The Innocent (4 page)

“Anne!” Aveline’s high, clear voice cut through the racket and Anne hurried over to where the maid had beckoned her. “This is Maître Gilles. He cooks for this house.” Anne, her wits regained, dropped a slight curtsy, taking care that her one respectable dress was lifted clear of the slick of fat on the flags near the cooking fire. “Maître, this girl will assist me as Lady Margaret’s body servant and as such she may relay requests from the mistress direct to you.”

Surprised, Anne found her hand being lifted and kissed by the chef. “Mademoiselle Aveline, this young person may be assured that my kitchen exists to serve Lady Margaret and her so charming new young companion.”

“Body servant, Maître Gilles, that is all,” said Aveline frigidly. “Come, Anne.”

But, distracted by the courtly gesture of the cook, Anne had not heard Aveline, and when she looked back to find her, the girl had vanished.

Maître Gilles laughed out loud at her astonishment, blackened teeth a shock in that unremarkable but pleasant face. “Here—look! Sorcery!” With a flourish he pressed his hand hard against a particular stone near the fireplace and a stone door swung open into the thickness of the wall. “You’ll have to hurry to catch her. This stair leads directly to Lady Margaret’s solar. Up you go.”

And go Anne did, fairly running because she could only just hear the sussuruss of Aveline’s skirts on the stairs ahead of her. Narrow and almost completely without light except for guttering pitch-dipped torches in iron sconces, they wound upward toward the top of the house. And it was so cold that although Anne climbed as quickly as her long skirts would allow, she found herself shivering in the close darkness. It was a relief to round the last curve, panting, and find Aveline framed in a square of light that dazzled her eyes after the darkness.

The room that Anne entered was a world away from the sweating chaos of the kitchen below. The solar was high up in the tower at the center of Blessing House; here the stone walls had been softened by bright tapestries and there was a ceiling of blue-painted wood powdered with silver-gilt stars like the night sky. There were proper windows too, not just wooden-shuttered arrow slits in the wall. The casements were made with small-paned, thick leaded glass through which spring light shone, and the bright fire burning in a chimney breast was of applewood that filled the room with a fragrant smell. It was the loveliest room that Anne had ever seen. And there was her mistress, the woman she had come to serve.

Lady Margaret Cuttifer was pale and still in the vast carved bed that lay in the center of the solar; her body was so wasted with illness that the shape of collarbone and ribs could be clearly seen beneath her sleeping shift. Her face was pale as the fine sheets she lay between, but as the girl entered with Aveline, she turned her head and smiled slightly, beckoning with one long-fingered hand for Anne to approach, though this tiny movement plainly cost much effort.

The woman coughed and her hand dropped onto the bed as the cough became a spasm. Aveline hurried over, snatching up a small horn beaker filled with a thick fluid that she held to Lady Margaret’s lips.

Her mistress sipped at the liquid, grimacing at the taste. Lying back she waved Aveline away, closing her eyes. As Aveline smoothed the bedding, Margaret raised her hand again. Aveline beckoned Anne closer and both girls leaned down to hear Lady Margaret speak. “Who is this?” she asked softly.

“Anne, Lady Margaret. It has pleased Master Mathew to give her a place for the moment. She is to assist me with your care, as body servant.”

Lady Margaret nodded slightly and spoke again in a reedy whisper. “My husband has too much care of me. Aveline, go down and walk in the pleasaunce; the air will be good. Leave this child with me.”

Aveline was not pleased, though she nodded dutifully. She curtsied to the woman in the bed and issued her instructions quietly to Anne as she crossed to the main door of the solar. “See that Lady Margaret has everything she needs. She has eaten nothing today. It is your first duty to give her food even though she will not want it. You will see a posset of curds and honey on the small coffer. Keep the fire bright, and if she sleeps, use the time. The cypresswood chest contains her most-used things—and the oak press by the window has personal linen. There is always mending: you will find needles and thread there also.”

Anne held the door open to a gallery high above the receiving hall below and curtsied as Aveline glided through, closing it behind her quietly. There was silence in the bright room now except for the cheerful crackle of the applewood in the fireplace and the gentle nudging of a spring breeze around the casements. It was a day for life, not death.

