Soul of the Fire

Chapter 23

Fitch’s head hurt something awful. The dawn light hurt his eyes. Despite sucking on a small piece of ginger, he couldn’t get the foul sour taste in the back of his throat to go away. He figured the headache and awful taste was probably from too much of the fine wine and rum he and Morley had treated themselves to. Even so, he was in good spirits and smiled as he scrubbed the crusty pots.

Slow as he was moving, trying not to make his head feel any worse, Master Drummond wasn’t yelling at him. The big man seemed relieved that the feast was over and they could go back to their regular cooking chores. The kitchen master had sent him after a number of things, not once calling him “Fetch.”

Fitch heard someone coming his way, and looked up to see that it was Master Drummond.

“Fitch, dry your hands.”

Fitch pulled up his arms and shook off some of the soapy water. “Yes, sir.”

He snatched up a nearby towel as he recalled with acute pleasure the title of “sir” being directed to him the night before.

Master Drummond wiped his forehead with his own white towel. With the way his head was sweating, he looked like he might have had some drink the night before, too, and might not be feeling his best, either. It had been a tremendous amount of work getting ready for the feast, so Fitch grudgingly guessed that Master Drummond deserved to get drunk, too. At least the man got to be called “sir” all the time.

“Get yourself up to Master Campbell’s office.”

“Sir?”

Master Drummond tucked the white towel behind his belt. The nearby women were watching. Gillie was scowling, no doubt waiting for an opportunity to twist Fitch’s ear and scold him for his wicked Haken ways.

“Dalton Campbell just sent word that he wants to see you. I’d guess he means right now, Fitch, so get to it and see what he needs.”

Fitch bowed. “Yes, sir, right away.”

Before she could give him much of a thought, he cut a wide path around Gillie, keeping out of her reach and disappearing as quickly as possible. This was one task Fitch was only too happy to rash to do, and he didn’t want to be snagged by the sour-faced saucer woman.

As he took the stairs two at a time, his throbbing head seemed to be only a minor annoyance. By the time he’d reached the third floor, he suddenly felt pretty good. He rushed past the spot where Beata had clouted him and down the hall just a short ways to the right, to where only a week before he’d taken a plate of sliced meat late one evening, to Dalton Campbell’s office.

The door to the outer office stood open. Fitch caught his breath and shuffled in, keeping his head low in a respectful sort of way; he’d only been there that once before, and he wasn’t exactly sure how he was supposed to act in the offices of the Minister’s aide.

There were two tables in the room. One had disorderly stacks of papers all over it, along with messenger pouches and sealing wax. The other dark shiny table was nearly clean except for a few books and an unlit lamp. The morning sun streaming in the tall windows provided light aplenty.

Along the far wall to the left, opposite the wall with the windows, four young men lounged and chatted on a long padded bench. They were talking about road conditions to outlying towns and cities. They were messengers, a coveted job in the household, so Fitch guessed it seemed a logical enough thing for them to discuss, but he always thought messengers would talk more of the grand things they saw in their job.

The four were well dressed, all the same, in the Minister’s aide’s exclusive livery of heavy black boots, dark brown trousers, white shirts with ruffled collars, and sleeved doublets quilted with an interlocking cornucopia design. The edges of the doublets were trimmed with distinctive brown and black braided wheat banding. To Fitch’s way of thinking, the outfits made any of the messengers look almost noble, but especially so those messengers belonging to the Minister’s aide.

There were a number of different kinds of messengers in the household, each with its own individual uniform, each working for a specific person or office. Fitch knew of messengers working for the Minister, Lady Chanboor, the chamberlain’s office, the marshal’s office; the sergeant-at-arms had several; there were a number of army messengers working out of the estate and those who brought messages to the estate but lived elsewhere—even the kitchen had a messenger. From time to time he saw others he didn’t recognize. Fitch couldn’t understand why they were all needed. He couldn’t understand how much messaging a person could possibly need to do.

Far and away the largest contingent of messengers—nearly an army’s worth, it seemed—belonged to the office of the Minister’s chief aide: Dalton Campbell.

The four men sitting on the padded bench watched him with friendly enough smiles. Two nodded in greeting, something messengers had done before when he came across them. Fitch always thought it odd when they did because, even though they too were Haken, he always figured messengers were better than he, as if, while not Ander, they were some indefinable step above a mere Haken.

Fitch nodded in kind to return the greeting. One of the men who had nodded, perhaps a year or two older than Fitch, lifted a thumb toward the room beyond.

“Master Campbell is waiting on you, Fitch. You’re to go on in.”

