There’s not even room for us to turn around in the window less dark. I’m pressed up against my mistress, my nose shoved into the scratchy damp wool of her cloak. Bartilmew presses against my pack. Dame Isabel kicks my ankle twice before she realizes I’m not a wall.
“Where’s my flint?” the merchant growls. He strikes a spark at the same moment lightning flashes outside the open doorway. In the weird, quick shadows, I can barely distinguish the dark shapes of the pilgrims. We stand huddled and bent, like souls waiting for the fires of damnation.
“Here’s a lantern, lads,” John Mouse says. “Where’s that flint?”
Once the lantern is lit, the shadows play wildly against the straw and mud walls. Water streams in from a hole in the thatch, and there are so many drips that we might as well be out in the downpour. I can’t tell if the terrible smell comes from the hut or from us, with our dirt and our wet wool.
Outside, the wind shrieks and the walls seem to press in on us. Everyone jumps at the crack of a falling tree. As it crashes to the forest floor, I can feel the ground trembling through my whole body. Gusts of rain sweep in from the entryway—there’s no door to keep out the cold water.
“Any food over there worth eating?” Petrus says.
“It’s not ours to eat,” Father Nicholas says.
“If we’re here, it’s ours,” Petrus says. “Toss us something tasty.”
“There’s nothing but onions,” Thomas says.
“Well, toss us an onion, then.”
“It’s not ours,” Father Nicholas says again in a faint voice.
As if to agree with him, a stooped little man suddenly pushes his way in the door, jabbering loudly. Even the merchant can’t understand him. He shoulders his dripping body between us, and we crush back farther against each other to make room. For a minute, I think he might be a wood sprite, not a charcoal burner—he’s shorter than I am, and his sinewy arms are as dark as cherrywood.
“Oh, what a horrible, filthy creature,” Dame Isabel says.
Once he’s by the wall, the little man sits down, right by Thomas’s legs. He says something, then pulls food out of a bag tied to his belt and begins to chew.
We stand there dumbly, not knowing what to do. It’s his hut, but he isn’t trying to make us leave. John Mouse speaks. “Perhaps we should eat as well.”
He’s right. Chewing oatcakes and apples makes us relax and forget the storm. By the time we are through eating, the thunder has abated. The cold air that follows the rain seeps through my damp skirt.
“Our host is asleep,” Thomas announces.
“Time we got on,” the merchant says.
As we leave the hut, I glance back at the dark little man. He’s wrapped his arms around himself and curled up against the wall. He smiles in his sleep. When nobody is looking, I take the last withered apple from my scrip and leave it on the ground beside him.
The storm clouds have rushed past us to harry other pilgrims, and the sky between the trees grows lighter. When the trees themselves seem to thin out, we all breathe with relief. “Here’s the path,” the merchant calls out, and he sounds the happiest I have heard him.
We follow eagerly, and I barely mind the way the branches slash at my face. But soon the trees begin to crowd round us again. The merchant slows to a stop. We look at each other, and then we look into the dark woods. Where is the path?
“This way,” Dame Isabel’s husband says.
“No, you fool, over here,” Petrus Tappester says.
“Listen,” Thomas says.
“Come, it’s this way,” Petrus says, crashing through the woods.
“Listen,” Thomas says again, and in a sudden silence, we all hear what he hears. Church bells. Behind us.
We stand listening, and then, wearily, we turn back the way we came, plodding through the dripping trees, dodging branches, fighting our way through thick bushes. Spiderwebs tangle in my hair, and I wipe them from my face, hoping no spiders still live in them. I am so tired that I want to sink to the ground and sleep, but we must keep on.
Every few steps, we stop to listen for the bells and then resume our battle with the forest.
It’s growing dark by the time we find the forest edge, and we tumble gratefully out into a stubbly, newly harvested field that’s dotted with haystacks. In the distance, we can see the walls of a town and the roofs inside it. Tired as we are, we break into a trot, the thought of warm food and beds goading us forward.
Sharp spikes of straw poke through my boots and scratch my legs as I cross the field, slowing me. Everyone else is equally slow, and Dame Isabel lags far behind, Bartilmew helping her along.
