HEARTHWANE · LAUNDRESS
human, 71
Nursed the girl Aveline, whose candle leaned toward her, and kept her secret from the village.
THEIR STORY
Gammer Whitlow came down the river with Lady Aveline as her nurse, forty years ago, and stayed on as laundress when the girls came. She washes every stitch in Linden Hall and counts the sisters' slippers into a basket each morning, worn through at the toes. She has a counting rhyme for the twelve names and a grey shawl she never takes off. Nobody in the hall asks her opinion, and she gives it anyway.
FROM
upriver, the same village as Lady Aveline
HOW THEY LOOK
Bent and quick, forearms red from the copper, and a grey-white shawl she never takes off. She smells of lye and lavender.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“Betony, Bryony, Campion, Clary. Count them, or they go.”
“Drink nothing a girl hands you at night, and give the water nothing but the truth.”
BEFORE THE TALE
40 years ago · upriver
Nursed the girl Aveline, whose candle leaned toward her, and kept her secret from the village.
38 years ago · the drove road
Was given a grey shawl by a warden of the Watch, who said it would keep her name if she ever needed it.
13 years ago · the kitchen yard
Made up a counting rhyme for the twelve sisters' names, so that none of them would ever be forgotten.
this year · the wash-house
Has counted twelve pairs of slippers worn through every morning since the spring, and washed out a grey dust that has no smell.