Wynter's Thief, page 16
Sighing, I put the sampler down on my lap. “Very true,” I say. “I don’t like sewing, Elfrida. I don’t see the purpose of it. I’ll never be able to afford fabric to make myself a new gown.”
“You don’t know that,” she says. “My mother always says we never know what’s around the next corner. Look at the lord’s son, Sir Richard – a famous soldier one minute, the next he’s a-lying in bed like an invalid, never to walk again.”
“Have you seen him, Elfrida?”
She glances at the bed, where my lady still sleeps. Then she whispers, “Only a few times. I’m not allowed in his room, except to deliver fresh bedding and bandages. He lies there white as a corpse and is never left alone. Old Olivet stays with him day and night, and the physician is in and out like a fiddler’s elbow. Once when I was there, the physician was slitting open a vein in Sir Richard’s arm, bleeding him into a big silver bowl. There was so much blood, I nearly threw up. ’Tis a wonder Olivet can stand to watch. But she’s over sixty and I suppose is used to all manner of things.”
“It must be mortal hard for Sir Richard,” I say.
Of a sudden, she jumps up and kisses my cheek. “I have to go, Wynter. I have to tear up more linen for bandages. You wouldn’t believe how many bandages they get through, for Richard’s leg – rather, where his leg was. They cut it off just above his knee. I’d rather die than have my leg sawn off, wouldn’t you?”
She runs off, and it is a while before I pick up my sewing, for my thoughts are with the lord’s son and his sufferings. It is strange, but I feel a natural affection for him, as if I know him. Perhaps it is because I have come to love my lord and lady, and Richard is their son; or it may be that his life force comes to me, even through these walls, and awakens my sympathy. While I think about him, I strive to send him peace and ease from pain, but nothing happens. I think that for me to ease suffering, I must be touching the person, and I wonder if my lord would let me visit Richard. But Richard is cloistered well away, as if he wants no one to see him in his weakness and pain. I decide I will pray for him more often.
I pick up my sewing and try to concentrate on it. It is indeed a struggle, this needlework, for it truly is pointless. Yet Lady Adelaide insists it is a vital skill. She does not understand my circumstances at all and does not know that when she has her babe I’ll be off back to my little house with Fox, living on the dirt instead of on wooden floors strewn with rushes and sweet-smelling herbs.
Fox is in my thoughts all the time. Even though I am busy, the days without him seem empty. From the beginning, he was a part of my new, free life – he is the reason I have a life at all now – and I cannot separate my existence from his presence. I have thought long on this, searching my heart to know if I miss Fox only as a replacement for my father, as someone to take care of me and be my protector; but I am sure it is not that. I need no protector now, for I have a home and work in a manor, with a kindly lady and her lord as guardians. I do not need Fox, and yet in my heart I hunger for his company, feel that, without him, a part of me is torn away. Is this love? It has nothing to do with the things Linnet told me of; yet I confess I have dreams and imaginings I would never tell anyone, for they shock even me. Small things overwhelm me with longing – the memory of his hands, his long fingers twined about my hair; the feel of his lips on my skin; the wonderment of his kisses; the way he peers sidelong down at me; his dark eyes brimming with humour and warmth. A hundred ways he interrupts my thoughts, and I spend hours caught betwixt sweet memories and tormented longings I still can hardly name.
I am thinking of him the morning Lord Rathborne comes into his lady’s room. The maids making her bed in fresh linen scurry off, giggling and twittering, for Lady Adelaide is sitting in a chair in her pale nightgown, and you can almost see through it, the fabric is so fine. The room is stifling, and I have, for once, pulled back the curtain and opened the casement, so she is resting in the sun and the morning breeze. I rush to close the casement, but Lord Rathborne waves a careless hand and says, “Leave it, Wynter. It won’t hurt for a little while.”
