The keep itself was outrageously dirty—the stinking reeds were filled with spoiled food, bones, and dead rats. There were no fresh reeds to cover the floors, so Merry had the stone floor swept out, and all the refuse tossed onto the midden.
It was a dreadful job, and done very slowly, since everyone was so weak. Exhaustion was the enemy. Merry called a halt to the work many times and sent people to rest in the inner bailey. And she encouraged them endlessly. Finally, the great hall began to look less wretched, and the smell was no longer quite so bad.
Since the dozen trestle tables had all been smashed, leaving nothing but sharp stakes of wood, she sent the men out to find large boards to set upon stones gathered from the destroyed soldier’s barracks. They managed to cobble together ten low tables.
“ ’ Twas a good idea, mistress,” Tupper said, and patted her arm.
Merry grinned at him.
When Garron returned three hours later with a huge boar tied to a pole, loud cheering filled the inner bailey. Garron was their hero.
“The cook, Old Clerc, died in the Retribution,” Miggins told him, “but yer not to worry, my lord.”
“Why not?”
“We have Bullic. And our little Merry can direct him, she knows what to do.”
“Who is our little Merry?”
“She, poor little mite, is the daughter of Wareham’s priest, Father Adal, who died in the Retribution from a knife in his chest. He was learned, he was, and thus he taught her to read and write. Lady Anne gave her household instruction before she died. Ye will see what Merry has accomplished whilst ye were gone.” And Miggins gave him a big toothy smile and hoped she had not overpraised.
Garron didn’t change expression, and he knew a lie when it hit him in the nose, but what part of what she’d said was a lie? He didn’t know, and at the moment, he didn’t care. Facing the enormity of what was ahead, he simply dismissed it, and smiled over at the girl, who kept her head down, as if afraid of him, or afraid he would see too much. He wanted to ask her why she hadn’t done anything until this morning, but again, he let it go for now. Maybe, like the others, she hadn’t bothered because she’d had no hope of survival.
“Ye go get the beast’s blood off ye, my lord. Merry will see to the food.”
Once Garron had stripped off his clothes in the inner bailey, rubbed himself all over with their single chunk of soap, Gilpin poured a pail of water from the castle well over his head. Garron shuddered and shook himself like a mongrel. “Tupper told me the devils missed this one bucket. He found it beneath a thick branch of a pear tree in the orchard. They’d chopped down the tree but missed the bucket.” Garron and his men shared the soap, except for Pali, who said there was only a sliver left and that wouldn’t even wash one leg, and he smelled sweet, did he not?
Garron strongly doubted there would be any more soap to be found in the keep. He prayed one of the women knew how to make soap. This girl, Merry—the priest’s bastard daughter—he also prayed she was as competent as old Miggins had assured him she was. First things first. Now there was enough food for everyone.
Garron hummed as he dressed himself in the clean clothes Gilpin shook out and gave to him. He paused a moment, realizing he heard men and women speaking, then a shout, even a short laugh. The silence was over, he thought, pleased. Where was the girl Merry?
10
Bullic was in charge of roasting the boar steaks. Merry watched him show six men and four women how to cut the meat. While he gave instruction, she saw him swell with pride. He himself spit all the steaks, grinning maniacally, and giving his cohorts orders without a pause, which no one seemed to mind. Everyone, she saw, moved more quickly, their heads higher, their voices stronger because now there was food brought to them by their new lord, and they knew their stomachs would soon stop cramping from hunger.
She grinned when she heard Miggins tell people how Merry was a young angel sent from God to help them, and they were to treat her well, and they must not forget—her voice dropped to a whisper—her name was Merry and she was Father Adal’s bastard daughter brought with him when he’d come to Wareham some six summers ago. Who was her mother? Who cared, Miggins said, and shrugged her scrappy, thin shoulders.
Flames roared in the huge fireplace. The smell of searing meat filled the great hall. Those few who’d grumbled now smiled. No one cared who exactly she was or where she came from. They might care in two days, but not now. She imagined they’d be willing to swear she was sent by Queen Eleanor herself if they had enough to eat. She smiled at that, remembering how she’d rubbed the queen’s back to relieve the aches from her child-swollen belly.
Soon, the smells—divine as baking figs, according to one old man—filled every nostril, and made all the trapped blue smoke well worth the watery eyes.
At last, Miggins in the lead, followed by Merry and her workers, carried the meat, still sizzling, stacked upon various small slabs of wood, and set them upon the planks placed carefully atop the stacked stones. No one worried about sitting on the hard stone floor.
There was instant silence, then sounds of chewing, and groans of pleasure.
Garron didn’t mind that the girl served him and his men last. He watched her as she brought a large plank piled high with meat to where he and his men sat cross-legged, and eased it down. This plank was wider since it was, after all, the lord’s plank.
A priest’s byblow? He wanted to question her more closely, ask her why she wasn’t starving like the others, why she hadn’t been ravished and taken by the Black Demon’s soldiers, but he smelled the meat, and realized he was hungrier than he’d been just the moment before.
He breathed in deeply. “You have done well.”
“Bullic found a bit of salt and sprinkled it on the meat.”
“I like salt. Now tell me, your name is Merry?”
“Aye, my lord.”
“ ’Tis an odd name. Your full name is Merriam?”