Matilda Bone

by Karen Cushman

  Matilda was speechless with horror, but Leech seemed pleased and Grizzl content.

  "Good work," said Leech, "my beauties, my hungry swarm. Did that make your tiny bellies warm?" He caressed each leech as he dropped it back into the leather pouch. He took the small coin Grizzl offered, frowned at it and then shrugged, put his bleeding bowl back on his head, and bowed to Matilda. "I trust you can find your way back without me leading? I must be about my bleeding." Matilda assured him she could, and he left.

  She warmed her hands at the ruins of the tiny fire, as Peg had showed her, before rubbing Grizzl's joints with liniment. At first Matilda felt timid about putting her hands to Grizzl's arms and shoulders, but soon she settled into the work, and the rhythm soothed her as well as Grizzl.

  "I knew Peg had someone to help her," Grizzl said as she gave Matilda a farthing in payment, "but I didn't know she would be so pretty."

  "Father Leufredus always called it a pity if all one had to be proud of was being pretty." Matilda shook her head violently. Obviously Horanswith Leech's way of speaking had corrupted her mind. She quickly wiped her hands on her skirt, nodded farewell, and left Grizzl's house.

  Matilda walked slowly back along the river. Although the water smelled offish and garbage, a cold but fresh wind that blew from the meadows across the river brought the scent of growing things.

  Along the riverbank the proprietors of cook shops tempted with all manner of fine foods: "Bread with butter, ale and wine, ribs of beef both fat and fine." She could have roast snipe for a penny, or ten roast finches, or a leg of rabbit, but did not have a penny, only the farthing that really belonged to Peg. Still, smells were free, so she went from stall to stall enjoying the hot and pungent odors.

  Finally she turned back toward the center of town. The high walls of great houses, enormous gray steeples, and stone towers glittered against the sky. Next to them were weedy patches of ground and hovels no better than Grizzl's tiny cottage. Matilda knew the poor must be poor by God's will, but how did He decide, she wondered, who would live in a great house and who in a cottage? It would be simpler if the good were rich and the evil doomed to poverty, but she knew it was not that easy.

  Stopping before one cottage in such ruin that it appeared to stand only through sheer stubbornness, she thought, I could have landed somewhere even more wretched than Peg's shop. I could live here and be but laundress's helper or bloodletter's girl or apprentice plucker of chickens. Lost in thought as she was, Matilda was not surprised to discover that she had also lost her way. She did not mind. The wandering gave her time useful for thinking.

  "Thank Saint Gobnet you are back," said Peg when Matilda returned and handed her Grizzl's farthing. "Else I would have had to grow another hand. Andrew Potter here has broken his wrist. Mix this plaster for a splint."

  Matilda took the pot and a wooden ladle and began to mix the plaster. Perhaps, she thought as she stirred, she should be somewhat grateful and try harder to please Mistress Peg so she would not be sent somewhere worse, somewhere where Father Leufredus would never find her. Somewhere like the dungeon where Saint Agnes was confined before being led naked through the streets of—

  "Matilda!" shouted Peg, grabbing the pot from the girl. "You have let the plaster dry! It is now as useless as you are. What have you been about?"

  "I was remembering Saint—"

  "Forget your saints for a moment! You must learn to attend to what and where you are right now, or you are no use to me. Heaven will wait for you." She began to pound and pry the dry plaster to free it from the pot. "See what has happened? Did you not think?"

  "I did not know it would grow so stiff," Matilda said in a voice as stiff as the plaster.

  "Think about what you are doing. And if you do not know, ask. I know this work is strange to you. Do you not have questions?"

  Matilda shook her head.

  "Not one? Not why or how or what will happen if?"

  "Father Leufredus said curiosity revealed an unquiet mind. He preferred I just listen and obey."

  "Well, I thank God and His holy mother every day that I am not Father Leufredus. Me you may ask if you want to learn."

  Matilda was not sure she wanted to learn and not at all thankful that Peg was not Father Leufredus. She said only, "I will do as you bid me."

  As days passed, Matilda busied herself boiling, bandaging, and bonesetting. She grew better at paying attention, mixing plasters, wrapping limbs, and restraining struggling patients. She assisted in setting broken wrists, sprained ankles, and wrenched necks. She pounded comfrey into juicy pulp, drained it through linen cloth, and packed it across straightened bones to dry and stiffen. As the winter went on, they did brisk business in broken hands and fractured jaws, for ale was cheap and tempers short. Women lifted loads far too heavy and wrenched backs, knees, and necks. Men slipped on the ice and needed to have their ribs bandaged.

