Laurie Grant - My Lady Midnight

As she watched, the horse swung his hindquarters around and kicked out viciously, knocking the smith into a pile of fresh manure. His shout of outrage rang out over the bailey. All around him worked ceased as the castle folk stared at Guy Smith’s misfortune.

The poor man! Lord Alain had said to leave him alone, but surely someone should see if more was hurt than his pride, she thought, darting forward across the hard-packed earth—and squarely into the path of a woman who had just come out of a nearby doorway, her shoulders bowed under the weight of two full buckets of ale. Both women went down, splashed with the amber liquid.

“Here, now, why don’t ye watch what you’re about, girl? That brew was bound for garrison and now it’s naught but hog swill!” the woman berated her, as a pair of piglets rushed up to drink the ale in a puddle at Claire’s feet.

Claire was just about to rise and give the peasant woman the dressing-down she deserved when she managed to rein in her temper. Haesel would have no right to do so.

“Well, curse me for a clumsy fool!” she managed, her embarrassment perfectly genuine as she realized that the other woman was equally soaked with the sticky, yeastysmelling liquid. “I’m sorry, but I was tryin’ to go t’ the aid of the smith over there,” she said, pointing to where Guy was struggling to his feet, rubbing his thigh and still cursing at the horse in colorful French.

Heedless of her skirts twisted up around her thighs, the woman propped herself up with her elbows to see what Claire had been talking about. “The old fool’s not hurt, though if the beast bad aimed a little more toward the middle, Guy’s wife wouldn’t have to keep birthin’ his brats every year,” muttered the woman with grim humor.

“Ye must be the brewster’s wife—or daughter?” Claire guessed, thinking the hard-faced, haggard woman was more likely the former than the latter. “How about if I was to go t’ back inside with ye and tell the brewster it was my clumsiness that done it, not any of yer fault?”

The woman laughed mirthlessly. “There ain’t no man t’ say ye’re sorry to. I’m Hertha, and I’m the brewster now that me man’s passed on, though Guy over there says ’tis just till the lord finds a man to replace me.”

“Oh, then I’m sorry twice over,” said Claire, getting to her feet and reaching out a hand to help the woman up. “I’m Haesel, the new nursemaid. Is there no way 1 can make it up to ye, then?”

“I know who ye are—I saw ye with the children,” Hertha said, as though Haesel ought to have saved her breath. “Nay, there’s naught to be done—just be more heedful of where you’re goin’ in future,” the brewmistress said, struggling to her feet without Claire’s assistance.

A prickly soul, Claire thought, as she watching Hertha disappear back into the outbuilding with her nearly empty buckets. She brushed as much dirt as she could off her damp-skirted gray kirtle. Glancing across the bailey again, Claire saw that the groom had regained control of the war-horse, and the smith had resumed his attempts to shoe the restive stallion. She resumed her exploration.

She finished investigating the inner ward first, with its outbuildings built into the inner curtain wall. Crossing the bailey from the brewmistress’s outbuilding, she had come to the kitchen, greeting Marie, the cook who had given her and the children bread yesterday, and had met Tansy and Flora, the pair of kitchen maids, and Peter the quistron, the boy who turned the spit.

At a right angle to the kitchen lay a large rectangular outbuilding easily identifiable as the stable by its odors of manure, livestock and hay. From within Claire heard a horse neigh, and then saw Lord Alain’s stallion prick up his ears, toss his head and give an answering whinny.

“Good morrow, sweeting, and welcome!” called a voice above her. She looked up to see a flaxen-headed man waving from a window in the upper floor of the stable. “Hugh la Jaune-Tête is my name! We’re both named Hugh, but if ye fancy a man who can woo ye better than Le Gros, why not come upstairs to the barracks and visit with me now? There’s naught here but me at present…It’s but a short climb up the ladder in the stable, sweetheart!”

Saints, did every soul in Hawkswell Castle know that Le Gros had tried and failed with her last evening? And as Haesel, she could not respond with the shocked outrage that she could have if a man-at-arms had taken such verbal liberties with Lady Claire de Coverly. Why, he could have been whipped for less at Coverly!

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