The Seasons Series; Five Books for the Price of Three

by Domning, Denise

  "Brother Mathias, what goes forward here?" Helewise's voice was soft, her tone filled with naught but feminine distress.

  "Stand back, servant. This insufferable daughter of Eve has dared not only to speak rudely to me, but to lay hands upon my person. She will be chastised."

  "Brother, I cannot oppose you, for if she did as you say, she richly deserves the lesson. However, might it not be better if Master Walter delivered it? Her attack on you has done her sire the greater damage as her behavior maligns both his house and reputation. He'll want to see the lesson truly learned, I think me."

  Johanna stared at the rushes on the floor as she set to bargaining with God. Papa said Helewise could bend any man to her will using naught but her sweet demeanor and soft words. It was this skill, not cooking or cleaning, he urged his sulking, tantrumming daughter to learn. Should Helewise succeed this day, Johanna vowed to do as her father requested.

  Vesper's call began as an alto clanging at St. Stephen's, Stanrudde's northernmost church, then rolled from holy house to holy house, until the abbey's church bell added its thundering tones to the sweet cacophony. The faithful had best hurry; there was naught but a quarter hour before the start of the evening service.

  With an irate breath, Mathias released his grip on Johanna's arm. "I stay my hand solely for her sire's sake," the monk hissed. "Never should I have allowed Master Walter to twist me into this. Tell him she is a terrible child and an even worse student. I'll not return to this task until she kneels before me, begging my forgiveness and displaying the welts he has raised upon her."

  Johanna dared to peek up at Brother Mathias in surprise. He was refusing to teach her? The monk shot her another raging look then leaned down to fetch his parchment from the ruins of the desk. With skin in hand, he strode for the hall's exit. Still stunned, Johanna listened as he clattered into the stone forebuilding, which shielded the house's exterior stairway from the elements. The massive door at the forebuilding's base creaked as it opened.

  "Good evening, Brother Mathias." Arthur, Papa's younger apprentice, called his greeting to his tutor from the yet open workshop window in next door's apothecary shop. Liking the twelve-year-old lad only a little better than he did Johanna, Mathias did not respond.

  Johanna sagged against Helewise in amazement. She was free! Elation swiftly reached the end of its tether, and her spirits crashed back to earth. Papa would be furious when he returned from his tour of the summer fairs. And, Brother Mathias wanted to see welts. A start of fear went through her. She looked up at Helewise. "Will Papa beat me?"

  Now that the crisis was passed, irritation clouded the housekeeper's face. "Well he ought, little mistress. I think it a shame your sire believes himself too big to use a reprimanding hand on any soul. Your strong-headedness dearly demands just such a punishment." She levered Johanna away from her, then aimed an accusing finger at her charge. "Were you my daughter I'd have your hide. What sort of woman will you become if you behave this way? You are headed on the road to destruction, I tell you. Why, every woman in the world knows better than to lay hands on a churchman."

  Outrage returned, tearing through all Johanna's new promises to behave. "But Brother Mathias meant to hurt Puss!"

  Helewise made an impatient sound. "And here's another instance where your father coddled you. He should never have allowed Katel to give you that cat. That creature has twice gotten into the milk this day."

  "Aleric!" Once again, Arthur's voice rose from the street-side window a storey below them and drifted through the open window.

  "What are you doing here, and who is that in your arms?" the apprentice shouted.

  "Arthur, come you and help me with the master's horse," Papa's most important servant called to the apprentice, his deep voice ringing in the quieting air.

  Helewise gasped, all color draining from her face. Johanna's heart lurched. Helewise said the road was dangerous for any man, but all the more so for a rich one. She made Johanna pray three times a day for her sire while Papa was journeying.

  Johanna leapt for the hall's exit, her plaits flying. Helewise was close on her heels. Dashing into the forebuilding, she careened down the steps, her path lit by what bit of the dying day's light streamed in through the two tiny windows at the forebuilding's western roof line. At the base of the building, she dodged around the half-opened door, turning away from Market Lane as she headed back behind the house.

