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actions in another light, one more in keeping with her character. All her life she had dissuaded me from imagining a life at the castle, switching the subject whenever I spoke of it. Is it likely she changed her mind on the point of death? Or had she invoked her friend’s name as a last desperate attempt to save me, hoping Pelleg Tewkes might be the one person who could dissuade me from entering that treacherous world?
    I will never know.
    “The first thing we must do is clean you up,” Agna said, looking disapprovingly at my clothes. “If you expect to be hired at the castle, you must look the part, as well as understand how things are done there. I will tell you all you need to know, in good time.”
    Relieved, yet still uncertain as to my place in the household, I waited for further instructions. Was I to stay in the family quarters upstairs? Or in one of the small servants’ rooms I glimpsed off the kitchen, as befitting a penniless orphan?
    “Come, I will introduce you to your cousins,” Agna said, taking me by the arm. Her mouth curved into a wry smile. “Don’t look so worried. I’m not heartless, no matter what your mother might have said.”

    In fact, my mother had spoken very little of her sister. There were fleeting similarities between them: Agna had the same curly hair that bobbed in tendrils around her face, and her eyes turned downward in a way that gave her a melancholy air, as had my mother’s. But, seen side by side, the two women would never have been taken for sisters. My mother, married to a poor, belligerent farmer, hid her strength beneath a cowering posture and cautious utterances. Agna, the wife of a wealthy cloth merchant, carried herself with the assurance that her words would be obeyed. She kept order among a staff of bustling servants, three children, and a husband without ever raising her voice. My uncle may have been head of the household in name, but my aunt wielded the power within those walls.
    During the two weeks I lived under her roof, I learned that kindness lurked beneath my aunt’s brusque manner. She bade me sleep in the same bed as her daughter Damilla, a few years older than me and already engaged to be married, and insisted I take a bath with heated water each Sunday, just as her own children did. My cousins, accustomed to such indulgences, were polite but indifferent to my presence, and I suspected that my lack of polish made me a figure of fun behind closed doors. Had they known the heights to which I would rise, would they have treated me differently? It is tempting to envision a comeuppance for those who have slighted you. And yet, knowing what their family was to suffer in the years to come, I cannot nurse a grudge. It is truly a blessing we are spared foreknowledge of our ultimate ends.
    Agna, who had worked at the castle alongside my mother before her marriage, instructed me in courtly etiquette and the servant hierarchies. She had one of Damilla’s old dresses altered to fit me and clucked in disapproval at my shoes. I owned only a single pair, made from wood and bark by my father. At home I went barefoot most of the year.
    “You can’t be seen in those,” she declared. “Hannolt will make you a pair.”
    Hannolt, I soon learned, was the shoemaker whose shop stood on the ground floor of my aunt’s house; it was common for homeowners to rent out their lower levels, since no decent family would want passersby staring into their windows. The top of Hannolt’s head barely reached my shoulder, but he made up for his lack of size by creating a storm of activity around himself and speaking in a loud yammer.
    “My niece should have a good, stout pair,” Agna told him as we stood in his shop. “Leather, of course, but not extravagant.”
    “Yes, yes, I understand,” Hannolt said, nodding. “Something that will withstand hard wear. Still, a young lady deserves a touch of beauty, does she not? Some embroidery, perhaps?”
    Agna shook her head firmly.