#my herbs and botanicals are pretty much entirely packed though!!

[canisonicscrewyou]

Doing a little insomnia cleaning + packing and now I’m watching my playlist of (mostly older) vlogbrothers videos titled ‘company’ for, well, what you can gather. Anyways now I keep occasionally tearing up at the especially nostalgic videos and the ones talking about the passage of time. Wack.

[blisserial]

Two

My mother was called Rose, after the rare flower in the garden her papa spent most of his life tending. Granda Jorge is a scrawny, gnarled man with no proper sense of humor. Sold into service at the age of ten, he showed an uncanny ability to keep green things alive -  first in Her Ladyship's solarium, later in the herb plot, and finally as groundskeeper of the household's  extensive ornamental gardens.

He still talks incessantly of land that isn’t his. He can describe every seedling he tended in thirty years of servitude but he cannot remember the family he lost to the king's war.

Perhaps this is not an elderly failing. Perhaps it is a calculated adaptation. I shouldn't resent his choices. Yet I do.

Rose was a pretty child and an even prettier maiden. She had absolutely no interest in either Granda's botanical passion or her own place in Her Ladyship’s  household. Rose had eyes only for the bright young conscripts who came marching by in an endless stream, season after season, away south on the dusty road that bypassed Her Ladyship's stables before curving away over the horizon.

To my young mother those untried soldiers must have represented mystery and adventure. Certainly, as she grew older, they became objects of desire and then pleasure.

I do not know how many men she bedded behind the boxwood hedge in Her Ladyship's lavender garden, but I do know I was the unsurprising end result.

She named me not after a flower, or shrub, or herb, but after the apparently impressive stead her last conquest rode. Blisstide Run, she said the nag was called, and I got the entire mouthful, thankfully shortened to Bliss in my very early years.

I am endlessly grateful that horse was not christened Knottytail Leap or Muskrat Gallop.

My mother, though a kind soul, had not a lick of sense. In the end that was her downfall.

                                                          *****

After more than fifteen years in the north, Maurice was still not accustomed to the bitter, bone chilling cold. He had become used to the drifts of snow, drifts that on either side of the king’s road grew as high as a man’s shoulder. He had become used to the spears of ice that dripped from gabled roofs, beautiful sculptures Maurice imagined could easily pierce flesh and bone if ever dislodged.

He had even become used to the endless grit of sand that lodged in boots and shirt cuffs, between eyelashes and in the ears and even between the teeth. Urchins and old men spread the sand over the king’s road in small, regimented armies, feeding hungry families with the coins they earned. The sand itself, Bliss claimed, was hauled from the infertile fields of abandoned border towns.

Maurice swallowed grit with his cider every night and regularly mused over the  fields that must now be scraped to deep trenches. And if the dirt in those fields had been laid low by black spells, was not the king tempting fate by sprinkling the same earth over his icy roads?

The clogging sand made Maurice nervous but the cold darkened his very spirits and made long days seem without hope or purpose. The wind snuck under his cloak and between skin and woolens, leaving chill blains on bits of his body that had never even seen the sun.

Fifteen years, and he should be used to the winter doldrums. He had heard tales of whole villages, years and years past, before even the king had come, who had burnt their very children in god offering, hoping only to chase the cold away.

“Nonsense,” Bliss scoffed when Maurice muttered such stories aloud. “The north has always been cold and Northerners have always been hardy. We do not try to change anything we cannot. Besides, no sane Northern family would send a child to the gods; a terrible waste of an extra pair of hands, that would be, come summer and harvest.”

Bliss managed to keep the ragtag remainder of her small company going through the winter. She did her best to keep them fed and warm, but even she could not turn winter to summer. In the right town circus tricks provided food and shelter, and in the wrong town Bliss’s gambling and Shaara’s quick fingers kept the company from famine.

Maurice refused to learn the role of thief. He had signed on with Ross as an honest man, an honest man looking for clean livelihood. Even after so much had changed, some principles could not be broken.

He would not lower himself to steal. But neither would he let Bliss starve.

                         “Maurice.” Juggling finished, upturned hat jingling with a few burnished coins, Shaara settled in the rushes at his feet. “Bliss wants to move on again tomorrow.”

