‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.
‘I think you do – and you may as well face facts, my dear. There’s scarce a dog’s chance he’ll return.’
‘I’ll face facts when I have to Sir, and not before,’ I told him haughtily. Then realising how thoroughly ill-bred that must sound, erred on the other side by becoming too polite.
‘Our barley is already ripening – see over there.’ I pointed to the West Field crop, fenced off against the cattle. ‘We’ll have the sickles out before the next moon if the weather holds.’
‘My dear child, cut the barley. Shock it, thresh it, grind the corn – do anything you like to pass the time. It makes no difference to the fact that in the end you’re bound to run to me for what you need. Now what d’ye say to that?’
‘Nothing that you’d want to hear,’ I told him rudely. (And wasn’t quite sure what he meant – although I don’t suppose that he was talking of the harvest, was he?) I knew that if I turned to look I’d find him grinning horridly.
But I’m not a fool, however he might think it, and don’t believe that man is all that he pretends. I see that it amuses him to play with women’s feelings. But that’s not to say he likes us… I mean as people, rather than mere bodies. (It first struck me that he doesn’t much, when Agnès told me he was swiving little Edmay’s nurse behind his lady’s back – and I saw in his face that he despised the silly creature, even as he used her.)
That was when the picture I now have of him began to come together – slowly like a piece of coloured stitchwork, thread by thread. A little clearer every time we meet. He acts as if there’s nothing in the world that discommodes him. But more than once I’ve heard a note bitterness in that light voice of his, and caught a glint, the flicker of a flame in his dark eyes – heard something hollow in his laugh, which first I took for simple knavery, but now begin to see as anger and frustration. Anger at his circumstance. Frustration with his dependence for position on a thin old woman who has borne him nothing but a daughter.
Which means I’ve found a weakness in Sir Hugh de-Perfect Bernay!
I took my chance that day out in West Field while he was giving his impression of a heartless charmer, to turn my mare’s head back toward the manor – and Nesta set off at a trot which with a little heelwork turned into a canter.
‘You will need help, and when you come for it, ma chère, be sure you’ll find me waiting.’ He shouted it after us to have the final word.
‘AS IF,’ I thought! Because I didn’t need his help, and wouldn’t trust the man to give it freely if I had.
That was in July. But when in September Sir Hugh returned to warn us that the anti-Jewish riots in the eastern counties were in danger of infecting Sussex, and to suggest it was too great a risk for any Christian lady to trade openly with Jews – I was persuaded to allow him to take the usance for the quarter in my place. Even to thank him for the offer – like a fool!
‘I put it to the old man that with affairs so dangerously unsettled, he’d be lucky to retain his licence as a lender,’ Hugh dared to boast when he strolled in from Lewes four hours later, with six shillings of the twenty-six still in his pouch. ‘I told him that his rates were scandalous, and had but to lift my cloak to make him see the point.’
He showed me the dagger in his belt just as he’d done to the poor moneylender. And when I informed him stiffly that I’d sworn an oath, could not in justice see Sir Garon’s debt defaulted, he’d laughed at me – again – that maddening, infuriating laugh!
‘Life doesn’t work like that,’ he said. ‘To make the best of it, my dear, you have to do – not what is seen as just by others, but just what’s needed to survive.’ (Although something in the way that he looked through me as he said it, gave me the feeling he was talking less of my life than his own.)
A sharp wind’s blowing, north-east through the gaps between the houses. Despite the hood, my face is frozen – feels as if some devil’s sticking sharpened icicles into my chin. Thank God, I say, for warm boots and sheepskin lining. The shutters of the shops are closed. Nesta’s snorting though her whiskers at the drifting woodsmoke from the inn – and I hope to heavens that the Jew’s house has a brazier. A group of ragged destitutes huddle at the castle gate and all across the bridge, in hope of something warm to fill their bellies – withered faces, pinched with cold (the only mob, poor things, that we are likely to encounter!).
We had to have a bullock killed at hay-homing for Lady Constance and Sir Hugh; a beast I’d hoped to keep back for the Lammas feast. Considering how drawn and ill she looks, the lady’s appetite surprised me. But I’ll be ready for her when she comes again at Christmastide, I am determined. If my Lady Constance thinks to find me unprepared for banqueting after the salt-fish fasts of Advent, then she will have to think again.
