The Exiled

by Posie Graeme-Evans

  ‘That is all for today, mistress. The light is gone.’

  Gratefully, Anne de Bohun sat back on her heels, allowing her body to slump and flexed stiffened fingers one by one.

  ‘Maestro? May I look?’

  ‘Not yet, mistress. Bad luck to look on it unfinished. Perhaps tomorrow.’

  She understood his reluctance perfectly. It would be hard letting something out into the world, even when it was finished, if you’d brought it into being. Very well, she could wait a little longer.

  Without fuss, Anne picked up a serviceable winter cloak and, getting to her feet, draped it round her shoulders. Best to cover the garnet-red velvet of the dress she was wearing for it was the most valuable thing she owned and there were strangers on the streets this winter. She did not want to invite robbery — or worse.

  ‘Lotta! Bring light!’ The painter’s voice was shockingly loud as he yelled for his servant, not even bothering to open the door and call down the stairs. She would hear him.

  As they waited, Hans Memlinc, the German painter, watched Anne covertly whilst he cleaned his brushes — those ivory hands with their long, capable fingers pinning her cloak together, smoothing the folds of the stiffened veiling surmounting the embroidered cap which hid her hair. He’d never seen her hair. He was sad about that.

  Anne de Bohun was a mystery. His paintings cost a great deal of money, but she’d not baulked at the price when they’d struck the contract. Yet, if gossip was correct, she was not, herself, personally wealthy, even if her guardian Mathew Cuttifer, the English merchant, was. Perhaps he had paid?

  There was a timid little thump at the door. Suppressing irritation, Memlinc leaned over and flicked the iron latch up. The door swung into the room, revealing the anxious face of his servant, Lotta. She was holding a branch of lit candles in one hand, a small, sputtering oil lamp in the other. She was very young and flustered, and her anxiety to please her master made her clumsy. She dripped oil from the lamp onto her kirtle as she curtsied to her master and his guest.

  ‘Set the candles down, girl. Not there!’ Lotta had hurried to comply, putting the branched lights down on the first available surface, his work table cluttered with mortars for grinding pigment and pots full of brushes. ‘How many times? No! Put the candles in front of the mirror, it will double the light.’

  Anne took pity on the harried child. It was only so little time since she too had been a servant. ‘There, Lotta, give me the lamp for your master. And please let Ivan know I am ready to go home.’

  Gratefully, Lotta scuttled out of the studio and Anne glanced at the painter as he dropped a fine muslin cloth over the face of his work. The material was held away from the surface by a delicate wire prop. Delicate things pleased them both. They smiled at each other.

  ‘Thank you, Maestro. Today was a good day. I shall look forward to our final session together tomorrow.’ Such a subtle stress on the word ‘final’, but the painter heard her, heard what she meant and surprised himself by nodding. Yes, they would finish tomorrow.

  Anne reached up and carefully placed the little terracotta lamp on a shelf above his work table where the uncertain light spilled down to the painter’s best advantage, then began fastening iron-shod wooden pattens over her soft shoes.

  ‘Until tomorrow, then.’

  She was grateful that tomorrow would bring completion, for it had been a lengthy process sitting for the painter and she was impatient to have the picture home.

  Hans Memlinc had no idea how important his work was to Anne. It was only paint, canvas and the skill of his hands, but this picture was Anne’s private, tangible symbol of hope, hope for her future, and her future success in this city, and as such was worth every one of the carefully hoarded gold angels she would pay.

  Anne’s pattens clicked on the painter’s tiled floor as she left his studio smiling happily. Belated conscience struck him and he called after her, ‘I’ve kept you late, mistress. You must be careful going home. There are too many mercenaries in town this winter. Wild and silly, most of them, but no one is safe after the curfew bell.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not worried. The Watch’ll have chained the streets by now. Soldiers all drink too much anyway. I can outrun them, Maestro!’ He heard her giggle as she clattered happily down his staircase and he found himself grinning.

  Anne was still smiling as Ivan, her guardian’s Magyar manservant, closed the front door of the painter’s house behind them. He’d been waiting in Master Memlinc’s warm kitchen, quite happy to while away another winter’s day chaffing little, shy Lotta and flirting with Eva, the cook–housekeeper. She was substantial, Eva, with an abundance of good flesh packed tightly into a pretty skin. He liked that. She liked him. They had been pleasant times.