Anne looked around her with real interest: she’d never seen so many fine and beautiful things in one room before. There was even a brass washing bowl on an iron stand placed ready beside the bed—and a ewer before the fire with a blackened firepot for the water, standing next to it. Anne smiled: she’d had an idea!

“Lady Margaret, may I speak?” The woman nodded faintly. “I have the makings of a soothing wash here, in my pocket.” The girl brought out three little packages from the small bag dangling from her girdle. “Just a few simple herbs that are sweet to smell. I could make it for you very quickly.”

The woman in the bed said nothing. Taking silence for assent, Anne moved to the chimney breast—a modern innovation, she’d never seen one before—and half filling the firepot with water from the ewer, she hooked it on to the chain that dangled over the fire itself. Then she carefully measured small quantities of the dried herbs and flowers from her pocket into the brass bowl while waiting for the water to boil.

Anne moved as quietly as she could. She needed to establish a harmonious relationship with Lady Margaret very quickly to secure her place in this house, but her mistress had the look of death and plainly no one, including her husband and Aveline, expected she would live much longer. Perhaps the knowledge that Deborah had given Anne could prove them wrong.

The water boiled and the girl poured it on to the leaves and petals in the bottom of the bowl. Then taking a small stick of alder-wood from her pocket, she carefully stirred the gently steaming liquid seven times sunwise and seven times countersunwise. The lady in the bed watched with a little curiosity—and a faint smile at the earnest expression on Anne’s face. As the wash infused, the girl searched for something she could use to apply it to Lady Margaret’s face. Not wishing to disturb her mistress with questions, she lifted the heavy lid of one of the coffers and was pleased to find a square piece of linen inside, perhaps a small drying towel, lying neatly folded on the piles of shifts and petticoats beneath.

Anne dipped one edge of the linen into the now warm water and squeezed most of the liquid from it—the cloth was so fine that she was able to fold it into as small a pad as she wished. Gently she applied the cloth to her lady’s face, pressing it to her forehead and over each closed eye, then to each cheek and finally to her chin and neck. Lady Margaret did not resist the gentle pressure of the pad against her face. The astringent scent of the herbs added to the fragrance of the applewood from the fire, and as Anne worked on, the silence between the woman on the bed and the girl became dreamlike and profoundly peaceful.

A slow tentative smile formed around Lady Margaret’s tired mouth, and after a time the girl heard her mistress say quite clearly, “Thank you, Anne. I shall sleep now.” Soon, deepened breathing told the girl that her mistress was indeed asleep, and she could see that some of the pain had gone from her face.

Anne smiled delightedly. Now, if she could just persuade Aveline that she posed no threat for Lady Margaret’s favor all might yet be well.

Chapter Three

It was Sunday, the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin, in the fourth regnal year of Edward IV, fourteen hundred and sixty-five years since the Virgin’s son had himself been born, and church bells were ringing over the city in the still cold air of winter.

Blessing House had been in an uproar since before dawn as the household readied for today’s double celebration—the Feast of the Virgin’s Birth was also the name day of Mathew Cuttifer. This year there was an extra reason for joy. Mathew Cuttifer wished to give thanks for his wife’s recovery from the wasting disease that had so lately threatened her life. The entire household would be present at a High Mass of thanksgiving in Westminster Abbey, paid for by Master Cuttifer, in which Abbot Anselm himself would lead the congregation. And then there was to be an almsgiving in the outer sanctuary, followed by a feast for specially invited guests at Blessing House in the presence of the king.

Anne had found it hard to sleep and had risen in the dark from her truckle bed in the solar. By the luxurious light of a wax taper—her mistress could not bear the smell of tallow candles—she was sewing a few last pearls to the gown that Lady Margaret would wear in the abbey today. Aveline was still asleep on her own bed, so Anne shielded her light and made no sound as she treasured these few moments to herself.

