I sat on a carved wooden bench
in my favorite corner in the vegetable garden, watching the boys at
their morning sword practice with my father and wishing I was out
there with them. My brother Blane, nineteen-years-old and blond like
Father, was easily besting the duke's son Kerr, as he usually did.
My favorite of the pure black
cats inhabiting the Manor jumped up on my lap, licked a paw, then
curled up and promptly fell asleep. It was that kind of warm summer
day when, if I wasn't with the boys, I didn't want to do anything
more than sit in the shade of the old apple tree and inhale its sweet
scent. Since I was ten I've dreamed of learning to feint and parry,
thrust and slice like Blane, Kerr, and my other brother Donal. But
I'm a girl and it wasn't seemly.
Girls of ten to twenty were
relegated to the sewing room where Jannet, the governess and
seamstress, taught us the fine art of needlepoint. I couldn't sew a
straight line to save myself, and I really wasn't interested in
learning. Our only other lessons were in the kitchens. Cook – whose
name was Bridey although no one ever called her anything but Cook,
not even her husband – taught us to boil an egg and make soup from
whatever was available. That wasn't so bad, because we could eat what
we made and no one else was the wiser when it tasted awful.
Blane
won his match, and next Donal fought a duel with Adair, the duke's
younger son. I watched them closely, Donal's red hair and Adair's
blond shining in the sun. I hoped I could learn by paying close
attention, if not by actually using a sword. Mind you, these were
short practice swords, not meant to do much damage. Donal appeared to
do much better than I'd seen in the past.
I was startled when someone
sat next to me on the bench. It was Madoc, the Manor's resident
wizard. I never heard him coming, and yet suddenly he was there, like
magic, which was what he wanted everyone to believe.
"Donal has improved,
hasn't he?" Madoc hadn't lost his East Island accent. You would
think a wizard would do something about that, but his kind of magic
came from knowing what others had long forgotten. All I knew was that
things had been different in the past. He had knowledge from reading
ancient texts and passed some of it on to the boys.
I looked into his warm, dark
eyes. "Yes. His movements are more..." I strove to find the
right word. "more fluid." I waved my arms about, imitating
my brother.
"He's learned how to
become one with his sword," Madoc said. "Notice how Adair
has to work to make the sword do what he wants, but Donal lets his
sword go where it should."
I turned to him. "Did you
teach him that?"
"Your brothers both have
some magical talent, an understanding of how to connect with
everything around them," Madoc explained. "I just helped
Donal to recognize how to use that."
"Oh." As much as I
wished I’d be allowed to learn to use a sword, my desire to study
magic with Madoc was even greater.
He'd come to the Manor when I
was eight. The duke's previous wizard was getting old and the duke
wanted a younger man to take his place, although I doubt he expected
a lad of sixteen. Madoc had shown his abilities on several occasions,
despite his youth. He taught the boys who were interested in his art,
and gave all of them lessons in science as well.
Now, eight years after his
arrival, he was part of our lives, and no one questioned his ability.
“Why
aren't you in the sewing room with Morna and the other girls?” he
asked.
“I
hate sewing.” I hesitated about going on, but the need to tell
someone who might help make it happen was too strong. “I would
rather learn to sword fight and do magic.” There, I'd said it.
He looked deeply into my eyes
and asked, “Why do you hate to sew?”
I shrugged. “I'm not very
good at it.”
“Do
you hate it because you're not good at it, or are you not very good
at it because you hate it?”
That was a question I'd never
considered. “Do you think if I liked sewing and thought it would
somehow be useful, I'd be better at it?”
Then he really surprised me.
“Nissa, you probably have as much magical ability as Blane and
Donal.” He paused briefly while I considered that and what it had
to do with what we'd been talking about. “Just as your brothers use
the energy around us to guide a sword arm, you can learn to use it to
improve your sewing.”
I swallowed. “Would you
teach me?” I dared to ask. “I mean, show me how, as you've shown
them?”
He stared at me for so long
that I was afraid he was preparing to refuse, but then he surprised
me one more time. “Meet me in my rooms this afternoon when the boys
return here for sword practice, and we'll see how good a pupil you
can be.”
I thought I would burst with
happiness. Madoc was going to teach me to do magic, or rather how to
use it!
“I'll
be there!” I said. He laughed, but it was a friendly laugh.
The cat woke just then and
jumped off my lap. “Well, I guess I'd better get back to Jannet
before anyone misses me.”
I could feel his eyes on me as
I walked off. It was more of a skip than a walk as I made my way
through a wooden side door and down the narrow hallway inside the
Manor. But my good mood dissipated when I entered the room where my
fourteen-year-old sister Morna and a few other girls sat at two
tables, hemming the cloth napkins they would later embroider.
“Narissa
Day, where have you been?” Jannet asked, her broad accent deepening
with her annoyance. Few people called me by my full name, but usually
it was when they wanted to scold me.
“I...I
needed some air,” I replied. It was true that this room was stuffy.
Lint from the linen cloth we worked with hung in the still air and I
could actually see it when the light came through the two tiny east
windows that early in the morning.
“Well,
you're falling behind. Morna, show your sister what she's to do,”
Jannet instructed.
“Yes,
Ma'am,” Morna said, smiling her usual radiant smile. She still
hadn't outgrown the sprinkle of freckles across her nose, and her
bright red hair cascaded over her shoulders. You had to smile with
Morna whenever you looked at her.
For the next hour or so, I
worked diligently at hemming large squares of cloth under Jannet's
critical eye, hoping that my lesson with Madoc in the afternoon would
make this task much more pleasant in the future. The time passed
slowly on the old hourglass Jannet used to time our work. I was
always the last to finish.
Well, this time my finished
hems were more or less straight and my stitches were even smaller and
more even than Larena's. She was the duke's daughter, and the second
worst seamstress after me.
“Very
well, ladies. You may all wash up and go to luncheon,” Jannet said.
We stood up and then trooped
out toward the dining hall, stopping at the trough just outside to
rinse off our hands before we ate. The hall was already filling up.
The boys, hungry after their exertions on the practice field, were
lined up to get their food. I just hoped they'd leave something for
the rest of us.
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