“You cunt,” Fabiana said, awake now, and she rolled over and sat up in one movement. Then she saw who had awakened her. The expression on her face—mouth widened into an O, her eyes huge—made Ama laugh in spite of herself.
“Lady,” Fabiana said. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Yes,” Ama answered. “That much I gathered.”
Fabiana made to stand up, but Ama stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Wait,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”
Fabiana stayed as she had been bidden to do. Her white head scarf was askew from sleep, and dark tendrils of hair escaped from it prettily.
It was no wonder that Emory liked this girl, Ama thought. Embarrassed as she was, she posed the question she had come to ask. “I know that King Emory has . . . visited you,” she began.
A smirk spread across Fabiana’s face, bringing a blush to Ama’s cheeks. “’Tis my pleasure to please my king,” Fabiana answered.
“Is it?” said Ama.
Fabiana’s brow gathered, confused.
“I mean to say,” said Ama, “and I am genuinely interested to know the truth, if you would be so generous as to answer me . . .”
“Answer what?” said Fabiana, and her tone, belligerent though it was, encouraged Ama forward.
“Is it truly your pleasure? To please the king?”
There was another moment of confusion before Fabiana’s face cleared. “Do I like it, you mean? When the king climbs me?”
“Yes,” breathed Ama, relieved. “Do you enjoy it?”
“Who would not?” Fabiana said. “To be measured by the king’s yard is a pleasure and a privilege, both.”
“But,” struggled Ama, “what is the pleasure? I mean to say . . . what does it feel like?”
“The king’s yard? Or the pleasure it gives?”
Ama appreciated Fabiana’s plain talk. “Both,” she said.
“Well, for the first, it feels all different ways. It can be a soft lump of warm dough, a handful of wrinkles and weight. And then it becomes a great thick horn, like the well-cooked leg of a turkey. And then, down betwixt my legs, it feels like . . . well, a key, perhaps, or a poker to a fire. It stirs me up. It takes me apart. It makes me feel myself like a lump of warm, moist dough.”
She raised an eyebrow at Ama’s clear discomfort. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Ama cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose.” Then she said, “You know, I am to marry the king.”
Fabiana’s expression turned like sour milk. “And you have come to tell me to stay away from my king.”
“No,” said Ama quickly. “You misunderstand.”
Now Fabiana tilted her head, listening.
“It is clear you find a pleasure with the king that I am well sure I am not capable of,” Ama said, searching for the right words. “I thought that, perhaps, when it came to . . . well, when it came to the king’s yard, you and I could have an understanding.”
“What sort of understanding?”
“Well, I imagine that I will have some duties I will not be able to avoid,” Ama continued. “But, as you seem to take pleasure in that which I will most likely just endure, I wanted to let you know that it would not be against my wishes if you continued to . . . take visits from the king.”
There. She had said it.
Fabiana blinked at her. “Lady,” she said finally, “you are greatly mistaken if you think it matters one whit whether I find pleasure or pain with my king’s yard, or, for that matter, whether or not you do. What matters, only, is my king’s pleasure. You, and I, and whichever other girls take his fancy, we are all servants to that.”
She stood up, tucked the loose, dark tendrils of hair beneath her head scarf, and ran her hands down her skirt to smooth it. “Lady,” she said, with a look of pity so unmistakable that Ama cast her gaze down from it, “if you cannot find pleasure with my king, I suggest you at least find a way to appear to do so. Otherwise, you risk his wrath. And a man’s wrath can be mightier by far than his yard.”
Five
The Queen Mother’s Chambers
When she returned to her room, Ama found an anxious Tillie waiting for her. She was pacing the floor, with Sorrow shadowing her, pacing as well.
“There you are,” Tillie said, her voice sharp.
“Am I not permitted to leave this room?” Ama heard her voice answering Tillie’s sharpness.
Tillie bowed her head. “Of course, lady, you are free to go as you please. I beg your pardon.”
Ama softened. “No, ’tis I should apologize to you. I have kept you waiting here, and I am sure you have better things to do than wait for an errant mistress to return.”
Tillie looked as if she might ask where Ama had been, but instead she said, “The queen mother has requested that your meeting be over breakfast, in her chambers. I am here to dress you.”
Ama swallowed. She was not hungry, and she still had no desire to visit the queen mother’s rooms. But she understood that a request is not always a request, and so she allowed Tillie to dress her.
Tillie chose the red gown that Ama had worn the first night she came to the castle, and Ama made her body obliging as Tillie tended to it. Then Tillie’s clever fingers braided black velvet ribbons into Ama’s hair, and she knelt to help Ama fit her feet into matching black slippers.
The whole of her ministrations felt hurried and tinged with anxiety, of words unspoken, and so, at last, when Tillie had declared Ama ready, Ama took Tillie’s hands up in hers and said, “I want to ask something of you. All right?”
Tillie nodded. “Anything, lady.”
It was Tillie’s duty to serve Ama, Ama reminded herself. As much as Ama would have liked for it to be true, Tillie was not her friend. Can there be friendship between a servant and a mistress? She did not know. “Tillie,” she said, “I’d like for you to be honest with me.”
“Yes, lady,” Tillie answered. “About what?”
“About everything,” Ama answered. “I am new to this place, as you know. I am new to everything. I have no knowledge of who I was before I woke in the king’s arms. I have no idea how this world of yours works, or how I fit into it. I have only the nagging fear that I do not fit here, not really, and I am unsure which parts of myself I must carve away in order to fit the way I am supposed to. Does that make sense to you, Tillie?”
“It does,” said Tillie. “That is the way of being a woman, to carve away at herself, to fit herself to the task, but, also, to be able to carve herself in a different way, when a different shape is needed.”
Tillie shaped herself in service of Ama, Ama knew. In what other shapes must Tillie carve herself when she was in other parts of her day? Ama did not know anything about what Tillie was, aside from her servant.
And here Ama was, asking Tillie to carve herself further into the image Ama would find useful, a shape that may not even be safe for Tillie to assume: that of divine truth teller, guide to Ama’s blindness. Why should she think that Tillie would relish such a task?
“Tillie,” she said, “I was wrong to ask. Your duties are to dress me and maintain my room. I shall not ask more of you.”
Tillie’s face softened, clearly relieved. “You look beautiful, lady,” she said. “The queen mother will be so pleased to see you.”
Which was, Ama understood, Tillie’s manner of telling her that it was time for her to go.