Where the Stones Sing (3 page)

‘It’s a fine house, and I love the fact that it is so near the river and is a little bit away from the noise and dirt of the city.’

Beyond St James Gate there were no more rows of houses. It was almost like the countryside; here there were fields and scattered houses, and views through fruit and nut trees down to the river. Kai fell in love with Dame Maria’s house as soon as she saw it. It was a tall stone house with a neatly thatched roof. There was a grey wall around it, but this was broken by an archway. Dame Maria led Kai under the
archway
and in through the front door, which opened into a hall. The walls were a sparkling white and the high ceiling and west-facing windows made it seem full of light.
Everything
was clean, everything was orderly. At one end was a large fireplace with a fire burning brightly in it. Along the mantelpiece was a row of polished pewter and bright
pottery
plates. The room was simply furnished with a long table and benches and two large chairs by the fireplace, a cabinet gaily carved and painted with birds and flowers and one or
two chests placed under the windows. The wood shone, the pewter glinted in the firelight and the place smelled of fresh lavender and rosemary. A door led to the kitchen quarters, equally bright and orderly, and a stairway led upwards to the chambers. These too were bright, the beds and chests hung with finely sewn tapestries. Kai could not resist going over to examine one, which showed a stag hunt in a forest. Dame Maria came and stood behind her, touching the tapestry with one gentle finger.

‘I made that for Philip when I was waiting for his birth. He loved it very much, and used to ask me to make up stories about it.’

She sighed and then went to one of the chests, where she began to pull out some clothes.

‘These are Philip’s. He was a little taller than you but you will grow into them soon enough. The monks will give you a surplice to wear for when you are singing in the church, but these will do for other times. No doubt they will give you a cloak as well, but here, take this in case you need extra warmth.’ She picked up a cloak. ‘See, this is where Philip tore it, trying to climb up one of the walls in the city. He was a wild child.’

‘How did Philip die?’ The question was out of Kai’s mouth before she realised what she had asked. There was silence in the room and Kai felt dreadful. She wanted to know about the boy whose death had made such a change in her life, but
now Dame Maria looked so sad that she felt really bad for her. She wanted to go over to Dame Maria, to hug her, try to make her feel better, but she couldn’t do that. It would not be something a boy would do and it might give away her secret.

Dame Maria smiled sadly and went to the northern window of the room.

‘Come and see. You see the garden and the gate that leads down to the river?’

Kai looked out and saw a garden filled with late summer colour. The apples and pears were beginning to ripen into gold and russet among the green leaves of the trees. There were beds of bright flowers and scented herbs and a stone wall with a gate in it. She could see over the wall to where the river wound its way towards the sea. There was a small rowing boat moored at its edge.

‘He was playing, of course, messing about on the water in his boat. But the boat overturned and he was trapped beneath it. He should not have been out alone. I always told him he should not go out on the water by himself. But that day I was not there to watch. By Jesu, I will never forgive myself for that …’

‘And you have no other children?’

‘No, Philip was an only child. He was all I needed. There are those who told me I should have married again to give him a father and to have other children. But no one could
replace my Geoffrey. Or my Philip, now. Oh Kai, if you could have seen him. Or heard his voice; his voice was like gold. I have not even a picture to remember how he looked. It is only sometimes, when I hear the choir sing, that I think that I can hear him too … which of course is just my mind
playing
tricks. But, now, enough of that. What about you, child? Have you been travelling with your father ever since you were born?’

‘As far back as I can remember. My mother died when I was very little so I don’t remember her at all.

Kai was surprised to find that her voice sounded shaky. She was so used to not having a mother that she rarely thought about it. But to have a mother like Dame Maria must have been lovely … She fingered the piece of pink coral on the silver chain, the only thing she had to remember her own mother by. She kept it well hidden under her clothes. It was her most precious possession. Her father had told her that mother had worn it all the time. He had also told her that coral had special powers, and could protect her from disease and harm.

She saw Dame Maria watching her and moved her hand away from her coral. She had to pull herself together. She couldn’t allow herself to cry like a girl.

‘We have travelled all over the place. Not just in Ireland but across to England and even once to France. My father cannot stay still.’

‘You have been to France! You must tell me all about it. You have travelled far more than I ever have. The furthest I have been outside Dublin is Tallaght. Or was it that
pilgrimage
I went on to Swords? But it must be hard to be out, travelling the roads all the time. And have you no other family, no grandparents or aunts or uncles who might look after you so you would not have to live so rough a life?’

