by Niamh Boyce
The cook recounted the argument with much arm waving. ‘“Go join your kin,” Sir Roger roared, “those clods from Flemingstown.” “At least my people toiled hard,” Alice answered. “Yours exhausted themselves gorging and fornicating.”’
‘What happened then?’ asked Helene.
‘Oh, he laughed, roared laughing. And she did, too.’
‘What’s so funny about fornicating?’ Helene seemed confused.
‘Nothing my dear, nothing. I’ve said enough, maybe too much.’
Esme gestured towards the door. It was ajar and an eavesdropper’s black skirts swung briefly in the gap.
‘Who was that?’ I asked.
‘A spy, I wager, paid by Alice to keep an eye. There’s much wealth under this roof, many things of value. We often feel ourselves being watched; sometimes hear footsteps, or glimpse a shadow …’
‘I think it’s a spirit,’ added Helene.
‘I’m aware of what you think.’
There was a smile growing in the corner of Esme’s mouth. Was she teasing the young maid? Was the girl light-fingered, and in need of tales to keep her from pilfering? I thought of my daughter upstairs, staring at the ceiling with her hands clasped. Her skirt was dark; most likely it was her.
‘Mór, that’s my real name,’ said Esme. ‘What’s yours? It’s not Petronelle. I see your pale skin, the red at your daughter’s temples. You’ve Irish blood.’
‘I doubt that,’ Helene said in her sing-song voice. ‘A lady like Alice, having a native combing her hair, fixing her dress? A lady like Alice? I doubt that.’
‘This native prepares every morsel that enters said lady’s mouth,’ said Esme.
‘You’re different.’
‘Am I?’
‘The Gaels are meant to keep to Irishtown, you know’ – Helene looked at me – ‘and are forbidden to trade or mix with us.’
I did not like how her mouth twisted on the ‘us’. The cook wasn’t letting her question go.
‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s your name, your real one?’
‘The one I hear from my mistress’s lips,’ I insisted.
‘An droch bréagadóir,’ the cook muttered. She had called me a liar, and a bad one at that. Yet the glance she gave, as she unpeeled her poisonous gloves, was one of kinship.
2. Basilia
My mother undid her kirtle and tugged on a nightshift that made her look like a ghost.
‘Was that you? Were you spying on us?’
Her voice was tired, different to the one she had used downstairs. Let her wonder – I’ll not answer. I had seen her down there, chit-chatting with the servants, like nothing had happened in the woods.
As if hearing my thoughts, she spoke. ‘I wasn’t myself.’
She sat on her bed, her hands open and dead on her lap. Not herself. Had my mother and her soul become parted in the woods? Could it still be there, caught in high branches, dark from the distance like a crow’s nest?
‘Please speak, Líadan.’
I stayed silent. I decided to answer if she used my new name, the one the dame gave, but she didn’t. She just sighed and lay down. I was sad, then angry. How dare she beg me to speak, she who kept so much to herself? Some winters we had almost starved to death on that mountain, and all along she could’ve brought us here, to this place – a house of plenty. Instead, she never even mentioned Kytler’s or Dame Alice. Our new mistress was a sight to behold: her veil hemmed with beads, her tight gown filleted at the sleeves to show a brightly dyed kirtle beneath, the satin bulging forth like guts from a belly. Her fingers were jewelled, her nails pointed. She wore her girdle belt low on her hips, weighed down by keys of all sizes, and her eating knife, scissors, file, comb and tweezers. They hung from chains she called a ‘chatelaine’. Dame Alice chimed through her house, silken trains whispering in her wake.
As the days passed, I found that living in Kytler’s was like being at court, or what I imagined a court must be like – one where Dame Alice said yes or no from her oak throne. There was an alcove near the hearth, where the maid Helene slept at night. I crouched there on a bed of old blankets and watched the dame move coins across a board to count them.
The dame spent most of her time bartering with a trail of visitors. They bartered with silver bits here, not just food or skins. People brought their precious items – a chair, golden thread, an embroidered mantle, a silver ewer and a stuffed parrot … If they didn’t repay the loans, she kept them. She explained all this while slicing notches in a tally stick, the splinters spinning on to her lap. The valuables were brought to a locked room, she said, called the Pledge Room.
