Brewer's Tale, The (5 page)

I sent Will to fetch Father Clement from St Bartholomew's next door. The man who was both our parish priest and friend should know what had befallen us. He would provide a measure of solace for the servants and, if I was frank, myself as well. I wasn't disappointed. Moments later, Father Clement strode through the gate. I watched him cross the yard, talking to Will, his cassock swinging as he clutched the cross hanging from the cord about his waist, and my heart lifted. Stepping into the kitchen, he sheltered my hands within his own and his hazel eyes said more than words. As he murmured a quiet prayer, Blanche, Adam, Iris, Doreen, Will and Saskia lowered their heads, the women with handkerchiefs screwed in their fists, the men pale as they slowly took stock of what this change meant.

I recalled an earlier time and a similar tableau. A balmy summer's evening just over six years ago. The sky was leaden, poised to rain, the heat moist. Mother had been listless all day, but it wasn't till her waters broke in the afternoon that we understood the baby had decided to ignore nature's course and arrive early. That it was two months before its time formed a patina of worry that overlaid the excitement. Father was in Ypres — as usual, worlds away from his wife and his expanding family. The midwife and her assistant were sent for and, in a gesture that announced my entree into the adult world, I was given the role of attending to my mother's needs and helping Saskia in whatever way I could.

Terrified of what was happening, I'd nonetheless obeyed every instruction: wiped the sweat from Mother's brow, held her hand, rubbed her back, propped beside her as she squatted over the freshly laid rushes, teeth clenched, eyes screwed shut, clots of blood dropping from her body, more coating her inner thighs. Hours later, after I'd slept and woken, not once, but twice, first one babe and then another were drawn from her womb. We were jubilant. Two babes! And alive. Cords were cut and they were tenderly swaddled, their squawks softening to whimpers as they were brought to her breast. The afterbirths were examined the moment they were expelled and removed, the stained rushes with them. Once it was over, I felt a rejoicing in my heart. After all the babies Mother had tried and failed to bring into the world — five, at last reckoning — this time she'd managed a pair: a beautiful, red-faced boy and girl. Father would be thrilled; this would make him smile, this would transform him back into the man of my earliest recollections. I couldn't understand why the midwife wasn't radiating joy, why her eyes when they slid from mine to my mother were brimming with sadness. At Mother's insistence, the babes were lifted from her and placed in my old crib. The midwife's young assistant stepped away from the pallet upon which my mother lay, leaving her pale, sweat-drenched and alone.

Calling me in a voice I no longer knew, Mother took my hand and pulled me to her side, requesting we be left alone. I was scared of the blood, of the strange odour exuding from the woman who always smelled so sweet. Her violet lips and shadowed eyes made her a stranger. Tears began to spill and my nose began to run, even though I couldn't have told you why. Drying my eyes with kisses, stroking my face with trembling, loving fingers, she made me promise that I would obey my father and, in a broken, weary voice, she revealed a terrible, shameful secret. A secret that even now, so many years later, I wanted to erase, to forget, to doubt. Yet, it explained so much …

I hadn't questioned her, I was shocked into silence. When she had finished, she sank back against the pillow and wrapped her arms around me. Lying across her swollen breasts, I felt her lips and hands against my hair, her hot breath on my head, the slow, ponderous beat of her heart, until, suddenly, I didn't.

It was Father Clement, newly arrived in the parish, who gently coaxed me from Mother's side, performed extreme unction, and held me as I wept. It was the good Father who allowed me to see Mother at peace, her body cleaned and wrapped, her face stripped of colour and life, her lips and eyelids forever closed. He'd been so calm, so capable that night. I knew if ever there were a crisis, he would be the one to have by my side. Once the body had been carried to the church, the servants and Father Clement had sat across from each other in the kitchen; the servants quietly weeping, the Father praying. I had stood out of sight in the corner, unable to cry, unable to think or speak. I was like the shadows into which I'd shrunk. Crossing himself, Father Clement raised his head and I was stunned to see tears staining his cheeks; I'd never seen a man cry before. He looked at Saskia and said: ‘Death too often chases birth and triumphs.' His mouth trembled, but he lifted his eyes to the ceiling. ‘God forgive me,' he whispered, but we all heard. ‘Why does our dear Lord make even good women pay for the sins of Eve? Surely,' he dropped his chin and stared into a space over my shoulder, ‘surely, the debt has been repaid in full?'

