The Book of the Maidservant (22 page)

Father Morgan escorts her up the stairs, Dame Margery talking all the way.

I gulp in one breath and then another and look at the creases in my fingers, where I’ve pressed them into the counter’s edge. My knees are trembling so hard that I have to lower myself to the floor, where I sit amidst the pieces of my mistress’s broken flask.

My mistress? No, I can’t be her maidservant anymore. People here treat me like I matter, like I’m worth something. To Dame Margery, I’ll never be more than chaff, something she can kick out of her way when she’s tired of it.

Besides, Constance is right. If I were to go with her, how long would it be before she abandoned me again?

But without her, how will I ever get home?

My tears start slowly, but then they come thick and fast, faster than my mistress ever cried on the way to Venice.

What will become of me?

I stare at the patterns in the wood of the wine cask. They run along together like currents in a river. Then my eyes fill again. I don’t know if I’ll ever see Rose or my father again.

A sob escapes my throat. I gulp in air, but I can’t seem to breathe.

Just then, I hear a noise, feet coming down the steps. A pilgrim, needing wine. I wipe furiously at the tears with my sleeve, but it doesn’t stop them.

When I stand, I see it’s not a pilgrim. It’s Constance. She catches my eye, then steps around the counter and pulls me into a hug. My tears start all over again.

When I can finally breathe, Constance rubs my back the way my sister used to. Together, we clean up the broken pieces of Dame Margery’s flask.

“Your porridge is ready,” she whispers. “Alice sent me to find you.”

I nod and wipe my face on my apron.

As she leads me to the kitchen, Constance says, “I like the way you braid your hair. Will you help me do mine that way?”

I nod again. I can’t speak, but my heart is full.

i
keep as far out of Dame Margery’s way as I can, but it’s not easy. To reach the alcove Constance and Henry and I share, I have to go through the women’s dormitory. When we are finished in the kitchen for the day, I stand at the dormitory door, listening for Dame Margery’s voice, but I don’t hear it above the low murmurs of women and the sound of a child crying.

In the flickering candlelight, pilgrims make dark lumps on the cots, and it’s hard to tell who is who. My toe stubs against somebody’s pack. Mine. I glance at the cot, but Dame Margery isn’t here yet. The pack is the one I carried all the way from England to Venice, the cooking pot poking me in the back the whole way. The one with my hood in it. I stretch my hand toward it. A noise makes me snatch my hand away as if I’ve been burned.

I scurry into the alcove and duck behind the curtain, my heart pounding. Slowly, I get my breath back and climb into bed. I pull the blanket all the way over my head, hiding until Constance and Henry come crawling into bed with me.

Even after they’re both asleep, I lie rigidly, listening for Dame Margery’s voice. Finally, my eyes fall closed.

She’s asleep when I get up the next morning, sharing a bed with a gentlewoman, both of them snoring lightly. I tiptoe past them and go down the passageway into the kitchen.

Only Alan, the head cook, is there, yawning so hugely his eyes are closed and he doesn’t see me. I blow the fire awake and set out the stacks of porridge bowls.

Alice comes in from the courtyard, one pin in her mouth, one in her hands as she arranges her wimple. She gives me a quick nod, and I go to the sack of oats. One, two, three, four, five, six handfuls go into the kettle of water. I give it a stir before I haul it to the fire.

By the time Constance and Henry have come into the kitchen, I’m sitting in one of the huge window casements, blowing on my bowl of porridge to cool it and watching a sparrow hop along the eaves of the dormitory roof, cocking its head this way and that.

Constance peers past me to see what I’m watching. “Like in Father Morgan’s sermon,” she says.

I look at her, confused.

“Remember? He said the poor man was like a sparrow, alone on the housetop. Henry, watch out!”

The bellows fall over with a clatter. Henry looks up sheepishly.

“Be careful!” Constance says. “Are you all right?”

He nods and she goes to him, folding him in her arms.

I finish my porridge and turn to last night’s pots. Then I measure millet for today’s meals and chop the pile of
onions Constance brings in until it’s time for me to attend to the wine.

Down in the cellar, a long line of pilgrims waits for me, but I only spill wine once, when a pig’s bladder springs a leak. I don’t see Dame Margery at all.

When the line dwindles to nothing, I wipe the spigot and the counter the way Alice showed me and start back up the steps.

A shadow blocks the light. I stop midstep.

Dame Margery towers at the top, glaring down at me. She doesn’t say anything, just stares at me, a line creasing her brow.

I take a deep breath and start back up the stairs. When I reach the top step, she doesn’t move.

“Beg pardon, Dame Margery,” I say, squeezing around her in the narrow passageway.

She doesn’t speak, but I can feel her eyes on my back as I walk away.

“Johanna!” Alice’s voice.

I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“Come tell me how to cook this rabbit,” Alice calls.

Rabbit? If she only knew. I smile and skip toward the kitchen. The rough stones feel comfortable, and I know just where to lift my feet to keep from stubbing my toes on the wood of the threshold.

Once I’m there, I see the rabbit will have to wait. Father Morgan stands by the courtyard door, motioning me over.

My heart catches in my throat. What if he says I have to go with Dame Margery?

“How long have you been in Dame Margery Kempe’s service?” he asks me as I get near him. The kitchen grows quiet. Alice stands with her arms folded over her chest, watching us. Constance shushes Henry’s humming. Wat stifles a sneeze, and even Alan, the head cook, stops carving a side of meat and looks up.

I try to remember. “I was hired at the Michaelmas Fair,” I say, thinking back.

