Chapter 32 | The Last Royal Mistress

“I could work,” volunteered Bear.

“Thou hast a job already,” said Rose.

The first thing Rose tried was to get an introduction into the court of the Duke of Alzeh, but the first minor noble she approached laughed her out of his sitting room. “You call yourself ‘Domma Herrada,’ but there is no such noble family, nor was there ever, you bold-faced fraud!” he said. “How am I to introduce you? As the Tremontine Slut?”

“He then offered to pay me two gold for the night!” Rose fumed, and Bear looked down. “But I’m not at that point yet, dear! It’s almost comic. In Tremont, I’m the Alzehn slut. In Alzeh, I’m the Tremontine Slut. I am a Slut without a country.”

She then tried lecturing on the wonders of Tremont. After all, she had seen a great deal of the country as she’d gone from man to man on her way from Belleth Town to the capital. But when it came time for questions, all anyone wanted to know was if it was really true she’d been kept by the Tremontine King, and Fredrik Gottshold, and Henrik Boarman, and what they were like in bed? Was it true she juggled them all at the same time? How many lovers did she take? And who was her sponsor in Crescent Bay? Would she perhaps consider this good Dommo--he might not be much to look at, but he was generous! And then the crowd would laugh.

“They all come to see the Infamous Woman,” said Rose. “Still, it pays the bills.” But it didn’t for long.

At the last lecture in the series, a familiar face gone pudgy and dissolute stood out in the crowd, a man with blond curls and now-bloodshot blue eyes. Rose was uncertain--had it really been that long? She wondered if she had changed that much herself. Could he have aged so much in so short a time? When she stepped into her backstage dressing room, Edwig Townes was indeed waiting for her, with a very harassed-looking Bear.

“I should think you’d have had the sense to stay away from me!” said Rose.

“Now, Lissie,” said Townes. “We’re old friends, aren’t we?”

“What do you want, ‘Eddie?’” she snapped.

“Oh, not here,” he said. “Shall we meet at your hotel?”

“Certainly not!”

Townes shook his head sorrowfully. “Very well, we’ll do it here. I’ll be plain, Lissie. I’m in a bad way--in debt up to my hat brim--and I am requesting your help as an old friend.”

“My help? Requesting my help! You’re barking mad to call me your old friend!” she replied. “You’ve already gotten more ‘help’ from me than I ever intended. Bear, escort the captain out.”

Bear gestured to the door, but Townes stood his ground. “I think you’ll want to help me, Lissie. After all, the world doesn’t know your real name.”

“Extortion! Go ahead!” said Rose. “Half the city remembers me as Lisset Townes--remember how charmingly you asked me to take your name without benefit of Palg’s Blessing, so no one would ask unfortunate questions? ‘It’s just for the hotel clerk, Lissie. We’ll get married soon, Lissie. And we don’t need a piece of paper to prove our love anyway, Lissie.’ I wouldn’t give you half a copper, Edwig Townes, not if you threatened me with a knife!” She remembered the Sairish dagger in the folds of her dress; it was one of the few things she’d taken with her from Sairland so long ago, though she’d put it away during her time in Tremont. Now that she was back in Alzeh, she’d put it on again.

Bear put his hands on his hips. “You never were a good man. I told Missy so all those years ago. You must go now!”

“Art thou threatening me, black boy?” said Townes, turning on Bear; if the captain hadn’t worn heels, Bear would almost be as tall. “Stay out of my way and I won’t kick thee to death like the black dog thou art.”

Rose slipped up behind him and put the point of her dagger under his chin; Townes stilled immediately. “Bear was a better man than you when he was still a little boy. If you touch him, I will slit your throat from ear to ear, Edwig Townes. I’m certainly tempted to, whether you touch him or not! Bear, open the door.” Townes hurried through the open door, throwing curses behind him and vowing to let everyone know who Rose Herrada really was.

“I should have killed him for you, Missy!” said Bear, helping his trembling mistress sit.

“No, Bear, I would never let thee bloody thy hands for my sake. Th’art worth far, far more than that,” she said.

Townes made good his promise. But as Rose predicted, he soon found out that no one cared. Half the city called her Rose Herrada; the other half called her Lisset Townes, and a very few called her Lisset Bakerson. By any name, everyone knew who she
was.