  ‘The picture will be finished tomorrow, Ivan, so no more happy days with Eva.’ Spooked by Anne’s prescience, the man nearly dropped his flambeau. He crossed himself quickly, but she saw it.

  ‘What’s this, Ivan? A prayer? Who for? Eva?’

  Her laughter was so unforced, so clear in the dark, sharp air that Ivan was ashamed. She was not a witch, this girl, just clever — for a woman. Cautiously he smiled, and held the light higher.

  Anne pulled on her one winter indulgence — fleece-lined mittens — as she breathed deeply of the wood-smoke air. A few minutes’ brisk walk beside the frozen canal and she would reach her guardian’s new house with its warehouse near the Kruispoort — one of the nine fortified gates of the city of Brugge — but Ivan would have his hand on the hilt of a short stabbing sword the whole way.

  It was a good feeling, if she was honest, that he was her protector, for the town was filled with outlanders this winter: mostly mercenaries in the service of the Duke of Burgundy who roamed the streets waiting for the end of winter and the certainty of the coming spring campaigns. The Lowlands were still restless and their new duke had much to do to secure his Duchy, let alone deal with the French. Mercenaries are only ever half tame, everyone knew that, and winter made them dangerous: too much time on their hands and too much blood from rich food and good beer.

  Ivan understood. As a very young man he too had been dangerous — still was, in a more controlled way — which was why he’d been hired by Sir Mathew Cuttifer, Anne’s patron and guardian, to help protect his interests in this city. Anne fell into that category for reasons Ivan was not paid to understand.

  Brugge, this Venice of the North, was booming and there were rich pickings to be had, and not just for English merchants with interests outside Britain, like Sir Mathew. Young, landless men are always attracted to wealth, and many here had more ambition than a short lifetime’s service as one of the Duke of Burgundy’s paid fighters.

  And it was hard to be poor in such a place, hard not to be envious of other people’s good fortune — if you had none yourself — for wool, spices and jewels arrived daily in barges down the Zwijn from the coast. More wealth to add to that already stuffed in behind the sturdy walls of this dynamic city — and Sir Mathew and his friends, the English Merchant Adventurers, commanded much of it.

  Thus it was Ivan’s job to see that his master, and his master’s ward, Lady Anne de Bohun, lived in peace, the peace he could help give them in dangerous times when so many coveted Sir Mathew’s rich possessions, this girl included. He took the office seriously as a matter of professional pride.

  Anne was a realist, too, for all the joking with Meinheer Memlinc. It was the darkest time of the year and she was grateful to have this short, powerfully squat man pacing at her side, alert as a hunting dog.

  Cold air breathed up from the ice of the canal into her face as she walked. Anne shivered, though she and Ivan were moving briskly, her pattens clicking on the cobbles, he pacing beside her in good leather boots, matching his stride to hers.

  Around them, houses crowded thick and tight, and warm light bloomed from some proud windows, though much of the town was dark. It was the wealthy who kept lights burning on into the night: the merchants, nobles and prie
sts who crowded around the new Duke of Burgundy as his court formed, eager for advancement.

  Sensible people went to bed even before the curfew bell, however, for heat and light were expensive in winter and it was easier, and cheaper, to stay warm under the covers. You didn’t need light in bed.

  Nearly there now, nearly there. Anne could see Mathew’s house on the other side of the frozen canal just past the bridge. It was well lit for her homecoming and that was good: her toes were burning, tingling with the cold, pattens or no pattens to keep them out of the muck.

  ‘Mistress?’

  Ivan had slowed his pace and spoke softly.

  ‘Hold the light, lady.’

  He was always calm in a crisis, Ivan, for he’d survived far too many bloody turns to get excited, but even he, now, was tense, because ahead of them, blocking the narrow bridge across the canal that led to Sir Mathew’s house, was a compact group of silent men. Faint light from the stars caught the movement as they silently drew swords.

  ‘Behind me. Drop the light when I tell you.’ Ivan breathed the words and Anne slid quietly into his shadow.

  ‘Now!’

