All the Ever Afters

by Danielle Teller

  Fernan sighed loudly. “Henny will be offended, but do what you want. It is on your head.”

  I lied to Henny, telling her that my sister had died years before, and that I wanted to name my child in honor of the only family member who had ever truly cared for me. Henny, God bless her, was a sentimental creature. She looked as though she were going to weep over my long dead sister. George grumbled about the irregularity, but Henny told him to mind his own business. Her large extended family lived in Old Hilgate or the immediate environs, and she pitied me for my isolation. The least she could do was to not make a fuss about her goddaughter being named for my dear departed sister.

  A dozen parishioners joined us at the church door for the christening. They gathered in the thin midwinter sunlight, stomping their feet and flapping their arms to keep warm. It was a bitterly cold day, and the priest’s words hovered in a fog above his head as he muttered his blessing through frozen lips. Father Michael placed salt in the baby’s mouth, provoking an indignant howl. George and Henny quickly recited the paternoster and credo, while the priest snuffled and wiped his red nose on the edge of his stole.

  We were relieved to proceed to the baptismal font; it was no warmer inside, but at least we were sheltered from the wind. Henny undressed the wailing infant and handed her to Father Michael. Watching my naked child tremble and shriek with panicked incomprehension caused my hands to shake; I willed them to be still. The priest plunged her into icy water for one brief, cruel moment, and then it was mercifully over. Henny wrapped the newly baptised Charlotte in a white gown and delivered her to my waiting arms.

  We threw a party for the christening at the alehouse, but Fernan did not even stay until the celebration ended. He said that he had to return to the abbey before sunrise, but I suspected that he wanted to avoid another night of broken sleep. After everyone left, I banked the fire and took the exhausted Charlotte to bed with me, tucking her little body into the crook of my arm and covering her with warm blankets. Charlotte was my family now.

  Alice died quietly one night during Pentecost, and most of the townsfolk attended her funeral. Despite her sharp tongue and bad ale, Alice had been well liked. She had always been willing to help a neighbor in need, and she had provided free food to those who could not pay. I too had developed an affection for Alice, but during her funeral Mass, I was preoccupied by my own fears.

  I looked around the church and reflected that I now recognized most of the parishioners. Children shifted from foot to foot, their faces masks of boredom. Some of the girls wore bright ribbons and daisy chains. It had been a long winter, and everyone was grateful for spring.

  I rested Charlotte against the swell of my belly, an early sign of the new baby already on its way. It was too soon. My Charlotte would just be learning to walk when this second one arrived. I wondered how many children my sister had, and how they fared. Then I began to worry again about how I was going to manage with Alice gone.

  I had to appeal to Fernan for help. I was not sure that he could afford to buy the alehouse back from Ellis Abbey, and even if he could, how would I convince him to do so? He was miserly, and he would think only of the risk of losing money. My roaming gaze slid past the altar and paused on the back of George’s balding pate, which dipped slowly forward and then jerked upright as he struggled to stay awake through Mass. His family took up the whole front pew; Henny hissed like a mother goose at their wiggling, whispering children. George was a businessman. I decided to approach him for advice when church let out.

  George set a time to visit me the next morning, but he surprised me by arriving earlier than planned. I was just finishing Charlotte’s feeding, and I hastily laced my gown. He did not apologize. Instead, he took a seat atop a table and planted his dirty boots on the bench in a wide stance. George was a short, thickset man, but he took up as much room as a man twice his size.

  “So, you want to buy Alice’s alehouse?”

  I lowered the sleeping Charlotte into her cradle. “Yes. I need to convince Fernan that it would be a sound investment. Business is good, and I am making nearly a pound each month after expenses. What do you think it would cost to buy this building?”

  George looked around, frowning. “The alehouse is in poor condition. It needs work. The steward could probably be talked into selling it for twenty pounds.”

  “If I am careful with my money, I could pay that back in three years.”

  “I can offer you the money at an interest rate of fifteen percent.”

