by Jodi Taylor
The stool sat in the middle of the room. He pointed sternly and I sat down before I fell down. Crossing to his wooden chest, he rummaged for a while and then pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle which he carefully unwrapped. Inside, were three small wooden boxes, each made of a different wood. He picked up the smallest and opened it, releasing a pleasant, almost pepperminty smell. The box contained a pale green salve.
He held out his hand for mine. I was too tired to argue. He carefully peeled off my makeshift bandage, examining the raw patches carefully. I remembered how important it was not to get an infection in this time. Tiny wounds that could safely be ignored in my time could be very dangerous in this.
No. I had to remind myself. This was my time now. This was when I lived. This was my life. Get used to it. True, as a member of St Mary’s, all my jabs were up to date, but we needed to renew them regularly and that wouldn’t happen now. I needed to watch for sepsis, tetanus and God knows what else.
While I’d been thinking about this he’d carefully cleaned the wounds and anointed them with a tiny amount of salve which tingled slightly but not unpleasantly.
He did the same with the other hand. To my surprise, he handed me back the bloodstained strips of cloth. Of course – everything had value. I could wash them out and use them again. Protection for my hands. To tie up my hair. Anything. I would never throw anything away again. I was the woman who had nothing. Not even a comb for my hair. And sooner or later the period-preventing injections I had every six months would wear off and that would be something else to cope with.
But, other women managed – so would I. I could find a stick to keep my teeth clean. And I could bathe in the stream. And wash my clothes there, too. I would survive. Somehow.
Until 1403 anyway.
The second day was a repeat of the first. Except that I was on the hay wagon all day. And we only worked for half a day because the rain came down after lunch.
Back at St Mary’s, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Everyone seemed to have some function or purpose. Everyone scuttled busily to and fro, finding something to do and I had nothing.
I stood uncertainly in the gatehouse doorway, watching the rain run down the roofs and splash into the muddy yard below. The midden continued to steam, even in the downpour. The chickens had taken cover. People splashed back and forth, calling to each other. I was just turning to go back upstairs when there was a shout from the other side of the yard. Walter and William wanted to see me. I knew better than to keep them waiting.
I hoisted my skirt and galloped across the yard, dodging the deeper-looking puddles. It’s no problem getting wet if there are hot baths and dry clothes at the end of the day, but getting wet and having to live in those clothes for the next twenty-four hours is no joke.
Under Walter’s close scrutiny and even closer questioning, I repeated my story. They’d obviously been mulling it over between them. As far as I could see from their body language, Walter was still deeply suspicious of me.
William Hendred spoke first. ‘You will remain with us for the time being.’
I bowed my head. ‘God’s blessings be upon you both.’
Walter snorted. I pretended not to hear. ‘You will work for your keep.’
I nodded, channelling strong, sturdy, medieval womanhood. I would have preferred to be an honoured guest, but an unpaid servant was better than nothing. I would have food on the table and a roof over my head. Well, William Hendred’s roof over my head.
I think, somewhere, someone had decided I wasn’t making any meaningful contribution to the haymaking process and the next day I was put on what, initially, I thought were light duties.
I was up with the sun, waiting in my room for William Hendred to finish his ablutions so I could begin mine. I soon learned not to drink anything after late evening. Beer goes through me faster than a politician through his expense account.
Once he’d banged the door behind him I was off, dock leaf in hand to avail myself of the latest thing in public facilities, a quick splash in the water trough and then, closing my mind to the lack of Leon bearing tea, I was ready for anything.
First up were the chickens, feathery and malevolent at the best of times – all of whom were grumpy at being woken so early and would take it out on me. I could see why the poultryman had embraced delegation with enthusiasm – an extra half hour in bed and the prospect of getting through the rest of the day unbeaked.
