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After the monks finished their mid-day service, I made my way to the Great Hall, and from there to the door leading to the ladies’ tower. The two guards barely glanced at me before pulling their pikes aside. Considered neither male nor female, but shadows flitting in between, the Silent Monks are allowed to give service to the ladies of the castle, and walk where no true man could go. I fingered a blessing, as best I could remember, and entered.
Behind the thick wooden door lay a different world, a soft world. A thick carpet of reeds, covered the floor, and tapestries warmed the walls. I climbed the stairway to the upper floor, a work room with wide windows, where spindle wheels and looms changed woolen fleece into cloth. Sewing needles and scissors turned the cloth into garments for man and table. The room promised perpetual activity, but a lack of humanity left it silent.
On the floor above, the sleeping chambers were also silent. Those I could not enter, not even as Monk, but I doubted that a lady would be abed in the middle of the day without some sort of frantic activity around her, activity which would echo through the floor to the room below.
And so I went down. There was a basement to the tower, a windowless room lit by candles. Not a cold room, either, for all that it lacked a fire. The well in the center of the room steamed with heat, a gift from the mountain gods. And it was in this water that I found the ladies, in much more compromising a position than if I had seen them in their beds. Indeed, I could see even more of the Lady Victoria than she had shown Sharp in the garden, and she was but one among the flock.
Grateful that the hood held me secret, I tried to ease back up the stair, unnoticed. I did not wish to lose another part of my anatomy, so soon after finding one who appreciated it.
Too late. One of the older ladies looked at me and cried out. "Our Monk is here!"
