19. Keep

We had made a sharp right inside the black stone tunnel.

Taken to a holding cell with wooden benches along one wall and a short row of four cots, we were told to enter and were subsequently locked in.

The strange guards had not been rough with us, just efficient.

As soon as the iron grate was shut, Eefa began to cry, Bronwyn holding her.

I sensed that we all may have felt this way but we were holding on, trying to stay calm.

Catrin and Maureen sat on the bench on either side of Helena, who was in a weakened position, I could tell.

The paste must have been inducing her courses and she would bleed soon.

Quinn and River sat on Maureen’s side, Bronwyn and Eefa following.

Mischa and I stood standing next to the grate, quiet, contemplative.

I had never been able to sleep without a window in the room.

This cell, while clean and with bedding, was nowhere for me to sleep, not without a night sky to see.

We were there all night.

They slept on the cots in shifts, except for Helena, who tried to sleep on one through the night, the pain of her courses coming on strong.

Our undergarments were nothing but shreds now and our dresses too coarse for the purpose, but she should have changed her strips out for fresh ones in the morning.

Or what we guessed was morning, as they left us with a stump of a candle that had guttered out short hours after our being locked away.

Guards came for us and took us on a long journey down the stone tunnel, which more and more appeared to us as an even-walled corridor, flickering sconce flames lighting the way, to a long room that looked like a dormitory with beds and again, we were locked inside.

We did not have to wait long before a key sounded in the lock and an older woman dressed in black with a leather half-apron came through the door.

The apron was secured by a belt from which loops of keys hung.

She was flanked by three other women in black with leather half-aprons.

“Good morning,”

she said, not unkindly.

“My name is Zinnia.

I am the keep’s chatelaine.

You are in the Shark’s Keep, in the hall of the Shark King, his highness, Hinnom the First.

I am going to prepare you to meet your new king.”

We stared at her.

Zinnia continued, her tone, neither welcoming nor unsympathetic.

“First we will bathe you.

Then we will provide you clean undergarments.

Your current dresses do not appear to be that in need of laundering.

You will eat, have a moment to gather yourselves and then you will face his highness.

In his throne room.

He is eager to meet the priestesses of Eccleston.”

“Agnes preserve us,”

muttered Mischa.

It was then we were introduced to the baths of Tintar.

Tintarians may be often called primitives, savages who worship their gods with blood, superstitious to the core and ruthless in battle, but this fortress of bluffs contained hot bathing water.

Zinnia, patient and likely trying to distract us, explained that the Shark’s Keep, temples and other holdings built into the bluff used the influx of seawater, flowing into caves and channels below, stoppered with small, manmade milldams and heated by furnaces under some of the raised floors of the lowest level of each building.

The steam was funneled through small chambers under the floors and in the walls, allowing for whole rooms of water to be heated.

The baths’ water was let out regularly by the milldams’ removal during low tides and refilled by the next high tide, held in by the milldams until it was let back out into the sea.

The majority of the brine was released into the air by the heat.

We were taken into such a room, twice the size of an Eccleston university lecture hall.

Stone benches and steps bordered the room, leading down into the steamy waters.

Shelves full of cakes of soap lined every wall.

There were hooks on which to hang the clothes of the bathers.

Various sections of the pool were cordoned off with blocks of stone to allow for the semblance of privacy, but the heads of the women using them could be seen over the edges.

At least fifty women were naked, lounging in the warmth, or scrubbing hastily, apparently preparing to go about their days.

We could see through the mostly clear water down to a mosaic of green shells that lined the floor of the pool.

None of the women seemed to pay us any attention.

“These are the women’s baths of the Shark’s Keep,”

explained Zinnia, her hand extended towards the green waters.

“All women who live in the keep bathe here, both the noble and the common.

Please disrobe.”

I realized no one wanted to fully expose themselves, at least not yet in this strange world.

I did not blame them, but I decided to be the first, shedding my shoes and clothes and descending the steps before I could overthink my choice, earning an approving glance from Zinnia.

Out of sight, tucked inside the palm of my hand with my little and ring fingers holding it so, was the hagstone and the tin comb.

Submerged to our waists in the warm water, Zinnia had passed small cakes of soap to each of us and we sloughed off the dirt, hay and grime of the last few days.

Helena was stiff in the water and blood seeped out from between her legs.

I stood next to her and whispered, “you should take out your strips.

They have been in for so long.

I will ask the woman for fresh ones.”

“Yes.

Yes, thank you,” she said.

I sloshed up to the steps where Zinnia and her staff were sorting through baskets of white linens, one of the women gathering up our dresses.

“Lady Zinnia,”

I said, striding out of the pool, water sluicing down my body.

I was so warm and clean, I did not mind my nudity.

