Chapter 24

Wren's POV

There were six of us in the side hall, standing in a row along the wall like hens at market, and the old woman in the chair looked at each of us in turn.

She was small and upright, in good grey wool, with a ring of keys at her belt. Nobody had told me her name, but I had seen the way the footman bowed to her at the door.

Her eyes rested a moment on the big woman at the end of the row, broad in the hips and heavy in the breast, who would have milk enough for three. Then they moved on. The big woman had been looking round the hall since we came in, at the carved chairs and the silver on the sideboard, and I think the old woman had seen her do it.

The next three were young and neat and clean, and stood with their heads down and their hands twisting in their aprons. The old woman's eyes slid over them without stopping at all.

So she didn't want greed, and she didn't want a mouse. She wanted someone who would be pleasant to look at in a prince's house, who knew how to behave, and who would keep her mouth shut.

Her eyes came to me and stopped.

I had on a plain brown dress Briar had bought from a stall that morning, with my hair pinned flat under a cap. I kept my hands folded in front of me. I could feel my fingers pressing into each other, and I made them stop.

"You," the old woman said. "Your name. And your circumstances."

I took one step forward. "Darrow, mistress. Nell Darrow."

She waited.

"My husband died last winter. Of a fever. There's a daughter. She was born after." I had to stop there. My eyes had filled, and I looked at the floor until I could see it clearly again. "His mother said I'd brought him bad luck. That I was cursed, and it had killed him. She said it every day. Last week, while I was out looking for work, she took what money we had left, and she took my girl, and went back to her own village. When I came home they were gone."

All of that was a lie except the part that mattered. Someone had taken my child, and I didn't know where.

"I've no family in Silverkeep, mistress. Nothing in my purse. I heard the Prince's house wanted a nurse, and I thought I would come and try."

The old woman said nothing for a while. I watched her face as she turned it over: a young widow, alone in the city, without people or money. I saw her decide that I was pitiable, and simple, and that a woman with nowhere else to go would be very careful not to lose a place like this.

"Can you care for a pup? Have you milk enough?"

"Yes, mistress. I fed my daughter myself. I've always had plenty."

I said it too fast. Her eyes went down to the front of my dress. The cloth was tight there, and I knew without looking that it was damp, because it had been since an hour after dawn. Heat climbed my neck. She looked at it the way Brannoch used to look at a wound, and then at my hands. I had cut my nails short. She seemed to like that.

She asked what I did when a pup cried at night, and how I could tell if one was hungry or cold or only cross. I told her. There was nothing clever in it. They were the things any woman learns in the first week.

"And in this house," she said at last. "What would you do?"

I hadn't expected that. I looked down.

"Whatever I'm told, mistress. I'd do my work and nothing else. What I'm not meant to hear, I wouldn't hear. What I'm not meant to ask, I wouldn't ask. And what I'm not meant to say, I'd never say to anyone."

Her face didn't change, but her head moved, very slightly, up and down.

"Come with me," she said, and stood.

* * *

My heart was going so hard I was afraid she would hear it. I followed her out into the passage.

She didn't look back. "Don't be too pleased with yourself. Nursing the young master is not what you think. All you've done is get past me. That's only the first step."

"I don't know anything about great houses, mistress. I'd be grateful for whatever you can teach me."

I lifted my face to say it.

The passage there ran along a courtyard, and the light came in full through the arches. She had turned her head to answer me, and she stopped.

She looked at me for too long. It was not the look she had given me in the hall. Her eyes went from one of mine to the other, and then over my face, and her mouth pulled down at the corners, as if she had just found a mistake in her own sums.

Then her face shut.

"Darrow," she said, "I don't think you'll suit. Go to the steward's room. He'll give you a silver penny for your trouble. Then go home."

It was like walking into a wall in the dark. For a moment I couldn't understand the words.

"Mistress..." I took a step after her. "What have I done? Tell me, and I'll mend it. Please. Give me one more chance."

I couldn't go. This was the only door. Behind it was the one place the Luna couldn't reach me, and somewhere behind it, maybe, was Sol.

She had already turned away. She beckoned to a little maid standing by the courtyard door.

"Take Goody Darrow to the steward. A silver penny. Then see her out of the house."