Jésu, how the beggars gawp. (You’d think they’d never seen a lady lead a horse through snow!)
The sky looks yellowish and heavy. If there’s to be another fall we’d better be sure not to stay too long. The men have taken Nesta with Kempe’s palfrey to find shelter at the inn yard, blowing in their fists to keep them warm. I’ve told them I will have them whipped if they so much as wink at a town whore… But what on earth have those three ravens found to make them so aggressive? – grisly birds; they call them ‘gallows-crows’ – has someone left a dead cat in the street?
They’ve swept the loose snow from the door sills, all but the Jew’s. But is he in? A row of icicles hang down across the entrance and I can’t see any smoke. We stamp our feet. Kempe’s rapping with his dagger hilt just as he did before.
‘Who’s there?’ (Old Jacob’s voice.)
‘It is the Lady of Haddertun!’ My words freeze in the air.
‘And remember Kempe,’ I whisper, ‘this time I’ll do the talking – the business is between the Jew and me.’ He’s frowning, has an unattractive habit of pushing out his lower lip to show his disapproval. But I’m giving him no option to refuse.
The shuffling feet again – the grating lock, more snow, an endless fall of whirling flakes blotting out the roofs. The door swings back… He’s swathed in woollen shawls against the cold, all grey – long nose and rheumy eyes, a bleary creature peering from its burrow. And hard to see into the shuttered room after the glaring whiteness of the street.
He greets us warmly nonetheless with, ‘How do you, Mistress? Master Kempe?
But inside it’s chilly, odorous as a spice coffer, steeped in shadow, misted with a bluish haze.
‘I fear this chamber is too cold for you, My Lady.’ Old Jacob’s gesturing through all that drapery toward the rusty curtain I remember at the back. ‘If you can bear a little woodsmoke, we’ll be more comfortable within.’
He holds the curtain back for us to pass behind the narrow staircase. A central fire glows through a fog of smoke in the small room beyond. His old wife, Sara, nods a greeting, hooks an iron pot to a tripod straddling the flames. It’s hard not to cough, and Kempe isn’t even trying. (Our clothes are going to reek of smoke!)
‘There is too little space between the buildings – so hard to get a good cross-draught.’ The old man’s pointing to the vents above the shutters. ‘A south-west breeze is what we need. But as things are – My Lady, Master Kempe – I believe you’ll find the smoke less tiresome if you sit.’
Sara hurries in with cushions for the bench. I tuck my cloak in and reward her with a smile. ‘The recent persecutions of others of your faith? They do not touch you here in Lewes I suppose?’ (No more than courtesy to ask.)
‘More of our race have been slain in Norfolk and the counties to the east, despite King Henry’s charter. Some of the rioters were fined, but not a single Christian hanged.’ The old man is looking sorrowful as well he might.
‘But thanks to God, and to my Lord of Warenne, we are safe here for the present, Lady. So long as we agree to stay indoors and never think to venture forth in daylight.’ His smile is painfully awry.
‘I’m glad of that.’
I’ve practiced what to say – pull off my gloves, talk rapidly and fumble for the drawstring bags within the lining of my cloak. ‘Sir Hugh, and my man Kempe here, were greatly in the wrong to withhold any part of the sum we’ve agreed. I wish to tell you that they acted on their own without my knowledge – and now I’ve come to make amends.’
I have a purse in each hand, both chinking fatly. ‘One pound and fifteen shillings for you, Jacob – four hundred and twenty silver pennies divided into two. I think my calculation is correct, but count it if you will?’ (And what a huge relief to have that said and done.) ‘The sum should cover all the interest to the year end, with three shillings of the principal included as a gesture of good faith.’
‘Mistress, I have to say…’
But Kempe doesn’t have to say it, does he? There are times when I could cheerfully divide him with a meat-axe from his lank crown to horny toe. But this time merely glare him into silence. He scowls morosely, gnawing at his lip – and serve him right for being such a niggard!
‘My steward knows as well as I do that we can afford it from our sales last month of grain and beanflour,’ I state firmly, ‘and a good price for our lambswool in July.’
