Chapter 11: Hester's Kitchen

Hester's kitchen smelled of onions and bread, as it always had.

For seven years I had come into this room sick, or scared, or sorry.

She had always handed me a bowl.

She handed me one now.

"Sit, darling. Eat first. We'll talk after."

I sat at the long table where I had eaten a thousand meals.

Tobin was at the fence with Duncan, and I could feel Duncan at the edge of my head, warm and watchful.

The pantry door stood open a finger's width.

Behind it the oldest elder of Black Pine sat on a flour barrel with her white braids under her scarf.

I had asked her to come at ten that morning.

I had told her only that Hester had something to say, and that she would want to hear it.

Hester poured two cups of tea from the black kettle and set one at my elbow.

"Chamomile," she said. "For your nerves."

"It smells like something else."

"Does it?"

"Poppy," I said.

The ladle stopped in the pot.

She turned around very slowly.

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody. I'm a scout. I know what grows on the north slope."

It was a lie, and she looked at it for a while.

Then she wiped her hands on her apron and sat down across from me and folded them on the table.

"Well," she said. "He told you. The King."

"Yes."

"I knew he would." Her face was tired and calm. "I knew the moment he named the law in my own hall."

"Fifteen years I've kept that book. And a man I turned away at my own gate reads it out loud."

"You turned him away three times."

"Yes."

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