The Reluctant Assassin by Fiona Buckley

Author:Fiona Buckley [Buckley, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780291031
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Word From Home

Next day, the gale continued to blow until nightfall, and there was heavy rain, but after that, things improved and the sun came out again. It made no difference to the fact that for me, life was miserable, and stayed so for the whole of the week that followed.

It was plain, very quickly, that Mary, although she was putting up with my company, and theoretically understood why I had once betrayed her, still wished I wasn’t there.

She used me as an errand runner. I was required to fetch and carry (find my riding gloves, will you, Ursula; Ursula, I’ve mislaid my big workbox, look for it, please; fetch me my fur cloak, Ursula). I was asked to tune her lute (but not to play for her); to applaud when she practised dance steps with Mary Seton and Lady Livingstone but not to join in; to thread needles for her; to wash her little black and white terrier, Timmy.

Because I was good at embroidery, I was sometimes allowed to help with that, but I was discouraged from taking part in the conversation that usually went with it. I was treated, in fact, like an unattractive poor relation. It made me feel like one.

At the end of that week, however, things improved a little, and that was due to Timmy. He was a lively little dog, sometimes given to slipping away to explore on his own, and on that seventh morning, Mary caught sight of him disappearing out of her parlour door, and told me to go after him.

I hurried out, saw his little piebald rump vanishing down the stairs, and gave chase. He glanced back once, realized that he was pursued and mischievously led me a dance, through a part of the castle that I hadn’t seen before, down some more stairs and straight towards the castle kitchens.

He was a fast mover and kept ahead of me, so there was time, before I caught up with him, for a noisy uproar to start beyond the kitchen door. I broke into a run and found myself in the hot, steamy cavern that is the usual kind of kitchen to be found in a castle, staring at two men dressed as chefs, one brandishing a most alarming carving knife and the other anti-climatically flourishing a bronze spatula. They were face to face and shouting, while Timmy cowered in a corner, whimpering.

‘You don’t kick Her Grace’s terrier! No one kicks Her Grace’s pets! You should have …’

‘I’ll kick any blasted animal except the kitchen cat that sets a paw in this place!’ bawled the chef with the carving knife. ‘And I wouldn’t put up with the cat except that it catches mice!’

He was a big man with a red face, though this was possibly due to the heat. There were four huge hearths and all of them contained roaring fires, where capons were sizzling on spits and cauldrons were bubbling. Both chefs and all their underlings – who had one and all stopped what they were doing in order to gape – were sweating heavily.

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