Some more of the story

Helen discovered that the castle, so massive and formidable as it cast its shadow over her life, over all the lives in the surrounding fields and villages, was a cold and damp place. As Izzy led her through endless corridors, clammy close places, to show her the kitchens and the smithy and the privies and various bedchambers, Helen found that she couldn’t help but shiver. The fires were out because the winter was gone, but Helen thought it a shame. Izzy did keep her occupied, though, with facts great and small: “This is where the pages sleep. Bothersome boys, always clamoring through the halls pretending to be in some great battle with their silly wooden practice swords, very annoying” … “Those stairs there lead down to the dungeons. I tried to go down there once, but the dungeon master looks and behaves like an ogre so I don’t bother trying again” … “Careful of that wet straw, all sorts of rodents just love to wallow in it, and I can’t tell if it’s water or someone missed the privy.”

“And now, Helen, our tour concludes. This is my chamber. Come in, won’t you, and sit with me a while.” Helen stepped through the entrance and blinked as Izzy lit a small torch from a large one in the corridor outside and brought it into the chamber, lighting some flames set into the walls and two candles on a table just inside the room. Helen started when she saw that there were … she counted … five people wrapped in blankets, asleep on the floor.

“Those are my servants. They all had quite a feast themselves. It won’t be easy to get them up to face the morning, I fear. Come and sit on my bed with me.”

Helen followed closely in Izzy’s wake toward the massive velvet curtains that seemed to form a rom within the chamber. Izzy parted them, and in they went with their candles. It was dark and close and warm and musty. After a few minutes Helen noticed that she was no longer shivering.

“Helen, where do you live? What do you do in your days? I need to know. Please tell me what your life is like, down the hill from here.”

Helen was taken aback by these questions. How could this lady, so privileged, with her own curtained bed to sleep in, and kitchens larger than Helen’s family’s whole cottage, be interested in such things? But Izzy’s eyes were intent, and she leaned forward, waiting to have her answers. So Helen began.

“Well … It isn’t very exciting. My parents and my two younger brothers all perished in the Great Sickness, so now it is just Maggie and me at the cottage. Our older brother lives in the village; he is a baker. He lost his wife and all but his youngest daughter; she was a baby at the time, but now she is a saucy lass of four years. Our other sister lives far away on the other side of the purple mountain. She married a blacksmith’s apprentice just after the Sickness had passed. We do not hear of her but maybe twice a year as folks at market sometimes come from there. She had a boy baby last springtime, so he must be a yearling now.” She smiled to think of Sally with a baby to nurse and clean and love.