Chapter 10

The Red Circle Trading House

The southern canal works of Lumière spread outside the city's southern wall, where the river bent sharply, and three years of construction had churned up the earth of the riverbank so thoroughly that whenever it rained the roads turned to red mire. People who came down from the north looked at that earth and said it was as though blood had been spilled across it; the laborers who came up from the south laughed and said it was just like the earth of the marshes back home. There was no earth like it anywhere else in Lumière.

Walking through that mire, Adelaide Crowell found herself thinking of the sixth funeral. Noah's distant relation in the grey frock coat, the red earth dried thinly on the inner edge of the heels of his highly polished shoes. That earth was this earth. Why the man had stopped here before the funeral still remained a question mark in her notebook.

She had not come dressed as a lady today. She wore the grey winter cloak the maids wore, her hair hung in a plain braid, and in her hand she carried a market basket. She had told the coachman she was going to the dressmaker's with Céline, and in front of the dressmaker's she had told Céline she had a headache. Céline had worn the look of someone who did not believe a word of it, but she did not hold her back either. With her sister gone, she could choose the dressmaker's finest silks all by herself.

The Red Circle Trading House stood at the end of the street lined with the laborers' lodgings, right in front of the canal landing. A single red circle was painted on its signboard, and beyond the open door, sacks of grain, dried fruit, and jars of spices were stacked to the ceiling. It had the look of a wholesaler that took in goods brought up from the south by boat and passed them on to the city.

The proprietor was a paunchy, middle-aged man with a thick southern accent; each time a customer came in, he rubbed his palms on his apron and looked the maid-clad customer up and down, his eyes evidently well practiced at gauging whether someone had come to buy or merely to look.

"What're you after?"

"M-my mistress... said she bought oats here before. The kind you feed horses. She told me to go and buy some of those same oats again."

Adel kept her eyes on the floor and gripped the handle of her basket tightly with both hands. That voice, small and trembling at the ends, was exactly the one she used in society, and today she learned for the first time that it suited a maid's clothes just as well.

"Plenty of oats here. Which house?"

"House Crowell. The Duke's."

The proprietor's hands stopped on his apron; he glanced once around the shop, then lowered his voice.

"Ah, that house. You mean the special stuff, then?"

"...Special stuff?"

"How does a maid like you not know? The thing your house bought last time. A sack of oats, and something wrapped up separate."

Adel kept her head bowed and steadied her breath. Her fingers tightened on the basket handle, but she did not loosen them, and kept up the voice of a maid who knew nothing.

"I'm new, you see. My mistress only said 'that thing from before'..."

The proprietor eyed her doubtfully for a long moment, then at last shrugged. On this street, the name of the ducal House of Crowell weighed enough to press down any doubt, and that house seeking the same goods again meant that he could charge the same price he had been paid last time.

"Over two years ago now, was it. A lady's maid from that house came. Said she was maid to the Duchess's household. Bought a sack of oat samples, and asked one thing more on the side. Said the horse was poorly, so mix in a little herb to perk it up. You know, that stuff that grows in the southern marshes. The kind they won't allow at the racecourse."

"...You mixed it in?"

"Didn't mix it. Wrapped it separate. A handful, dried. Told her to mix it herself. I only sell that sort of thing, I don't mix it. If I mix it, it's on my head."

As he said this, the proprietor smiled the smile of a man who had long ago mastered the art of not being held responsible.

"Paid in silver. Ten times the price of the oats. That house is generous, I'll say that. That's why I remember."

"What did that lady's maid look like? I... I have to tell my mistress. Whether she meant me to buy the same thing from the same person."

"Didn't get a good look at her face. She came wearing a grey cloak, same as you. Young woman, northern way of talking. Oh, and her hands were fine. For a maid's hands. Counting out the silver, not a single callus on her fingers. So I took her for a lady's maid. Lady's maids don't handle mops."

Adel nodded. The duchess's lady's maid Elsa had been from the north, had worn a grey cloak, and had done nothing but brush her mistress's hair and choose her gowns, so there was no reason for her hands to have calluses. And that autumn, three months after Count Harold's funeral, she had gone back to her home village, saying her mother was ill.

Adel loosened her fingers on the basket handle one by one, then gripped it again.

"So, need some more of that? It's gone up a bit lately, what with the crackdowns."

"...I'll ask my mistress and come back."

Since leaving empty-handed would look suspicious, Adel bought a measure of oats and put it in her basket, and the proprietor, counting the coins as he took them, laughed that next time she ought to take the special stuff along too.

Sitting on the steps beside the landing with her basket on her knees, Adel gazed down at the river flowing slowly by, mingled with red earth, then took a small notebook from the inner pocket of her cloak. She had left the black notebook at the bottom of the drawer; outside, it was her rule to write only in this one.

Red Circle Trading House. Two-odd years ago, a young woman claiming to be a Crowell lady's maid bought oat samples plus a handful of madweed separately. Silver, ten times the price of the oats. Grey cloak, northern speech, fine hands without calluses. Said herself she was maid to the Duchess's household.

She struck a line through the last sentence and wrote it again above. "Said" she was maid to the Duchess's household.

No poisoner announces herself as the duchess's lady's maid.

And yet the proprietor remembers those words. Even after two years. Because he was paid ten times over in silver.

Had it been Elsa, she would have had no reason to bother saying whose maid she was; even unspoken, the cloak and the speech and the hands would have said it all for her. And yet that woman had gone out of her way to say she was maid to the duchess's household, and had paid enough silver that a stranger would remember it two years later. Like someone who wished to be remembered.

When Adel closed the notebook, the river wind set the hem of her cloak flapping, and as she pressed it down with her hand, she reflected once more that what she was wearing now was the grey winter cloak worn by every servant in the manor. Just as she had put it on today and passed for a maid, that woman could have put it on and passed for a lady's maid.

It might have been the duchess or Elsa, or it might have been someone else pretending to be Elsa. Adel opened the notebook again and added one line beneath the sentence she had struck through. Either way, the buyer came from inside the manor.

Then she picked up her basket, rose, set the heel of her shoe against the edge of the landing's stone step, and scraped off the red earth clinging to it, thoroughly, before she set off to find a hired carriage back to the dressmaker's.

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