by Niamh Boyce
He glanced at her plump face; her pursed mouth. She was Sofia, she said, the only daughter of Lord Piotr Hatton. A man, the bishop recalled, who had no sense of dignity – a lord who fished for pearls in his braies, and who, by his own account earlier this afternoon, was a martyr to lust in every guise. The girl looked up, wispy ringlets shamelessly springing from under her veil.
‘Yes,’ she answered, when asked about Kytler’s. ‘There’s much sin in that house. More now than ever, since the new servants.’
‘Go on?’
‘Alice’s new maid and her mute daughter. That girl has been using love charms to steal my sweetheart.’
‘And the dame – does she lead the girl in this practice of magick?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘though the maids are more cunning, you must remember.’
How dare this foul-mouthed, overfed ignoramus remind the bishop of anything? She had the manners of a lapdog. He longed to make her yelp, but she was the first to come forward. He must treat her well, so others would follow.
‘Would you tell of this under oath?’ he asked.
There was silence. And then the sly girl picked herself up and skipped swiftly from the cathedral.
Lughnasa
* * *
AUGUST
There once were two cats of Kilkennie.
Each thought that was one cat too many.
So they fought and they hit,
and they scratched and they bit,
till except for their nails,
and the tips of their tails,
instead of two cats, there weren’t any.
Old Kilkennie rhyme
19. Petronelle
Most of the household were gathered around the hearth in the kitchen, each with a task in hand. Sir John was still poorly, so, with little else to do, his daughters had joined us. The twins preferred the finery of the hall, but now, with the evenings cooling, they appreciated the warmth of the kitchen. The rare peace was broken when the work boy Ralph rushed in to say that the hives had been destroyed. Dropping my mending, I ran outside, lifting my skirt and rushing down to the orchard. Who could have done such a thing? I recalled the twins’ exaggerated gasps at Ralph’s announcement. When I got to the hives, I found his words to be true: each skep was smashed to a pulp. Flies, wasps and bluebottles fed from the wrecks. In one, a dark honeycomb remained intact. Light as a feather, and almost black in the centre, a lone bee worked it.
No one asked any questions as I stormed back through the kitchen with the honeycomb in my hand. I went upstairs and lay on my bed and wished, for the first time since I’d got here, for the comfort of another’s arms.
I lifted the honeycomb and inhaled. Suddenly I was back in Flemingstown Woods, lying with Otto, licking honey from his mouth, delving my tongue into the dip beneath his bottom lip, liking his salt skin better than any sweetness.
That memory felt like a gift. Lately, I was finding it hard to recall how we were together, as if I were losing him all over again. I remembered the night, years past, when we’d fallen in love. I was a spinster of eighteen. The Bealtaine fire had burned high. Flemingstown’s merchants, bakers and swineherds mingled and guzzled with its ladies, maids and harlots. Most were disguised. Beaked vultures sang with fur-clad wolves; leather-faced rats danced with drunken pine martins. Some had their masks perched atop their heads, making themselves two-faced.
My own face was uncovered, my hair garlanded. Musicians played tambourines, flutes and Jew’s harps as birds and beasts revelled in the churchyard. A woman in a swan mask plucked violet flowers from her hair and flung them at passing men. As she did, her white-feathered sleeves flared open.
Someone reached out then and tugged my kirtle, and I found myself spinning in a circle. From behind a gargoyle mask, greedy eyes laughed. I slipped free and joined my mother by the sundial. She stood with others, sharing a mether of ale, reminiscing. She chided me, pointed to the revellers. ‘You must dance.’ A troupe of youths, masked as wolves, broke through the crowd howling and pulling at women’s skirts.
‘How nice, naked from the waist up,’ said a wife to my mother, as everyone scattered in mock terror.
‘It’s a pity,’ answered Líthgen, ‘they’re not naked from the waist down.’
They fell about with mirth. I didn’t join in the laughter. I knew that beneath the muzzles and pelts were boy’s faces and bodies, but, as they knocked people to the ground and mauled them, it reminded me of what a real wolf had done to my father. I stepped away from the laughter and was looking about when a youth approached.
