WE BROKE OUR fast on my parents’ plain fare. I’d never shared a meal with any Bamarre before. Just as we did, they picked up their food with their fingertips and speared the common cheese with their little knives.
Just as we did? I was a Bamarre! And why was I surprised?
I asked Annet, “How much did you tell Lord Tove?”
“He said he already knew you were a Bamarre!”
“He didn’t, but I’d made him suspect.” My great mistake.
She went on, “I told him we were sisters and how Lady Klausine took us.”
“Not about Halina?”
“No.”
“What did you say about how I found out I’m a Bamarre?”
“He didn’t ask.”
Once he knew what I was, he didn’t care about anything else.
“Did he keep questioning you?”
“Aunt Nadira,” Poppi said, “begging your pardon, don’t badger your sis— niece.”
I ignored him. “You didn’t mention the magic boots, did you?”
She shook her head. “He had no more questions.”
“Magic boots?” Drualt cried.
I grinned and explained. Mama and Poppi had to restrain him from trying them.
When he’d settled down, Poppi said, “Shoni, Annet looks like you used to.”
“I was never as pretty as Annet.”
Annet blushed, a new sight for me.
“You are a lovely woman, Shoni.”
Mama touched her hair.
“Do I look like anybody?” Drualt asked.
Poppi hugged his shoulder. “You resemble an Eskern Mountain puppy.”
Drualt barked and laughed.
I saw what Poppi meant in my brother’s big eyes, enormous half-circle smile, and shaggy eyebrows, especially on a child.
“Did Aunt Nadira look like any of us before she was changed?” Drualt said.
Mama said, “It was too dark to see.”
After breakfast, while Poppi built a pallet frame for my mattress, the rest of us stuffed a canvas sack with straw from a shed behind the cottage. Black specks dotted the straw—fleas, too numerous to pick out.
When we finished, I pronounced my new bed excellent.
Annet said, “Begging your pardon, Pe— Aunt Nad—” She stopped herself. “Poppi, do I really have to call her that?”
I answered for him. “You should.”
Annet’s eyebrows rose.
“Ooh!” Drualt sounded surprised.
My parents frowned.
“Nadira is safer,” I said. Wasn’t that obvious? “We all have to get used to it.” And I had to get used to looking like an old woman.
“Aunt Nadira,” Annet said, “if Poppi were Lord Tove and someone asked him a question, would you answer for him?”
I started to say I would, if I knew the answer, but that wasn’t true.
They waited, watching me.
If the person Annet had asked were a Lakti and my own age, I would have answered, but not someone older or higher in rank. If the person were a Bamarre, no matter how old, I would speak. That I was being disrespectful wouldn’t occur to me. I blushed. “I shouldn’t have spoken for you, er, Nephew.”
He squinted, which I had learned meant he was thinking.
Everyone waited.
He said, “If we’re going to win our freedom, we also have to learn what it’s like to be a Lakti. We’ll watch you, too.”
Annet swept the breakfast crumbs into her hands and flung them into the fire. “We know what the Lakti are like, and Aunt Nadira should have thanked us for making her a bed.”
Mama wrapped the remaining cheese in burlap. “Sweet”—she touched my unsweet sister’s nose—“living in that castle, some of you is a Lakti, too. Both of you need to become completely Bamarre.”
Poppi squinted. “Shoni, take Aunt Nadira with you.”
I jumped up from the table bench. “Where?”
“With me, Adeer?”
Poppi nodded. “The best way to learn to be a Bamarre is by serving the Lakti. Aunt Nadira, Shoni cooks for one of the families.”
My chest tightened. Why was I afraid of my own people? “I’m ready.”
“Begging her pardon,” Annet said, “she doesn’t even know how to scrub a carrot.”
No one answered. Poppi stirred up the fire. I realized they didn’t want to argue.
