Rasvetchick awakened Milyenka with a vigorous shake of the shoulder. She woke up and thrashed at him with a vigorous Grenoulian curse. He shushed her and then hissed a question where such a sheltered young lady had learned such language. He passed her the half full chamberpot and turned discreetly away as she did her business. When she asked how she could clean herself, he passed her a damp rag. She thought for a moment and then applied it with a sigh. He then led her from the room, then lit the candle. At the bottom of the stairs was a pot of cold water and a small bar of soap. She looked at it carefully and then used it to wash her hands and then below. Then she washed her hands again.
As they passed through the inn yard there was a quiet to and frowing of servants carrying buckets of water and loads of wood through the open gate. They had to wait as a donkey cart passed through carrying a load of vegetables and a side of pork. Rasvetchick stopped a moment and talked to the hostler as they waited.
Off to the north, the first stabbing rays of the sunrise graced the tops of the tower. The sky was a sulky grey and the streets were still full dark. They passed down the ' street following the path from the previous night. Milyenka kept a low growling grumble along the way. "Could you have found a more miserable disgusting stinky set of accommodations in all the city? "
"Sure" Rasvetchick said. "All over the city there is far worse. Especially in the house of Alkhoura the bawd, where you might wind up if you can’t keep your trap shut."
She kept her expostulation to a low murmur the rest of the way till they met up with a watchman with a lamplighter walking along using the snuffer to douse the lamps he had lit the night before. There were very few that were lit. He greeted them cheerfully "Good morrow, good sir, good morrow, good wife" Milyenka recognized him from the previous evening and gave him a small curtsey. "Your good wife is wise as well as honorable."
Milyenka just shook her head. "That he but half a wit has does not me wise make."
The watchman laughed and turned to Rasvetchick. "Ah... Is it true as they say of Grenouilian women that they are so saucy?"
Rasvetchick bowed and said "I get sauce enough from this one to keep my palate surfeited with sauce." Behind the watchman Milyenka made a face at him. The watchman strolled down the road, stopping now and again to put out a light. They waited until he was gone and then Rasvetchick again reached into the hidden space and pulled the bell. As they waited Milyenka restored to good humor said quietly, "Truly, that place is secure. No one of sense would look for the princess royal there!"
After passing through the two doors to the room inside they met the old man resting on a cane in front of the counter. He had a sheaf of papers in his hands. "I would like to thank you for a most remunerative evening " he said unctuously. "I have here 18 of those notes that the rumor is will be unpaid. You did say those were the ones you wanted. The are for 25 gold talents each. They traded for the value of 5 gold talents each. We already agreed that the clothes would pay the commission."
Rasvetchick thanked the old man profusely, and they took their leave. They then took yet another round about route the took them past the now quiet ghetto gates. Rasvetchick had a quiet talk with the guard as he unlocked the chains. Then they took yet another route back to the inn. On the way back Rasvetchick was the one grumbling under his breath and he walked so fast that Milyenka was obliged to trot to keep up.
Milyenka asked "Why so much fury? "
Rasvetchick stood before the inn gates and visibly controlled his temper. "The man knew I would check on what his son's sold the stones for. They got 20 of the notes and a large pot of cash besides. He just gave me 18 of the notes. That is him being insulting and giving us a warning. 18 is the mystical symbol of life in the ghetto. He is giving us our lives and a warning should we cause trouble. He would be willing to sell us if he knew where to find us."
"Would he not send us to follow no one?" Milyenka said
Rasvetchick laughed quietly. "They would none of them dare to take the streets we followed." He grew serious. "Do you really think your uncle to duke will pay those bills of your fathers?"
Milyenka spread her hands and shrugged. "The Duke no well I do not know. He all his time in Southern Marches lived. I do know that my father with the Treasurer often argued. I know not whether it was by persistence or good argument my father convinced, but the Treasurer his way usually got."
Rasvetchick said "So you think your uncle will listen to the Treasurer? "
Milyenka said "It depends on how well he to anyone listens. All I can say is that when I them together saw, the duke to the treasurer attentively listened."
Rasvetchick stared of into the middle distance for a moment. "Ah well" he said. "It is only with great risks do you get great rewards." Then he walked briskly into the inn yard with Milyenka scurrying behind. There they found the ox cart already set up and ready. The got on and headed out of the inn yard gates.
