THE BITTERBYNDE TRILOGY

Book One: The Ill-Made Mute

(c) Cecilia Dart-Thornton.

gold moon. And for an instant, he thought he saw an impossible silhouette flying across the bright face of it.

Soon - too soon for the nameless youth's liking or well-being, his benefactress decided he was fit enough to work at light tasks. She hustled him out of his pile of blankets and set him to sweeping floors, helping in the laundries and cleaning the various ingenious instruments of lighting that had accumulated in this place over the years - brass candlesticks and chamber-sticks, candle-snuffers, wax-jacks, bougie boxes, wick-trimmers, douters, candle-boxes and lamps.

His legs trembled constantly and sometimes he nearly fainted with the effort. Fatigue and unfamiliarity made him slow - at whiles, Grethet lost patience and cuffed him. The first time it happened, he was greatly shocked and stared at her in horror, his thick lips wordlessly mouthing protestations. Whereupon an expression of guilt flashed across her face, chased by a look of ruthlessness, and she cuffed him again, harder.

As day followed day like a queue of weary grey beggars, he became accustomed to her light, stinging blows and abusive tone, but alone at nights he sometimes wept silently for want of love.

Nourished by food, sleep and warmth, he began to gain strength as time passed. With strength came more understanding of the words employed by the other servants living and working within these dark walls. He "spoke" with the loveless Grethet, employing simple, universally obvious gestures.

"Hide yourself," she would nag, "Maimed boy, you are. Wrap yourself and they won't see."

How did I come to this place? he wanted to know, and Who am I?

But he was unable to concoct a way of enquiring. Nonetheless by keeping his eyes and ears keen he learned other things.

One law he learned first.

Miserable, stooped with weariness, he swept lint from the floors of the laundries. Steam imbued the air with breathless humidity. He pushed his taltry off his damp head for just a few moments of relief, but as he drew breath to sigh, a staff cracked down on his shoulder. He flinched, but could not cry out.

"...taltry on... head!" screamed the chief laundress, her face empurpled as a ripe plum, "Never... off, understand?"

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