“I know it.” Maurice had foregone drink and food this night. The tavern Bliss had chosen seemed especially dirty, the men slumped over the tables especially taciturn. Even the obvious regulars appeared to be avoiding the fare which was enough to make Maurice wary.

It made one wonder, it did, how exactly the tavern master kept his little industry afloat.

“She’s taking us south, again.” Shaara pulled a dried turnip from his pocket and, munching delicately, began to sort the coins from his hat. “Two more days at this pace and we’ll hit the border.”

“I’ve eyes, boy.”

“She swore she’d never set foot over the border again, not if the entire Northern coast came after her with fish hooks and bloody spears.” Shaara’s solemn face brightened some. Despite a multitude of worries, no boy of fifteen summers could resist Bliss’s particular imagery.

“It’ll be warmer south, a few days across the border.” Maurice’s stomach growled. He wanted food. And more yet, he wanted drink. Even so, he was too wise to risk his gut on an unclean hearth. He'd learned Northern hygiene the hard way.

To distract himself from Shaara’s mostly devoured turnip, Maurice let his roaming gaze settle on Bliss.

For lack of stool or chair she had settled herself on the bar, knees tucked under her chin, compact and still but for the elaborate gestures she made with her hands as she spoke.

He was too far away to hear just what tale she was whispering so solemnly to her captive audience, but captive they were, and that was what mattered most. She'd gained a mug of cider and half a loaf of bread. Northern grime never bothered Bliss.

“She’s telling the one ‘bout Amy and the Seat’s lions,” Shaara said with elaborate unconcern. “They’re a blood thirsty group, tonight, enjoying the savage stories. Do you really think she’ll take us across?”

“Three years and she hasn’t yet.” Maurice studied Bliss’s mobile face. The dirt had grown so thick across her cheeks she appeared bruised in the faint light. “Some day she will have to.”

“Pride?”

“Passion.” Maurice snatched the stub of turnip from the lad’s hand and bit deep.

  Bliss took a soldier to her bed that night, thus proving to Maurice that his suspicion about the tavern’s true industry was indeed correct. He did not begrudge her the pleasure, nor the coin spent on companionship, but he did wonder, briefly, what she would do for breakfast the next morning if she used all her coins on companionship. A hungry Bliss was not an exceptionally likable Bliss.

Apparently breakfast came with the deal, or else Bliss had stolen from the local baker, because when she roused Maurice and Shaara from their shared pallet, she carried fresh bread and a pot of butter. The butter looked rancid but in the end Maurice couldn’t resist the bread, Northern hygiene be damned.

“Snowing out,” Bliss said, attacking the butter with relish. She smelt foul, of smoke and sweat and sex, but she looked more rested than she had in a fortnight.

“We are surprised?” Maurice glanced about the attic loft. Most of the other pallets, full to bursting in the night, were now empty.

“I let you sleep in.” Bliss said, reading his expression. “Tis after midday. You needed the rest. Besides, we’re in no hurry today.”

“We’re not?” Bread eaten, Shaara squirmed free of borrowed bedding. “We’re always in a hurry.”

“Not today. Today we’re playing with a lord’s good will. And tonight we’re performing for his mistress’ entertainment.”

Shaara’s mouth dropped open, showing bread between his teeth. Maurice closed the boy’s gape with a gentle fist, eying Bliss.

“Where did you find a lord willing to hire a green lad, an old man, and a soldier’s unwashed toy?”

Bliss’s eyes snapped but her smile was well satisfied. “Last night’s sturdy soldier is not a soldier in truth. No longer. He guards Lord Tamner’s stables, has for the past handful of months.”

“He must guard Lord Tamner’s ear and balls if he can arrange the man’s entertainment,” Shaara marveled. Maurice finished his breakfast silently, all the while watching Bliss pretend not to squirm.

“Lord Tamner was also a soldier,” Bliss said. “In the south. Before he earned his title and his land. In the battle of Green Hill.”

Maurice stilled. “That’s it, then. He’s heard of us.”

“Most of those who survived Green Hill have.” Bliss waved one long hand. “Last night’s bed companion wasn’t convinced until he had wormed his way under my shirt. And this morning he ran tattling to Tamner.”

