“Make haste, sleepyhead,” she said.
Xanthe rubbed her eyes. “Surely it’s still nighttime?”
Jayne laughed. “’Tis near six o’clock! Mary will be fit to spit if she must call for us.”
Xanthe dragged herself out of bed. The shock of the cold air in the room was effective at waking her up. She did not like to think about how freezing it might be in the winter. As quickly as she could she wriggled into her unfamiliar clothes.
Jayne picked up her roommate’s boots, staring at them in horror.
“I never did see what a minstrel wore on her feet before. Such ugly things. I imagined players to have fancy clothes, finery sometimes, to be all color and shimmer and show. I could not have conjured in my mind … these!”
Xanthe took them from her. “We do a lot of walking,” she said flatly. “Getting from place to place.”
“When the master and mistress were entertaining here in the summer there were minstrels of all sorts,” Jayne said. “Players of lutes and pipes and drums, singers, and dancers with bells and ribbons. The master let all the servants come up to the great hall to watch the dancing. Oh, how I should love to have danced with Joshua Appleby! So light on his feet, and yet such strong arms. Which were, alas, for the most part about the waist of Mistress Clara,” she added with a look of exasperation. “She is not the maid for him. That’s plain for a fool to see.”
“Oh? You know someone better?” Xanthe teased.
Jayne blushed again and then looked a little sad. “Master Joshua cannot be seen giving his attention to a servant.”
Xanthe studied her face. The girl’s choice of words suggested that it would be fine for a well-to-do young gentleman to flirt with a girl of thirteen, servant or not, so long as it was done in secret. “Have you ever … talked with Master Joshua?” Xanthe asked.
“Me? Oh no! Though he did once smile at me.”
“Really?”
“Yes! I had to fetch his cape from the parlor where it had been cleaned for him. They arrived one day in such weather as you never did see, all mud-splattered, horses and men, and we set to cleaning their outer garments while they went about their work, and later, when I took him his cape all clean and dry, he thanked me so politely, like I was a proper lady, and he did smile at me!” She clasped her hands to her chest at the memory of it.
“Must be quite something, that smile of his.” Xanthe thought how hard it must have been to live and work as a servant, never mind the added angst of impossible teenage crushes. It was a good thing the Applebys seemed to be respectable men. She wondered how often servant girls were taken advantage of and then cast aside. Jayne was sufficiently infatuated, naive and pretty to be at risk. At least she had a dragon in the shape of Mary to protect her virtue. Xanthe let her help force her hair under the starched white cap, a garment that struck her as the manner of headgear that would make anyone, however pretty, instantly unattractive. Perhaps that was the reason behind their design!
“Jayne, how well did you know Alice?” she asked as casually as she could.
“’Tis as I told you, we worked together, we shared a room. She is a good person.”
Xanthe hesitated only a moment before uttering the words she knew would shock the girl. “And a Catholic?”
Jayne’s expression was that of a person who had just received a slap.
“What makes you ask such a thing?”
“I want to help her. I’m trying to understand—”
“No good comes of scratching at old wounds,” she interrupted, no longer meeting Xanthe’s eye. All the easy chat was gone in an instant and replaced with something else. Fear. “Come,” she said, holding open the door. “We shall be missed and begin the day flinching from the sharp edge of Mary’s tongue.”
Clearly the conversation was at an end. Xanthe followed the girl out of the room and Jayne did not say another word all the way to the kitchen. As they went about their work that morning two things went round and round in her mind. The first was that she absolutely had to find a way to talk to Alice. She had no idea how, but she would have to make it happen somehow. The second thing that kept nagging at her was something that simply did not fit. If Alice was a Catholic and continued to practice her faith, she was putting anyone connected with her in danger, too. If her whole family were executed as traitors, she would already be under constant suspicion herself. Why then, would the Lovewells have taken her in? They were Protestant, and they were clearly a family determined to claw their way up the social order, to establish themselves as important, which had to mean gaining the king’s favor. To do that they needed to be of spotless reputation, so why on earth would they give house space to the daughter of convicted traitors and known Catholics? It did not make sense.
As if the kitchens were not already a place of constant activity and hurrying to keep up, the approach of Clara’s birthday celebrations increased the pressure on the staff noticeably. More and more food was brought in, all of it carried by wet and bedraggled servants, as the weather outside had worsened to heavy rain as well as strong winds. Randolph went into a frenzy of cooking pies and puddings, all the silver and pewter had to be cleaned, and the workload seemed to double. On top of all this, there were workmen rebuilding the stables who had to be fed, and the Applebys in the house, having resumed their work on the improvements and extensions, who also needed to be given meals.
It was nearly noon when Mary called Xanthe over and handed her a tray of beer, bread, and cold meats.
