Around a corner, we come upon another group of students. One of them stands on a little platform speaking, and others listen to him, scowling in concentration or whispering to each other. I can’t understand a word—it’s all in Latin, just like the Mass is—so I look at the students. Filthy, unkempt boys in filthy, ill-mended gowns, they seem to me. I try to find John Mouse in the crowd, but I don’t see him.
We go through narrow passageways under banners of laundry that flutter between buildings. We pass the river, and I look across it, thinking of the mercenaries. When we go down one street, two men shout at each other from the upstairs windows on opposite sides of the street.
I don’t know how the others know where we are, but when we turn a corner, there’s the hospice.
I plop down on a bench inside. It feels so good to sit for a change. I lean my head back and close my eyes.
When I open them, Dame Isabel is standing in front of me. She plucks all the hair off her forehead and eyebrows, the way a gentlewoman does, even though her husband is a wool merchant—no gentleman at all. With her hair pulled back so severely beneath her veil, her eyes turn up at the corners, giving her a pained, catlike look.
“These need washing,” she says, dropping a bundle of clothes on the bench beside me and walking away.
Petrus sees what she has done and says, “Mine, too.” He disappears and comes back with more clothes, which he drops on top of Dame Isabel’s pile.
They expect me to wash their clothes? I’m already cooking for them. Isn’t that enough?
I close my eyes again. The hospice disappears, along with the clothes, the cooking, my mistress’s weeping. I’m back in the kitchen in Lynn, having a summer supper with Cook and Cicilly as the birds call in the twilit sky. Cook is laughing at one of her own jokes, and Cicilly and I are smiling at each other, happy to be eating Cook’s good dumplings.
Whap!
The blow knocks me off the bench. I crawl to my knees and look up.
Petrus towers over me, ready to strike again.
“You wash those clothes, or …” He shows me his meaty hand.
My teeth clenched in anger, I grab the clothes and scuttle away before he can hit me again. I wish John Mouse were here to defend me.
A servant in the kitchen shows me the way to the river.
Dame Isabel’s shift comes clean easy enough, but when I get to Petrus’s breeches, I refuse to do anything more than dip them in the water and hang them over a bush to dry. They need more cleaning than that—a lot more.
Just as I’ve spread the last pair of hose over a bush to dry, the sun comes out from behind a cloud. I sit down on a grassy place beside the river, rub the back of my head where Petrus hit it, and watch the pattern of sunlight sparkling on the water.
The gleaming nets of light lure me back to Lynn again, and further back still, to the pond near Hodge’s cottage, where the wind rippled the surface and Hodge’s three little boys chased the ducks. My job was to keep both ducks and boys safe. Ducks I could care for, but little boys I knew nothing about. Before long, I would yell and they would cry, and Rose would come running from the cottage, slapping flour from her hands and pulling William, the youngest, into a hug. He would make faces at me over her shoulder. He knew, just as I did, that they were her family now, not me.
I remember staring at the water so I wouldn’t have to see the hurt on Rose’s face, her disappointment in me.
Why did she have to marry Hodge? If it hadn’t been for Hodge, I’d never be here now, hating Petrus Tappester.
I focus on the patterned river water and try to erase Hodge and Petrus from my thoughts. Hodge and Petrus and that look on Rose’s face.
For the next two days, I make myself scarce, hiding behind walls, disappearing whenever one of the company comes into view. I braid my mistress’s hair in the morning and pin up her headdress, but after that, I run to the river and walk along its banks until hunger forces me back to the hospice. They can wash their own clothes. I’m not their servant.
On the morning we are to leave, the merchant shows up before sunrise, but John Mouse and Thomas aren’t there.
“Dicing and wenching,” Petrus says.
“Surely not on a holy pilgrimage,” Father Nicholas says.
I’d like to agree with him, but when I remember the taverns near the university district, I’m not so sure. I try not to think about it.
Dame Isabel seats herself on a bench, folds her hands in her lap, and says, “Of course, we won’t leave without them.”
