Frederick gulped. A great silver moon . . . What might that look like from his rooftop telescope? “Will it be soon?”
“Aye, the wink of an eye, and the stretch of an eternity. Another ten years. But mark my word, our Juliette will make good on that vow.”
“Aye,” Juliette chimed in from where she placed carrots upon a plate. “That I shall.”
“Now,” her mother said, tugging the girl’s plaited copper hair. “Give the boy a bowl and be on your way. The pigs need feeding and they’ll have it from none but you, you sprite-o’-the-mist.”
The girl slid a plain brown bowl his way, running her finger around the rim and skipping over its three chips. “Do take care with our fine china,” she said with a wink and skipped out the door, her mother shooing her and whisking the bowl away from Frederick. She moved it to the head of the small table, replacing Frederick’s with one that bore only a single chip on its rim.
Steam curled from a poached egg within. Double yolk, indeed. It looked for all the world like a king’s feast, his stomach coming alive with a vengeance after last night’s wanderings. He thought of the breakfast that Cook laid out every morning, silver-domed dishes piping with sausages and potatoes and all manner of offerings. Never did he remember wishing to inhale them as he took breakfast alone each morning. But the simple fare before him now summoned a growl from his belly, the likes of which could’ve shaken the earth.
Frederick watched as the woman pulled a single cob of corn from another pot over the fire and harvested its kernels into a bowl. She heaped at least half into his bowl, dividing the remainder among another three bowls.
“Please . . . ” His voice broke, muddied from the long night as it scraped past a soreness. He cleared his throat. “Please, don’t trouble yourself for me.”
The woman paused with a dish she was drying in her apron and looked him full in the face. “Master Frederick.”
He hung his head. “You know . . . who I am.” He heard the heavy defeat in his own voice. If she knew he was the son of Sir Barnard Hanford, she would know him as the servants did—for he heard them, when they did not know he was near, call him the “sea brat.”
“Too much salt air’s addled him,” he’d heard a footman say once. “Wanderin’ the cliffs like a banshee, never knowin’ the work it takes to keep the land beneath his feet alive.” The man had spit in disgust, and Frederick had begun letting his wanders take him farther inland, to watch as the tenant farmers toiled over the land. Was it true? Did those who worked on his father’s land break their backs, only to live on a handful of corn kernels for breakfast?
“Ah, now don’t let the gloom settle over your bones so,” the woman said.
Gloom in the bones . . . He had never heard the phrase before, and though it was a sad one, it comforted him to think that somebody understood him.
“To be known is no shame. You eat up, Master Frederick.”
But the gloom did settle in his bones—the heaviness piling upon him until he felt physically weary. He nudged the bowl away from himself, looking toward the door where the others had disappeared. “Might I . . .” His formal speech sounded sharp here. “Would you mind if I. . .”
She laughed, an easy sound like the rolling tide, and lowered herself into the chair beside him as it creaked beneath her slight form. “Out with it, then. What’s it you want, child?”
“To help,” he blurted, the words sounding foolish. What did he have to offer? And yet . . . how could he not?
Understanding eased the lovely lines around her smile. “Ah,” she said. “Juliette’ll be slopping the pigs, and Tom—that’s my husband—and Elias will be feedin’ the sheep. The porridge’ll keep, but eat that egg before you go. They’ll show you what to do.”
Frederick made quick work of the egg with a tarnished tin fork and set outdoors, where the mud was gloriously thick and the sun shone bright.
He watched as Tom filled a trough with straw for the lambs who were nudging their way toward breakfast. Perhaps he imagined it, but the man seemed to slow his work, never saying a word but casting a glance at the spare shovel, then sending a grin Frederick’s way. An invitation.
Before long he was transferring armloads of pokey straw, doubtless bungling the job at every turn, but something about plunging his strength into the dark earth was a balm to his soul.
Juliette seemed less than pleased that her shovel had landed in the hands of a spoiled sea brat. “You’re always tellin’ me not to hold the shovel that way,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Juliette, my girl,” Tom said, a glimmer in his eye. “Come here and I’ll show you how to hold it.”
“You have before, Father.” She looked offended, but there was a spark in her spirit mirroring her father’s, as if she knew he was up to something. She drew near to him, stepping with caution toward his open hand. Another step, another—and he reached out and smudged her cheek with mud.
“There, now,” Tom said. “Fit to be mistress o’ the land.”
She shrieked feigned anger, the smile across her face entirely consuming.
“Not the likes of me,” she said, and it was with pride, this proclamation that she was unfit to be mistress of the land.
Somewhere in Frederick’s young mind, her words stung.
“The day I become mistress of the land is the day I can fly!” She launched a clump of mud at her father, pleased when it landed on his shoulder and splattered his face.
Frederick could see by the look on the shepherd’s face that he relished their banter. He rested his chin on the shovel, his head feeling heavy and foggy after the work, and laughed quietly as he watched father and daughter splatter each other with mud. They heard, and the two of them turned on him, exchanging a conspiratorial glance.
“No,” he said, but felt something come alive in him.
“Aye,” Juliette said, and drawing back her arm, sent a glop of mud flying right at his shoulder, hitting its mark expertly.
This was foreign to him. Had he ever known larks such as this? With another child, no less? Some instinct overtook him, and he stooped to gather soggy ammunition of his own. But could he truly take aim at a girl? Smear her, most literally, with mud?
He glanced at her father, as if to ask permission. The shepherd tipped his head as if to say, Only if you dare. All the permission he needed.
What followed was joy. Pure, wild, unabashed. Mucking about with two people he’d never met, who by rights should despise him, the way Father’s tenants were wont to do with his family.
And yet here he was, sun splotched, dirt streaked, and happier than he’d ever been.
A sudden clanging sounded, tin bucket against fence, and Frederick turned to see a boy about his age. He was tossing grain on the ground for the chickens and looking none too pleased at the scene before him—despite the smile pasted on his ruddy face.
“Who’s this?” He dipped his head toward Frederick, never taking his eyes from him.
“I’m. . . I’m nobody,” he said, his tongue feeling thick as his thoughts. The boy’s manner made Frederick feel three inches tall, an imposter here in the barnyard.
And wasn’t he?
The shepherd, Tom, drew up next to Frederick and put an arm around his shoulder. The effect was that of a protective cloak. The boy’s stare flicked to Tom, whose face showed only welcome to them both.