But she could say nothing of this to the young laundress. She could only pray to the gods that the man who had escaped down the river might be her man.
A single guard wearing the mark of a white swan stood guard at the service door, around by the alley. When she touched the tin swan in her bodice, she knew she had to brave this last leg of the journey.
“Go on, child, go home, then, and my thanks to you.” She handed over the heavy basket. “May the Hanging Woman loosen your womb and let your child come easily.”
“My thanks, Mistress.”
Anna watched the girl’s waddling progress into the dusky streets and hoped she would get home without mishap, but the King’s City was a peaceful place on the whole. Folk were still about, so she was able to cross the square by tagging along behind a pair of young apprentices hauling a butchered pig between them. The Forlanger soldiers glanced at the pig and made crude comments about what the lads were like to do with the sow, but their gaze skipped right over her. They took no notice of her at all, right up to the moment she cut sideways and strode up to the side gate and its single swan-marked guardsman.
“I pray you,” she said in a low voice, not hiding her distress as a pair of Forlanger soldiers broke off to trot toward the gate, “if your lady wishes to save the life of General Olivar, then let me inside before they catch me. And tell them this tale, that I am ... “
Fear made her words fail and her thoughts sluggish. The guard was staring at her as the footfalls of the Forlangers closed in. The poor young man looked as stupefied as she felt. A breath of wind brushed her neck, like the stroke of a sword.
So she got mad, for she had not trudged all this way just to have her corpse tossed into a rubbish heap and the general left for dead in the forest.
“Stupid boy, let me in! Tell the soldiers I am your poor mother come to beg a loaf of bread in the kitchen and that I will scold you if you don’t let me in. I will see that the lady knows you helped me. But General Olivar will die if you do not act now.”
He was so surprised by her harsh tone that he opened the gate and, as soon as she slipped through, slammed it behind her.
The Forlangers ran up as she hurried across a courtyard to the servants’ door. “You! Who was that?” they demanded.
The youth’s voice was shaking, but it could as well have been from annoyance as fear.
“My mum, as if it’s anything to you. Cursed woman keeps coming to beg bread off the kitchen. I’m that ashamed of it, but if I don’t let her in she stands outside and scolds me. And she’s drunk as usual. Best day of my life when I walked out of her cursed filthy hovel.”
Their argument faded as she reached the door. She whispered thanks to the gods when the big latch pushed down easily, not locked. The door opened onto an entryway bigger than her cottage. She closed the door and stood there gaping at a high ceiling and wood paneling illuminated by oil lamps, the richest ornamentation she had ever seen, such fine carving as put the headman’s house in the village to shame. The heat and smell of the oil in the lamps drenched her; the fierce light after the dark streets made her blink. A riot was happening somewhere down the hall, a clattering like a battle and many voices talking over each other.
Something about a roast.
A girl in a neat skirt and blouse covered by a linen apron dashed down a length of stairs with a tray in her hands. Seeing Anna, she stopped.
“Where is that careless girl?” bellowed a voice from the room where a mob was evidently destroying every piece of furnishing.
The girl ran into that other room. Anna tried desperately to get her bearings, but the long corridor, the many doors, the stairs, and the echoing sound confused her more than forest, road, or city streets had.
The girl appeared again, stared at her again, and ran down the corridor to vanish into another room. She reappeared with a radiantly handsome woman behind her who might have been Anna’s age and was wearing the most fashionable clothing Anna had ever seen, a gold gown that shone like sunlight and a finely embroidered bridal shawl draped over her shoulders. Anna stood stunned, not knowing how to show honor to a great lady, the king’s own sister!
The woman approached her with a stern gaze. “Who are you, Mistress? How have you gotten through the gates this night? I am surprised that Roderd allowed you in, for he knows better. On the new moon, the lady gives out alms. You must come back then.”
“You are not the king’s sister?” Anna asked.
Those lustrous eyes opened wide, and the woman smiled. “I am her downstairs chatelaine, the keeper of the kitchen and lower hall. Where are you from? For you have a country accent and a country look about you.”
Anna looked toward the girl, a little thing no taller than her second daughter but lively and as smartly-dressed as the headman’s three proud daughters who liked to traipse around the village showing off their expensive garb.
“Go along,” said the chatelaine with a gesture. The girl scurried off into what Anna at long last realized must be a kitchen so large that the headman’s house would fit inside it. That explained the echoing clamor of many cooks and servants at their work, making ready for some manner of feast.
“Do not make me call a guard to throw you out, Mistress,” said the chatelaine more kindly, as if suspecting Anna was slow of wit and perhaps drunk besides.
“I beg pardon for my manner,” said Anna, recovering her tongue at last, “but I have never seen such a fine house as this one.”
The chatelaine sighed.
She went on hastily, seeing the woman’s patience wane. “I pray you do not throw me out. I am come many days’ walk from a distant village with news I can only trust the king’s sister to hear.”
“You must imagine such a tale will fall coldly on my ears.”
Anna did not know what to do. What if the Forlanger soldiers pushed past the lone guard and rushed into the house? She had to trust that the mark of the king’s sister being a swan and the general’s mention of her meant that the lady’s servants were also loyal to the man. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “News of General Olivar.”
The chatelaine’s eyes opened wide. From the courtyard, shouting broke out.
Anna reached into her bodice and pulled out the tin swan.
The chatelaine gasped. “Hide it!” she said, then grasped Anna’s wrist and tugged her along up the stairs in such haste that Anna stumbled twice before they reached the top. There, a pair of bored young men wearing swan-embroidered tabards straightened up as if caught doing what they were not allowed.
“Get down to the door and by no means allow any outsiders farther than the entry until I return,” the chatelaine snapped. “Send Captain Bellwin to me at once in the library.”
The young men grinned, like hounds eager to the scent, and pounded down the stairs just as some manner of altercation erupted at another door. But Anna had scarcely time to think, for the dazzling corridor down which they hurried was like a palace of the gods, all studded with gold and silver and color. There were people walking and standing and hunting and dancing along the walls too, so like to people that she wanted to reach out and touch them, only she knew they were paintings like the one in the market hall that depicted the king being anointed and crowned.
The chatelaine pulled her into a room so filled with books that it smelled different than any room Anna had ever been in. She did not know there were so many books. Even the priest at the temple, who bragged of his treasure-house of six books, would lose his ability to speak could he have seen the shelves and shelves of them. Who made so many books? What was their purpose?