I would chivvy a large number of disgruntled birds out into the fresh air – rather like my old games teacher cattle-prodding thirty unenthusiastic schoolgirls into sub-zero temperatures for a refreshing bout of bloodstained hockey – feed said chickens without losing a leg or an eye, and then, while they were busy, nip back into the hen house to collect the eggs.
I’d take the eggs to the kitchen for the head cook – a massive, tow-headed, red, sweaty, man who was generally known either as Fat Piers or That Bastard, depending on how his day was going. Hands on hips, he would hold me responsible for the disappointing number of eggs reposing on his table. In the first week, I stood meekly, head bowed, and then one day I caught a couple of the scullions smirking at each other and cottoned on.
Next morning, I presented the eggs and stood and grinned at him. He shouted – I grinned some more – he paused, things hung in the balance for a moment, then he too grinned gummily and made a ‘get out of my kitchen’ gesture. I dumped the basket and ran.
I would draw endless buckets of water for the washerwoman Margery Daw, a brawny woman with forearms like hams and fists to match, who was sporadically assisted by a waif named Little Alice, who was barely tall enough to see over the vats, so I was the one doing most of the heavy lifting. Occasionally, I think as some sort of reward, I was allowed to stir a vat of scummy water.
Then I was off for a breakfast, usually of porridge and then back to help the two of them spread their washing over the bushes to dry in the sun.
The next task was to take a midday meal up through the village to Father Ranulf, the elderly priest, now half blind and his even older and frailer ‘housekeeper’, Dame Rowena.
It would seem that he and she had been together for years. I suspected he was the younger son of a good household and that either just before or just after his ordination there had been some Rowena-related scandal, and he’d been despatched to this remote place. Out of sight and out of mind. I think it had been a stroke of luck for all concerned and he’d arrived here as a young priest, bringing his ‘housekeeper’ with him, and the village had been the gainer because he was a conscientious and compassionate man with slightly less hair than Dr Bairstow – which is to say none at all. I was lucky – his Latin was excellent. Many local priests had virtually no Latin at all. They’d learned the services by rote years ago and were sometimes unintelligible.
Rowena had been beautiful – you could see it in her fine bones and patrician profile. The poor soul was crippled by arthritis these days, her fingers twisted into uselessness. Hence me taking them up their midday meal and making the return trip with the used dishes from the day before.
I would also take the opportunity to sweep around their house, tidy a little, and empty their pots for them, and in return they taught me a few useful words and phrases in the local dialect. Weather permitting, we would sit on a bench against the church wall and talk in a strange mixture of medieval English and Latin, with me relapsing into modern English and mime under stress. They laughed a lot. I think they thought I was hilarious. Sometimes they poured out beakers of something apple-flavoured and then things became even more hilarious and I often had trouble getting back down the hill.
In the afternoon, I would sweep my room, William Hendred’s room, and the gatehouse stairs, often meeting his men-at-arms as I did so. They always stepped aside politely, which surprised me. I wondered if they thought I was his property and were therefore keeping their hands to themselves. I tried to feel that this was a Good Thing.
After I’d tidied our rooms, it was back to
take in the washing for Margery who herself was often incapable by this time of day. There was never any sign of Little Alice at this hour. I had no idea where she took herself off to.
Out of kindness, Rowena had given me a drop spindle for which she had no more use because her fingers couldn’t cope any longer. She’d spent a couple of hours trying to instil the basics and when I felt I was well enough advanced I thought I’d have a go in public, I sat on the bench by the gatehouse door and practised my spinning. I was rubbish. To this day, I’m convinced the stupid thing was defective.
Sitting in the sun, I assembled my bit of practice fleece, hooked on the spindle, let the fleece rest over the back of my left hand as she’d shown me, and cockily gave it a twirl. A nice thread appeared and, greatly encouraged, I teased out a little more of the fleece and gave it another go. I’m not sure what happened – I think I overspun. Or possibly underspun – let’s face it there’s only two ways it could go. Anyway, the yarn parted and the spindle dropped heavily to the ground. Presumably, that’s why it’s called a drop spindle. Although in my case, thud spindle would be more appropriate.