“Resourceful man,” Maurice said blandly. He brushed crumbs from his cloak and began to set the bedding right. “Especially if he convinced Tamner to take the bits of us that are left.”

“Tamner offered three hundred gold,” Bliss said.

Shaara gasped. Maurice set down his half-fastened pack. He stared. “To entertain his mistress? The lord’s surely mad.”

“The mistress is inconsequential.” Bliss hopped up, restless. “Tamner’s apparently a loyalist. It’s a coup, feeding Ross’s Troop at his boards. Even the ‘bits of us that are left.’”

“A coup,” Maurice sighed. “Or trouble.”

“Trouble we can handle.” Bliss paused in her pacing to stare through the attic’s dirty window. Whatever she glimpsed beyond hardened her features. “Myself, I’m more worried about Tamner’s boards. It’s been a very long time since we’ve performed for a landed audience.”

“For three hundred gold, I’ll walk Trout’s watery river.” Shaara’s face suffused with sudden joy. “Think of it. Supper every night from winter to winter.”

Maurice shouldered his pack. Extending a hand, he hauled Shaara to his feet. “Supper every night it is, then. When are we expected?”

“Sundown,” Bliss murmured to the window. “They call it Cliffhouse. We’re to knock at the servants’ entrance.”

“Ah.” Maurice nearly laughed aloud. “The heroes of Green Hill we may be, but it’s still the servant’s entrance for Ross’s Troop.”

“And so it will always be.” Bliss whirled away from the glass. She winked. “Come. I’ve found us hot water.”

  Bliss’s hot water steamed in an old whiskey barrel in a crooked stable behind the local blacksmith’s shop. The blacksmith, charmed either by Bliss’s smile or the promise of future payment, had erected a privy curtain contrived of dusty horse blankets pinned across worn rope.

Maurice could not remember the last time he'd enjoyed the small luxury of privacy. As for hot water, surely it had been since spring.

“You’re going last.” He told Bliss before ducking behind the horse blankets. “You’ll turn water to mud with the dip of one toe.”

“Oh, yes.” Bliss followed after, ignoring Maurice’s glare. “And you’d prefer I was pillaged every second stop.”

“If you mean rape,” resigned, Maurice shed his clothes and slid into the whiskey barrel with an audible sigh, “you’re fooling yourself. You’re woman enough to stave off any danger of that, even if you hadn’t Shaara and myself as shadows every step of the last year.”

“You think I’m wearing dirt because I like the itch?” Bliss snapped. She walked once around the barrel, then settled on a rusted anvil. 

Maurice shrugged. “You were clean enough at the height of our popularity. Cleaner than most. I seem to remember screaming tantrums if the hot water wasn’t quick enough.” Maurice dipped up a rag the blacksmith had kindly left over the barrel edge. He began a single minded scouring. “I think you’re hiding.”

“Hiding?”

“From men like Tamner. Men with long memories.” Maurice agreed. “Truth told, you’ve been hiding long enough I thought you’d forgotten the game. What changed your mind, Captain?”

Bliss growled, whether at the title or the impertinence, Maurice did not dare guess. “We need the money. The boy’s gone thin as a worm-riddled goat.”

“Speaking of the boy,” Maurice squeezed the rag over the crown of his head and sighed again as water dripped into his eyes. “Where’ve you sent him?”

“Shaara is running an errand. I’ve a seamstress cobbling together our fancy dress.”

Maurice paused. “You’ve been mighty free with forthcoming coin, Bliss. Lord Tamner had better be an honest man, or we’ll be chased over hill and dale with pitchfork.”

Bliss rolled bony shoulders. “Luckily you’re still spry, old man. Finish up. I didn’t hire the water for you alone.”

Maurice rose from the barrel, shedding streams of water. “And what am I supposed to do until sundown?”

Bliss met his eye as she tugged at her tunic. “Practice.”

  Cliffhouse was reached by way of a winding, recently sanded and well maintained path. The cobblestones beneath the layer of grit were sturdy and unbroken, if still icy. The sun had disappeared long before sunset, overcome by an ornery bank of gray clouds.

