The Lode Stone

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  “Show me everything,” I said.

  ***

  Four chamber maids, a manservant, and two ladies’ maids. I did not ask who they had attended, not wanting to think about the family that had been summarily evicted so Lord Charles could give this mansion to me. In the kitchen, a head cook with two assistants and two servers for the dining room. A boy to tend the fires and fetch water. In the stable, a groomsman and two stable boys to tend the six horses. The groomsman doubled as driver when the carriage was wanted. Each of the servants had a list of specific duties, from polishing the silver (silver!) to dusting, cleaning, washing dishes, lighting the fires in the bedchambers and drawing back the covers, emptying the chamber pots... Sixteen servants and it seemed not one of them could be dispensed with, according to my house matron.

  The entire property was overwhelming. The largest bedchamber had a presence room! What was I to do with a presence room? I had Simon’s and my bed moved into the bedchamber, alongside the bed already there. It looked like a poor relation in its simplicity, with no canopy and curtains to keep out the night vapors. Our table I had carried to the presence room where it, too, looked embarrassingly rustic with its unadorned benches. Well, it was not as though I would be receiving visitors up there. I kept a stern face as I directed the stable boys to set it in the alcove window.

  I heard the bells ringing vespers and became aware of how long I had been here. My mother and children would be frantic.

  My mother! She had been a housemaid in a grand house before her marriage. She would help me sort this all out, decide who I might let go and who to keep. For I must let some of them go. I could not maintain, nor did I need, such a large household. My mother would know what was necessary. And Marie, she would help me also.

  “Harness the carriage,” I told the stable boys. “I will be down directly.”

  Had I actually said that? I thought as they scampered from the room. Would they really do it? I went to the alcove window and looked out. In a few minutes I saw them hurry from the back kitchen door across the courtyard to the stables. I smiled and headed downstairs.

  ***

  It was bad enough riding down the hill in a fancy carriage wearing my homespun cap and the well-worn kirtle I wore on laundry day, but when we got to the streets where everyone knew me, it was far worse. I flushed, hot and embarrassed by the stares and pointing fingers of people I’d lived beside as an equal until a few hours ago. I felt as though I was putting on insufferable airs. I pushed myself against the seat back where I could not be seen. From there I noticed the carriage curtains, and quickly drew them shut. I had felt a pretender in the big house, but I had not expected to feel the same way in my village. Where did I belong now? I closed my eyes against the moisture gathering in them, grateful for the privacy of the curtains.

  When we reached my mother’s cottage I had to climb out and face the crowd that had followed my carriage here.

  “It is only me,” I said, flustered.

  It broke their silent astonishment and they surged around me as my mother ran out followed by Alys and Guarin, all weeping with relief to see me. Everyone was demanding to learn what had happened and making wild guesses from a noble engagement to my Simon returning alive from the Holy Land with his pockets full of Saracen gold. They needed to hear an explanation before rumors started spreading, not necessarily accurate or kind.

  I took a deep breath. “Lord Charles has been so kind as to give me a new house and a quarry...his quarry,” I corrected myself, “has given me his quarry to honor my husband who gave his life to save him.” I said it quickly, all in a rush, and still it almost choked me. To give Lord Charles such credit for Christian charity, to sound so grateful after he had all but starved us out of our home!

  Then Alys and Guarin rushed into my arms. Guarin whispered in his thin lisping voice, “We will not be hungry now, Maman?”

  “Non, mon cher,” I whispered back, holding him tightly. “Never again.”

  Chapter Eight: The Quarry Mistress

  I kicked my horse into a gallop. The fresh spring breeze tugged at my cap, freeing wisps of hair which fluttered around my face. It had been so long since I had ridden a horse. I bent low over the gelding’s neck to avoid the tree branches as I galloped through the woods. If I belonged anywhere, it was here, riding in these woods. My woods. They were a reprieve, a passage of time when I was not living in someone else’s house, pretending to be someone I was not. If I rode fast enough, I could imagine myself travelling home, the wind and the trees and the racing beast beneath me all carrying me somewhere I belonged. I could imagine at the end of these woods...

  At the end of these woods was a quarry, and men to whom I must prove myself equal to a man’s task. And at the other end was a town that waited for me to fall from my sudden, undeserved elevation, and a house that belonged to a man who waited for me to fail on both counts. Whatever home I imagined myself travelling to, I had lost when Simon died.

  I would have to make my own way now, and I would do it. Those who waited for me to fail would wait in vain. So I told myself, to bolster my courage as I rode through the woods to visit my quarry for the first time.

  I had spent the past two weeks settling into my new home. Maman had come to live with me and I had given her complete charge of running the household. I was surprised when she did nothing for four days but comport herself like a visiting guest. When my house matron came to me I approved the daily dinner menu, the market purchases, the changing of the floor rushes, cleaning windows and oil lamps, washing of linens. Maman watched everything, looked into every chest and cupboard, but said nothing. It was annoying, for what did I know of how often such things should be done in a grand house like this? But on the fifth day as one of the serving maids cleared away the loaf of bread and jug of ale with which we had broken our fast, she told me to get my purse and call the house matron in. When the woman arrived, Maman informed her that I had no more need of her service. She took two silver coins from my purse and gave them to the matron, at the same time reaching her other hand across the table, palm up, asking for her ring of keys.