Although I have to smile, as my hands fly up the moment Jacob takes the heavy little sacs into his own. He’s saying that he has no need to count the coins. The scales will show the sum to be correct – and he’s grateful plainly, hugs the bags of silver pennies like lost children to his woolly chest. The wine that Sara hands me is warm, red, spiced this time and welcome. We’re steaming gently at the fireside like a couple of salt hams.
‘Sir Hugh is not a man I care to deal with.’
Jacob pauses by the staircase on his way through to the scales. I give a little nod across the goblet to show I understand. ‘You will perhaps forgive me for presuming, Lady. But I would advise you to be wary of him. In my experience, a person who proves treacherous in business may not be trusted to act fairly in his other dealings.’
I nod again – as if I needed telling!
The last patches of snow have thawed, and it is raining hard. I’ve had the puddled courtyard strawed and planked across to let the maids walk dry-shod, with more planks in the yard behind, to reach the milch cows and the poultry. The ivy garlands are already wilting on the walls. But, thank the Lord, the Christmas feast is over.
We ate in silence at the high board, Sir Hugh and I, with Edmay and her nurse, Odette – and Hoddie doing all the talking, describing every feast she could recall, and who was drunk and who was sick, and who attempted liberties beneath the cloths. ‘Glory, some soul had to speak,’ she told us afterwards when Hugh had left the board. ‘We can’t all sit like stuffed fowls in gravy with our necks across our backs!’
Last Christmas, after a church mass to celebrate the coming of the Holy Child, the Yule log was brought in at the commencement of the feast to be set amongst the fragrant juniper and crabwood on the fire. We’d all cried ‘Yole!’ and ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ and begged God to increase our number, while Father Gerard crossed himself and blessed the celebration. But this year, before the log was flamed the priest was upstairs chanting paternosters by My Lady’s bedside. This year there’s no cause for joy, or reason to believe our numbers will increase – rather the reverse, considering that Lady Constance is about to die!
On Christmas Eve, Sir Hugh brought her to Haddertun in a closed litter. She was too weak to walk. He had to lift her out, and he and Fremund carried her upstairs – her clothing wet with rain and little Edmay crying out pathetically to tell her not to die.
‘She started on the coughing fits at Martinmas,’ Sir Hugh said, as he laid her by my own instruction in the bed I share with Hod. ‘But it was not until we’d passed the ford at Uckfeld that she became distressed.’
He seems disturbed, and at the same time angry with his wife for giving him the cause – and maybe will decide to love her after all when she is dead. He’s only three or four times entered the bedchamber since he laid her there, each time so stumbling-drunk and thoroughly impatient with her case, that the poor woman begged him to depart and leave her to her prayers. She’s asked for the little girl to be kept from her too – and as the dim-witted nurse can only think of weeping (which is no help to anyone, least of all a frightened child), Edmay’s with Hoddie, learning how to twist a yarn (a thing, Hod says, her mother should have taught her years ago).
So here am I. And there lies Lady Constance propped up on pillows and close to paying her last debt to nature, for the fever is malignant. I know that she’s in pain and struggling to breathe. The poor woman’s laboured to give birth to Garon and to Edmay and the child that died, and now must labour to deliver her own soul.
A candle burns beside the bed, and has done day and night since she first came. It’s guttering already (I’ll have to light a new one, and the rushes on the floor need changing). Here on his knees is Father Gerard, who’s shriven her and hopes to speed her into purgatory before he falls asleep – and here am I beside a woman I’ve no reason to be fond of or to mourn when she departs – sitting at her bedside like a faithful daughter while her husband drinks himself into oblivion.
Hod says that like as not I’ll see the Callydus fly in before she dies. ‘A big white bird that flaps in through the window, to perch on her bed tester, an’ turn ’is ’ead away from ’er to show ’er time has come.’
I’m trying to recall what Mother did when Grandmère died? The coffin’s ready. I have the linen band for tying up the chin. But should we wash her first for decency? Should we clip some hair and fingernails, as Hoddie recommends, to keep her son from harm? Then when we close her eyes, is that the time to place the coins on them to stop the lids from rolling up? Or does that all come afterwards when we have laid her out? Old Agnès, who was here when Garon’s father, Sir Gervase, gave up the ghost, will know what we should do. They say the soul stays near the body, watching for the space of forty days.