"Wake up!"
Rob started, his eyes flying open. On the pallet beside him Arthur loosed a mournful snort; even in his sleep Master Walter's younger apprentice cried for his home and his mama. Arthur rolled to his side and yanked his blanket over his head, still deep in his own sad dreams. If not Arthur, then who?
Blinking, Rob rolled onto his back and stared into the predawn dimness of the apothecary shop. Johanna appeared out of the gray. She knelt beside his pallet, her unplaited hair hanging around her face. As his vision cleared, he saw her overgown was on backward, which meant she'd dressed herself in the dark.
"I know something you want to know," she whispered.
Rob stared at her in confusion. It was his nightly duty to bar the door and, unlike Arthur, who sometimes forgot what was his to do, Rob was never remiss with his chores. He clearly remembered placing the bar into the braces as he, Arthur, and Rob's master and mistress retired for the night.
"How come you to be in here?" he demanded.
Johanna sat back on her heels and crossed her arms to show she was upset he hadn't responded to her tease. "The door was open." She was careful to keep her voice low, knowing she'd have worse than the chamber pots to do if she was found here.
Rob shook his head, positive he'd barred it. "It is not," he whispered. He'd be in as much trouble as she, were she discovered.
"It is so," she shot back. "If it had been barred, I couldn't have come in."
At this inescapable point of logic, bitter disappointment flowed over Rob. He hated making errors. Each mistake was a failure when he'd vowed never to fail Master Colin. Disappointment deepened. Where his few, earlier mistakes had been of little consequence this one was beyond all tolerance. Not only had he left the shop open, but he hadn’t even heard Johanna as she entered when he should have been keeping one ear open for disturbances.
Now he glanced around the grayed room, looking for anything else that might be amiss. The wall behind Rob was covered with shelves sectioned into tiny squares. Within each of these wee cubicles sat a container of some sort: boiled leather flasks stoppered with wood, wooden bowls topped with chalk, pottery jars closed with wax. Within each of these containers was a different potion, posset, unguent, tincture, or cure, some of them containing fabulously expensive spices. It was for their sake that he and Arthur slept on the workshop floor; in case of thieves, they were to raise the alarm.
"No matter the door, you aren't supposed to be here," Rob told her, his voice harsh with his own failure. "Go home."
Even in the semidarkness he could see her eyes narrow and her jaw jut out in stubborn anger. "You aren't being nice to me. Now, I shall never tell you what I know."
He shrugged to hide his frustration. When Johanna said
never
, what she meant was she had every intention of pestering him until he had to know what she knew. Once he finally asked after it, she'd withhold the information until he apologized to her when he'd done no wrong.
Outside, the ropemaker's cock stuttered quietly, three times. The noise came from the distillery's roof, only a few feet lower and a cloth yard distant from Master Colin's bedchamber window. Both impatience and disappointment dimmed with the sound. Grinning, Rob sat up and jabbed Arthur in the back.
The apprentice groaned. "Leave me be. It's not yet morn."
"Nay, wake up," Rob hissed, being even more careful to keep his voice low. It would be a terrible shame to wake Master Colin before the cock crowed. He pulled off Arthur's blanket. "Rise now and quietly so," he commanded.
Despite that Arthur was the apprentice and Rob a mere servant, the lad muttered and sat up, only to yelp softly when he saw Master Walter's daughter. "What's she doing here!" he breathed, scrambling to pull the blanket up over his bare and protruding belly.
"Hush," Rob told him as the cock once again stuttered quietly, but warming his throat for his performance.
Arthur grinned. "Do you think he's on the distillery roof?" he breathed.
Rob nodded and tensed in delicious anticipation. He aimed his gaze upward to the ceiling above them. Arthur did the same. Johanna glanced between them, then at the ceiling, which was also the floor of Master Colin's bedchamber. "It's only a cock," she whispered, her pique over Rob's refusal to take her bait forgotten.
"Hush," both Rob and Arthur told her as one, their gazes never leaving the floor of their master's bedchamber.
Accompanied by the flap of its wings, the arrogant bird loosed a fierce and ear-piercing salute to a new day's start. Master Colin roared in response. His feet hit the floorboards directly overhead with a booming thud. Every jar and flask in the shop rattled, dust filtering down on Rob through the gaps in between the planks. The upstairs shutter nigh on splintered against the outer wall. Something hard slammed onto the distillery's roof. With a startled squawk the bird's serenade ended.
