Free Belle's Song by K. M. Grant Page B

“We’ll be watched,” I said rather hopelessly.
“I know. Walk with me anyway.”
“I’ll get Luke.” I felt hysterically anxious.
“Do you have to? Luke believes nothing but good of me.”
That stopped me in my tracks. “And I don’t?” Then I was walking. “Whatever you do, it must be for a reason,” I said, more to reassure myself.
“That’s kind.” The Master knotted his fingers behind his back. We got to the river. “Do you know what a trimmer is?” he asked, turning his full gaze on me.
“No.”
“Can I tell you?”
It was so odd that the Master should ask permission. “I suppose so,” I said in the end.
“Thank you. A trimmer, Belle, is the worst kind of person. A trimmer’s somebody who doesn’t want to end up on the wrong side.” He gave me a very frank look. “In my public life, that’s what I’ve always been, and very successfully so.”
“Nobody wants to end up on the wrong side,” I mumbled.
He unknotted his fingers and reknotted them again. “In some ways, you know, Summoner Seekum’s a braver man than I am.” He shook his head when I tried to disagree. “No. It’s true. Seekum may be lecherous and scabridden, but he’s run his colors up the mast and doesn’t care who knows it. Did he tell you that he’s joined those who have declared themselves the king’s enemies?” I looked at my feet. “Yes,” said the Master, “I can see he did. And it’s brave, Belle, because he knows that if the king wins, his own life may be forfeit. I, on the other hand, who have been in Parliament and should disapprove of the king, at the same time take the king’s wages, thus neatly keeping a foot in both camps.” He paused. “It’s also a matter of public record, as Seekum must well know, that I’ve occasionally undertaken private missions in royal service.”
My mouth opened.
The Master waited until I shut it again. “If that disappoints you, I’m sorry. Perhaps I should add, though, that the summoner’s wrong if he imagines I believe our present king to be a good king. I don’t. That’s the truth and you can tell him I said so.”
“I’ll tell that toad nothing at all,” I declared with more conviction than I felt.
“Oh, you will if you have to, I daresay.”
I glanced back. Luke was standing beside Dobs, hands on hips. I had usurped his place and his hurt was palpable, even from a distance. I wanted to run to him, to explain, but the Master hadn’t finished. He bent down, plucked a reed, and held it in the breeze. “Look how it bends,” he said. “That’s how it withstands the wind that snaps an oak’s fat branches.” He let go and the reedcurved a graceful descent. “I bend, just like that reed.” He grimaced. “You see, Richard shouldn’t be king yet, and wouldn’t be if his father had lived. It’s one of God’s poorer jokes that we’re ruled by a mercurial boy. Have you uncles, Belle?”
“None,” I said, wondering if grief had made the Master lose his reason. What had uncles to do with anything? “I’ve no relations except for my father.”
“King Richard has uncles, some good men amongst them. Unfortunately, he also has friends, and friends and relations are an unhappy mix. The king listens to his friends when it might be wiser to listen to his family, particularly his uncle John, Duke of Lancaster, who has been very kind to me.” The Master plucked another reed. “He’s quarreled with Duke John and behaves very high-handedly with all the great lords whose support he needs. Now he’s made his other uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, so angry that a rebellion is threatened.”
“The king’s uncle is going to rebel against the king? How dare he!”
“Oh, Belle, men do all manner of things for power. Thomas of Gloucester thinks he’d make a good king himself. Moreover, he’s a cantankerous fellow who loves war, just as Richard’s father did. It’s public knowledge that he thinks Richard disgraces both God and the kingly office by not being