It seemed that Berta was not an admirer of knights. “Apparently my cousin’s husband has already arrived. Sir Roland Vawdrey.”
“I don’t know one from t’other,” Berta scowled. “And what’s more, I don’t want to know!”
“His standard is a black panther on a red field,” Lenora elaborated, but Berta made no reply. “Has the tournament begun? The jousting, I mean.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Berta scowled. “I got better things to be going on with.”
“Well, perhaps you could ask,” Lenora said pointedly. “Some of the other palace staff. It would be useful for me to know.”
Berta looked sullen and straightened up from the fire. “Anything else?”
“Some fish, for the cats.” Berta drew a scandalized breath, but Lenora forestalled her before she could make her retort. “Tell the kitchen staff it is for me.”
The door slammed shut as the curmudgeonly Berta retreated. Fendrel was startled from his slumber and shot an accusing look at his mistress. “There, there,” Lenora murmured, but he refused to be pacified and jumped down, making his way to join his sibling at the window.
Lenora stood slowly up from her chair, stretched her stiff body and went to retrieve the looking glass. Taking a deep breath, she turned it over and held it in front of her face.
Oh.
2
Despite the shock of her own reflection, Lenora slept the best that night that she had in a long time. She attributed it to the familiar weight of the cats curled up on her bed. It was strangely soothing somehow and even though she was plagued with the usual bad dreams, the cats’ presence made sure she was aware it was only a dream and not her present reality. She gritted her teeth until she could surface into wakefulness, and when she did, she lay there a moment, dazed and blinking as she heard Berta bustling around in the adjoining room. Presently the old woman entered carrying a jug of warm washing water.
“Black with a white gate, yellow with a black stag and blue with a white hart,” she chanted like an incantation.
Lenora rubbed her eyes, sitting up. “Good morning, Berta,” she murmured. “What did you say?” Then she realized it had been a recitation of knight’s crests. “Blue with a white hart?” she repeated slowly. She knew that design. That would be Sir Lionel Emworth, heretofore one of her most devoted admirers. She threw back the covers. “Yellow with a black stag,” she said thoughtfully as she slid from the bed, her feet hitting the floor. Surely, she knew that one too. She rather thought that was Sir Edward Bevan who was a friend and companion of Roland Vawdrey’s.
She crossed the room and poured water from the jug into the ewer. Lenora had always rather enjoyed the lists. She liked how you faded into the crowd as everyone watched the knights with bated breath, united in the spectacle. What was the first one Berta had said? Black with a white gate. Oh. She pulled a face. She knew who that was of course. Sir Garman Orde. Oh well, they couldn’t all be crowd favorites.
“‘Tis the first day today,” Berta told her, setting down the jug.
Lenora felt a flicker of something. The first day! She thought of the crowds, the fluttering pennants and standards, the banners, the hawkers, the pageantry. “Have you never been, Berta?” she asked, turning to the servant.
“Always been respectable, I have,” the old woman said sourly. “They got no call for respectable women at those places,” she added. “Or ugly ones.”
Lenora stiffened a moment, then realized the maidservant was not referring to her. She looked sidelong at Berta a moment, trying to imagine her as a young woman and failing miserably.
“It’s different for noble-folk,” the old woman said with a sniff. “You sits in a box away from the common rabble. Untouchable.”
But was it? wondered Lenora. She doubted she would ever fade into a crowd now. Not with her face. They’ve got no use for ugly women. “Berta,” she said. “I need you to make some purchases for me. Do you mean to go to the marketplace today?”
“I could do.” Berta shrugged. “What are you after? Your people said they would send more of your clothing now you’re up and about—”
“I need new head veils,” Lenora interrupted her. “Opaque ones, that cover your face.”
The old woman squinted at her. “Is that so?”
“I want a good deal of them,” said Lenora, lifting her chin. “One for every day of the week. Of all different lengths and sizes.”
She felt strangely restless for the rest of the day. Berta returned in the afternoon with a bundle of veils for her to try out. Lenora found she could only achieve the level of opacity she desired by layering three veils of differing lengths on top of one another. She started with the shortest which extended over her face, then placed one over that which reached to her décolletage and then another that extended down to her waist over that. Rolling her blonde hair into a bun at her nape, she fitted a toque decorated with pearls to the top of her head, and then pinned another veil to the back of that and stood back to get the full effect. “Berta,” she said, turning.
The old woman straightened up from the hearth she had been scraping out. She took one look at Lenore and fell back. “Lord’s sake!” she squawked. “You look like a faceless specter!”
“Can you pass me my rose damask gown?”
“Where you be off to in that get-up?” the old woman asked suspiciously as she helped lace her into the dress. It was the first time Lenora had been fully dressed since her illness.
“Nowhere,” she answered lightly. “But I don’t mean to lie in the sickbed all day long, now I have started on the road to recovery.”
“Humph!” Berta shot her a suspicious look.
Lenora ate her supper of vegetable stew sat upright in her chair. Tybalt and Fendrel played at her feet with a loose thread from the unravelling chair upholstery. It was a cast off after all. Looking down, she noticed her dress was rather loose in the bodice. She supposed she could recover her figure at least if she put her mind to it, if not her face.
A knock at the door was answered by Berta and she heard her father, Sir Leofric’s Montmayne’s, fretful tones. She wasn’t really all that surprised. Her father had always been fonder of her than her mother. And Mother’s presence always meant there could be no real exchange of conversation as she insisted everything revolved around herself. Indeed, Lenora had been surprised to see her mother at all as Lady Montmayne rarely bothered to come to court these days. Lenora supposed she should be flattered really, that she had thought her daughter’s illness warranted her presence.
Without thinking, Lenora drew down her veils and covered her face as her father approached.
“Lenora.” He cleared his throat.
“Can we offer you any refreshment, Father?”
“Er—no,” he said, retrieving a chair from against the wall. He whipped a handkerchief over it fussily before being seated and sat there a moment in silence, looking about him. “We will have to see about having you moved from these apartments, Lenora,” he started uncomfortably. “Now ‘tis plain your life has been spared.”
For a moment, she considered pointing out these rooms felt like luxury after being left to rot in the crypt for weeks, but thought the better of it and held her tongue. “And that attendant,” he continued fretfully. “Belongs at a deathbed, or a laying out, not serving the living.” Lenora could think of no response to that either. Her father eyed her head-dress approvingly. “A very good notion, that,” he said, gesturing. “Though I think you should leave your hair loose, daughter. Your hair is still bountiful? It did not fall out?”