The Book of the Maidservant

by Rebecca Barnhouse

  There’s room for us both, and the heat left over from the day’s baking seeps into my back, my legs, my aching bones. The smell of warm bread envelops me. In sleep, I am home with Rose on her baking days and the warmth of our garden in summer.

  Just as light begins to seep around the door’s edges, an old woman with eyes deep in her wrinkled face shoos us out, but she smiles and gives us each a hunk of barley bread that she has tied up in her apron. We race back to the inn.

  After a warm night and kind strangers, I find my way over the rocks easily all day long, my head full of the sound of John Mouse’s laughter, the sight of him winking at me.

  Then, after fifteen days, or fourteen if you believe Petrus Tappester, we arrive at the hospice in Bolzano.

  My mistress isn’t there.

  “Too soon,” Bartilmew says when he sees me looking through the dormitory. “Wait.”

  That’s what he says, but what if she’s lost in the snow somewhere? What if she has fallen down a cliff or been overtaken by robbers? What if the mercenaries found her? I pray to St. Margaret to keep her safe.

  When I go back to the common room, a pile of clothes greets me. “Those need to be washed,” Dame Isabel says. “And some need mending.”

  “Where’s our supper? Hurry up, girl,” Petrus says.

  I want to kick the pile of clothes and storm out of the hospice. Don’t they think I get tired? Don’t they know how hungry and cold I am?

  I stomp into the kitchen to find the sack of meal allotted to us. Inside the sack, something’s moving. I look closer—weevils, hundreds of them, crawling through the barley meal. Ugh. There are far too many for me to pick them out. I shut the sack and stare at it for a moment. Then I dump the meal into a pot of water and hang it over the fire.

  Once it’s boiled, they’ll never notice. At least, I hope not.

  While it cooks, I scrounge around for my own supper, scraping the moldy edge off a piece of hard cheese I’ve been carrying for weeks and digging deep in my pack for an oatcake.

  When I serve the bowls, Petrus Tappester and Dame Isabel are arguing about how long we should stay in Bolzano. They never look at their food, just spoon it into their mouths. Father Nicholas blinks at his for a minute. Then he stirs it and starts eating.

  I feel bad about Bartilmew—but not bad enough to say anything. And, anyway, for all I know, weevils might taste fine.

  After supper, it’s too dark out to wash clothes, and besides, they’d never dry. They can wait till morning. In the kitchen, I find a place near the fire and hunch over Dame Isabel’s husband’s hose, trying to mend the rip in them. My fingers are so rough they snag the wool, and I jab myself with the needle. Blood speckles my skirt and the hose.

  Finally, I finish, my seams a crazy zigzag. Cook would laugh if she could see them. I toss the hose on the pile of laundry and stand, stretching and rubbing at the place on my neck that’s sore from leaning over my mending. I’m going to bed.

  A voice stops me, low and dangerous. “I thought I told you to wash my clothes,” Petrus Tappester says.

  “I will. In the morning. It’s too dark for them to dry now.”

  I see his hand just before it hits me.

  My fingers fly to the side of my head.

  “Put them in front of the fire, stupid girl. They’ll dry.” He stalks out.

  I stand there, shaking with fury. I hate him so much.

  Where does he think I’m going to do all this washing, when I don’t know my way around and it’s dark out?

  I probe my head and feel a lump. I hope the devil finds Petrus Tappester.

  A log rolls over in the fire, making the flames leap. I look toward the room’s shadowy corners where devils sometimes hide. Did something move? I cross myself.

  Quickly, I paw through the clothes to find Petrus’s breeches, then slip out the hospice door. For a moment, I stand in the dark, letting my eyes get accustomed to the pale moonlight. The stable looms ahead of me. I stumble toward it, bruising my toes on stones.

  Inside the stable it’s even darker, and I have to feel my way forward until I find the horses’ trough, the water crusted with ice. I bunch Petrus’s breeches around my hand and punch through it. Bits of oats and hay float in the water, and horses have slobbered in it, but I don’t care.

  I pound the breeches against the side of the trough to loosen the dirt, then plunge them back into the water. When I yank them back out again, the cloth catches on something. I pull again but nothing happens. I pull harder. Suddenly, the breeches are in my hands, and I have to step back to steady myself.