  Their private courtyard was nothing more than the space caught between the house, outbuildings, and the wall that surrounded Herebert the Ropemaker's enclave. Just now, Aleric stood at its center, his back to her. Papa's big white horse snorted and huffed next to him. Sweat stained the steed's flanks, while the bright saddle trappings were fouled. As chubby Arthur claimed the horse's reins, Aleric turned.

  Johanna stopped short. In the agent's arms lay a lad, dried blood and dark purpling covering every bit of his visible skin. The breeze lifted, flowing from Aleric to her. Johanna's stomach twisted. The lad smelled worse than the beggars who gathered around the priory.

  "Aleric, what of the master?" Helewise cried out, nearly stumbling over Johanna in her haste to reach her brother.

  "Worrier," Aleric chided with a brief smile. "I'd have said were aught wrong. I am but returning with Master Walter's newest servant."

  Helewise laid a gentle hand on the boy's brow "Holy Mother of God, what happened to him?"

  "He was beaten by his sire as that man attempted to drive him from their home." There was deep affront in Aleric's low tones.

  Johanna took a step back, her heart aching. This was what Brother Mathias wished Papa would do to her. She took another backward step, wanting only to escape looking on what might be her own fate.

  Aleric's gaze caught hers. "Nay, you cannot leave, little mistress. You must tell me what I'm to do with the lad. Your father has made the healing of him your task."

  "Mine?" she squeaked in surprise. She knew nothing of healing. That was Helewise job.

  "Aye. He says if you do well in it, he'll delay your reading lessons, honoring instead your request to manage his house."

  She stared at the tall servant, shock giving way to relief, then gratitude to God. The Almighty had done better than answer her prayer. He had saved her. Squaring her shoulders, Johanna thrust out her chin and strode to Aleric's side. The tall man made an odd choking sound, but Johanna ignored him to squinch her eyes just as Helewise did when she looked at the sick. Oh, but this boy was so hurt. She was only eight. What if she couldn't heal him?

  Chewing her lower lip, Johanna looked up at Helewise. The housekeeper's brows rose, inviting her charge to spill a treatment plan. Johanna racked her brain, seeking to remember what Helewise did for those ailing folk who crossed their threshold.

  "He needs to be in the kitchen, lying on a pallet before the hearth where it's warm?" This was a fairly safe wager as the kitchen's hearth was where Helewise always laid the sick.

  A touch of a smile appeared at the corners of the housekeeper's mouth. "And, what else?"

  "His clothing should be removed, and the filth washed from his wounds?" That's what Helewise had done for the beggar who'd dropped at their doorstep last winter. Glancing at the years-old burn mark on the back of her hand, she added, "Then we must put salves on his bruises and cuts?"

  "Aye, that's a well-thought plan, little mistress," Helewise said. "Who will you have me send to fetch a pallet from the hall?"

  "Arthur?" Johanna asked.

  Helewise's head bobbed once in approval, and she called the command into the stable. At Arthur's positive response, the housekeeper turned to her brother. "Aye then, our little mistress says we're for the kitchen, Aleric."

  Johanna breathed the worry from her lungs as she turned to run ahead of them to the wooden cooking shed. In Helewise's reaction was the offer of aid. The housekeeper would watch that no foot was put wrong, but say nothing to Papa about how she'd helped. Freedom from Brother Mathias was within reach.

  Set in the small a
rea between the rear wall of the house, the stable, and the apothecary shop's back yard, her father's kitchen was hexagonal in shape. Johanna blinked as she stepped inside, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness within the room. Smoke from the ever-burning fire on the kitchen's central hearth flowed upward, drawn out through a shielded vent at the apex of the shed's thatched roof. A great pot, its bottom blackened by constant use, hung over the flames on its ratcheted chain. Thick bunches of herbs dangled from the crisscrossing rafters overhead, while stoppered containers of hardened leather, some so big she could barely put her arms around them, stood on shelf and floor. Wedged between casks of oil and wine were sacks of shelled almonds, while the morrow's fish swam hopelessly in a broad, lined barrel at the far wall.

  At his worktable with knife in hand, Old Philip looked up from the cubes he was making of yesterday's bread. Small and wiry, the cook's hair lay flat against his skull beneath his cap, his skin slick with a day's worth of sweat. "And who do you seek to heal at my hearth this day?" he called to Helewise as she and Aleric followed Johanna into the room.