What kind of animal he was meant to be, I couldn’t guess. He’d the arms of an archer, his belt was thick leather, and his mask was silver. He did not grab me or lift me by the waist – he offered his hand. The stranger lifted his mask then; it was Otto Kytler, back from battle and unmarked, except for the small silver scar on his lip. He wanted to dance; I wanted to kiss his mouth. He said I had changed, and smiled. We danced and danced.
The swan woman thrice elbowed us as she glided past. ‘Alice,’ Otto whispered, ‘is not pleased.’ I was surprised to realize that the swan was Alice. I was also surprised she didn’t like me dancing with her brother, but found it hard to care about, either. Days after, a lifetime after, he scratched our names inside two ivory rings. He kept the one with my name, and I, his. I wore it every day after that, until I entered Hightown.
Líthgen had said Otto had not made it to battle, that he had met his death in Flemingstown. I believed her: my mother was seldom wrong. Líadan was gifted with the same insight. I wished that I too had it, that I could see what had really happened.
I lay there on my bed, the hollow honeycomb from the destroyed hive in my hands, remembering his strong brown ones and how my skin came alive just by being close to his. The way he rubbed his thumb across my mouth …
When I woke, the room was hazy. I stumbled from my bed and rushed to Alice’s chamber, just as she herself was entering. She had opened the door, and I saw Sir John lying across the bed, twisting and groaning. As Alice turned towards me, her face lit with anger. She put her arm across the threshold, blocking my view of the room.
‘Gone hours just to check a few hives,’ she whispered. ‘What have you really been up to? Are you off flirting with someone? Is it that Jasper, that fool who painted your plain face on to my sacred altar? Look how you flush. You, of all people. It’s ludicrous – it would suit you better to say your beloved prayers.’
She slammed the door in my face. I strode down the stairs and out into the lane, and made my way to St Mary’s. So Alice thought I was flirting – it was far from the truth but her contempt at the notion hurt. She played the coquette, encouraged constant jests about a widow’s appetites, but if I were to seek love, it would be ‘ludicrous’. Say your beloved prayers? Damn her. When Otto entered me, he whispered ‘Alleluia’ in my ear and I became a prayer.
I arrived at Saint Mary’s Church, breathless from the steep steps. Sheets draping the scaffold concealed the mural behind the altar. I sat and prayed, inviting God’s glory to wash over me, to wash away the longing I’d had of late. I sat for a while, loosening all thoughts from my mind.
I don’t know how long I was there before I heard a rattling cough. I looked behind to see that the portly priest had entered the church. I left my seat and approached him. He listened with a small smile as I put my question. If I wished to dedicate myself to a life of prayer could I become an anchoress? The priest touched my arm. It was wonderful, he said, that my faith was strong, but the women who lived between the walls had to renounce all their possessions. I interrupted, vowing I was more than ready to do that.
‘Let me finish,’ he said. ‘They renounce their property, so as to make a gift of it to the church, a bountiful gift.’
As he suggested the path was for women other than I, it dawned on me that he meant wealthy ones. If I were rich, I could become an anchoress. They would take Alice; Ledrede would gladly say her death rites and seal her into
a stone cell. But I had not enough riches to be poor. I thanked the priest and left. There was no sense to it all. Even I, a simple maid, knew God didn’t need possessions. What wants the saviour with coloured glass and silver, he who created the sun, moon, seas and rivers?
There was no sign of Líadan in the kitchen. She was probably skiving in the Pledge Room again, playing at being Dame Alice, counting gems and the weave in raw silks. Helene came in carrying a basket of washing. She began complaining about the twins.
‘Those sisters – I do not like the way they loll in bed, all entwined with each other, laughing at me. It isn’t decent. They’re not well bred; they’re as common as I am. Ladies, my rear end. Ladies indeed. There are strands of hair everywhere. They must be moulting!’
Helene swayed from admiration to loathing when it came to the twins. They toyed with her, at times playing at confidantes, whispering feminine secrets in her ear, other times acting as if she didn’t even exist. Alice didn’t sway; her mistrust was constant. Since they had moved in, she checked and checked her coffers, counted silver, coverlets, jewels and coins till she recited numbers in her sleep.