But when they still haven’t appeared by the time the cathedral bells clang for half prime and the sun is as high as the bell tower, the merchant says we have to go. When Dame Isabel protests, her husband says, “Now, now, my sweet honey bird.” She looks stiffly away from him, her cheeks flushed in anger.
Suddenly, I am filled with sympathy for Dame Isabel. She is young and as lively as a calf, but her husband is old and foolish. He never allows her far from his sight. Did she have a choice about marrying him?
“Boy,” Dame Isabel says sharply, and slaps Bartilmew, who has done nothing wrong. My sympathy flees, fast as a jackrabbit.
Bartilmew stumps heavily along behind his mistress, staring at the ground. He and John Mouse must be about the same age, but they couldn’t be more different. I picture the way John Mouse walks: head high, back straight, clear eyes looking at the sky, the trees, the birds flying past. His feet touch the ground so lightly that it’s almost as if he were dancing. Sometimes he throws in a little skip while he walks.
He speaks to everyone in our company, long discussions in Latin with Father Nicholas, questions about our route with the merchant, jokes with Petrus. When he talks to Dame Isabel, it’s always in the presence of her husband. But mostly, John Mouse and Thomas sing and talk and exchange merry quips.
A branch floats along the Rhine beside us, outstripping our pace. Where are they? Surely the mercenaries wouldn’t have harmed them, not in Cologne.
I look back so often I get a crick in my neck, but I never see them.
When a cart rumbles toward us, I think they must have caught a ride—but it’s just a farmer and his family.
When we stop to rest and eat, both Dame Isabel and I sit so we can watch the path behind us. And when my mistress begins to pray loudly and Petrus Tappester shouts at her to stop, I’m sure I’m not the only one wishing John Mouse were here to stop their squabbling with his scholarly arguments.
“You want another gag in your mouth?” Petrus asks.
My mistress’s face grows red, but it’s not with tears; it’s with anger. “You never forgave me for choosing John Kempe over you,” she says, her voice deadly quiet.
Silence falls over us as everyone listens.
“But I would never have married you, Petrus Tappester, whether John Kempe had asked me or no.” Dame Margery stands, glaring at Petrus.
My mouth drops open. Could it be true? That Petrus wanted to marry my mistress? What would Cook say if I told her!
Petrus splutters, the veins in his nose glowing purple. “You’re mad, woman.” He looks around at everyone else. “It’s not true! You know she’s a madwoman!”
No one answers him. I remember what Anne, the girl in Dame Hawise’s kitchen, told me back in Lynn, about Petrus Tappester being a good catch when he was young and about how much he has changed.
Petrus picks up a stick and hurls it toward a tree. It hits with a loud crack, and a crow flies up from its branches, squawking.
Father Nicholas is the first to recover. He picks up his pack and heads for the path. The rest of us follow along, and I see Dame Isabel give her husband a wide-eyed look. As I walk, I keep trying to imagine my mistress as a girl and a handsome Petrus Tappester—a Petrus Tappester with hair!—courting her. No matter how hard I try, I can’t picture it. Surely neither of them could ever have been young and pleasing to the eye.
Not like John Mouse. Where is he?
By evening, we’ve found a smoky inn with more rats th
an guests. As I serve the whole company, I keep my ears open for the students. Before I sleep, I pray for them.
But they don’t come.
By morning, neither John Mouse nor Thomas has shown up. I don’t think I’ll ever see them again.
A misty rain wets my lashes as we start out. My head feels heavy; the sky is heavy; my pack weighs me down.
I miss Cook and Cicilly. I miss my sister.
The memory of Rose comes fast and sharp, like pricking my finger when I’m mending a shirt. Sudden and sharp it starts, but then it grows and fills me the way a big man like Petrus fills a shirt, stretching it to the edges. That’s how the pain feels, growing and spreading and filling my entire body all the way to my fingertips. The pain surprises me as much as the tears. They course silently down my cheeks, mingling with the rain.
Does Rose ever think of me? Have Hodge and his three little boys replaced me in her heart? Does she even know I’m gone?
