The Servant’s Tale (15 page)

Out of the kitchen’s heat of ovens and cooking, the air bit deeply into her thin flesh. From habit, not from any hope of it doing any good, Meg huddled her cloak more tightly around her and let herself out the back way into the side yard that ran between the nunnery and its outer wall and opened by another gateway into the courtyard at the front, from where she could take the road until she reached the field path again.

The sun was a deepening gold, swollen in the cloud-clear sky as it dropped to setting. Across the fields under the sweep of sunset light, darkness was already gathered in the grass and along the hedge line, waiting to take the world as soon as the sun slipped away; and Meg hurried, driven as much by the coming darkness as the cold, wanting to be home and close to her own fire.

If someone had bothered to bring in wood. If someone had bothered to feed it to the fire.

There was no one in sight as she came past the church and along the frozen ruts to her house. The sun was gone and everything in twilight shadows. Yellow light showed here and there at cottages where a window’s shutter did not fit close enough; but there was only darkness at her own, she saw as she came to it, and her faint hope of a fire and warmth sank lower.

But after all, as she opened the door, there was a glow on the hearth from wood burned down to coals but still alive. Warmth, and familiar smells of woodsmoke and animals wrapped around her as she closed the door at her back. Hewe was there. He turned from laying hay in front of the goat. In the half darkness she could not see his face clearly but his voice was cheerful. “I made the fire, Mam. Only I’ve waited to build it up again so it wouldn’t be gone before you came.”‘

“And brought in Nankin,” Meg said, letting approval come into her voice. “You’re a good son, Hewe. And the chickens?”

“They’re fed and watered.” His voice fell, waiting for her to be angry as he added, “But I’ve not cleaned their mess yet.”

Meg was too glad of the fire to care. “That can bide. Come to the warmth now.”

“And one of them’s dead,” Hewe added in almost a whisper.

Meg sighed and sank down on one of the three-legged stools close to the hearth, opening her cloak to the warmth, holding her hands out over the coals. “That can’t be helped,” she said wearily. “Maybe I’ll set it to boiling tonight and we’ll have a New Year’s feast of it. Come lay wood on the fire for me. My hands are that stiff with cold I don’t know if I could.”

Hewe came and with great care built up the fire until it danced, throwing shadows and light around the room and over his face. Meg fondly watched him watching the flames, and after a while said, “Where’s your brother? Why isn’t he here helping you?”

Hewe did not look around from the fire. “He’s at the alehouse, or near it, I’d guess.” Sym was willing to do for others the chores he neglected at home, because of the few coins he could earn to drink away at the alehouse. “And like to be out for a while.”‘

The shabby cottage that served as gathering place for idle men and dishonest women had been his father’s place and he looked like making it his own, too. Then, like his father, let him take the consequences. “There’s something in the flour kist,” Meg said. “You bring it to me.”

“Something besides flour?” Hewe asked in surprise.

“Besides flour.” Though precious little of that there was. She must be making some deal with the miller, or finding a way to buy or barter some from Dame Alys.

“What’s this?” Hewe asked, puzzled, holding out the orange that Barnaby had brought from Lord Lovel’s feasting.

“A treat for us,” said Meg. She had kept it in her apron until she had come home again; and put it in the flour kist for safekeeping. “Look you.” She wiped the flour off of it with her cloak and held it out into the firelight so its color glowed and its strangeness showed.

Hesitantly Hewe reached out a forefinger to touch it, stroked it cautiously, and then drew back. “What is it? Where did you find it?”

“Hold it,” Meg said. “It’s not tender. Go on.”

Hewe took it, turning it around and around in his hands while she told him where it had come from, how his father had earned it.

“By singing for the lord?” Hewe asked.

“Noble folk like to be entertained when they’re feasting,” Meg said. “And do you know what we’re to do with it now?” Hewe shook his head. “Eat it!” she said triumphantly.

Hewe prodded at its hardness doubtfully, as Meg had when she first held it. But she had seen what Dame Frevisse had done, and held out her hand for it. “Give it to me. I’ll show you.”

