The Copper Sign by Katia Fox, Lee Chadeayne Page A

dropped onto the bed without noticing anything and immediately fell asleep. As always when he had had too much cider to drink, he snored loudly. Ellen lay down, too, but she tossed and turned restlessly and found it hard to get to sleep.
    In the middle of the night she awakened with a start. She had been dreaming, and in her dream she had enormous breasts that she carried in front of her like trophies. She looked around. It was still dark except for the moonlight falling through the cracks in the little wooden shutters. After making sure that Art was still asleep, she sat up in bed, pulled her shirt over her head, and felt her breasts. Of course they weren’t as large as in the dream. Then she drew her shoulders back and passed her hand back and forth over her chest, almost proudly. But then a wave of despair came over her again—she wouldn’t be able to conceal her womanly shape much longer. What could she do? Just recently she had bought a large piece of linen cloth to make padding for her monthly bleeding, but she hadn’t started doing that yet. Maybe she could tie a piece of it around her breasts like a bandage. She pulled the cloth out from under her straw mattress and unfolded it. Then she measured a strip over two feet wide and ripped it off lengthwise. She was startled when Art began making loud snoring sounds and cursed herself for not having kept her shirt on. She took the strip of cloth and wrapped it as tightly as possible around her chest. Then she raised her right arm as if she were going to strike something with a hammer, lowered it again, and shook her head. It would be impossible to work like that. She loosened the cloth just enough so that she could raise her arm and still get enough air to breathe. That’s how she would have to do it.
    The next morning she wrapped up her chest again. At first her movements were stiff, but in the course of the day she began to feel comfortable with it. In the afternoon, however, she noticed that the cloth had slipped down and was on her hips. She mumbled a few words of apology and hurried out of the smithy.
    In the following days she practiced wrapping the cloth around her midsection so it could not slip down, and finally succeeded, and she never again dreamed of the giant breasts.
    Arnaud sneered and complained that Alan was worse than a girl with his constant running to the latrine, and she feared he might already suspect something.
    She cursed and spat more frequently now and during her unclean days scratched her crotch as men often do, checking the cloth in her braies. Nevertheless, she was in constant fear of being found out.
     
    With November came foggy days. At times the heavy, wet blanket hung over Tancarville from morning to night, melancholy and impenetrable. Sometimes it seemed as if the fog wanted to lift, bringing with it a hope for brighter, friendlier days; but then once again it would rise from the Seine, reaching out with its cold, clammy fingers to clutch the hearts of men. On other days, the fog in the morning seemed as heavy as lead but dissipated before noon like a silken cloth raised up into the heavens by a gentle wind. On such a day, Ellen returned to the castle for the first time in weeks.
    Directly behind the open door a boy stood on a tree stump that was not even wide enough to accommodate both feet at the same time. He was tall and strong, perhaps two or three years older than she was, and stood at attention, without moving, looking straight ahead. His hands were folded behind his back, and in them he was holding a little bag full of sand. Ellen paid no further heed to him. Presumably he had been standing there like that since midnight and was almost done. Ellen knew from overhearing conversations between the squires that this was only one of the many tests every page had to take before he could become a squire. When his turn came, he would be wakened rudely and without warning in the middle of the night and ordered to stand on the tree