The Proviso

Once in their chambers, she had to assist him in removing his mail and gambeson. Underneath all that, he was in his soldier’s garb of breeches and plain tunic. It was linen and nothing a noble would wear whilst shopping in the most expensive part of Hogarth. Certainly, she was wearing nothing that said “Countess.”

He accompanied her to the very few shops she needed before going to the clothier’s and carried her purchases for her without once complaining. They received many contemptuous glances from exquisitely attired people who were nobles and commoners of means. Read more →

Grimme was enraged, finding out Brìghde had gone to Hogarth without him. Aye, he should have told her when she confronted him about charging Emelisse with the care of all his sons that he had abruptly changed his mind about spending the day with her. After her pointed lecture punctuating his deficiencies as a father and her chastisement this morning, the last place he wanted to be was on a forty-mile round trip to shop with his wife.

But then Pierce had slipped Emelisse’s charge, run out to the stable after Brìghde, and was despondent that she wasn’t there. A groom had led him back to the keep and he had run to Grimme and cast himself in his arms and wailed, “She didn’t even say fare thee well!” Read more →

The next morning Brìghde went to prayers, but Grimme was not there. She went out to ask the grooms to prepare Troy and Grimme’s horse for a day’s outing. She spent some time petting Troy and giving him treats, talking to him, and wishing she had Mercury with her. He and Troy would get along magnificently.

She went to Sir John’s study to request more coin for her and Grimme’s trip into Hogarth, but stopped at the door, hesitating. She rapped her knuckles lightly.

“Come.”

She entered slowly to see Sir John sitting in a chair in front of his hearth, staring into it, with a goblet in his hand. He said nothing. Brìghde closed the door quietly behind her and remained quiet, her hands folded in front of her. Read more →

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That night Brìghde dropped into her bathtub with a hiss and a sigh, leaning back and thinking about how sore she was going to be on her ride to Hogarth with Grimme in the morning, to which she was looking forward a little less now. Riding forty miles round trip after a day of hard labor was no mean feat.

It had taken a mere fifteen minutes for some forty servants to scrub all the tables and chairs in the great hall with hot water and lye soap to her satisfaction and take them out to the bailey to dry.

However, it had taken hours for the forty of them—and Brìghde—to dig up several inches’ worth of compacted filth, discarded rotting food, and dog shit upon the stone floor with scrapers. It had taken Brìghde a half hour to teach them what she expected and how to do it and on her hands and knees, by the Virgin Mary, and she had spent the rest of the afternoon tending them to get the floor completely clean and a thick carpet of rushes and herbs laid by suppertime. Read more →