It proved to be more messy than she had thought. The thing was no more like an apple under its rind than it was without, but they managed it at last, pulling it into the slices already formed, once they understood how it was put together. They shared the pieces between them, laughing and delighted at the tart sweetness and juice and surprise of it all, until the orange was all gone except for its peel, and they were themselves fragrantly messy, hands and faces both.

When they had washed the stickiness away, and Meg was on her stool again with Hewe sitting beside her, his head leaning on her knee, he sighed. “That was grand. All that, just for singing for Lord Lovel.”

“Umm.” Meg was not much listening. Warmth and weariness were overtaking her. She had meant to think about Gilbey’s offer tonight, but thoughts did not seem to want to come.

“I could do that,”‘ Hewe said.

“What?”

“Sing for Lord Lovel. Or dance, maybe. I can dance, you’ve seen me. So they would give me things. Or pay me. Like the players did today. They did their play and then people gave them money.”

Meg had hardly thought of this morning’s nonsense on the green since it had ended. A little sharply she said, “That’s not man’s work! Dressing up and pretending some foolish tale. And look what sort of folk they are. Not decent, wandering the roads and belonging nowhere.”

“It looked as good a sort of work as any I’ve seen,” Hewe said warmly, sitting up away from her, his face taking on all the rebelliousness he otherwise saved for saying he did not want to be a priest.

Meg opened her mouth, wanting a sharp reply to put sense in his head, but the door fell open from someone’s heavy thrust and in a draft of cold air and night’s blackness, Sym lurched into the room.

He was drunk. That much was immediately clear. He staggered against the doorpost and stayed there, gaping at her as if not remembering where he was or why. And sometime he had fallen; one knee of his breeches was torn through its patch and where she would find another piece of cloth to mend it again, Meg did not know. That, added to Hewe’s foolishness, made her angry, all the contentment of hardly a moment before gone in a frustrated urge to hurt him back the way he was hurting her.

“If you’re that drunk, Sym, take you off to someone’s sty and sleep it off,” she snapped. “You’re not to come in here to be sick.”

He slurred, “Mam…” and swayed forward from the doorway, leaving it open behind him.

“He stinks,” Hewe said disgustedly, moving away from him. “He stinks like Da did.”

“You stink, brat!” Sym snarled. “Of mother’s milk, baby. I’m going to rub your head with knuckles till it bleeds, you come in reach of me!”

“Hewe, close the door. There’s no need we have to freeze because he’s drunk.”

Hewe circled his brother to obey. Sym lurched for him but Hewe was too used to that to be caught. He deftly avoided him and in the doorway said over his shoulder to Meg, “I’m off to Peter’s for the night. When I see Sym’s sober I’ll be back.”

Meg cried out, “Hewe!” but he was gone, pulling the door shut behind him, leaving her alone with Sym, whose lurch had carried him on sidewise to fetch up against the table where he leaned, resting his weight on one arm, his head bent down. His other arm had been wrapped across his stomach. He moved it, held out his hand in front of him and frowned at the dark gleam of it in the firelight. “Mam.” He sounded bewildered. “I’m bleeding.”

Chapter
13

For the day’s last prayers at Compline, St. Frideswide’s nuns were spared the cold rigors of the church. At the bell’s ringing of the hour, they laid aside their reading and handwork in the warming room, Dame Alys put out the candles, and in the gentle glow of the firelight Domina Edith led them in their prayers.

Frevisse enjoyed this brief while between the ending of each day’s tasks and the going to bed by twilight in summer, in darkness in winter. Even marred this evening by coughing and snuffling, the prayers held their promised peace for a day done and a night of rest to come, and ended as they always did with, “The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen.”

As they finished, Sister Lucy sneezed heavily, Dame Perpetua coughed until it seemed she must suffocate, Dame Alys trumpeted into her handkerchief, and Frevisse thought with a private sigh that a quiet night did not seem likely. But two women from the kitchen bustled in with a pitcher of hot spiced wine and cups and such bread as was left over from supper, and Frevisse let go future woe for the present pleasure of that warmth before the cold walk through the cloister to bed.