Fitch was surprised to be called by name. “Thank you.” He shambled over to the tall doorway to the inner room and waited at the threshold. He’d been in the outer waiting room before—the interior door had always been closed—and he expected Master Campbell’s inner office to be more or less the same, but it was larger and much more grand, with rich-looking blue and gold drapes on the three windows, a wall of fancy oak shelves holding a colorful array of thick books, and, in the other corner, several magnificent Ander battle standards. Each long banner was of a yellow background with red markings along with a bit of blue. The standards were arranged in a display flanked by formidable-looking pole weapons.

Dalton Campbell looked up from behind a massive desk of shiny mahogany with curved legs and a scalloped skirt. The top had three inset leather squares, smaller ones to each side of a large one in the middle, each with a curly design painted in gold around its edges.

“Fitch, there you are. Good. Come in and shut the door, please.”

Fitch crossed the big room and stood before the desk when he had done as bidden. “Yes, sir? You needed something?”

Campbell leaned back in his brown leather chair. His princely scabbard and sword stood beside a tufted bench, in their own special holder of hammered silver made to look like a scroll. Lines of writing were engraved on the scroll, but Fitch couldn’t read, so he didn’t know if they were real words.

Tipping his chair back on the two rear legs while he sucked on the end of a glass dipping pen, the Minister’s aide studied Fitch’s face.

“You did a good job with Claudine Winthrop.”

“Thank you, sir. I tried my best to remember everything you told me you wanted me to do and say.”

“And you did that quite well. Some men would have turned squeamish and failed to do as I instructed. I can always use men who follow orders and remember what I tell them I want done. In fact, I would like to offer you a new position with my office, as a messenger.”

Fitch stared dumbly. He’d heard the words, but they didn’t seem to make any sense to him. Dalton Campbell had plenty of messengers—a whole army of them, it seemed.

“Sir?”

“You did well. I’d like you to be one of my messengers.”

“Me, sir?”

“The work is easier than kitchen work, and the job, unlike kitchen work, pays a wage in addition to food and living quarters. Earning a wage, you could begin to set money aside for your future. Perhaps one day when you earn your sir name, you might be able to buy yourself something. Perhaps a sword.”

Fitch stood frozen, his mind focused intently on Dalton Campbell’s words, running them through his head again. He never even dreamed such dreams as working as a messenger. He’d not considered the possibility of work that would give him more than a roof and food, the opportunity to lift some good liquor, and perhaps a penny bonus now and again.

Of course he dreamed of having a sword and reading and other things, but those were silly dreams and he knew it—they were just for fun dreaming. Daydreaming. He hadn’t dared dream close to real things such as this, such as actually being a messenger.

“Well, what do you say, Fitch? Would you like to be one of my messengers? Naturally, you couldn’t wear those . . . clothes. You would have to wear messenger livery.” Dalton Campbell leaned forward to look over the desk and down. “That includes boots. You would have to wear boots to be a messenger.

“You would have to move to new quarters, too. The messengers have quarters together. Beds, not pallets. The beds have sheets. You have to make up your bed, of course, and keep your own trunk in order, but the staff washes the messenger’s clothes and bedding.

“What do you say, Fitch? Would you like to join my staff of messengers?”

Fitch swallowed. “What about Morley, Master Campbell? Morley did just as you said, too. Would he become a messenger with me?”

The leather squeaked when Dalton Campbell again tipped back onto the two rear legs of his chair. He sucked on the end of the spiraled-blue and clear-glass pen for a time as he studied Fitch’s eyes. At last he took the pen away from his mouth.

“I only need one messenger right now. It’s time you started thinking about yourself, Fitch, about your future. Do you want to be a kitchen boy the rest of your life?

“The time has come for you to do what’s right for you, Fitch, if you ever want to get places in life. This is your chance to rise up out of that kitchen. It may be the only chance you get.

“I’m offering the position to you, not Morley. Take it or leave it. What’s it going to be, then?”

Fitch licked his lips. “Well, sir, I like Morley—he’s my friend. But I don’t think there’s anything I’d rather do in the whole world than be your messenger, Master Campbell. I’ll take the job, if you’ll have me.”

“Good. Welcome to the staff, then, Fitch.” He smiled in a friendly way. “Your loyalty to your friend is admirable. I hope you feel the same of this office. I will have a . . . part-time position for Morley for now, and I suspect that at some point in the future a position may open up and he could then join you on the messenger staff.”

Fitch felt relief at that news. He’d hate to lose his friend, but he would do anything to get out of Master Drummond’s kitchen and to be a messenger.

