“What’s this?” Hewe asked, puzzled, holding out the orange that Barnaby had brought from Lord Lovel’s feasting.
“A treat for us,” said Meg. She had kept it in her apron until she had come home again; and put it in the flour kist for safekeeping. “Look you.” She wiped the flour off of it with her cloak and held it out into the firelight so its color glowed and its strangeness showed.
Hesitantly Hewe reached out a forefinger to touch it, stroked it cautiously, and then drew back. “What is it? Where did you find it?”
“Hold it,” Meg said. “It’s not tender. Go on.”
Hewe took it, turning it around and around in his hands while she told him where it had come from, how his father had earned it.
“By singing for the lord?” Hewe asked.
“Noble folk like to be entertained when they’re feasting,” Meg said. “And do you know what we’re to do with it now?” Hewe shook his head. “Eat it!” she said triumphantly.
Hewe prodded at its hardness doubtfully, as Meg had when she first held it. But she had seen what Dame Frevisse had done, and held out her hand for it. “Give it to me. I’ll show you.”
It proved to be more messy than she had thought. The thing was no more like an apple under its rind than it was without, but they managed it at last, pulling it into the slices already formed, once they understood how it was put together. They shared the pieces between them, laughing and delighted at the tart sweetness and juice and surprise of it all, until the orange was all gone except for its peel, and they were themselves fragrantly messy, hands and faces both.
When they had washed the stickiness away, and Meg was on her stool again with Hewe sitting beside her, his head leaning on her knee, he sighed. “That was grand. All that, just for singing for Lord Lovel.”
“Umm.” Meg was not much listening. Warmth and weariness were overtaking her. She had meant to think about Gilbey’s offer tonight, but thoughts did not seem to want to come.
“I could do that,” Hewe said.
“What?”
“Sing for Lord Lovel. Or dance, maybe. I can dance, you’ve seen me. So they would give me things. Or pay me. Like the players did today. They did their play and then people gave them money.”
Meg had hardly thought of this morning’s nonsense on the green since it had ended. A little sharply she said, “That’s not man’s work! Dressing up and pretending some foolish tale. And look what sort of folk they are. Not decent, wandering the roads and belonging nowhere.”
“It looked as good a sort of work as any I’ve seen,” Hewe said warmly, sitting up away from her, his face taking on all the rebelliousness he otherwise saved for saying he did not want to be a priest.
Meg opened her mouth, wanting a sharp reply to put sense in his head, but the door fell open from someone’s heavy thrust and in a draft of cold air and night’s blackness, Sym lurched into the room.
He was drunk. That much was immediately clear. He staggered against the doorpost and stayed there, gaping at her as if not remembering where he was or why. And sometime he had fallen; one knee of his breeches was torn through its patch and where she would find another piece of cloth to mend it again, Meg did not know. That, added to Hewe’s foolishness, made her angry, all the contentment of hardly a moment before gone in a frustrated urge to hurt him back the way he was hurting her.
“If you’re that drunk, Sym, take you off to someone’s sty and sleep it off,” she snapped. “You’re not to come in here to be sick.”
He slurred, “Mam…” and swayed forward from the doorway, leaving it open behind him.
“He stinks,” Hewe said disgustedly, moving away from him. “He stinks like Da did.”
“You stink, brat!” Sym snarled. “Of mother’s milk, baby. I’m going to rub your head with knuckles till it bleeds, you come in reach of me!”
“Hewe, close the door. There’s no need we have to freeze because he’s drunk.”
Hewe circled his brother to obey. Sym lurched for him but Hewe was too used to that to be caught. He deftly avoided him and in the doorway said over his shoulder to Meg, “I’m off to Peter’s for the night. When I see Sym’s sober I’ll be back.”
Meg cried out, “Hewe!” but he was gone, pulling the door shut behind him, leaving her alone with Sym, whose lurch had carried him on sidewise to fetch up against the table where he leaned, resting his weight on one arm, his head bent down. His other arm had been wrapped across his stomach. He moved it, held out his hand in front of him and frowned at the dark gleam of it in the firelight. “Mam.” He sounded bewildered. “I’m bleeding.”
13
FOR THE DAY’S last prayers at Compline, St. Frideswide’s nuns were spared the cold rigors of the church. At the bell’s ringing of the hour, they laid aside their reading and handwork in the warming room, Dame Alys put out the candles, and in the gentle glow of the firelight Domina Edith led them in their prayers.
Frevisse enjoyed this brief while between the ending of each day’s tasks and the going to bed by twilight in summer, in darkness in winter. Even marred this evening by coughing and snuffling, the prayers held their promised peace for a day done and a night of rest to come, and ended as they always did with, “The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen.”
As they finished, Sister Lucy sneezed heavily, Dame Perpetua coughed until it seemed she must suffocate, Dame Alys trumpeted into her handkerchief, and Frevisse thought with a private sigh that a quiet night did not seem likely. But two women from the kitchen bustled in with a pitcher of hot spiced wine and cups and such bread as was left over from supper, and Frevisse let go future woe for the present pleasure of that warmth before the cold walk through the cloister to bed.
By rights, when the time came to make their soft-footed, skirt-whispering way along the dark cloister walk, Domina Edith should have led them, and left them at the foot of the dormitory stairs to go with her servant on around the cloister to her own rooms. But the prioress was well aware of how slowly she moved these days, and of how cold the nights were. So tonight she gave her nuns leave to go on ahead of her, smiling gently and bowing her head to their curtsies before they hurried out the door into the darkness between the warming-room door and the lantern left lighted by the dormitory steps.
They were already on the stairs when they heard the rabble of sound from the courtyard. Where there should have been only the night’s thick black silence, there were voices rising in anger. Raggedly, losing their haste, the nuns stopped, turning toward the noise, startled.
“Outlaws!” Sister Amicia whispered. “They’re breaking in! We’ll all be raped!”
This might have started a panic among the nuns, except that Dame Alys likewise broke the rule of silence. “Hold!” she bellowed, and such was her authority, and volume, that the nuns froze in place.
Sister Fiacre made the sign for church and began to push herself feebly against the nuns in her way. But one of them was Dame Alys, and she was not to be moved. Her large, steadfast presence was a rock against which the tide of frightened women broke uselessly.
Dame Claire raised her hand in signal to Frevisse, who nodded, and the two stepped the other way down the cloister walk toward the gate that led to the courtyard. Dame Alys watched them go with such concentration that the others began to notice the direction of her gaze and, seeing two nuns who were not afraid-who were in fact moving toward the danger-their own courage was restored. Only then did Dame Alys begin to lead them toward the church in a silent, orderly procession.
As Frevisse and Dame Claire reached the outer door, it was clear from the noise that whatever was happening was directed at the older guesthall, not at the cloister door. As Frevisse reached for the latch, the voices rose in a kind of animal triumph. Dame Claire crossed herself. By the sound of it, there were going to be people hurt. Frevisse lifted the latch and went out.