Carefully I write f-r-u-m-e-n-t-y across the road. He comes to stand on the other side. He looks down at my word. His eyes flicker as if he is nervous.
After a bit, he nods. “That’s it.” He looks around and announces to the porter, “That’s frumenty.”
He’s looking at it upside down. He does not know that words have upsides and upside-downs. I understand at once. He cannot read. I am careful to give no outward sign of my sudden knowledge.
Still he hesitates.
“Sir Cook,” I say, “I did not mean to insult you when I pulled away from your hand. But, Sir Cook, I knew my face is dirty. I did not want your fine, fair hand to be soiled.”
What a huge lie, a lie bigger than Jonah’s whale. It is a stupid thing to say, but I cannot think of anything else. Unless the man is a moon-born fool, he will see through that lie. My hands are dirtier than my face, but I did not pull away when he touched my hands. In despair, I cast about in my mind for another way to get into the castle, but my head is empty of all ideas.
“Come with me,” he finally says. He turns and heads into the castle yard.
Relief washes over me. I start to follow him.
I’m stopped by the grasp of the witch’s boy’s hand.
“What about me?” he asks. He looks at me with huge, frightened eyes. “What will happen to me?”
My mind races. I cannot give up this chance. Master Cook has reached the gates.
“Boy,” he calls. “Boy who can write! Are you coming or no?”
“Sir Cook,” I cry, “I cannot leave my brother. Please let me bring him, too. He is a good worker and does not eat much.”
“I will have no lackwits working under me.” He signals to the porter, and the gates start to stutter shut.
I look back and forth between the frightened boy and the gates. Then I drop Fangmore. I tear the large pouch from my belt and thrust it into the boy’s hands.
“There are oatcakes in there, and a good twig to clean your teeth.”
I break away from him and run to the gates.
I hear him wailing behind me, “Come back, come back.”
The gates stop, the width of two people, and I slip through. Master Cook is already halfway across the castle yard. A woman of about Nettle’s age, but plump as risen dough, catches my arm as I go past. She is dressed in a woven gown the color of dried wheat with a mustard-brown wimple set firmly on her head.
“Will you leave your brother, just like that? For shame, a big boy like you.” She speaks with a soft accent as if she has come from a distant place.
“We need the work, lady,” I whine. “He can go back to our village.” I must be inside the castle for my plan to succeed. “Our auntie will look after him there,” I desperately lie. The boy will be fine. He is nothing to me. He found me to help him. He will find someone else.
I can still hear him wailing outside the gates. I hear the other abandoned boys taunting him, calling him “Crybaby!” and “Weeping Will!” and “Leaky!”
The woman calls out to Master Cook, “A word, Master Aswald!” At the same time she waves a hand at the porter, who stops pushing the gates and leans against them.
Master Cook turns to her. “Yes, Mistress?”
“As you know, I am not as spry as I used to be. May I choose a boy to be my legs, to fetch the flour and such?”
He inclines his head, gracious as a king, then continues on into the castle proper.
She lets loose my arm. “Run and fetch your brother, lad.”
I hesitate. “He is not clever, lady. He is a good boy, but—”
“Bless you, my little cabbage leaf, that matters not. My third child, he was a moonling, too, but he was as good a boy as ever breathed. Me, I would rather have a moonling than some clever, sly m’sieur that must be watched every moment so he does not steal the raisins or torment the cat. Now run to your brother.”
I race out to the teary witch’s boy. “I have persuaded Master Cook to let you come with me,” I tell him. His face lights up. “But you must say you are my brother.”
He nods solemnly and repeats, “I am your brother.”
“And not a word about your momma, understand? If folk think you are from witch stock, they will cast us both out.”
He tugs at my sleeve. “You left a picture letter for my momma and told her to come for me at the castle, remember?”
I suddenly see how this can be used to my advantage.
“If you say or do anything wrong, they will throw us out of the castle. If you forget to say I am your brother, they will throw us out. If you are lazy or fail to do everything you are asked, they will throwus out. And if they throw us out, your momma will never find you and will die of grief.”
