Medieval 03 - Enchanted

is much the same as
another.”
    Blanche gave Ariane a startled look.
    “Beg your pardon, mistress, but there is
considerable difference.”
    Ariane’s only answer was a series of quickly
plucked notes that sounded like dissent.
    “Not that I blame you for being
uneasy,” Blanche said hurriedly. “There are some
surpassing odd fold here. ’Tis enough to make a body start at
shadows.”
    “Odd?” Ariane asked absently, drawing a
questioning trill from the harp strings.
    “Tch, m’lady, you have been talking to
your harp so long your mind has gone as numb as your fingers must
be. The Learned are odd ones, don’t you think?”
    Ariane blinked. Her fingers stilled for a few
moments.
    “I don’t think the Learned are
odd,” Ariane said finally. “Lady Amber is as kind as
she is lovely. Sir Erik is better educated—and more
handsome—than all but a few knights I’ve
known.”
    “But those great hounds of his, and that
devil peregrine on his arm. I say it isn’t
natural.”
    “’Tis as natural as breathing. All
knights love hounds and hawks.”
    “But—” Blanche protested, only to
be cut off.
    “Enough useless chatter,” Ariane said
firmly. “All keeps and their folk seem strange when you
haven’t lived within them very long.”
    Blanche said nothing as she set about readying her
mistress’s bath needs. The sight of a long ebony comb
reminded Ariane of her earlier conversation with the mistress of
the keep.
    “Have you seen a comb set with red
amber?” Ariane asked. “Lady Amber misplaced
one.”
    Blanche was so startled by the question that she
simply stared at Ariane and gnawed on one ragged fingernail,
speechless.
    “Blanche? Are you going to be sick
again?”
    Numbly Blanche shook her head, causing a few lank
tresses to escape from the kerchief that was her only
headpiece.
    “If you do find the comb,” Ariane said,
“please tell me.”
    “’Tis unlikely I will find aught before
you do, lady.Sir Geoffrey said many times how
like your aunt you were.”
    Ariane went taut and said nothing.
    “Was it true?” Blanche asked.
    “What?”
    “That your aunt could find a silver needle in
a field of haystacks?”
    “Aye.”
    Blanche grinned, showing the gap where she had lost
a tooth to the blacksmith’s pincers when she was twelve.
    “It would be a fine gift to have, finding
lost things,” Blanche said, sighing. “Lady Eleanor was
always beating me for losing her silver embroidery
needles.”
    “I know.”
    “Don’t look so sad,” Blanche
said. “If Lady Amber has lost her comb, you soon will find it
for her.”
    “Nay.”
    The flat denial made Blanche blink.
    “But Geoffrey said you found a silver goblet
and ewer that no one—” began the handmaiden.
    “Is my bath ready?” Ariane interrupted,
cutting across the girl’s words.
    “Aye, lady,” Blanche said in a low
voice.
    The handmaiden’s unhappiness tugged at
Ariane’s compassion, but Ariane had no desire to explain that
she had lost her fey gift along with her maidenhead.
    She also was weary of having her stomach clench
every time she heard Geoffrey’s name.
    “Lay out my best chemise and my scarlet
dress,” Ariane said in a low voice.
    Whether a wedding or a wake, the dress would do
quite well.
    “I dare not!” blurted the
handmaiden.
    “Why?” asked Ariane.
    “Lady Amber instructed me that she would
bring your wedding dress to you personally.”
    Uneasiness rippled through Ariane.
    “When did this pass?” she asked.
    “Another Learned witch—er,
woman—came to the keep,” Blanche said.
    “When?”
    “Just at dawn. Didn’t you hear the
baying of those hellhounds?”
    “I thought it was but a lingering of my
dream.”
    “Nay,” Blanche said. “’Twas
a Learned woman come to the keep with a gift for you. A dress to be
wed in.”
    Ariane frowned and set her harp aside. “Amber
said nothing to me.”
    “Mayhap she couldn’t. The Learned woman
was special fierce. White hair and eyes like ice.” Blanche
crossed herself quickly. “It was the one they call Cassandra.

’Tis said she sees the future. There be witches here,
m’lady.”
    Ariane shrugged. “According to some, there
were witches at my home. My aunt was one of them. So was I.
Remember?”
    Blanche looked confused.
    “If it makes you feel better, I have met the
Learned woman face-to-face,” Ariane said. “Cassandra is
quite human.”
    The handmaiden’s frown eased and she
sighed.
    “The chaplain here told me that this was