I sighed and reached down to pick it up, caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up to find William Hendred, hands on hips, watching me from a few yards away. I gave him my ‘Yes? Can I help you look?’ but he just shook his head and walked away.
I practised constantly. I had to – this was not an age when women sat around and did nothing – if they weren’t ploughing a ten-acre strip with a teaspoon while eight months pregnant, or delivering a breeched calf in a thunderstorm, or brewing something dark, bubbling and unspeakable, or shrieking at their countless children, then they were spinning. And you didn’t catch them scowling in concentration, or cursing under their breath or grappling with yarn that looked like a string of badly stuffed sausages. These women sat, coiffed heads close together, their tongues as busy as their fingers, chatting, watching their children over their shoulders, and doing a hundred other things at the same time.
They were friendly – I was sometimes invited to join them as they sat outside Pikey Peter’s house, waiting for their bread to bake in the public oven.
Pikey Peter was the enormous lad who had greeted me at the gate on the day I arrived. He’d been a big, strong and handsome lad – the apple of his widowed mother’s eye – until the grave he was digging one day had collapsed on him. He had been working alone and by the time they got him out he’d been buried for too long. Now he was capable of only the very simplest tasks and his great strength was not the blessing it had once been. But people rallied around. He was given work to do – lifting and carrying – and his exhausted mother, Eadgytha, earned a little extra in the way of an egg or two or a small bundle of firewood by minding other people’s bread as it baked in the oven outside her house. I sometimes hid a wrinkled apple or two in the bottom of my basket as I toiled up the hill and left them on her doorstep.
Anyway, I sat with them if I’d finished my tasks early and occasionally – out of polite exasperation, I think – one of them would take my spindle and twirl it expertly for me, and sorting out the tangle I’d managed to get myself into. Mostly I just listened, picking up words and phrases and listening to the gossip.
Interestingly, no one liked Walter of Shrewsbury – he was generally reckoned to be a hard man. William Hendred they seemed to like. I once asked if he was from Castle Hendred across the county, but either they didn’t know or more likely my accent defeated them. Hugh Armstrong was an unknown quantity. He’d never spent much time at St Mary’s. As a young boy, he’d gone into service to John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolinbroke – soon to be King Henry if he wasn’t already – and had remained with him ever since, sharing his exile. I gathered from their talk that news of Henry’s landing at Ravenspur had not yet reached them. Again, I would stare at my feet and wonder what to do. And that was my dilemma, of course. Summer was passing and it was all going to kick off any day now.
I would look around the peaceful village at the, if not happy then at least reasonably contented, people living there, their cottages and livestock, their carefully tilled strips of land – it wasn’t a rich village, but it was reasonably prosperous. I was getting to know some of them. Enormous John Smith and his countless equally enormous sons, working at their forge down by the stream, near the stepping stones. Miserable Robert Stukely who ran the mill and would cheat you blind as soon as look at you. Nearly opposite, on the other side of the stream, lived Margaret Brewer, whose ale was so good they came for miles around for it. Assisted by her daughter, Big Alice, she lived and brewed almost on the same spot the Falconburg Arms would occupy some six hundred and fifty years from now. And there was William the Carpenter, the two kitchen boys, Roger and Edgar, who might have been brothers. Fat Piers the cook I’ve already mentioned. And there was Dick, the tall scullion boy, and the other one whose name I could never remember but whose face was an explosion of acne, and Wymer and Cuthbert, the stable boys, who loudly and cheerfully pursued every girl in sight and who would be terrified if they ever caught one.
They were kindly people, hard-working, devout – most of them worshipped daily and even I traipsed off to church on Sunday, significantly failing to burst into flames on the threshold. I would spend the service staring around at the brilliantly painted walls and statues, kneeling and crossing myself at the appropriate moments, always half a beat behind everyone else, as Father Ranulf celebrated Mass.
