The conversation was between Hanna and Kurm, concerning some yarn Kurm had recently purchased from a local farmer.
“I can’t use the stuff,” said Kurm. “It’s last year’s spin, and I hate telling old man Dutter it’s no good, but I can’t afford not to. I can’t use it.”
“The quality is bad?” asked Hanna. “The Dutters were always good spinners.”
“It isn’t the quality,” he replied. “It’s the smell. I told you what I suspected … “
“About Dutter not fathering those boys? Yes. You told me long ago.”
“Well, you know he has that smell. Skunk-lung is what it is, and it’s why they wouldn’t have him, no matter how much he offered for dowry. And he’s been seen here and there near the Dutter farm since those two boys came there—everybody knows they aren’t Dutter’s boys—and they have that same smell. Old man Dutter, he’s either got no nose or he’s so used to it he doesn’t notice.”
“But the boys don’t spin.”
“No. And billy goats don’t give milk. But you make goat cheese where there’s a billy, the cheese stinks, sympathetic like. You spin yarn where there’s skunk-lung, and the yarn stinks, too. They breathe it onto everything, and whatever the cause, I can’t use it.”
Which was all that was said, enough to make Mouche mightily interested. The Dutter boys had lived over the hill from his own home. And Madame had said she’d turned Dutter down when he’d tried to sell them. So, Dutter was a farmer, and the boys probably weren’t his, and they smelled, and House Genevois had two newish students who smelled and whom Madame was not thrilled with. So, who was the he who had been seen near the Dutter farm? The same he who had come to House Genevois?
“Have you heard about them smelling bad?” Mouche asked his friends, when they discussed the matter that night in the loft where they slept.
“The room smelled bad that time,” said Tyle.
“Maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it was the other one.”
They didn’t know. Bane and Dyre were still new boys. If they smelled, only the other new boys would know.
The fact that the other new boys didn’t know was a testimonial to Madame’s assiduity and long experience. She had not been in the same room with Bane and Dyre for more than a moment before realizing they would present a challenge. Charcoal in the food, and chopped alfalfa, and certain herbs she knew of. Certain uncommon unguents rather than usual ones. One drug, expensive but efficacious in quelling goaty effusions in young bucks. The condition presented by the two youngsters was not unknown, though this was the first she’d ever heard of it in young men. The condition was usually reported as infecting those few weird and elderly outcasts who frequented the frontier. They’d wander into town, nobody knowing who they were, and they’d have that smell.
He, her patron, who had offered a very large sum in gold for the training of these boys, had the same affliction, though he looked perfectly normal. To him, it must have seemed unimportant, for he did little to ameliorate his own condition. He, of course, was not married. He had not produced children. Except, vague rumor had it, these two, and they under such circumstances as were … well, better not mentioned. Those who had at one time spoken openly of the matter had ended up … gone. Vanished. Still, people whispered: Had he placed them with Dutter? Or had she! The woman. Whoever she was or had been. A certain name was sometimes whispered; whispered unwisely, Madame felt.
Madame was fairly sure who the mother had been, though she did nothing to verify the fact. She asked no questions, sent no investigators—though there were several she had employed in the past when she had needed information. In order that she might be unburdened of the boys as soon as possible, she concentrated instead on turning Bane and Dyre into acceptable candidates, and within two or three seasons she had them to the point where they could be seen occasionally in public without greatly risking the reputation of House Genevois.