The Book of the Maidservant (21 page)

“In the fullness of time, Alice, in the fullness of time. Come with me, child.”

My breath catches in my throat. I don’t know what’s happening, and the last thing I want is Alice angry at me.

I glance over to see her mumbling something and bringing her cleaver down hard, splitting an onion in half.

“Don’t worry about Alice,” Father Morgan says, loud enough for her to hear. “She understands the relative importance of pots and souls.”

Alice gives a sigh of exasperation, and Father Morgan smiles before he leads me out of the kitchen and across the courtyard.

Outside the chapel doors, he stops and turns to me, his face solemn. “You have had a hard journey.”

I don’t answer.

“On such a pilgrimage, there are many opportunities to sin,” he says, and I stiffen. What has he heard about me?

Like he did before, Father Morgan reaches for my hand and covers it with both of his, warming mine. Under his white brows, his eyes are piercingly blue. He holds me in his gaze. “Many opportunities to sin, but few, I think, to confess.”

I hang my head.

“Would you like for me to hear your confession, my child?”

I don’t know what to say. I’m not ready for this, not at all.

Father Morgan puts a hand to my chin and lifts my head until I can’t help but look at him again. “The Lord’s forgiveness passes all understanding,” he says, his voice low and calm.

A tear leaks out of the side of my right eye, and I brush at it angrily.

“Come along,” he says.

I follow him into the chapel, dread in my heart. I haven’t prayed in so long. How can I confess? I can barely enter a church without choking.

At the altar, he lowers his hood over his eyes. I kneel, careful about my knee. My mouth dry, I force out the familiar words, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” But I can’t go on.

“Have you sinned in thought, my child?”

I nod, my eyes lowered, and feel sick.

“Tell me,” he says, his voice gentle.

I open my mouth, but no words come out.

Father Morgan waits silently, but I still can’t speak. “Have you felt envy toward another, my child?”

Have I? I don’t think so. I shake my head.

“Anger?”

How did he know? I nod, and as I do, I say in a small voice, “I have been so angry, Father.”

“Ahh.” He nods. Little by little, he coaxes the words out of me, my rage at Dame Margery for leaving me, even if she is a holy woman, even if the Lord told her to. I tell him about what happened in Venice, how I deserted Bartilmew when he defended me against Petrus Tappester, how I don’t know what happened to him.

It seems like I have talked forever, but when I stop, he says, “There’s something else, isn’t there, my child?”

There is, but I don’t know how to say it.

He waits. And waits. I hear sparrows chittering in the rafters. Somewhere outside, a man calls to someone. Still, Father Morgan waits.

“The saints have forsaken me, Father.” My whisper is so low, I’m not sure he hears me. If he does, what must he think of me? I cower, my chin lowered almost to my chest.

“Have they, now?” he says.

I keep my eyes down.

“You’re sure you haven’t forsaken
them?”

I can’t speak.

He doesn’t say anything else about it, just gives me an easy penance, a Paternoster and an Ave at morning, midday, and evensong for five days. “Say the words,” he tells me, “and the saints might just hear them.” He crosses me, touching my forehead, my chest, my left shoulder and my right, then walks stiffly out of the chapel, leaving me before the altar.

I stay on my knees despite the ache. As Father Morgan’s footsteps fade, I realize that nothing’s changed. I still can’t pray. And I didn’t confess everything I should have.

Like about Hodge. The anger that’s been knotted up in my belly for so long begins to loosen, but I clench my teeth, unwilling to let it go. I’ve been angry at my sister’s husband for a long, long time, ever since I got to Dame Margery’s. But it’s not really Hodge; I know that now.

It’s Rose I’m angry at. At Rose—and at myself.

All the hopes I’ve held on to about my sister and my father coming home again—they’ve all been dreams, nothing but dreams. I have been a fool.

Suddenly, without warning, the knot unties, emptying me of my anger and leaving me nothing but memories and the truth I’ve been hiding from myself.

