I’m no storyteller, but The Lady is worth talking about, I think. There be something both right and wrong about her, and maybe you can figure it out.
First of all, I wasn’t born and raised in Bree, so maybe I don’t know what I should about these things. My brother and I were just another couple of Southrons, as we’re called up here, camping in the old ruins. I’m not a little girl anymore, so he was wanting to protect me from the other Southrons wanting what isn’t theirs to take, so he worked out a secret meeting with Mr. Claywick, but when we all got together, a few of the others caught up with us and there was a bloody fight, and when it was all done, the only ones left alive were me and Mr. Clay. He took me and my poor brother’s body back to Bree. So, you see, I’m not a real Bree-lander, but I am learning to get by and get along.
Anyways, The Lady. You have this big beautiful place in town called Windview...like a castle, it is, all stone and straight, and keeping out the weather, and nice fireplaces to cook from and keep you warm and dry. I know because The Lady hire’s me to help take care of things when she’s away, and lets me stay there sometimes even when she’s home. It’s got some planting fields and a big stone barn for animals, and I get to tend them, too. She bought the place not too long ago, I hear, from the Mayor, but no one knows too much about her, except she’s foreign, like me, I guess, but from somewhere else. I heard the Mayor was really happy to sell the place because of...tacks? … I dunno ...
But, she’s all secrets, you know, and maybe she’s sad from a death, because she never lets anyone see her without her black hood. She is kindly, though, in a standing-back sort of way. She calls me by my real name, Tessa, instead of what the other Southrons called me, which was Fetcher, because that’s all they thought I was, until I wasn’t just a little girl anymore.
She’s real tall, to me that is, and thin but not in a bony sort of way, and what little bit of her face you can see is really beautiful...I hope I finish growing up that pretty. Sometimes she looks at me funny, like she doesn’t understand something, and then she teaches me.... well...could be anything, like a new word maybe, or a new way to cook something. Her voice is like pretty music when she does that...
I call her “My Lady”, because it just seems right to do, and she lets that be alright. She’s never told me her real name, and I don’t need to ask, because we get along real fine the way things are. She doesn't talk too much, but she reads a lot and I see her going back and forth from the Skuller’s Hall, I think they call it, swapping books and scrolls in and out. Miss Caladna seems to like her, I guess, because you don’t see her let many other folks take books from the Hall.
The only thing she ever asked me about, besides me, was Mr. Cutch … I miss him … he got killed, you know, way out somewhere they call Shire. Not too many folks here remember him, but some of us do and … well … we miss him lots. He had bushy eyes, and a big nose, and a big smile, and a big heart …
Anyways, she asked me what I knew about him, which isn’t much more than that, except he went away to get married, and then one day one of the Shire hobbits came around to tell the Watch about his being dead...
I think she might know some folks up in Tusslebridge, I think it’s called, because sometimes she rides out north and doesn’t come back for a few days. When she’s gone, she has me stay in Windview alone, except for the Watchers who keep an extra special eye on the place when she’s gone, and sometimes I look at her things. I don’t take anything, but sometimes I hold her clothes up to me and wonder if I will ever be as pretty as her … I dunno …
She had a real nice pair of gloves that I tried on once when she was away, and they fit, and they were made of leather so soft and... cozy...I dunno...but like everything else, when I took them off, I put them right back where they were. The next time she rode away for a few days, she gave them to me for keeps without saying anything but “These are good for riding. Save them for that.” I guess she knew I was poking around in her things, so I stopped.
Her horse is big and beautiful and black as the night, and she talks to it and it understands her, I just know it. I get to tend to him when she’s home, and he likes me to brush him, except I have to climb on the stall wall to reach all the way. Once I got on his back and before I knew it, he walked me out into the barnyard and shook his head and looked back at me and waited for me to grab up his mane and then he trotted me around. I got a little afraid when he carried me out to the lane but then I saw The Lady standing outside the front door with her arms crossed and he trotted up to her and he stuck his face out towards her and I swear he laughed. She smiled at us both and shook her head under her hood and said something to him I didn’t understand, but he did because he nodded...really nodded...and trotted me back into the barn.
But there is something scary about her, like a storm coming in. She carries this pouch on her hip all the time, and though I never seen her take anything out or put anything in, sometimes when she walks, I hear something rattling inside it, like bones maybe...I dunno...Anyway, she seems to know when I am a little scared, and she lays her hand against the bag to keep the bones from rattling. Sometimes I look at it wondering, and she sees me and says there’s things I shouldn’t poke into, not like she’s angry, but like she’s telling me about a danger … I dunno ...