“That’s awfully kind of you, sir. I know Morley will do right by you, too. I swear I will.”

Dalton Campbell leaned forward again, letting the front legs of the chair thunk down. “All right, then.” He slid a folded paper across the desk. “Take this down to Master Drummond. It informs him that I have engaged your services as a messenger, and you are no longer responsible to him. I thought you might like to deliver it yourself, as your first official message.”

Fitch wanted to jump up and hoot a cheer, but he instead remained emotionless, as he thought a messenger would. “Yes, sir, I would.” He realized he was standing up straighter, too.

“Right after, then, one of my other messengers, Rowley, will take you down to estate supply. They will provide you with livery that fits close enough for the time being. When you’re down there, the seamstress will measure you up so your new clothes can be fitted to you.

“While in my service, I expect all my messengers to be smartly dressed in tailored livery. I expect my messengers to reflect well on my office. That means you and your clothes are to be clean. Your boots polished. Your hair brushed. You will conduct yourself properly at all times. Rowley will explain the details to you. Can you do all that, Fitch?”

Fitch’s knees trembled. “Yes, sir, I surely can, sir.”

Thinking about the new clothes he would be wearing, he suddenly felt very ashamed of what had to be his filthy scruffy look. An hour ago he thought he looked just fine as he was, but no longer. He couldn’t wait to get out of his scullion rags.

He wondered what Beata would think when she saw him in his handsome new messenger’s livery.

Dalton Campbell slid a leather pouch across the desk. The flap was secured with a large dribbling of amber wax impressed with a sheaf-of-wheat seal design.

“After you clean up and get on your new outfit, I want you to deliver this pouch to the Office of Cultural Amity, in Fairfield. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes, sir, Master Campbell. I grew up in Fairfield, and I know just about any place there.”

“So I was told. We have messengers from all over Anderith, and they mostly cover the places they know—the places where they grew up. Since you know Fairfield, you will be assigned to that area for most of your work.”

Dalton Campbell leaned back to fish something from a pocket. “This is for you.” He flipped it through the air.

Fitch caught it and stared dumbly at the silver sovereign in his palm. He expected that most rich folk didn’t even carry such a huge sum about.

“But, sir, I haven’t worked the month, yet.”

“This is not your messenger’s wage. You get your wage at the end of every month.” Dalton Campbell lifted an eyebrow. “This is to show my appreciation for the job you did last night.”

Claudine Winthrop. That was what he meant—scaring Claudine Winthrop into keeping quiet.

She had called Fitch “sir.”

Fitch laid the silver coin on the desk. With a finger, he reluctantly slid the coin a few inches toward Dalton Campbell.

“Master Campbell, you owe me nothing for that. You never promised me anything for it. I did it because I wanted to help you, and to protect the future Sovereign, not for a reward. I can’t take money I’m not owed.”

The aide smiled to himself. “Take the coin, Fitch. That’s an order. After you deliver that pouch in Fairfield, I don’t have anything else for you today, so I want you to spend some of that—all of it if you wish—on yourself. Have some fun. Buy candy. Or buy yourself a drink. It’s your money; spend it as you wish.”

Fitch swallowed back his excitement. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll do as you say, then.”

“Good. Just one thing, though.” Campbell put an elbow on the desk and leaned forward. “Don’t spend it on prostitutes in the city. There are some very nasty diseases going through the whores in Fairfield this spring. It’s an unpleasant way to die. If you go to the wrong prostitute, you will not live long enough to be a good messenger.”

While the idea of being with a woman was achingly tantalizing, Fitch didn’t see how he would ever work up the nerve to go through with it and get naked in front of one. He liked looking at women, the way he liked looking at Claudine Winthrop and he liked looking at Beata, and he liked imagining them naked, but he never imagined them seeing him naked, in an aroused state. He had enough trouble hiding his aroused condition from women when he had his clothes on. He ached to be with a woman, but couldn’t figure how the embarrassment of the situation wouldn’t ruin the lust of it. Maybe if it was a girl he knew, and liked, and he kissed and cuddled and courted her for a period of time—came to know her well—he might see how he could get to the point of the procedure, but he couldn’t imagine how anyone ever worked up the nerve to go to a woman he didn’t even know and just strip naked right in front of her.

Maybe if it was dark. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was dark in the prostitutes’ rooms, so the two people wouldn’t actually see each other. But he still—

“Fitch?”

Fitch cleared his throat. “No, sir. I swear an oath not to go to any of the prostitutes in Fairfield. No, sir, I won’t.”