by Faris, Fiona
“I have no doubt,” Margaret assured her, laying a hand on Elizabeth’s wrist. “But ‘being able to’ and ‘actually doing’ are two very different things.”
She considered the young girl for a moment, gnawing lightly on her bottom lip.
“I tell you what,” she decided. “I shall leave you in charge on one condition, and that is that you promise to call on Sanderson to enforce your authority should it ever be challenged.” She smiled. “Let him be the hand that cuffs their lugs for you, should they want cuffing!”
Elizabeth did not know how she felt about Margaret’s proposal. It made sense to have her authority backed by the fear of Ewan Sanderson, but she nevertheless had a lingering sense of being patronized. She would much rather rule on her own account. But she recognized that Margaret was right; she had not yet earned the fear or the respect of the other servants, and she never would if she failed in this, her first test. She acknowledged that the servants would use this opportunity to test how much they could get away with. She also acknowledged that almost all of the more senior servants looked down their noses at her, on account of her sordid beginnings.
Also, in common with the other servants, she feared and disliked Ewan Sanderson. He was a devious man, who skulked the shadows of the castle and its estates, appearing just when he was least expected, and, more often than not, just when some mischief was afoot, or some mishap had occurred. And he was merciless in his punishment of misdemeanors, however minor they may have been. He had struck a dairymaid across the face with a strap when she had accidentally upset a pail of milk in the castle’s milking shed. He ruled through fear and an iron fist, and Elizabeth was intimidated by that fist as much as any of the household’s retainers, with the exception, perhaps, of the men-at-arms.
Nevertheless, she was crestfallen and resentful of Margaret’s lack of faith in her. She had a burning desire to better herself, and she had seen this as an opportunity to prove herself worthy of Margaret’s trust. At the same time, she was desperately anxious not to let Margaret down.
“I promise,” Elizabeth said to Margaret, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice.
“You will make a fine lady,” Margaret remarked, drawing a bashful smile of self-satisfaction. “I am determined to find you a fine knight at court who will be worthy of your virtue.”
Elizabeth’s smile and color deepened.
“I’m not sure that I would want to keep table and house to a knight,” she ventured.
“Elizabeth!” Margaret was appalled. “Why ever not? There is no finer calling for a lady than to manage her lord’s household.”
Elizabeth fell silent and pensive for a while.
“They say there will be war again,” she said in a low anxious voice. “In Ireland, perhaps. How can you bear the constant danger Sir Gilbert puts himself in? The victory at Bannockburn was supposed to bring us peace, but there has been no peace. King Robert has taken the war to King Edward’s northern provinces and to Man as well as Ireland, and Sir Gilbert has accompanied him on every campaign. There is even talk of King Robert fulfilling his pledge to the Pope to join a crusade to the Holy Land. When will it ever end?”
Margaret sighed, remembering her mother’s words, which had been uttered, it seemed, a lifetime ago.
“The world is made up of three classes of men,” she explained to Elizabeth. “Those who fight, those who pray, and those who work. The most distinguished are those who fight, the class to which Sir Gilbert, and with God’s grace, your future husband belong.” She turned to Elizabeth. “That is why you are fortunate that you will not be wed to a bonnet laird, to labor on his farm and have his children sired upon you like a broodmare. If that were the case, you might as well have been left as a scullery maid.”
Elizabeth looked down sheepishly at her hands.
“For that I thank you,” she said in a low, penitent voice.
“But the price a lady must pay for her station in life is the ever-present danger that her lord shall be killed in battle. That is the great burden we must carry, and carry bravely, for our husbands’ sakes.”
“It is a terrible responsibility,” Elizabeth remarked. “It is not one which I am sure I can bear.”
“That, too, is part of a lady’s virtue. Perhaps its greatest part. To succor her husband in his constant sojourn in the valley of death, and to bear the suffering of his absence.”
Then Margaret clapped her hands and turned towards the door.
“But this is far too gloomy a subject – almost as gloomy as the day – and I must depart for Perth, where the Court awaits. The time will fly, just you wait and see. Before we know it, our men shall return as conquering heroes, and we must be here for them.”
Elizabeth wondered just how long she would have to wait for her man and was startled when a vision of Duncan Comyn was conjured up by the thought.
Would he turn out to be her lord?
Chapter Four
Slains Castle
Undercroft
Later the same day
Almost as soon as Margaret and her entourage of attendants had left, Elizabeth took herself to the undercroft to check the castle’s provisions, more to indulge her elation at having been left in change as from any real need to take an inventory. She could see from the household accounts, over which Margaret had taken her the evening before, exactly just how many hogsheads of Bordeaux wine and how many firkins of homemade ale there should be in the cellars, and how many sacks of oats and barley. But she wanted to feel the keys in the locks of the cellar doors, the weight of their power and authority on the belt at her waist. Above all, she wanted to savor the feeling of being the mistress of her domain, however temporary that situation was to be.