“Please show her, Annet. Now Her Mistress-ship will have not two but three servants for the wages of one.” Mama did a gliding dance step to the hooks by the door. “I’ve been lucky to have you with me.”
She meant Annet.
We donned our cloaks.
“Aunt Nadira . . .” Mama faced me. “We call them the Ships because they think they’re so grand. His Master-ship glares, as if a snake was squeezing his liver. Her Mistress-ship fancies herself a wit. Laugh if you can, but be sure to smile. Her twins, the two little Ships, are six, old enough to know they can order us about.” She put on her cap with its dangling green tassel.
I realized—probably we all did—but Annet said it: “Aunt Nadira needs a tassel.”
My stomach twisted.
“We have many, Aunt Nadira,” Mama said. “Adeer makes them and sells them. Sometimes they fall off. People often need one.”
Poppi left for the shed. Mama rummaged in a basket and lifted out a plain brass brooch. Poppi returned with a tassel.
I hugged my cap to my chest, unwilling to hand it over.
Drualt put on his own cap and tilted his head from side to side so that the tassel swung back and forth. He made his eyes cross following it.
I couldn’t help smiling. I gave the cap to Mama, who pinned the tassel to the band and returned the cap, an ordinary cap, nothing to reveal that I’d been a lord’s daughter—just loose, unbleached linen sewn to a starched band that circled my brow, ran under my ears and around the back of my head.
I remembered a couplet from a poem called “Circle”:
Nothing waxes but to wane.
In the start, the end awaits.
I put on the cap and felt no different. Still a Lakti on the inside, I followed Mama and my sister out of the cottage.
Outside, a light rain greeted us.
“Annet, please be pleasant. Aunt Nadira, please don’t talk.” Mama added, surprising me, “They have their troubles, too.”
The walls of the two Lakti houses were made of stone and daub, as the Bamarre cottages were, too, but these houses had slate roofs, rather than thatched, and were four times the size of a cottage, with a complete second story and small glazed windows on the first floor. The upper windows were covered with greased parchment, as all my parents’ windows were.
Mama stopped at the first Lakti door, which was freshly painted a bright orange. She turned and brushed the drops that beaded on her shoulders and told us to do the same. “Her Mistress-ship doesn’t like drips.” She straightened my cap, tucked Annet’s hair into her cap, and smoothed her own cloak in front.
Did we have to be perfect for these Lakti?
Mama added, “She lets us use the front door when the widow isn’t watching.”
The widow, I later learned, headed the other Lakti household.
We entered a small vestibule, stairs straight ahead, closed doors left and right. A child’s cry, another child’s triumphant shout, and a woman’s harried tones came through the door on the left. We entered the one on the right, and Mama closed it behind us. Blessedly unpopulated—except for a cat sitting on the long worktable—the kitchen was as big as our cottage but a quarter the size of the castle kitchen.
Across from us, the logs in the fireplace glowed, barely alive.
“We’re late!” Mama cried. “Breakfast in half an hour.”
What would happen if we weren’t ready?
Hastily, we took off our cloaks and hung them on hooks next to the door. I started to remove my cap, but Annet shook her head at me. The tassel had to stay on.
Pots and pans hung from the ceiling. Cupboards lined the walls. Under a window in the back wall stood an iron sink and a pump, which would deliver water from the village well. A hose ran from the pump to the sink. We had several pumps in the castle, none in my parents’ cottage.
The door opened a crack, and a Bamarre woman Mama’s age squeezed through despite her plumpness.
“Across the Eskerns.” The Bamarre greeting. Then, “Oh!” at the sight of me. She curtsied to me first, then to Mama, then to Annet. I wondered why I’d come first.
Ah. My seeming age.
Annet curtsied back. I nodded, as would a Lakti to a Bamarre. Mama coughed. Annet made a strangled sound in her throat.
What?
Aaah! I curtsied, too. I wasn’t supposed to talk, but I ventured my first “Beg pardon.”
The woman curtsied again. “No matter. To apologize makes you good.” She waited.