The dress was made from ink-blue Flanders velvet, the color of the night sky; the sleeves were lined in lustrous white figured damask folded back over the outside, and were tipped with rare white fox fur traded from Russia by Mathew Cuttifer’s factor in Brugge. The low neck was filled with the finest sheer cambric—also snowy white—sewn with pearls the size of hawthorn berries. It was the most beautiful thing that Anne had ever made, but she’d had to argue hard to convince Phillipa Jassy to let her cut and sew the precious material all by herself. Normally seamstresses came to the house to sew for all the household, but Anne had been determined. This dress was the culmination of all the work she’d done for Lady Margaret over these last eight months. It was a tribute to her mistress’s returned beauty, which Anne felt she knew best how to glorify. On this quiet morning she worked on, conscious of the gentle breathing of the woman in the bed, and smiled happily. She thanked God, and Deborah, for having been able to help restore her mistress’s health.

Very soon after joining the Cuttifers’ household, Anne had come to believe that Margaret’s very expensive doctors were bleeding their patient to the point of exhaustion; collectively, they’d told the terrified Mathew that it was the only way the evil humors causing the wasting sickness could be extracted from his wife’s body. They’d also instructed that spirits of mercury were to be taken in old wine boiled with rue as frequently as possible, since quicksilver was thought to replace lost vitality. But Anne had clearly seen Margaret sink deeper and deeper into the strange world between life and death each time she drank the dark, sticky liquid.

Somehow Anne had found the courage to speak to Jassy. In her opinion, the opinion of a humble peasant serving girl, the doctors were killing her mistress with their treatment. All life and death was in God’s hands, but her mistress needed more blood, not less, if she was to fight the illness in her body.

And would it not be better to remove all the “medicines” while trying to get Margaret to absorb some nourishment? Anne knew what starvation looked like, and her mistress resembled nothing so much as the emaciated villagers she’d seen in the one famine year of her childhood.

Mathew had grown increasingly desperate, even though the whole household prayed day and night for Margaret’s recovery, and he’d had his chaplain Father Bartolph say countless Masses of intercession for his wife. When Jassy had dared to raise Anne’s thoughts with him, it was as if a veil had lifted. Almost too late he had seen that he’d let excessive faith in modern medicine eclipse his native common sense.

He had sent for Anne and Aveline and questioned them closely. Because she was jealous of Anne, Aveline had been reluctant at first to agree that her mistress was worse each time she took the foul medicine prescribed by the physicians, but in the end, self-interest, and the possible preservation of her place in this household, had made her tell the truth. The question then became, how to proceed if Margaret’s life was to be saved?

As a child, Deborah had fed Anne a tonic made from dried marigold petals, the juice of crushed parsley and rosehips, garlic, sage, honey, and fennel seeds. It worked to stimulate the appetite and strengthen the body during the time of winter ills. Cautiously, Anne had suggested she could make some of the strengthening tonic for her mistress—it could do no harm and might help. She also asked to make puddings from the yolks of new eggs and fresh bull’s blood taken from a living animal, and thrice-boiled broth made from the flesh and bones of chickens.

Whether it was the removal of the “medicine,” the suspension of the bleedings, or the tonics and puddings she’d been permitted to make, Anne had found, with great joy, that her mistress slowly, very slowly, regained her strength over these last months. And now, this day had finally dawned.

With the last pearl in place, Anne bit off the thread and carefully rubbed the precious needle in white chalk, to ward off the rust, before she put it away in a little oiled-skin bag in the linen coffer. Soon, it would be time to wake Aveline and her mistress, but first she should bring water up from the kitchen for bathing. She sighed. All the kitchen staff would be busy preparing for this great day, so Corpus would have to help her whether he wanted to or not. She shook Aveline to wake her, and before the sleepy maid could question her, she slipped out of the solar.

Anne felt her way down the stairwell, hurrying as fast as she could from step to step; she’d tried to convince Jassy that lanterns should be hung on these stairs at intervals—lanterns that would keep burning, rather than the unreliable pitch-dipped bundles of firwood that were jammed into the sconces—but the housekeeper had said it was needless expense, and Aveline had mocked her fears of the dark.

The housekeeper, of course, had more pressing concerns than the night terrors of a fifteen-year-old body servant, but Aveline took pleasure in Anne’s fear, as usual. Now, in her haste to get down to the kitchen as quickly as possible, Anne stubbed her toes against the stone door as she wrenched it open, allowing blessed light and warmth and noise to flow into the darkness around her. There was the smell of food as well, great gusts of roasting meat and fat and butter and new bread. Anne felt the fear ebb as hunger lunged through her gut. Too bad she would have to wait until after the Mass.