I close my eyes and see her standing in front of our cottage, churning, her cheeks pink with the effort, a tendril of her dark hair curling beside her ear. I try to hold on to the image, not letting the bad memories in. But it’s too late—they’re already there, the things she said about me to Hodge when she didn’t think I was listening. I hear her voice drifting up to the loft where I was supposed to be sleeping. I screw my eyes tightly shut, trying to forget, but over and over again, I hear her voice.
When I stumble blindly over a rock, a hand steadies me. Bartilmew. When did he fall back from Dame Isabel’s side to walk with me?
“Give me your pack,” he says, and I do so without thinking.
He hoists it onto his back, alongside his much heavier pack, and I feel ashamed. I want to thank him, but my mouth is as full of weeping as my eyes.
We walk in silence for at least a mile before I can speak. “I can take it now,” I say.
He tugs on the strap and shakes his head. “Soon.”
“But—”
“Soon,” he says again, and we keep walking.
I think he would carry it all day if his mistress doesn’t realize he’s not beside her.
“Boy!” she cries in her thin voice. “Come here!”
He looks at me apologetically, then hands me my pack and lumbers away.
Just as I take it, I hear voices. I turn.
Two dark-robed figures far behind us shout and wave as they run to catch up. My heart gives a kick. John Mouse and Thomas are safe.
I scrub at my tearstained face with my sleeve as they approach, laughing, out of breath, splashing through puddles.
“What happened to you?” Father Nicholas asks.
“We thought we’d never catch up,” John Mouse says, panting.
They don’t say where they’ve been, but they smile secret smiles at each other when they think no one else is looking. They don’t mention the mercenaries. I think the merchant may have been right about the dicing and the wenching.
Especially when we stop for a meal and Thomas pretends to pray over his chunk of bread: “From a scanty dinner and a bad cook, from a poor supper and a bad night, and from drinking wine that has turned, Good Lord deliver us,” he says.
Father Nicholas and my mistress look shocked, but everyone else laughs. Dame Isabel hides her smile behind her hand. She is as happy as a colt turned loose in a meadow.
If she could see her face, she wouldn’t be so happy. The hairs she plucked from her brows and her forehead have begun to grow back in, black and patchy against her white skin. She looks moth-eaten, like a fur coat stored in a trunk over the summer. I hope nobody tells her.
When we begin walking again, my pack feels lighter than it has in days. A silly song Rose and I used to sing comes bursting into my head, and before I know it, I’m singing it quietly to the beat of my footsteps.
The hare went to market,
scarlet for to sell,
The greyhound stood before him,
money for to tell.
I try to remember what comes next when I hear someone singing ahead of me. John Mouse glances back, gesturing for me to continue, and now that I’ve got the words, I do. My voice blending with his makes a thrill run through my body, and I wish Thomas wouldn’t join in, but he does. So does Father Nicholas. Finally, even the merchant starts singing, and we all keep time with our feet.
We’ve barely sung the last note when John Mouse starts us on “How Many Miles to Beverlyham?” He remembers every single verse. Then Thomas begins a song I learned from Cook: “Come O’er the Burn, Bessy,” and the rest of us chime in with “thou pretty little Bessy, come over the burn, Bessy, to me.”
This time Dame Isabel looks back at us, her eyes going straight to John Mouse, and joins in the singing, but she can barely keep a tune. I wish her husband would notice the way she looks at John Mouse and say something to her.
The scent of smoke from harvest fires in the misty air reminds me of autumn days at home. When a flock of birds rises from a tree beside our path, I finger the lark on my knife blade and think of my father and Rose—and I feel light and happy.
It doesn’t last long.
In the afternoon, when the rain stops, so do we, plopping ourselves onto logs or on the ground, pulling out food from our packs.
“I have some hazelnuts, if anybody wants some,” Dame Isabel says. “Here, girl, come crack these nuts open.”
I look up and realize she’s speaking to me. My name isn’t girl. And I don’t take orders from her.
“I said, come crack these nuts. There are plenty of stones lying about,” she tells me, handing me the bag of hazelnuts.
Dame Margery doesn’t look at me—she’s praying. At least she’s doing it silently this time.
I yank the bag from Dame Isabel’s hand and begin searching for two stones. I’m tired, too. Doesn’t she know that?