"God in His heaven, how could I have missed?! Aye, fly you coward! If I ever get my hands on you, you're stew!" Master Colin shouted hoarsely after the departing fowl. "And don't think I won't eat every last bite of you, myself!"
Rob and Arthur fell back onto their pallets, careful to spill their laughter only into their palms. Still round-eyed in surprise, Johanna giggled quietly.
"Colin," protested Mistress Katherine, the apothecary's young wife. Her voice was languid with sleep despite her rude awakening.
Rob glanced at Arthur, and they shared a moment of mutual disgust. Master Colin was ensorcelled by his wife. More often than not, his eyes glazed over when he looked upon her. Together, they'd vowed that when it was time for them to marry, they wouldn't let their wives make such fools of them.
"I hate that damn bird," Master Colin told Mistress Katherine in what was still a near shout. The bed ropes creaked as he settled back onto their mattress. "The only reason Herebert hasn't already wrung its neck is because he knows how much the creature annoys me."
"It's not that," Mistress Katherine said, laughter now lilting in her tone. "You threw your shoe. Did you plan to make your appearance this morn with but one shoe on?"
Anticipating his master's coming request, Rob leapt to his feet and brushed the wrinkles from his shirt before straightening his chausses. He wasn't supposed to sleep in his clothing, as it caused excessive wear to the fabric when these garments were but loaned to him. Once he grew out of them, they'd be stored for the next boy to use. However, this was the only one of Master Colin's edicts he felt comfortable disobeying. Having to dress each morn took too long when he was impatient to begin his day.
"May the devil take that bird! Now look what he's made me do!" the apothecary roared anew. A brief silence ensued. "Stop laughing."
"What makes you think I'm laughing?" his wife replied, her voice filled with muffled laughter.
Still smiling, Johanna handed Rob his tunic from the pallet's end. As he tugged it on, Arthur shoved him his shoes. Rob stepped into them, leaving the laces undone.
"Rob, are you awake?" Master Colin didn't need to raise his voice to ask the question. Sound traveled easily through the gaps in the boards that separated the shop from the living quarters above it.
Again, Rob and Arthur shared a look, this time in amusement. As if anyone could sleep through what was becoming Master Colin's daily waking routine. "Aye Master. Shall I fetch you your shoe?"
"If you would be so kind." As always, this master asked, rather than commanded.
That was why Rob so loved Master Colin. The apothecary was steady in temperament and patient in the extreme. He never struck out in chastisement. There was no need for it. With but a single look, Master Colin could make Arthur and Rob feel smaller than worms.
"There's no haste," Master Colin added. "Stir the ashes before you bring it up, lad."
"Aye, Master," Rob replied, cinching his belt around his waist and setting his cap upon his uncombed hair.
Johanna followed him to the workshop's narrow rear door. Rob paused before it. The bar was, indeed, out of its braces, standing in the spot it occupied during the day.
"See, I told you it was open," she said softly. "Mayhap, you forgot to bar it last night?"
"Mayhap," he said, his disappointment in himself returning.
Opening the door, he and Johanna stepped outside into the brisk and pinkening air. Trapped within the city's thick walls, the smell of gardens wet with dew mingled with that of wood smoke as fires came back to life in hundreds of homes and kitchens. In their own compound, Philip was the earliest riser; the yeasty aroma of baking bread wafted to them from the kitchen's vent.
Just now every winged creature in Stanrudde—cocks, geese, pigeons, doves, crows, even sparrows—had lifted its voice to herald the new day until the air was alive with their joyous noise. Then, the first hammer rang against an anvil, followed by another and another, until the sound of iron mongering banished the morning's peace. Rob gave thanks he wasn't attached to a smith's household. Here, at the city's more civilized center, workshops didn't open until the ninth hour of the day.
Their distillery was no more than a waist-high stone hearth jammed lengthwise between the shop's rear wall and the back of Philip's kitchen. Held above the hearth on a network of rope stretched between four poles was a layer of thatching. Its purpose had been to shield the condensing concoctions from the elements, but it would serve that end no more. Master Colin had thrown his missile so hard it had punched right through the bundled reeds. The shoe lay on the hearth, leather sole upward, between the tiny bulbous oven and their two simmering pots.
