“Sit down,” I told the maid.
She gaped at me, and then sat obediently on the bench I’d pointed to.
“Now hold him firmly, between your knees. And don’t let him go, no matter how he claws and wiggles or yelps. And hold on to his front feet so he doesn’t claw me to ribbons while I’m doing this. Understand?”
She took a deep breath, then gulped and nodded. Tears were streaming down her face. I set the dog on her lap and put her hands on him.
“Hold tight,” I told her. I scooped up a gobbet of butter. “I’m going to use the fat to grease things up. Then I’ve got to force his jaws open, and hook the bone and jerk it out. Are you ready?”
She nodded. The tears had stopped flowing and her lips were set. I was glad to see she had some strength to her. I nodded back.
Getting the butter down was the easy part. It blocked his throat, though, and his panic increased, pounding at my self-control with his waves of terror. I had no time to be gentle as I forced his jaws open and then put the hook down his throat. I hoped I wouldn’t snag his flesh. But if I did, well, he would die anyway. I turned the tool in his throat as he wiggled and yelped and pissed all over his mistress. The hook caught on the bone and I pulled, evenly and firmly.
It came up in a welter of froth and bile and blood. A nasty little bone, not a fishbone at all, but the partial breastbone of a small bird. I flipped it onto the table. “And he shouldn’t have poultry bones either,” I told her severely.
I don’t think she even heard me. Doggy was wheezing gratefully on her lap. I picked up the dish of water and held it out to him. He sniffed it, lapped a bit, and then curled up, exhausted. She picked him up and cradled him in her arms, her head bent over his.
“There’s something I want from you,” I began.
“Anything.” She spoke into his fur. “Ask, and it’s yours.”
“First, stop giving him your food. Give him only red meat and boiled grain for a while. And for a dog that size, no more than you can cup in your hand. And don’t carry him everywhere. Make him run about, to give him some muscle and wear down his nails. And wash him. He smells foul, coat and breath, from too rich food. Or he won’t live but another year or two.”
She looked up, stricken. Her hand went up to her mouth. And something in her motion, so like her self-conscious touching of her jewelry at dinner, suddenly made me realize who I was scolding. Lady Grace. And I had made her dog piss on her night robe.
Something in my face must have given me away. She smiled delightedly and held her doggy closer. “I’ll do as you suggest, dog boy. But for yourself? Is there nothing you’d ask as reward?”
She thought I’d ask for a coin or ring or even a position with her household. Instead, as steadily as I could, I looked at her and said, “Please, Lady Grace. I ask that you ask your lord to man Watch Island’s tower with the best of his men, to put an end to the strife between Rippon and Shoaks Duchies.”
“What?”
That single-word question told me volumes about her. The accent and inflection hadn’t been learned as Lady Grace.
“Ask your lord to man his towers well. Please.”
“Why does a dog boy care about such things?”
Her question was too blunt. Wherever Kelvar had found her, she hadn’t been highborn, or wealthy before this. Her delight when I recognized her, the way she had brought her dog down to the familiar comfort of a kitchen, by herself, wrapped in her blanket, told of a common girl elevated too quickly and too far above her previous station. She was lonely, and uncertain, and uneducated as to what was expected of her. Worse, she knew that she was ignorant, and that knowledge ate at her and soured her pleasures with fear. If she did not learn how to be a duchess before her youth and beauty faded, only years of loneliness and ridicule could await her. She needed a mentor, someone secret, like Chade. She needed the advice I could give her, right now. But I had to go carefully, for she would not accept advice from a dog boy. Only a common girl might do that, and the only thing she knew about herself right now was that she was no longer a common girl, but a duchess.