threatened to escape. ‘I do. Apparently she thought the young ladies needed a clear indication of which men would make the best mates.’
Molly lifted her brows. ‘Perhaps they did. There were six weddings at Springfest that year.’
My wife looked across the room. Patience, my stepmother, was dressed in a grand old gown of pale blue velvet trimmed with black lace at the cuffs and throat. Her long grey hair had been braided and pinned to her head in a coronet. She had a single sprig of holly in it, and several dozen bright blue feathers stuck in at all angles. A fan dangled from a bracelet at her wrist; it was blue to match her gown and feathers and also edged with stiffened black lace. She looked both lovely and eccentric to me, as she always had. She was wagging a finger at Molly’s youngest, warning him about something. Hearth stood straight, looking solemnly down at her, but his clasped fingers fidgeted behind his back. His brother Just stood at a distance, concealing his grin and waiting for him to be released. I took pity on them both. Patience seemed to think they were still ten and twelve, despite how they towered over her. Just was barely short of his twentieth birthday, and Hearth was Molly’s youngest at seventeen. Yet he stood like a scolded boy and tolerantly accepted Patience’s rebuke.
‘I want to let Lady Patience know that more of her minstrels have arrived. I hope this is the last batch of them. Any more and I suspect they’ll be coming to blows over who gets to perform and for how long.’ Any minstrels invited to perform at Withywoods were assured of meals and a warm place to sleep, and a small purse for their efforts. The rest of their rewards were won from the guests, and often the musicians who performed the most reaped the greatest gain. Three sets of musicians were more than ample for a Winterfest at our holding. Four would be a challenge.
Molly nodded. She lifted her hands to her rosy cheeks. ‘I think I’ll just sit here a bit longer. Oh, here’s the lad with my wine!’
There was a lull in the music and I took the opportunity to cross the dance floor quickly. Patience saw me coming and first smiled and then scowled at me. By the time I reached her side, she had completely forgotten Hearth and he had escaped with his brother. She snapped her fan shut, pointed it at me and asked me accusingly, ‘What has become of your leggings? Those skirts are flapping about your legs like a ship with storm-torn canvas!’
I looked down at them, and up at her. ‘The new style from Jamaillia.’ As her disapproval deepened, I added, ‘Molly chose them.’
Lady Patience stared down at them as if perhaps I had a litter of kittens concealed in them. Then she lifted her eyes to mine, smiled and said, ‘A lovely colour. And I am sure she is pleased that you wore them.’
‘She is.’
Patience lifted her hand, I extended my arm, she placed her hand on my forearm and we began a slow perambulation of the Great Hall. Folk parted for her, bowing and curtseying. Lady Patience, for so she was this evening, gravely inclined her head or warmly greeted or embraced as each person merited. I was content simply to be her escort, to see her enjoying herself, and to endeavour to keep a straight face through her whispered asides about Lord Durden’s breath or her pity for how quickly Tinker Dan was losing his hair. Some of the older guests remembered when she was not only the Lady of Withywoods but wife to Prince Chivalry. In many ways, she still reigned here, for Nettle spent a good portion of her time at Buckkeep Castle as Skillmistress to King Dutiful, and Molly was content to let Patience have her way in most things.
‘There are times in a woman’s life when only the company of other women can suffice.’ Patience had explained to me when she had summarily moved in with us at Withywoods five years previously. ‘Girls need an older woman in the house as they become women, to explain those changes to them. And when that other change comes early to women, especially women who hoped to bear more children, it is good to have the guidance of a woman who has also known that disappointment. Men are simply not helpful at this time.’ And while I had known trepidation about the arrangement when Patience first arrived with her baggage-train of animals, seeds and plants, she had proven the wisdom of her words. I knew it was rare for two women to exist so contentedly under one roof and blessed my good fortune.
When we reached her favourite chair by the hearth, I deposited her there, fetched her a cup of mulled cider, and then confided to her, ‘The last of your musicians arrived just as I came down the stairs. I haven’t seen them come in yet, but I thought you’d want to know that they had arrived.’
She raised her brows at me and then turned to peer the length of the room. The third set of musicians were moving to take over the dais there. She looked back at me, ‘No, they’re all there. I was most careful in my selection this year. For Winterfest, I thought to myself, we must have some warm-tempered folk to keep the chill away. And so, if you look, there is a redhead in every group that I’ve invited. There, see the woman warming her voice? Look at that cascade of auburn hair. Don’t tell me that she won’t warm this fest with her spirit alone.’ She did indeed appear to be a very warm-natured woman. She let the dancers rest by launching into a long story song, more fit for listening than dancing, sung in a rich and throaty voice. Her audience, old and young, drew closer as she sang the old tale of the maiden seduced by the Old Man of winter and carried off to his distant ice fortress in the far south.
All were rapt by the tale, and so it was that my eye caught the motion as two men and a woman entered the hall. They looked around as if dazzled, and perhaps they were after their long hike through an evening of falling snow. It was obvious they had come on foot, for their rough leather trousers were soaked to the knee. Their garb was odd, as minstrels were wont to wear, but unlike any that I had ever seen. Their knee-boots were yellow mottled brown from the wet, their leather trousers short, barely hanging past the tops of their boots. Their jackets were of the same leather, tanned to the same pale brown, with shirts of heavy-knit wool beneath them. They looked uncomfortable, as if the wool were too snug a fit under the leathers. ‘There they are now,’ I told her.
Patience stared at them from across the room. ‘I did not hire them,’ she declared with an offended sniff. ‘Look at that woman, pale as a ghost. There’s no heat to her at all. And the men are just as wintry, with hair the colour of an ice-bear’s hide. Brr. They chill me just looking at them.’ Then the lines smoothed from her brow. ‘So. I shall not allow them to sing tonight. But let’s invite them back for high summer, when a chilly tale or a cool wind would be welcome on a muggy evening.’
But before I could move to her bidding, I heard a roar of ‘Tom! There you are! So good to see you, old friend!’
I turned with that mixture of elation and dismay that surprise visits from unconventional and loving friends stir in one. Web was crossing the room in long strides, with Swift but a step or two behind. I lifted my arms wide and went to greet them. The burly Witmaster had grown in girth these last few years. As always, his cheeks were as red as if he had just stepped in from the wind. Molly’s son Swift was a couple of steps behind him, but as I watched, Nettle emerged from the crowd of guests and ambushed her brother in a hug. He stopped to lift her and whirl her in a joyous circle. Then Web engulfed me in a spine-cracking hug, followed by several solid thumps to my back. ‘You’re looking well!’ he told me as I tried to catch my breath. ‘Almost whole again, aren’t you? Ah, and my Lady Patience!’ Having released me from his exuberant greeting, he bowed gracefully over the hand that Patience extended to him. ‘Such a rich blue gown! You put me in mind of a jay’s bright feathers! But please tell me the feathers in your hair did not come from a live bird!’
‘Of course not!’ Patience looked properly horrified at the thought. ‘I found him dead on the garden path last summer. And I thought, now here is a time for me to see just what is beneath those lovely blue feathers. But I saved his feathers, of course, plucking them carefully before I boiled him down to bones. And then, of course, once I had discarded the jay broth, my task was before me: to assemble his little bones into a skeleton. Did you know that a bird’s wing is as close to a man’s hand as is a frog’s flipper? All those tiny bones! Well, doubtless you know the task is somewhere on my workbench, half-done as are so many of my projects. But yesterday, when I was thinking of feathers to take flight from our troubles, I remembered that I had a whole box full! And luckily for me, the beetles had not found and eaten them