Dark has settled around us by the time we make it to the town gate. Even if there’s no inn, we’ll be happy to be within the walls and safe from whatever might come out of the forest in the night—outlaws or wolves or evil spirits.
The merchant calls out in some foreign tongue, and a man holding a torch looks down at us. The flame flickers in the wind, lighting his face with weird reds and devilish yellows. He shouts down to the merchant, who shouts back. Why won’t they hurry? Can’t they see how tired we are?
I rub at the scratches on my arms and legs. Food, fire, bed—that’s all I want. I don’t even care if I have to do the cooking.
The merchant’s shouting sounds angry. So does the voice of the man with the torch. But he disappears from the guard tower, and I look toward the wooden door inside the vast stone gate.
It doesn’t open.
“The devil take him!” the merchant says. “It’s past curfew and they won’t open the gates.”
“But we’re pilgrims,” Dame Isabel says in a little whimper.
“Did you tell him I’m a priest?” Father Nicholas says.
“They’ve had trouble from the forest,” the merchant tells us. “They won’t open the gate for anybody.” He gestures toward the field and spits. “He says we’re welcome to a haystack.”
A haystack?
“Foxes have their holes and the birds of the air have their nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head,” Father Nicholas says.
“Amen,” John Mouse says ruefully. “Well, if you don’t mind the mice, at least haystacks are warm. Come, Thomas.” The two of them head across the field to one of the distant lumps I can barely see in the dark.
“Come along, girl,” my mistress says. We don’t look back to see what the others do. When we come to a haystack, we burrow holes for ourselves and climb in, careful to make sure we can still breathe.
My stomach grumbles, but John Mouse is right. We’re warm and out of the wind. The hay scratches, and I can feel bugs crawling up my skirt and down my neck, but we’re not walking for a change. I fall asleep, picturing John Mouse scrunching his way into a haystack, cocooned in his black robe.
all the next day, I scratch at bug bites. It takes me forever to get the straw from my mistress’s gown, and my hair is full of it, too. So is everybody’s. We all sneeze from the dust and everybody scratches themselves, even Dame Isabel.
She wants to find an inn where she can wash, but Petrus and the merchant refuse to give their custom to the town that locked us out. Instead, we wash in an icy stream, then walk for hours until we come to another town. Even though there is plenty of daylight left, Dame Isabel refuses to leave once we find an inn. Even Petrus doesn’t argue with her for very long. Instead, he turns his attention to my mistress, who is once again warning the whole company not to eat meat—just as I serve the salt bacon. I scurry back into the kitchen. Let them argue. I’m just relieved to be eating warm food and to have a place indoors to scratch my bites.
But by the time we leave the next morning, I’ve been ordered around once too often and called a sullen child—by Dame Isabel, who should know, she’s so sullen herself. My face stings from a slap Petrus gave me when he said I didn’t serve him fast enough. This was right after he’d lost to Thomas at dice. My mistress saw the whole thing, but she never said a word.
I pull
my cloak around me against the chill wind and walk along behind the company, my boots biting into my toes, rocks biting into my boots. What if I ran away? I could live in the forest, sleeping in one of the tall oaks. Or I could find an abandoned hut like the charcoal burner’s. I could eat nuts and hunt rabbits, now that I know how not to cook them. If I stayed in one place long enough, I could soak the peas all day long before I cooked them. The pot is in my pack; the flint and strike-a-light are in my scrip.
John Mouse slows his pace until he walks beside me. “Dreaming, little serving maid?”
How did he know?
“So, they don’t dream,” he says when I don’t answer. “You were only considering what a fine brewet you’ll cook for us and the best way to get that stain out of your mistress’s cloak.”
I hadn’t noticed the stain. “I wasn’t always a servant,” I say.
“No?”
I shake my head. There are so many things I would like to say to John Mouse, but nothing comes to me now. What a simpleton I am.
“Do girls who weren’t always servants have names?”
“I’m Johanna.”
“Johanna! Then we have the same name day, from St. John the Evangelist.”