Rose will never leave Hodge. She couldn’t even if she wanted to, now that they’re married. But she doesn’t want to. I’ve seen the way she gazes at him, her eyes full of tenderness. She loves him. And with his three motherless children for her to take care of, how can she spare any love for me? Especially when I acted the way I did.

It was Rose, not Hodge, who made me go away. Hodge may have found me a place at Dame Margery’s, but Rose told him to. I listened to them arguing when they thought I was asleep. I can scarcely think of it for the shame, yet the memory is too strong to ignore. Too much the truth.

“But she’s your sister,” Hodge said. “And she helps take care of the children.”

“She acts like a child herself and makes more work for me,” my sister said. “She needs to grow up. If she’s not
going to be any more help to me, she’ll have to go into service and earn her own way.”

Rose said that. About me.

I remember lying on my pallet in the loft of their cottage, feeling as if I had been slapped by her words. Had I really caused her more work?

Yes.

How many times did I sulk behind the cottage instead of milking the cow until her bawling brought Rose running to do it herself? How often did I wander off into the fields looking for daisies and butterflies instead of watching the sheep? I didn’t help Rose with the little boys as I should have—I let them run crying to her when her arms were already full of washing or baking or brewing. I refused to smile at Hodge, even the time he brought me a robin’s nest with three bright blue eggs in it. Or when he told Rose he was the one who had spilled the oats when he had seen me do it.

But I’ve bottled up Rose’s words and refused to think of them so I could blame Hodge instead. I thought he would help my father with his debts, but I was wrong. My father’s debts were too much for ten farmers to pay, let alone just Hodge. Even so, Hodge would have paid them if he could have.

Still, it seems as though nothing bad happened until Hodge began stopping by our cottage to see Rose.

A tear plops onto my cloak.

I’ll never live with Rose and my father again. I know that now.

And I know it’s not Hodge’s fault.

Another tear trickles down my cheek, leaving its salt taste in my mouth. Then another, and then another.

When the tears finally stop, I breathe in shakily.

A calm emptiness fills me.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena,”
I whisper. “Hail Mary, full of grace.” This time the rest of the prayer comes to me and I say it aloud. Then I say my Paternoster.

When I look up, a shaft of light illuminates a stained-glass window. St. Michael looks down on me, his scales in his hand, weighing a tiny, naked soul.

t
he pots are still waiting when I get back. I stopped at the well to wash my face before I went in, but it didn’t help. One glance would tell anyone I’ve been crying.

As I go to my scrubbing, Wat gives a mighty sneeze.

I look up at the sound, and Constance catches my eye, giving me a nod of understanding. I try to smile at her, but when my lower lip quivers, I turn quickly to my work.

I’m glad of the tasks Alice sets me, especially when I can lean over a boiling pot and feel the steam bathing my eyes. Or when she sends me to the cool, dark cellar to measure wine. “Taste it first to make sure it hasn’t gone bad,” she says, making a funny face as if she’s in pain. I’m on my way down the stairs before I realize she was winking. I smile and feel my face begin to relax.

By the time the sun is high enough to reach over the chapel roof and into the kitchen window, just when I’m ready to sit and rest my aching knee, a bell rings, twice. Another big group of pilgrims, but this time I don’t even blink; I just measure more oats into the kettle. After the fourth handful of oats, I suddenly stop, remembering what
this means. Other pilgrims will have to make way for the new ones. But not me. I have a place now and a bed with Constance and Henry.

There’s no time for me to run to the chapel for the midday prayers Father Morgan assigned me as penance, so I say them while I’m stirring the kettle. As I do, I remember Rose teaching me the words, our voices blending as we said them together, kneeling beside the pallet we shared.

In the afternoon, Father Morgan shows me his system for keeping track of how much wine each pilgrim gets. I know I’ll never be able to remember it, but when he asks me, I tell him I will.

He smiles. “It’s like praying, child. Keep practicing and it will get easier.”