  "Not Helewise," Johanna responded before the housekeeper could speak, "me. Papa sent me a lad to heal." With her words came a strange sense of ownership. Papa had given this lad to her, trusting she would care for him as she ought.

  "Is that so?" Philip replied, his grizzled brows lifting in tune to his question.

  Philip's son, Tom the Lackwit, looked up from scouring the remains of lamb stew from a tureen. Although only a little younger than Katel, Tom's round face was yet childlike. His bottom lip hung slack as he watched Aleric bear the lad into the room. "Hurt," he said after a moment.

  "Aye, Tom," Johanna replied. "I'll be needing one of your cleaning cloths and hot water to wash him."

  Tom hesitated, pondering this unusual command coming from an even more unusual source, then nodded and trundled past the hearth to do her bidding. Pleasure shot through Johanna. Now, this was how life should be, she the mistress, while others did as she commanded.

  When the makeshift bed was ready, Tom set the basin at its head, and Aleric lowered the unconscious boy to the pallet. The lad freed a muffled cry then lay still. Kneeling at his side, Johanna began to wrestle his filthy, bloodstained tunic from him. It caught on his arms and would not move. The lad moaned as her efforts made his head joggle against his hard bed.

  Helewise knelt beside her to cup the boy's skull in her hand. "Shall I bathe him for you?" she asked quietly as she lifted Johanna's patient a little so his tunic could be eased over his head.

  "Nay," Johanna said, grunting against the effort it took to remove clothing from an unresponsive body. "Papa has made this boy mine, and I must do for him."

  "Why, Johanna of Stanrudde, you surprise me. Even as I watch, the babe in you is being replaced by a sober woman."

  The pride in Helewise's voice made Johanna's heart glow. Her lips tried to curve into a smile, but she kept her mouth tight in an expression appropriate to the mistress of the house. Aye, she would show Papa she was of more use to him as a housewife than a scholar.

  Stanrudde

  Late May, 1173

  There was a fire burning behind Rob. Although the hiss and crackle was comforting, he lay too close. Even nude with but a single blanket atop him, sweat trickled down his back. If he moved, he'd lose the final tendrils of the dream he'd been having about Mama and Blacklea.

  Something brushed against his face. Rob clenched his eyes shut, drawing a breath to keep from reacting to the tickle of it. The air around him smelled of day-old fish. There was an awful lump covered with prickly fabric beneath his cheek. Grimacing in discomfort, he shifted his head until it no longer troubled him.

  Again, that something brushed his face. Raising a hand, he batted at it. With that, the ragged ends of his dream slithered into some hidden recess of his mind. Sighing in disappointment, Rob opened his eyes.

  Although the fire behind him barely managed to keep night at bay, the shimmering golden light was strong enough to show him a thick table, legs like small tree trunks, just a few feet beyond his reach. From where he lay, he couldn't see the table's surface, but the floor beneath it was bare earth, long since beaten into rock hardness. Beyond the table, dancing shadows played along the wall, curling around large casks and finding glittering beads of sweat on the waxen surface of the great wheel of cheese. On the wall above these items hung six long knives, four rasps, three large ladles, and five sieves, all of them gleaming in the low light.

  Rob frowned. Wherever he was, it wasn't the kitchen at Blacklea Manor house where all the village women baked their bread. John the cook had only two long knives, two ladles, one rasp, and three sieves.

  In dreadful realization, Rob closed his eyes. This was Master Walter's kitchen. Despair followed fear. His world was destroyed. No longer could he proudly call himself Robert the Counter, heir to Ralph AtteGreen, the richest man and only freeholder in all of Blacklea. Instead, he was disowned by his sire and sold like a slave to a merchant from someplace called Stanrudde.

  A touch of outrage joined his despair. What if Master Walter forever after called him Robert the Bastard, instead of Robert, son of Ralph? It was neither right nor fair that he should be called so when he was no bastard.

  "I know you are awake." It was a girl's voice. "Look at me, Robert of Blacklea!"

