Authors: Judith Merkle Riley
THE WARM SPRING BREEZE
was rustling in the pear blossoms above the stone bench in the garden. High brick walls shut out the sounds of the city beyond. Hundreds of bees were at work among the flowers, and the scented canopy above the bench hummed as if it were alive. But soft spring and trees throbbing with life did not affect Madame Agathe, the knight's widow charged with making Cecily and Alison Kendall into ladies, whether it suited them or not. She sat as stiff as a poker on the hard bench, her basket of threads and mending beside her, her needle flashing in and out of a pallid linen shift spread across her lap. There was a sudden flash of black and white feathers among the branches.
“Oh, look, there's the wicked pie!” exclaimed Alison, pointing to the tree with a pudgy finger. Still round-faced at seven and a half, she was above the average height and nearly as tall now as her older sister. The neat braids of her silky red-gold hair, tied at the end with rose-colored ribbons, hung nearly to her waist, or what might have been a waist on another child. Her pretty sky-blue tunic almost brushed the top of her soleless leather slippers. All around her, a litter of shattered, split stemmed daisies from a failed garland gave mute testimony to an ambition that outreached the abilities of her round little fingers.
“Pas en Anglais,” said Madame, never looking up from her sewing. Beside her on the bench, a gleaming silver button lay among the reels of thread in the basket. Hidden beneath the sewing things,
all neatly wrapped up, were lumps of rock sugar, the most expensive and infallible bribe in Madame's armory of improvement techniques. Alison eyed the basket hopefully.
“What's ‘pie’ in French?” she demanded of her sister in that language.
“It's ‘pie,’ same as with us, silly,” answered Cecily, superior in her two additional years, her grander French, and the expertly woven crown of daisies that lay atop her flaming, unruly red curls. Fierce combing and tight braiding had failed to subdue that hair, which remained as rebellious as its owner. Her ribbons, snatched up in a fit of fury that morning, did not match; her green wool gown, its hem twice turned down, still failed to cover the bony ankles of her knobby, growing legs. Skinny and intense, Cecily spent her days being blown by gusts of passion; a lost ribbon, a moth hole, a sad song, a short answer, a new puppy, or a stranger's smile sent her flying to the heights and the depths at least fifty times a day and set the entire household into fits. That is, the entire household except for Madame.
“Demoiselles must not address each other thus,” said Madame Agathe, in the elegant, alien tongue of documents, treaties, and court circles. “Mademoiselle Alison, repeat your question:‘Dear sister, what is the name of magpie in French?' and you, Mademoiselle Cécile, reply in gracious tones,‘Beloved sister, the word is also pie, but pronounced in the French fashion.’ Now, immediately.” Cecily's face turned red under its freckles, her mouth tightened, and she began to poke holes with her fingernail in the stems of the daisies that still lay on her lap. Alison's eyes lit up at this sight.
“Dearest sister,” she said in tones of sickening sweetness, “what is the name of the bird we call magpie in the French language?” Cecily looked at her sister with eyes that could pierce steel armor, and responded in a honeyed, sarcastic tone, “Beloved sister, the name of the bird is exactly the same in French as in English, it is my pleasure to inform you.”
“The demoiselles appear to desire that they be reprimanded with a crack of my thimble on each of their hard little heads. Now, again,
in that pleasant and agreeable tone that is fit for young ladies,” announced Madame, and the exchange was repeated again to her satisfaction. She shook out the mended shift, folded it, and took up a pair of child's hose, worn out at the knees. Alison looked at the hose, and then at her sister. She wrinkled up her nose, as if to say, “eeew, little boys who wear out their hose scrubbing around on their knees are disGUSting, especially if they are baby brothers.” Cecily's blue eyes met her sister's as she received the thought. Agreed, the eyes said, and the two children nodded as if they shared a secret. Madame's needle began to make its way through the russet wool as she spoke again.
“And now, my young ladies, we will review the proper subjects for polite conversation. We never discuss money, amours, or the faults of another person not present. All gentlemen are gallant, and all ladies gracious. People of common rank are honest or good souls. Between respectable men and women, godly topics are best, provided care is taken not to enter into debate. But remember, let no man but a close relative offer you holy water with his fingertips in church—” There was a splendid whirring of black and white feathers as the bird landed on the corner of the bench beside the basket. Cecily and Alison were so still that they scarcely breathed. The bird tipped his head on one side as he took in the scene with his shrewd little black eye.
