Silverdown's Gold

Trionn the scullion could never pause anywhere for more than a minute without attracting a heap of cats. It did not matter whether his clothes reeked of the midden on those days when he raked out the garbage, or if he was simply sitting, huddled against the wind, awaiting his turn at the privy. The cats always found him. They settled, arranged comfortably in his lap, or stretched across his feet in sprawls like dropped knitting. All too often they betrayed him by leading those very people to him that he fervently wished to avoid.

    That was how he came to be lying prone in high grass on an afternoon when he should have been helping to butcher a pig.

    The blood and the smell of the slaughter pen made him sick; the cook knew as much, and cursed him for a puling ninny. There had been too many pigs killed for the table since the new Lord had inherited the rule of Silverdown; as if a feast must grace the tables each night until every pasture was emptied. The squalling as helpless animals were dragged out for the knife made Trionn sweat and turn pale. The heave of his stomach always followed, until lately, no meat sat well in his gut. Discomfort held him prone, though he knew today's victim was by now far beyond feeling; the tripes would be boiled and the last ham set up in the smokehouse. Pots left over from the rendering waited in the scullery for washing, stuck with grease, and crusty with charred rings of gravy. He would earn another beating for his shirking.

    Trionn did not care. With one cat curled between his shoulderblades, two more nestled against his flank, and the white female who was heavy with kittens flopped over the backs of his knees, he sucked at a grass stem and stroked the ears of the tom who gnawed at his thumb. He was safe enough here, where the cook

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