The Catswold Portal

Briccha’s narrow eyes widened. “You will not last at all if you cannot control your rudeness.” She pushed past Melissa and strode out the attic door.

Melissa climbed into the high bunk, meaning to rest for only a little while. She didn’t know what Briccha had meant, but she would find out. Pulling the thin blanket up, she lay thinking about the palace dungeons. She had glanced into the scullery storeroom when a girl was sent to get flour. She thought it likely the cellars were near the storeroom to give easy access to the larger food stores, and she wondered if they opened from within the storeroom. Soon she slept. She didn’t wake until Briccha shouted up at her. “Four o’clock. Get down from there. Get dressed.” A lantern burned at the far end of the room.

She climbed down, cramped and uncomfortable in her wrinkled dress. There was a crock of icy water beside the window. Two girls were dipping their towels into it, dabbing at their faces. She dropped her dress and washed herself all over, shivering, trying to wake up. Most of the girls still slept. Only five had been called. She dressed and followed the other four out, crowding sleepily down the dark stair. At home she would have built up the fire and gone back to bed until the cottage warmed, then risen to wake Mag.

As she pushed into the scullery behind the other girls, Briccha was already giving orders. Melissa tried to find humor in the woman’s harsh manner, but it took her some days before she could let Briccha’s scoldings roll off as the other girls did. Only Terlis seemed unduly upset by the scullery mistress’s harshness. Melissa liked Terlis; the valley elven were shy, gentle people—though they hated to talk about unpleasant things, even to answer one’s questions. The valley elven took the view that if you didn’t talk about it, it would go away. When she asked Terlis why Briccha thought she would last for only a few days, Terlis didn’t want to answer.

“What harm to tell me? It’s too hard, not understanding.”

“Look at yourself,” Terlis said softly, “then look around you. You’re the only pretty one. We’re all either misshapen with the blood of cave dwarfs or just homely like me. You’ll be sent home soon. The pretty ones are all sent home.”

“But why are they brought here, then? And why are they sent home?”

Terlis smiled patiently. “Sent home to keep them out of the king’s bed.”

“Oh,” Melissa said, her face reddening. She knew a dozen tales of the king’s adventures with various lovers. Of course the queen took lovers, too. She had a constant procession of bedmates as she tried to breed a healthy heir to strengthen her claim to the throne. Thus the kingdom was locked in a constant power struggle. Siddonie, if she could bear a healthy child, would surely throw King Efil out and make the new child’s father king. She had married Efil to become queen; she didn’t need him now. And if Efil could breed a healthy child first, he would dispossess Siddonie.

Terlis said, “Everyone knows a commoner is more likely to breed a strong baby.”

“But,” Melissa said, “if she’s afraid of the king taking servant girls to bed, why does she bring them here at all?”

“No one knows.” Terlis looked hard at Melissa. “The queen brought you here just as she brought us all, and no one knows why. Maybe her spells made you start out on your own, maybe she made you think you were coming on your own, but you can be sure that Queen Siddonie brought you to Affandar Palace.”

She knew Terlis was wrong, but she didn’t argue. What good to argue?

It was night when she found her chance to search further for the door to the cellars. She crept down from the attic after the other girls slept, and moved into the black shadows of the storeroom. Feeling her way along the shelves, her hand trailed over cloth bags of flour and jars of fruit, groping for the door that would lead down. She had tried for days to come in here, but there had always been people around. She knew that Briccha slept next to the storeroom, so she moved silently, but at last she brought a small spell-light—and froze.

Briccha stood in the shadows, broader than ever in a voluminous nightgown. “I thought so. What are you doing here? What are you looking for?”

“I was hungry. I came down for a slice of bread.”

Briccha slapped her so hard she staggered against the shelves. “You don’t need bread. The bread is in the scullery. I don’t like nosiness. Nor does the queen. Get to bed.”

For a week she didn’t go near the storeroom. But in that moment she had seen, behind Briccha, two doors. One was open into a sleeping chamber—she could see inside a rumpled bed and a wrinkled white uniform hanging on the wall. The other door looked heavier, more stoutly made, and it was closed.

Convinced that was the door to the cellars, she waited until a morning when Briccha was in the vegetable gardens, then she approached it, slipping out of the scullery past the other girls, carrying an empty bowl as if she were going to fetch something. She hurried through the storeroom…