“Hmmm.” Father Morgan shakes his head and I cringe. Then he looks back at me. “This harvest just past?”

I shake my head. “No, Father, the one before that. We left on our pilgrimage just before the fair.”

“Ahh, I see,” he says, and suddenly, I see, too. Servants are hired for the year at the Michaelmas Fair, and wages for the next year are paid. We left before the fair, so Dame Margery couldn’t have paid Hodge and my sister. They must be furious. I’ve been working since October without any pay at all.

I smile at Father Morgan. “Then may I have the position?”

He nods. “You have it already. As far as I can figure, you started when you got here.”

I take a deep, happy breath. “Thank you, Father.”

He smiles and glances over at Alice, who gives him one of her funny grimaces. When he goes out the door, sound returns to the kitchen as everyone goes back to their tasks. Wat gives me a shy pat on the shoulder as he passes me, and Constance doesn’t stop smiling all afternoon. Alice might be smiling, too, but it’s always hard to tell.

That evening, the stream of pilgrims lightens, and
things are so calm that Alice serves out six bowls of porridge, one for herself, one for Alan, one for Wat, one for Constance, and another for Henry. And a bowl for me. She pulls the bench up to the long wooden table where we do our chopping and calls us all over.

When I get to the table, Alice hands me two dirty slivers of metal. One is round and one is half-moon shaped. I look at them and back at her.

“It’s your first pay,” she says.

I stare at the coins, the dark grime etched into their edges. They feel cool and heavy on my palm. I don’t even know what they’re worth—they must be Roman. I squeeze my fingers around them, then open my hand and listen to the clink as I toss them.

When I look up, everyone in the kitchen is watching me. Wat bursts out laughing, and Constance hides her grin with her hand. Henry giggles. I look at Alice and see the side of her mouth pulled up into one of her peculiar grins.

Then we sit down to eat, just like we’re a family.

For two more days, Dame Margery makes her home in the hospice, glaring at me whenever I pass her but never speaking to me. I hear her weeping in the chapel and telling other pilgrims about her visions, but she pins up her wimple and veil by herself. The veil hangs lopsided, and greasy fingerprints mark the edges of the wimple.

On the third day, when I tiptoe past her bed at dawn, she isn’t there. Neither is the pack with my hood in it.

“Didn’t you hear?” Constance says when I ask her
about it. “A rich woman invited her to stay in her house. Didn’t you see the servants coming to get her last night?”

I shake my head slowly.

“Their clothes must have been made of silk, and they were just servants!” she says.

I open my mouth, then close it. Dame Margery is gone? A ball of fear forms in my stomach. How will I ever get back to England?

As I pour wine for today’s pilgrims, I can’t stop my fear from growing. I look at each pilgrim, their faces, their clothes, and wonder if I could travel with any of them. It’s a long, dangerous trip. Who could I trust? How would I ever pay my way? The coins Alice gave me won’t get me far, that I know for sure.

After the last of the pilgrims disappears up the steps, I lean back against the wine casks, inhaling their scent of oak and summer sun, and wonder what’s to become of me. I wonder where Bartilmew is by now. In the Holy Land, I hope, a place even stranger than Rome. I think of him plodding along behind his mistress and her husband, carrying her heavy pack without complaint. I hope he’s safe.

Alice’s voice startles me from my thoughts. “Johanna? Where are you?”

I trudge back up the steps, making my way to the kitchen.

As I come in, Alice gives me a sharp look. “Hurry up. There’s work to be done.” She gestures toward a stack of wooden bowls.

Constance raises her eyebrows to ask if I’m all right, but she doesn’t say anything. She starts handing me bowls
to dip porridge into to take to the sick people the friars take care of. I fill bowl after bowl, trying not to think about Dame Margery.

“Careful!” Constance says, and I realize a dipper full of porridge has landed on the floor.

“Beg pardon.” I turn my attention back to the bowls.

Alice comes over and I stiffen.

“Father Morgan is away till nightfall, and some of the brothers, too. I’ll need you to help feed the sick, Johanna.”

I nod, relieved. That’s the second time I’ve spilled porridge—the second time that Alice has seen, anyway—but she’s never yelled at me.

“When you finish with those, take that tray to the dormitory and help the brothers serve them.” She marches back to her worktable.

The tray is huge and heavy. Constance helps me navigate it through the kitchen. I cross the bright courtyard, staggering under the weight of all that porridge, looking for a place to set it down for a moment. There isn’t one. I keep going. At the dormitory for the sick, I have to kick the door open, and the tray sways dangerously.

A friar rushes to help, taking the tray from my hands and setting it down.

I watch the two friars in their brown robes move from bed to bed, delivering the bowls. Old people with slack, spotted skin lie feebly on some beds. In another, I see a little boy with twisted legs, his mother sitting beside him. Near them is a man with a cloth tied around his eyes. The brothers whisper words of comfort and encouragement to them all. One friar leans over to spoon porridge into the
mouth of a woman who can’t move her arms. The other friar comes back to get more bowls. “You start in the next room,” he says, pointing me toward a door.

I stack five bowls on top of each other, the way the friar has done, praying that I won’t drop them, and walk carefully to the other room. Just through the door, there’s a place to set them down. As I do, the stack wobbles. As the top bowl falls, I reach out and catch it. Good thing Alice wasn’t here to see that.

Behind me, I hear a voice. “The little serving maid? Johanna?”

I stop. I can’t move, lest it be a dream.

“Is it you, Johanna?”

Slowly, I turn.

In the cot behind me, John Mouse leans back on his elbows, watching me.