The Book of the Maidservant (5 page)

At that moment, a man clad in red and blue steps into the room. His black beard forks in the middle, and he wears a green cap. Even Petrus Tappester stops talking to look at him.

“They said you were bound for Venice,” he says, and people nod. “You’d be wise to follow me. I’ve been this route more times than most.”

“Are you a merchant, then?” John Mouse asks, and the man nods.

Petrus Tappester rolls his eyes, but the young wife says, “Well, as I’ve said, there is safety in numbers.”

People rumble their agreement and slide down the bench to make room for the merchant.

Now that everyone has been served, I find an out-of-the-way spot in the kitchen to slurp my soup. As I eat, I think about John Mouse’s friend Thomas. His eyes and face are as guarded as John Mouse’s are open. Thomas’s short hair is the color of a haystack in the rain, and he keeps the collar of his black gown high around his neck, his shoulders hunched. The two of them spoke softly to each other during the meal, and whenever John Mouse laughed, Thomas twisted his lips in a wry smirk. How can they be friends when they’re so different?

Just as I’ve picked the last little bit of fish from my bowl with my fingers, the servant of the old man and his young
wife comes through the kitchen door. He sees me and nods. I smile at him—I hope he’s not like Piers back in Lynn, never doing anything but bothering me.

He doesn’t smile back, just gestures that we’re leaving.

I scramble to shoulder my pack, then hurry to follow the company. The last thing I want is to be left behind.

a
s we leave town, Petrus Tappester takes charge because he’s the loudest. Never mind that the merchant actually knows the way. Petrus walks quickly, and I’m grateful for the old man and his young wife, who slow us down.

The wife, Dame Isabel, is wearing slippers, not boots like everybody else or bare feet like me. She takes little mincing steps, crying out every time her toes meet a sharp rock. Then her old husband rushes to her side and says, “Now, now, my sweet honey bird.” It looks to me like he needs more help than she does, he’s so old. His hair, what’s left of it, is gray and so is his wispy beard. His legs are as skinny as the skeleton’s that’s carved into the stone outside the guildhall in Lynn. The skeleton leads a merry dance of people, from a prince to a leper, all of them heading to the grave.

I’m glad the old man with his skeleton legs isn’t leading us.

And I wish old men wouldn’t wear such short tunics. They’d look far better in long gowns, like priests and students wear.

Their servant is called either Bartilmew or “boy,” depending on what sort of mood Dame Isabel is in, although he’s more of a man than a boy. He’s big, pale-skinned, and red-haired, and he plods silently behind his lady, carrying her enormous pack as if he’s her mule.

The merchant keeps himself apart from the rest of the company, as if to show he’s not a pilgrim. No one would mistake him for one with his cocked hat and bright tunic. Despite his jaunty clothes, he has a sour nature. He scowls up at the sun, then scowls again when a passing cloud gives us shade. He and Thomas could have a scowling contest.

With so many people, and with the priest walking near me, I feel safe from Petrus Tappester, even with that devil inside him. Who would ever do anything wrong with a priest watching?

The fields around us are pretty, green and autumn-gold. They make me think of my father’s fields when I was a little girl, before everything fell apart.

Here the grain will soon be ready to harvest. When we left Zierikzee, the road was wide, but now it has narrowed to a rough track through the fields, a path pounded by countless pilgrims. The sun-warmed earth feels good to my bare feet, reminding my toes of home.

As we walk, the students start a song in Latin. The way they laugh at the end of each verse makes me wonder if what they sing is bawdy. When the priest, Father Nicholas, casts a disapproving eye at them, I know I’m right.

The priest’s look doesn’t stop the song, and it makes me happy to hear them sing. I watch John Mouse’s brown curls bounce whenever he and Thomas skip-leap together
at a certain note in each verse. John Mouse’s eyes sparkle, and once he catches me watching him and grins. I smile back. I wish I could sing along with them, the way I used to sing with Rose and with Cicilly and Cook, but it’s a scholar’s song, something I don’t know.

We pass a farm, and a dog races out to bare his teeth and growl at us. The old man raises his pilgrim’s staff, and the dog clamps his teeth around it. The young wife squeals, the students laugh, and three sturdy-looking farmers come running from a field to claim their beast.

When they’ve grabbed the dog and the old man has shaken his staff at it to show he’s the master, one of the farmers ducks his head at us and says, “Got greet you.” His words sound old and clipped, but I can understand him. He must realize we’re pilgrims.

“Benedicite, God bless you,” Father Nicholas says, crossing himself, and then we set out again, the dog safely held by its real masters.

The river is worse than the dog. No bridges are in sight, nor any boats. We walk back and forth along the banks, looking for a place to ford it. Finally, Petrus Tappester plunges in. The water never goes above his thighs, so the rest of us follow.

I look around, and when nobody’s watching, I tie my skirts up the way I used to when I helped my father in the fields. The water is colder than I expected, and the current pushes against me.

When I hear a scream, I look up to see the young wife, her large skirts caught in the current. It takes her husband, her servant, and a lot of squealing to get her across.

Then Dame Margery plunges in. When I see her teetering, I rush back and take her arm. She grabs at me and I pull her across, then quickly lower my skirts before anybody sees.

After the river, everyone is snappish. The students stop singing, and we hear nothing but the squelching of wet boots.

Then my mistress adds her voice to this song. She walks alongside Father Nicholas, but her words are loud enough that everyone can benefit from her sermon.

