The Book of the Maidservant (10 page)

For the next two days, I make myself scarce, hiding behind walls, disappearing whenever one of the company comes into view. I braid my mistress’s hair in the morning and pin up her headdress, but after that, I run to the river and walk along its banks until hunger forces me back to the hospice. They can wash their own clothes. I’m not their servant.

On the morning we are to leave, the merchant shows up before sunrise, but John Mouse and Thomas aren’t there.

“Dicing and wenching,” Petrus says.

“Surely not on a holy pilgrimage,” Father Nicholas says.

I’d like to agree with him, but when I remember the taverns near the university district, I’m not so sure. I try not to think about it.

Dame Isabel seats herself on a bench, folds her hands in her lap, and says, “Of course, we won’t leave without them.”

But when they still haven’t appeared by the time the cathedral bells clang for half prime and the sun is as high as the bell tower, the merchant says we have to go. When Dame Isabel protests, her husband says, “Now, now, my
sweet honey bird.” She looks stiffly away from him, her cheeks flushed in anger.

Suddenly, I am filled with sympathy for Dame Isabel. She is young and as lively as a calf, but her husband is old and foolish. He never allows her far from his sight. Did she have a choice about marrying him?

“Boy,” Dame Isabel says sharply, and slaps Bartilmew, who has done nothing wrong. My sympathy flees, fast as a jackrabbit.

Bartilmew stumps heavily along behind his mistress, staring at the ground. He and John Mouse must be about the same age, but they couldn’t be more different. I picture the way John Mouse walks: head high, back straight, clear eyes looking at the sky, the trees, the birds flying past. His feet touch the ground so lightly that it’s almost as if he were dancing. Sometimes he throws in a little skip while he walks.

He speaks to everyone in our company, long discussions in Latin with Father Nicholas, questions about our route with the merchant, jokes with Petrus. When he talks to Dame Isabel, it’s always in the presence of her husband. But mostly, John Mouse and Thomas sing and talk and exchange merry quips.

A branch floats along the Rhine beside us, outstripping our pace. Where are they? Surely the mercenaries wouldn’t have harmed them, not in Cologne.

I look back so often I get a crick in my neck, but I never see them.

When a cart rumbles toward us, I think they must have caught a ride—but it’s just a farmer and his family.

When we stop to rest and eat, both Dame Isabel and I sit so we can watch the path behind us. And when my mistress begins to pray loudly and Petrus Tappester shouts at her to stop, I’m sure I’m not the only one wishing John Mouse were here to stop their squabbling with his scholarly arguments.

“You want another gag in your mouth?” Petrus asks.

My mistress’s face grows red, but it’s not with tears; it’s with anger. “You never forgave me for choosing John Kempe over you,” she says, her voice deadly quiet.

Silence falls over us as everyone listens.

“But I would never have married you, Petrus Tappester, whether John Kempe had asked me or no.” Dame Margery stands, glaring at Petrus.

My mouth drops open. Could it be true? That Petrus wanted to marry my mistress? What would Cook say if I told her!

Petrus splutters, the veins in his nose glowing purple. “You’re mad, woman.” He looks around at everyone else. “It’s not true! You know she’s a madwoman!”

No one answers him. I remember what Anne, the girl in Dame Hawise’s kitchen, told me back in Lynn, about Petrus Tappester being a good catch when he was young and about how much he has changed.

Petrus picks up a stick and hurls it toward a tree. It hits with a loud crack, and a crow flies up from its branches, squawking.

Father Nicholas is the first to recover. He picks up his pack and heads for the path. The rest of us follow along, and I see Dame Isabel give her husband a wide-eyed look.
As I walk, I keep trying to imagine my mistress as a girl and a handsome Petrus Tappester—a Petrus Tappester with hair!—courting her. No matter how hard I try, I can’t picture it. Surely neither of them could ever have been young and pleasing to the eye.

Not like John Mouse. Where is he?

By evening, we’ve found a smoky inn with more rats than guests. As I serve the whole company, I keep my ears open for the students. Before I sleep, I pray for them.

But they don’t come.

B
y morning, neither John Mouse nor Thomas has shown up. I don’t think I’ll ever see them again.

A misty rain wets my lashes as we start out. My head feels heavy; the sky is heavy; my pack weighs me down.

I miss Cook and Cicilly. I miss my sister.

The memory of Rose comes fast and sharp, like pricking my finger when I’m mending a shirt. Sudden and sharp it starts, but then it grows and fills me the way a big man like Petrus fills a shirt, stretching it to the edges. That’s how the pain feels, growing and spreading and filling my entire body all the way to my fingertips. The pain surprises me as much as the tears. They course silently down my cheeks, mingling with the rain.

Does Rose ever think of me? Have Hodge and his three little boys replaced me in her heart? Does she even know I’m gone?

I close my eyes and see her standing in front of our cottage, churning, her cheeks pink with the effort, a tendril of her dark hair curling beside her ear. I try to hold on to the image, not letting the bad memories in. But it’s too
late—they’re already there, the things she said about me to Hodge when she didn’t think I was listening. I hear her voice drifting up to the loft where I was supposed to be sleeping. I screw my eyes tightly shut, trying to forget, but over and over again, I hear her voice.

When I stumble blindly over a rock, a hand steadies me. Bartilmew. When did he fall back from Dame Isabel’s side to walk with me?

“Give me your pack,” he says, and I do so without thinking.

He hoists it onto his back, alongside his much heavier pack, and I feel ashamed. I want to thank him, but my mouth is as full of weeping as my eyes.

