We returned by the fifth bell of the afternoon, on foot but escorted by a couple of barrow boys pushing a small cart loaded with straw-wrapped clays containing yet more chemicals and ingredients for what I was starting to suspect would be a long season of experiments and potions.
At the time, I recall feeling mildly resentful of this, for I did not doubt that I would be heavily involved in whatever the Doctor had in mind, and that my efforts would be in addition to those domestic tasks she had come to rely on me performing as a matter of course. To me, I strongly suspected, would fall most of the weighing and measuring and grinding and combining and diluting and washing and scouring and polishing and so on which this new batch of observations would require. There would be proportionately less time for me to spend with my fellows, playing cards and flirting with the kitchen girls, and, without being shy about it, that sort of thing had become relatively important to me in the past year.
Even so, I suppose, it could be said that in some cellar of my soul I was secretly pleased to be so relied upon by the Doctor and was looking forward to being crucially involved with her efforts. These would, after all, mean us being together, working as a team, working as equals, closeted in her study and workshop, passing many happily intense evenings and nights together, striving for a shared goal. Could I not hope that a greater regard might blossom in such intimate circumstances, now that she knew it was in my thoughts? The Doctor had been decisively rejected by the one she loved, or at least the one she believed she loved, while the manner in which she had declined the connotation of my interest in her seemed to me to be more to do with modesty than hostility or even indifference.
Yet I did feel a degree of petulance towards the ingredients being wheeled up the street in front of us that evening. How I regretted that feeling, so soon afterwards. How unsure that future I had envisaged for myself and her really was.
A warm wind seemed to blow us up the Market Square towards the Blister Gate, where long shadows advanced to meet us. We entered the palace. The Doctor paid the barrow boys off and a handful of servants were summoned to help me carry the clays, crates and boxes up to our apartments. I laboured under a rotund clay I knew was full of acid, chafing at the thought of having to share the same cramped set of rooms with it and its fellows. The Doctor was talking about having a workbench-level hearth and chimney constructed to allow the noxious fumes to escape better, but I suspected that even so the next few moons would see me with running eyes and an aching nose, not to mention hands pimpled with tiny burns and clothes perforated with pin-head holes.
We achieved the Doctor’s apartments just as Xamis was setting. The casks, clays and so on were distributed about the rooms, the servants were thanked and given a few coins, and the Doctor and I lit the lamps and set to unpacking all the inedible and poisonous provisions we had purchased from Master Chelgre.
A knock came at the door just after seventh bell. I answered it to find a servant I did not recognise. He was taller and a little older than me.
“Oelph?” he said, grinning. “Here. A note from the GC.” He shoved a sealed piece of paper addressed to Doctor Vosill into my hand.
“The who?” I asked, but he had already turned and was sauntering off down the corridor. I shrugged.
The Doctor read the note. “I am to attend the Guard Commander and Duke Ormin in the Suitor’s Wing,” she said, sighing and pushing her fingers through her hair. She looked round the half-unpacked cases. “Would you mind doing the rest of this, Oelph?”
“Of course not, mistress.”
“I think it’s obvious where everything goes. Like with like. If there is anything unfamiliar, just leave it on the floor. I’ll try not to be too long.”
“Very well, mistress.”
The Doctor buttoned her shirt up to the neck, sniffed at one of her armpits (just the sort of thing she did which I found unladylike and even distressing, but which I look back on now with an ache of longing), then shrugged, threw on a short jacket, and made for the door. She opened it, then came back, looked round the mess of straw, box-planks, twine and sacking that lay strewn across the floor, picked up her old dagger which she had been using to cut (or rather saw) the twine around the boxes and crates, and went off, whistling. The door closed.
I do not know what made me look at the note which had summoned her. She had left it lying on top of an opened crate, and as I pulled the straw out of another box nearby, the fold of creamy paper kept attracting my eye. Eventually, after a glance at the door, I lifted the note and sat down to read it. It said little more than what the Doctor had told me. I read it again.
D. Vosill kindly to meet D. Ormin and G.C. Adlain in the Suitor’s Wing on receipt privately. P.G.t.K.
Providence Guard the King, indeed. I looked at the last word for a few moments. The name at the end of the note was Adlain, but it did not look like his writing, which I knew. Of course the note had probably been dictated, or composed and written by Epline, Adlain’s page, on his master’s instructions. But I thought I knew his writing, too, and this was not it. I cannot claim that I thought any further or at any greater depth.
I could claim a host of reasons for what I did next, but the truth is that I do not know, unless instinct itself can be cited. Even to call it instinct may be to dignify the urge. At the time it felt more like a whim, or even a sort of trivial duty. I cannot even claim that I felt fearful, or had a premonition. I simply did it.
I had been prepared to follow the Doctor from the start of my mission. I had expected to be told to shadow her one day, to follow her into the city on one of the occasions she did not take me along with her, yet never had my Master requested such a thing. I had assumed that he retained other people, more experienced and adept at such behaviour, and less likely to be recognisable to the Doctor, for such work. So, in putting out the lamps, locking the door behind me and following her, I was in a sense doing something I had long thought I would one day find myself doing. I left the note lying where I had picked it up.
The palace seemed quiet. I supposed most people were preparing for dinner. I ascended to the roof-floor. The servants who had their rooms up here would all be busy just now, and probably nobody would see me as I flitted by. Also, this way to the old Suitor’s Wing was shorter. For somebody who was not thinking about what he was doing, I was thinking remarkably clearly.
I descended to the dark confines of the Little Court by the servants’ stairs and skirted the corner of the old North Wing (now in the southern part of the palace) by the light of Foy, Iparine and Jairly. Lamps burned in the distant windows of the main part of the palace, pointing my way for a few steps before the light was eclipsed by the shuttered façade of the old North Wing. Like the Suitor’s Wing, this would not normally be used at this time of year unless there was a great state occasion. The Suitor’s Wing looked shuttered and dark, too, save for one sliver of light showing at the edge of the main doorway. I kept to the two-thirds darkness at the foot of the old North Wing’s wall as I approached, and felt exposed beneath the single intrusive eye of Jairly.
With the King in residence, there were supposed to be regular guard patrols, even here where there would not normally be anybody. I had seen no hint of any guards so far, and had no idea how often they made their rounds, or indeed if they really did bother with this part of the palace, but even knowing that men of the palace guard might appear made me more nervous than I felt I really ought to be. What had I to hide? Was I not a good and faithful servant, and devoted to the King? Yet, here I was, quite consciously skulking.