I'd never thought about God in terms of debits or credits before. If I had, I'd have believed my gentle, kind Mother would have earned, over and over, a place on earth and an eternal one in heaven. I once would have sworn that God owed her, not the other way around. But not any more. With Mother's whispered words my eyes had been opened. My mother was as brazen as Adam's wife and as great a sinner. Reproach coloured my cheeks but also pride that she'd trusted me with the darkest of confidences. I loved my mother with all my heart and I didn't know how to reconcile what she'd told me with the woman who raised me, the woman I thought I knew. And what about the twins? Were they stained with her sin as well? Blessed Mother Mary knew Tobias was. What did these sweet little babes owe to God? Were they to continue to pay Mother's debt by being denied her? What had I done to suffer such a loss?

That night, I burned with hate for God and Eve, the original sinner. I imagined setting fire to the Garden of Eden and watching the Tree of Knowledge flame, wishing what I'd learned could be reduced to ashes and blow away on the winds. Instead, I pushed what I knew into the recesses of my mind and, determined that one day, when the time was right, I would seek the truth. Till then, I would keep what I knew as close to my heart as my mother had.

All this crawled through the maze of my mind as I listened to Father Clement's prayer for my father. When he finished, he reluctantly released my hand and administered what succour he could to the household. Cousin Hiske didn't interfere but quietly thanked him. Later that day, he sat vigil in the church for those whose loved ones had died on the
Cathaline
. I attended briefly, offering words of consolation and receiving them. This wasn't just our loss, but the entire town's. That the ship bore my mother's name made it all the more painful. Guilt attended my every word as if, somehow, I was responsible for these good people's pain. But it was my father who'd christened the ship. Returning home after Mother died to find he had two more mouths to feed (as he put it) and no wife, he'd spoken to Lord Rainford and, within months, another ship was added to Father's small fleet. Father chose to name it after his dead wife. If anyone thought the gesture ill-omened, they hadn't spoken out … not then.

In my mind, life was divided into two parts: before Mother died and after. There was another schism too, but I would only admit it in moments of weakness: before the secret and after. Between both was a threshold over which I'd been pushed and at first, floundered. After Mother died, Father came home to absorb the news and, I thought, to comfort his children. Within twenty-four hours of Mother's burial, after grunting at the twins as Louisa held Karel and I held Betje, Father left — for what port I did not know. Subsequently, he transformed into little more than an unpleasant presence that I tried to replace with older, happier versions until they too faded from memory.

Four months later, bearing a curt explanatory note from Father, cousin Hiske arrived and promptly took over. Within the household she'd become my guardian, my torment. I regarded her now, trying not to feel resentful that the freedom I believed Father's death would accord me was to be Hiske's instead.

Within a few hours of learning Father's fate, the head of the Merchants' Guild and the Mayor of Elmham Lenn, Master Dickon Fortescue, arrived with his daughter and my childhood friend, Betrix. Master Fortescue clumsily offered his sympathies before informing me that because my father had alienated himself from the guild by joining forces with Lord Rainford and therefore wasn't obligated to pay tithes, he was unable to offer me the usual financial and other support provided to merchant families at these times. Betrix simply held my hand while her father stuttered and stammered, relieved when he'd done his duty and was able to leave the solar and join the other callers in the hall downstairs.

‘I'm sorry, Anneke,' said Betrix after I recounted for her as calmly as I could Master Makejoy's visit. ‘Papa would do something if he could … you do know that, don't you? The other merchants … they won't allow him … it's just your father didn't —' She paused, hesitating to speak ill of the dead.

‘Have many friends.'
I
would say it. The truth cost nothing. Not any more. Nor did Papa hold any title or office in town. Once, he'd been an alderman and a juror, but those positions had been relinquished before Tobias was born. All my father had was his family and the sea. He turned his back upon one and the other claimed him. I extracted my hand from Betrix's and stood, staring out the window at the procession of people continuing to arrive at the house. I would need to hear their platitudes as well. ‘Father made his choices and now —'

‘You have to suffer them,' Betrix finished, and placed an arm around my shoulders.