Kai shook her head. ‘No, there is just the three of us. I think my father quarrelled with his family, but he never speaks about it. It’s not so bad really; every day is different. Exciting.’

Even to her own ears, her voice sounded doubtful. Dame Maria said briskly, ‘There’s nothing too exciting about
singing
for alms in the shadow of a cold wall with the night coming on. However, I see you are a loyal child, which is all to the good. Do you want to keep your own clothes? You must get into these things here and I’ll bundle the rest up for us to carry up to the priory. Listen, the bells of Christ Church are ringing – we must not be late. But first, go down to the kitchen and get yourself clean. I told Damaris to leave out soap and hot water in front of the fire. We must hurry back.’

Kai felt herself shaking slightly. She hoped against hope that she would be left alone while she washed and changed. However, she was pleased to hear that her voice was quite steady when she asked:

‘Can we have a look at the garden before we go back?’

‘Yes, if we don’t delay too long. Do you like gardens?’

Kai nodded. There was something so nice about the idea of having one’s own garden, of planting things and
actually
being there long enough to see them come up out of the soil. Dame Maria led her down to the kitchen and, to Kai’s great relief, left her alone. To make sure she wouldn’t be interrupted, Kai dragged two heavy stools in front of the door and washed and changed as quickly as she could. Then she joined Dame Maria where she was gathering herbs
outside
. This garden is full of music, thought Kai. There was the sound of the water beyond the wall, and birdsong and the warm buzzing of bees. Dame Maria showed her the
vegetable
plot, with its last crops of beans and peas and the
marrows
and the onions. Then they visited the pear and apple trees that already had tiny fruits hiding in the leaves, the fruit bushes and the herb garden where Dame Maria grew
healing
plants for the medicines she made. They gathered some honey from the hives that were lined against the western wall, and Dame Maria told her that she could take one of the combs back to the priory for the monks.

On the way back into the house, she showed Kai the
stillroom
with its long table and shelves with vials and retorts, and herbs hanging everywhere. Here Dame Maria dried and distilled roses and lavender and many other plants. She used the mixes to make everything from polish to potions for those who were sick. The room smelled wonderful.

Kai looked around her, thinking how lovely it would be to spend time in Dame Maria’s house, helping in the garden and the kitchen and the stillroom, and learning how to make beautiful things like the tapestry upstairs. But she could say nothing about this − no boy would ask to learn how to sew tapestries! She wondered how she was going to cope with being a boy all the time. Although she had always acted as a boy while out on the streets singing, up to now she had been able to relax and be as girlish as she liked when she was alone with her father and her brother. Now she couldn’t do that. Now she would have to watch herself every minute of every day. She would have to fight her corner and shout with the best of them. And her fellow choirboys
were
probably going to fight with her, if today’s adventure was anything to go by. Although she had a strange feeling that during their last scuffle, Jack had got in a kick at Roland, rather than actually doing her or Edward very much harm.

The Priory of Holy Trinity

y the time they got back to Christ Church Kai was very tired. Dame Maria left her at the gate of the priory and she was led by the gate-keeper to the refectory, where Brother Albert introduced her to the brothers. All the brothers had different work within the priory – some of them looking after the
kitchens
and the cellar, some riding out to collect the rents from the priory’s farms in Dublin and beyond, some keeping the accounts. There were too many of the brothers for her to take in all their names at once, but one or two faces stayed in her head: Brother Stephen because he was so tall and thin and pale and had such a gentle smile, and Brother Malcolm because he was very handsome and seemed to be looking down his nose at her. The prior, Robert, was a tall, stout man, with a high colour and a hooked nose. He looked energetic and efficient, but he smiled at her kindly.

‘Welcome, Kai Breakwater. I hope you will be happy here and learn to praise God well with the holy gift that the Lord has given you. And I see that you have come bearing a gift of sweetness from our benefactress, Dame Maria. Her honey is the best in Dublin. You have done good work today, Brother Albert. Dame Maria has made a generous bequest and it will fill my heart with joy to hear singing in the Chapel of the White Mary of Dublin every day.’

‘Kai’s voice is wonderful. He could become the best singer in our little choir.’ Brother Albert said eagerly, and while Kai felt rather odd to have herself discussed as if she was not there, she could not help but be pleased. Now the prior raised his eyebrows and asked, ‘Is his voice as sweet as Roland’s?’