“—and you, Mademoiselle Cécile, when you walk abroad, must cease to glance about so boldly. Remember, look at your toes. A demure and downcast eye is essential in a girl of good breeding—” The bird paused, spying the basket. It tilted its head again. Lovely thread. A shiny button. The large person's nest was splendidly furnished. The two smaller people were very quiet, looking at each other without moving. The bird could feel thinking going between them. Encouraging thinking.
“—proper activities in company may include games such as chess and backgammon but not dice, and never any game for money stakes. Group singing is a pleasant diversion, and the hearing of old tales of heroism and the lives of saints, but never these dreadful
modern stories of galantry and improper relations between the sexes. You are to excuse yourself graciously from the room if such subjects arise. Women do not argue with men, but submit humbly to their superior judgment—never let it be known that you can read, a woman who reads is easy prey to gallantry, and cannot be a faithful wife—oh, Dieu! What's that?”
With a fierce and sudden movement of its beak, the piratical bird seized the coveted button and flew into the pear tree. “My button, my lovely button, that horrible bird has taken it!” Madame stood so suddenly that the mending and with it her precious needle dropped into the grass at her feet. “Ah, the rake there, catch it, catch it, Cecily!” But what amazement! Madame had reverted to English, heartfelt English such as they had never heard before from Madame's refined lips. Cecily stared, her great start of joy at the bird's act converted suddenly into astonishment. Could Madame be an actual person, capable of sorrow? Suddenly she saw Madame's snobbish airs, her desperate dependence, her tiny luxuries in an entirely new way. Madame stood beneath the pear tree, shouting up at the bird, “For shame, for shame! Drop it, drop it, you awful creature! What good is it to you?” As Cecily fetched the rake, the bird flew triumphantly from the pear tree into high branches of the tall elm whose branches overreached the garden wall.
“Its nest, there's its nest! It's gone to hide it!” cried Alison, looking up at the big, untidy collection of sticks wedged high in the branches. But Cecily had already tucked up her dress and was clambering up the ornamental fountain set in the wall. At the top of the wall, she paused only to kick off her shoes, where they fell, plop, plop, onto the thyme-planted walkway by the fountain.
“Come down, come down at once, Cecily,” she cried, and then reverted to French. “This is improper! Madame your mother does not approve.
I
do not approve!” Madame shouted up into the tree. Gray hair had escaped from beneath her plain widow's headdress. Her voice was frantic. Cecily was already halfway up the tree.
“I'll get it back for you,” Cecily shouted down from above in
English. “You'll see. I'm a good climber.” The thin branches could be heard cracking dangerously under her weight. The bird, having hidden its treasure, was flying at her as she came close to the nest, and she raised one arm to protect her head, clinging tight with her knees and bare toes.
“Come down, come down!” shouted Madame. “Leave it, oh, it's not worth it! Come down and we'll have the gardener climb up with a ladder. No higher! I hear the branches breaking!” In the alley outside the wall, apprentices were gathering to hear the source of the shrieking.
“Hey, I know her! It's Cecily Kendall, stuck up in a tree,” one of Master Wengrave's apprentices, who had been passed on to him when old Master Kendall had died, called out happily to the growing crowd.
“Come down, I say come down at once!” they could hear a woman's voice calling in French from inside the garden.
“I—I can't,” quavered the skinny, flame-headed figure up in the tree. Bobbing perilously among the frail branches beneath the nest, Cecily looked down at the wall and the ground, so very far beneath her. On one side, the crowd of apprentices was growing, and she could hear them shouting:
“Who's that? Hey, that's not a girl, it's a
very big
magpie. Ho, magpie indeed, it's a cat! Hey, meow, come down!” On the other side was Madame, frantically waving, and there, by the unattended basket, Alison quietly rummaging for the sugar. The ground seemed very hard, it seemed to move and sway. The more it swayed, the tighter she clung. It was so easy going up. Why hadn't she thought of getting down? She'd never thought at all. Now all was despair. She imagined it growing dark, with her still clinging to the branches. Maybe she'd be in the tree forever. Could they send dinner in a basket? Do people never come down, or do they fall out some time and break all their bones? Below her, she could see two apprentices coming from the door to the undercroft of Master Wengrave's great house with a long ladder. And there at the corner of Thames Street
and the alley, oh, dear, it was mother with a big basket on her arm and Peregrine by the hand, and Cook behind her, laden with provisions from the market.