  I had not expected this. “Usury is against the law.”

  George laughed. “Nobody gets arrested for loaning money. Anyway, it would be between you and me. Nobody else need know. And if you cannot make a payment on time, you can find other ways to compensate me. It must get lonely with your husband away so much of the time.” He jerked his hips forward suggestively, and his potbelly jiggled. Then he smiled down at me as though he had made a funny joke.

  I felt a wave of nausea, then anger. I had not expected this from George either. “I shall consider your generous offer of fifteen percent interest,” I replied evenly. I looked him in the eye, unsmiling.

  George pouted about my coldness, but he made no further advances. After he departed, I scrubbed away the muddy footprints that he had left on the bench and floor.

  Despite the unpleasantness, George had been helpful. I had an estimate for the price of the alehouse, and he had given me the idea of offering to pay Fernan back with interest. When I made my proposal to Fernan, he did not blink at the price of twenty pounds. I realized then that I had underestimated both his wealth and his desire to be free of me.

  In the end, Fernan managed to negotiate a price of fifteen pounds for the alehouse with the abbey’s steward, and I was elated. Though I knew that Fernan had helped me with his own best interest in mind, I felt a new warmth for him. He had negotiated skillfully, and he had taken on the encumbrance of purchasing the alehouse without complaint. He was not a toad, like George, and he had remained faithful to his promise to Abbess Elfilda to support me. He did not love me, and I did not love him, but after Fernan purchased the alehouse, I found the burden of being a good wife less onerous.

  In spring and summer, my ale sold more quickly than ever because of frequent market days, but regular evenings were slow. Long hours of sunlight kept people at work, and cold did not chase them indoors at the end of the day. When it was quiet, I liked to open the window upstairs and lie in bed with Charlotte, watching the colors of the sky change with the sunset. The night winds that sent inky clouds scudding across the square of pink sky framed by our casement also breathed delicious cool air into our chamber, waking orange tongues of flame in the fireplace, billowing the makeshift bed curtains I had hung from one of the ceiling’s rough wooden beams. The breeze flowed over our bare skin with a caress that was both voluptuous and pure. Sometimes Charlotte nursed lazily, twining her little fingers in my hair, pulling soft strands against her cheek and holding them there with surprising force. Other times I rocked her in my lap, singing to her. She would look at me with a serious expression, a tiny furrow in her brow, as though she were trying to understand the words of the lullaby. Some nights, she cried inconsolably, though I never knew the reason. When that happened, I walked with her, bouncing, telling her stories she could not understand. Charlotte’s wailing would fade to mewling and then snuffling, and if I nuzzled and kissed her smooth skin, she would smile. After she fell asleep, I watched the rapid rise and fall of her tiny chest and drank in her sweet milk scent, wishing that I could see inside her dreams.

  Fernan warmed to Charlotte as she grew. Along with his coloring, she inherited his bright smile and liveliness, though not his gregariousness; as a baby, just as now, Charlotte was cautious with strangers. I think that Fernan saw his own reflection in his daughter’s face, and that made him happy.

  Just before Matilda was born, Charlotte learned to totter around on her sturdy legs, and Fernan liked to chase her with a feather or fuzzy blade of golden se
dge, tickling the back of her neck until she laughed with delight. When she lurched too close to fires and hot cauldrons, he snatched her back, but one afternoon he was too slow, and she knocked into a boiling kettle that I had left on the hearth. She burned her arm, and her neck was scalded by water that sloshed from the spout. She still has a rose-colored scar that snakes from the base of her throat to the edge of her jaw, which is why she wears only high-collared gowns.

  Charlotte’s shrieks reverberated through the kitchen; Fernan scooped her up in his arms and plunged her into an open barrel of ale to cool her skin, but her agonized cries did not abate. I dashed across the room more swiftly than I would have thought possible in my ponderous state, and when I reached out to help him hold the thrashing child, I felt Fernan trembling.

