“I have a bed for ye, if you’ll sleep. Give all that to one of my drudges. Come.” Sukey walked off towards the cook fires.
The same men-and a few women-who had bitched about fighting and riding all day were now sitting at fires drinking wine and re-telling it all. A dozen knights of the Order were listening to Ser Michael’s account of the ambush. Two nuns were brushing out Sister Amicia’s hair.
Prior Wishart, who Sukey knew from two days in camp, was deep in conversation with the captain, who gave her the “not now” sign. So she pushed past, Blanche at her heels, and took her around the fire that had become the hub of conversation-and thus, no work could be done-to the main fire line. There, despite the hour, twenty women and a few men were heating water, cooking, washing…
“Anne Banks! Get your nose out of his business and come over here,” Sukey yelled. A young woman who had been kissing a young man came, in a sulky, put-upon way.
“Annie’s a scullery and she’ll do as she’s told most o’ the time,” Sukey said. “Annie, this is Blanche, the Queen’s-friend. She has a mort of linen needs cleaning.”
Anne was prone to be difficult. Blanche knew her kind well enough. She smiled and kissed the younger woman’s cheek. “For the baby, Miss Anne. I don’t expect you to do my things.” She laughed. “Except I don’t have any things.”
Annie nodded. “For the baby?” She took the whole armload without demur. “For-the King?” she said.
“His shit is just as shitty as any other baby’s,” Sukey noted. “Anne Banks, if you lie down with that boy and get a baby in you, you’ll end a common harlot.”
“Which they gets paid a damn sight better than sculleries. An’ the work is restful,” Annie said in a tone aimed to infuriate her officer.
Sukey smacked the girl with her open hand. “Don’t be a fool,” she said. “You want to hear about being a whore, talk to Sauce. I’m sorry, Lady Blanche.”
“I’m no lady,” Blanche said. “They just call me that.”
Sukey was now clutching Anne to her chest. “I’m sorry, Annie. But you ain’t got a mama to teach you, so all you get is me.”
“You hit me!” Anne wailed.
Sukey winked at Blanche. Over Anne’s head, she said, “You and I are of a size. Want some clothes?”
Blanche contemplated refusal, but it seemed stupid. “Yes,” she said. “I can’t pay.”
Sukey smiled. It was an odd smile, as if she knew something that Blanche didn’t know. Which she probably did.
Back towards the gate, a voice called, “Sukey!” like the sounding of a great horn.
“Damn the man,” Sukey said. “Anne, wash those linens and bring them to…” She looked at Blanche. “I guess you’re casa 24-R2.”
“What’s that?” Blanche asked. Anne picked up the linens without another sniff and curtsied as if Blanche was indeed a lady. Blanche responded-it was a little like the laundry at home.
“24-R2 is the twenty-fourth tent of the second corporal of the red band,” Sukey said, already underway. “Look, I’ll show you.”
“Sukey!” called the deep voice.
“I’ll kill him. You know, he went off and lay with another girl at the Inn of Dorling, and now he thinks he can walk back in here-”
“Suuu-key!”
Blanche, always everyone’s confidante, giggled. “That’s Bad Tom?” she asked.
“Aye,” Sukey said. “That’s Bad Tom.”
“He’s very handsome.” Blanche hadn’t thought it aloud before that. But Tom’s sheer size was-remarkable.
“Aye he is, and he knows it, the devil.” Sukey was walking fast through a darkened camp. “See the captain’s pavilion? No, there. See? Red flags.”
“I see it,” Blanche allowed.
“All the lances of his household camp in a line behind-knights at the head of the camp, then men-at-arms and pages and then servants. See? R2 is Ser Francis, and a nicer gentleman you’ll never meet. Twenty-four is just a spare at the back of camp. I walked all the way around so you’d see the how and the why. See? And see the cook fires?”
Blanche swallowed heavily. “Yes,” she admitted. “So many tents!”
Sukey laughed. “Honey, wait until you see whole company-that’s nearly five hundred tents. An army! Christ and all his saints, you can get lost walking around looking for a spot to piss.”
“Suuk-keeyy!”
“He’ll make a fool o’ himself,” Sukey said. She seemed perfectly well pleased. “Come to my tent and I’ll gi’ you a gown and a couple of shifts.”
“You’ll want to get to sleep,” Blanche said.
Sukey laughed and licked her lips. “I doubt Tom has sleep in mind. He’s been fightin’.” She grinned. “Fightin’ makes him think o’ just one thing. Come on-I don’t mind makin’ him wait.”
Back, by some incomprehensible path through the endless rows of white wedges in the moonlight, like a monster’s teeth, like headstones in a churchyard. Blanche was instantly lost as soon as she couldn’t see the captain’s two red tent banners.
Then they emerged into a cross street, as broad as half a bowshot.
“Officer’s line,” Sukey said. “See, there’s the cap’n’s tent again. Got your bearings?”
Blanche shook her head.
“Well, never mind. Here’s my little home.”
Sukey’s home was a wagon with a tent on the wagon box. She lit a taper with magick, as easy as kissing her own thumb.
“I don’t ha’ my mother’s talent, but I can do a thing or two,” she said.
By candlelight, Blanche could see Sukey better. She was beautiful, with rich black hair, a pert nose and freckles and light eyes that were improbable in her face-large and full of humour, at odds with her nose and mouth. She wore a fine kirtle with the skirts pulled high enough to show a fair amount of leg, and the front cut low enough to advertise her figure, which was as good as Blanche’s own.
The two women eyed each other.
“I think you’ll fit me to a T,” Sukey said. She opened a chest in the wagon box. “Red?”
“I daren’t,” Blanche said.
“Cap’n won’t care. It’s his favourite colour,” Sukey said.
“I serve the Queen,” Blanche said. “Red’s the King’s colour.”
“Oh, aye,” Sukey said, as if the notion had no interest for her. “A nice dark brown?”
She held up a kirtle with side lacing and a low neck.
Blanche whistled. “That’s fine cloth.”
“Aye, my mother made it for me in Morea,” Sukey said. She put her hands around Blanche’s waist. “Oh, you’re as little as me in the tummy. Take the brown-I never wear it. It makes me look poor. You ha’ the hair for it.”
She took down two shifts from a basket. “I can spare you two. I’ve no stockings-I’m barefoot myself until we reach Albinkirk.”
Blanche took the other woman and kissed her. “You’re a true friend.”
“Sister, women in this lot need to be friends.” Sukey laughed. “Besides, soon eno’ I’ll need favours of you.”
“Su-key!” came a roar, almost outside the wagon.
“Get a room!” came an angry call from the tent lines.
Blanche took her prize wardrobe and dropped off the wagon box to the ground. “Thanks!” she said.
“I’m right here, you great ox,” Sukey said.
“I brought you something,” Bad Tom said.
“A couple of your doxies to do my scut work?” Sukey shot back.
“Don’t be like that, woman,” he said.
Blanche covered her ears and giggled.
“Like what? Spiteful? Mad as a cat in water?” Sukey asked.
Tom laughed. “You’re jus’ play-acting.”
“Try me, Tom,” she said.
“You? Dare me?” Tom said, and roared his laugh.
Blanche lengthened her stride.
She ran far enough to escape the sounds, and stopped to catch her breath.
She’d come the wrong way-or perhaps not. As she spun, she gradually got her bearings-the captain’s banners, the pavilion, the cook fires near at hand.
She was ravenous. She came to the fire where so many had been gathered a quarter of an hour before. Now there were only a handful of men. Sister Amicia and her nuns were gone.
Toby was with the captain. “I’d need help to bed them all down,” Toby was saying.