  Soon enough it seemed to Matilda that her whole world had become sore knees, cracked ribs, stiffened elbows, and arthritic joints in the jaw, the shoulder, and the toes. Sometimes the pounding on the wooden door signaled fish or bread peddlers hawking their wares house to house, or street sellers with pepper and garlic, but most often it was someone needing Peg's help.

  Peg offered Matilda companionship, sausages, and an occasional bout of draughts, but the girl refused it all and felt as alone as the moon. She did not belong here. She wished to devote herself to holy words and higher things. What was such a one doing on Blood and Bone Alley? Dear Saint Ursula, she prayed, martyred with your eleven thousand companions, have pity on me who am all alone. Saint Ursula answered, Eleven thousand companions can be very trying at times. How I wished to be alone now and then.

  Still, oh, how Matilda longed for Father Leufredus, for a life that did not plague her with questions and uncertainty. But Father Leufredus did not return. And still the winter went on.

  Chapter Seven: Finding Another Matilda

  "Here," said Peg to Matilda, handing her five pennies. "This is for the butcher and the baker. And these," she said, adding another two to the pile in Matilda's hand, "are for you. You have earned them."

  Matilda stared at the coins in her hand. She'd earned them. Never before had she owned any money, for at the manor she was given what she needed. The coins appeared to shine in the dimness of the room. Matilda bobbed her head in thanks to Peg and hurried back to the buttery. There was a small sky-blue jug on the lowest shelf. She dropped her two pennies into the jug, satisfied at their clink and clank. She had earned them! She turned and ran off to the market.

  It was a rare fair day. The pale sun shone feebly in the blue sky. Peg's instructions still sounded in Matilda's ears: "Get a bit of bacon, three eggs (pay no more than a ha'penny for them), beef bones with some meat still on them and not all fat, a cabbage (green and firm with no worms), the freshest bread the thieving baker has, and a penny's worth of tallow candles." She chose to walk a new way and get lost, for she had thinking to do. Nearly two months had passed, and Father Leufredus had neither returned from London nor sent for her. What did that mean?

  Turning an unfamiliar corner, she beheld a magnificent house, the finest she had seen but for the goldsmiths' guild hall and the Lord Mayor's residence. Tall wooden gates faced the street, open now to reveal a cobbled forecourt, stream, stable, and garden. As Matilda stood and admired, a young girl with dark hair and a lively step came through the gates.

  "Matilda!" someone shouted from the house. "Matilda, you ninny! You backside of a donkey!"

  Matilda jumped. Who was calling her in such a way?

  "Yes, Mistress Annet. I'm here," replied the dark-haired girl.

  "Do you have the coins? How are you going to buy whitefish without the coins?"

  "I have them right here!" The girl jingled the pouch at her belt. "Someday," she said as she passed Matilda, "there will be one insult too many and I will be gone. Or Fat Annet there will be found with her throat slit."

  Matilda was intrigued by this fierce gir
l from the fine house. She asked, "Your name is Matilda?"

  The girl nodded. "Mostly they call me Tildy, when they're not angry with me. I am the kitchen maid."

  "1 am Matilda also," said Matilda.

  Tildy smiled as brightly as a full moon. "Two Matildas! It must be God's plan that we be friends."

  Matilda thought God had better things to concern Himself with than a kitchen maid's friendships, but still she walked with the girl toward the market square, examining her as they went. Tildy was of middling height, with small waist and broad hips. Under her nut-brown hair were curious black eyes in a thin, dark face with the slight look of a rodent. For all that, Matilda thought her not unlovely, although not at all meek or obedient or holy.

  "Mistress Annet Greedyguts is nought but the housekeeper," said Tildy, "although she thinks she owns the house and all in it. She hates me because I am not content to be in the kitchen." She smiled. "Someday I will be a lady's maid and comb my lady's hair, stiffen the pleats on her best wimple, and brush the crumbs from her velvet mantle. I have had enough of kitchens. Look at my hands!" Tildy held up her hands, red, peeling, and cracked.

  "Is there a lady in the house?" asked Matilda.