Alice knew everyone, and everyone knew her. Like most in Hightown, she said, her people were not from this country: they were Flemish. It sounded like an illness. Flemish, Flemish and owning half of Kilkennie.
After a week, Helene was instructed to chaperone me about the town. She linked my arm as we left the house, warning against thieves and beggars. She didn’t understand why her mistress had taken in strangers and allowed them such freedoms. I didn’t either, but was glad of it. She spoke slowly, as if not being a town dweller made me a half-wit. As we stepped into the heat of Low Lane, a stench rose from the dung heaps. I clamped my hand to my mouth. Helene laughed. ‘At least it’s dry. Wait till it rains and all that filth turns to soup.’
Across the way from Kytler’s, steep steps led up to a paved alley where a milkmaid sold butter from her cart. It looked dark in there, cool. It would’ve been nice to feel those chilled slabs beneath my feet, but Helene pulled me on.
I heard noise before we even turned the corner. The shambles was rowdy with pigs, sheep and chickens, penned or tethered. A pup lapped a pool of blood. Shit spilt from the haunches of frightened beasts. The air was full of flies and feathers. Meat hung on hooks from the butcher’s house front. He was a winky smiler. Helene elbowed me and grinned. ‘I’d marry him on the spot only for the sound of those knives sharpening.’
We came then to a wide road where houses stood shoulder to shoulder. Shutters were propped like tables beneath each window, laden with bolts of cloth, medicines and bright spices. ‘Paprika. Ginger. Cinnamon …’ Helene chanted, waving her finger, mimicking Dame Alice’s habit of listing her treasures. Traders shouted their wares, boys pushed barrows of offal, swine ran riot.
Beggar children were everywhere; scrawny little creatures that tugged at my sleeve and darted about our skirts. Helene growled and slapped them away. One grabbed my hand, a curly-haired, brown-eyed girl. Her plump wrist was wound with plaited bracelets, grubby red threads. She tugged me forward. Helene smacked the child, who released her grip. I swayed backwards, almost knocking against a barrel. The child’s figure blurred as she skipped off. Helene steadied me. ‘You’re so weak,’ she snapped, ‘and much too thin,’ as if it were something I had chosen.
Helene had a vain walk, returning many of the glances thrown her way. We passed cobblers, bakers, furriers, a barber scraping a young man’s jaw. All the men in Hightown kept their hair cropped and the women kept theirs covered. I felt a stab of loneliness for my own people. Helene led me off the street and through a warren of passageways: Asylum Lane, Blind Boreen, Red Alley, Garden Row … She slipped ahead, almost at a run. Trying to lose me or get me lost. As if I cared – roaming was second nature to me.
We came upon a smith at his forge, a large man, his flushed face close to the glow of the rod. He looked up, wiped the sweat from his forehead.
‘Good day to you, Ulf,’ Helene called.
The man nodded and turned back to his work.
‘He loves me really, just hides it well.’
As we strolled on, the sound of a river came closer. At the foot of a small stone bridge stood a gate tower topped with a turret. Its iron gate was shut to us.
‘Watergate,’ Helene said. ‘It guards the walls that keep Hightown and Irishtown apart. You might as well muzzle a pair of cats.’
A keeper leant out of the tower window. His hair was slick as an otter’
s and his beard dripped, darkening his white tunic. He waved at us and Helene waved back. She called up to him in a foreign language. He laughed before disappearing again. We heard a loud creaking as the gate began to rise. A group of clerics rode their horses over the bridge, and Helene pulled me backwards till we were standing in the long grass.
‘Don’t gawk!’
She lowered her head and shut her eyes – as if the men couldn’t see her if she couldn’t see them. When they were out of sight, she spat.
‘That was the bishop, off to tour Hightown like a sheriff.’ She looked at me crossly then, annoyed by my silence. ‘Do you’ve a tongue in your head at all?’