“Take this up to the Great Hall,” she said. “Master Appleby and his sons are doing their work in there this day, so Mistress Lovewell has chosen to take her food in her sitting room with Clara. ’Tis a sensible woman who leaves the men to their business. Now, you have not to serve them, simply place the tray where they may take what they wish. Wait and ask if there is anything more they require, then return here without delay.” She stressed the last two words to make the point she had not yet forgiven or forgotten Xanthe’s trip to the stables the day before. Xanthe wondered why she did not choose someone else for the task, and as if reading her mind, Mary added, “I would send one of the boys, but they have all been called upon to assist with the stables. And as for Jayne…” she tutted at the sight of the girl. Not much got past Mary, it seemed, and she wasn’t about to give the youngster the chance to make a fool of herself. “Hasten!” she said, clapping her hands.
The tray was so wide Xanthe had to turn sideways to get through the doors, and so heavy she doubted she would be able to go all the way to the Great Hall without setting it down at least briefly. But there was nowhere suitable, so she struggled on, clumsily maneuvering herself through the last heavy door backward, to arrive, puffing, in front of Samuel Appleby. She had expected to find him with his brother and father, as well as Master Lovewell, so she was surprised to discover him alone. He was dressed in dark clothes to match his own looks, with his black hair loose to his shoulders. His long jacket was deepest plum velvet and the doublet over it—a sleeveless jacket—was black with black and silver braid stitched onto it and looked very different from the starched white collar and cuffs that many wore. It was as if he wanted to be absorbed into the shadows rather than be seen. He wore long black leather boots which came over his knees, and black hose. He was bent over some plans which were spread out on the high table, his attention entirely taken up with whatever they showed. Xanthe looked around for somewhere to set down the tray, but he was taking up the whole table. She could hardly put the thing on the floor, but her shoulders and arms were burning from the weight of the thing, and she was in danger of dropping it if she did not do something quickly.
She tried noisily clearing her throat, but the man was oblivious to her existence.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said at last, “might I be permitted to put this down, somewhere?”
He answered with a grunt, something that could have been a nod, and a wave of a hand, without for one second taking his eyes off his precious plans.
&nbs
p; She tried again. “Your refreshments, sir, where would you like them?”
He turned to look at her then, his expression somewhere between distracted and annoyed. It strangely suited him. Xanthe blamed her fortune for getting the awkward brother to deal with.
“Where shall I put it?” she asked again, this time a little desperately.
“I care not. Where you will.”
Her arms had begun to shake with the effort, and she was fast losing patience. “The table?” she suggested, nodding in the direction of the plans.
“There is no room here,” he replied, as if she had failed to notice, and as if he could not possibly do anything about it.
Fine, she thought, two could play at that game. On the point of dropping the tray, she took a step forward and plonked it down on the table, on top of a section of the drawings.
Samuel gave a shout of horror, leaping over to snatch up the tray again.
“Does Master Lovewell now invite imbeciles into his house?” he demanded, turning circles to find somewhere else to put the tray.
Xanthe fought her natural response to defend herself. Keep meek, think humble, she told herself, you are a servant.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I feared I might drop—”
“Do you not know your duties?” He strode off to a high sideboard on the far side of the hall and slammed the tray down with such force that every plate jumped and rattled and beer slopped from the jug spilling all over the bread.
Xanthe was about to apologize when she saw what it was he had been poring over. The plans were drawings of an intricately carved screen, beautifully drawn, meticulous measurements and specifications marked with infinite care. They were a work of art in themselves, a perfect example of expert draftsmanship, showing hours of loving work, and the object they described was breathtaking. She recognized it at once. She had seen the real thing, rendered in gleaming mahogany, ten feet tall and broad enough to bisect another great hall, set in place in one of the grandest houses in the north of England. Drillington Hall was famous for the number of craftsmen employed over decades to work on its interior, and there was no mistaking this highly decorative screen.
“Oh, this is exactly how it looks! Are these the original drawings?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. She held her breath, terrified she had just given herself away. She frantically tried to remember when the screen at Drillington had been installed. If it was later than 1605 then she had just admitted to knowing about something that did not yet exist.
Now she had Samuel Appleby’s full attention.
“You know the Drillington screen?”
“Well, I…”
“You have seen it?” He marched back to stand close to her. “Truly, you have seen it for yourself?” In his face she saw real passion for the thing. This was a man who understood matchless craftsmanship, who loved and appreciated the beauty of an object such as this one.
Xanthe reasoned that if he was asking about it, it must at least exist. Relieved, she nodded. “Yes. I have.”
“But your words, your demeanor, are not of the north. How came you to be in the Earl of Yorkshire’s home?”
“I am a minstrel,” she explained. “As musicians, we travel a great deal, visit many great houses.” She was not lying about having been to the place, but by the time she had got there it was in the care of the National Trust, you had to buy a ticket to get in, and the screen he was talking about was more than three hundred and fifty years old.
“And you recognized it from these drawings?” He brushed past her and smoothed the plans carefully, running his hands over the area where she had put the tray, almost reverently brushing away the tiniest specs of dust. Xanthe noticed that he smelled of bergamot and sawdust and ink.
“I did. They are so well done,” she said, turning to study them again. She remembered then that she had once watched a BBC documentary on the history of the Earl of Yorkshire’s house. The screen had been featured in that, an iconic and important piece. This was hardly something she could share with Samuel, though! She glanced up at him and saw how absorbed he instantly was in his project. “Did you draft them?” she asked.