I get a blanket and spread it over my lady. Lord Rathborne pulls up a stool and sits near her, takes her hand. He is so tender, even his voice is full of fondness, and his ways with her fascinate and enchant me. It is true love, I know, and there is something so sacred and intimate about it,that it seems wrong to watch. And yet I do watch, for it offers a precious balance against the brutality I have seen in my life. I once saw a man beat his wife in the street, so badly that she had to be carried away with blood running from her nose and ears. None stopped him, for such punishment on a wife is lawful. Also, I stay in my lady’s chamber because I have not yet been dismissed.
“I have news, my love,” he says to her.
She glances past him, gives me a smile. “Will you leave us for now please, Wynter? But stay near, and I will call when I need you again.”
I obey, lingering just outside the door.
“Your sister is coming to stay,” he tells her. “I wrote to her of your confinement, and I received a letter back today. She insists that she comes herself to take care of you.”
“But I have Wynter, and I like her well. And if Cynthia comes she’ll bring her awful children, and her rowdy husband. The disturbance will not be good for Richard. I don’t think –”
“Cynthia will come with just two of her maids to wait on her, and two of her children. She said she will arrive on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption. The letter has been a week getting here. She arrives tomorrow. As for Richard, he is making a fast recovery, thank God. The chaplain’s prayers have been answered, for there is no more infection and his fever is past. It is more than I ever hoped. He’s a brave lad, Richard – either brave, or foolhardy. He’s champing at the bit to get out of bed and start learning to walk again. I’m having a carpenter make crutches for him, strong and padded and comfortable to use.”
“Oh, that is wondrous news!” she says, and there is a small silence, as if they kiss. He sighs and murmurs something, and I slip away further along the landing, guilty for eavesdropping.
But the news has lifted my own heart, for other reasons: if my lady’s sister is coming to look after her, then maybe I will have time to call my own.
The next day the Lady Cynthia arrives, all rustling silks and scent of musk and bits of juicy city news. That day I help to get her and her two rowdy boys and her maids settled, and the next morning – Assumption Day – I am off, singing, to see my Fox.
• • •
For more than three weeks I have been at the manor, and in this time the village of Ocken Underwood has been almost cleaned up, after the flood. Only the fields still show signs of bog, and oxen roam the harvested ground, grazing on the remaining stalks. Work on the new church has stopped for this holy day, and I find Fox outside our house, chopping up fallen branches for firewood. He is not wearing a shirt, and his breeches, tied about the top with twine, are fallen down to his hips. He is slender and clean-limbed, his skin pale where the sun has not often seen it, and the sight of him quickens my heart.
Seeing me, he hurriedly drags his breeches up to his waist and grabs his shirt from the ferns nearby. It is a new shirt, a soft yellow that suits his dark looks well. He slings a new belt about his narrow hips then turns to face me, grinning. “How now, Wynter!” he says, and comes close as if he will greet me with a kiss. Then he stops, uncertain, and steps back.
He smells of new-cut timber and wood smoke, and his black curls are damp about his face and on his neck. His cheeks are not as hollow as they were, and his eyes have lost their haunted look. It occurs to me that when first I saw him I had not thought him handsome, but brooding and severe; now he is beautiful to me.
“It’s good to see you!” he says, his smile warm as the sun.
“’Tis good to see your face, too,” I say, more glad than I can tell to be with him again, and sad that the kiss did not happen. “Lady Adelaide’s sister is come to the manor to help look after her, so I have today to myself, since she is here, and it’s a holy day.”
“And a merry day, now you’re here. I thought I would spend it all alone and forlorn.”
“Will you come with me to the Assumption play at the manor church?”
“Of course. When?”
“It is beginning soon, I think.”
He picks up his axe – a new one from the smithy, with the small image of a fox burned into the handle. Seeing me looking at the fox, he says, “I take this to work with me. They’ve got me clearing trees, for wood for the carpenters. It’s a good axe, and I have my sign on it so it can’t be stolen.”
“There are thieves among the labourers?”
He shoots me an odd look, then grins of a sudden. “Apart from me, you mean?”
