When she came back, she set a pot to boil while she scrubbed at the dried oatmeal on the table. The table was the one good piece of furniture she had. Its thick, smooth boards sat on sturdy trestle legs that had a finely-detailed pattern of vines and leaves carved into their flat sides. When Sym and then Hewe had been small, she had used to sit on the dirt floor with them, tracing their fingers along the patterns and telling them stories of what a fine house the table must have come from. She had never been in a fine house, but there had been the chair and chalice and embroidered cope in the village church, and the Lovels had once ridden down the village street with hawks on their hands and their clothing gay with gems and embroidery, and Meg’s aunt’s husband had once spent an evening telling her tales full of crowns and peacocks and bright woven tapestries when she was a little girl. From all of that she had made stories for Sym and Hewe. The other babies, the little girls and the other boy, had not lived long enough for her to tell them stories.
But the table, like the house and herself, had suffered with the years. Despite all she did and however much she nagged, its top was scarred with all the places Barnaby and Sym and Hewe chose to thrust in their knives instead of laying them by their bowls like decent folk. For all that she scoured it, even with sand, there was no way to unmar it. But she scrubbed at it anyway today. It was her stubbornness that had kept her going all her life, and especially these last years as Barnaby went more to drink and the boys began running wild. It was her stubbornness that took her up to St. Frideswide’s priory, trying to earn enough money to buy back at least the ox. And maybe-but that was her secret hope; and as if in answer to her unfinished thought, the cottage darkened with someone standing in the doorway, and Meg looked up to see Hewe there, blinking as if surprised.
There had been a baby born after him but it had died and so he was her last chick, her baby, the one she was most careful of. It was a little disconcerting to see, when the light was angled just so along his cheek, the beginning of beard touching it with gold. He was fair-haired, slender, and fine boned, but no longer boyish. His manhood was coming soon; at thirteen there was not much time left to save him from being no more than his father and brother were.
Meg said harshly, “So you’ve come at last. And where’s your brother? Not working, surely.”
Hewe shrugged, careless, and sprawled across the bench. “It’s Christmastide, and God set aside twelve days not to work, so what’s the to-do, Mam?”
“We’re excused only from the labor owed Lord Lovel. Our own work needs doing, and you’ve been a slacker.” She pointed sharply at the goat and chickens at the room’s other end.
Hewe sniffed and shrugged again. “It smells good enough to me. You’ve been too much with the nuns, Mam; it’s made you finicky.”
“There’s muck from two days under their feet and I want it out of here! And so do you, if you’ve any thought of eating anything before I leave again,” she added, forestalling whatever reply he was about to make. “I muck out, or I cook,” she continued. “I don’t do both, and I won’t cook in a house that smells of muck.”
“Well, at least can’t it be warmer in here? There’s almost no fire, and I’m near clemmed.”
“There’s the last of the wood already on the fire, and you can fetch more if you’d be warmer.”
“That’s Sym’s task, not mine!”
“And where’s Sym to do it? Most of the things I do are someone else’s task, or ought to be. Get on with you. The mucking first. I want to see it done before I go.”
“You’re going back again? What so needs doing there you’d leave us to be dark and hungry?”
“It’s not what needs doing; it’s the ha’penny they pay me for doing it. You know what I want that for.”
“Aw, Mam! I’ve no call in my heart to the priesthood, I’ve told you that and told you that. Better you stay here and keep us happy. And take what you’ve saved and buy the steward off Da’s neck. That’d be more to the point.”
It was a familiar whine. It was what they all said, but Meg knew they were wrong. Years ago she had sent Hewe to Father Clement to learn his letters. At first proud to be singled out, he had tried hard, and learned with an ease that only confirmed her instincts. And it wasn’t mere cleverness; though he did it but to plague the priest, he asked Father Clement questions about his Catechism that had left the poor old man groping in confusion. More than that, Hewe could figure such things as how many fourpence in three dozen pennies without resorting to his fingers, while all Meg knew of sums was the old joke that two stewards and an executor made three thieves.
Yes, Hewe would be a priest if she could earn the money to buy his freedom from villeinage. She said sharply, “My money is not for your Da. He makes his own bad luck, does Barnaby, and your brother takes after him. But there’s no reason you have to live like a beast, too, if I can buy you clear. Now see to that mucking so I can be on with my own business here.”
He made a rude sound under his breath but went to the other end of the cottage. Meg did not care what he said so long as he obeyed. She squatted by the fire to clean the bowls and spoons and then the pot with the water it had been heating. The bowls and spoons she set on the table. The pot she emptied out and filled with clean water and put to boil. She set beside the hearth the sack of oatmeal that would be supper. She would have stirred an egg into the stuff if there had been any, but there was not.
Still, with an edge of pride, she took a little napkin-wrapped bundle from her apron pocket and put it on the table.
Hewe, who could fail to see a piece of work that needed doing even if it was sitting under his nose, looked up from the last of the chicken muck and said, “What’s that, then, Mam?”
“A something from the priory. They said I could have it for a Christmas treat, but I brought it home for you. Finish your chores, and wash yourself and I’ll show it to you, but you must wait for the oatmeal before you taste it.”
For once he washed without complaint. She had often spoken to him of the fine things they ate at the priory, but this was the first time she had actually brought something home.
The low overcast had thinned to westward by the time she called him to the table. Weak, orange-tinged light slanted through the slatted window to lie in stripes across the cottage floor. It had little warmth but its light was welcome; and as Hewe bent forward to look at the napkin, the sunlight caught and burnished his pale hair to gold. Meg tucked her rough hands under her apron to keep from stroking it, knowing how much he hated any gesture of affection anymore, being too old to want his mother’s and too young yet to seek another woman’s. “So open it,” she said. “It’s all for you.”
At her word, he pulled the napkin open eagerly, and she laughed aloud to see the wondering wariness on his face as he stared at what was in front of him.
“It’s seed cake,” she said triumphantly. “You won’t find the like of that outside of a lord’s hall or a monastery.” She watched him sniff it while she held her own breath. He would like it, surely, sweet to the taste; and then she could point out it was the sort of thing he would have in plenty if he but pried himself out of the village and into the priesthood. But as she watched him, the wonder on his face suddenly meant nearly as much to her and she said with fond laughter, “Go on, then. Eat it. Your oatmeal will keep.” If he ate it now, she would not have to make him share it with his brother, and that would save a quarrel.
Unexpectedly Hewe looked up at her. He had the cake in his hand, ready to taste, but he held it toward her instead and asked, “Share with you, Mam?”
A warmth that nearly brought her to tears spread up from Meg’s breast, that he would think of her in the midst of his pleasure. Surely, surely, he was meant for something better. She shook her head. “I had a bite of one at the priory. They’ve many of them, and other fine things, things you wouldn’t believe, in the kitchen there. That one’s all for you. Go on.”