“I know that.” How stupid does he think I am? Very, considering what I’ve said to him so far. “I was dreaming of running away to the woods and never fixing another meal for certain people.”
“Certain people, eh?” He smiles. “I thought yours looked like the face of one who dreams. But beware—as the poet says, ‘Dreams, dreams, they mock us with their flitting shadows.’” He winks at me and sprints ahead to rejoin Thomas.
My face looks like the face of one who dreams? We share a name day! My feet no longer hurt. I repeat the poet’s words to myself so I won’t forget them. “Dreams, dreams, they mock us with their flitting shadows.”
John Mouse’s words sustain me like a hot eel pie on a cold day. I think of them that evening when Petrus Tappester yells at me for burning the brewet and the next morning when my mistress calls me a wretched girl for poking her when I’m pinning up her headdress. She’s lucky I didn’t poke any harder.
When Dame Isabel looks down her thin nose at the rip in the bodice of my gown, I run the poet’s words over my tongue. They soothe like clear stream water.
I repeat them to myself as we walk so I won’t have to hear people bickering, especially my mistress and Petrus Tappester. Even Dame Isabel argues with my mistress, when she’s not too busy arguing with her husband.
One cold day, we come to a town where an English-speaking priest tells us that with such discord in our company, we will come to harm unless we have great grace. My mistress follows him into a church. When she comes back to the hospice, she says, “The Lord spoke to me in my mind. He said, ‘Don’t be afraid, daughter. Your party will come to no harm as long as you are with them.’”
Petrus laughs loudly. Over in the corner, I see Bartilmew moving his lips in prayer.
He does well to pray as long as I am in charge of the cooking.
When I pray, it’s to St. Margaret with her dragon; to St. Pega of the Fens; and to St. Guthlac, her brother, with his long, uncombed hair and his ragged clothes, standing patiently while winged devils assail him. They swarm around him like angry bees, but he just waits for their fury to subside. It’s harder for me, but then, I’m not a saint.
We march on, day after day. Far in the distance, I can see smoke on the horizon. The merchant says it’s not smoke; it’s mountains. He must think we’re fools. Even I know what mountains look like, and it’s not like smoke.
Sometimes it rains, and sometimes the rain turns to sleet. The flat fields give way to hills that strain my legs. We leave the broad waters of the Rhine and follow what the merchant says is a faster route to Constance. Of course, he’s the one who thought he knew the route through the forest, too.
One day we come to a set of hills so high that we climb until nightfall and descend all the next day—only to have to climb again on the following day. I can’t see the smudge of smoke on the horizon anymore. Instead, I see high hills around me, some of them with snow on their tops. Rocky places open into broad fields, and goat bells jingle somewhere nearby.
While I’m looking around for the goats, I stumble and the sole splits from the rest of my boot. I sit on a rock and tear yet another strip from my linen shift—my clothes are starting to look like St. Guthlac’s. Bartilmew sits beside me and helps me tie my boot together, but I’m not sure how long the repair will last. Already my feet ache with the cold in the mornings, especially when we have to camp outside under clouds and spitting rain.
The next morning, we pause at the top of a hill to rest. Cathedral spires shine in the distance like a vision of heaven.
“That’s Constance,” the merchant says. “Up ahead there. See the lake?”
“Constance?” Dame Isabel says.
“Constance!” Petrus Tappester says, slapping Father Nicholas on the back.
“Blessed be our heavenly Father,” my mistress says, and falls to her knees.
We start walking again, quickly now, our spirits high in anticipation of our arrival.
“Is there an English hospice?” Dame Isabel asks.
“A hospice—what about a cobbler?” Petrus Tappester says.
I look at his boots. They’re in worse shape than mine.
“Fresh bread is what I’m looking forward to,” Father Nicholas says.
“You take the bread; I’ll take the ale,” Thomas says, and John Mouse laughs.
“Hate to spoil your fun,” the merchant says, stroking his beard, “but we’ve a long way to go. We’ll be lucky if we make it by nightfall tomorrow.”