‘Sweeter, I think. As sweet as the honey he has brought us from Dame Maria.’

Jack poked Tom and whispered, ‘And let’s hope his nature is sweeter than Roland’s too.’

Unfortunately, the prior overheard him.

‘Jack, I beg of you, control yourself. We will not have insults made to our brothers in the Lord.’ But even the prior could not resist a smile, as if he knew that Jack’s comment about Roland’s lack of sweetness was a fair one.

Kai was soon to discover how very sour Roland could be. He had hated the very idea that Kai, a beggar child, was being allowed into the priory. The fact that this new choir member was competition for his place as the soloist of the choir only made him angrier. He frowned when, after the
meal had been finished, Brother Albert told the boys to take Kai to their dormitory. ‘We are going to sing in the church, but you children do not have to attend this particular office.’

Brother Albert saw Kai looking puzzled, and continued:

‘The services are called offices. We pray and sing at
regular
stages during the day and night. You and the other boys are here to sing the special afternoon service in memory of Philip. You will do that every day, but you will also attend some of the other services and sing with us. And of course you will sing with us on Sunday at High Mass. But you look weary, child. It has been a long day for you. Go along now; it’s time you were all in bed.’

The children’s rooms were near the Great Gate, beside the guest chambers and the prior’s quarters. The monks slept in a dormitory over the chapter house and kitchen, to the east of the cloister. Jack chattered non-stop as they made their way through the cloister, the central square garden which the priory buildings were built around.

‘We’ll show you the rest of the priory tomorrow, the chapter house and the scriptorium and the kitchens. And the piggery and the stables. And Hell, of course.’

‘Hell?’ said Kai.

‘Pay him no heed,’ said Tom. ‘It’s just the name of the little dark passageway that leads from the priory to Fishamble Street.’

‘Is it called Hell because it’s so dark?’

Jack crossed his eyes ferociously.

‘That and because there is a demon lives there. The Dolocher. He appears in the shape of a giant black boar with bristles and HUGE tusks.’ Tom said, ‘Oh give over, Jack. He is just trying to frighten you, Kai. Jack loves telling his stories, but don’t pay any heed to them … And here we are.’

The children entered a long white room, almost as narrow as a passageway. Along one wall there were windows looking out over the cloister. For a horrible moment Kai thought that they all had to sleep together in the same room. Then she realised that one side of the room was divided into
separate
cells, each with a tiny arched window above the bed. Each boy had a separate little cell. The partitions were made of lime-washed white wood, which meant that the children could still talk to each other when they were in bed. Kai was soon to learn that Jack loved to keep everyone awake and shivering with stories of witches and goblins, of fairy
creatures
like the puca and the banshee, of ghosts and other
creatures
of the night. But now they all went into Kai’s cubicle.

Roland, who had come along with them with a sulky look on his face, pulled at the cloak Dame Maria had given Kai and spoke for the first time, ‘You must have stolen this from somewhere – it’s far too good for you. I am going to confiscate it.’

Kai felt a rush of fear. At the best of times she hated to be
pulled at, and now, so tired that she was close to tears, the last thing she wanted was another tussle, a tussle in which her companions might discover that she was not a boy after all. She pulled the cloak closer around her.

‘Leave it be! she said. ‘Dame Maria gave it to me!’

‘Leave it be!’ Roland mimicked her in a high-pitched voice. ‘Oh, aren’t we the high and mighty one, with our friends like Dame Maria! But I don’t believe she gave it to you! You stole it like the thieving brat you are!’

They were now both pulling at the cloak, and Kai was shaking, terrified that it would tear, or worse, that her secret might come out.

But Jack pulled Roland back and said, ‘No, Kai is telling the truth. I know that cloak – it belonged to Philip. Look, there’s the tear he made that time we had the fight with the choirboys from St Patrick’s and we had to escape over the archbishop’s wall.’

‘Did you know Philip?’ Kai asked.

Jack nodded. ‘He was one of my best friends. It was
horrible
when he died. Old Jenny Greenteeth got him in the end.’

‘Jenny Greenteeth?’

‘The witch that lives in the water. She pulls people to their death when they go on the Liffey.’ Jack’s voice had changed to deep sepulchral tones. ‘You can always tell that she’s around, lying in wait, when you see the green
duckweed
that grows where she is sleeping. Tom knows all about
her.’ Jack shivered dramatically and Tom nodded.

