The Book of the Maidservant

by Rebecca Barnhouse

  Nobody says anything, but they all keep their eyes down.

  “On a pilgrimage, we shouldn’t laugh or joke,” Dame Margery says. “Instead, we should speak only of religious subjects. I myself would rather be chopped up as small as meat for the pot than not speak of Our Lord and his sufferings.”

  Sometimes I’d be willing to do the chopping.

  The priest blinks several times. “Laughter in and of itself is no bad thing.” He clears his throat. “After all, as Scripture tells us, Sarah, the mother of Isaac, is known to have laughed.”

  I wish John Mouse and Thomas would start singing again. My mistress might go on all day long if someone doesn’t stop her.

  No one does.

  By the time the sun has begun to dry our clothes, she has told us all about Christ’s sufferings on the way to Calvary. She says we should be suffering just like Christ did.

  Aren’t we?

  Petrus Tappester grows angrier and angrier, yelling, “Quiet, woman!” every few steps. It only makes my mistress louder.

  The afternoon goes on forever, and my pack gets heavier and heavier. My legs ache, my feet hurt, and I want this pilgrimage to be over.

  Finally, as the sun sinks below a line of trees, the sound of dogs barking and a bell tolling in the distance tell us we’re coming to a village where we can stop for the night. As we get nearer, we see gravestones outside the church, dark and bent like Petrus Tappester’s teeth. We skirt a newly dug grave, the soft earth mounded high the way it was when they buried my mother. I can’t remember anything about her funeral except the brown earth raining down on her white winding sheet.

  The thought brings sudden sharp memories of home, before Hodge began stopping by. On warm evenings, Rose and I would haul the wooden table outside the cottage door. She would set supper on it while I ran to our neighbor’s to exchange eggs for ale. Then my father would come home, his hair flecked with bits of straw, dirt settled into the sunburned creases around his eyes and the three long furrows across his forehead.

  He and Rose would sit on our bench, and I’d take my porridge to crouch in the doorway. Their voices would rise and fall softly like the breeze that would tug at my eyelashes and pull stray hairs from my braids. The sound would mingle with the distant lowing of cows and the clanking of cowbells, and although I wouldn’t hear my family’s words, I would be held close in a net of comfort.

  I miss them so much. I open my eyes wide to keep my tears inside.

  Just beyond the graveyard, two crows battle over a bit of bone. Whose?

  In the village, there’s no inn or tavern, but the villagers make us welcome with bread and cheese and ale. The parson escorts Father Nicholas away, while a well-dressed matron takes my mistress and the young wife by the arm and marches them into her house. When I try to follow, she holds her hand out to stop me, then points to the barn.

  She wants me to sleep in the barn, alone among all those men? I stand in the twilight watching as my mistress disappears through the door. She doesn’t say a word to me; she never even looks at me.

  I glance back at the barn, take a deep breath, and move toward it. I try to slip in quietly so the men don’t see me. It’s so dark I can barely make them out—but I can hear them joking in loud voices and pissing in the straw. After a few moments of blinking, I can see again. I tiptoe to the ladder that leads to the loft at the far end of the barn. Just as I start to climb it, Petrus looks up. He elbows the merchant in the ribs and makes rude noises.

  I catch my breath. I wish Cook were here. She wouldn’t let any harm come to me, even if she does tease me beyond all bearing. A chill encircles my waist like a cold eel twining itself around me.

  Then John Mouse sees me. He makes a great show of yawning, walks over to the ladder, and spreads his cloak on the straw beneath it. “Quiet down, lads. I’m trying to sleep,” he says.

  I scramble the rest of the way up the ladder.

  As I roll myself in my damp cloak and settle into the straw, I pray to St. Pega and her brother, St. Guthlac, who lived in the Fens like I did and who were always wet and always tormented by devils. A prayer for Cook and for Cicilly; one for Rose and my father; one for my mother and the baby who died with her, God keep their souls from torment. And one last prayer for my safe homecoming.