Helene led me back to the house. When we arrived, she pestered my mother with one question after another. Why does your daughter not speak? Did she speak before? What’s it like outside the walls? Are there heads staked at every crossroad? How did you escape the wild Irish? If you came from so far, how did you know to come here, right to Alice’s door?
‘She followed a scent, you Welsh whelp’ – Dame Kytler had appeared on the bottom step of the stairs – ‘that’s how she knew. Now leave us in peace.’
The following day, the dame sent word down to the kitchen that I was to accompany her to a meeting of the Greater Twelve, once dinner was over. My mother laid down her spoon and wondered who the Twelve were.
‘Men of quality, skill and standing,’ Esme explained. ‘They run this city, make laws, set tithes. Sir Arnold will be there, too, seneschal of all Hightown and loyal friend of our mistress.’
As we ate, my mother complained about the waste, how I could be helping mend Alice’s linens instead.
‘And why,’ added Helene, when my mother had left the table, ‘should a maid’s daughter attend the court of the Greater Twelve?’
‘She’s not attending the meeting, she’s attending her mistress,’ said Esme.
I followed Dame Alice through Low Lane, trying not to darken her train with my sweating fingers. I felt guilty, having such a light load while my mother worked hard at home. Though it was summer, Alice’s feet were shod in kid slippers. The stone felt warm beneath my own bare ones. We climbed the steep steps that curled about Saint Mary’s Church and led us to the meeting tower.
When we neared, the crowd parted to let Alice through. Inside, people lined the stairs, and again we climbed. I kept dropping her train, and tripping on the hem of my own gown – it was much longer than anything I’d worn before.
‘Where’s Sir Roger?’ someone asked.
‘Taking care of business,’ Alice said.
Whatever that business was, Roger was doing it in his sleep. He had been still in bed when we left. The higher we climbed, the louder the noise. People were pressed against the wall along the stairs. Once we got to the meeting room, Alice told me to stay by the doorway. I watched as she joined the men in the benches. She sat next to a bearded one I guessed was Lord Arnold. A dark man with a trimmed black beard, his tunic was brightly embroidered and his puffed sleeves were tied with ribbon at the elbow. The men in our settlement would’ve sliced him free of such fine threads, once they’d finished laughing. A bell was rung, and the babbling died down.
A small child stood before the bench. His hair was feathery at the neck, babyish still. An elderly nun stepped forward and explained that the convent was placing him at the mercy of the town. Sir Arnold and Alice were talking to each other. One of the Twelve questioned the nun. The boy’s name was Jack, we heard, and the Sister who cared for him had just died.
‘I remember this case,’ the official said. ‘The convent was paid a great amount for his keep some years ago, were they not?’
‘No, no, most of it went to Canice’s Cathedral,’ she said, rubbing her knuckles. ‘It paid for another bell.’
‘Why so?’
‘I cannot say – it is a matter of decency.’
The official smoothed his beard. ‘Who owns the child?’
‘Some nun’s misstep,’ the man behind me whispered.
The old woman looked to the ground and made no answer.
‘Did he spring from your loins?’
There was great laughter as the nun shook her head. Sir Arnold suddenly raised his hand, and the crowd quietened.
‘Father?’ he asked the nun.
‘We do not know.’
‘Is the mother dead?’
‘Dead to this world.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Arnold nodded as if everything were clear. ‘And you would turn out her child?’
‘We’ve no money …’ added the nun.
‘Ah, so she’s looking for money. You’ll get none here. Care for the child,’ snapped Arnold, ‘as your deceased Sister once did.’
The nun left, the boy trailing after her, his eyes searching the crowd. All stared back but none stepped forward to offer him shelter. I looked over at Alice, but she and Arnold were chattering between themselves again.
There were many matters next, mostly tithes, fines … a baker condemned to the stocks for weighing down his bread with grit. My mind wandered to the mountain, where people were too busy living to gather in stone towers deciding who should care for stray children. If children were there, they were cared for.
When at last the meeting was over, everyone pushed against each other to leave. Once outside, Alice pulled me over to meet Sir Arnold.
‘This is Basilia.’
‘Oh’ – he looked at me – ‘I see.’