We walk in silence for at least a mile before I can speak. “I can take it now,” I say.

He tugs on the strap and shakes his head. “Soon.”

“But—”

“Soon,” he says again, and we keep walking.

I think he would carry it all day if his mistress doesn’t realize he’s not beside her.

“Boy!” she cries in her thin voice. “Come here!”

He looks at me apologetically, then hands me my pack and lumbers away.

Just as I take it, I hear voices. I turn.

Two dark-robed figures far behind us shout and wave as they run to catch up. My heart gives a kick. John Mouse and Thomas are safe.

I scrub at my tearstained face with my sleeve as they approach, laughing, out of breath, splashing through puddles.

“What happened to you?” Father Nicholas asks.

“We thought we’d never catch up,” John Mouse says, panting.

They don’t say where they’ve been, but they smile secret smiles at each other when they think no one else is looking. They don’t mention the mercenaries. I think the merchant may have been right about the dicing and the wenching.

Especially when we stop for a meal and Thomas pretends to pray over his chunk of bread: “From a scanty dinner and a bad cook, from a poor supper and a bad night, and from drinking wine that has turned, Good Lord deliver us,” he says.

Father Nicholas and my mistress look shocked, but everyone else laughs. Dame Isabel hides her smile behind her hand. She is as happy as a colt turned loose in a meadow.

If she could see her face, she wouldn’t be so happy. The hairs she plucked from her brows and her forehead have begun to grow back in, black and patchy against her white skin. She looks moth-eaten, like a fur coat stored in a trunk over the summer. I hope nobody tells her.

When we begin walking again, my pack feels lighter than it has in days. A silly song Rose and I used to sing comes bursting into my head, and before I know it, I’m singing it quietly to the beat of my footsteps.

I try to remember what comes next when I hear someone singing ahead of me. John Mouse glances back, gesturing for me to continue, and now that I’ve got the words, I do. My voice blending with his makes a thrill run through my body, and I wish Thomas wouldn’t join in, but he does. So does Father Nicholas. Finally, even the merchant starts singing, and we all keep time with our feet.

We’ve barely sung the last note when John Mouse starts us on “How Many Miles to Beverlyham?” He remembers every single verse. Then Thomas begins a song I learned from Cook: “Come O’er the Burn, Bessy,” and the rest of us chime in with “thou pretty little Bessy, come over the burn, Bessy, to me.”

This time Dame Isabel looks back at us, her eyes going straight to John Mouse, and joins in the singing, but she can barely keep a tune. I wish her husband would notice the way she looks at John Mouse and say something to her.

The scent of smoke from harvest fires in the misty air reminds me of autumn days at home. When a flock of birds rises from a tree beside our path, I finger the lark on my knife blade and think of my father and Rose—and I feel light and happy.

It doesn’t last long.

In the afternoon, when the rain stops, so do we, plopping ourselves onto logs or on the ground, pulling out food from our packs.

“I have some hazelnuts, if anybody wants some,” Dame Isabel says. “Here, girl, come crack these nuts open.”

I look up and realize she’s speaking to me. My name isn’t
girl
. And I don’t take orders from her.

“I said, come crack these nuts. There are plenty of stones lying about,” she tells me, handing me the bag of hazelnuts.

Dame Margery doesn’t look at me—she’s praying. At least she’s doing it silently this time.

I yank the bag from Dame Isabel’s hand and begin searching for two stones. I’m tired, too. Doesn’t she know that?

Nobody besides Dame Isabel and her husband orders Bartilmew around, but everybody feels free to tell me what to do. And Petrus feels free to show me his fists any time he wants.

I squat in front of a flat rock and start cracking hazelnuts. Dame Isabel is sitting on her husband’s cloak to keep out of the mud, and he dances from foot to foot, wrapping his arms around himself to keep warm in his short tunic and leggings.

I bring a stone down hard on a hazelnut and pretend it’s Dame Isabel’s head. It doesn’t make me feel any better.

I hit the stones together harder, then miss and hit my thumb.

Ow
. Tears spring to my eyes, but no one notices.

When I’ve finished cracking all the nuts, Dame Isabel doesn’t give me a single one. Instead, she offers them to John Mouse.

I watch as he bows his head in a courtly gesture of thanks and declines them.

Her face grows red, and she rejoins her husband. She doesn’t offer nuts to anyone else.

Later that evening, we come to a town with a hostel for
pilgrims. The hostel provides ingredients, but we have to provide our own cook. Me.

A mess of cabbage and a heap of peas, that’s what they give me. But there’s nobody to show me how to cook them. And the hearth is cold. At least I can get a fire started, striking my flint and metal fast, not hard, the way Bartilmew showed me, to light my char-cloth, using the little scraps of linen and bark and grass I’ve been collecting to feed it. In no time, I have a fire dancing on the hearth, the flames warming my face.

No fire will help this supper, though. The peas are like pebbles no matter how much I stir them or how many prayers I say, while the cabbage turns to slime. I serve them anyway.

Dame Isabel’s husband breaks a tooth on one of the peas.

How was I to know I was supposed to soak them overnight and serve them for breakfast?

I go to bed angry. I wish they had
all
broken their teeth. Even John Mouse.

In the middle of the night, I awaken. Something hovers over my face, something that feels like a winged demon. Petrus’s devil? Or one looking for me?

I pull the blanket over my head and pray for forgiveness. Anger is a deadly sin. I lie awake waiting for the demon to go away, listening to the mice scampering across the floor.