Grayling's Song (19 page)

Hanging on to the arm of Rhys from the stables, for the yard was slippery with rain and horse droppings and chicken dung, he greeted us: “Good fordood to you, by lord, and to you, Lady Aislidd. I ab hodored to bisit your bodest badder and beet the baided.”

I thought first he spoke in some foreign tongue or a cipher designed to conceal a secret message, but it seems only that his nose was plugged. And it stayed plugged throughout his entire visit, while he breathed and chewed and chattered through his open mouth. Corpus bones! He troubled my stomach no little bit and I determined to rid us of him this very day.

I rubbed my nose until it shone red, blacked out my front teeth with soot, and dressed my hair with the mouse bones I found under the rushes in the hall. All through dinner, while he talked of his warehouses stuffed with greasy wool and the pleasures of the annual Yarmouth herring fair, I smiled my gap-tooth smile at him and wiggled my ears.

My father's crack still rings my head but Master Lack-Wit left without a betrothal.

27
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER

Being imprisoned in the solar was none so bad this day, for I heard welcome gossip. My uncle George is coming home. Near twenty years ago he went crusading with Prince Edward. Edward came home to be king but George stayed, finding other lords to serve. My mother says he is brave and honorable. My father says he is woolly-witted. Morwenna, who was nurse to my mother before me, just sighs and winks at me.

Since my uncle George has had experience with adventures, I am hoping that he can help me escape this life of hemming and mending and fishing for husbands. I would much prefer crusading, swinging my sword at heathens and sleeping under starry skies on the other end of the world.

I told all this to the cages of birds in my chamber and they listened quite politely. I began to keep birds in order to hear their chirping, but most often now they have to listen to mine.

28
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
,
Michaelmas Eve

Perkin says that in the village of Woodford near Lincoln a man has grown a cabbage that looks like the head of Saint Peter the Apostle. People are gathering from all over the shire to pray and wonder at it. My mother, of course, will not let me go. I had thought to ask Saint Peter to strengthen my eyes, for I know it unattractive to squint as I do. And to make my father forget this marriage business.

29
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
,
Michaelmas, Feast of the Archangel Michael

Last night the villagers lit the Michaelmas bonfires and set two cottages and a haystack afire. Cob the Smith and Beryl, John At-Wood's daughter, were in the haystack. They are scorched and sheepish but unhurt. They are also now betrothed.

Today is quarter-rent day. My greedy father is near muzzle-witted with glee from the geese, silver pennies, and wagonloads of manure our tenants pay him. He guzzles ale and slaps his belly, laughing as he gathers in the rents. I like to sit near the table where William the Steward keeps the record and listen to the villagers complain about my father as they pay. I have gotten all my good insults and best swear words that way.

Henry Newhouse always pays first, for at thirty acres his is the largest holding. Then come Thomas Baker, John Swann from the alehouse, Cob the Smith, Walter Mustard, and all the eighteen tenants down to Thomas Cotter and the widow Joan Proud, who hold no land but pay for their leaky cottages in turnips, onions, and goose grease.

Perkin the goat boy holds no land either, but pays a goat each year as rent for his grandmother's cottage. For weeks before Michaelmas, Perkin tells everyone in the village, “I will pay him any goat, but not the black one” or “not the gray one.” William Steward of course hears and tells my father, and come rent day my father insists on the black one or the gray one that Perkin did not wish to part with. My father gloats and thinks he is getting the best of Perkin, but Perkin always winks at me as he leaves. And each year the goat my father demands is the weakest or the meanest or the one that eats the laundry off the line or the rushes off the floor. Perkin is the cleverest person I know.

30
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER

Morwenna says when I have done with writing, I must help with the soap-making. The bubbling mess stinks worse than the privy in summer. Therefore I plan to write abundantly.

First, I will say more about Perkin. Although he is the goat boy, Perkin is my good friend and heart's brother. He is very thin and goodly-looking, with golden hair and blue eyes just like the king, but is much dirtier than the king although much cleaner than the other villagers. He is sore afflicted with wind in his bowels, so I regularly make him a tonic of cumin seed and anise to unbind his liver and destroy the wind. It mostly does not work.

One of his legs is considerably shorter than the other, so as he walks he seems to be dancing some graceless dance, with his head bobbing and arms swinging about to keep his balance. Once I tied a bucket on my foot so I could walk like Perkin and we could dance together, but my arms and legs quickly grew tired. Perkin must be tired all the time, but it doesn't make him ill-tempered.

He lives with the goats or his granny, depending on the season, and is mostly wise and kind when he isn't teasing me. It is Perkin who taught me to name the birds, to know the weather from the sky, to spit between my front teeth, to cheat at draughts and not get caught, all the most important things I know, the Devil take sewing and spinning.

I am frequently told not to spend so much time with the goat boy, so of course I seek him out whenever I can. Once I came upon him in the field, chewing on a grass, saying some words over and over to himself.

“What spell are you casting, witch-boy?” I asked.

“No spell,” said he, “but the Norman and Latin words for apple, which I lately heard and am saying over and over so I do not forget.”

Perkin likes things like that. He would like to be learned. When he discovers new words, he uses them all together: “This apple/
pomme/malus
is not ripe” or “Sometimes goats/
chevres/capri
are smarter than people.” Some people have trouble understanding Perkin, but I know always what is in his heart.

My hand grows tired and I am out of ink and Morwenna is sending me black looks. I fear it is the soap-making for me. Am I doomed to spend my days stirring great vats of goose fat when not writing for Edward?

I wonder why rubbing your face and hands with black and sandy evil-smelling soap makes them clean. Why doesn't it just make them black and sandy? There is no more to say.

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K
AREN
C
USHMAN
is the author of
Catherine, Called Birdy
, a Newbery Honor Book, and
The Midwife's Apprentice
, which received the Newbery Medal. Her acclaimed historical fiction also includes
The Ballad of Lucy Whipple
;
Alchemy and Meggy Swann
; and, most recently,
Will Sparrow's Road
. This time she wanted to write a story set in a place “like medieval England, but with magic.”
Grayling's Song
, her first fantasy, is the result.

Ms. Cushman lives in the Seattle area with her husband, who is a magician in his own way.