Catherine, Called Birdy (10 page)

Roger's wound has grown black and smells bad. My mother and Morwenna and I do all we can, but his head is no better and his fever no less and his eyes still closed.

10
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Scholastica, the first nun

Roger died this morning. He never woke up. He was seventeen.

11
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Gohnet, virgin and beekeeper

Today is Roger's funeral ale, and our hall rings with noise and music and fighting and eating and drinking just as it did the day our brawling killed him. This will go on all night until the funeral Mass tomorrow after which there will be more feasting. I am in my chamber, for my head aches and my heart grieves, and I have no appetite for food, merriment, or company.

13
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Modomnoc, who first brought bees to Ireland

I told Morwenna that my hands were too cold for embroidery. She now watches me like a chicken hawk to make sure they are also too cold for writing. No more now.

14
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Valentine, a Roman priest martyred on the Flaminian Way

Today being the day birds choose their mates, I watched my
birds all morning to see if I could spy them pairing off but they are acting just the same as always, so I must have missed it. Mating is definitely in season, however. Meg from the dairy giggles as she carries the milk pails and leaves a trail of spilled milk from here to there. The cook spent the forenoon teaching Wat's yellow-haired daughter to stir a porridge. Half the kitchen boys have disappeared with half the serving maids. And my father stopped blustering long enough to lay a kiss on my lady mother's head.

As we wove cloth this day, Morwenna and I talked of mating, love, and marriage. I told her I thought it all silly and a waste of time and if I were king I would outlaw it.

"Even the king would have trouble enforcing that law, Birdy," she said, "for one stick won't make fire, and God's creatures dearly love to warm their hands on a fire."

She laughed and snickered so to herself then that I could not get a word of sense out of her. God's thumbs. Mating season has soddened even Morwenna's wits.

16
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Juliana, who argued with the Devil

I am to go to Castle Finbury to visit the duchess of Warrington—the lady Aelis that was. She is there at home while she waits for her husband to grow up. I will be with her for fourteen days! My belly is quivering with excitement and a little still with remorse. I will take with me plenty of remedies.

18
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Eudelme of Little Sodbury, about whom nothing is known except that she was a saint and I do not know how we even know that

Just before dinner, Morwenna and I and our escorts arrived at Aelis's castle. Clattering over the moat bridge, we passed
through the main gate into the castle yard. The castle seemed like a small stone city. Huddled against the great curtain wall with its stone towers were buildings of all sizes—a slope-roofed storage shed, a kitchen with a chimney like a church steeple, the great hall, a brewhouse, thatched barns and stables, a piggery, a smithy, and the chapel.

The yard teemed with sights and sounds. Great snorting horses coming or going or just milling around stirred the rain and snow and dirt into a great muddy slop. Peasants held wiggling, squawking ducks and chickens by their feet, shaking them in the face of anyone who might buy. Laundresses stirred great vats of dirty clothes in soapy water like cooks brewing up some gown-and-breeches stew. Bakers ran back and forth from the ovens at the side of the yard to the kitchen with great baskets of steamy fresh bread. Masons chipped stones and mixed mortar as they continued their everlasting repairs. Everywhere children tumbled over each other and everyone else, stealing bread, chasing dogs, splashing and slopping through the mud.

As we drew near to the great hall, the smells overpowered even the noise—the sour smell of the sick, the poor, and the old who crowded about the door, waiting for scraps of food or linen, the rotten sweet smell of the garbage and soiled rushes piled outside the kitchen door, and above all the smell of crisping fat and boiling meat and the hundreds of spices and herbs and honeys and wines that together make a castle dinner.

The great hall seemed larger than our whole manor at Stonebridge, and the tables were laid with enough golden plate to make my father die of greed were he but to see it. Dinner was festive, with wine and musicians and minstrels and much laughter. And food such as we see at home only for a feast, and never in winter—eels in quince jelly, hedgehog in raisins and cream, porpoise and peas, spun sugar castles, boats, and dragons—but I noticed that many of the dishes had snow on them, for the kitchens are outside in the yard and food must be carried through the snow to the hall.

After dinner Aelis and I walked about the castle yard for a few minutes, but it was too cold, so we ducked into the kennels to see her new hounds. A stable boy not more than ten years old sleeps there to see to their needs—how thin and cold he looked. The dogs were cleaner and better fed. I gave him some cheese and bread I had concealed in my sleeve for later, for I did not relish crossing the yard in the middle of the night to steal food from the kitchens the way I do at home.

Aelis, now that she is married, wears her hair tied up in bunches over each ear but she still gossips like the old unmarried Aelis. She wanted to talk about George but I was pricked with guilt and tried to talk about anything else. She said she sent him a message and although he never responded, she will love him until she dies. Prick. Prick.

19
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Odran, who was Saint Patrick's chariot driver

The night sounds in a castle are so different from home. I could barely sleep for the clanking and calling of the guards as they passed one another in the night, the laughter and shouting of the guests still drinking in the hall, and the loud, sharp sound of footsteps on stone, unmuffled by dirt and rushes.

The castle was abustle early this day with cooking and sweeping and the mucking out of privies. A messenger had arrived to say that the king's cousin, Madame Joanna, will stop here to rest on her way from York to London. She is but two or three days away!

Aelis and I have been hiding from all the activity so that no one will think of something for us to do. We are guessing what the great lady is like. Aelis imagines she is tall like the king, slender as a weasel, and white as whale's bone, dressed in cloth of gold and sea-green velvet, with jewels instead of keys hanging from the belt at her waist. So says Aelis.