Snow fell as the remaining members of Ross’s Troop trudged uphill through pine and forest scrub. Lord Tamner was a Royal Hunter; leather pennants rose from hills of snow along the edge of the forest, promising a hangman’s noose for any who dared poach on the consigned property.

“Surely his lordship wouldna miss a grouse or four,” Shaara muttered, glancing thoughtfully at snowy branches. “Or a fat turkey. I can smell the bloody birds, the spoor is so thick.”

“Touch not a feather,” Maurice warned although he, too, could sense the birds sheltering above. “I’ve no desire to cut your body free from a hangman’s knot. Leave the birds to our king and his licensed hunters.”

“And pick your finery up from the mud,” Bliss growled. “Or the hangman’ll have no use for you once I’m done.”

Shaara sighed and hoisted his velvet cape over one shoulder. Bliss’s seamstress had been unusually quick. The garb was most certainly second hand and from the profusion of lace and fur several seasons out of style, but the opulence suited their profession and the seamstress had been skilled enough with the needle where it mattered. Maurice’s cloak had been altered in several important places and Shaara’s sleeves slit and edged until they were a drape of lace over elbows, baring delicate wrists and leaving quick fingers unhindered.

“You remembered the oil?”

Maurice swallowed a snort. “Three years out has not turned this old hand into an idiot, Bliss.”

“You were one from the beginning.” Bliss paused beneath a rustling fir. The torch she held in one hand brightened the old trunk, sending snow in the branches directly above to hissing. “We can’t foul this up, Maurice.”

Maurice rolled a shoulder. Bliss had never been one for pre-performance jitters. In fact, she had always been the coolest of the lot. Cooler, in the end, even then Ross.

“Something you want to tell us, Bliss?” Softly, because if he knew Bliss, she was bracing for a fight.

“Nothing at all. I want my year of hot dinners, just like the boy. And maybe a bed without nits once every full moon. I’m tired of living off the dregs.”

Snow sighed above the trees as Shaara shifted and muttered. Maurice ignored the lad. Bliss ignored Maurice.

In the drip of the snow and the flicker of the torch she looked almost as young as she had a four years earlier, fresh and full of triumph, clothed in riches and honor and Southern perfume. Before she had finally broken and fled home.

The seamstress had cut most of the lace away from Bliss’ tunic and then made up for its loss with a fluff of white fox and coon. The velvet trousers tucked into freshly blackened boots were almost the same color as the purple stone Bliss wore on her thumb.

She glowed, within and without. It was determination, Maurice realized, and then he wondered what had finally woken Ross’s protégé from her hibernation.

He meant to choose suspicion, but instead he found himself smiling at the defiance in the set of her shoulders.

His smile faded as the wind in the trees sharpened to rustles, the crackle of purposeful steps in the underbrush, and as Bliss wheeled, the mutter of audible voices.

“Not one feather, I said!” Maurice growled at Shaara, groping at his belt after a knife he had sold for supper more than twelve months earlier.

“I didn’t!“ Shaara protested. The boy snapped a branch from a drooping sapling and held it over his head as though he intended to club the king’s men into submission. Little good that would do, Maurice thought, grim, as he bent to unearth a log from the snow. Even so, the lad had the right idea. No man wanted to die an empty handed coward.

“Maurice,” Bliss cautioned. “Stop. He didn’t. I didn’t. They’re not –“

“No?” Maurice interrupted, counting spearheads and bearded grins. Five. Five men, and they had not troubled to be silent, because they did not need to be. They carried far more steel than any gamekeeper could innocently excuse. “Then what?”

“They’re here for us.” Bliss lifted her torch. Rich gold thread gleamed on red breasts; a half moon rising. No royal insignia, that. Not the king’s indentured souls, then, but Tamner’s  men.

“Come,” said the tallest of the group. There was white in his beard and amusement in his smile. “Milord is waiting. Dinner will be growing cold.”

 The fellow took the flame from Bliss’s hand and set off into the night. Bliss, without so much as a twitch of protest, followed after.

Maurice hesitated. Four pairs of black eyes watched impassively. Maurice dropped his makeshift weapon. At his nod, Shaara did the same. Tamner’s men, jingling carelessly in the wind, closed behind, herd dogs in a nobleman’s finery.