The undercroft lay adjacent to the kitchen and beneath the Great Hall. As well as storerooms and cellars, the honeycomb of vaulted brick-lined cells and low, narrow passageways contained the armory and brewery. Elizabeth toured the warren of corridors undisturbed; everyone was busy, at labor in the courtyard workshops on the home farms riggs, where the soil was being enriched with basket loads of seaweed fetched up the cliff path from the beach.
The dank, windowless cells and passageway held a sullen chill, and Elizabeth drew her mantle more tightly about her throat against a creeping draught that seeped in from the postern gate that gave access to a small natural harbor through a cleft in the cliffs of the headland on which Slains stood. The only sound that accompanied her was that of water dripping almost painfully slowly in some distant part of the passageway and the shuffle of her own slippered feet on the rough, uneven stone pavement.
She stopped at a low doorway and tried a selection of the keys on the ring on her belt until she found the right one. The lock complained as the key strained to trip the heavy mechanism, before surrendering with an echoing ‘clunk’. The door scraped on the floor as she pushed it open.
The candle she was carrying to light her way guttered and flared in the dank stale air. Its uncertain light cast fantastical shadows over the low ceiling and the bulky objects that hid the walls. A shiver of fear ran down her spine, and her heart fluttered in her chest at the prospect of entering the gloomy chamber, and she shivered again at the thought of what wee beasties might lurk in the shadows between the barrels and beneath the pallets. But she steeled her nerves and stepped inside.
The cell was chock full of big-bellied barrels of wine and ale and plump sacks of grain, stacked on low wooden pallets to keep them off the floor. The hoppy scent of the ale seeped through the wood of the barrels and mixed with the earthy aroma of the hessian grain sacks. Together with the closeness of the room and the stale air, the combination of heady odors made Elizabeth feel faint, and she nearly dropped her candlestick. She placed it carefully on top of one of the ale barrels and steadied herself by leaning her weight against its rim.
“And what are you doing down here?” came a stern voice behind her.
She almost jumped out of her skin, and her senses reeled. She spun around and f
ound Ewan Sanderson standing in the doorway. He was much taller than Elizabeth and had to stoop to see in; his own candle added to the dancing light in the cell.
“Oh, it’s yourself, is it?” he remarked with a sniff. He indicated to the contents of the cellar with a wave of his candlestick. “Well, as ye can see, it’s all still here. Nobody’s made off with the stores in the wee bit hour or so since her ladyship departed. But it’s good to see you’re so vigilant. We can all sleep safe in our beds.”
“Ewan,” Elizabeth said, ignoring his sarcasm. “You gave me such a fright. I didn’t hear you come down.”
Sanderson drew his lips back into a sneer that might have been a smile; it was difficult to tell.
“I like to go about my business quietlike. It keeps the castle on its toes. Nobody kens when or where I might pop up.”
“Well,” Elizabeth said, moving to pass him in the doorway. “I’ll be getting away back up to the hall…”
“What’s your hurry?” Sanderson grinned, placing his hand on the door jamb, barring Elizabeth’s passage. “You’re a lady of leisure now; you can take all the time you like, now your mistress, the Countess, is away.”
Elizabeth stepped back, trying to compose herself and appear calm. Inside, however, her heart and her thoughts were racing. She gave a nervous start as a barrel bumped her in the small of her back.
“Oops! Careful, now.” Sanderson laughed. “We wouldna want ye to come to any harm down here.”
He stepped down into the room and straightened until his bald pate brushed the low brick ceiling. He kept himself between Elizabeth and the door.
“But you’re a fragile wee thing.” He grinned, revealing the brown stumps of his rotten teeth. “Like a wee bird. I wat that your heart is beating away like the heart of a wee frightened bird too.”
He placed his hand on her breast. She sobbed at his touch.
“Aye,” he said, “I can feel it there, drumming away ten to the dozen. But you mauna be feart,” he assured her with a solicitous frown. “I winna hurt ye.”
He continued to massage her breast, pressing it with his rough fingers through the fabric of her gown, rubbing the soft nipple with the heel of his thumb.
“But my, there’s not much to you, is there?” he observed huskily, his breath coming in increasingly short and shallow gasps. “But you’re a bonnie wee thing, a’ the same. You’ve a bonnie face, lass, and a trim wee body. I like a wee bit more meat on my bone. But you’re young yet, a mere slip o’ a girl. Nae doubt ye’ll fill out in time.”
Sanderson’s face was only inches from hers. The flickering light from their candles cast long dancing shadows across his features, transforming them into a gaunt diabolical mask. The leer that parted his lips revealed the irregular stumps of his broken and discolored teeth and Elizabeth recoiled from the putrid stench of his breath. The stink of stale sweat that rose from his robes when he moved threatened to make her gag. She felt the bile rising in her throat; she swallowed it down, trying not to vomit.
“You know.” He breathed out the words. “We can ha’e the run o’ the house while the Countess is at Perth. As the auld wives say: when the cat’s away, the mice may play… I’ve lang had a notion to tup a lass in the maister’s bed.”