“You are not a thief, Fox. You have a scar on your face that is skin-deep, that’s all. What you are is what you decide to be.”
He sighs. “It would be a fine thing if you were right, Wynter. And yes – there are thieves. One, anyway. Tom Machin, a skilled mason. He stole a tool and had me blamed for it. But the bailiff searched Tom’s house and found a whole stash of tools stolen over the months, long afore I joined the work.”
“So there was justice for once in your life.”
“Not quite. A number of masons had pledged themselves to work on a cathedral in another town and had just left, so we were short of skilled stonecutters. The master mason didn’t want to lose Tom as well, so he had him pardoned and fined two shillings. That’s why I’m working up in the woods, above the church; it’s so our paths don’t cross, Tom’s and mine.”
“Did you get into a fight?”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
He puts the axe into the house and looks at the firewood scattered about. “Shall I leave it out here?” he asks, looking up at the skies. “Any rain foretold, Wynter Weather-monger?”
“None at all,” I say.
He gives me a smile that sets my heart pounding, and takes my hand, and we head off down the little path to the village.
“How is life at the manor?” he asks.
“Eventful. Lord Rathborne told me that Father Villicus was here searching for me.”
“I know,” he says. “Father Damian sent him off on a wild goose chase. Not a bad man, Father Damian, after all.”
“I’m glad you see it now,” I say. “There have been other things happening, too. Do you remember that wagon we saw taken into the manor? The one with the sick man in it?”
He nods, and I go on, “It was the lord’s son by his first wife. He’d been a soldier in France and got a leg wound that turned bad. They cut off his leg, and we could hear the screaming all over the manor. I haven’t seen the son yet. Like my lady, he’s confined to his room while he recovers, with only an old woman, the physician and the family’s priest for company.”
Fox lifts my hand, holds it against his breast, draws me closer. He gazes on me, his dark eyes full of feelings. “I miss you, Wynter.”
“And I you.”
“Can you not visit me more often?”
“You know I would, if I could. I think of you all the time.”
“How long will you be there?”
“I don’t know. I think it is only until my lady’s babe is born. That will be near Christmas, the physician says.”
Fox groans. “’Tis a hundred years off! It’s only August’s middle now! I suppose you’ll tell me next that you have to be back there after noon today.”
“No. I have two days I can call my own.”
“And I have all this day, since it’s a holy day.” Letting go of my hand, he uses both his own to blow a wide kiss to the skies. “Sweet saints in heaven, thank you! Thank you!”
We continue along the path, jostling shoulders, and he sings a tune, out of key.
He stops and says, “I’d best not treat you to my serenade. You’ll think it’s a lament, howled by a wounded dog.”
I laugh. “Your singing is not so unpleasing.”
“You’re a bad liar, sweeting. I suppose you attend great feasts at the manor and hear minstrels sing, with harps and mandolins.”
“No. I live mainly with my lady, and she eats in her chamber, alone. Mostly I eat in her room, but sometimes I go to the kitchen.”
“It doesn’t sound such an exciting life. It would be far more thrilling here with me, you know. I’m a wealthy man now. I earn one shilling and four pennies a week. A king’s ransom. I have bought us a stool each with three legs – I couldn’t afford those with four – and a cooking pot, a spoon and a few other extravagances. The blacksmith is making me two stands with an iron rod between and a hook, to hang my pot over the fire.” He adds, with a wicked leer, “You can come and stir my pot anytime, wench.”
Laughing again, I punch his arm, and he keels slowly over in the undergrowth. How much I have missed this, his madcap foolery! I am still laughing when we come to the end of the track, and he draws me suddenly to him and kisses my mouth. At the same moment the church bell tolls, faint on the morning air, like a disapproving mutter from God, and we draw apart.
In the village, we walk decently, an arm’s length apart, lest the villagers find something else to gossip about, besides his brand and my questionable abilities.