  The flambeau’s light hissed out into the dirty, banked snow at the lane’s edge, but as it died, the flame showed Anne another three men behind them.

  ‘Ivan, behind us. Three more!’

  ‘The canal. Jump when I yell.’ It was the only choice and so, as he sprang towards the men on the bridge screaming, ‘A moi, Sainte George!’ Anne kicked off her pattens, scooped up her skirts and ran to the edge of the canal.

  Too late to think, too late to judge the drop from bank to ice, she half fell, half dropped down, and though she rolled as soon as she hit the hard surface, to cushion the jolt, she knew she’d soon feel the shock in her muscles — if she survived.

  Above her there were shouts from the bridge as Ivan fought his way into the midst of the attackers. The men had seen her drop and someone was yelling, ‘Get the girl, get the girl!’, but Anne still had an advantage of seconds, though she was encumbered by long skirts.

  Breathing raggedly, heart jolting, she scrabbled to her feet and blessed the lessons of moving over the ice that Ivan had made her practise this winter — one foot, next foot, striving for balance. Then fear turned to panicked acid in her throat: she had to cross the fragile, new ice in the centre of the canal if she was to reach Sir Mathew’s frozen water gate ahead of her attackers. On the bridge, Ivan was fighting with the fury of his berserk ancestors, but he could not, single-handedly, hold them all away from her. She must do it, must move on.

  With a yell, two men dropped down off the centre of the bridge, but the freeze was only two days old and the ice was not as thick as it soon would be. Their yells changed to screams as they fell through into the frigid black waters of the Zwijn.

  Anne saw the cracks in the ice shoot out from the hole they’d made as she slid on towards the farther side of the canal, but she was far enough away from them, and so much lighter, that the ice held together under her soft shoes. Breathing hard, she reached the other bank and scrambled towards Sir Mathew’s water gate — it was frozen shut but it was close, closer. Perhaps she could climb it.

  Now she was yelling, too, ‘Help us, help us!’ as lights flared in houses above the canal. No one liked another’s dispute, especially if it was just a fight amongst drunken mercenaries, but they had heard her calling out and a woman’s voice stirred the conscience — a little.

  Blessedly, torchlight suddenly shone down and willing hands reached out to haul her up — Sir Mathew’s steward, Maxim, and two of the stable boys. ‘Help Ivan! There, the bridge,’ she could hardly gasp the words as her arms were wrenched above her head, but then they had her onto the roadway and Maxim was hurrying her inside, into the warm hall, whilst he shouted for more men.

  It was over very soon. Maxim and Sir Mathew’s servants rushed the bridge where Ivan was viciously defending the honour of his master’s house. Two assailants, lethally slashed, were groaning at his feet and one man was dead, his blood a black, steaming puddle in the snow. Of the two who had jumped from the bridge, one was lying on the cracked ice half drowned and gasping, whilst the other hadn’t surfaced. The other men, the followers, had disappeared.

  Now Anne stood in front of the expensive new fireplace in Sir Mathew’s hall-house under a painted panel of Saint George destroying the dragon; it was an apt expression of her life: she must slay the dragon of fear here, tonight. Holding out her hands to the flames, she swallowed hard, trying to control her breathing, trying to banish the burning vomit in her throat.

  It was a shock. All she had been warned about was true. And if this was more than it seemed — a kidnap for ransom — then she had enemies and it was time to face these facts, time to think her way through her situation very carefully.

  ‘Mistress? Are you harmed?’ It was her foster-mother’s anguished voice Anne heard now and she turned slowly, giving herself enough time to gather a smile to her face.

  ‘Not at all, Deborah. As you see. Where’s Edward?’ She must not give in to the fear; must not. Shakily she forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply as she tried to unfasten her cloak with suddenly useless fingers.

  Deborah answered the unasked question. ‘He’s fine. Just fine. Here. Let me.’ Deborah hurried to help, gently detaching the cloak from Anne’s shoulders and unpinning the crushed and distorted headdress. ‘He’s asleep, bless him. We’ve got his cradle near the fire in the kitchen. He fed well again tonight — I’m very pleased with the new nurse; she’s a fine strong girl, abundant milk.’

