The Ghosts of Kerfol Read Online Free

in from candle making. I couldn’t welcome her advances, feeling, as I often would, like a fly in her hapless web. On the other hand, we made some two hundred candles a day that season, casting them in molds with wicks or stripping the bark from rushes to dip in melted tallow for the common rushlights. It was weary work.
    “Come, walk with me.” She did not seem to command so much as cajole, as if I might object. As if I
could
object. She led me through the busy courtyard back to the orchard and reached to touch each branch we passed, elegant fingers trailing over knobs of bark and heavy fruit. The day was bright and blue. Her face was closed and dreamy. Against my better judgment, I found myself at ease.
    But two figures back in the courtyard startled me right again. They were too far off to make out, but their stance and focused stillness told me they were likewise watching the two of us: fuzzy figures strolling in the orchard. I had a sinking feeling then, that I’d somehow trespassed; at the core of that sinking feeling was the seed of another. I resented Milady for leading me there so recklessly, for doing what I knew she would do again and again. Her need was such. I felt afraid for no reason I could name.
    The first figure revealed itself. Cook came bustling across the wide courtyard, carrying in her oft-scalded hand what looked to be a shiny copper plate. By now, Milady had stiffened like a doe reading the wind. As Cook drew close, we saw that the plate bore a sliced apple, artfully composed, its flesh a perfect pinkish white.
    Before the lady could inquire or accept, we saw the second figure striding forth. We stood quite still until the baron reached us, greeting Milady with a tight smile.
    “I’m no queen,” his wife protested with a shrug, “to need such honors.” She took the plate from Cook, who looked as uneasy as I felt and who tugged me away by the apron string. We had not been dismissed, so we stood apart to give them privacy.
    I heard Milady soften her complaint with a hollow, insistent laugh. “I can pick my own apples, you know, Yves. I might enjoy it.”
    He leaned close, lifting her chin, and his shadow darkened her. “I would have you inside now,” he said. “I depart soon, and a man with a treasure does not leave the key in the lock when he goes out.”
    “Why do you never take me with you, then?”
    So few things pleased Sire, but he seemed to smile as he fished a timepiece from his coat of dark red-flowered silk, gesturing at the house. “Young wives belong at their firesides.”
    Abruptly, he set off for the château again with Cook at his heels, and when he’d gone, Milady and I followed the edge of the moat around to the front gardens — so she could hear the birdsong a moment longer, she said. She hurled the already browning apple in among a stand of drooping cosmos. “When he goes, you bring me an apple, Perrette.” Milady spoke over a shoulder, her voice stubborn and rueful. “That one had a worm in it.”
    The crunch of carriage wheels on gravel sent me scurrying down to the kitchen, where I secured a basket from Maria and walked — nay, skipped, for this was a precious errand — out to the orchard again. The day was yet crisp and fine, and just as I’d hoped and imagined, Youen found me rummaging through the gnarled branches.
    “I saw you go past.” He bit thoughtfully into one of the baron’s perfect apples, a dozen bees circling him as if he were a honeyed treat.
    “You make very free.” I glanced round.
    Youen leaned easily against a trunk, and his look said,
Do I?
    “Maria warned me never —”
    “Maria,” he sighed with good humor. “Is there nothing under the sun Maria doesn’t know?” He took another bite while I stood frozen to the spot, basking in his attentions, for he seemed to study me.
    Chewing and smiling, he plowed at the soil round the tree’s roots with his boot heel. “I hail from a family of notorious poachers, you know. Ask anyone.”