I think she is clever and funny and writes songs. And that she will grow to love me and not wish to be without me and will take me with her to London to the king's palace where we will dance every night until morning and have adventures and many knights will love us and even wish to die for us, but we will have none! If we wish to be puppeteers at a fair or skate on the ice or be strolling players, we will, for who could refuse the cousin of the king and her beloved friend? And I will never again have to spin or weave or comb wool or stir boiling vats of anything! And no one will be able to marry me off for silver or land. I cannot wait until she arrives, friendly and kind and beautiful as summer.

I have brushed and smoothed my best green gown and Aelis will let me wear her lavender surcoat over it to hide the worst stains. I washed my hair and near roasted my backside at the fire trying to get it dry. My shoes are cleaned and my fingernails also. I must be at my best for this opportunity.

20
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Wulfric of Haselbury, a hermit who doused himself frequently with cold water for penance

All is ready but Madame Joanna has not yet arrived. Aelis and I are huddled beneath the bed covers trying to keep warm while I write. There are icicles on the walls of her chamber, on the side away from the fire. I thought great barons and their families lived in luxury, but this castle is much wetter and colder
than Stonebridge Manor. The fleas are the same as at home, although the wine is better.

Two villagers and a goat froze to death last night.

Where is my dear Madame?

21
ST DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Peter Damian, monk, cardinal, poet, and maker of wooden spoons

Madame Joanna arrived this day while we were at dinner. The baron hurried out of the hall to greet her and bring her in. I was taken greatly by surprise. She is a hundred years old, gray and puny, smaller even than Robin Smallbone's sister, who is not yet eight. Her face is all wrinkled and brown and covered with gray hairs, her eyes are round and red, and she is missing all her teeth but the front two on top. God's thumbs, I thought, Madame Mouse.

I watched her closely during dinner. Her veil and wimple were crooked and stained with crumbs and gravy from her attempts to straighten them. When she talked or ate, which she mostly did at the same time, she lisped and whistled so no one could understand her at all. A tiny dog who looked like a hairy beetle sat on her lap all through dinner. She fed him the best pieces of meat picked from the serving bowls. Sometimes the dog sniffed or licked a piece of meat and then would not eat it, so she'd put it back in the bowl. No one dared chide her, her being the cousin of the king!

Was this the beloved friend, beautiful as summer, who would rescue me and take me to court where we would dance and frolic? Disappointment grumbled my guts and made my breath sour.

After dinner Madame Joanna told fortunes. It was hard to know what she said, for she talked in riddles and proverbs while lisping and whistling, but those who thought they heard
of love left blushing and giggling and those who thought they heard of riches grinned, so most seemed pleased.

My turn came and I near fainted when she said, "Come closer, Little Bird." How could she know that name? She peered intently into my face, her mouth so close her whistling tickled my chin.

Finally she said, "You are lucky, Little Bird, for you have wings. But you must learn to master them. Look at the barons hawk there on her perch. Just because she doesn't flap her wings all the time doesn't mean she can't fly."

I was impressed with her knowing Little Bird but could make little sense of the soothsaying. I went to bed.

22
ND DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Baradates, called The Admirable, it does not say why

The sun came out fiercely this day and warms the world. After dinner the baron took a party out hawking although it is early in the year, for they said they could not waste this glorious day. They will spend the afternoon setting birds to hunt and kill other birds. You can imagine what I think about that. Aelis has gone with them.

After dreaming in the sun a while, I wandered into the hall and found Madame Joanna there, eating boiled cabbage and bacon at the great table, all alone except for her dog. She called me over, bade me sit, and fed me bits of bacon just as she did the dog. She said I reminded her of her youngest daughter, who is now a queen in some German country, so we talked about her children. She tries to be kind to them, she said, but on the whole prefers her dog.

And we talked about me. I told her about Stonebridge and Perkin—she agreed he sounds quite superior for a goat boy—and Morwenna and my father and the endless business of
learning to be the lady of the manor, the spinning, embroidering, hemming, brewing, doctoring, combing, marrying, and on and on. I told her of my dreamings about her and going back to court with her where we would have adventures and do exactly as we pleased.

"Adventures!" she squeaked. "I am a woman and cousin to the king. Do you truly think I could be a horse trainer or a puppeteer or even be friends with a goat boy? Do you think I have adventures instead of duties? There are many worse chores than spinning, Little Bird.

"But, my dear," she went on, "I flap my wings at times, choose my fights carefully, get things done, understand my limitations, trust in God and a few people, and here I am. I survive, and sometimes even enjoy."

She smiled then, a lovely smile except for the cabbage stuck between her only two teeth. "You," she added, "must learn about wings, my dear."

And then, before I could ask what she meant, the bird killers returned, tables were laid for supper, and my time to charm the king's cousin was over.

24
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Matthias, who preached to cannibals

I did not see Madame Joanna again, for I was called home all unwilling to celebrate the marriage of the abominable Robert to the little heiress of Foxbridge. They have been hand-fast for two years and were to have been married in two more when she reached fourteen. Robert promised not to bed with her while she was of such a tender age, but from the looks of her, he paid no more attention to his promise than a cow at Mass. Either the girl has overfed herself on honey cakes or the child is with child.

Her father is too angry with them to risk letting them go to Foxbridge, so we will have the wedding here. My father, Sir Nip-Cheese, objects to the cost, saying it is obvious they are already husband and wife. My mother in her quiet way does as she wishes. Robert and his bride will have a hasty but real wedding and we will get all the meat eaten before Lent begins.

26
TH DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
,
Feast of Saint Ethelbert of Kent, first English king to become a Christian

The wedding feast still rollicks below, but I have had my fill of merriment and have escaped to my chamber to write this account of the day's events.