"It's just not right, Mama…."

"You hush, Lynet, and mind your place," her mama said briskly as she scrubbed the linens in a tub with a washboard. "It's not for you to decide what's right and what's not."

"Mama," Lynet said, using a long stick to pull the tablecloth out of the tub and transport it across the steamy laundry room to where another laundress was running things through a mangle, "Would you ever make me sleep out in the stable?"

Alma sighed. Her little bird always asked the most difficult questions. Lynet had, of course, hit it right on the head, so she tried to distract the girl witha joke. "You're much too small for the stables, pet. Why, those horses would munch you up with their oats and never notice!"

"Boy is smaller than me," Lynet said, looking up with huge green eyes.

Ahhhh, no. Alma could never bear it when Lynet turned those big sad eyes on her. Reminded her all too much of Lynet's dad – dead these three years after trying to do the right thing and protect a farm girl from some bandits.

Lynet got more than those eyes from her father, she did. Alma hoped it wouldn't end the same way.

She sighed. There wasn't much she could give her daughter in life, other than clean clothes, a roof over her head, a warm bed, and enough food, and so the girl hardly ever asked for anything. But here she was, her eyes big and sad with mute appeal. Like as not, she'd regret this – but she couldn't bear the look in her daughter's eyes.

"Now, don't you be getting all underfoot in the stables," Alma started scolding, although both she and Lynet knew she wasn't truly angry. "You make sure to ask the stable master polite, you hear me, before you ever approach your little friend. If the stable master says aye, then you invite Boy to have supper with us. No point in hurting the lad by dangling something in front of him that he can't have."

Lynet grinned, coming back to the tub to pull out a pillowcase with her pole to take to the mangle. "Oh, Mama, thank you." Once she'd negotiated getting the wet cloth safely across the laundry (though she hardly ever dropped anymore, she was a big girl of seven!) she'd run back to hug and kiss her mother.

"Ahhhh, off with you," her mother said in pretended annoyance, giving the girl a quick kiss on her brown hair. "Remember your manners!"

Boy was sitting in the hayloft, his feet dangling over the edge as he watched what was going on below.

He'd had a hard day's work already – carrying water, forking hay into stalls… at eight, he wasn't even big enough to curry the horses yet. But the stable master had ruffled his hair, told him to go get washed up and find a place to rest – he'd done all his chores. And so Boy had washed quickly in the shallows of the river, scrubbed his clothes best he could, and let them hang, drying, from a tree branch as he had lain dozing in the sun until boy and clothes were dry again.

There was that girl again.

She was a bit bigger than him, and wore her hair in two tightly braided plaits on either side of her head. Enormous green eyes were framed in a sturdy, round face with a healthy flush on the cheeks. She was sturdy the way servants and their children were, made so by hard work.

Boy was more than fairly sure she could best him in a fight, if she cared to fight him. He'd seen her knock down a village boy who'd been throwing stones at a cat. When the boy had jumped up and hit her, she'd blacked his eye for him and sent him howling for his mama.

She was standing in the doorway to the stable, peering into the darkness. It was hard to see, when you'd just come in from outside – the danger of fire was too great to keep lanterns burning inside. He wondered why she was here – as far as he knew, her place was in the laundry.

"Boy?" she called quietly.

Hazel eyes scrunched up in thought as he regarded her from his perch. What could she want with him, he wondered. Maybe he was in trouble – maybe someone from the castle had seen him stretched out naked at the riverside, thought he was loafing – maybe they were going to send him away, just as he'd been sent from the castle to the stables, and he was going to have to find some way to feed himself and get shelter for himself…

She stepped into the stable now, peering left and right into the loose stalls. He could hear the horses nickering restlessly at this new scent, this new person who did not belong, and with a sigh, he clambered down the ladder to meet her. Best get it over with. "I'm here."

She turned, and smiled.

Boy stopped dead. No one smiled at him – not the way she had. It was a pretty smile, for all that one of her front teeth was chipped – a warm smile that went all the way to those huge green eyes. He wasn't sure if that meant she was happy because she was here to do something nice, or because she was happy because he was getting into trouble.

The other boys smiled when he was getting into trouble.

"Boy, Mama said – that is, if you want to – Mama said you could have supper with us."

He considered this gravely. He'd already had some good black bread, an egg, and a slice of meat for his afternoon meal, but there was no question that he was still hungry. Working in the stable was hard work, and he never felt he had enough to eat.

"Oh… okay." He shook himself. Manners, he thought. "I mean, thank you. That's… very kind. I would… I would be very pleased to join you."

Had she been smiling before? He thought she had, but the grin she showed him now blew that one away as if it had never existed.

He must have been standing there, dumbstruck, because she giggled and ran to him, taking him by the hand.

Nobody had held his hand before. He looked at her in a mixture of surprise and… well. He felt his mouth stretching in a grin that felt like it might split his face.

"Come on,"she urged, with a little tug to get him started. "Your master told me you could come, I asked polite, like mama said."

He let himself be led by this strange girl. She was a little taller than he was, and he just knew that she could beat him in a fight, even as he knew she never would.

"I'm Lynet," she said, as she led him to the small cottage near the walls of the castle.

He paused at the door, wondering at this new experience, being asked to supper with a real family. The door opened, and a woman came out, smiling, wiping her hands on a flour-sack cloth.

"Everyone calls me Boy," he murmured with embarrassment, "but my real name is Alistair."

Lynet gave his fingers a comforting squeeze as she drew him closer to her Mama. "Join us, Alistair."