Only once had Anwin interfered when Augusta berated Thursey. "Brat of a coward. Like father like child, and worthless," Augusta had screamed.
"He wasn't a coward. My father wasn't a coward or worthless!"
"Everyone knows it. How could a man as clumsy as he was, who lost two fingers just working in the mill, ever expect to amount to anything or stand up to an enemy?" Augusta taunted.
"Who do you think ran this inn! And he kept you decent tempered, which is more than you are now!" Thursey flared. "Anyone can have an accident."
"Any clumsy one. Anyone afraid of the very mill wheel."
"Died a coward," Delilah cut in. "I heard he ran from Balkskak's troops when the queen and prince were captured."
Anwin, having listened from the kitchen, had come into the hall and stared so hard at the three that their gazes dropped in confusion, and Druscilla's face turned red. Anwin said no word, but his furious glare drove the three of them from the hall in silence.
"Pay no attention, child. You can't allow yourself to believe such foolish things."
"I know, Anwin," she mumbled through her tears. "But I don't even know if he's alive or dead. That's what makes me cry."
It had happened so long ago, yet she never stopped hoping her father would come home. Anwin had shaken his head sadly; he would not give her false hope. "Hundreds of men died at Balkskak, child." But when he had gone away, Thursey knew if there were any word of her father, Anwin would seek it out in his travels.
It had been a long desperate battle with Balkskak. When the king's winter palace was attacked, and the queen and the twelve-year-old prince captured, there followed more than three years of warring before the captives were safe again. All the men of the village had been called out at once in a first terrible effort, Thursey's father among them. But the battles raged ceaselessly during the next years, and only occasional news of them reached the village. Thursey had been but a child when her father went away. Three years later when the warring was over, he did not come home again. Nor was there word of him. The returning men did not remember when he was last seen in the confusion of the war. The known dead were mourned over, but those others who were missing seemed to be forgotten. The town, in its delirium over knowing the wounded prince and queen were safe, could talk only of the health of the royal family. For both queen and prince had been dangerously ill with a foreign fever during the whole of their imprisonment and were said to be pale and weak still. The king's attacks had again and again been drawn back with the threat of their imminent deaths. After the battle they were taken to the far isle of Carthemas, where it was said they might be cured by healers. Now, more than five years after the first battle of Balkskak, it was said the prince was still wasted and suffering, for he had been wounded as well as enervated by the fever.
IT was some days after Thursey sewed the pages of the book of Aschenputtel that she heard the news: the king's party had already left the winter palace and this year they were bringing with them the young prince and the queen. They were expected to arrive well before Easter. The news was carried by a traveling herbalist. He came in the evening riding upon a roan gelding so swaybacked that Thursey stood staring in amazement before she ran to take the man's stirrup and see to his wants. He dismounted like a spider unwinding, so tall and thin he was, and stood looking down at Thursey with a sour expression.
The sisters, peeping through the windows, would perhaps make little of him for he looked poor indeed. Still he was male, and Delilah came simpering out to welcome him. "See to the horse, child, are you dumb? Heat the ale then, get the gentleman's belongings—be off with you!" As the herbalist turned away from Delilah, Thursey saw a bit of a smile on his thin long face, and she grinned boldly back at him. Geddebeuf, his name was, and when he was fed and rested, he took his wares to the center of the village. Sitting on the roan gelding and calling out his wares in a voice like hinges creaking, Geddebeuf drew a crowd around him. "My friends, I am not one of those meager herbalists who stand in front of churches; I am a healer, true and good, and I carry with me medicinals to cure your ills and humors. I bring you wonders from the distant lands, from Apulia and Calabria and Burgundy, from the Forest of Ardennes where wild beasts have been slaughtered that you might benefit from the ointments extracted from them to cure your ills, to cure fevers and coughs and humors and worms, to cure faintness and dispeptics and fallen hair . . ." Thursey listened, enchanted, as his voice rambled on like a creaky trumpet.
Only when the crowd's interest began to wane did Geddebeuf commence to tell of the king's imminent return to the castle. Then the crowd drew close as he spoke of the king's party traveling even now on the high road and of the wonderful Easter ball that was planned.
After supper as Geddebeuf settled his feet on a padded stool and leaned back before the fireplace in the hall, he spoke in even more detail of the coming return of the king, and of the ball the king planned. A ball for the queen and for the young prince, who despite his illness must soon take up his duties as a man. "Ah, they will make a merry time of it, be sure. The king brings with him the finest of poets and minstrels in the land, he brings gleemen and singers and jugglers to cheer the queen, and storytellers with tales of war and love, ribald tales and quaint. He brings musicians who play upon the tambourine and harp, the lute and the rota and the bagpipes, upon the syrinx, the clarion, and the rebec, the psaltery and the sackbut, the gittern, the shalm, and—"
"And the health of the prince is improved?" cut in Augusta with irritation.
"Indeed! The cure is a secret known only to a few of us, and I would have tended the young prince and the queen myself had I not been engaged in other matters."
Delilah laughed scoffingly. "What is the cure, then, herb man?"
"Ah, 'tis made from the milk of a rare kind of goat found only on one island in the whole of the known world, the Isle of Carthemas, and those goats have been brought back in ships by the king. The milk is so rich and wondrous that it, mixed with secret herbs, has made the queen quite rosy, and soon the prince, despite his slow-healing wounds, will be the same. The goats travel with the king's own party and will be stabled right in the castle."
Though the news was interesting, Thursey would have preferred a story. The approaching entourage would throw Delilah and Druscilla into a fit of primping, for many hangers-on would stay at the inn. And, too, the idea of the ailing prince seemed to make the two sisters quite giddy. Druscilla whispered to Delilah, "The dear prince, he will be so weak and pale," and Delilah, sighing, answered, "Oh, the tender care I could give him."
"And the king searches still for the wielder of the sword of Balkskak," Geddebeuf was saying, "for the gallant man who purloined the Balkskakian king's own sword and used it to defend the wounded prince until the king's forward guard found him standing off seven Balkskakian warriors in the palace wine keep where the prince and queen lay bitterly ill . . ." Thursey thought the tale could be told with less pomp; all Gies knew it anyway. But the telling of it seemed to please Geddebeuf and the stepsisters. She thought of the king's party with interest and annoyance mixed. There would be tubs of porridge to boil, loaves to knead so her arms ached thinking of it, troughs of meat and barrels of ale to deal with. And Delilah and Druscilla, busy with demands and bad tempers and very little help, would occupy themselves flirting and getting under foot. Thursey sat silently wondering if she ought to go away. But go away where? And if her father ever returned, he must not find her gone.