His face turns white.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “If we are to be brothers, boy, I must know your name.”
“Pod.” His eyes begin to fill with tears. “Momma called me her little pea pod ’cause—”
“We’ll have no talk of mothers here!”
He stares wide-eyed and then lowers his head like a lamb to the slaughter and trudges into the castle yard. I follow.
The gates of His castle thunder shut behind us.
I smile.
I am in His stronghold. My plan is ripe. By the end of the week, He will be dead.
E L E V E N
I HATE the world of the kitchen.
Even though the kitchen is easily ten times as big as Nettle’s hut, there are so many people bustling about that I am always bumping into someone. Since everyone else but the witch’s boy outranks me, I am sore from their cuffs and kicks.
My worst tormentor is the apprentice to Master Cook, a tall, slender boy called Brude. He is supple as a whip and as sly as a serpent. His face is as soft-featured as any lass’s, and his eyelashes are the longest I’ve ever seen. But his fair face hides a foul heart. When Master Cook leads me, the witch boy, and the ragged lad in, Brude minces over to examine us and pinches his nose with his fingers.
“Paugh, paugh!” he cries out to Master Cook. “Master Aswald, surely these are the stable lads who have followed you by mistake. These filthy ragamuffins will never do justice to your fine kitchen.”
Master Cook sighs and shakes his head.
Brude adds, “Two of these lads look too pisley to give full service. Should we not go to the village and trade them for larger beasts?”
Then Brude and Master Cook titter and wink at each other and roll their eyes around.
“I would be glad to go for you,” Brude offers.
I find out later that Brude will do anything to get out of the kitchen. When Master Cook is nigh, Brude fawns and makes much of him, but as soon as Master Cook is out of sight, Brude finds an excuse to creep out and flirt with the laundry maids. Still, in the afternoon, Master Cook does let Brude go to the village to hire two more lads.
We new hires are put to work fetching and hauling so the masters can set up the kitchen in preparation for the lord’s arrival. Master Cook takes delight in cursing and calling us names when we set things down in the wrong place. He swears more when Master Baker, Master Steward, and Master Bottler are nigh—as if the oaths and insults are meant more to impress them than to chastise us.
He swears most at the witch’s boy, who begins to breathe even harder and rush around even faster. After he is called a puddlepuffin, tears well up in the boy’s eyes. I pull him aside and in his ear I whisper a rhyme that Nettle used to chant when the village children mocked me:
Ye may break my bones
With sticks and stones
And clods of dirt,
But names do no hurt.
I see the plump, gray-haired woman watching us out of the corner of her eye. After a few moments, she goes over to Master Cook and whispers in his ear. He pouts, but he grabs the witch’s boy by the neck of his tunic. “You lazy lumpkin, you should be helping Mistress Lisette and not getting under the feet of my kitchen lads.” He gives the witch’s boy a little shove toward the plum
p lady, and she sets him to work piling bowls and such on some low shelves.
By the time the sun sets, everything has been unpacked. MasterCook directs a ragged village lad and me to set up a trestle table in the courtyard, and we pile it high with day-old bread, green cheese, and buckets of ale. From all over the castle come other servants— men and boys from the stable, the poulterer and his assistant, the laundry maids, Master Steward, the tailor, the alewife, Master Smith and his sweaty helpers, the stinking porter, and all the other workers. Brude arrives in time for supper, followed by two large village lads. It makes me dizzy to see so many folk about. They ignore me, which makes me glad. This way I can study them and learn their ways and customs. The witch’s boy stands close to me, his chin pressed against my arm. We all eat standing up, taking turns sipping from a ladle of ale. I notice that folk talk only with those who work with them—kitchen folk talk only with other kitchen folk, stablemen talk only among themselves, and so forth. Many of the men make eyes at the laundry maids, the only young women about, and most of the laundry maids peep back at them. The witch’s boy and I eat silently.
The food is good and we are allowed to eat our fill.
BY THE END of my first day, I learn that the kitchen staff occupies the next to lowest rank of servants in the castle. Only the stable lads who shovel out the stalls are lower than we. It is clear that the village lads, the witch’s boy, and I are the lowest ranking of the kitchen staff.