‘She’s a dreadful creature. All the millers tell stories of her. I have never seen her but my father’s uncle has, and he says he was never so frightened in his life.’

Kai was not sure she believed in Jenny Greenteeth, but when she saw that Roland had gone very pale she realised that he did.

Now Tom put his hand on Roland’s arm.

‘That enough, Roland,’ he said. ‘Leave the cloak alone. You are just making trouble and you know you are in Brother Albert’s bad books already for teasing Quincunx.’

‘Who’s Quincunx?’ asked Kai.

‘The kitchen cat. The terror of the kitchen mice. Do you like cats and dogs?’

Kai, who had been chased by large numbers of farm dogs, guard dogs and even the occasional hunting dog, considered for a moment.

‘I am sure I like cats,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure about dogs.’

Roland cut in, ‘Scared of them, are you? You’re worse than a girl!’

‘I’m not scared of them,’ said Kai, wondering if she would need to mention this small lie in confession. ‘I just don’t especially like them.’

‘You will have to come and visit our mill out at
Kilmainham
,’ said Tom. ‘We have a little farm there too. We have loads of puppies at the moment and I know you will like
them
. We have kittens as well. We nearly always have kittens in one or other of the barns.’

Kai was puzzled. ‘If you have a home of your own, why are you here?’ she asked.

‘It’s a great honour to be brought to sing in the cathedral,’ said Tom, in a resigned voice. ‘And anyway the mill is going to be left to my older brother, so they have to find something to do with me. I might become a monk, though I’m not sure I’d like it. Jack here is an orphan, so it’s almost certain you will become one of the monks, isn’t it?’

Jack shrugged. ‘I don’t think I would make a very good monk. It’s so quiet here! What I would really like to do is become a sailor or a fisherman and spend my life out on the sea. Or maybe work with horses. I love horses. I’d ride any horse, even the puca. Last April I went out with the seneschal when he rode out to collect the rents from the farm at
Glasnevin
– it was the best day! And I love singing too, of course. I really can’t really decide which is my favourite thing of all.’

Kai decided she would make an effort with Roland, who had finally let go of her cloak but was still standing in the cubicle swinging from foot to foot with a sour look on his face. She had a feeling he was always the one left out in this group. She had so often been the one left out that she hated seeing it being done to anyone else.

‘Is singing your favourite thing?’ she asked him. Roland sneered at her.

‘No it’s not. I don’t even like it, even though I
am
the best singer in Dublin. But then I am the best at
anything
I do. It’s a pity nobody here realises that. I have been stuck here in this place because my father has had to go away on the king’s business. I shouldn’t be mixing with rabble like you at all. And as soon as my father gets back to Dublin he will take me away from here. He’s going to be given a really important job, perhaps even be put in charge of the king’s government in Ireland. Then you can be sure I will have nothing to do with you − except perhaps ask my father to put every one of you in the pillory!’

‘Let’s hope he
is
made Justiciar,’ Jack said. ‘Then maybe you will go off and live in the castle and not be around to boast and cheat and sneak any more.’

‘And that would indeed make us
all
very happy,’ said Tom. Kai resisted the temptation to nod in agreement. So much for making an effort, she thought. There really didn’t seem to be much point with Roland.

It was strange to sleep in her little bed, knowing that her father and her brother were not close by. Indeed, she had no idea where her father was, though she thought it likely he was in Ymna’s. Ymna, though long settled in Dublin, was related to the fairground people, the wanderers like the Breakwaters who lived on their wits and called nowhere home. Kai lay awake for a long time, wondering if at last she
could
call somewhere home. But for how long? How long
was this new deception going to work? She had a feeling that Roland already suspected something; she had noticed him watching her, staring at her during dinner. It was going be hard enough to live a lie without someone spying on her all the time. She tried to think of how she needed to be careful. For certain, tomorrow she had to be awake before the boys, to be up and dressed and washed. She just hoped she would be able to wake up in time. She would listen for the bells giving the number of the hours. She tossed restlessly. It was lonely, in the dark, with nobody she could talk to for comfort. But then there was a low
Brrrr
and something soft and warm landed on her chest. Opening her eyes, she could just make out a white furry face and a pair of glowing green eyes.