  I reach into my scrip for the pebble that Rose gave me. I turn and turn it in my fingers, like the way it tumbled through the waters of the River Gay until its sides were feather smooth. Slowly, I relax.

  aslant of sunlight steals into the hayloft, sliding under my lashes and turning the straw to gold. I stretch and yawn, then hurry down the ladder to find my mistress. Even if she’s sleeping inside a house, she’ll want me to pin up her hair and her wimple.

  I stop at the last rung, looking for a place to step between Thomas and John Mouse. They lie curled like caterpillars in their black robes, one on either side of the ladder. When my foot touches earth, Thomas starts, turning suddenly. Seeing it’s only me, he blinks, closes his eyes, and curls back into sleep.

  I’m not the only one up. Bartilmew gives me a nod as I creep out of the barn. He’s carrying a pot of water to the old man. He’s so covered in straw he looks like a scarecrow, and I’m sure he doesn’t know it. I giggle as he passes me.

  Then I look down at my skirt. If Bartilmew is a scarecrow, I must be a haystack. I brush at my gown and comb my fingers through my hair.

  When we are all finally ready to go, I heave my pack onto my shoulder and groan. It feels as if a hundred-pound weight has been added to it. I drop it heavily to the ground and rifle through it, rearranging things so the blankets will be between the cooking pot and my backside. There’s nothing new in it—it just seems heavier.

  The pot clanks against something as I walk, putting a rhythm into my head that soon has me humming Rose’s chicken song.

  Bartilmew falls in beside me, his feet keeping time with my song, but he doesn’t join in. When I’ve hummed my way through the last verse, I ask him where he’s from.

  He mumbles something.

  “What?” As I turn toward him, he blushes.

  Working his mouth laboriously, he speaks again. “Dumpling Green.”

  Now I know why he prefers silence. His words are so garbled and misshapen I can barely understand them.

  “I served my mistress’s father, now her,” he says. Mistress’s is almost more than his tongue will handle. “She is a good lady.”

  Good? Dame Isabel? I haven’t seen much evidence of it, especially the way she squealed like a pig when we crossed the river or the way she calls Bartilmew “boy” whenever she pleases, but I keep my mouth shut.

  Bartilmew doesn’t ask about me or my mistress, and I can’t blame him. We walk along quietly, listening to our feet hitting the dirt. It’s not a bad kind of companionship. My mistress could learn a thing or two about silence from Bartilmew.

  Just as I think this, she raises her voice in a loud conversation with the Lord. She must think someone as old as God is getting deaf.

  “Hold your noise, woman,” Petrus Tappester yells back at her from the head of the line. It does no good. The two of them squabble back and forth until we stop for a midday meal.

  Our days settle into a pattern. In the mornings, tempers are mild, but by the time we stop to eat, somebody is angry—usually at my mistress. Sometimes everybody is angry at her. Especially me.

  I know she’s been specially chosen by the Lord, who speaks to her every day. But when he tells her what everyone else should do, and she passes it on to us, I am tempted to anger, even if it’s a deadly sin.

  Sometimes I’m more than tempted.

  Does a day ever pass when the Lord doesn’t tell her how wicked I am? Why doesn’t he tell me, not her, if I’m that bad? Maybe I’ve been a little too slow some mornings or pulled my mistress’s hair a little too tight when I braided it, but I hardly have a chance to dally when we walk all day from cockcrow to sundown.

  It’s gotten so cold in the mornings that I’m wearing
my boots and my hood now, not carrying them. My legs have grown accustomed to walking for hours at a time, my back and shoulders to the weight of my pack. But my feet will never get used to my boots. The blisters they’ve caused now have blisters of their own. I tear little strips of cloth from the bottom of my shift and wrap them around my toes. Sometimes it helps. But my shift is getting shorter just when I need it for warmth.

  Three days pass, or maybe four. One night, dusk overtakes us when we’re nowhere near a village or even a farm, and we have to sleep under the stars. This sounds like fun until I’m trying to start a fire. It’s nothing like blowing a banked kitchen fire back to life of a morning—instead, I have to make a flame from nothing. I’ve found enough wood and kindling, but no matter how hard I hit my metal strike-a-light against my flint, I can’t get a spark. Twice I cut myself on the sharp flint and have to suck the blood off my thumb.