What did he see? He didn’t say. They turned their backs to me and continued talking. I liked the name Basilia, and how my mistress said it. I noticed the boy Jack: he was sitting cross-legged on the ground nearby. The nun was nowhere to be seen. When I looked again, the child was gone. Alice finally shook off the last of those who wanted to wish her well and we returned home.
Inside the house, Sir Roger was perched in Alice’s wooden chair, picking his teeth. He hopped to his feet and wrapped his arms around his wife when we arrived. He was ruddy-faced and seemed in the best of humours, but she whacked him away for crushing her veil and urged him to put on his hose. I watched my mother as she helped Alice rearrange her head pins. She seemed so dull compared with everyone else in this place, her skin, her voice even.
‘Líadan,’ she said, ‘come to the hives in a while?’
I fled to the kitchen without answering. Let her call me Basilia, like the rest of the household.
3. Petronelle
I like to be the first awake, always did. So, by our second week, I became the one who let daylight in, the one who unlocked the shutters, drew the bolt on the front door and shooed the dogs from the hearth. That morning the pup bolted as usual but the mastiff moved slowly, stopping at the doorway. Prince, they called him, though he was an old wreck of a beast. The dog was about to raise his leg, so I ran at him. He hopped out with a yelp. The floor needed sweeping, and ash had spilt on to the hearth, but those were Helene’s tasks not mine.
I walked over to my mother’s tapestry, studied a panel bordered with acorns. In it, a hunter reached towards the burlap of arrows on his back. One look at his face and my heart tightened. My mother had woven Otto. I pressed the threads of his red tunic, and dust rose. A tear came. I wanted to show Líadan, but remembered my promise to Alice. The past must not be mentioned.
At that, I heard my mistress’s bell. She kept a small brass one by her bed and when it rang, I ran.
I climbed the stairs to her chamber and found her already at her mirror, fixing rings into her ears. The gold glinted, as with a twist of her wrist she slipped a hoop through her lobe. On their bed, Roger dozed with his night cap over his eyes.
‘Hurry, my son Will’s coming.’
‘Will he be staying?’ I asked.
I had yet to meet Alice’s son, for he lived in the Le Poer household.
‘No, no! We’re off to court. Today, we elect the new seneschal.’ She laughed then. ‘I could save the town crier his breath and announce it now; for the new seneschal will be the old seneschal: Arnold, the
loyalest ally anyone could wish for.’
I combed her hair and Alice talked about needing allies more these past couple of years, with the bishop on Irishtown hill getting crankier and crankier. ‘Completely ignorant of how things are run here in Kilkennie. He hasn’t even the decorum to remain absent like all the bishops before him. This Easter’ – Alice’s neck flushed – ‘he condemned a certain moneylender – “A female,” he said, “prone to usury.” Everyone turned and tittered in my direction.’
‘How awful,’ I answered, holding back my questions.
No matter how much we chattered in the kitchen, I’d noticed that, around Alice, servants were required only to listen.
‘Since then, I attend Saint Mary’s Church. It’s far closer than the cathedral, and besides my William rests there. I’m funding an altar in his honour.’
Alice remembered her first husband fondly as I buttoned a sleeve to her gown. How different this woman was towards the girl who had galloped on an invisible horse with her dagger raised, who had come bursting through the thickets, crying, ‘Have no fear!’ Maybe that change was no bad thing, for young Alice could be as cruel as she was reckless.
‘You’ll see him for yourself tomorrow.’
‘Who?’
‘Don’t you listen? Bishop Ledrede, when you attend cathedral mass.’
‘It’s swarming season; had I better not watch your bees? I have a feeling –’
‘No, you’ll go to the cathedral. And be sure to stay awake – Esme kept falling asleep and missing the best bits.’
‘Of course.’
I would’ve much preferred to check the hives, one of the few tasks permitted here on a Sunday. Though town walls meant safety, I was also learning that they meant rules, many rules.
I began to pin Alice’s wimple into place. She was impatient with my slowness. My fingers were more used to soil than the folds in a lady’s veil. There was a commotion on the stairs.
‘Will has arrived. Oh, wait till you see him. Did I mention he was fostered by Le Poers, of all families?’