After supper, Brude sets us to gathering up the scraps, taking down the trestle table, and cleaning the ale buckets and the bread knives in the scullery shed. I learn that the small ragged boy who was hired with us at the gates is called Mungo. He talks a lot and is never still, as if ants have nested just under his skin. One of the new boys from the village has a huge body but a young, gentle face. His hands are as big as chickens, but he is clever with his fingers. His name is Ban. Alpen, the other new lad, is lanky and dark. He is always chewing on something—an oat straw, the top of a knuckle, a thumbnail. He seems overwhelmed by the size of thecastle and company, and he speaks only when he is asked a question.
None of them know when the lord is to arrive.
After we finish our tasks, it is full dark, and so we return to the kitchen. All the household masters are gathered around the biggest table, throwing dice. In the corner, all the apprentices except Brude also throw dice. The gray-haired lady is seated on a low stool by the far corner of the fire hearth. The witch’s boy sits on the floor next to her. Both of them are polishing pewter ladles.
The village lads creep over to a shadowy corner where a pile of hempen sacks can serve as their couch, but I join the lady by the fire.
“I am called Lisette,” she says, looking up at me, not breaking the rhythm of her polishing. “I am the wafer maker.”
Master Cook glances her way and sniffs. “Wafers!” He sniffs again. “A French notion if ever I heard one. Good Scottish fare is not good enough for our lady. Oh, no, she must ape the ways of Paris! She—”
He shoots an angry glance at me, and then, as if embarrassed at saying too much, struts over to shout at Mungo, who is examining a barrel of boardlike cod.
Lisette rolls her eyes as if she has heard this many times.
“Master Aswald cannot forgive me for being French,” she says softly. “Even though my husband—Lord keep his soul—was born and bred in this land, and both my sons are Scots through and through.”
“What are wafers?” the witch’s boy asks.
“Bits of pastry,” she tells us. “Sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy or savory or salty.” She shows us her wafer press, which is made of two flat stones. “I mix up batter no thicker than spring cream, and I brush it on this stone after I have heated it to just the right hotness. Then I press this stone atop it for just the right spell. I lift off the top stone and peel off the thin baked dough. Voil‡! A wafer!” She chuckles. “Master Aswald is always waspish at the talk of wafers because he cannot master their art. No one in the kitchen can master it butme.” Her tone is one of simple pride. “Press one too long, and it crumbles when you try to take it off the griddle stone. Press it too short, and you have a mess of string. Heat the stone too hot, and the wafer chars. Heat it too little, and the wafer is naught but tough saddle leather. There is magic in the making.” She winks at me and Pod. “ ’Tis true.”
The boy listens to her, gape-mouthed. I nudge him to shut his mouth, but instead my touch startles him into speech.
“Can you teach me, lady, to make the wafers?”
Before I can explain that if Master Cook cannot master the art, then he certainly cannot, Lisette says, “My little marrow bud, had I the time, that I could do. I taught it to my Jimmie, my third child who is like thee, and now he can make a fine living at any place he pleases.” The witch’s boy’s face lights up with a joy so bright that it hurts me to see.
Lisette hands the boy a tankard. “Now be a good lad and run out to the well and fill this with sweet water so we all may have a good drink.” The boy wrinkles his brow. “You remember the well,” she says in a gentle tone. “We passed it as we walked in, about three paces from the kitchen door.”
Joy flashes back into the boy’s face.
“I will go,” he cries out and runs off in his wobbling way.
Lisette pulls me closer. She smells of lavender and sweet-spice. “While your brother is gone, I thought we might have a bit of a chat.”
I swallow nervously.
“I meant what I said,” she adds. “It takes patience more than anything else to master the art of the wafer. Moonlings, poor lambs, may not have the brains of Master Aswald, but often they beat him all hollow for patience. Could this lad learn to make wafers, he would have a trade to keep him in fine style all his life. ’Tis true, many of the lords and ladies like to ape the ways of France and England and such, and so they like to have a wafer maker in their holdings.” She sighs. Her breath gusts like a March wind, and thereis the scent of cloves in it. “If I were younger, I would teach wafermaking to your little brother as I taught it to my own Jimmie. It took me three years and more to teach my Jimmie, but learn he did. And learn your brother could, too, I have no doubts.”