  We wrapped Charlotte in soft cloth, and Fernan paced in circles, cradling the whimpering baby, a look of anguish on his face. When she finally settled, I sat beside Fernan and leaned my head against his shoulder. He laced his fingers through mine, and I whispered a prayer as we watched our injured daughter drift into a fitful sleep.

  It is said that mothers’ remembrances are all about the firstborn, and that is true for me. My memory of Matilda’s infancy is a warmhearted haze punctuated by fleeting images: her downy head nestled against my neck, her clinging to my chest, naked and froglike, in the last warm days of early autumn, her snuffly breathing when she nursed. Matilda was a sweet, quiet baby who never demanded much.

  Fernan was unhappy that I bore another girl, and he hated to be kept awake by crying, so he stayed away from Old Hilgate for increasingly long stretches of time after Matilda’s birth. I do not doubt that he kept another woman, or women. When he was home, Fernan was mostly cheerful. I paid my debt to him regularly, with interest, and I made him comfortable at the alehouse. He sometimes cuffed the children, but he did not hit me again. I was grateful that Fernan mostly left us alone, and I prayed that I would not become pregnant again for some time.

  We chose Matilda’s godparents well. John and Matilda Lothrop ran the town’s mill, and after they became her godparents, they crushed my malted barley at no expense. John adjusted the grinding plates to just the right distance apart, so that he did not turn my grain to flour. I gave them free ale in return, but the better end of the bargain was mine, as they saved me many hours of hard work with the hand quern.

  It took me two years to repay Fernan, and then I had a third story built on the alehouse, replaced the old daub, plastered the walls, and added glazed windows. The building became one of the finest in town. Old Hilgate was not a great center of commerce, but it had its own bourgeoisie, and I was welcomed into their ranks. I solidified my social position by offering help to merchants with simple reading or writing; I even sometimes helped with accounting. They thought that I had received a rarefied education at the abbey, but in truth, I had only a small amount of knowledge; it was just that their knowledge was even less than mine.

  Once Matilda learned to walk and talk, the girls became thick as thieves. Charlotte was practical and inventive, whereas Matilda was both soulful and fierce. Between the two of them, they concocted elaborate schemes, such as the time they created dyes from berries, flowers, and mud, and they used them to paint pictures on the outside wall of the alehouse. They looked nothing like sisters, as Matilda was fairer, with a tawny complexion, hazel eyes, and auburn hair, whereas Charlotte had her father’s brown skin, big dark eyes, and a mass of glossy black curls that sprang out from the tight plaits I wound around her head. Yet the two were always together, like peas in a pod, arms circling each other’s waist, whispering little-girl secrets in each other’s ears.

  At the end of each day, Charlotte and Matilda tumbled like puppies into bed with me and demanded a story. I have never possessed much imagination, but I made up stories as best I could. They only liked happy endings, and their favorites involved castles. I talked or sang to them until they fell asleep, their small limbs draped over me. Even at the time, I knew that those were the happiest years of my life.

  12

  Misfortune

  Although the four years following Matilda’s birth were golden, they were not perfect. There always seemed to be some problem with the brewery; rodents eating the grain, the ale spoiling too soon, the abbey’s sergeant imposing unreasonable fines. What made me most unhappy during that period, however, was watching Charlotte awaken to the fact that she was ill-favored.

  It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and while I believe that to be true, it cannot be denied that society has strong opinions about what is beautiful and what is not. My Charlotte was unacceptably dark skinned. It did not matter that she was strong and lithe, or that her shining brown eyes were large and soft as a doe’s. It did not matter that she had inherited her father’s dazzling smile. To other children—and to many adults—she was ugly, and to them, her outward appearance reflected darkness in her soul.

  In her sixth year, at midsummer, Charlotte was attacked. The Saint John’s Day celebration was just getting under way in a meadow outside of town. It was a hot day, and I was helping to move a food table into the shade of a tall oak when little Matilda came pelting over the riverbank at a furious pace. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me away with all of her strength, sobbing. I could not understand what she was trying to tell me, but she pointed toward the river, and I ran in that direction, terrified.

