“Well, what is it?” she demanded in a whisper.
I shrugged and began to read it to her. “ “On this day was born my Molly Nosegay, sweet as any bunch of posies. For her birth labors, I burned two tapers of bayberry and two cup candles scented with two handfuls of the small violets that grow near Dowell’s Mill and one handful of redroot, chopped very fine. May she do likewise when her time comes to bear a child, and her labor will be as easy as mine, and the fruit of it as perfect. So I believe.’ ”
That was all, and when I had read it, the silence grew and blossomed. Molly took that last tablet from my hands and held it in her two hands and stared at it, as if reading things in the letters that I had not seen. I shifted my feet, and the scuffing recalled to her that I was there. Silently she gathered up all her tablets and disappeared with them once more.
When she came back, she walked swiftly to the shelf and took down two tall beeswax tapers, and then to another shelf whence she took two fat pink candles.
“I only need—”
“Shush. There’s no charge for any of these. The sweetberry-blossom ones will give you calm dreams. I very much enjoy them, and I think you will, too.” Her voice was friendly, but as she put them into my basket I knew she was waiting for me to leave. Still, she walked to the door with me, and opened it softly lest it wake her father. “Good-bye, Newboy,” she said, and then gave me one real smile. “Nosegay. I never knew she called me that. Nosebleed, they called me on the streets. I suppose the older ones who knew what name she had given me thought it was funny. And after a while they probably forgot it had ever been anything else. Well. I don’t care. I have it now. A name from my mother.”
“It suits you,” I said in a sudden burst of gallantry, and then, as she stared and the heat rose in my cheeks, I hurried away from the door. I was surprised to find that it was late afternoon, nearly evening. I raced through the rest of my errands, begging the last item on my list, a weasel’s skin, through the shutters of the merchant’s window. Grudgingly he opened his door to me, complaining that he liked to eat his supper hot, but I thanked him so profusely he must have believed me a little daft.
I was hurrying up the steepest part of the road back to the keep when I heard the unexpected sounds of horses behind me. They were coming up from the dock section of town, and being ridden hard. It was ridiculous. No one kept horses in town, for the roads were too steep and rocky to make them of much use. Also, the town was crowded into such a small area as to make riding a horse a vanity rather than a convenience. So these must be horses from the keep’s stables. I stepped to one side of the road and waited, curious to see who would risk Burrich’s wrath by riding horses at such speed on slick and uneven cobbles in poor light.
To my shock they were Regal and Verity on the matched blacks that were Burrich’s pride. Verity carried a plumed baton, such as messengers to the keep carried when the news they bore was of the utmost importance. At sight of me standing quietly beside the road they both pulled in their horses so violently that Regal’s spun aside and nearly went down on his knees.
“Burrich will have fits if you break that colt’s knees,” I cried out in dismay, and ran toward him.
Regal gave an inarticulate cry, and a half instant later Verity shakily laughed at him. “You thought he was a ghost, same as I. Whoa, lad, you gave us a turn, standing so quiet as that. And looking so much like him. Ey, Regal?”
“Verity, you’re a fool. Hold your tongue.” Regal gave his mount’s mouth a vindictive jerk and then tugged his jerkin smooth again. “What are you doing out on this road so late, bastard? Just what do you think you’re up to, sneaking away from the keep and into town at this hour?”
I was used to Regal’s disdain for me. This sharp rebuke was something new, however. Usually, he did little more than avoid me, or hold himself away from me as if I were fresh manure. The surprise made me answer quickly, “I’m on my way back, not to, sir. I’ve been running errands for Fedwren.” And I held up my basket as proof.
“Of course you have.” He sneered. “Such a likely tale. It’s a bit too much of a coincidence, bastard.” Again he flung the word at me.
I must have looked both hurt and confused, for Verity snorted in his bluff way and said, “Don’t mind him, boy. You gave us both a bit of a turn. A river ship just came into town, flying the pennant for a special message. And when Regal and I rode down to get it, lo and behold, it’s from Patience, to tell us Chivalry’s dead. Then, as we come up the road, what do we see but the very image of him as a boy, standing silent before us, and of course we were in that frame of mind and—”