Tomorrow! I had thought we’d be there by midday today. Our pace slackens. The merchant reminds us that he’ll leave us in Constance, to spend the winter with his friend. “I don’t envy the rest of you, having to cross the Alps. See those mountains in the distance? That’s where you’ll be when I’m snug before a fire.”
I look where he’s pointing. Ahead I see cruel-looking peaks covered with snow—the peaks we have to cross. I shake my head. I don’t think it’s possible.
“But after the Alps, we get to Bolzano,” John Mouse says. “And then Thomas and I are off to Bologna, to the university.”
I draw in a sharp breath. I’d forgotten.
“And we’ll head on to Venice, and from there, the Holy Land!” Father Nicholas says, crossing himself.
The rest of them may be going to the Holy Land, but my mistress and I will head to Assisi, where St. Francis preached to the birds, and then to Rome. Without John Mouse.
I watch as he and Thomas have a long conversation, gesticulating at each other, looking grave and then laughing. What do these scholars talk about amongst themselves?
Constance. We finally arrive, my boot now in tatters. The merchant bids us farewell and points us toward the hospice. I want to tell his packhorse goodbye, but the merchant hurries down the crowded street without a backward glance, pulling his horse along with him. Besides, I don’t think his horse will miss me as much as he ought to.
On the first morning, my mistress and I go with Petrus Tappester to get our boots repaired. A broad-shouldered cobbler stands up behind a counter when we approach the stall. My mistress and I glance at each other, our eyebrows high with surprise: the cobbler is a woman.
Petrus pushes his way past us to be first, but the cobbler shakes her head and points to me. I grin and pull off my boot, hopping on one foot while she turns it over in her calloused hands. It doesn’t take much hammering and needlework before she gives it back to me, ready to wear.
When Petrus steps up to the counter for a second time, the cobbler shakes her head at him again and points at my other boot. When I hold up my foot to show her that it needs no repair, she gestures that I should give it to her anyway.
“God’s blood! I’ll find a real cobbler, none of this woman pretending she knows what she’s doing,” Petrus says, and s
tamps away. The cobbler looks up to watch him go and says something I can’t understand. Her mouth curves in a crooked smile.
When she gives my boot back to me, I pull it on and realize it doesn’t mash my toes the way it used to. I don’t know what she did, but I like it. I try to thank her but I don’t know how, and, anyway, she’s already gesturing for my mistress to hand over her boots.
As we leave the stall, I see Petrus elbowing his way toward us. He runs into a man carrying an armload of wood who yells something, but Petrus ignores him. I fall back behind my mistress as he nears us—when he’s as angry as he looks right now, I could end up bruised.
“Not another cobbler in sight,” he says between gritted teeth. “What do these foreigners know, anyway?”
My mistress and I don’t wait for him. Now I understand the cobbler’s crooked smile when Petrus left—she must have known he’d be back.
All the way back to the hospice, I want to dance, my boots feel so good to my feet. When my mistress gives me a sharp look, I realize I am dancing. I stop, but I still can’t help myself—every third step, I give a little skip.
Back at the hospice, I sit in front of the fire and stretch my toes toward it, admiring my boots. I’m lost in a summery daydream when a noise beside me makes me jump.
John Mouse stands next to me, a shirt in his hands. He shrugs apologetically and says, “I tore it.”
His face looks so comical, like he’s a little boy who’s stolen a tart, that I laugh. “Shall I fix it for you?”
“Would you?”
I nod, and as he hands me the shirt, his fingers touch mine. I pull my hand back as if I’ve been burned.
Then he’s out of the room, calling for Thomas, and I’m relieved when I hear their voices growing faint as they leave the hospice, because I wouldn’t want them to see me blushing so furiously.
As I sew, I try not to imagine the shirt touching John Mouse’s bare skin. Instead, I think of his long, elegant fingers, the ones that touched mine. His hands are as soft as a gentlewoman’s, supple as a lute player’s. Only the ink stains on his fingers mark him for a scholar. No one would ever mistake my hands for a gentlewoman’s—they look more like the cobbler’s. My nails are dirty and broken, and my fingers are red and rough from hauling wood and water, from making fires and washing linens. Could he feel all that when our fingers met?
The Book of the Maidservant Page 8