  Routine. Reassuring, safe routine. All was well — Deborah could always do that for her. Anne summoned another smile and carefully smoothed the folds of her expensive red dress. She grimaced. It would never be the same. The hem was dragged and dirty and there were dark, wet patches where she’d fallen on her knees; it would have to be carefully dried and brushed if the fabric was not to be completely ruined. Hans Memlinc would see her in another dress tomorrow.

  ‘I shall see how my nephew fares.’ She needed to see the baby, needed to hold him. Deborah smiled at her, touched her hand gently. ‘Yes, it’s nice and cosy in the kitchen. I’ll see to warming the solar.’

  Anne was calmer now, soothed as always by Deborah’s care of her. Tremulously the girl smiled in return and would have leant against her foster-mother for strength, except that Maxim or one of the other servants might see the moment of weakness and be curious.

  She was too new to Brugge, too new to the role she’d been given — that of Mathew Cuttifer’s ward — to be anything but careful; too much was at stake. She and Deborah must always retain the appearance of servant and mistress in front of the household, yet both women found the constant role-playing a strain, especially now. They’d get used to it, they had to. For the moment, it was their only safety for they had nowhere else to go.

  Anne sighed, then consciously relaxing her rigid shoulders, folded her hands at her waist and stepped down the wooden staircase to the kitchens without fuss, breathing deeply as the peace of being home and safe clothed her softly as a cloak.

  The kitchen was always busy in a large household, especially now as it was close to supper-time, but as Anne appeared, all work stopped. She was well liked, their master’s ward.

  ‘Lady, are you harmed?’ The Flemish cook, Maitre Flaireau, hurried forward. ‘Please, please, sit here by the warmth.’

  Anne nodded brightly in return for the relieved smiles from Ralph, the filthy scullion, Henri, the spit boy, and Herve, the Maitre’s meat-man as she allowed herself to be led to the ingle-seat beside the largest of the cooking fires. She must not let them know how strange she still felt or let them see how hard it was to keep her tightly clasped hands from shaking. She had one aim now.

  ‘Is Edward ... where is he?’ As Maitre Flaireau pressed her to sit. ‘There, mistress, do you see?’

  They had moved his cradle into the shadows, out of the light of the cooking fires into a warm corner
of the cheerful, tiled room. And he slept on, oblivious to all the bustle around him in the busy kitchen.

  Anne yearned to pick him up, to kiss him awake, to hug him tightly to her breasts — the breasts which had never fed this child, but she restrained herself. Time for that later, when she was alone again with Deborah, the baby safely in the little annex of her solar.

  ‘Wine! Hot wine for our mistress. Herve, hurry now!’ Anne smiled slightly at the courtesy title ‘Mistress’. Lady Margaret Cuttifer, Mathew’s wife, was mistress in this house, even though she was so rarely here.

  Four months since Edward’s birth, four months of lies. She sipped the hot, rich wine; they’d spiced it with honey and nutmeg and beaten an egg yolk into it for strength. She was tired now, and aching. Leaning into the ingle-seat, she closed her eyes, just closed them and ...

  ‘Sssh! Herve, move quietly!’ The cook hissed at his assistant as he pantomimed creeping silently around the girl who seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep. Chastened, Herve took care to sharpen the wicked boning knife as quietly as he could. He would be mortified to wake her, poor lady.

  But Anne was not asleep. She smelled the blood again; it was animal blood from the carcass Herve was butchering, but it was enough, she was back there ...

  His birth, Edward’s birth. Four months ago and a long, long way from Brugge. A tiny, suffocatingly hot room in the convent she’d been sent to by Sir Mathew to await the labour well away from prying eyes, away from gossip.

  Blood. Blood everywhere. On the straw-stuffed mattress, the whitewashed wall beside the bed, all over her. But he’d been born, alive and strong. Deborah had taken him from her belly and given him to a woman who’d been hired to suckle him, immediately, not even wiping the wax and the blood off his little body.

  It was best this way, said Deborah, best that Anne never suckled him for if she did, to give him to another would be unbearable. It would be easier with time. These words were muttered as a prayer by her foster-mother as she bound Anne’s breasts with bruised arnica and mallow to help with the pain when her milk let down, the milk that would not be given to her child.