  When I crested the riverbank, I saw that a half dozen girls had surrounded Charlotte, shouting names like “witch,” “blackie,” and “devil’s daughter.” Their voices were shrill and edged with spite. I recognized three of them as Mylla Ainsley’s children, our near neighbors. Charlotte’s gown was torn and covered in mud; she had fallen or been pushed to the ground several times. Blood trickled from a gash in her forehead and another on her arm. The girls picked up stones from the bank and launched them forcefully at Charlotte, pushing her farther and farther into the river. Charlotte, wild-eyed, struggled to keep her footing in the rushing water while raising her hands to deflect the stones.

  Fury swept me down the bank with such speed that I might have been flying. With strength fueled by rage, I seized the nearest girl by her shoulders, lifting her high into the air. She seemed to weigh nothing at all. I shook her much harder than I intended, and her head wobbled and snapped back and forth as though she were a dead rabbit in the jaws of a dog. The other girls stood frozen, staring. I wanted to throw the evil child into the river, but I released her instead and let her fall to the ground. Charlotte whimpered and waded unsteadily toward me through the current. I scooped her from the water and held her tight, murmuring soothing words, wiping the blood from her brow until she quieted. By the time I looked again, the girls had fled.

  Charlotte was afraid to go outside after that. The Ainsley brood lived in our row; there were seven or eight of them, and they roamed like savages. John Ainsley was a master carpenter, and though he provided well for his family, he traveled for work, leaving his wife, Mylla, alone to manage their children. Mylla was a pious and opinionated woman who could not keep her own home in order, but she always had time to pry into the affairs of other people.

  I called on Mylla to let her know what had happened and to enlist her help in making sure that it never happened again. She came to the door wearing a prim gown with an unfashionably high collar. Her face was still lovely, but there were deep creases between her brows, made permanent by age. Her graying hair was pulled back severely and covered by a veil, though her bare feet indicated that she had no immediate plan to leave the house.

  “Yes?” She eyed me suspiciously.

  “Good morning to you, Goodwife. I have come to tell you about something that involves your girls and my Charlotte.”

  “The darkie?”

  I flushed. “So your daughters called her. They threw stones at her and tried to push her into the river. She could have drowned.”

  “My girls would know when to stop. They would never have let her drown.”

 
I bit my lip, trying to keep my temper in check. “Stopping just shy of murder is not a demonstration of Christian charity. Your girls were not only calling names, they were throwing stones. Charlotte was terrified.”

  Mylla glared at me. Her eyes were green and gold, beautiful, but filled with hostility. “True Christians are not just fair of face but fair of spirit. I was not there to see what happened, but I know my girls would never hurt any good Christian girl who was minding her own business.”

  “Well, I was there, and I am telling you that your children attacked my Charlotte.”

  “That seems unlikely to me.”

  “I saw it with my own eyes!”

  Mylla shrugged her angular shoulders. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  I stood helpless before her, trembling with fury. Mylla’s lips twisted in a smug smile. I yearned to remove the smile with a sharp slap across her face. Instead, I did the only thing I could, which was to bid her good-bye and walk away.

  After Saint John’s Day, Charlotte clung to my skirts, refusing to go out. I had hoped to tell her that the Ainsley children would leave her alone, but I could not even offer that assurance. I tried to convince her to go out anyway. I did not want my daughter to live her life in fear, and I did not believe that children would bully her too badly in town, where adults were watching. Matilda joined me in trying to convince her, tugging on Charlotte’s hair and scampering about, teasing, but Charlotte still refused. Matilda would go outside alone, her head hung low. She was a quiet girl, but determined, and she was not going to let her fearful sister keep her cooped up indoors.

  I put Charlotte to work in the brewery; she helped me to sort through the old barley or stir the mash when I had to tend to customers. She was diligent and focused for such a young girl, and I was proud of her. Still, I could tell that she was wistful; she wanted to be in the sunshine with her sister, and I wanted that for her also.