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Chapter 19:- Planning
It took her five days to gather what would be required. She could have done so quickly, within an hour or two, had she been able to be open in her preparations. But secrecy was paramount, and so she worked slowly, and with caution, all the while frantic that she would wake each morning to find her mother had engineered Murrow’s departure, that he had indeed left that day before dawn. But Elsbeth stitched steadily on her wedding clothes, and her mother, like Murrow, seemed satisfied that she had accepted the match. Lady Garland had much to do to prepare for the wedding, and sending Murrow of Bruster away did not seem as urgent as it had. It could wait a few days more.
It took her five days to gather what would be required. She could have done so quickly, within an hour or two, had she been able to be open in her preparations. But secrecy was paramount, and so she worked slowly, and with caution, all the while frantic that she would wake each morning to find her mother had engineered Murrow’s departure, that he had indeed left that day before dawn. But Elsbeth stitched steadily on her wedding clothes, and her mother, like Murrow, seemed satisfied that she had accepted the match. Lady Garland had much to do to prepare for the wedding, and sending Murrow of Bruster away did not seem as urgent as it had. It could wait a few days more.
Still, Elsbeth knew she should plan upon having no more than a week in which to work. Her mother might, in the face of other demands, delay dealing with the rejected suitor, but she would not forget.
By the end of the third day, Elsbeth knew she could not do all that must be done on her own. Not in time, and some things, not at all.
She needed help.
This realization sent her deeply into despair for most of an afternoon, sewing slowly, as if staring into a dark well of doubt, wondering if Murrow had been correct, that the marriage would come to pass and her own comfort lay in making terms with that reality.
If only her brother were here. Lionel, three years younger, would help her, without question and without concern about what might result to him. Indeed, very little would, no matter what he did. Lionel was the heir; there were three children younger than him, but two were girls, the boy youngest of all, not yet two years old, far too young yet to know that he would live to see his fifth birthday, let alone adulthood. Lionel’s position was quite secure.
But Lionel was away, and had been for two years now, fostering in Bruster. That, Elsbeth remembered suddenly, had been a struggle of some note between her parents. Lady Garland had not wanted him to go to Bruster at all, but the Roth had urged Lord Garland that he wished to encourage stronger ties with the southern kingdom. Lord Garland had finally agreed that Lionel would go to Solud, the island of Bruster where his sister was queen-consort, for three years, and then would finish his fostering in Ragonne.
But Lionel’s friends — the half-dozen boys in the household he had grown up with — were not gone. Here worry and conscience wriggled uncomfortably in Elsbeth’s mind. Lionel could have stolen a Brusterian longboat at knife-point to help her, with little risk to himself from Lord and Lady Garland. The same was not true of the cook’s son, the baker’s apprentice, or the swordmaster’s nephew. But Elsbeth knew, even as she fretted over it, that she had little choice. If she wanted the chance to escape, she needed assistance. She sewed rapidly, pondering which of her brother’s childhood companions would be willing, able to be discrete, and least likely to be either caught or, if found out, punished severely.
