Margaret of Ashbury 03 - The Water Devil Read online

  We were baking bread that day, cook, the girls and I, and the kitchen was smelling all fine and yeasty as we uncovered the starter. The girls had big aprons on, rolled over at the top several times and tied up high under their arms; to keep hair out of the baking, they each had their hair rebraided in a single long braid down the back, Alison's smooth, and Cecily's fuzzy. They stood over the big wooden bread troughs, their sleeves rolled up, waiting for cook to turn out the dough into them.

  “Alison, don't taste the starter. It will grow inside you, and you'll split.”

  “Did you ever know anyone who split like that, mama?” asked Alison, who is too fond of ghoulish things for my taste.

  “From eating the starter? I'm sure there are lots of greedy girls who've done that. Just look at how it grows in the pan—you wouldn't want that to happen inside you, would you?”

  “Then you don't know anyone, do you, mama?” said Cecily, who is horribly hard-headed.

  “Don't we have raisins? I want to bake a cake, a sweeeeet one,” announced Alison.

  “No raisins, no cinnamon, no pepper until father comes home. They're too expensive.” The sharp cry of a magpie came in on the breeze from the tree outside the window, followed by a sound almost like a human voice, “treat, treat, treat, treat.”

  “Oh, there's my wicked pie who flew away when the cage was broken. And he spoke so clearly, too! Now he's learning calls from those bad birds outside. I swear, he's living in the tree just to taunt me.” Cook leaned her head out the window and called, “Come to mama. See? I've put out your treat for you. Treat, treat!” Amid a handful of crumbs on the windowsill she laid a tiny sliver of bacon fat. There was a flash of black and white feathers, and the bird settled on the windowsill, strutting up and down and inspecting the company inside with one beady black eye. We held very still, so that he wouldn't think we were going to try to catch him. First he tilted his head, one bright eye on the treat, then he gobbled it up in a flash. “Treat, treat, treat,” he called, as he flew up into the green branches outside.

  “We has an understanding, that bird and me,” said Cook, “he won't come in and I won't catch him. But he's gone to the bad, I say. He lives in that tree like a pirate, flying down to steal anything he wants. He's shameless.”

  “He has my hair ribbon that I took off in the garden. I just laid it on the bench, and, swish, it was gone like that,” said Alison.

  “So that's where it went,” I said. “I thought I told you not to take it off.”

  “It fell off when I was playing ball with Peter Wengrave,” said Alison.

  “He took it straight up to weave into his nest, I saw it,” said Cecily. “That's not a nest, it's a pile of trash,” announced Cook. “Don't have the men pull it down,” said Cecily. “Maybe he's got a family in it.”

  “A world of wicked magpies hatching up there, what else should we expect these days? The day of the Lord is coming,” said Cook, stirring the last batch of dough with her strong right arm. Outside, we could hear a new song being sung in the street by some drunken rowdies. “The King rode out in noble company, a crown for to win—” it began, before it floated away. The news from France, all done into a song. My, the word of the defeat had certainly traveled fast.

  “HALT, you mindless sots! Have you contemplated your SINS? Vain singing in place of godly and sober conversation, all is VANITY—” Goodness, spring had even brought out Will the street preacher. And there was only one reason he'd be in our neighborhood. I'll be seeing him at the kitchen door asking for a loan. Sure enough, there were footsteps in the alley and a voice at the open window. The magpie had perched on a branch above him, and was inspecting Will's long, rusty black gown and moth-eaten hat with the ear flaps turned up.

  “Ha, bird. You dress in black and white like a Dominican. And like the Dominicans, you are here begging ahead of me. I know you for the vulgar jester you are, bird. Ah, it's a wicked world when lords and burgesses reward jugglers and mountebanks ahead of men of learning.” I poked my head out of the window. We'd inherited Will and his endless manuscript on the sins and corruption of the worldly folk of London from Master Kendall, who said it was good to have someone around to keep his head clear by reminding him how others saw him.

