Like a Whole New Me…

“It grows too hot in the forge in the summertime,” Diarmuid
supplied. He rooted through the cabinets as he spoke, assembling, I
figured, the contents o’ our evening meal. “We get used to the early
hours so we can run the forge before the full heat o’ day. But in the
winter, when the sun comes later, we get up later, and the forge keeps
us warm after last night’s embers die.”

I smiled a little, liking the simplicity of it. “Aye,” I
acknowledged. I remembering finger-aching cold and being rousted
from me bed to fetch water, and this seemed a better way.

“Yer not asking about today, then?” Cairsten asked, a slight smile
under his dark hair.

“Yer gonna show me my chores,” I said knowledgeably. Funny
how I thought I knew so much when in fact I knew nothing, not even
the shape o’ the darkness.

Cairsten laughed, a great booming noise that shook the paned
windows in their frames. “Nay, boy—not on yer first day. We’ll tame
ye all right, but first we gots to bathe ye.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “A bath? But there’s no holy day
tomorrow!”

Diarmuid grunted. “I told ye,” he said, disgusted, and Cairsten
shook his head in response.

“Tha’ ye did, but I were thinking good on the—”

“Don’t,” Diarmuid snapped. “Don’t ever ye think good on him.”
Diarmuid cast me a veiled glance. 
“Not tha’ one. He dinna deserve
nobbut!”

“Aye, aye,” Cairsten acknowledged, holding his hand up to
forestall what looked like a flash of Diarmuid’s temper. “I hear ye.” He
turned his attention back to me. “We’ll start with a bath, boy, and move
on to putting sheets on yer bed, showing ye letters, finding ye clothes. I
think Diarmuid’s old things might fit ye fine, and we’ll need a good
suit o’ yer own. Did ye not have that at yer cottage?”

I shook my head and looked at the brown-and-gray stained
jerkin and breeches I were wearing. “Is all I have,” I said,
embarrassed.

They worked as a team, as they did out at the forge. The smith
went and fetched the tub while Diarmuid pumped water, first into a pot
to boil, and then into bucket after bucket that he dumped into the tub.
There were steam rising from the surface before they had me strip
naked and step into the tub itself.

Cairsten picked up my clothes using a pair of forge tongs. “I’ll
just… just see to these,” he said grimly, and I watched him go, feeling
dismal and half-drowned and sorry for myself.

“Me knife,” I said, thinking of the blade in my pocket. It weren’t
really a knife, but it had kept me safe from Kump that one night, and all
the kindness in the world couldn’t set my mind at ease regarding the
bald, barrel-chested, black-bearded smith.

“Ye need a knife?” Diarmuid asked, pressing a piece o’ lye soap
and cloth in my hands.

“I…. It were handy,” I said, trying for dignity. “What’s this for?”

“Rub the soap on the cloth, and rub the cloth….” Diarmuid
grimaced. “Everywhere.”

I gazed at him blankly. “Everywhere?”

“In yer hair ’til it’s soaked, then under yer arms, between yer legs,
behind yer knees, on yer manhood—everywhere.”

The water were already making me flush, or I might’ve flushed
all on my own. “Are ye watching to make sure I do?”

Diarmuid grimaced. “I’ll turn me back if ye wash the crease o’
yer arse and everything in there.”

“Why?” I asked boldly, but I were already doing it. His back were
broad and stoic. He didn’t seem interested in touching me, and, well,
he’d fed me. Small boys are animal, feral—feed them, give them
safety, they’ll curl at yer feet and never sniff another soul. I were no
exception.

“Ye smell,” he said frankly. “We have to live with ye. Would be
good not to smell ye, day in, day out.”

“Excuse me—”

“And ye get sores if ye dinna wash!” He must have felt
uncomfortable, because his voice were thickening with that forest
accent again.

“They sting in the water,” I told him, as though this had just
occurred to me. Well, maybe it had.

He turned and caught my eyes. “Next bath, after living in clean
clothes, they willna sting so much. The next one, they’ll be near to gone.”

“How do ye know?” I asked. Aye, I were but a child—but it were
occurring to me, looking at me thin limbs, me shins covered in sores
from me ragged trousers, that I weren’t much good to these two great,
brawny men who could make good porridge and hammer metal and
bend it to their will. How could I earn my keep here, where I might
have eggs for breakfast one day?

“I were the same when Cairsten found me, only covered in blood
to boot. He were taking a fixed wagon to a thatcher’s cottage in the
woods. He found me there. I were nobbut four or five.”

“How’d ye get there?” I asked, intrigued in spite o’ myself.

“I dinna know,” Diarmuid said, shivering. “I knew me name, and
I kept pointing deeper into the forest. Cairsten said… well, he said he
felt summat wrong that direction. He took me with him, cared for me.
Were father to me. ’E’s a good man, Teyth. Ye’ll see.”

I scrubbed myself, careful o’ me sores, and thought on it. “I
willna be no trouble,” I said after a moment. “I don’t need no
raising. I can make porridge fine, haul water, herd chickens and pigs,
sweep hearth….” I looked around me uncertainly. There were no
chickens or pigs as far as I could see, and Diarmuid had made a
better porridge than ever I could. “I….” I bit my lip. Now that some
of the grime had been stripped away, I could smell the lack of the
smell I’d worn on my skin. “I… would rather not go back,” I said
baldly, thinking sadly on Mum. I were an evil boy—Kump had
always said so. Mum had begun to agree with him at the end there.
And now I’d just gone and proved them both right by turning my
back on them.

“Well, we’ll find things for ye ter do,” Diarmuid said, and again I
were reassured. It were wise o’ him, I thought later. He didn’t say I
could stay right off, although that were what he and Cairsten probably
planned the minute they looked at me. He said they’d find things for
me to do. Right there, he’d known about me, about the heart o’ me.