With the lecture series over, Rose took to the stage as a dancer. She pirouetted haphazardly to Boarman’s pseudo-Alzehni dances, kicking up her heels high enough to show a great deal of leg. No one came to see her in Crescent Bay, having satisfied their curiosity already. So she embarked upon a disastrous tour of the smaller cities further inland. Some audiences threw rotten vegetables at her, others just yelled for her to kick higher.

One day in the midst of one leg of the tour, they stopped for the night in a tiny rural village surrounded by orange groves, and took up residence in the best room at the only inn. Bear had to sleep on a pallet in the kitchen; he was finally deemed too old to stay in Rose’s room at night, and as the best room was the only room, it was the kitchen or the stables, “and I prefer the smell of onions to the smell of horses, Missy!” said Bear. In the morning, they would continue on to the next town big enough to support a theater.

“Missy,” said Bear as he unpacked her traveling bag in the best room, “this is where we lived once with Mr Harritson, I’m sure of it!”

“Ah, Mr Harritson,” said Rose. She opened the windows of the best room and took in a long draught of orange-flower-scented air. “We were happy there, weren’t we, Bear?” she murmured.

“Never happier, Missy,” said Bear.

“It’s Palgday, isn’t it? See if they hold market day here, Bear, and go fetch us some treats! Fruit pastes for me and barley sugars for thee, eh? Here’s a silver, sweetheart, off with thee!” When he was gone, Rose lay down on the bed and let the honest tears flow. She’d held them back for so long--not the tears of a tantrum, but soul tears, from deep inside, tears she had refused to shed since she was a girl. The tears filled her eyes and slid down her cheeks onto her neck, leaving wide, wet trails. So much had happened to her since she’d left Deneen, and even more since she’d left the Harritson plantation. She’d tried to make the best of it--more than the best of it, she’d tried to make herself independent of any man, a noblewoman of her own making! And she’d done it! She had been Lady Callant! And now the former Lady Callant was lying on a straw ticking in the best room of the only inn of a village so tiny it wasn’t even on a map.

Lady Callant. Domma Rose Herrada. Mistress Lisset Townes. Mistress Lisset Bakerson. Miss Lisset Rosedale. Lisset, Lisset, Lisset.

When Bear returned from market day, he found his mistress on the bed, still dressed, her face turned away from the window and her eyes unseeing. Bear put aside the sweets he’d gotten, closed the window, drew the shades, called in a serving maid to help Missy undress, and settled down to wait.

When she emerged from the best room two weeks later, pale and weak, the first thing she said to Bear was, “Bear, what’s my name?”

“Your name, Missy? Why--don’t you remember?”

“Tell me.”

“You’re Domma Rose Herrada, the last of a noble Southern Alzehn family!”

“But none of that’s so, Bear.”

Bear looked around, eyes round. “No--but--”

“My name, sweetheart, is Mistress Lisset Bakerson. Our little adventure is over.”

Rose re-introduced herself to the landlady as Mistress Bakerson, making up one of her usual stories as to why she came to stay under a false name, and in short order, the entire village knew that Mistress Bakerson was back. “Well, I thought that was her all along,” sniffed the landlady to the baker’s wife. “She had that black boy tagging along after her, just like I remember, but him so much bigger! It’s a few fair years ago since I’d seen ‘em, I suppose. And I said to him, I said, ‘boy, ain’t thee that one what belonged to Mistress Bakerson?’ But the boy would insist his mistress was Domma Rose Herrada--and everyone’s heard of her, ain’t they? Who’d claim to be that jade unless she really were, eh? I just thought maybe this Herrada woman’d bought the boy! Mistress Bakerson sick in my best room this whole time, poor thing, and me thinking it were the Tremontine Slut,” the landlady finished with a cluck.

“I seem to recollect, Trevaina, that you used to call Mistress Bakerson a few fine names what sounded a great deal like slut!” said the baker’s wife. The landlady stiffly changed the topic.

Not long after the reborn Lisset rose from her bed, a letter came, sealed in orange wax. “The gossip has reached the plantation house, I see,” she said, breaking the seal. “It’s from Mr Harritson. We’ve received an offer, Bear. Mistress Harritson is dead, and Mr Harritson says he would greatly appreciate my company, as he’s truly missed me all these years.” She put the letter down, placing one frail white hand atop it. “What dost thou say, my advisor in all things?”

“Would you be happy, Missy?”

Lisset laughed. “Bear, I’d be alive, with a roof over my head and no jealous wife to throw me out. At this point, it sounds like Amma’s Lap to me. Wouldst thou be happy, my darling?”

“Wherever you are, I am happy,” said Bear.