  I look up to see Bartilmew watching me. He comes over, takes the flint and metal from my hands, and holds them up so I can see. “Fast, not hard,” he says, and hits them together. A spark leaps to the char-cloth, lighting it, and before I know it, Bartilmew has a fire burning.

  After we’ve eaten and I’m cleaning up, the priest tells a story about the time he saw a bishop exorcise a boy who was possessed by a demon. I glance at Petrus Tappester, but he doesn’t say anything, just picks at his teeth with a dirty fingernail.

  “What did the demon look like?” Dame Isabel’s husband asks, placing a protective hand on his wife’s arm. She shakes it away irritably.

  “It was about this big,” Father Nicholas says, measuring a span with his thumb and fingers. “With wings like a bat’s and a tail as long as its body.”

  “What happened to it?” Thomas asks.

  “It flew right out of the little boy’s mouth and perched on his shoulder. Then the bishop sprinkled holy water on it, and the demon vanished in the blink of an eye.”

  “What about the little boy?” Dame Isabel keeps her eyes on John Mouse, who is stretched out against a tree, his arms folded behind his head, his long legs crossed.

  “When the demon disappeared, the boy started laughing,” Father Nicholas says, “because the Holy Spirit filled up the place where the demon had been.”

  “Our Lord is ever merciful,” my mistress says.

  Petrus Tappester kicks at a stone and walks out of the firelight. I watch the shadows the flames cast on his face and bald pate. I can’t imagine the Holy Spirit ever filling him, but it would be fun to see the demon leaving his body.

  Long into the night, when I’m lying on the ground with rocks biting into my back, images of Petrus’s demon haunt me. Does anybody besides me know it’s inside him? I shudder and pull my blanket up over my face. I’ll never sleep.

  But when the sky begins to grow light and the birds begin to call from the fields, I wake up and realize that I have slept, after all.

  Late the next afternoon, we come to a town as big as Lynn with a hospice for travelers. Everybody else is as tired as I am, and we crowd through the door.

  I slide the pack from my shoulders with a sigh of relief and lower myself to a bench. My break doesn’t last very long.

  The hospice has a buttery for travelers to use, and the merchant brings me two rabbits and a handful of carrots and onions he has bought.

  “You’ve got a pot. Cook these up for everybody,” he says, plumping them down in front of me. I look at my mistress, but she’s disappearing through the door, off to find a church where she can hear evensong.

  In the buttery, I stare at the bloody brown fur of the dead rabbits. Cook has always done this, and before her, Rose. I don’t know how to skin a rabbit.

  A man who is preparing his own meal takes pity on me and shows me what to do. “Squirrels are easier,” he says. “Just step on the tail and pull the body out.”

  When he has to show me how to cook the rabbits, too, he begins to lose his patience. “After you put in the turnips, boil it as long as it takes to say a Miserere or two,” he says.

  I don’t know the Miserere.

  “Then a couple of Paternosters. You do know your Paternoster, don’t you?” By the way he frowns, I can tell he wishes he had kept his mouth shut.

  Dame Isabel and her husband bring wine to the table, and Father Nicholas contributes a thick round loaf, but John Mouse and Thomas are nowhere to be seen when I take the brewet off the fire. They’re wise to stay away—I’m not sure whether anyone will be able to eat it. The carrots and onions have turned to mush, but I think the rabbit meat might still be raw. Little clumps of fur and gristle float on the top of the broth.

  Just as everyone is finding a place on the buttery’s benches, my mistress returns from church all puffed up with holiness. “We shouldn’t drink wine, not on a holy pilgrimage,” she says. “And no meat, either. We should be fasting. Our Lord—”

  “Quiet, woman,” Petrus Tappester growls. “Your fool of a husband put up with your nonsense, but you aren’t home in England. Now let us eat in peace.”

  “Our Lord God is as great a lord here as in England,” Dame Margery says.

  “I said quiet!” Petrus bangs his fist down on the wooden table. The pot of brewet teeters, then falls facedown onto the dirt floor.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Petrus yells.

  “God’s blood!” the merchant says. “You’ve ruined our supper and now you ruin our peace.”