Nobody besides Dame Isabel and her husband orders Bartilmew around, but everybody feels free to tell me what to do. And Petrus feels free to show me his fists any time he wants.
I squat in front of a flat rock and start cracking hazelnuts. Dame Isabel is sitting on her husband’s cloak to keep out of the mud, and he dances from foot to foot, wrapping his arms around himself to keep warm in his short tunic and leggings.
I bring a stone down hard on a hazelnut and pretend it’s Dame Isabel’s head. It doesn’t make me feel any better.
I hit the stones together harder, then miss and hit my thumb.
Ow. Tears spring to my eyes, but no one notices.
When I’ve finished cracking all the nuts, Dame Isabel doesn’t give me a single one. Instead, she offers them to John Mouse.
I watch as he bows his head in a courtly gesture of thanks and declines them.
Her face grows red, and she rejoins her husband. She doesn’t offer nuts to anyone else.
Later that evening, we come to a town with a hostel for pilgrims. The hostel provides ingredients, but we have to provide our own cook. Me.
A mess of cabbage and a heap of peas, that’s what they give me. But there’s nobody to show me how to cook them. And the hearth is cold. At least I can get a fire started, striking my flint and metal fast, not hard, the way Bartilmew showed me, to light my char-cloth, using the little scraps of linen and bark and grass I’ve been collecting to feed it. In no time, I have a fire dancing on the hearth, the flames warming my face.
No fire will help this supper, though. The peas are like pebbles no matter how much I stir them or how many prayers I say, while the cabbage turns to slime. I serve them anyway.
Dame Isabel’s husband breaks a tooth on one of the peas.
How was I to know I was supposed to soak them overnight and serve them for breakfast?
I go to bed angry. I wish they had all broken their teeth. Even John Mouse.
In the middle of the night, I awaken. Something hovers over my face, something that feels like a winged demon. Petrus’s devil? Or one looking for me?
I pull the blanket over my head and pray for forgiveness. Anger
is a deadly sin. I lie awake waiting for the demon to go away, listening to the mice scampering across the floor.
the next morning, our path leads us into a forest. Finally, we’re out of the rain, in a dry area. As we crunch through the bracken, I go out of my way to wade through deep piles of leaves, kicking at them gleefully, smelling their rich earthy smell. When I realize the merchant and his packhorse are staring at me scornfully, I stop. The merchant can look at me that way all he wants and I don’t care, but his horse makes me feel foolish.
When I stop scuffling the leaves so loudly, I can hear the dry ones that still hang from the tree limbs. With each puff of wind, they rustle with the sound of water.
By midday, there’s no sound at all except our feet hitting the ground. The wind has dropped, and the air has grown still. Too still. We are deep within the woods, following the merchant along dark trails. Does he really know the way? Branches snag my hood and vines claw at my hair. I duck and twist as the trees’ fingers reach out, grasping at me. I try not to think of the tales I’ve heard about evil spirits dwelling deep within forests. When I see eyes peering at me from a hole in a tree, I scurry closer to my mistress.
We don’t take the time to stop for a meal. All of us are eager to be out of this still, dense wood. The darkness grows heavier, the forest quieter, as if it’s listening to us. The trees seem to bend toward us. When a twig grabs at my cheek, I jump, slapping it away.
A bolt of lightning illumines the dark trees. The sharp crack of thunder makes the horse neigh nervously. “We’ll be wanting shelter,” Father Nicholas says.
“Fine, how about that lovely tavern over there?” Petrus Tappester says.
Father Nicholas doesn’t answer his sarcasm.
We are scarcely ten paces farther when another lightning bolt shows us a hut ahead of us.
“There, you see? The Lord will provide,” Father Nicholas says.
“A charcoal burner’s hut,” the merchant says.
We race for it, pushing into the tiny space just as the storm lets loose with great gusts of rain-laden wind. Only the merchant’s horse stands outside, absorbing the downpour. There’s no room for him, and he’s an evil creature, but I feel sorry for him all the same. I know he’s afraid of the thunder.
The Book of the Maidservant Page 7