“Eeeeeeeeemaaaamaaa,” came the hideously clear voice of the two-and-a-half-year-old, soaring up over the babble. “Lookit, Cecy's inna
tree. Per'grine
wants to go up inna tree. Lift me up.”
“Cecily, come down,” called her mother, her firm voice full of common sense. “If you got up, you can come down. Just put your foot where you had it last.”
“Can't,” shouted Cecily, clinging tighter than ever. More strangers surrounded her mother. Mistress Wengrave, still wiping her damp hands on her apron, had come out of her house.
Down below in the alley, Margaret had already packed off her howling son, and was directing the apprentices where to put the ladder. “Not there,” she said, “see how the stone is uneven? Brace it here. We'll need two grown men to hold it. But who will climb? He needs to be agile, but light enough so that the ladder can bear the weight of two.” She cast about her in the growing crowd for suitable recruits. There was something about the look in her eye, the look of a falcon, of a commander in the field, that made no man refuse her. Already a bulky fellow, a cordwainer by the look of his apron, had come forward to hold the ladder. Two men on horseback, dusty with travel, had been drawn to the edge of the crowd by the cries and the sight of the bobbing little figure high in the tree.
“Bigod, look there, Denys, it's a girl up that tree,” said the older man.
“After that magpie's nest, I swear, the little cat,” answered the younger. “And now she can't get down.”
“Reminds me of someone,” said the older man.
“It certainly
doesn't,
father,” said the younger. “I always got down. I put my foot where I had it last.”
“There was the little matter of the tower roof.”
“That's not the same. It wasn't my fault.”The old man inspected the woman giving orders. Unfeminine. Must be the mother. Very
well dressed, for a weekday. That squirrel-lined surcoat, very handsomely embroidered. The veil, hmm, it looked like silk. And the cross hanging, half concealed, at her neck, solid gold, foreign work- manship. And this street, a very good one, lined with the tall, brightly painted houses of wealthy mercers and knight-vintners. Quick judgments of the rank, condition, and cash reserves of those who stood before him were the specialty of the old magistrate. But the woman's eye had fixed on them there.
“You,” she said to the boy beside him, “can you climb?” The figures elevated above the crowd on horseback had caught her eye immediately. Good cloaks. Swords. Possibly knights? They're good at climbing ladders. The old one, too heavy, too stiff—gray in his beard. The young one with the black brows. Fifteen or sixteen, wiry looking, clever face. He'll do. She fixed her fierce, commanding eye on him.
“Father?” said the boy, looking at the older man to ask permission. “Are you the mother?” said the old man, his eyes canny.
“I am. That's my daughter Cecily up in that tree, for reasons of her own,” answered Margaret.
“My son, never refuse a lady in distress,” said the old man, giving his paternal benediction. The boy dismounted from his winter- coated cob, and unbuckled his short sword, handing weapon, hat, and cloak up to his father. An apprentice boy ran to hold his horse.
“You act as if you know that girl,” said the old magistrate, probing gently.
“Oh, who doesn't know her here? That's Cecily Kendall. She's not even ten, and you wouldn't believe the things she's done.”
“Ah, then, she'll live and die a spinster. No man will have her.” The old man's eye had a speculative gleam. His son had begun to ascend the ladder.
“Girls with a marriage portion like hers never go unwed, Master. So says Mistress Wengrave, my master's wife, who knows everything.” The gray-bearded man smiled. Cecily Kendall, he said to himself, as he stored away the name. A relation, perhaps, of that
wealthy Roger Kendall who had donated the chantry at St. Paul's cathedral for merchants lost at sea? It was worth looking into. And this was as good as an introduction….
Meanwhile, all eyes were fixed on the ladder, which did not reach all the way. The wiry, agile figure of the boy swung easily from the ladder to the limb above. The branches above are too thin for them both, thought Margaret, and she wanted to shout “No higher!” but was afraid that any sound would distract the climbing boy. Her breath was tight in her chest as the boy paused, leaning up under Cecily's cracking perch. What was he doing? Would they lose them both? The crowd was deathly still. Even the boy's father had put aside speculation and, his eyes on the swaying figures, seemed suddenly pale and drawn.