“There’s no need for lady,”

said Zinnia.

“Just Zinnia.

I have earned this position through hard work, not my bloodline.”

I nodded, maintaining as much dignity as one can in no clothes.

“One of us has begun her courses.

Do you have the linens for that?”

“I do.

Tell her to come see me when she is done bathing.”

Zinnia handed me a linen to towel off with and said, “I have laid out shifts and stays for each of you.

And I have sent one of my girls to get you dresses.”

She waved towards herself.

“Keep women wear this black.

All four seasons, in different thicknesses.

I know your current dresses were clean but they do not fit you.”

“That is most kind,”

I said, wrapping the linen around myself, somewhat hobbled by holding the hagstone and comb.

Why was I so insistent on keeping them?

“There are pins, combs and brushes in this,”

said Zinnia, gesturing to a smaller basket.

“You will eat soon and then meet the Shark King.

Please arrange your hair in an orderly fashion.

Dry it as much as possible.”

I hesitated.

“Is the king fastidious about such things?”

Zinnia frowned.

“He is the Shark King and he is unknowable.

It is safest to present oneself as respectable as one can in the throne room.”

“I understand,”

I replied, which was a complete untruth.

We ate in the keep kitchens, another vast room full of hearths, worktables and bustling with a staff of what seemed to be five dozen.

Small slotted windows through the bluff rock allowed for some daylight to creep through and I guessed it to be the high point of the morning.

I could tell it was a cloudy day and I prayed, to what god I did not know, that it was not a portent of our fate.

They fed us fried fish, goat’s cheese, wedges of tomato and sliced pears and peaches drizzled in honey and the same savory nuts Stefan had foraged in Nyossa.

“This is delicious,”

said Mischa, having forgotten who was feeding us.

“It’s perch,”

said Zinnia, nearby with a pitcher of water, topping off our tin drinking cups.

“It was caught in a river not an hour’s ride away.

A freshwater fish when we often eat fish from the sea.

A delicacy.”

“A delicacy for prisoners of war?”

Quinn dared to ask.

Zinnia grimaced, but her frustration was not with Quinn.

“It was intended for his highness, but our king decided on another meat to break his fast.”

Mischa burst out laughing.

“This is called perch?”

Zinnia nodded, confused.

Mischa continued to laugh.

“That’s what that long-haired bastard is called,”

she explained her amusement.

“Perch.

The man is a fish.”

Maureen, having been sad and silent after her mother’s attack, started to giggle, as did Catrin and River.

“Are you referring to Sergeant Perch?”

asked Zinnia.

“Of The Procurers?”

She seemed to be offended by their laughter, as did her three staff.

We fell silent, all of us, even Mischa.

The inner corridors of the Shark’s Keep were a dark gray-blue, the inner rock of the bluffs a different shade from the black outside.

Sconces carved out of pale green stone provided light in sections of the corridors not lit by narrow windows that overlooked, sometimes the thrashing sea or the busy city streets.

It took us some time to travel down first one, then a second, then a third corridor, following Zinnia and one of her women, the other two behind us.

I held Helena’s hand, trying and failing to keep track of the turns we made.

We passed well-dressed people, mostly men, talking and walking without rush as well as servants, both men and women garbed in black, walking at faster clips than the people I assumed to be some kind of nobles.

All of us had wrung as much dampness from our hair as we could, braiding it back and Mischa, Maureen, Helena and I had fallen back into the habit of a scribe’s braid crown, the hair evenly placed in a braid around the head so as to put less weight on the scalp or in a knot at the back of the head.

When one is bent over a desk all day, the comfort of the neck is considered.

They had outfitted us in clean shifts, stays and the black cotton dresses Zinnia and her women wore, but without the half aprons.

I was relieved to find pockets in this dress also and slipped the hagstone and comb inside.

My dress fit fine but was again, taut across my chest.

These dresses also had a square neckline, but this came higher up over my breasts than my dress from the Sibbereen farm women.

My mind flashed back to Alric and his wandering gaze and the way my skin had girlishly blushed under it.

Shame flooded me again.

What did some arbitrary man’s attentions, out of all of the attention I had experienced, between the ages of sixteen and now, matter?

The corridor opened up to an antechamber full of people, all of them well dressed.

Some sat at small tables, playing a game that involved small pieces made of sculpted rock.

Some sat on long couches covered in what I assumed was sealskin.

“Their peerage,”

said River to the rest of us.

The nobles watched as we walked through the antechamber to double doors made of wood that had been painted white.

They were impressive not because they were ornate but because they were so tall and wide and the wall on this side of the antechamber was broad, not giving way to any other corridors, whereas, several other corridors lead to this antechamber.

We were about to enter the throne room.