2
ANNA had never seen a noble lord so close before. Nor had she ever imagined that a table could groan under the weight of so much food. She had never seen people eat and drink as much as these did: Lord Wichman, eldest son and second child of Duchess Rotrudis, his cousin Lord Henry—named after the king—and their retinue of young nobles and stalwart men-at-arms. The young nobles boasted about the battles they would fight with the Eika in the days to come. The men-at-arms, who drank as lustily as their noble masters, were wont to get into fistfights when their interest in Master Helvidius’ lengthy and complicated court poems waned.
It had not taken long after the departure of the refugees for the mayor of Gent—desperate to find amusement for Mistress Gisela’s noble guests—to remember that he had left a court poet out among the refugees and to wonder if the old man had remained behind.
“You’ll go to his summons?” demanded Matthias that next afternoon, amazed and appalled, “after he deserted you here when he took the rest of his servants inside the palisade?”
“Pride hath no place among the starving,” said Master Helvidius. So each evening he took Anna with him to carry his stool and help support him on the long walk up the rise that led to the inner court, and of course Helen had to tag along as well, for there was no one else to watch over her with Matthias working until last light each day. The tanners and smiths and foresters worked long hours and harder even than they had before, for they now had over seventy men and thirty horses to care for, feed, and keep in armor and weapons besides those they had brought with them.
Over the next many days Lord Wichman’s force marched out every day, searching for Eika, fighting a skirmish here, burning a ship there, each feat of arms retold in great detail at the night’s feast. Helvidius quickly became adept at turning the details of these expeditions into flattering paeans to Lord Wichman’s courage and prowess, which the young Lord never grew tired of hearing.
Anna grew equally adept at grabbing half-eaten bones off the floor before the lord’s dogs could get them, or at begging crusts of bread from drunken soldiers. Master Helvidius, fed at the high table, slipped her food from the common platter, delicacies she had never before tasted: baked grouse, black pudding, pork pie, and other savories. Helen was content to sit sucking her thumb in a corner, by the hearth, eating what was offered her; the rest Anna saved in her pouch and took back to Matthias in the mornings—she, Helen, and the poet had to sleep in the hall because once night fell, the gates to Steleshame remained shut.