Not knowing how to answer, I said, “Thank you.”
Mama and Annet said in unison, “To forgive makes you wise.”
This little poem proverb—that’s what I was supposed to say?
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Exactly.”
To cover my awkwardness, Mama introduced me to Goodwife Dyrin, who cleaned for the Ships. “Aunt Nadira arrived last night. She is kind enough to help us.”
Annet stirred up the fire and fed it with kindling from a basket on the hearth. A covered pot rested on a trivet above the flame.
I had to do something, too! I gazed about stupidly.
Annet began, “Pe— Nad— Aunt Nad—”
Mama began, “Poor Aunt Nadira . . .”
Goodwife Dyrin’s eyes traveled from one of us to the other.
Annet subsided and Mama finished, “. . . is recovering from phlegm fever.”
Phlegm fever had the effect of making its sufferers dull and slow.
Mama continued. “It’s a wonder she arrived safely. She came alone!” She chuckled. “Fairies watch over the fool.”
That’s how I discovered Mama’s cleverness. In a stroke she accounted for my behavior and my solo arrival.
In unison, Goodwife Dyrin and Annet answered, “If only they’d punish the cruel.”
Another poetic adage, this one aimed at the Lakti. How many proverbs were there?
Annet took my elbow and led me to an open cupboard stacked with pottery. “Aunt, we need four bowls, two platters, and two pitchers. Can you count them out and put them on the table?” Facing away from Goodwife Dyrin, she grinned at me.
I didn’t think she was being mean. Instead, she was making this a game. Surprisingly, she reminded me of Drualt.
In my new, gravelly voice, I said slowly, “I think so, Niece.” I carried the bowls to the table one at a time and made a show of counting when I got there.
Goodwife Dyrin asked, “Any news about your other daughter? Is she still a danger?”
I dropped a bowl.
Mama and the goodwife gasped, but, cushioned by the rushes spread across the wooden floor, it didn’t break. What would be the punishment for shattering a bowl?
“Beg pardon,” I remembered to say as I picked it up.
“No word of her, thank you. We hope she won’t bring trouble down on us.” Mama’s eyes touched me and moved on.
I blushed hotly.
Goodwife Dyrin stroked Mama’s arm. Her tone became matter-of-fact. “Shoni, can your aunt sweep out the rushes here and put new ones down? I’m racing like a donkey with spurs in its side. I just wanted to warn you that the Rest are coming for dinner, and Her Mistress-ship is in a Mood.”
The Rest, I deduced, meant the other Lakti family. I’d soon learn what a Mood meant.
Goodwife Dyrin squeezed out again.
A broom leaned against the wall between two cabinets. I began to sweep, a task I’d never tried before. A tempest of dust and rushes ensued until Annet told me to wield the broom less energetically.
Using tongs, Mama lifted the lid on the pot and stirred its contents, the morning’s pottage, which, it turned out, she’d prepared the afternoon before and left to cook over the smoldering fire. Annet chopped onions and scattered them on top.
When the used rushes were piled near the door, Mama had me sweep them into a dustpan and then into a pail, which I filled to brimming.
“Before you take them out, spread fresh ones. Her Mistress-ship doesn’t like a bare floor.” Mama showed me a basket under the table that held unspoiled rushes.
When I finished, she told me to toss the dirty rushes into the road.
I opened the door to the vestibule without putting on my cloak because cold didn’t trouble me. But then I decided it would trouble Nadira. Congratulating myself on thinking like a Bamarre, I returned to the kitchen and wrapped myself up. Back in the vestibule, a sprinkling of rushes fell out when I picked up the pail. Now I’d have to fetch the dustpan. For slowness, I might as well have had phlegm fever.
A door opened. “What are you doing?” A woman’s voice, and sharp.
Startled, I let the pail sway. More rushes cascaded.
“Put that down!”
I did and straightened up.
A tall woman slapped me.