  "Yes, but she has old Elsa, who does for her. And there is no one else but Master Theobald. Still, I will find a great lady somewhere someday who will have me." Her lips were firm and tight, her chin set. Matilda had no doubt she could do what she said.

  "This Theobald. Is he the master physician?"

  "Master Theobald is indeed a physician. A healer and a wonderworker," said Tildy.

  "I saw him once in the street," said Matilda. "He seemed clever and learned. Would that I could attend to such as him instead of Mistress Peg."

  "Indeed, I am learning much just by living in his house," Tildy said. "Not about physicking but about fine houses and fine clothes and fine food. But I cannot let Fat Annet catch me out of the kitchen. The witch."

  They passed a man walking a goose on a string. Matilda stared, thinking them perhaps entertainers on their way to the market square. But Tildy said, "That is Samson. He's taking a goose to the kitchen of the inn. Take care not to walk behind them, geese being notorious despoilers of the street. And there is Mary Weaversgirl, the silk spinner. She must be on her way to sell her silk to Master Orron. Oh, look, she sees Lucy Goode, the rosary maker. They do not speak. See how they just nod stiffly."

  "Watch out..." "There goes..." "See..." As they walked, Tildy continued pointing out people and places Matilda had never before noticed. Tildy seemed to know everyone and was interested in everything. Matilda felt she was seeing the town with new eyes.

  Reaching the Shambles, they passed the butchers' stalls with their skinned carcasses of rabbit, lamb, and (some said) cat, hanging from poles, heads lolling, mouths open. The sight always made Matilda shudder delightfully, as if they were tiny martyrs. Today they reminded her of Hag. Never before had she met a cursed cat with a name. Hag. She felt a stab of pity and did not like it.

  "I made a good bargain for the fish and have a farthing left over for a raisin pie," said Tildy. "Will you share it?"

  Matilda was silent. Would Father Leufredus wish her to be friendly to this girl? Surely not. But Tildy's invitation made Matilda feel surprisingly warm within, so she accepted.

  The girls ate sitting on the edge of the wide stone basin surrounding the bubbling spring that served as the town well. The women of the town were drenching their dirty linen in the icy water and slapping it mightily against the stones. Matilda watched the laughing, chattering women with their sleeves rolled up to reveal strong, red arms, skirts pulled high, feet bare to spare their shoes. They gossiped as they washed: Helga of Baywater Village had given birth to a baby who was half wolf and half snake; Samuel Fuller's bad skin cleared right up after he set fire to a toadskin at midnight; Gilbert Carpenter was cured of fever by the great Theobald (Tildy nudged Matilda and smiled), who had prescribed eating only cooling foods: grapes, woodcock broth, kid's foot jelly.

  Matilda heard a familiar name: "Old Mother Uffa," said a young woman kneeling in the water and scrubbing, "from Blood and Bone Alley has finally died. Her son claims it is because she spit into his cook fire, but I think she finally ran out of days. Her house has been rented. Some say to a witch."

  Matilda told Tildy, "I can imagine what Peg will say when she hears this news: 'Witch or no, I do hope she plays draughts.'"

  Tildy laughed a morsel of the raisin pie right out of her mouth. Matilda was surprised. She had not meant to be funny, but Tildy's laughter was so infectious, Matilda might have joined her had she not thought what Father Leufredus would say about such foolishness—her laughing and gossiping with a kitchen maid, unlettered and unholy, and enjoying it. Matilda jumped down from the well and said, "I should not be here laughing."

  "Why not?"

  "It would be better for me to spend the time in prayer."

  "I myself think laughing is mighty like praying," said Tildy, "as if saying 'Listen, God, how much I enjoy this world You have made.'"

  This sounded much like blasphemy. "I must go."

  "Please come again someday. I know God meant for us two Matildas to find each other. Maybe someday we could get a place together. I would be a lady's maid, and you ... what can you do?"

  "I have reading and writing in Latin and a bit in French," Matilda said. "I know the Ten Commandments, the seven moral virtues, and the fourteen articles of the faith. I know which saint to invoke against oversleeping and which to call upon when in peril at sea, and I can quote Augustine of Canterbury on Saint Gregory the Great and Saint Gregory on Augustine. I can recite in Greek about the meaning of free will and whether God can be seen in his essence and—"

  "Gor," said Tildy. "But what can you do?"

  "I am attendant to Red Peg the Bonesetter," said Matilda, "but I hope to be leaving her soon."