  “How goes the writing, Master Will?”

  “Well enough, well enough. I am revising. I have been too light on lawyers, flatterers, fawners, gossips, and givers of bribes. In the meanwhile, I found myself short of fourpence for ink.”

  “Come in, come in at the door, Master Will. We're relieved of the burden of vile Mammon these days, but if you've brought your inkhorn, you can pour some out of the inkwell in my husband's office.”

  “Sir Gilbert not home yet? I hear the army was housed in hovels, eating rats. Perhaps a slice of, hmm, not even a joint of mutton on the fire. Your house is getting to look like my house, Dame Margaret— only larger, of course. It is a sinful world where merchants prosper when men of honor must live like beasts, ah, mm, excellent cheese, this—”

  Because Master Will goes all over town telling people to repent, he is a very good bearer of news. While he ate what there was, we heard that the first of the soldiers were already in the city, arrived with the Duke himself, who had come to escort King John from the Tower across the water to Calais, as part of the peace settlement. Then we heard all about the local sins, of which he keeps a good list. Then we heard ensamples of how the low are too high, and the high are too low, which is always interesting. “—and then, in the Cheap, the widow of a gentleman fainted dead away from hunger— thus are the widows of heroes treated in these wicked times!—You know her, I believe: Dame Agatha, that dwells in Fenchurch Street with her sister's husband's family. The man resents her and seats her too low at table. She would rather not eat at all than be seated too low. There's a lady of true gentility! I said to her, said I, think you of Dame Margaret, whom you know and who would make you welcome, and she said never, when a woman of rank gives her word, it is given. Pride, I say, that goeth before a fall—” Well, goodness. Madame. She certainly hadn't prospered since she'd walked away from giving French lessons.

  The girls, I noticed, had become very silent, and occupied themselves with a great show of kneading the bread.

  “Now, about that ink—”

  “You'll have it, Master Will,” I said, wiping my hands on my apron.

  Master Will's tall, raggedy form had scarcely passed out through the kitchen door when the girls lost their sudden and uncharacteristic silence.

  “Mama, pleeeeease don't bring Madame back,” said Cecily

  “She's much too mean, Mama,”Alison added.

  “She did a very good job of teaching you French, and she's not mean, just firm,” I answered.

  “She has too many rules. Being a lady is very tiresome,” announced Alison.

  “Yes, and she says ladies let boys win at games,” said Cecily. “And they always let the boy have the biggest piece on the plate,” said Alison.

  “And she said boys must speak first because they are cleverer than girls, and will grow to be men, and do worldly things. But Peter Wengrave is so slow, he doesn't even know his letters yet, and cries when the master beats him, and I knew my letters long ago,” said Cecily.

  “And, Mama, there's the fingers,” said Alison.

  “What fingers?” I asked.

  “The fingers to pick things up. First and third for this dish, first and second for that, don't touch with your little finger, and never put fingers in the sauce deeper than this first little bit. There's ever so many rules for fingers. I don't see why being a lady needs fingers and getting the smallest piece. Hands are more sensible.”

  “Alison, you cannot go through life snatching out the biggest piece of chicken and splattering gravy up to your elbows. You both are in need of a lot more manners than you have.”

  “Pleeeeease, no more Madame,” they chorused. I sighed. More of Madame would be just right. I suppose I just hadn't been firm enough.

  “You're
in no danger of Madame,” I said. “She won't have us.”

  “Then we don't have to be ladies after all?”

  “No, you just have to be ladies anyway.”

  “We could be pirates instead,” suggested Alison.

  “Some pirate you'd be, stealing sweets—” answered her sister.

  “When I'm a pirate king, you'll be just a common sailor, because you don't even know what's good to take. You just climb all the time, and sit up in the pear tree dreaming.”