I had a great respect and liking for them all and I thought – well, I hoped – that that they had some liking for me. I worked hard. I cantered up and down to the village twenty times a day. I was polite and respectful to everyone – and then came the day when I wondered if I’d been kidding myself.
It was early morning. I was delivering today’s eggs to the kitchen. Everyone was yawning and stretching, poking the fires back into life, and laying out platters and beakers for breakfast.
I dumped the eggs on the table, turned to go and bumped straight into a man who smelled of urine and onions. Not an attractive combination in any age. It was the gate-guard I’d met on my first day here. The one who had left Pikey Peter in charge while he got his head down. For a couple of days afterwards, he’d walked around with a split lip. Medieval discipline as administered by William Hendred.
‘Ah,’ he said, taking advantage to run his hands over me. I stiffened. There were very definite rules about touching women. Basically, if a woman wasn’t a relation, then you didn’t. I, of course, had no relations. There were no men here to protect me. He laughed. I didn’t catch everything he said but I did get ‘þe womman wiþouten maister.’
Oh God, was that what they called me? The masterless woman? That wasn’t good at all. Men come in many shapes and forms. Bottom of the heap is always the greasy, inadequate runt with a sense of entitlement who can’t quite understand that all women are not gagging for him. And this one was bottom of even that heap. The sort of bloke you’d use to line your budgie cage. The sort who grabs a woman by whichever bit of her anatomy is most easily accessible and when she struggles tells her he likes a woman with spirit until you kick him in the nadgers and it turns out that he doesn’t. Things can then go one of two ways. Either he oozes away and rejoins the primordial slime or he lays in wait until you’re alone and far from help.
I was always alone. I could be in trouble here.
I compromised by kicking his shins He hopped backwards cursing and then came back at me with a raised fist. I was preparing to defend myself with a small wicker basket when there was a noise. I can’t describe it, but in the silence that followed I looked around to find that it had been the sort of noise made by everyone in the vicinity picking up the nearest implement and assuming a nasty look.
There was never any doubt as to which way things would go and, with a face-saving glare, he seized a loaf off the table and barged his way out of the door.
I picked up my basket and prepared to follow him out.
Dick, the tall s
kinny scullion, touched my arm and shook his head. I chose to interpret that as a message to let him get clear. He handed me a small beaker and nodded to a stool near the giant fireplace. I put down my basket and sat. My legs were trembling. Good idea.
The beaker was half full of very weak beer which – and you wouldn’t think this possible – tastes even worse than beer that isn’t very weak. However, I sipped slowly, leaving the traditional small amount in the bottom so I wouldn’t have to see what the beer had failed to dissolve.
Yes, that had been one small bad incident among many good ones, but it was the moment I realised I was part of this community. I didn’t rank very highly because he was right, I was a masterless woman, with all the problems that entailed – but I knew them all, and they were beginning to know me. I was the foreign woman – the one who had lost everything – and they generously forgave my eccentricities and incompetence. They had taken me in and made my life much easier than it could have been, and there was one way I could repay them. I could find someone and make him listen to me. I could repay my debt to them and, if History didn’t like it, then that was just tough.
I discounted Walter of Shrewsbury immediately. Even I didn’t have that much of a death wish. So it was not without some misgivings that I placed myself in front of William Hendred as he emerged from the stables one afternoon.
Remembering my womanly duty to look chaste, obedient, respectful, humble and dutiful – none of which came naturally – I clasped my hands before me and said, ‘God give you good day, sir. May I speak?’
He had been standing in the sun, chewing a straw and, I suspected, just taking a moment to enjoy the day. It wasn’t a great moment, but as Walter had pushed off to harass someone somewhere else, it seemed as good a time as any.
William Hendred was a man of very few words but I was beginning to understand his expressions. He regarded me with a familiar mixture of exasperation and faint amusement. Taking the straw from his mouth, he nodded.