  I wring them out and rush, shivering madly, back into the kitchen. When I spread the breeches on the bench before the fire, I see the huge rip.

  I can’t stop my tears. I kick at the bench. All I want to do is sleep, but now these loathsome breeches. If I don’t fix them, Petrus might really hurt me.

  I wish John Mouse were here now. Oh, Cook, oh, Cicilly, oh, Rose.

  I collapse in a crumpled heap before the fire, the wet, ripped breeches in my hands.

  The sound of a rooster crowing draws me from a hazy dream. It’s dark and the fire has died out, but I can hear a horse clopping past, a woman clucking at hens, the bleating of sheep. Morning sounds. I start to stand and then stop as I sway, my hand to the lump on my head. When the dizziness passes, I stand again, more slowly this time.

  Petrus’s damp breeches fall out of my lap, where they’ve left a wet spot on my skirt, and land on the dirt floor.

  I stare at them.

  Somewhere nearby, church bells are tolling.

  I listen, but I hear no sounds from the hospice. No one is up. Silently, I glide out the door. I look up the narrow street, then down it, until I find the bell tower.

  Grabbing my skirts, I walk quickly, glancing behind me every few steps. In a church, at Mass, Petrus Tappester wouldn’t dare touch me.

  Three widows in black dresses climb the steps to the church door. I follow them in and find a place beside a column where I can kneel to pray.

  I’m in the midst of a prayer to St. Pega and her brother, St. Guthlac, when a sound makes me catch my breath.

  “Ah, sweet Jesu,” a voice cries out. A sob follows.

  My mistress has made it over the mountains.

  i feel a weight lifting from me, as if I had just taken off my pack. I look through the dark church until I find my mistress kneeling among a group of women, her eyes closed in prayer.

  I redouble my own prayers. The Lord has been merciful to us both.

  When Mass is over, I follow Dame Margery out, marveling at how white her gown is. It’s new, not the one that Petrus Tappester ripped the bottom off of, the one that was filthy from weeks of mud and rain and wading through streams.

  She walks with three very fine ladies—they’re so fine that I’m afraid to approach them.

  “Dame Margery,” I call.

  She turns. Her wimple is well-pinned, her veil beautifully starched. How did she do that without me?

  She frowns. With an impatient gesture, she signals me to follow.

  I stay a few steps back. I can hear the ladies’ gowns rustling like summer oaks. Is it silk that sounds so rich?

  When we come to a tall building with broad steps leading up to a massive wooden door, like a church, Dame Margery hisses, “Go around to the kitchen.” The door opens and she and the ladies disappear through it.

  I walk around the house, gazing up at the high stone walls, my mouth open. A boy looks down at me from a window, then draws his head back in. When I find a low door in the back, I peer through. The kitchen.

  When I step inside, a man standing by the fireplace speaks to me, but I can’t understand him. His dark hair surrounds his face in tight curls, and a thin mustache curves like a caterpillar on his lip. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

  His voice gets louder and he gestures at me, but I still can’t understand.

  When he speaks again, his voice is angry. He rushes at me as if I were a
goose, chasing me away.

  I stumble backward, outside. The door slams shut.

  What do I do now? My mistress won’t be able to find me, and I don’t speak the language.

  I wander back to the front of the house. I don’t think they’d like it if I knocked.

  I lower myself onto the steps. My stomach growls and my head aches where Petrus hit me, but I’d rather wait here than back at the hospice.

  Between two buildings, the sun peers from behind a cloud, climbing into morning. A dove lands on the street with a whooshing noise and pecks at a clump of dirt. Somewhere nearby, hooves clop, coming toward me. I watch as a mule appears from around the corner, a basket on either side of its back, a shabbily dressed man hitting it with a stick. The man sees me, then shakes his head quickly, giving me some kind of message as he goes past. What does he mean?

  The door opens and I jump up.

  A man in a fine black robe and a sort of turban on his head comes out, pulling on gloves. Behind him comes a younger man, this one in a bright blue tunic and red hose.

  I drop a little curtsy. “Beg pardon, I’m looking for Dame Margery.”