Milyenka stretched out and enjoyed the ride. Once again they were taking a new route through the city. This time they headed north to the river. She heard many new languages as they went down into the dock region. There was a Grenouilian neighborhood they passed through, where though it was the same language she heard at court, it was also a great deal rougher and more coarse.
As they rode Rasvetchick discussed some of the gossip he had collected. One bit of gossip that frightened Rasvetchick was the rumor that the law on men over 35 would be enforced. He would have to marry or face consequences.
Milyenka knew all her life that for her marriage would have no iota of love or romance. She knew early on that she was a tradable commodity in the world of politics. Some minor noble with a lot of cash and a need for more influence at court would be allotted to her for a husband. Even though 14 was considered marriageable, her mother had demanded that they wait till she was at least 16 until she was auctioned off. It had been a game between her and her sisters to point out elderly merchants or nobles and assign each other the ugliest possible husbands. She knew that there would be no sweet proposal of love. However she was not quite ready for the proposal of Rasvetchick. "I can't go to any of the other maids" he said. "My life is notorious with them. However, you are new and supposedly naive and would not know about me. I can't let this go any longer. The duke has a reputation of being cold blooded, religiously bigoted and there is a rumor that he has arrested several men already for offenses against religion, including the bishop. So I need your help. I will find you someone to take care of your needs, discretely. But I need your help right now." Milyenka agreed very quickly. Rasvetchick at his worst would be a better than the merchant Khorobochok, who had been assigned to her sister Helnika. All she knew of men were the ones who she saw around the palace. Usually elderly or in any one of a thousand other ways deadly to romance. She was not yet that interested because all the samples of manhood she had seen in her life would have inspired chastity in the most desperate.
Not far from the river they stopped at a cooper's shop. It was very quiet there today. There was none of the hammering and chopping going on in the rest of the cooper's shops around it. As Rasvetchick read the notice on the gate he began to look like a cat with a huge plate of cream.
Rasvetchick arranged his features into a look of commiseration. They walked into the workshop where the master and the journeyman were arguing quietly. The master was an elderly stout and choleric man with a scraggly beard and a petulant expression. His journeyman was tall, thin but with great strong shoulders. They grew silent at the approach of Milyenka and Rasvetchick. Rasvetchick spoke to the master. "You have lost yet another apprentice, I see. That must be hard."
The master grunted out "Apprentices are just not the boys they were in my time. Always running off to their mamas about discipline. This new one complained of the the belt. The whole point of a belt is to keep an apprentice in line. For two pins I would sell out and move to the country."
Rasvetchick said "How about if I offer 48 silver talents for your forge and the rest of your journeyman's contract."
"48 talents!" the master yelped like a stuck pig. "That would barely cover the cost of the accumulated metal. It would be a horrible loss to sell for a mark under 72 talents."
"Come now," rejoined Rasvetchick "All there is to your shop is the journeyman's contract, some bricks and some bellows. We know what the goodwill for this place is."
Over the next hour the two of them dickered over the price. The journeyman began the process of bringing tools and iron bars and loading them onto the cart. Next he started to dismantle the forge and bring it over and load it on the cart brick by brick. All this while the master and Rasvetchick begged each other to be compassionate, to recognize just how much it was really worth. Finally, they settled on a price of 64 silver talents, 7 doxies. Rasvetchick quickly endorsed 5 of the notes from the old man to the cooper, and added the remaining doxies and talents from a purse that seemed to arrive out of no where. The journeyman's articles were endorsed in quick order too.
The master assumed a sly expresion. "Thank you for taking care of my shop" he said. Now I must leave the city quickly, but I have these bonds here from the king for Neftchika's house. I have three of them. I have to sell them at a tremendous loss. They are 25 gold talent bonds. How much are you willing to offer for them? They are quite the steal. "
"Because you have worked with me so fairly, I am willing to offer two gold talents a piece for them." Rasvetchick said.
"You are serious" the master said.
Rasvetchick said "of course!"
The master hustled back into his shop and brought out the three notes and the trade of three 25 gold talent bonds for twelve twelve silver talent notes on the old man was done quickly as well. Rasvetchick sent Milenka back into the back of the cart while he and the Journeyman Cooper ("his name is Stephen" said the master. "he knows how to read and write and is good with numbers.") rode in front.
