Soon enough, I found myself looking into the castle’s kitchen. The servant was there, digging some more meat out of a great kettle on a crude stove while a heavyset female cook clucked at him to hurry up. There was no one else in the room.
I examined the kettle and decided I was strong enough to carry it fairly easily. I thought a big pot full of boiling hot water would even the odds quite a bit. The decision made, I reached over my shoulder, drew the rapier from its hidden sheath in the easel, and strode into the kitchen.
The servant and the cook, as dull-witted as grinding menial labor usually makes people, didn’t even notice me until the point of the rapier was at the man’s throat.
“Silence,” I commanded.
The servant’s face grew pale, that of the cook grew red.
“‘E’s come to kill th’Baron,” croaked the servant.
“Kin I watch?” asked the woman eagerly.
Well. That settled one question—whether the Baron’s servants would attempt to protect their lord and master. Settled it, at least, so far as the woman was concerned. The man’s face seemed to grow even paler, almost ashen, as if the prospect of the Baron’s death brought him no pleasure at all.
“Stupid woman,” he hissed. “We’ll be blamed, wife!”
His words immediately erased the glee in the cook’s expression. Her face became as pale as the man’s.
I had not foreseen that complication. “Why would they blame you?” I asked.
The servant swallowed, his eyes riveted on the rapier. I withdrew the blade a few inches from his throat. After swallowing, he croaked: “Allus blame th’servants, when somethin’ goes wrong. Th’other Barons’ll say we’s done it. Kill us both. Kill half th’peasants on the Barony, too.”
Damnation.
Something of my chagrin must have shown. The cook examined me more closely. “Yer not from th’Baronies, sir,” she whispered. “Me husband’s got th’right of it.”
My mind raced, trying to find a way out of the impasse. A thought came to me.
“What happened when Greyboar the Strangler did for the Comte de l’Abbatoir and his Knights Companion?” I demanded. “Were the Comte’s servants and peasants slain afterward?”
The servant and his wife ogled me as if I were an imbecile.
“Well, o’ course not!” choked the servant. “The great Grey—uh, the vile strangler—slew ’em all, you know, most flamboyant like. Couldna possibly been done by no servants. Nor no peasants, neither.”
“Tied they necks into knots, ‘e did!” gurgled his wife, glee returning to her face.
I thought on the problem a moment more. This time, with the mind of an artist rather than a swordsman. The solution came almost at once.
“Flamboyance, is it?” I said gaily. “I dare say I can manage that.”
I lowered the rapier. Clearly enough, there was no longer any need to threaten them. I glanced around the kitchen, seeing several large and crudely made cabinets. “Do you have flour?” I asked the cook.
She nodded mutely. “Lots of it?” Again, she nodded.
“Excellent. Get it out.” I eased the sack off my shoulders and rummaged in it for a moment, before withdrawing the bullwhip. Then, I began removing my blouse.
The husband was gaping at me. “I assume the Baron had enemies,” I stated confidently.
The servant seemed to have been struck dumb. But his wife, returning from a cabinet with a barrel in her arms, chuckled harshly. “Plenty!”
“Did he kill any of them? Especially, any that were of approximately my height and build?”
She set the barrel of flour down on a nearby bench, straightened, and examined me closely. “None so purty as you. But Sieur Henri de Pouilleux were as tall, iff’n no so broad-shouldered.”
“He’ll do. How did the Baron kill him?”
“Stabt ‘im inna back, ‘ow else? Th’sword went clean t’rough ‘im.”
“How else, indeed,” I agreed cheerfully. “Clean through him, you say? Better and better!”
By now I was bare from the waist up. I seized the husband by the scruff of the neck and shook him a bit, to clear his head. “Come to your senses, damn you! I mean you no harm.” I motioned toward the barrel with my hand. “Start smearing that flour all over me. Everything except my hair.”