  Rob clenched his eyes even more tightly shut. Was it not bad enough he'd lost everything important to him in life? Now some lass thought she could tell him what to do. She lifted his blanket, allowing cooler air to enter beneath it. With a gasp of shock, Rob shifted on the mattress to glare up at his tormentor.

  The girl sat on a stool beside him. Her reddish gold hair was tangled and loose. Bare wisps of that same golden-red color rose to peaks above her blue eyes and freckles were strewn like golden seeds across her face. Her gowns were blue trimmed with a band of glittering stones, but they were rumpled as if she'd slept in them. In the same hand that she had clenched around his blanket's edge she held a long straw.

  Anger flared into being at this indignity. "Drop my blanket," he croaked.

  A superior smile blossomed on her face, as if daring him to make her do so. He reached up to take the blanket from her, but his arm trembled so badly, he couldn't jerk it from her grasp. It was she who released it to him, and she knew it.

  "Don't do that again," he warned in an effort to save some shred of pride, once again gathering the woolen sheet around him.

  His gaze lowered to the kitten writhing in the crook of her elbow. Mama disapproved of any attempt to hold a cat, especially scolding when he let it dangle so. Rob leapt on the girl's misdeed. "You're not sup-posed to hold a cat that way. Don't you know anything?"

  Her eyes widened at his insult, then her jaw firmed and thrust ever so slightly forward. A quirk of appreciation shot through Rob. She wasn't one of those weak-willed lasses, but the other sort, the kind that punched first and cried after.

  "Puss is mine, and I may hold him any way I like. I can do anything I like, because I am Johanna, daughter of Walter le Espicer," she announced in a grand and lofty voice. "You are my servant and cannot tell me what to do."

  Her words tore through his already aching self-image. "I'm no girl's servant! Master Walter hired me as his scullery lad," he cried, then struck out again at her. "Once I have earned the value of the ten coins he gave my papa, I will be a free man, unlike you, who will always be a girl."

  That tweaked Johanna the spice merchant's daughter right prettily. She dropped Puss to the floor and set tight fists on her hips.

  As the kitten skittered away to chase after mice and shadows, Master Walter's daughter leaned toward him, her skin reddening until her freckles stood out as pale, cool spots. "I am the mistress here! You are not being respectful. Everyone must be respectful of me."

  Merchant's daughter or no, she was younger than he. No babe in arms was going to lord over him. "Respectful! Hah!" He paused a beat then threw out the comment that always destroyed the village la
sses. "You are so nasty, I think no man will want to marry you."

  This lass only lifted her chin, her lips again curving into that superior smile. "I will so wed. I am already betrothed to Katel."

  Rob shrugged as if unaffected by her claim, all the while hiding his surprise. She was only a little girl. How could she know whom she would marry? In Blacklea no one thought of wedding until they were ready to start their own families. Stanrudde was, indeed, a strange place. Even more disturbing was the realization that her retort left him both weaponless and defenseless against her. Rob sorted desperately through his muddled thoughts for some way to put her in her place. When he'd found it, he smiled and raised a haughty brow.

  "I am surprised he wants you. You are ugly, and your nose is too big."

  Hurt far deeper than he'd intended flashed across her face. She set a hand atop the bridge of her nose, a much smaller version of the merchant's great, arching beak, as if to shield it from his eyes. "Papa says I have a nose of authority." Her voice was low and uncertain as if she'd been teased about this many times.

  Regret destroyed Rob's moment of triumph. He'd only meant to bludgeon her into submission, not draw her heart's blood. He shrugged then offered an olive branch. "It's not that big and, mayhap, I do remember you gave me water when I ailed."

  Puss meowed, the frightened sound coming from the nearby tabletop. With a frantic cry, Johanna leapt from her stool. Rob lifted himself up on his elbows until he could see. The kitten dangled over the edge of a large bowl on the tabletop. Before Johanna could reach it, the bowl rolled over the table's edge, crockery shattering around the cat.

  With a wordless cry of horror, the master's daughter snatched up the dripping creature and turned on Rob. Her expression twisted in fear. "That was curded cheese for the morrow. If Philip learns Puss did this, he'll tell Papa, and Papa will take Puss from me. You must say you did this," she demanded.