This choice: Sleep on it until the morning. • Go Back...Chapter #5Sleep on it until the morning. by: Unknown After a restless night of little sleep and vivid dreams of daggers and shadows, I awoke to a gray, misty day. I knew exactly the person to do my spying for me; someone I had used many times in the past with great results. My fool. No one would suspect my fool, because, rightly, most people thought she was an idiot.
She, you ask? Yes, she. The village idiot, they said, never amount for anything but milking cows or breeding other idiots with a shepherd. Her real name is Calliope Canters, but everyone at the castle calls her "Dum Dum" or "hey you" or "Fool". She and I prefer it that way. Callie is still young, but wise beyond her years. An unfortunate birthing accident with a pair of delivery tongs by a sodden butcher of a doctor, and Callie was born before her time with a misshapen head and as short as a five year old, although she is probably twenty by now.
Her mother was going to sell her for a new pig. I heard about it from my man about town and carriage driver, Donovan, an Irishman by birth, and the only person I really trusted in my castle besides my dogs. Donovan has a soft heart although he tends to cover it up with peppery language and a brusk manner. He was walking by the market square and saw poor ten year old Callie tied to a fence post with a misspelled sign announcing: Good for keeping house-mute girl-sold for a fine pig or best price. When Donovan saw her, his heart flipped. Despite her funny big head and tiny body, she had flaming red hair and eyes as green as Irish sod. She resembled his youngest sister, far away in the Emerald Isle. So he bought her, thinking she would be good help mate for his ailing wife.
What Callie was, though, was a sack of bones and skin, who didn't have enough energy to milk a cat, never mind a cow. Donovan's wife didn't have the heart to through the little mite out, even though she hadn't spoken a word. So, he made up a fine Irish yarn about how smart she was and how clever and told his best friend, the King.
When I met Callie, she had clean hair, shorn close to her head to get rid of the lice she had come with, a plain brown shift, good shoes on her feet, and hope in her eyes. I decided to make her my fool, since she was tiny and odd looking. But she couldn't make me laugh.
Instead, I found myself watching her go about the light chores I asked her to do. She reminded me a stray dog I once adopted, who ended up being the county champion sheep herder during the trials. She always did what I asked, and sometimes did what I asked before I opened my mouth. I think she was watching me as much as I was watching her.
After about a year of the two of us watching each other, Callie found her way into my study. I was trying to figure out what to do in the case of Widow Sandal, who had a mouth on her like a viper and a mean spirit. Widow Sandal was claiming the land next door as hers, because the new owners had never made proper use of the land, but let it go to meadow. She was insisting it was hers because the law of the land was such that all lands needed to be made useful for crops, or for recreation. Widow Sandal had beans she was waiting to grow.
Callie heard me muttering to myself. She wiggled up into the high chair next to me and adjusted her long green gown. Callie made all her own clothes from the fine fabrics I had picked out to match her coloring. This one managed to make her look older and taller than she really was.
"It's simple," she said, in a clear, crystalline voice.
I almost fell off my throne. "You can talk?" I asked.
"Of course I can speak. In fact, I know three languages. It is interesting what a girl can pick up in a bawdy house," she replied, a grin on her lips.
I blushed to think of my fool in a house of ill repute.
"Donovan didn't tell me that was your last employer. I thought,.."
"Sire, I am as virginal as the new snow outside. Why do you think the old bag was trying to sell me for a pig? No one would want to bed a girl as small as their daughter. Unless of course," she answered.
"Yes, yes, let's not think about such disgusting types of people. I didn't know you had an education. I thought you were just.."
"Sire, my father was a wandering teacher, a magician of sorts. He wanted to take me with him on his travels, but his horse came lame, and bandits waylaid him on the way to get me. He was killed in a sword fight. I hid his collection of books from my mother so she could not use them for firewood or to sell for more food or trinkets. I have knowledge of the stars, the medicinal herbs and the law. I even know what your courtiers are saying behind your royal back. Would you like to know?" Callie had a full grin now.
"Fool, you should have told your king as soon as you were comfortable here all this. I have wasted a year trying to figure out what that scoundrel Sir Lackjaw has been saying. Speak, girl!"
The fool, Callie, looked straight in my eyes and said:
word count: 959
Tessa House Martell
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