A few mornings later, as I opened the shutters in Alice’s chamber, Sir John sat up in the bed beside her and announced his sickness wasn’t natural, that someone was making him ill on purpose. He looked across at his wife, who stared back. Alice tried to reason with her husband: he had a fever and it needed to break, then he would see sense. Fever or not, Sir John kept his opinion fixed. No longer would he drink the tonics she’d ordered Esme to make. She reached out across to him, but he shook her off.
I left the room, but, whatever happened after, Alice must’ve cried a lot. I patted hazel water on her swollen eyes later that night, but she would not discuss the matter of her husband’s accusation.
It wasn’t hard to guess where he had got such a notion. The twins tended him every day. They fluttered and pecked, delivering ointments, sharing furtive whispers amidst sly glances at his wife. They tripped across to Piotr Hatton’s house, shoulder to shoulder, their skirts hoisted vulgarly high as they climbed his steps. You could see the back of their shaved shins.
We soon learnt about the suspicions they’d been planting in that household, too. They were repeated by its maids and yard boys, to our maids and yard boys. And by Lucia, too, it seemed, to her seamstress, her cobbler, her girdle-maker. ‘Fine strapping knight gets married, then laid low.’ ‘Again?’ ‘A coincidence?’ ‘Well, what else?’ ‘Poison?’
Some days passed and Alice remained silent. Then one morning, as I laced up her gown, she became suddenly furious. ‘He’s telling the world,’ she said, ‘telling the world I’m a poisoner – from a bed I paid for.’ I knew then that the crying was over. Sir John seemed to sense the shift, but, instead of backing down, he became more adamant: Alice was poisoning him, and, what’s more, she had likely poisoned her husband before him.
If that were not unpleasant enough, there was a thief in the house. The glass bead I’d found at the well went missing from my windowsill. Other items disappeared, too, small things – bone needles, a brass pin, a stub of wax, a cracked phial, a length of mourning ribbon. I suspected Helene was feathering her nest. One part of me wanted to shake out her purse and send her off into the night. The other part understood that a girl fending for herself had to be devious. I had noticed a rash on her face. I wasn’t the only one – Esme teased her about bearded gentlemen and Helene teased Esme about bearded gentlewomen. Though she made a jest of everything, Helene seemed different, fragile somehow. There was a raw catch to her voice.
One day neither Helene nor Líadan was anywhere to be found, so Esme sent me up with John’s platter. ‘No!’ he declared. ‘Take it away. I’ll not eat anything she had a hand in preparing.’ As if Alice would lower herself to prepare a meal. His daughters were sitting each side of him, stitching miniature tapestries, eyes cast down; smiles small. I brought the tray back down to the kitchen. The table was in chaos: leeks, onions, carrots and kale had been brought in from the garden, and Esme was shredding and chopping. Helene was polishing silver.
‘We’re missing a spoon,’ Helene said. ‘Those twins, I’ll bet. They’ve caused untold trouble. Who do they think they are? They paint their faces like harlots, but they are not. They frequent the tables of wealthy merchants, though they are not. They are no ladies. They trail their tippets in the gravy, sit on their veils and hoist their skirts like peasants.’
‘They’re far from peasants,’ said Esme. ‘It is said their mother was Gráinne Ní Dhuibhne. Do not tamper there. Just count the cursed spoons.’
I tried not to smile when I heard the name. If Alice hadn’t known about the twins during her love affair with Sir John, I doubt she knew about their mother. Whoever she had been, that she was a Gael must’ve irked Alice no end. Gráinne. Oh, how I would’ve loved to have seen my mistress’s face.
As luck would have it, I spotted a jar of honey on the high shelf. Lifting it down, I carried it and a spoon to the chair by the window. Let the women squabble, let some mad person destroy the hives, there was still honey to be enjoyed. I peeled back the cloth and tasted some. My mouth sang with sweetness. Eating sunshine, that’s what Líadan called it when she was a child. Outside, the sun blazed orange, low in the belly of the evening. I could understand why the heathens worshipped it.