  They stare at me. Then the younger man shoos at me the same way the man in the kitchen did. Can’t they see I’m not a chicken?

  “Dame Margery,” I say more loudly, drawing out the words, so they’ll understand. “Mar-ger-y Kempe.”

  The two men speak to each other rapidly. Then the younger one goes to the door and shouts something.

  Finally. I smooth my skirt and wait for my mistress, keeping my eyes down so the men won’t think I’m too forward.

  A huge man comes out, tall and brawny, even bigger than Petrus Tappester. I shift to see if Dame Margery is behind him. He keeps coming, directly toward me.

  Before I can step out of the way, the man lifts me up and carries me down the steps.

  “Stop! Put me down!” I yell. I crane my neck back to see my mistress, but she’s not there.

  The man keeps going. The more I squirm, the tighter he grips me. “Let me go! Help!” I call to two young men walking down the street.

  They laugh and keep walking.

  When we get to the corner, the man drops me. In the mud.

  When I look up, he’s halfway back to the house again. I stand, brushing at my cloak, rubbing my backside where I landed and my elbow where it hit the ground. Angry tears blur my sight as I stare back at the house.

  Where is my mistress?

  There’s nothing for me to do but go back to the hospice. Back to where I left Petrus Tappester’s torn breeches and a pile of unwashed laundry.

  I creep down the street, past the church, and toward the hospice. When I stop at the door, I can’t hear anybody, or see them, either, so I tiptoe in. The pile of clothes lies on the floor where I left it, Petrus’s breeches on top. I grab them all.

  Down the street the opposite way, I see a well. As I near it, I watch two girls Rose’s age talking and laughing as they pound clothes against the stone sides of the holding tank. When I approach, they stare at me. “Benedicite,” I say, crossing myself—I don’t want them to shoo me off, too.

  One of them says something, but I shake my head to show her I can’t understand. She shrugs and goes back to her washing and her chatter.

  As I immerse Dame Isabel’s gown into the cold water, I see them eyeing me, but they keep talking to each other. Before long, it’s as if I’m not even there.

  After I’ve washed the pile of clothes, I tackle my cloak, shivering in the chill breeze while I scrub the mud off it. If it wasn’t so cold, I’d stay here to mend Petrus’s breeches, too, but I can’t thread the needle when my hands shake so much.

  When I get near the hospice, I hear voices. As I drape damp clothing over a low wall by the hospice door, I listen. My mistress is here.

  “God willed it,” she’s saying. “How else could I have made it here two days before you did?”

  That’s easy: She didn’t have Petrus Tappester leading her astray. When I finish hanging out the clothes, I hover by the door.

  Someone says something, Father Nicholas, I think, but I can’t make it out. But I can certainly hear Dame Margery.

  “Dona Caterina invited me to stay at her house. She knows Brother Alphonse, the friar I met in Constance—the one who presented me with this fine gown.”

  I peek in to see her preening in front of Dame Isabel and Father Nicholas. When I see Petrus Tappester scowling at her from a corner, I duck out, my heart pounding.

  “I’m not listening to this,” he says. “Don’t think you’re going to Venice with us, not with all your crying and your holy talk.”

  I hear his boots hitting the ground hard as he comes toward the door. Where can I go? There’s no place for me to hide. I lower my face and look at the ground.

  He stomps past me without a word.

  As he turns a corner, I let out my breath.

  The moment I come through the door, my mistress sees me. “And you,” she says, her eyes narrowed in anger, “you wretched girl, leaving me all alone like that.”

  “No, mistress, you don’t understand, they—”

  “I understand wickedness when I see it,” she says.

  “But I went to the kitchen; they wouldn’t let me in.”

  She slaps my face. I step back, dazed.

  “You left me to cross the Alps alone with just an old man to see to my needs,” she says.

  I left her?

  “I’ll be at Dona Caterina’s,” Dame Margery says to the others. She turns back to me. “And I certainly don’t need you there. Dona Caterina has lent me her own personal maid while I’m in Bolzano.” She sweeps out of the hospice.

  i may doubt my mistress’s holiness right now, my cheek still burning from the slap she gave me, but Dame Isabel doesn’t. Not anymore. “The Lord saw her over the mountains, and he’ll see her to Venice, too,” she says. “We need her in our company.”