“Then will you teach him, lady?”
She shakes her head till her mustard brown wimple wobbles. “But no, my child. I am too old. My bones ache like a miller’s gate. Come Twelfth Night—or Midsummer’s Eve at the very latest—and I will serve his lordship no more. Both my sons and my married daughter have offered me a home at their fireside. Within these next few months, I will accept their offer, and then I will make wafers no more.” She sighs again her clove-scented sigh. “Your brother seems steady and faithful of heart. Could you but find a good and patient wafer master to teach him . . .”
Her soft voice trails off. She looks down at her plump hands with the small calluses on their fingertips. I cannot blame her for not meeting my eye. We both know that good and patient masters are hard to find in this harsh world.
A log cracks in the fireplace. The dice players cheer a throw. Lisette raises her eyes to mine. Her eyes are soft like a flower, like brown heart’s ease. “But tell me, young one, what is your name?”
“Gilly.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “ ’Tis a queer name for a lad.”
Inwardly I curse my inattention. I have forgot that I am now a lad and not a lass. I cast about in my mind for an explanation to satisfy her.
Before I can think of aught, Master Baker calls out, “Hereabouts, Mistress Lisette, ghillie is another word for servant.”
“ ’Tis a fitting name for this one,” crows Master Cook. All the masters hoot with laughter and return to their dice.
Just then Pod comes trotting back, both hands closed tightly around the tankard, which slops sprinkles of water onto the floor with each wobbling step. He thrusts it forward to Lisette as if it were the very Holy Grail itself.
She drinks and hands it back with a long “Ahhhhhhhhh.” He holds it out to me with the sa
me reverence, an anxious expression on his face. I drink and nod to him. He smiles suddenly, and then he finishes off the rest in a long, gurgling swallow.
Lisette says, “Good work, my pretty lambkin,” and the boy beams. Then she asks, “What is your name, my little one?”
“My name is Pod,” he says, proud as can be.
Lisette laughs. “As odd a pair of names as I ever heard tell. Were your folks gardeners that they named you after a vegetable?”
Pod shoots me a frightened look. I’m glad to see that he knows better than to talk of his momma. To my relief, Lisette does not wait for an answer. She pats his shoulder. “ ’Tis a sweet name for all that.”
Soon it is time to sleep. I learn that most servants in the castle take their pallets to the Great Hall in the keep and sleep on its floor, but those of us who toil in the kitchen find places to sleep down here. The masters take the tables for their beds. The apprentices make themselves nests out of the sacks of grain. Lisette tells us she prefers to sleep in the ale shed with the alewife each night. Mungo, Ban, and Alpen curl up by the hearth, but I use some soiled table linen to make a bed for Pod and for me. I glare at the sleepers on the tables, envying how being up high can keep them away from the bugs and beasties that creep about the night-time floor. I find two long-handled roasting forks and hand one to Pod. We drift off to sleep, clutching the forks in our hands in case we have to beat away the mice and rats.
The kitchen is blessedly warm. In my mind I sing a lullaby I have made up:
Lullaby,
Time is nigh,
He will die,
He will die,
He will die.
T W E L V E
THE NEXT MORNING, Master Cook formally presents all the new kitchen staff to Seyton the Steward. He is a large man with a broad chest above his round gut and a broad, bumpy, pockmarked face. When he talks, he sways back and forth. His eyes are a little unfocused, as if he is listening to voices inside his head, voices the rest of us cannot hear. We follow him across the kitchen courtyard to the keep, a tower atop a swell of ground in the middle of the castle enclosure. Pod stays as close to me as if we were stitched together. We clatter up a set of wooden stairs to the Great Hall. Brude, as pretty and scornful as ever, trails behind, running his fingers through his yellow curls, listening and watching us.
The Third Witch Page 5