He halted, suddenly embarrassed, but whether it was because he was speaking of my father to the cause of his abdication, or because he was addressing a puppy and a six-year-old as if they had intelligence, I am not sure. He glanced about, reassessing the situation. "Wait here," he told us finally. "I'll slip in and bring something out for you. Less chance of me getting stepped on ... or caught. Now stay." And he reinforced his command with a firm gesture of his hand. I backed up to a wall and crouched down there, out of traffic's way, and Nosy sat obediently beside me. I watched admiringly as Cob approached the door and slipped between the clustered folk, eeling smoothly into the kitchens.

With Cob out of sight, the more general populace claimed my attention. Largely the folk that passed us were serving people and cooks, with a scattering of minstrels and merchants and delivery folk. I watched them come and go with a weary curiosity. I had already seen too much that day to find them of great interest. Almost more than food I desired a quiet place away from all this activity. I sat flat on the ground, my back against the sun-warmed wall of the keep, and put my forehead on my knees. Nosy leaned against me.

Nosy's stick tail beating against the earth roused me. I lifted my face from my knees to perceive a tall pair of brown boots before me. My eyes traveled up rough leather pants and over a coarse wool shirt to a shaggy bearded face thatched with pepper-gray hair. The man staring down at me balanced a small keg on one shoulder.

"You the bastid, hey?"

I had heard the word often enough to know it meant me, without grasping the fullness of its meaning. I nodded slowly. The man's face brightened with interest.

"Hey," he said loudly, no longer speaking to me but to the folk coming and going. "Here's the bastid. Stiff-as-a-stick Chivalry's by blow. Looks a fair bit like him, don't you say? Who's your mother, boy?"