  Her husband nods, and Father Nicholas is quick to agree.

  “You must go to Dona Caterina’s house and beg her to come with us,” Dame Isabel tells the priest.

  “That’s all fine to say, but what about Petrus?” her husband says. “He’ll never agree to it.”

  “Petrus isn’t the only one on this pilgrimage,” Dame Isabel says, stretching herself tall. “I’ll speak to him.”

  By the time I serve supper, it’s official. My mistress will rejoin the company. Until we leave, she’s staying at Dona Caterina’s—without me.

  “You mark me,” Petrus says, waving his bread toward Dame Isabel. “One word out of her and it’s over.”

  “Now, Petrus,” Dame Isabel says. “I’m sure there will be no trouble.”

  The trouble comes two days later when Petrus decides it’s time to leave Bolzano.

  “Certainly not,” Dame Isabel says. “We’ve barely arrived.” She flicks her eyes toward the door.

  I do, too. We’re both waiting for John Mouse and Thomas. If my mistress made it over the mountains so quickly, they could, too. They could be here any minute. If we leave without them, I’ll never see them again—they go straight from here to the university at Bologna.

  Like Dame Isabel, I’m content to stay in this hospice as long as we can, even if it does mean my keeping to corners and out-of-the-way places where Petrus won’t find me. I mended his breeches, but the seams look like crooked scars. I put them on the bottom of the pile of clothes in a dark corner. So far he hasn’t said anything.

  In fact, nobody pays any attention to me unless they want something. Except Bartilmew. He gives me nods of acknowledgment or looks of commiseration when Petrus shouts at me.

  In the end, Petrus prevails. Five days have passed with no sign of the students, and he says we have to leave. I watch behind me all the way out of town, but I catch no sight of them.

  The trip to Venice is the easiest we have had so far. We sail down rivers, never out of sight of land, and when I stand on deck and look out at the horizon, the queasy feeling le
aves my stomach. In its place is a huge emptiness for John Mouse.

  As the mountains recede, I think of him in the infirmary, high in the Alps, and pray for him.

  * * *

  The strange city of water welcomes us. As we disembark, men rush up to us saying, “Deutsch? Français? English?” A short, wiry man with a stooped back attaches himself to us and hurries us off the quay.

  “Good place to stay, clean, cheap,” he says. “For you English, good cheap.”

  He leads us, pulling at our arms, pushing Dame Isabel’s husband from behind, and making us laugh. We go through narrow streets, over bridges, around corners, past churches. It’s so bright, with orange roofs and paintings on the walls and buildings so big they make the guildhall in Lynn look like a toy. There’s water everywhere, more water even than in Lynn. People rush past, ladies carried in litters, tradesmen leading donkeys, boys in rich tunics, and boys in beggars’ rags. Everywhere, tippy-looking boats ply the waters.

  We pass shops and market stalls: money changers, tailors, cobblers, rope sellers, cloth dealers waving bright fabrics. Wondrous smells prick at my nose—spices and sizzling meats and something sweet, I don’t know what. Men reach out to us, holding fruits and fowls and long loaves of bread. I’m dizzy with the colors and noises and smells, but our guide leads us too quickly for me to stop and look.

  He takes us down a dark alley so narrow that when I reach out, my fingers brush against the walls on both sides. When we finally stop, it’s in front of a two-story building whose windows have no shutters.

  “You have servants? Better that way,” the guide says. “Good price for you English,” he says before he and Petrus start bickering. They come to an agreement and shake hands.

  When the guide leaves, Dame Isabel, her husband, and Dame Margery all turn on Petrus. “That’s the best you could do?” Dame Isabel says.

  “We haven’t even looked inside,” her husband adds.

  “I’m not paying that much,” Dame Margery says. “I won’t be here long, anyway—I’ll be leaving for Assisi.”

  “You’ll pay the same as the rest of us,” Petrus tells her.

  I close my ears and look through the door, which hangs drunkenly on one hinge. When I step in, the smell is terrible. Dame Isabel’s husband was right.