The King's Concubine. Anne O'Brien

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ can keep an inventory of your food stuffs.’ I was not going to shut up unless he ordered me to. ‘I can tally your books and accounts.’ If I was condemned to work here, I would make a place for myself. Until better times.

      ‘A miracle, by the Holy Virgin.’ The mockery went up by a notch. ‘What is such a gifted mistress of all crafts doing in my kitchen?’ The laughter at my expense expanded too. ‘Let’s start with this for now.’

      I was put to work raking the hot ashes from the ovens and scouring the fat-encrusted baking trays. No different from the Abbey or the Perrers’s household at all.

      But it was different, and I relished it. Here was life at its most coarse and vivid, not a mean existence ruled by silence and obedience. This was no living death. Not that I enjoyed the work—it was hard and relentless and punishing under the eye of Master Humphrey and Sir Joscelyn—but here was no dour disapproval or use of a switch if I sullied the Rule of Saint Benedict. Or caught Damiata’s caustic eye. Everyone had something to say about every event or rumour that touched on Master Humphrey’s kitchen. I swear he could discuss the state of the realm as well as any great lord while slitting the gizzard of a peacock. It was a different world. I was now the owner of a straw pallet in a cramped attic room with two of the maids who strained the milk and made the rounds of cheese in the dairy. I was given a blanket, a new shift and kirtle—new to me at any event—a length of cloth to wrap round my hair and a pair of rough shoes.

      Better than a lay sister at St Mary’s? By the Virgin, it was!

      I listened as I toiled. The scullions gossiped from morn till night, covering the whole range of the royal family. The Queen was ill, the King protective. The King was well past the days of his much-lauded victory on the battlefield of Crécy against the bloody French, but still a man to be admired. Whilst Isabella, a madam, refusing every sensible marriage put to her. The King should have taken a whip to her sides! As for the Countess of Kent—my ears instantly pricked up—who had married the Prince and would one day be Queen, well, she was little better than a whore, and an ill-mannered one at that when it suited her. Thank God she was in Aquitaine with her long-suffering husband. Unaware of my interest, the scurrilous gossip continued.

      Gascony and Aquitaine, our possessions across the channel, were in revolt. Ireland was simmering like a pot of soup. Now the buildings of the man Wykeham! Water directed to the kitchens to run direct from a spigot into a bowl at Westminster! May it come to Havering soon, pray God.

      Meanwhile I was sent to haul water from the well twenty times a day. Master Humphrey had no need for me to read or tally. I swept and scoured and chopped, burned my hands, singed my hair and emptied chamber pots. I lifted and carried and swept up. And I worked even harder to keep the lascivious scullions and pot boys at a distance. I learned fast. By God, I did!

      Sim. The biggest lout of them all with his fair hair and leering smile.

      I did not need any warning. I had seen Sim’s version of romantic seduction when he trapped one of the serving wenches against the door of the woodstore. It had not been enjoyment on her face as he had grunted and laboured, his hose around his ankles. I did not want his greasy hands with their filthy nails on me. Or any other part of his body. The stamp of a foot on an unprotected instep, a sharp elbow to a gut kept the human vermin at bay for the most part. Unfortunately it was easy for Sim and his crowd to stalk me in the pantry or the cellar. If his arm clipped my waist once, it did so a dozen times within the first week.

      ‘How about a kiss, Alice?’ he wheedled, his foul breath hot against my neck.

      I punched his chest with my fist, and not lightly. ‘You’ll get no kiss from me!’

      ‘Who else will kiss you?’ The usual chorus of appreciation from the crude, grinning mouths.

      ‘Not you!’

      ‘You’re an ugly bitch, but you’re better than a beef carcass.’

      ‘You’re not. I’d sooner kiss a carp from the pond. Now back off——and take your gargoyles with you.’ I had discovered a talent for wordplay and a sharp tongue and used it indiscriminately, along with my elbows.

      ‘You’ll not get better than me.’ He ground his groin, fierce with arousal, against my hip.

      My knee slamming between his legs loosened his hold well enough. ‘Keep your hands to yourself! Or I’ll take Master Humphrey’s boning knife to your balls and we’ll roast them for supper with garlic and rosemary!’

      I was not unhappy. But I was sorry not to be pretty, and that my talents were not used. How much skill did it take to empty the chamber pots onto the midden? And as I toiled, dipping coarse wicks in foul-smelling tallow to make candles for use in the kitchens and storerooms, all noise and bustle swirling around me, I allowed myself to step back into the days of my early novitiate. I allowed the Countess of Kent—indeed I invited her—to step imperiously into my mind. She might be in Aquitaine, but for those moments she lived again in the sweaty kitchen of Havering-atte-Bower.

      How had such a lowly creature as I come to be noticed by so high-born a woman? What a spectacle she had provided for me, little more than a child that I had been. A travelling litter had swayed to a halt, marvellous with swags and gilded leather curtains and the softest of soft cushions, pulled by a team of six gleaming horses. Minions and outriders had filled the space. And so much luggage in an accompanying wagon to be unloaded. I had never seen such wealth. As I had watched, jewelled fingers had emerged and the curtains twitched back in a grand gesture.

      Blessed Virgin! The sight had stopped my breath as a lady stepped from the palanquin, shaking out her silk damask skirts—a hint of deep patterned blue, of silver thread and luxuriant fur—and smoothing the folds of her mantle, the jewels on her fingers afire with a rainbow of light. She was not a young woman, but neither was she old, and she was breathtakingly beautiful. I could see nothing of her figure, shrouded as she was in the heavy cloak despite the warmth of the summer day, or of her hair, hidden beneath a crispinette and black veil, but I could see her face. It was a perfect oval of fair skin, and she was lovely. Her eyes, framed by the fine linen and undulating silk, were large and lustrous, the colour of new beech leaves.

      This was Countess Joan of Kent, the ill-mannered whore of kitchen gossip.

      From one of the wagons bounded a trio of little dogs that yapped and capered around her skirts. A hawk on a travelling perch eyed me balefully. And an animal such as I had never seen, all bright eyes and poking fingers, the colour of a horse chestnut with a ruff around its face and a long tail. Complete with a gold collar and chain, it leapt and clung to one of the carved side-struts of the litter. I could not look away. I was transfixed, entirely seduced by worldly glory, whilst the creature both charmed and repelled me in equal measure.

      Then, without warning, with harsh cries and snatching hands, the exotic creature leapt to dart through the nuns, drawn up in ranks to welcome this visitor. The nuns flinched as one, their cries in counterpoint. The lap dogs yapped and gave chase. And as the animal scurried past me, I knew!

      Stooping smartly, I snatched at the trailing end of its chain so that it came to a screaming, chattering halt at my feet, its sharp teeth very visible. I gave them no thought. Before it could struggle for release, I had lifted it into my arms. Light, fragile boned, its fur incredibly soft, it curled its fingers into my veil and held on, and I felt my face flush as a taut silence fell and all eyes turned on me.

      Back in the kitchen, as the reek of hot tallow coated my flesh, I shivered, almost able to feel the scratch of the creature’s fingers as I cut and dipped. The rescue of Joan’s monkey had been a selfishly СКАЧАТЬ