  It was a rich gift, two silver pieces. I opened my mouth to object, but closed it again. Maman knew what she was doing. And she was thrifty, not one to spend a penny without reason.

  “There are two ways to come by wealth, Melisende,” Maman said when the woman had left, gazing at her silver with delight. “You can earn it with a long and noble bloodline, in which case it belongs to your family and everyone will be watching to see if you husband it well for your heirs. Or you can receive it as a sudden benediction from God, in which case it belongs to every hopeful soul who enters a church to pray, and they will all be watching to see if you are worthy of your good fortune.”

  “And how do I prove myself worthy, Maman?”

  “Let no one ever say you were less generous to them than God has been to you. Now, call in your two ladies’ maids. We can do nicely with one.”

  In the end Maman let go four house servants and one of the stable boys, giving them all rich rewards for their past service. It would have been more but one of the maids had raised four younger siblings before coming to this house and she became Guarin’s and Alys’s nurse, while another declared herself to be a competent seamstress which Maman said would save us money on new clothes. Maman insisted I must have a wardrobe to suit my new station if I wanted the respect of my servants and workers, and neither of us had time to sew it. As well, Guarin and Alys outgrew their clothes as quickly as the seasons changed. I had agreed with reluctance.

  Just when I thought we had made quite enough adjustments and could relax, Marie came to visit. She approved our new clothes, let Alys and Guarin show her their nursery, and gave my mother a knowing smile. I was not happy with that smile.

  When we sat down to eat our dinner, I raised my hand to send the maid for Alys and Guarin to join us.

  “Let us talk a minute,” Marie told the maid, sending her back to the kitchen. I turned to Marie in s
urprise.

  “Melisende,” Marie said quietly, “the children of the wealthy eat in their nursery until they are of age.”

  “In their nursery?”

  “With their nurse.”

  I looked at my mother and saw she was nodding. “But I have always eaten dinner with my children. I would miss their company.” I frowned at my mother.

  “I enjoy their company, also,” Marie said. “But they must learn what will be expected of them, and it will be easier for them if they learn it from you.”

  “They are already polite and well-behaved!” I protested.

  “I would expect no less. But others will expect more. Would you have them shamed by their ignorance when people come to call? Or have people who think they are better than you look down on you and yours?” Marie and Maman stared at me silently, united in their knowledge of this new world we had been thrown into.

  “I wish we had not come here,” I muttered, my heart aching at the thought of spending even less time with Alys and Guarin.

  “The change will be harder on you than on them. They are young; for them, this will be an adventure. Think of all the exciting things that await them. You might sell one of the horses and buy a pony for Alys.”

  I smiled, imagining Alys’s delight at that. “How will I know what else to teach them?”

  “Their nurse knows, if she is any good at her job.”

  Maman nodded. “She has been itching to turn them into the children of gentry.”

  I nodded glumly and spent that dinner learning from Marie how different the lives of the wealthy were from the life I had lived. Money does not always improve one’s life.

  ***

  I will watch first and learn what I can as Maman did, I thought as I cantered toward my quarry, both eager and nervous at making my first appearance there.

  I heard the quarry before I saw it. The ringing blows of iron against rock, the shouts of the men punctuated with curses and scraps of laughter, the crash as blocks of limestone loosened from the cliff wall fell to the ground. The air was full of stone dust, the sting of it in my nostrils. It formed a white coating on the limbs of the trees this close to the quarry, turning them into ghost trees. The trees ended and before me stood the limestone cliff.

  The immense width of it shocked me, the far end stretching beyond the cloud of dust, a shining wall rising into the sky ablaze in the sun like the gate to Heaven. The side nearer, on which the men labored, was lower, maybe one hundred feet high. Motes of white dust glittering in the sunlit air before it, and the ground all around reaching almost to where I sat on my horse was littered with piles of rocks.

  I dismounted and tied my horse to a tree, glad that I had decided to wear heavy leather riding boots rather than my light decorative new shoes. The men wore sleeveless tunics over their hose and boots twice as thick as mine. Their muscular arms shone damp in the hot sun, their tunics clinging to them dark with sweat. Several men worked on the piles of rocks, cutting the stones flat, ready for use. A long two-wheeled cart stood near one of the piles of rocks, the horse standing weary in the shafts while three men hoisted cut rocks up onto the flatbed. The driver stood in the cart arranging them, packing as many in as possible.

  Off to the left stood a low wooden building, and not far from it a blacksmith’s forge. A young man worked it, the crackle of his fire and hissing of his water bucket adding to the din as he sharpened chisels and made the metal wedges for the men cutting the rock from the cliff face.

  The men on the cliff worked in pairs, one man holding a long metal chisel bit against the rock while his partner struck it with a mallet. I watched one pair as the first man turned the bit sideways and the second struck it again. When they removed it, it left a hole as thick as a man’s thumb, into which they began stuffing dry wood.

  “Men, our mistress has come to do our laundry!”

