Oh, thank gods, I thought. They’re going to leave me. All I wanted to do was lie in the dry prickly grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you are halfway to Methana. Wherever Methana might be.
But they didn’t leave me. They unsaddled their horses and got out their lunches and sat and ate while I slept.
When the sun was halfway down the sky, Pol nudged me with one foot until I woke up. I twitched my eyes open and had no idea at all where I was. I wasn’t in bed. I wasn’t at home. I’d woken up several times disoriented in the prison, and I automatically stifled my first thrash of surprise to prevent my chains from grinding on old bruises, and finally I remembered that there were no chains. I crossed one arm over my face and moaned convincingly. I felt surprisingly well. I was as hungry as a donkey, but my head was clear. I sat up and rubbed at the stiffness on the side of my face where the grass had left its rough pattern.
I groaned and complained while Pol, single-handed, pushed me back up onto the horse and we all started down the road again. The magus rode beside me and handed me pieces of cheese and lumps of bread that he tore off a loaf as we went. I ate with one hand and held on with the other. Horses are the most awful means of transport. I wanted to ask why they hadn’t brought a cart, but I was too busy eating.
We made it to Methana as the sun was going down. It was a small town with just a few houses and an inn at an intersection of roads. We didn’t stop. We rode on until it was pitch-dark. The moon was just a tiny sickle, and the soldier dismounted to lead his horse. He walked slowly to avoid stepping into the ditch by the roadside, and the other horses followed his.
The night air was cool, but my wonderful nap was a long way behind me. I balanced on the narrow back of my horse and wished the saddle offered more support. My head drooped forward and then bobbed back. The magus must have had eyes like a thief because he told Pol to stop and dismounted to walk alongside me, one hand resting just above my knee, ready to shake me if I fell asleep. He shook hard and resorted to pinching periodically.
We reached Matinaea at last. It was no bigger than Methana had been, but more roads met there. The inn was two stories tall and had a gate beside it that led to an enclosed courtyard. As we rode up, a groomsman came to take the horses. We all slid to the ground, and Pol was quickly beside me with one hand firmly on my shoulder. It was an easy business for him; my shoulder came only to his chest. Sometimes it bothers me that I am so small. It bothered me then, and I shrugged my shoulder in irritation, but his hand didn’t move.
The magus introduced himself as a traveling landholder to the owner of the inn and said that he had sent a messenger ahead to arrange rooms. The owner was delighted to see him, and we all trooped toward the doorway. As I passed the owner’s wife, her nose wrinkled, and as I reached the door, she protested.
“That one,” she accused, pointing at me. “It’s that one that smells so awful, and he’s not coming into my wineroom and I won’t have him sleeping in any of my clean beds.”
Her husband made futile hushing motions with his hands.
“No, I won’t have it. Not if he’s your lordship’s son,” she said to the magus. “Although I hope he’s not.”
I could feel my face getting hot as the blood rushed all the way up to my ears. The magus and the woman negotiated, over the husband’s protests. The magus said no, I couldn’t sleep in the barn, but I could sleep on the floor. He gave her an extra silver coin and promised I would wash immediately. She gave directions to the pump in the courtyard, and Pol led me away.
The pump was in the middle of the courtyard behind the inn. There were stables on two sides, a wall on the third and the back of the inn completed the courtyard. It was not a private place to take a bath. When we reached the pump, Pol grabbed my shirt at the waist and jerked it upward. I snapped my arms down to prevent it from going over my head. The fabric tore in his hands. He reached for me again, but I stepped away, drowsiness gone.
“This,” I snapped, “I can do for myself.”
“Just make sure it’s a good job,” he said before he began to pump. The water gushed out of a pipe at the height of my waist as I stripped out of my overshirt and dumped it on the cobbles. I pulled off my shoes, I had no stockings, so the pants followed immediately after. As the water splashed off the cobblestones and onto my naked legs, gooseflesh came out under the dirt. I shivered and swore as I bent into the stream.
While I rinsed under the pump, the younger Useless arrived. He kept well away from the splattering water.
“Put those down in a dry spot,” said Pol, “and fetch a couple of sacks from the stable.”
When Useless came back, Pol took one of the sacks he’d brought and handed it to me with a square block of soap. Crouching beside the water, I soaked the sack and rubbed the soap across it. It made a tremendous lather, and I stopped to smell it in surprise. I laughed. It was the magus’s scented soap. Useless the Younger must have dug it out of one of the saddlebags.
I scrubbed myself with the sacking, washing away what felt like years of dirt. I rubbed hard and then rinsed and soaped myself up again before Pol could stop pumping water. I dragged the sack across the back of my neck and as much of my shoulders as I could reach and scrubbed my face again and again, thinking to myself that my nose would be smaller, but at least it would be clean.
The younger Useless stood and watched, and I wondered what he thought of me. The iron waistband had left deep bruises in a circle around my waist, and I was covered in flea bites and sores, but the ones on my wrists were the worst. Where the manacles had chafed there were raw spots partially covered in scabs that were black against my prison-fair skin. Once I had cleaned most of the dirt off myself and rinsed my hair, I squatted down in front of the spraying water and tried to find the place where the water would fall most gently on my wrists. Several of the sores were infected, and they needed to be cleaned out, but it was going to be a painful business. My whole body was shaking with the cold, and I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering while I leaned into the water.
Pol stepped around the pump and leaned over me to look at the sores. The water flow slackened.
“Leave them,” he said. “I’ll work on them inside.” He gave me another piece of sacking to dry off with, and when I was done, he handed me a pile of clothes—pants and a shirt as well as an overshirt and a pair of stout workboots. I looked around for my own clothes and saw the younger Useless disappearing into the stable with them in his arms.
“Hey,” I yelled. “Come back with those!”
He turned around uncertainly. “Magus told me to burn them,” he said.
“Everything but my shoes!”
Useless looked into the pile in his arms and wrinkled his nose. “All right, but if Magus says to burn them, you’ll have to give them back.”
“Fine, fine,” I said as I hopped across the wet cobblestones in my bare feet and took my shoes out of his arms. The rest of the clothing I consigned to the fires without regret, but I’d had the shoes made specially. They were low boots just a little higher than my ankles, reinforced on the soles, but still supple enough to let me move unsuspected through other people’s houses. I carried them back to Pol; then I looked for a dry place to stand while I got dressed. The pants were heavy cotton and bagged at the ankle where they tucked into my shoes. They bagged even more around my waist, but there was a belt to hold them up. The shirt was cotton as well. There was something wonderful about rubbing a clean shirt against clean skin. I was smiling by the time I pulled the overshirt over my head. It was dark blue and short-sleeved. It came down to my thighs and was enough too big that when I moved my arms across my chest, it didn’t bind. I checked to be sure.