  "And where is it you would go?"

  "Somewhere, anywhere, with Father Leufredus." Matilda sighed. "But right now I must go back to Mistress Peg's. She will be waiting."

  "Don't forget me," Tildy called.

  Matilda thought she would not forget Tildy, with her bright eyes and laughter and blasphemous notions. Laughing like praying—what an idea! As if God wanted us to enjoy this world! Matilda shook her head.

  As she completed her tasks, she mourned once again for her old life. She saw in her mind Father Leufredus leading prayers in the manor chapel with light from the colored windows shining on his face, Father Leufredus reading from the Life of Saint James the Dismembered, Father Leufredus lecturing in Latin on evil, sin, devils, Hell, and eternal lakes of fire. Matilda sighed a very big sigh, remembering the days when she was uninvolved in all the matters of the world, of pain and illness, of unsuitable friends and useless skills. It was easier at the manor, where the most difficult thing she did was walk to the privy in winter.

  Chapter Eight: Watching Tom

  One Friday when Matilda returned to Peg's from the market, there were Doctor Margery, Grizzl Wimplewasher, and Juliana Parchmenter. "See who has come for draughts and a bite of supper," Peg said. "Come and join us."

  The shop looked cozy, with Grizzl at the table pouring ale, Doctor Margery complaining, Peg toasting oatcakes by the fire. Father Leufredus would spurn such company, but Matilda's heart longed for friends of her own.

  "Here, Matilda," said Juliana, setting up the draughts board, "I will show you the secrets and mysteries of this most splendid game."

  "She will not," said Peg, "for the girl seeks higher things."

  "Such as ladders?" asked Juliana. "Or the moon?"

  "Or roof thatch?" added Grizzl.

  "No. Such as those early apples just out of reach on the treetops," said Peg, and they all laughed.

  Matilda flushed red. They were taunting her, she thought—a bonesetter, a laundress, a merchant, and a goose girl. Matilda pulled herself closer to the fire and thought about all the ways in which she was worthier than they.

  Griz
zl's laughter turned into furious coughing. "Pardon our jesting," she said when she was able. "I am most pleased to see you again. How well you look. Even the fire is dimmed by your pink and pretty face."

  "I so long to be frail and pale like the holy saints," Matilda told her, "but instead I would have these rosy cheeks."

  "Frail and pale, my elbow!" shouted Doctor Margery. "This you say to Grizzl, who has seen six babies and a husband waste away, frail and pale, in that poor house by the river where the dampness never leaves your bones! You are fortunate to have Peg's good food and dry house, a strong constitution, and those rosy cheeks."

  Matilda wiped bits of Margery's oatcake off her sleeve and gritted her teeth so she would not shout back. Almost she could hear Father Leufredus saying, "Meek and obedient, Matilda, meek and obedient. Do not succumb to the Devil's attempts to lead you into sin."

  Peg took Margery by the arm and said, "Joints that have not been used grow frozen and stiff. The same might be said of a young girl's heart. I suppose we must be more patient, Marg."

  Matilda was shocked at the hearing. Her heart frozen and stiff? Her heart that was warm with loneliness and soft with longing? How little they knew her here.

  She moved to the door and threw it open, hoping to escape from these women, but she was stopped by a hubble-bubble outside. A small, hairy man, in mustard-colored tunic and green hose, was trying to persuade an ox to pull a very large wagon through the very narrow alley, "Ite," he shouted, "Ite, bestia diabolus. Ad supplicium aeternum damno!"

  Latin! It was cursing, but it was Latin! Perhaps the man was a lawyer or a university master or a great physician from Paris or Salerno. Or a saintly priest. Matilda stared at him.

  Peg pushed her out of the doorway. "Tom!" she cried, enfolding the man in her great embrace, lifting him right up so that Matilda could see nothing of him but his hairy hands about Peg's neck. There was much hugging and kissing and pounding of backs and shoulders. When Peg set him down and moved aside, Matilda could see he had the widest shoulders she had ever seen. And the shortest legs. And the biggest nose, which was so like a turnip, it put her in mind of supper. His little raisin eyes peered out under grizzled brows in a face as writhled and brown as a beef roast, and he smiled a great, merry smile. So this was Peg's Tom. He didn't look particularly wise and learned, but he was speaking Latin. Matilda waited eagerly to hear what he would say.