We meet up with others on the way, for the whole village, it seems, is off to the church on the manor land to see the play about the Holy Mother. When we reach the church we find many folk ae standing outside the door, for the church is too small for all of us. Edging our way in, Fox and I manage to squeeze into the nook beside the pillar, where I hide when I have been here for prayers. The church has been decorated for the play. Garlands of flowers are wound about the pillars, candles are everywhere and smoke hovers in a cloud fragrant with beeswax and incense. The high altar is draped with golden cloth, and the candlesticks are of gold. Lord Rathborne is seated above us all, beside the altar, but his wife is not there, only her sister, important and queenly in her best gown. Her two young sons are with them, looking bored already.
There are prayers, all in Latin of course, beyond our knowing; but the solemn tones of the priest, the shining of his jewelled robes in the candlelight, the morning sun slanting in the glassed windows and lighting the incense and smoke, and striking gold on the glorious paintings on the walls – all this overwhelms me with wonder, and I almost weep for sheer joy. Much of the play I can’t see, for the people in front of me crane their necks and bob their heads this way and that; but Fox is tall and can see enough to tell me what is happening. The most glorious part I do see – the statue of the Virgin being raised up on a little platform, to show how she was raised to heaven instead of staying in the grave. As she ascends, the choir sings and it is like the singing of angels, the music soaring higher and higher, as she rises – and then she disappears behind a white cloud up near the church rafters, and we know she is in heaven, crowned like a queen, praised by all in paradise, with her Son. It is wonderful, and I cry without knowing that I do. I look at Fox; he smiles a little, and wipes my tears away with his hands.
We leave before the Mass, which only Lord Rathborne’s family and the most important people in the village are permitted to have. A few others leave with us, and mostly we are silent in the lanes. Fox does not talk, and I am thankful, for I want to hold the holiness in my heart. My father took me to Mass sometimes, if we were in a village on the Sabbath, but it had never been like this. A long time I am lost in the beauty of it.
A man behind us calls Fox’s name. He turns and sees who it is, then walks on faster, holding my hand. The man who called runs and stands in front of us, wanting to talk. A big man he is, brawny and rough, with grey stone dust on his hair and ingrained in his shirt and skin. His soul-fire is a murky red, rippling with anger and hate. Smiling falsely, he wishes us a good day.
Fox ignores him and would walk on, but the man says, “That’s a fair maid you have there, Master Fox. Will you not tell me her name?”
“No, I will not,” says Fox, trying to pass.
But the man moves, blocking his way, and I see rage flare in Fox.
To keep the peace I say, “My name is Wynter, sir. Now let us pass.”
“Wynter,” he says, his dark smile widening. “Well, our thief is a lucky man. Too lucky, by my reckoning.” But he moves aside, and Fox and I go on our way.
“Who is he?” I ask.
“Tom Machin,” says Fox. “The thief I told you about.”
“Beware of him,” I warn.
Fox laughs bitterly. “I need no seer to tell me that.”
We pass the alehouse and the smithy, and I look behind us and see that Tom has turned down another lane. But he has stolen my peace, and I am cross about it.
Fox puts an arm about my neck. “Come – enough of woe!” he says. “Would you like to see the new church? You can make out where the nave is now, and the chapels, and where the high altar will be. You can stand up there and pretend to be a priestess, without a congregation dying of shock.”
I smile, unable to be ill-humoured for long with him. Hand in hand, we go down the church road, past the deserted sheds and ramps and wheelbarrows put away for the day. It is silent, and a scent of hewn wood and stone hangs in the shining air. Fox takes me under the scaffolding, between the long ladders and ropes and pulleys, into the interior of the church.
Though unfinished, the walls are already far higher than the walls of the manor church. The nave is wider, with pillars on either side, beautifully carved, and still with scaffolding around them. We walk around the pillars, and Fox says, “These little rooms off the nave are chapels. This one we are in is for Saint Fenelia, and people will come here to pray to her. And now we are under the tower, in the centre of the church.”