20. Basilia
I was in trouble. Dame Alice made me stand in the centre of the hall; she turned and told Sir John to whist. He sat hunched in her chair by the fire – complaining loudly of being feverish. He would be much less so, if he moved back from the flames. My mother watched with her arms folded, while the mistress ranted. Someone had seen me by the river last week; said I was rolling in the grass with one of Piotr’s lads. I was no longer a girl, did I understand? I was not a savage, did I understand? I lived in a merchant lady’s house and must behave accordingly. Did I understand? I bowed my head, thinking – Yes, Alice, yes, Alice, I understand, it’s a matter of not getting caught, like the dame who stole out by night to lie with her lover. Said lover spat into the fire and shivered.
When Alice left, my mother came over. She put her arms around me and squeezed tight. ‘Mind your heart,’ she whispered, ‘but don’t be too careful with it.’
Later, I was punished further when Alice decided to dress me in one of her gowns. ‘A treat,’ she said. How was it a treat to be harnessed into layers of cloth?
I stood in my shift as Alice knelt over a massive chest, deciding which costume to burden me with. She chose a green kirtle and, for over it, a red gown with filleted sleeves and skirts. The girdle was made from silver hoops.
‘You won’t be able to stray far dressed in that,’ laughed my mistress. She laid out ivory and gilt combs, gem-topped pins, embroidered ribbons and headbands, and wondered which to use. As it turned out, Dame Alice was completely ham-fisted. Everything slipped out or looked wrong. The ornaments were thrown back into their box, and a veil was hastily pinned to my head. She stepped backwards across the room to get a good view of her handiwork.
‘Now, proceed towards me.’
I shuffled forward, hampered by the overlong skirts.
‘Here,’ she said, walking towards me, ‘like this, with each step, a little kick.’
I noticed for the first time how Alice kicked aside the hem of her gown as she moved. So that was why the ladies swayed the way they did. I tried to copy her and tripped.
A short time later, her son, Will, entered. He was a little younger than I, but much taller. Dame Alice made me sit with them while they reminisced about his father, Alice’s beloved first husband, whom she adored, though she seemed to adore them all once they were dead.
Will was quiet, not offering as much news from the house of Le Poer as Alice would have liked. He had been fostered there since he was young, Alice told me. Though he smiled when asked for scandal, Will offered none up. He jigged his leg, as if he would prefer to be on a horse. The scar on his face was deep. I tried not to star
e, but after a while it was the only thing I saw, running from his blue eye to his full mouth. He had a cruel mouth, but, for some reason, I liked it. He noticed me gawking and touched his wound.
‘It was my first time in battle. I was sent on to the field when it was over, to find each fallen enemy and make sure he wouldn’t get up’ – he mimed driving a sword downwards – ‘but one of them did.’
His mother swiftly turned the conversation to Arnold le Poer, and how many men he had, and how much land now, and who threatened it. Time passed, and they talked. I half listened, half daydreamed. Alice teased him about giving her a grandchild, not letting the line die out.
‘What’s all this for, all the years of work, mine, my father’s – what will happen if there’s no one to carry it on?’
‘This again.’ Will jumped to his feet and left.
When he was gone, I sat a while, sweating under the weight of all the brocade. I was stunned that anyone would treat Alice like that. My mistress broke the silence, angry now with me instead of her son.
‘You must speak: it is imperative. If you do not speak, you will never be marriageable. You’ve been silent long enough. Do you understand?’
I tried to answer but couldn’t. My throat was still parched of whatever eases words forth. I saw that grey wolf slipping off, taking my speech with it.
Back in the comfort of my own plain gown, I made my way through the gardens to the river bank. The bank sloped downwards, so when I sat, no one could see me from the house, though the pearl-diver might, if he were looking. I took off the shoes Alice insisted I wear and stretched back, enjoying the heat on my face. The Nore seemed different today – deeper, darker, swollen. It appeared still at first, but when the sun sparkled on its skin, you could see the ripples, see how fast it was really moving. Sofia Hatton passed by. She stared at me, her milky face all haughty. I waved and she turned pink. Some youngsters passed then, wheeling the boy that couldn’t walk in a barrow that was lined with hides – a dunghill foundling, raised by the town. I wiggled my feet – green grass, white toes. Clouds hung upside down in the water. The sky was swallowed by the river. A glass throat. The bells rang, my odd thoughts scattered.