Had anyone else said those words, I may have denied them. But I'd known Betrix for years. When Father refused to heed the guild and became independent (or so I'd thought) by going into business with Lord Rainford, Betrix's mother, Else, and mine managed to ensure their friendship, and that of their daughters, survived. Up until Mother died, we'd shared so much — silly secrets and the frivolous dreams of the very young; our blooming attraction to various visiting knights or the sons of lords or wealthy merchants. The kind one has when the future is all rosy promise and a press of lips both harmless and pregnant with meaning. Once Hiske was ensconced within the house, taking control of Mother's duties and many others as well, sacking servants and allocating their tasks to me and those who remained (‘idleness is the devil's playground' she'd say), she rejected Mistress Else Fortescue's attempts at friendship, literally closing the door upon her. That meant Betrix was also denied. Though we'd exchanged furtive and even passionate letters of indignation and endless reassurances of sisterly love, and managed to meet in the woods and even at the market once or twice, Hiske's snubbing of Mistress Fortescue (who, as far as she was concerned, as the daughter of a laundress, had married far above her station) meant our friendship eventually cooled. I'd been allowed to attend Betrix's wedding, and I'd even squeezed in a visit after her son, Henry, was born. But I'd seen her stepping out with other girls, girls we'd once laughed at for their foolish antics and lack of learning. The truth was, I'd thought Betrix lost to me and mourned her long ago. Father's death proved me wrong and for that I was very grateful. I learned that some things weren't altered by time, not in an irreparable way anyhow.

Betrix left the house promising to return when things settled. I would hold her to that — Hiske or no Hiske.

I'd half expected the head of the Kontor, the foreign trading post set up by the Hanseatic League in Elmham Lenn, Captain Hatto Stoyan, to call. Amid all the other visitors, I felt his absence acutely. Though Mother's death had put a strain on his relationship with Father (he'd known Mother's family for years and would deliver news from Maastricht whenever he returned from there), I'd thought he'd make the effort. Despite Father, he'd always had a kind word for me and made a point of bringing the odd cask of wine or two from Bordeaux, cheeses from Ghent and ribbons or lace from Italy for our pleasure. Excuses to visit they may have been, but I always enjoyed the captain's presence and Mother's spirits were visibly buoyant after he'd been. Though I'd barely seen him since Mother died, I regarded Captain Stoyan, possibly unrealistically, as a link to her. Puzzled and hurt by his absence at first, I later discovered he was in London. I considered writing to him; I wanted him to know about Father, about us. But there were others who needed to be told first.

Bad news is bold, a jackanapes, spreading faster than a plague, whereas good news is like a freshly hired hand, circumspect, afraid to overstep the mark. Just as I'd told the twins, I wanted to be the one to let Tobias know. Even though I was sure Lord Rainford would have dispatched a messenger to his son, I wrote briefly but, I hoped, lovingly. Tobias may have let correspondence between us falter, but I'd never done so. Though, since Mother died, I'd not had to deliver such bad tidings.

After organising the making of mourning clothes, a task readily undertaken by Mistress Taylor in town, I pulled Adam aside and shared with him the rest of what Master Makejoy had told me. Adam listened respectfully as I explained my situation, (
ours
, he gruffly corrected, and I wanted to throw my arms around his neck as I had as a child), his strong jaw clenching and unclenching, his hand occasionally rising to run through his thick, grey hair or graze the fine stubble on his cheeks. I finished by asking him to elucidate where we stood as a household and business. I thought maybe I could throw myself on Lord Rainford's mercy but, in order to do that, I needed to understand the costs of running a house our size. If Lord Rainford was, as Master Makejoy inferred, to offer the lease to someone else, why could it not be me?

For the next three nights, Adam and I waited until everyone was abed, then equipped with candles and cresset lamp, retired to the office. There was nothing surreptitious in our action, it was just that I preferred Hiske remain, for the time being at least, ignorant of what I was doing. On the first night, Adam made a fire and, as the kindling took, he opened a big ledger on the table. Inviting me to take Father's chair, he sat beside me. Moving through the columns of neat figures and annotations he'd made over the weeks and months, I learned, to my dismay, that the day-to-day costs of running the house were more than I anticipated. While the tenant farmers paid reasonable tithes and supplied a variety of meat, grain and dairy produce, like most of the town, we were beholden to the Friary of St Jude's for our ale, and purchased wood and coal from the respective merchants. Cloth and other sundries were bought when needed. Occasionally, small amounts went to the thatcher, farrier, cooper, cobbler and all other manner of trades for repairs to and replacements of objects I had taken for granted. Then there was the servants' wages …