  “I do not—”

  “Girls, girls, you haven't kneaded the bread in the trough long enough. See? If you push it, it doesn't crawl back. That's how you know it's not ready yet.” I pushed at the dough to show how it lay there, all dead and not ready to rise. Then I poked at mine, to show them how it should spring back.

  “Eeuw, it's a giant worm—it's the innards of a clam, all alive—”

  “Don't prod at it like that, Alison. You have to treat it like a friend if you want it to rise nicely. And you, Cecily, don't pout. Sour girls make the bread sour and the ale flat—”

  “Yes, mama, and many girls have split from eating the dough.”

  “Cecily, don't be sarcastic—”

  “Lady, lady, come quick, soldiers in the street!” Perkyn the steward burst into the kitchen, his face alight with the news. Bread dough forgotten, we ran to the front door. Every soul on Thames Street was hanging out the windows. We could hear joyful cries as householders ran to hang out tapestries, tablecloths, and anything else handy from the upper windows as a sign of welcome. Down the street came the oddest parade in the world. A good two dozen pike- men and archers from Billingsgate Parish, packs on their backs, still wearing their leather brigandines, marched in ragged order. Behind them was a mule litter and a boy from my father-in-law's estate leading Old Brownie, the most broken down old gelding in the Brokesford stable, laden with chests and bundles. The banners of the de Vilers had been affixed to the litter, although not well, their staffs being at such odd angles as to give them a look of cheerful intoxication. In the litter, reclining like a king, dressed in his long riding surcoat with his leg heavily splinted, lolled my own Gregory, waving jauntily to the faces crowding the windows. Whatever the outcome of the war, no one can say our parish doesn't welcome its own.

  All covered with flour, and still in my apron, I ran out to embrace him. Behind me crowded the children, the servants, the neighbors.

  “I missed you so,” I said, and when we kissed, I could hear them cheer.

  “Me, too,” he said. Then he gazed about him, eyes glittering with amusement. “Just look at this, Margaret. Last summer I departed as a no-account wastrel, and today I return home a hero. Such is the power of war to transform men's opinions.” People were trying to touch him, to exclaim, to be part of it all. He had a crutch lying across his lap.

  “What has happened?” I said, looking at the bad leg.

  “Why, nothing so bad at all. I'm in high favor with the Duke— and just damaged enough so that I don't have to go back when he returns to Calais with King John. I'll see him at Leicester Castle when he returns and catch everything up. I couldn't be luckier.”At the talk of dukes and castles, everyone was awestruck. He turned to the postilion on the lead mule.“Put the mules in the stable with Old Brownie tonight—Margaret, I said we'd keep them here until we can send them over to the Duke's stables at the Savoy tomorrow—” Peregrine had clambered up into his lap, and grinned happily as his father embraced him. I heard a woman whisper, “See the banners? That's the only heir to the Brokesford estates.” The sound in her voice made that tumbled-down old manor house seem practically as big as Leicester Castle itself. A good thing she's never seen either, I thought.

  “We've no feed—I—I sent the horses to the country—” I told him. Peregrine was crowing, “Papa, papa home.” How odd, he wasn't shy at all about hugging his son, stroking his head, admiring him. That wasn't like Gregory, so stiff and formal with children.

  “—to save money, eh? Well, nevermind. We'll have some sent in. And have Perkyn send to the bake-house as well for some joints and a spitful of fowl, these fellows with me are all invited to dinner. Set up the tables in the hall, Margaret, I'm home.”

  “But—”

  “Margaret, quit worrying. The Burgundians are paying for this supper. Right, boys?”

  “Right!” they chorused.

  “And fetch your sweethearts and old mothers. We'll all go home drunk tonight.”

  “Sir Gilbert, you won't be walking far. You'll already be at home.”

  “So I am obligated to be the drunkest of all, then,” Gilbert proclaimed, extending his arm in a grandiose gesture.

  “Right again!” they shouted.

