Free The Raven's Head by Karen Maitland

me to return, but the stick clattered harmlessly against the closing door and I found myself whistling as I bounded down the stairs. I couldn’t afford to push Gaspard too far, not yet anyway, for I wasn’t about to reveal to him what I’d learned. That news was for only one pair of ears.
    But I soon discovered that it is easier for a mouse to bell a cat than for a lowly apprentice like me to meet in private with a nobleman such as Philippe. Indeed, one of the scullions from the kitchens or a stable boy would have had more chance of speaking to him. In the past, whenever I’d been summoned with Gaspard to the
salle basse
, the lower hall, in which Philippe received the peasants, so that we could record the judgements he made in their affairs, or even to the hall above, the
salle haute
, to record the contracts he had made with other nobles, we might as well have been at the town fair. There were always crowds of men, women and servants milling about, not to mention their dogs and hawks, snarling and shrieking.
    Since his rise at Court, Philippe was far too busy to stroll alone in the gardens. Even when he was walking between the main house and his private chambers in the tower, he was always surrounded by petitioners trying to beg favours, or arse-lickers, like Charles, pretending to marvel at his every word, as if he shat gold coins and pissed rubies. Try as I might, I couldn’t catch Philippe alone.
    I even contemplated sending him a letter begging for a private audience. I’d written and read enough letters in my time to know how to flatter, but he received a hundred such requests a week from men he considered far more important that his librarian’s whipping boy, so it might be weeks or months before he summoned me, if he bothered at all. More likely, he’d simply ask Gaspard what I wanted, and he would doubtless tell him I was a fool and to ignore me. I might have been hanging around for months. But ironically it was the lickspittle, Charles, who gave me my chance in the end.
    Charles was a distant cousin of Philippe’s, the poor relation. He was his father’s third son, so he was never destined to inherit much from his own family, unless his brothers had the decency to die before their father. But Charles had a modest allowance and enough noble blood running through his veins to ensure that, if he’d entered the Church or had managed to display even a little prowess in the jousting tournaments, he’d have risen swiftly enough. If I’d had half of his advantages, I’d have been a bishop or knight by his age and amassed a small fortune in spoils from either blessing people, slaughtering them or both.
    But Charles was as lazy as a cuckoo and was far more interested in marrying wealth and position than trying his hand at building it for himself. All the women in the château seemed to find him attractive and charming, with his immaculately curled hair, cow’s eyelashes and elegant flattery, especially Amée, who allowed him to fawn over her and actually seemed to like it. Why do women fall for such oily arse-wipes? I’d never be seduced by a pretty face if the woman behind it was as blatantly vacuous as that slug-brain.
    As I said, Charles had never bothered to apply himself to anything, and when Philippe foolishly entrusted him with inspecting some properties he owned, he hadn’t even known which records he would need to take with him to check that all the goods and livestock were accounted for, the boundaries and buildings in good order. With a languid wave of his paw, Charles instructed old Gaspard to have me bring him whatever he might need. The ancient one, anxious as ever to please, had me running around like a ferret in a rabbit warren, pulling out ledgers and boxes, until there was such a great heap of them that not even a warhorse could have carried them. He meticulously sorted them until he had a leather bag full of what he considered the most important, changing his mind several times before