She says that on a pilgrimage, we should all try to be like Christ. “Don’t we journey for the sake of Our Lord? Shouldn’t we be as much like him as we can?”

Nobody says anything, but they all keep their eyes down.

“On a pilgrimage, we shouldn’t laugh or joke,” Dame Margery says. “Instead, we should speak only of religious subjects. I myself would rather be chopped up as small as meat for the pot than not speak of Our Lord and his sufferings.”

Sometimes I’d be willing to do the chopping.

The priest blinks several times. “Laughter in and of itself is no bad thing.” He clears his throat. “After all, as Scripture tells us, Sarah, the mother of Isaac, is known to have laughed.”

I wish John Mouse and Thomas would start singing again. My mistress might go on all day long if someone doesn’t stop her.

No one does.

By the time the sun has begun to dry our clothes, she
has told us all about Christ’s sufferings on the way to Calvary. She says we should be suffering just like Christ did.

Aren’t we?

Petrus Tappester grows angrier and angrier, yelling, “Quiet, woman!” every few steps. It only makes my mistress louder.

The afternoon goes on forever, and my pack gets heavier and heavier. My legs ache, my feet hurt, and I want this pilgrimage to be over.

Finally, as the sun sinks below a line of trees, the sound of dogs barking and a bell tolling in the distance tell us we’re coming to a village where we can stop for the night. As we get nearer, we see gravestones outside the church, dark and bent like Petrus Tappester’s teeth. We skirt a newly dug grave, the soft earth mounded high the way it was when they buried my mother. I can’t remember anything about her funeral except the brown earth raining down on her white winding sheet.

The thought brings sudden sharp memories of home, before Hodge began stopping by. On warm evenings, Rose and I would haul the wooden table outside the cottage door. She would set supper on it while I ran to our neighbor’s to exchange eggs for ale. Then my father would come home, his hair flecked with bits of straw, dirt settled into the sunburned creases around his eyes and the three long furrows across his forehead.

He and Rose would sit on our bench, and I’d take my porridge to crouch in the doorway. Their voices would rise and fall softly like the breeze that would tug at my eyelashes and pull stray hairs from my braids. The sound
would mingle with the distant lowing of cows and the clanking of cowbells, and although I wouldn’t hear my family’s words, I would be held close in a net of comfort.

I miss them so much. I open my eyes wide to keep my tears inside.

Just beyond the graveyard, two crows battle over a bit of bone. Whose?

In the village, there’s no inn or tavern, but the villagers make us welcome with bread and cheese and ale. The parson escorts Father Nicholas away, while a well-dressed matron takes my mistress and the young wife by the arm and marches them into her house. When I try to follow, she holds her hand out to stop me, then points to the barn.

She wants me to sleep in the barn, alone among all those men? I stand in the twilight watching as my mistress disappears through the door. She doesn’t say a word to me; she never even looks at me.

I glance back at the barn, take a deep breath, and move toward it. I try to slip in quietly so the men don’t see me. It’s so dark I can barely make them out—but I can hear them joking in loud voices and pissing in the straw. After a few moments of blinking, I can see again. I tiptoe to the ladder that leads to the loft at the far end of the barn. Just as I start to climb it, Petrus looks up. He elbows the merchant in the ribs and makes rude noises.

I catch my breath. I wish Cook were here. She wouldn’t let any harm come to me, even if she does tease me beyond all bearing. A chill encircles my waist like a cold eel twining itself around me.

Then John Mouse sees me. He makes a great show of
yawning, walks over to the ladder, and spreads his cloak on the straw beneath it. “Quiet down, lads. I’m trying to sleep,” he says.

I scramble the rest of the way up the ladder.

As I roll myself in my damp cloak and settle into the straw, I pray to St. Pega and her brother, St. Guthlac, who lived in the Fens like I did and who were always wet and always tormented by devils. A prayer for Cook and for Cicilly; one for Rose and my father; one for my mother and the baby who died with her, God keep their souls from torment. And one last prayer for my safe homecoming.

I reach into my scrip for the pebble that Rose gave me. I turn and turn it in my fingers, like the way it tumbled through the waters of the River Gay until its sides were feather smooth. Slowly, I relax.

a
slant of sunlight steals into the hayloft, sliding under my lashes and turning the straw to gold. I stretch and yawn, then hurry down the ladder to find my mistress. Even if she’s sleeping inside a house, she’ll want me to pin up her hair and her wimple.

I stop at the last rung, looking for a place to step between Thomas and John Mouse. They lie curled like caterpillars in their black robes, one on either side of the ladder. When my foot touches earth, Thomas starts, turning suddenly. Seeing it’s only me, he blinks, closes his eyes, and curls back into sleep.

I’m not the only one up. Bartilmew gives me a nod as I creep out of the barn. He’s carrying a pot of water to the old man. He’s so covered in straw he looks like a scarecrow, and I’m sure he doesn’t know it. I giggle as he passes me.

Then I look down at my skirt. If Bartilmew is a scarecrow, I must be a haystack. I brush at my gown and comb my fingers through my hair.

When we are all finally ready to go, I heave my pack
onto my shoulder and groan. It feels as if a hundred-pound weight has been added to it. I drop it heavily to the ground and rifle through it, rearranging things so the blankets will be between the cooking pot and my backside. There’s nothing new in it—it just
seems
heavier.

The pot clanks against something as I walk, putting a rhythm into my head that soon has me humming Rose’s chicken song.