“Since you swear you didn’t see anything on your way back to the kitchen, you are proving to me that you are a lad of potential. Perhaps one who could be entrusted with more responsibility.”
“Responsibility, sir?”
Dalton Campbell’s dark eyes gleamed with a terrifying, incomprehensible intelligence, the kind Fitch imagined the mice must see in the eyes of the house cats.
“We sometimes have need of people desiring to move up in the household. We will see. Keep yourself vigilant against the lies of people wishing to bring disrepute to the Minister, and we will see.”
“Yes, sir. I’d not like to hear anyone say anything against the Minister. He’s a good man, the Minister. I hope the rumors I’ve heard are true, that one day we might be blessed enough by the Creator that Minister Chanboor would become Sovereign.”
Now the aide’s smile truly did take hold. “Yes, I do believe you have potential. Should you hear any… lies, about the Minister, I would appreciate knowing about it.” He gestured toward the stairs. “Now, you had best get back to the kitchen.”
“Yes, sir, if I hear any such thing, I’ll bring it to you.” Fitch made for the stairs. “I’d not want anyone lying about the Minister. That would be wrong.”
“Young man—Fitch, was it?”
Fitch turned back from the top step. “Yes, sir. Fitch.”
Dalton Campbell crossed his arms and turned his head to peer with one questioning eye. “What have you learned at penance about protecting the Sovereign?”
“The Sovereign?” Fitch rubbed his palms on his trousers. “Well… um… that anything done to protect our Sovereign is a virtue?”
“Very good.” Arms still folded, he leaned toward Fitch. “And, since you have heard that Minister Chanboor is likely to be named Sovereign, then…?”
The man expected an answer. Fitch groped wildly for it. He cleared his throat, at last. “Well… I guess… that if he’s to be named Sovereign, then maybe he ought to be protected the same?”
By the way Dalton Campbell smiled as he straightened his back, Fitch knew he’d hit upon the right answer. “You may indeed have potential to move up in the household.”
“Thank you, sir. I would do anything to protect the Minister, seeing as how he’ll be Sovereign one day. It’s my duty to protect him in any way I can.”
“Yes…” Dalton Campbell drawled in an odd way. He cocked his head, catlike, as he considered Fitch. “If you prove to be helpful in… whatever way we might need in order to protect the Minister, it would go a long way toward clearing your debt.”
Fitch’s ears perked up. “My debt, sir?”
“Like I told Morley, if he proves to be of use to the Minister, it might be that he could even earn himself a sir name, and a certificate signed by the Sovereign to go with it. You seem a bright lad. I would expect no less might be in your future.”
Fitch’s jaw hung open. Earning a sir name was one of his dreams. A certificate signed by the Sovereign proved to all that a Haken had paid his debt and was to be recognized with a sir name, and respected. His mind tumbled backward to what he’d just heard.
“Morley? Scullion Morley?”
“Yes, didn’t he tell you I talked to him?”
Fitch scratched behind an ear, trying to imagine that Morley would have kept such astonishing news from him. “Well, no, sir. He never said nothing. He’s about my best friend; I’d recall if he’d said such a thing. I’m sorry, but he never did.”
Dalton Campbell stroked a finger against the silver of the scabbard at his hip as he watched Fitch’s eyes. “I told him not to mention it to anyone.” He arched an eyebrow. “That kind of loyalty pays plums. I expect no less from you. Do you understand, Fitch?”
Fitch surely did. “Not a soul. Just like Morley. I got it, Master Campbell.”
Dalton Campbell nodded as he smiled to himself. “Good.” He again rested a hand on the hilt of his magnificent sword. “You know, Fitch, when a Haken has his debt paid, and earns his sir name, that signed certificate entitles him to carry a sword.”
Fitch’s eyes widened. “It does? I never knew.”
The tall Ander smiled a stately farewell and with a noble flourish turned and started off down the hall. “Back to work, then, Fitch. Glad to have made your acquaintance. Perhaps we will speak again one day.”
Before anyone else caught him up there, Fitch raced down the stairs. Confounding thoughts swirled through his head. Thinking again about Beata, and what had happened, he just wanted the day to end so he could get himself good and drunk.
He ached with sorrow for Beata, but it was the Minister, the Minister she admired, the Minister who would someday be Sovereign, that Fitch had seen on her. Besides, she struck him, a terrible thing for a Haken to do, even to another Haken, although he wasn’t certain the prohibition extended to women. But even if it didn’t, that wouldn’t make him feel any less miserable about it.
For some unfathomable reason, she hated him, now.
He ached to get drunk.
16
“Fetch! Here boy! Fetch!”
Usually, when Master Drummond called him by that name, Fitch knew he blushed with humiliation, but this time he was in such anguish over what he had seen upstairs earlier that he hardly felt any shame over so petty a thing. Master Drummond’s talking down to him as if he were dirt could not match Beata’s hating him, and hitting him.
It had been a couple of hours, but his face still throbbed where she’d clouted him, so he was clear on that much of it: she hated him. It confused and confounded him, but he was sure she hated him. It seemed to him she should be angry at someone, anyone, besides him.
Angry at herself, maybe, for going up there in the first place. But he guessed she couldn’t very well have refused to go see the Minister if he asked for her. Then Inger the butcher would have thrown her out when the Minister told him that his Haken girl refused to go up to take his special request. No, she couldn’t very well have done that.
Besides, she wanted to meet the man. She’d told him she did. Fitch knew, though, that she never expected he would have his way with her. Maybe it wasn’t the Minister she was so distraught about. Fitch remembered that man, Stein, winking at him. She was up there a long time.
That was still no reason for her to hate Fitch. Or to hit him.
Fitch came to a halt. His fingers throbbed from having them in scalding water for so long, scrubbing and scraping. The rest of him felt sick and numb. Except, of course, his face.
“Yes, sir?”
Master Drummond opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it and instead leaned down. He frowned.
“What happened to your face?”
“One of the billets of apple slipped and hit me as I picked up an armload, sir.”
Master Drummond shook his head as he wiped his hands on his white towel. “Idiot,” he muttered. “Only an idiot,” he said, in a voice loud enough for others could hear, “would hit himself in the face with a stick of wood as he picked it up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Master Drummond was just about to speak when Dalton Campbell, studying a well-used piece of paper covered with messy lines of writing, glided up beside Fitch. He had a whole stack of disheveled papers, their curled and crumpled edges protruding every which way. He followed down the writing with one finger as he nested the papers in the crook of his other arm.
“Drummond, I came to make sure of a few items,” he said without looking up.
Master Drummond quickly finished at wiping his hands and then straightened his broad back. “Yes sir, Mr. Campbell. Whatever I can do for you.”
The Minister’s aide lifted the paper to peer at a second sheet beneath.
“Have you seen to putting the best platters and ewers in the ambry?”
“Yes, Mr. Campbell.”
Dalton muttered absently to himself about how they must have been changed after he’d looked. He scanned the paper and then flipped to a third piece. “You will need to make two
additional places at the high table.” He flipped back to the second page.
Master Drummond’s mouth twisted in agitation. “Two more. Yes, Mr. Campbell. If you could, in the future, would you kindly let me know such as this a little earlier in the day?”
Dalton Campbell’s finger flicked at the air, but his eyes never left his papers. “Yes, yes. Only too happy to do so. If the Minister informs me of it sooner, that is.” He tapped a place in his papers and looked up. “Lady Chanboor objects to the musicians’ stomachs grumbling along with their music. Please see to it that they are fed something first, this time? Especially the harpist. She will be closest to Lady Chanboor.”
Master Drummond dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Yes, Mr. Campbell. I will see to it.”