I hope pouring gets easier. Jars and flasks are easy, but wineskins and pigs’ bladders collapse every time I try to fill them, spilling wine onto the counter and the dirt floor below.

When our work is finally done for the day, Constance shows me the little alcove hidden behind a curtain where she and Henry sleep. The cot is against the wall, and on the other side is the kitchen chimney. Delicious heat seeps from it, warming the blanket.

Henry is already asleep when Constance and I kneel together beside the cot to pray. I can feel her looking a question at me, but I lower my head and begin my Paternoster. She joins in, and then we say our Ave.

As we climb into bed, Henry wakes up enough to give me a hug. Then, startled, he opens his eyes and murmurs,
“Thought you were Constance,” before he’s sound asleep again. Constance and I smile at each other before she pushes Henry over to make room for all three of us.

The next day, I’m standing behind my wine counter, struggling with a little old woman’s pig’s bladder. She bobs her thanks over and over, her metal pilgrim’s badges clinking with every nod as I hand the bladder back to her, its out-sides as wet as its insides from where I misjudged the spigot. There’s more wine seeping into the dirt floor than there is in her pig’s bladder. At the rate I’m spilling it, all the pilgrims, rich and poor, will have to make do with three days’ worth of wine. Maybe two.

“Sorry, mistress,” I say.

“Never you mind, dearie, never you mind. You’re doing God’s work.” She bobs her way out of the cellar, clinking up the stairs, and I look up to see who’s next. Someone in a dirty white skirt.

My eyes widen and my breath catches in my throat.

“So
here
you are, you wicked girl.” Dame Margery steps up to the wine counter.

I stare, unable to move. Her veil is as badly pinned as ever, and a dark stain marks the front of her white gown, as if she’d dribbled wine down it.

“Well, I see the Lord took care of you.” She looks me over.

My legs remember to curtsy and I dip my body to her.

“Since you’re here, you can get me my wine.” The flask
she sets on the counter will hold twice as much as I’m supposed to measure out for any one person. “You can’t imagine how hard this trip has been for me, but the Lord watched over me.” She crosses herself. “Well, go on, then,” she says, pointing at her flask.

Concentrating carefully, I fill it to the brim without spilling a single drop.

“Easy with that,” she says as I hand it to her. “Now, come along.” She turns toward the stairs.

I grip the edge of the counter. “No, Dame Margery.” My voice is a feathery whisper, so small I can barely hear it.

She turns back to me, hard lines between her eyebrows. “I said, come along, you disobedient girl. Have you lost your hearing? There’s work to be done.”

I close my eyes and bite the inside of my lip. Louder this time, I say, “No, Dame Margery.”

I open my eyes to see hers narrow. “No? What do you mean,
no?
You do what I tell you.”

I train my eyes on her upper lip, avoiding her gaze. My fingers press the rough edge of the countertop so hard I can feel the wood biting into my bones. “My place is here now,” I say.

Her eyes narrow again, and this time I look directly into them.

She sets down her flask and points at me. “Of all the ungrateful servants, you are the worst. The Lord will punish you for this.” As she steps toward the counter, I back into the cask behind me.

“You,” she says, gesturing. Her hand sweeps the flask
off the counter. It crashes to the floor, sending pot shards and wine everywhere. “Now look what you’ve done, you wretched girl.”

A stair creaks and I see a brown robe coming down to the cellar. Father Morgan. He stops at the bottom of the stairs and looks from Dame Margery to me and back again. Then he looks at the broken flask on the floor and nods.

“Is it Margery Kempe?” he says, and my mistress turns to him. “I’ve heard much of you.”

“This girl—” she says, her voice harsh.

“Never mind the spill; she’ll clean it up. She’s a good girl,” Father Morgan says. “Come, you must tell me how the Lord speaks to you. Is it true that his voice sounds like sweet music?”

Dame Margery’s voice softens and she smiles. “Yes, Father, and sometimes it’s like a little bird, a redbreast, singing merrily in my right ear.”