I knew he wasn’t speaking to me. I watched him over the edge of the blanket as he took the lantern from its hook and wandered off, muttering to himself. I remember that first night well, the warmth of the hounds, the prickling straw, and even the sleep that finally came as the pup cuddled close beside me. I drifted into his mind and shared his dim dreams of an endless chase, pursuing a quarry I never saw, but whose hot scent dragged me onward through nettle, bramble, and scree.
And with the hound’s dream, the precision of the memory wavers like the bright colors and sharp edges of a drug dream. Certainly the days that follow that first night have no such clarity in my mind.
I recall the spitting-wet days of winter’s end as I learned the route from my stall to the kitchen. I was free to come and go there as I pleased. Sometimes there was a cook in attendance, setting meat onto the hearth hooks or pummeling bread dough or breaching a cask of drink. More often there was not, and I helped myself to whatever had been left out on the table, and shared generously with the pup that swiftly became my constant companion. Men came and went, eating and drinking, and regarding me with a speculative curiosity that I came to accept as normal. The men had a sameness about them, with their rough wool cloaks and leggings, their hard bodies and easy movements, and the crest of a leaping buck that each bore over his heart. My presence made some of them uncomfortable. I grew accustomed to the mutter of voices that began whenever I left the kitchen.
Burrich was a constant in those days, giving me the same care he gave to Chivalry’s beasts; I was fed, watered, groomed, and exercised, said exercise usually coming in the form of trotting at his heels as he performed his other duties. But those memories are blurry, and details, such as those of washing or changing garments, have probably faded with a six-year-old’s calm assumptions of such things as normal. Certainly I remember the hound pup, Nosy. His coat was red and slick and short, and bristly in a way that prickled me through my clothes when we shared the horse blanket at night. His eyes were green as copper ore, his nose the color of cooked liver, and the insides of his mouth and tongue were mottled pink and black. When we were not eating in the kitchen, we wrestled in the courtyard or in the straw of the box stall. Such was my world for however long it was I was there. Not too long, I think, for I do not recall the weather changing. All my memories of that time are of raw days and blustery wind, and snow and ice that partially melted each day but were restored by night’s freezes.
One other memory I have of that time, but it is not sharp-edged. Rather it is warm and softly tinted, like a rich old tapestry seen in a dim room. I recall being roused from sleep by the pup’s wriggling and the yellow light of a lantern being held over me. Two men bent over me, but Burrich stood stiffly behind them and I was not afraid.
“Now you’ve wakened him,” warned the one, and he was Prince Verity, the man from the warmly lit chamber of my first evening.
“So? He’ll go back to sleep as soon as we leave. Damn him, he has his father’s eyes as well. I swear, I’d have known his blood no matter where I saw him. There’ll be no denying it to any that see him. But have neither you nor Burrich the sense of a flea? Bastard or not, you don’t stable a child among beasts. Was there nowhere else you could put him?”
The man who spoke was like Verity around the jaw and eyes, but there the resemblance ended. This man was younger by far. His cheeks were beardless, and his scented and smoothed hair was finer and brown. His cheeks and forehead had been stung to redness by the night’s chill, but it was a new thing, not Verity’s weathered ruddiness. And Verity dressed as his men dressed, in practical woolens of sturdy weave and subdued colors. Only the crest on his breast showed brighter, in gold and silver thread. But the younger man with him gleamed in scarlets and primrose, and his cloak drooped with twice the width of cloth needed to cover a man. The doublet that showed beneath it was a rich cream, and laden with lace. The scarf at his throat was secured with a leaping stag done in gold, its single eye a winking green gem. And the careful turn of his words was like a twisted chain of gold compared to the simple links of Verity’s speech.
“Regal, I had given it no thought. What do I know of children? I turned him over to Burrich. He is Chivalry’s man, and as such he’s cared for. . . .”
“I meant no disrespect to the blood, sir,” Burrich said in honest confusion. “I am Chivalry’s man, and I saw to the boy as I thought best. I could make him up a pallet in the guardroom, but he seems small to be in the company of such men, with their comings and goings at all hours, their fights and drinking and noise.” The tone of his words made his own distaste for their company obvious. “Bedded here, he has quiet, and the pup has taken to him. And with my Vixen to watch over him at night, no one could do him harm without her teeth taking a toll. My lords, I know little of children myself, and it seemed to me—”