Milyenka still felt resentful that even as the sort of fiancee and on this trip wife she was relegated to trying to find a comfortable spot among fire bricks, the bellows, and all the other bits and pieces of the forge. But she saw there were many women riding in the backs of carts as well. She had already managed to calm her temper about how she no longer got treated as a princess. Given the current status of a princess in the kingdom the ersatz wife of a tavern keeper was a major step up.
It was approaching dark when they finally made their way to the Simon gate at the bottom of the lower town. There was a man on a ladder putting up a set of notices by the gate, and the guards were reading them and discussing them angrily. The king was giving notice that contrary to rumor all bonds would be paid at par. Steven the Cooper stood on the board and read it to them. Then he began laughing. He turned to Rasvetchick. "You got them for two each.
The guards came up. "What is so funny" said a very belligerent one.
Steven the Cooper said "My master here told a very funny joke." The guard made a 'well go on' gesture. With a bit of a stammer he continued. "There is a tavern near the docks. And resting on the counter of the tavern there is a large glass jar of coins. Doxies, silver and gold talent pieces. And the jar is very large. One day a man comes into the tavern and ask 'What is the story behind the jar?' The tavern owner explains that anyone who wishes to try and complete three tasks makes a contribution of three doxies to the jar. If he does all three tasks, he gets the jar. The man asks 'What are the three tasks? and the owner tells him he must beat up the largest man in the room, pull the bad tooth of the ferocious bear baiting dog in the back, then he must satisfy the tavern keepers insatiable but horribly ugly wife. The visitor thinks for a moment, drops three doxies into the jar, and then steps up the the biggest man in the room and knocks him cold in three quick strikes. Then he marches into the back, and soon you hear this piteous howl from the dog. Then he comes back into the main room of the tavern and says 'Well, that is done. Now I need a pair of pliers, and where is the ugly woman who needs her tooth pulled?'
The guards gave a loud guffaw at that and after a perfunctory examination of the wagon they were allowed to pass on. The late evening traffic on the road gradually dissipated as they rode along. On the front seat Rasvetchick and the cooper discussed how they would operate the cooper shop next to the tavern. The discussed issues like wood supply and water supply. Harvesting the oaks for barrels would mean there were fewer in the nearby forest. The tenants nearby resented chopping down oaks as they provided food for their pigs. They were even less appreciative of cutting down the level of timber required to run the fires in a smith or a coopers shop.
Milyenka just sat on the fire brick watching the road unwind behind them. She had briefly looked at the notes. The notes for the old man did not mention an interest payment. She noted that Rasvetchick had paid more in coin than he had specified for the cooper shop. She remembered the Treasurer discussing the concept of note discounts at length with her father. The old man's notes had not suffered much of a discount, but she noted how anxious Rasvetchick was to trade them for the Cooper shop. The Bond notes had specified that there was to be a payment at the Treasurer's office every year of 1¾ per bond. That struck her as a lot. What it meant for sure is that they would get 54¼ gold talents per year for these bonds. Considering how close and careful everyone lived near the tavern, where everyone worried about each and every gasc, what did he plan on doing with all the money?
The ox cart took its own sweet time. Soon the city towers vanished behind them. The men up front kept a desultory discussion going about wood and iron supplies. Milyenka ruminated over what Rasvetchick had told her. She thought about the changes her life had gone through. She had gone from silk to hemp dresses, and no longer even remembered what silk felt like. Sleeping exhausted on straw made for better nights sleep than down. The good natured bickering of the serving girls in the inn was was far better than the perpetual sneering between her mother and the queen.
Then there was her future as the 'wife' of Rasvetchick. She wasn't naive about the man's tastes. When she had been younger she had found discussions about him confusing. Obviously their would be no benefit to being his wife in the most direct sense, but as cover from agents of the Duke it couldn't be bettered. But there was the niggling worry in the back of her head that her life would be only marginally better than that of one of the other servants. She wondered who he would find to ' take care of her needs.' Thinking back over the men and boys who lived near the tavern, she speculated that there must be other ways to meet her needs than what was on offer.
When they arrived at the inn yard it was quite dark. Milyenka jumped off the cart and headed to her lodging with her sister's nurse. Rasvetchick called that she needed to be ready early in the morning for another busy day because the harvest needed to be brought in. That raised the next question. Were she married, what would become of her brother and sister? Despite the long day that question haunted her most of the night after she climbed up into her loft.