“I did, and I fear they are but a shadow of those for the original screen.” He waved a hand at them, shaking his head. “I have endeavored to re-create what is at Drillington, but my information comes from the reports of others, and from rough sketches only. Having not seen the screen myself—”
“You haven’t visited the Hall? Surely, if you want to make something similar—”
“Not similar, the same!” He gave a dry laugh. “Master Lovewell is a man of borrowed taste, but it is nonetheless good taste for that. He wishes to have an exact copy in his own home. I will do my utmost, but I fear I cannot reproduce the detail, the finesse of the one at Drillington, my information being so scant.”
“Can you not take a few days, I mean, some time?” She tried not to sound ignorant of how long the journey would take, but really she had not a clue, never having ridden from Wiltshire to Yorkshire. “Surely, it would be worth the time?”
He nodded at this. “Indeed it would. Alas, a person such as Master Lovewell is determined to make his ascent through the ranks of society without being seen to try. Commissioning the screen is one thing, openly owning to having your craftsman copy it is quite another.”
“Ah,” she said.
He looked at her then, more closely. “Ah, indeed.” He seemed to regard her differently, as if before she had been merely some flibbertigibbet maidservant, given to blundering around in unsafe buildings or narrowly avoiding damaging his work, but now, now that he knew that she knew something important, something that mattered to him, well, perhaps she was a proper person after all. “Would you look again,” he asked, “as closely as you are able, and tell me if any irregularities strike you?”
“Irregularities?”
“Deviations from the original. Departures from what you recall of the Earl’s screen.”
She leaned over the table and scrutinized the plans. They were incredibly detailed. He must have had such patience, such skill to produce them, particularly if he’d never actually seen the thing. She tried to translate the lines and measurements into the solid object of her memory. It had been tall, set in a double-height room just as the one they were standing in, used as a sort of partition at one end, beneath the minstrels’ gallery. It was intricately carved with leaves and scrolls, and the amount of wood cut away must have been almost impossibly difficult to carve without rendering the whole thing unstable. As far as she could see, the plans would produce something similar, but there were differences.
“The drawings are wonderful, but…”
“But? You detect imperfections?”
“Well, not imperfections, as such, just small things that aren’t exactly the same.”
“Where? Show me. In what way does my design differ?”
She pointed to the doorway set into the screen. “Here, for example. This was definitely narrower.”
“You are certain?”
She remembered stepping through the door of the screen and having to wait while a queue of people went in front of her, one by one. It would not have been possible for them to have passed through it side by side. “Yes,” she told him simply. “I’m certain. A shoulders’ width, no more.”
He snatched up a quill and a sheet of paper, grabbed a pot of ink and led her to the window. “Come, see here,” he instructed, setting the page down on the windowsill so that the sharp autumn light fell upon it. “You say narrower, so the arch above it must have been steeper, like so?” He sketched quickly. “Or like so?” He did another sketch.
“Well…”
“Have a care,” he warned. “You must be certain.”
“I am as certain as I can be, doing it all from memory,” she reminded him, beginning to feel a little hectored. He looked at her, holding her slightly grumpy gaze, his face so full of hope, his dark eyes shining with the joy of creating
something, with the love of his work. It was a hard face to say no to. “It is like the second one,” she pointed at his sketch. “Exactly like that.”
“I see. Yes, that would be more pleasing to the eye, though harder to construct, stability already being a matter of difficulty.… In what other ways are my drawings inaccurate? What else can you detect that does not fit?”
“Well—”
At that moment the door opened and Master Lovewell came in, all smiles and good humor.
“Good morning to you, Master Samuel, I trust you are being well cared for. Have you all that you need? We must not have our genius going hungry. Surely no person ever heard the whisper of his muse above the growl of their own empty belly, don’t you think?”
“Thank you, I am well supplied.”
“But you have not eaten! This will not do. Come, let us dine together. Girl … your name again?”
“Xanthe, Master Lovewell.”
“Ah yes, very curious. You may go now. Tell Mary to send up some of her venison pie. We must have meat to fuel our endeavors, must we not, Master Samuel?”
She turned to go, but as she did so Samuel put his hand on her arm. It was a fleeting gesture, a reaction to the thought of such a valuable resource leaving him, no doubt. Still the contact was startling, his touch firm, and the look he gave her suggested it surprised him, too.
She left the room and went in search of Mary to relay the master’s request for pie. She found her at the door of the kitchen talking to Willis. They did not notice her at first, and she was able to overhear their conversation.
“I am to go to Marlborough this afternoon,” Willis said. “I must visit the tannery and see the costermonger. The fire has left us short a number of pieces of harness that will have to be repaired or replaced.”
“Come to me before you leave,” Mary told him. “I will have a basket ready for you to take to Alice.”
“She may be there a while yet. Best send all provisions you can.”
“All I can without the mistress noticing.”
The Little Shop of Found Things--A Novel Page 19