By rights, when the time came to make their soft-footed, skirt-whispering way along the dark cloister walk, Domina Edith should have led them, and left them at the foot of the dormitory stairs to go with her servant on around the cloister to her own rooms. But the prioress was well aware of how slowly she moved these days, and of how cold the nights were. So tonight she gave her nuns leave to go on ahead of her, smiling gently and bowing her head to their curtsies before they hurried out the door into the darkness between the warming-room door and the lantern left lighted by the dormitory steps.

They were already on the stairs when they heard the rabble of sound from the courtyard. Where there should have been only the night’s thick black silence, there were voices rising in anger. Raggedly, losing their haste, the nuns stopped, turning toward the noise, startled.

“Outlaws!” Sister Amicia whispered. “They’re breaking in! We’ll all be raped!”

This might have started a panic among the nuns, except that Dame Alys likewise broke the rule of silence. “
Hold!”‘
she bellowed, and such was her authority, and volume, that the nuns froze in place.

Sister Fiacre made the sign for church and began to push herself feebly against the nuns in her way. But one of them was Dame Alys, and she was not to be moved. Her large, steadfast presence was a rock against which the tide of frightened women broke uselessly.

Dame Claire raised her hand in signal to Frevisse, who nodded, and the two stepped the other way down the cloister walk toward the gate that led to the courtyard. Dame Alys watched them go with such concentration that the others began to notice the direction of her gaze and, seeing two nuns who were not afraid—who were in fact moving toward the danger—their own courage was restored. Only then did Dame Alys begin to lead them toward the church in a silent, orderly procession.

As Frevisse and Dame Claire reached the outer door, it was clear from the noise that whatever was happening was directed at the older guesthall, not at the cloister door. As Frevisse reached for the latch, the voices rose in a kind of animal triumph. Dame Claire crossed herself. By the sound of it, there were going to be people hurt. Frevisse lifted the latch and went out.

Confused for a moment in the suddenness of torchlight, she paused. There were perhaps a dozen men struggling in a knot outside the old guesthall door. Some were carrying torches whose spasmed light jerked and flared and hid almost as much as it showed as the men wrestled and struck at something in their midst. Only one of them she recognized surely—Roger Naylor, the steward. At the edge of the melee, he was trying to drag men back, yelling at them to stop.

Frevisse grabbed her skirts out of her way and crossed the courtyard at a deft-footed run, adding her voice to Naylor’s. “Stop this! You’ve no right here! Stop it!”

She was unheeded, but as if spurred on by her presence, Naylor shoved in among the men, dragging first one and then another back from their violence until he was wedged well in among them, still shouting for them to stop. Frevisse tried to follow. These were village men; once they knew she and Naylor were there, they would stop. But they were too furious to notice anything but their goal, struggling against each other toward the center where more men were bent down holding and striking at someone under them.

Naylor drove a hard fist sideways into the ribs of a man to his left. The man, clutching a torch, reeled backwards. Frevisse caught at his elbow, shoving it up to keep the fire from her face, and shook him, demanding, “How dare you come here like this?”

The man gaped at her, seeing in a single glance who and what she was, then jerked free and backed off, throwing the torch to the cobbles before he turned and ran blundering off into the darkness.

“Naylor!” she called. “Are you all right?”

Naylor was too busy to reply. He dragged another man back by his tunic neck, pushed him aside, and grabbed for a third. The First man, staggering to balance, went snarling at Naylor’s back. Frevisse stepped forward and kicked hard at his knee. Her swing, shortened by her skirt, staggered him without bringing him down and he swung around on her furiously, fist rising. Frevisse flung up her arm but fright doused his anger before he struck. He pushed back from her, mumbling, “Pardon, lady, pardon.” He turned to run, shouting, “Look, men! The nuns are come!”