Lifting it from the ashes, Rob slapped off what he could of its ashy coating then tucked it into his belt. Beside him, Johanna shifted from foot to foot in impatience. "Why don't you want to know what I know?" she asked when she could tolerate his silence no longer.
Rob shrugged to hide his growing interest in her news. If he was to get it from her, he'd have to be clever about it. Removing the two pottery covre-feux that had kept yesterday's coals warm throughout the night, he stirred the embers until they revealed their red hearts. "If it's for me to know, someone will tell me. I don't expect that someone will be you, since you've already said you'll never tell."
Johanna thrust herself between him and the hearth, her face filled with the torture of keeping a secret she longed to share.
"Mayhap, I've changed my mind."
Rob caught back his triumphant grin. Generous in victory, he pointed to the coals. "Would you like to start the fires?" Helewise never let her do this, fearing Johanna would set herself ablaze.
"Might I?" Johanna asked in breathless excitement.
At his nod, she reached beneath the hearthstone's overhanging edge, finding the dried moss and twiglets they kept on the shelf there. As Rob tied his shoes she fed the moss to the coals with the utmost care, watching until it began to spark and smolder. Atop this, she laid her twiglets. Flames appeared.
Rob handed her an armful of small pieces of wood, all of equal size and weight. When these were stacked just so the fire that resulted owned an even temperature. Although Johanna tried to arrange them as she knew she must, they kept slipping and tumbling from their pattern.
"So, what is it you have to tell me?" he asked casually as he reached out to help her.
Johanna glanced at him, her blue eyes yet alive with the joy of doing this forbidden task. "Papa returned by himself, very late last night. Everyone else comes this morn. Even though it was so late Master Colin came to talk with him. I know because I listened at the bedchamber door, while Helewise tended to them."
Rob almost sighed as the weight of his error fell from his shoulders. It hadn't been him who'd left the door open, but Master Colin, who had forgotten to bar it upon his late return. For all his skill, Master Colin wasn't careful about remembering mundane details.
"What did they talk about?" he asked, his voice filled with his relief.
Johanna glanced up from once again restacking the wood, her lips quirking upward into a smug smile. "You."
Rob stared at her in shock. "Me?"
"You." She turned her back to him, directing her full attention on the sticks.
Rob stared at the front of her overgown in horror. What if Helewise had spoken to Master Walter about returning him to Blacklea?
He'd forgotten to ask her not to do so. Panic started through him. If Master Walter sent him home, who would see to Master Colin? The apothecary needed him. Each day Master Colin told Rob he'd never had a lad as talented. Each day, the master asked what he would do without such a lad as Rob in his shop.
Rob's eyes narrowed in refusal. He wouldn't go home; no one could force him to leave Stanrudde. Clamping a hand on Johanna's shoulder, he turned her toward him. "What did they say about me?" It was a harsh and ungracious command.
"Mayhap I'll tell and mayhap I won't," she said with a haughty lift of her chin. "You weren't nice to me."
Pulling free of his grasp, she turned her back to him once more to fuss with the sticks over the second set of coals. Once again, she knocked them into a messy knot of wood.
"Until you tell me, you'll do this no more," he snapped, shoving her to the side as he angrily reclaimed what was his own to do.
Johanna stepped back, seeming almost as relieved to return to him his chore as she was to spill her news. "Master Colin told Papa about how you already know more than any lad he's ever met. Papa talked about priests and the abbey, but Master Colin talked about the apothecary scale." The wisps of gold that were her eyebrows rose in curiosity as she looked at him. "Do you wish to use the scale, Rob?"
Rob froze. His hand clenched around the stick he held. Flamelets licked at his knuckles.
With a swift breath he snatched back his hand and sucked at his burned skin. Not even Arthur, who was his dearest friend, knew how deeply he desired to use that precious piece of equipment. How the scale balanced was more mysterious than how a juggler kept three balls aloft at the same time. Rob longed to place a bit of crushed leaf into the apparatus's attached dish, then hang a tiny lead weight off the loop in the gleaming wood of its free arm and watch as the bar evened. Longing shattered against a wall of reality, and Rob's shoulders slumped in hopelessness.