  “Margaret, take Peregrine and help me get down.” As he leaned on my shoulder and took up his crutch, he said, “and here are my two hellions. How many waiting-maids have you frightened away since I left? You both look prettier than ever. I imagine soon you'll be ladies.” The two girls looked knowingly at each other. “Ha! I'm glad to see you unchanged. It would be a great disappointment if you had become meek and mannerly in my absence.”

  “What on earth has happened to you?” I asked as he leaned on me while I helped him over the threshold. “You seem so—changed.” All around him people were crowding, to exclaim, to hear more. More about the war, about the duke, about the king, about battles and sieges, about royal favor and the rise of fortune.

  “Happened? Oh, I was hit by lightning.”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, and I had the oddest dream.”

  “How brave, how modest!” I heard a someone exclaim.“Wounded in a mighty conflict with the wicked French lords, and he won't even boast of it!” Muttering and cheering spread through the watchers, and I could sense the envy of those invited inside as the steward tried to shoo the crowd away so he could close the door behind us. Even so, by the time my returning lord was seated in the hall, we had received three invitations to dinner from the most prominent families in the ward. His leg propped on a stool, his son on his lap, his stepdaughters pressing attentions on him, and his comrades-in-arms scouring the house for comestibles, he looked more content than any king on his throne. But I, I was happiest of all.

  “Margaret, you're doing it again.”

  “What, my own dear heart?”

  “Glowing—all pinkish orange around the edges. How very odd. Did you know for years I never noticed you did that? It's not respectable, you know.”

  “In my own house, lord husband, I'll glow as much as I want,” I said, as we kissed again.

  “WHERE'S MY INK? I thought I had more. I distinctly remember sealing the stopper with wax, so it wouldn't dry up.” Gilbert was rustling around in his things, seeing if they were where he'd left them. “And here's my Garin le Loheraine, not in the chest, and— ugh, there's crumbs between the pages. Have the girls been reading it? Little savages. Someone should teach them manners. That's no way to treat a book.” He brushed away the crumbs. “Whatever happened to that fierce Madame creature that Master Kendall had teaching them French? Now there was a woman who knew how to keep order.”

  “And I don't?”

  “Margaret, the proof is plain. Crumbs in my book, and a whole bottle of ink most likely used up drawing fantasies. And my paper— if those girls aren't in bed sick, they have the whole household topsy-turvey all the waking hours of the day. They must learn to ask permission—”

  “They're good girls—”

  “I never said they weren't good—just disorderly. Admit, with all that you do, they've got beyond you.”

  “I told them to wash their hands before opening a book—”

  “And so they followed the letter of the law, and not its spirit. They washed their hands and ate while reading.”

  “But the ink's my fault. I let Master Will renew his supply, and the paper—”

  “Margaret, it's very clear. They need to be sent to some great household for polish. They haven't a bit
, that's obvious, and here they're getting to the age of betrothal and I've never seen two less marriageable girls. Now that I'm standing in good favor with the Duke, I'm sure I could arrange something.”

  “I can't bear it, I just can't. To have them so far away? Suppose they were ill treated? Suppose they got sick? Here in the City, they have position, their godparents are nearby, they are well regarded. But in the house of a great lord—no, I just can't bear it, I can't.”

  Gilbert looked thoughtful. “I see what you mean,” he said. “Still, it's not proper, keeping them at home. Maybe just a while more— but still, Margaret, you need to see beyond your indulgence of them. If you love them, they need manners. They have to have them. Why, if they can even frighten away a dragon like that Madame—”

  “They didn't make her go, Gilbert, you did.”

  “Me?” He looked utterly puzzled.

  “She said it was demeaning enough being reduced to teaching French in the household of a merchant, but if I should so soil an honorable widowhood by remarrying a fortune-hunting copy-clerk who had palmed himself off as a monk to get into the household, then it was no longer decent that she remain.” But instead of being offended, as I thought he would be, my husband threw back his head and laughed aloud.