  The shout startled me. I had been so focused on trying to understand the tasks involved in cutting stone I had not seen the man approach. He stood before me now, a tall man with bulging arms and the dark skin that comes of working in the sun. His wide girth set him apart from the others, as did the linen shirt under his tunic. I examined him coolly, ignoring the laughter of the men as they stopped their work to hear my response.

  “You are my overseer, I assume,” I said. That, and that alone, kept me from a sharper retort. “I will come to speak to you presently, Sir. First, however, I would like...” I turned to look back at the workmen. Disappointed in not witnessing a sparring match between their masters, most had turned back to work. One, however, was watching me with a friendly smile. His face was familiar—I thought back till I placed him as a young man who had brought his father’s horses to my father to be shod. I had not seen him in many years. “...to be shown the quarry. That man will do.” I beckoned the friendly face over to me, turning my back on the overseer.

  “Can you explain the workings of this quarry to me,” I asked when he came. “Jean-Louis, is it not?”

  His smile widened. “Certainly, Madame Melisende.”

  I let the overseer stew as Jean-Louis walked about the quarry with me, pointing out what was being done and answering my questions.

  “These men are loosening the stone,” he said, pointing to the pair I had watched on the cliff face. “See the holes they have made with their star bit and mallot, each one hand apart?”

  “Why do they stuff wood into them?”

  “They will water the wood so that it expands, causing fissures in the rock, which they will use to prise away blocks of stone from the cliff.”

  He led me to several men working on one of the piles of stone on the ground. “These men are cutting the blocks into slabs. See those lines in the stone? They are using the chase masse to split the stone along those natural lines of weakness.” I watched them place one side of the large hammer-like tool against the rock and pound the other side with a hammer. The stone fell apart along the lines he had shown me.

  “The larger stones are used for lintel stones above doorways and for anchor stones in a wall.” He pointed to a smaller stone being hefted into the cart. “We call those man-sized stones; they are small enough for one man to lift. They are ready to be taken to the building site.”

  “And what is your job here?”

  “I do a little of everything. I train and supervise the new men, and step in where I am needed. I have been a quarry man and stone-cutter since I was a lad.”

  “I have a lot to learn,” I said, as he walked me back to the overseer’s building.

  “It is hard work, and dangerous at times, and cutting the stones takes skill, but a quarry is not that complicated. You will understand the business soon enough, Madame.”

  My overseer was less accommodating.

  “We have a contract with Lord Etienne du Lyon to supply stones for his new castle. After that, Monsieur Raoul is waiting for stones to build a high wall around his estate.” He said this in a surly tone after I had asked him twice to see his books. “I am busy, Madame, I cannot entertain your curiosity for long. You must leave the business to me as Lord Charles and his father before him have done.” When I pressed him further to see the writ he had made with Lord Etienne, or to tell me about the current value of the stones, he snapped, “The men are working, are they not? The stones are being cut and sold and hauled away. You saw all this. The quarry is in good hands. Mine, not yours. You might do better to thank me than to question me.”

  I took my leave, unwilling to press him further. Perhaps he was right. The quarry had run well enough without Lord Bernard or Lord Charles interfering. How could I do better than trust it to the overseer they had trusted? Did I expect to be my own overseer?

  Nevertheless, I rode home dissatisfied. I did not want the quarry to continue as it had done; I wanted its profits to increase. Should I hire more men to work more of the cliff-face? Fill two or even three contracts at once? Was there enough demand to do that, or would I drive the price of stone down by producing too many? Un
til I knew more any action I took could do more harm than good. I returned again later that week, but once again he put me off, insisting I leave the business to him to run.

  The third time I went, as I left the office and strode toward my horse I noticed a number of the men laughing and exchanging coins. They are laying bets on how quickly he will get rid of me, I thought, feeling a hot flush suffuse my face.

  But what could I do? He had endless reasons to avoid going over the quarry records with me, and I could hardly stand around watching the men work. He had made a comment about that when I arrived this time, to the general amusement of the men. Only Jean-Louis had cast me a sympathetic glance, which embarrassed me further for I wanted no one’s pity.

  I could not grant my overseer the victory by staying away, yet each time I visited and left without being satisfied my position weakened.

  I was considering this as I made my way once more to the quarry. It was an overcast day and the woods seemed darker than usual. Maman had warned me against riding out alone each day, but I had ignored her fears. I could not bear the thought that even these woods, which eased my weariness as nowhere else, were not safe for me to ride through alone. I was deep in thought about how to convince this stubborn overseer to obey me, without risking him leaving me with no one to run my quarry, and did not hear the horses’ hooves till they were nearly upon me. I looked up, startled.

  Lord Roland galloped toward me with several men behind him.

  “Madame Melisende,” he called, reigning in his horse. He frowned, looking down the road behind me. “Are you alone?”

  I flinched at the tone of disbelief in his voice. “These are my woods,” I said. Then fearing he would take me wrong, I added, “you are welcome, of course, to ride through them. The road belongs to everyone.”

  He turned his horse to ride beside me and waved his men back before answering. “Every woodland, even yours, is prey to thieves and brigands. As you see, even I do not ride without an escort.”