They set off into the early morning light, and Eleanor got her first look at the place she was now expected to call home.

Sarah and Matthew’s cottage, much like her father’s place in town, sat on the edge of an open space, with other cottages nearby. It was much smaller than the market square, and had grass and mud in place of stone underfoot. The cottages clustered around the area were a mix of stone and wood, sitting square, and low beneath the trees beyond. Only their place, and the one Tilly was emerging from, boasted an upper floor.

Tilly waved and skipped across the clearing towards them. “Your hair looks so elegant all up like that. Can you show me how you do it?”

Eleanor choked on a snort of disbelief and smiled. “I’d be happy to.”

Really, she couldn’t laugh at Tilly, the girl was sunshine on a string and not even Sebastian could have been mean to her. On second thoughts, he probably could, but then he’d find out just how painful a hair pin could be.

She looked around, counting eight cottages staggered in a messy square around them. “Is this all of the village? I don’t see the mill or a smithy.”

Tilly giggled and bumped shoulders with her, how could such a clumsy gesture feel warm and friendly? She said. “Oh no, but the trees will only clear so far. They’re terrible determined to keep us a forest village, Pa says. So we have clusters like this in all directions. This is the centremost one, and the other five join through the paths you can see.”

Tilly turned and pointed at several well-worn trails through the forest surrounding them, then continued. “We’re heading to River Clearing now, it’s the closest to our little river so it’s where we have the mill, the smithy and the bath house.”

The short walk was made shorter by Tilly’s bubbling enthusiasm and questions about how townsfolk bathed and spent their days. Eleanor found herself hiding her father’s wealth and answering for the servants who’d taken care of her all her life. She was already enough of an outsider here.

The River Clearing held three more cottages, sitting beside the promised mill and smithy, both with homes attached, and another building in a completely different style. It was still stone and square, but had a high roof, with interlocking pottery tiles, instead of the slate or thatch covering the other buildings. It was surrounded by a luxuriant hedge of rose bushes, blooms shading through soft gold and pink to deep wine red brightening the grey autumn morning.

Sarah said. “We’ll need to look at harvesting those soon, before they’re withered.”

Tilly nodded. “Ma said to check with the others this morning for some free hours.”

They ushered Eleanor through the door and into a bath house unlike any she’d been in before.

Mirrors, little more than small pieces of glass and highly polished metal, were carefully placed to reflect the lamplight, and what little sunlight filtered from above, to make the place light and welcoming. The walls were lined with gold-grained wood, rather than the usual dank, undressed stone, and a maze of pipes and channels connected tubs of different sizes across the space. The floor between alternated squares of stone and wood, may sections overlaid with woven rush mats. At the far end was a stone fire pit, with a strange contraption of metal pipes twining above it, the lower ones festooned with towels of various sizes.

Tilly looped her arm through Eleanor’s and pulled her further in. “We use those tubs for getting clean, then those are for relaxing, Sarah has some lovely herb mixes we add to them, the water’s heated by the pipes over the fire, so the tubs nearest there are the hottest, and get cooler as you move nearer to where we are.”

There were about ten women in various stages of bathing who looked over at the sound of Tilly’s voice, and exchanged speaking glances when they caught sight of Eleanor. Tilly pulled her forward again, straight over to the oldest woman in the room, sharp-featured with eyes of a blue that saw right through you, she reclined in one of the relaxing tubs.

“Maggie, this is Eleanor, Cadan got married and brought her here from town, and now we have her and she knows many, many things. She’s funny and clever and Cadan’s just so smitten I barely knew where to look yesterday evening.”

Eleanor’s felt her face heat as Tilly burbled on but Maggie’s gaze went from knife to twinkle as she replied. “I’m delighted to hear you approve. Sarah, does this mean you have your new assistant?”

Sarah nudged Eleanor towards a place to leave their fresh clothes, then began taking her other ones off. “That’s up to Eleanor.” She turned to Eleanor to add. “And I’m sure you’d rather make an informed decision.”

Eleanor looked between the two women and an effervescent Tilly. “Um, yes?”

Oh spirits of wind, her first impression and she sounded like an idiot. She bit her lip and focused on stripping, horribly aware of being naked in front of strangers, for all she’d done this many times in both Carra and Yallish.

Sarah laughed, then handed her a little pot of herb paste and guided her to one of the washing tubs. “Find one that’s the right temperature. I like this one, but most find it a little too warm. Maggie’s hoping you’ll turn out to be the apprentice weaver she’s been looking out for ever since Gwen went to the castle.”

Eleanor dipped her fingers into Sarah’s preferred tub, too warm but the next one along was perfect. Tilly splashed in beside her. “This one’s definitely the nicest. You use the herbs to help scrub. Soap nice enough for skin’s hard to come by here, although you probably used it all the time in town.”

She had – soap made from olive oil grown and pressed in the Scattered Isles – she avoided the implied question in her reply. “This smells much nicer than any of the soaps I’ve seen in the market stalls. Some of those make you stink worse coming out of the bath than you did going in.”

The women around her chuckled at that, and the general conversation started up again. Eleanor listened to the flow of chatter, this child had a new tooth coming through, that one had fallen out of bed during a bad dream, the chicken coop was going to need new lattice soon, Tilly mentioned the roses, and one of the cloth orders from town had proved to be much larger than expected.

Maggie commented on the last. “That happens a bit when it’s Cadan who goes, and always in our favour. Perhaps we should send him every time.”

Eleanor waited for someone to suggest she should go too, as someone who knew Gandry better than anyone, but Maggie turned the subject. “Eleanor, quite a fancy sort of name. Do you shorten it?”

Eleanor’s skin clenched, she was not going to be called ‘Ellie’. She said. “Cadan calls me Nora.”

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