  The brewet may be seeping into the dirt below the table, but my mistress didn’t ruin it. I did when I cooked it. The company doesn’t know how lucky they are.

  I take a chunk of bread and slip out into the twilight and make my way to the stable. Through the wall, angry voices rise and fall like the wind in a storm. My mistress wails and cries.

  I crouch in the dark, surrounded by the smell of manure and dusty straw, and think of home. The merchant’s packhorse must recognize me. It snuffs at me, and I stroke its nose a few times before it snaps at my fingers.

  When the shouting stops, I creep back into the buttery. Petrus grabs me as I go through the door. “She’s with us,” he says, holding me by the arm. “We need someone to cook and wash.” His thick fingers grip just above my elbow, and he pulls me up against him. I try to pull away, but he grips me harder.

  I look across the table at my mistress. She stands alone, red-faced and weeping. On my side of the table, the merchant glares at my mistress, and the old man shelters his wife with his arm. Bartilmew is just behind them, but his face is hidden in shadows. Where is Father Nicholas?

  Petrus yanks on my arm as he speaks. “We’re sick of you and your preaching. From this night on, you go your own way. Agreed?” He looks at the merchant, who nods, then at the old man, who looks down.

  “Yes, of course,” Dame Isabel says. “She can’t travel with us anymore.”

  What about me? “Dame Margery,” I start to say.

  Petrus Tappester pulls me through the doorway, then shoves me toward the stables.

  As I reach the stable wall, I whirl toward him, my eyes wide.

  “You stay away from her, you hear me? Or you’ll get what’s coming to you.” He shows me his fist, then pivots toward the hospice.

  I stand just outside the stable as darkness falls around me, my breath coming in ragged gasps. They can’t really leave my mistress, can they? And take me with them? Tears fill my eyes. I don’t know what to do.

  I hate Petrus Tappester, even if it is a sin. I hate him.

  A noise makes me start. I slide just inside the stable door and listen.

  Singing—someone is singing. In Latin.

  John Mouse and Thomas come around the dark corner, supporting each other as they stumble and laugh.

  I take a deep breath and step out. “Beg pardon, John Mouse. I must speak to you.” My voice cracks.

  He squints in the darkness and peers at me. “Ah, the little serving maid,” he says. He is drunk.

  “Please, I need help,” I say, tears filling my eyes again. Is there anyone I c
an trust?

  “Stay, Thomas,” John Mouse says. “A maiden in distress. ’Tis our lot to rescue her from the dragons that assail her chastity.” They both laugh, and Thomas pulls an imaginary sword from its scabbard.

  “It’s my mistress, Dame Margery,” I say.

  “The quiet one? Never says a word about God?” John asks.

  “They’ve thrown her out of the company. They say she can’t travel with them anymore. And they say I have to cook and wash for them.”

  John Mouse stands a little straighter and stops laughing. “Hush, Thomas,” he says. “When did this happen?”

  “Just now,” I say.

  “Not to worry, little serving maid,” he says. “Come, Thomas, my good fellow. Bring that wineskin. Time for a disputation.”

  The two of them disappear into the hospice, singing again.

  Fearfully, I creep into the stable and curl up in a corner to wait out the night.

  the nickering of a horse awakens me. Light filters through chinks in the stable walls—it must be morning.

  I look around, trying to understand where I am.

  Suddenly, I remember last night. Where is my mistress? I gather my skirts and fly out the door, then stop when I hear voices coming from the hospice.

  When I peer in, I see Dame Margery standing against the wall, her head down. She has pinned her headdress herself—and very badly. Her crooked wimple makes her look like a madwoman.

  Everyone else sits on benches watching her. Everyone except John Mouse, who paces back and forth, his long black gown billowing when he turns. He gesticulates toward my mistress as he speaks. I see no signs of last night’s drunkenness.

  “As Christians, as pilgrims, how can you leave a woman alone in the middle of a strange country?” he asks. “She doesn’t speak the language; she doesn’t know her way. She may have been sent by God as a penance for us all.” He looks directly at Petrus Tappester, who snorts and looks away.

  I listen in awe. John Mouse doesn’t need to go to the university at Bologna. He’s a good lawyer already.