He moved his hand to her upper arm and steered her back towards the grain sacks.
Elizabeth was terrified. Shame, fear, revulsion, and anger all moiled in her breast, and he pushed her, gently but firmly, back into the cell. She could not bear his touch and wanted nothing more than to tear herself from his grasp, slip past him, and make her escape back to the hall above. But he was much bigger and more powerful than she, and she knew from experience that resistance would only result in greater violence.
But, at the same time, she did not want him to gain the advantage over her by her surrendering to his intimidation. That, she knew, would be tantamount to her consenting to her abuse, to becoming complicit in it as a victim. She was determined to stand up to him and not allow him to intimidate her into submission. She decided to bear the indignity with courage, to bear the insult with as much dignity as she could muster, to deny his attempt to overcome her by asserting her moral superiority.
She stood her ground, refusing his guidance towards the grain sacks at the back of the cell. She composed her face into an expressionless mask and held her head high. She met his eye with her own and held it there until he could bear her look – her accusation – no longer.
Dropping his eyes to the floor, he let go of her.
“You shouldna be so choosy,” he spat in disappointment. “I ken the stories; I ken your past. I know you’re sullied flesh, that you were ta’en by ilka chiel for the asking o’ it afore the mistress took ye in to try and make o’ ye a lady. But you’re nae mair a lady than my horse is. You’re nothing but a wee whore. And no matter how much the Countess dresses you up and gi’es you airs and graces, you’ll never be anything but a dirty wee whore. And the whole world knows it.”
His voice was low and seething then. Flecks of spit flew from his lips, and Elizabeth felt them land on her cheek and brow. But she did not flinch; her face remained a mask of indifference, as if Ewan Sanderson was of no significance to her whatsoever.
Inside, however, her stomach churned, and her rage boiled. She also feared that he was speaking nothing but the truth. She had her own doubts about her mistress’ ambitions to find her an eligible match, a knight who would make her his lady and bring her a household to manage. Part of her felt that she would always be nothing more than the scullery drudge that she had been when her mistress had first taken her under her protection, the lowest of the low and prey to any scullion of stablehand that had a notion to use her.
“You could dae worse than accept my charity,” Sanderson went on. “I’d be willing to take you on to warm my bed and tickle my balls, though the lave would think me a daft auld fool for my trouble.”
Elizabeth’s countenance remained unmoved. She indicated with a movement that she wanted to pass, and Sanderson reluctantly moved aside. She stepped unhurriedly through the low doorway and into the narrow passage.
“And ye’d be the mistress o’ the steward o’ a rising family,” Sanderson called behind her. “That’s a station that’s not to be sniffed at.”
* * *
Back in the hall, Elizabeth’s legs began to shake, and she feared she was about to fall. Her stomach roiled, and though she felt like her blood had turned to ice in her veins, perspiration broke onto her brow. She sat in on of the high-backed chairs at the high table.
“Are you alright, ma’am?”
A small dumpy serving-woman was looking across the hall at her in alarm. She had an armful of logs, which she was depositing in a basket just inside the inglenook. In her distress, Elizabeth had not noticed her presence when she had come in.
“Yes, Ailis,” she replied with a thin smile. “It’s just the bad air in the cellar. The smell of the hops has fugged my head.”
Ailis tipped the logs into the basket, then wiped her hands down the front of her kirtle.
“Maybe you should go out to the courtyard for a breath of fresh air,” she suggested. “There a braw fresh breeze coming in off the sea; it will blaw thae fumes away.”
Elizabeth drew the cuff of her gown across her forehead and rose unsteadily to her feet.
“Maybe I will do that, Ailis.” She smiled wanly. “I’ll just go up and get my cloak.”
“I could fetch it for you, ma’am,” Ailis offered.
Elizabeth shook her head.
“That’s alright, Ailis; you have your work to do.”
“It would be no bother, ma’am,” Ailis assured her. “I could be up and down those stairs in a trice.”
Elizabeth began to walk to the turret door by the side of the dais.
“Thank you, Ailis, but I’ll manage. You carry on with your chores.”
Elizabeth began to climb the stone spiral staircase to the solar. She was beginning to feel better. Her head had stop
ped spinning, and her legs had regained their strength.
She entered the solar and went straight to her chamber. She picked up her cloak from where it lay on top of the kist at the foot of her bed. But instead of going out again, she sat on the edge of her bed and raised her hands to cover her mouth with her fingertips. Sanderson’s words kept echoing over and over in her head, slowly at first, then faster and faster, like a falconer spinning a lure.
I ken your past.
I know you are sullied flesh.
You’re nae mair a lady than my horse is.
No matter how much the Countess dresses you up and gi’es you airs and graces, you’ll never be anything but a dirty wee whore.
And the whole world knows it.
Was it true? Was that how the world saw her? At heart a ruined maiden, a loose and easy scullery drudge? Was this, after all, her inescapable fate, her decreed place in the order of things? Were her dreams of a better life, her mistress’ grand designs for her, mere vanities?