North Side of the Tree. Maggie Prince

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СКАЧАТЬ why I am defending the person who annoys me more than any other in this household.

      “Nonsense! She’s a serving woman and she’s twice his age, and what Gerald wants to be doing talking to her is a mystery to me.”

      People near us glance round and grin. I suspect Aunt Juniper is the only person to whom it is a mystery.

      Mother comes in, her cheeks pink and her hair escaping from its cap. “That’s the last of the strangers on their way!” she declares. “I never thought I’d thank a Scot for anything, but I do thank him for forcing our men to stay at home.” She crosses to the hearth. “I’m going to open my elder wine. Give me a hand, Juniper. We have good reason to celebrate.”

      “Them downstairs don’t,” mutters Kate.

      I peer round the corner of the hearth as my mother and aunt lift out two wooden-stoppered clay flagons from the proving oven. “Give Kate a drink, Beatie, for pity’s sake,” Mother orders me. “I can’t be doing with her endless griping. Get out the silver goblets. I’m not using pewter any more. Cedric says it rots your brain.” She thumps the flagons on to the table and stares round her for a moment, hands on hips. “I can still scarce credit that the march on Scotland is stopped.”

      “For now.” Kate slams her rolling pin into a soft mound of dough. “We wouldn’t have given up so easily in my day – one Scot and a whole war called off – I never heard the like of it.”

      I take down the best goblets one by one from the dresser, whilst Mother and Aunt Juniper unstopper the flagons. I remember Father coming home with these goblets one Michaelmas, fifty of them in finest silver, beautifully wrought with patterns of herons and reeds. When I have passed everyone a goblet of wine, I go to sit on the bench at the long table, and as I do so there is a commotion in the gatehouse arch and my father comes crashing in. “What’s the merrymaking?” he bellows, and lurches towards the kitchen table. “Are the dead men laid out?” He throws an arm round Kate who is putting the lid on the thrush pie. “What’s in t’tart, Kate?”

      “Songbirds.” Kate peers up into his face and scowls at him. “Cupshotten already, master? You wasted no time.”

      “Aye well, Katie, you see we don’t have any time to waste, do we, as them downstairs will surely warrant.”

      “You’re right there, master.” She stabs the pie crust three times with her pastry knife, muttering, “Father, Son, Holy Ghost.”

      “Amen,” intones my father, and the two of them nod gloomily at one another.

      I pour myself more wine. The sweet-smelling brew rocks to and fro in the shiny round bowl, red, maroon and purple in the shifting firelight. I see my mother leading my aunt away, arm round her shoulders, heads bent, to seat themselves in my place in the chimney corner. My mother is talking. My aunt is listening. I realise she is being told the news about Verity. With a surge of longing I want my own sister here, back where she belongs. I have no one here now who thinks as I do, who is prepared to laugh with me at the absurdity of our elders, and to defy them with me when necessary.

      Suddenly Leo is at my side. I jump. I had not seen him arrive. I take a large swallow of wine, and then have to lean my elbows on the table to keep myself steady. He sits down next to me and asks, “How are you, lady?”

      “Well enough.” I realise how ungracious I sound, and stand up to pour him some wine. “I thank you, Leo, for enquiring.”

      He rummages at his waist. I catch the flash of a blade. “You’ll be wanting this back.” He produces my knife from where it was pushed into a sheath with his own. I stare at it, so familiar, with its horn handle and curved blade. “Was this what you used?” I ask him, appalled. Our eyes meet. It is as if we were alone in an empty kitchen. He makes a circle of his finger and thumb, touches it to his own broad-bladed knife, then to his lips.

      “Nay,” he says. “I used my own. It was a pleasure, lady.”

      There seems to be nothing more to say. My profuse and incoherent thanks of earlier cannot be repeated, back in this normal world. I try to work out my feelings. I try to work out whether there was anything else he could have done. I feel a strange closeness to Leo, like kinship. We share one another’s secrets. Perhaps this is how you do feel towards someone who has saved your life. After a while Leo says, “I’ll be saying nowt about the other, neither, mistress.”

      I have to think for a moment what he means, then I realise he means John, and the kiss. “Oh. Well thank you. And… Leo, you can be sure… I shan’t be saying anything to anyone about what happened, either.”

      He nods. A pact has been sealed.

      Germaine comes round with cates, tiny squares of bread fried in goose grease, wafer-thin slices of salty black pudding, candied gooseberries, marchpane comfets. We help ourselves from two big platters. My father, leaning lopsidedly on the chopping block, slips off when he tries to help himself, and bangs his cheek. With a spluttering curse he heaves himself upright and crosses the room to the fireplace as if dancing the galiard, relieves himself into the flames, then pirouettes back. He picks up one of the flagons with both hands and drinks from it. The wine spills down his neck, staining his ruff. “Damnation to the Scots!” he shouts. The assembly raises its goblets. The fire flares brilliant, unfocused, into the room. Germaine goes round lighting the candles, and they shine with rainbow haloes in the smoky air. Leo pats me on the shoulder, and leaves.

      As the afternoon draws on, Kate puts on barley broth to stew, for those who might wish to recover their senses later. I grow weary of explaining my injuries to people, and wonder if I would have minded less if my explanations had been the truth.

      Tilly Turner, curled on the oak settle by the fire, faints with great drama, smashing her head on the hearth, and has to be revived with a burning feather under her nose. Mother pats her cheeks back and forth with more vigour than is strictly necessary, and William the henchman assists her out into the fresh air. Moments later he returns with a flurry, calling to Father, “Master, parson’s come out of t’wood.”

      “Woodworm’s come out of t’wood,” my father mutters, staggering to his feet. William comes over and props him up.

      “Is he to come in, master? Is the parson to come in?”

      Everyone waits for my father’s answer. They all know his opinion of John Becker.

      I creep across the kitchen and take over Tilly’s place on the oak settle, where I can be hidden by its high sides. I had forgotten that John was coming. I’m horrified at the thought of him seeing me hot, sweaty and half-drunk. Germaine comes to sit next to me. “Hiding, Beatrice?” she enquires. I nod carefully, fearful that my head might fly off. Germaine laughs. “He might consign the rest of us to hellfire, but not you, my dear.”

      To me, the kitchen already seems like Hell – hot and full of people whose misdeeds are about to catch up with them.

      My father blunders across the kitchen, stumbling over chairs and benches. “Might as well show him in, William lad,” he shouts. “Yon whining preacher could do with a drink, I daresay. Can’t do aught but improve him.”

      Everyone’s gaze swings towards the entrance. We hear the front door crash open, then William’s voice. “They’re in the kitchen, sir.” My father prepares himself grandly, feet apart, hands on hips. William comes back into the kitchen and whispers something to him.

      “Nay lad,” my father replies loudly, СКАЧАТЬ