Silken Threads (24 page)

Limping to the salle, he watched through the
front window
—
she’d closed the bottom shutter but left the
top open for air
—
as she crossed Wood Street and entered
the apothecary shop. She was in there so long that his broken leg
started aching. He leaned against the wall, his gaze trained on the
window, waiting for her to come out.

When she did, she was wearing Olive’s dark
green mantle. “What the devil...?” Graeham murmured as she raised
the hood of the heavy woollen cloak, pulling it low to shade her
face, and started back across Wood Street. She still carried her
bag of wares; in her other hand was something small that flashed
blue in the afternoon sun
—
no doubt the phial containing
Ada le Fever’s tonic.

She disappeared into the alley. Graeham
turned and hobbled back into the storeroom. By the time he got
there, she was crossing le Fever’s stable yard.

Byram emerged from the stable, leading le
Fever’s black horse by the reins. Glancing at Joanna as she walked
up to the back door, her head down, he called out, “Afternoon,
Olive. You can go on in.”

She raised a hand in acknowledgment, opened
the door, and disappeared inside.

“You clever girl,” Graeham whispered,
sinking onto the cot.

* * *

Closing the door behind her, Joanna found
herself in a hallway leading straight ahead the length of the
house. To the right, through an arched doorway, she saw part of a
sunlit room that must have been a kitchen, judging by the pots and
utensils hanging from the rafters. The plump kitchen wench who’d
greeted her at the door earlier stood with her back to her at a
work table, singing as she chopped.

An oaken door stood open to her left.
Through it, she saw kegs of ale, barrels of wine, and a number of
ewers, goblets and cups on shelves. In a corner of this
well-stocked buttery she spied what she was looking
for
—
the service stairwell.

She climbed the stairs quickly but
stealthily, praying she didn’t bump into Rolf le Fever before she
had a chance to find his wife and talk her into a commission. As
she passed the second level, she heard men’s voices, including le
Fever’s, and crossed herself.
Please, God, don’t let him find me
here.

Pausing on the third-floor landing, she
listened for sounds on the other side of the oaken door, her
spirits sinking when she heard nothing. Olive had told her she’d
find the mistress of the house in the solar, nursing her stubborn
cold. If she wasn’t here, Joanna would have to return home,
defeated.

She knocked softly on the door.

“Aethel?” came a reedy voice from within. “I
thought you’d gone marketing.”

Joanna cracked the door open. The great
chamber, with its tightly shuttered windows, was so dim that it
took her a moment to spot the narrow, uncurtained bed on the
opposite wall. A woman lay propped up on pillows beneath a
coverlet, observing her with an expression of bewilderment.

“‘Tisn’t Aethel, mistress,” Joanna said,
stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. It was warm
in here, and stuffy, despite the room’s size. “My name is Joanna
Chapman. I live behind you.”

Joanna crossed the room, feeling decidedly
uneasy to be here in this woman’s private sanctum, uninvited,
having gained access by subterfuge. She began to wish she hadn’t
done it, not because of the risk of discovery, but because she was
violating the privacy of this stranger. Most likely she wouldn’t be
entertaining these misgivings had she found Ada le Fever dressed
and sitting up, rather than abed in her night shift.

The darkly paneled walls were bare of
hangings, the wooden floor devoid of rushes, the furniture minimal.
A carved wooden crucifix hung over Mistress Ada’s bed, and a book
with a cross stamped into the leather-bound cover sat on a shelf
beneath it. There was an almost empty bowl of what looked like
broth on a little table next to the bed, and a cup of water. Were
it not for the chamber’s spaciousness, it might almost have looked
like a nun’s cell.

Ada pointed toward the blue glass phial as
Joanna approached the side of the bed. “Is that my tonic?” she
asked in a very soft, girlish voice.

“Aye. Olive...asked me to bring it.” In
truth, Olive had seemed confounded by Joanna’s request to borrow
her mantle and deliver Mistress Ada’s medicine. But once Joanna had
explained what she was about, the girl had agreed readily enough,
on one condition.
Have her take the tonic while you’re there,
so’s you can bring back the phial. Mum counts those phials twice a
day
—
they’re that dear.

Joanna set her bag on the floor and took a
seat in the chair next to the bed, trying not to stare at Ada le
Fever. She was young, much younger than Joanna had
realized
—
or perhaps it only seemed that way because she
was so dreadfully thin. Her face looked white as chalk in the
half-light, an effect intensified by the sharp contrast of
blue-black hair worn in two tidy braids. She had enormous, dark
eyes with shadows beneath them, as if someone had smudged a bit of
charcoal there.

Joanna tried to reconcile this pale, fragile
creature with the vibrant young woman she’d seen last summer,
gardening behind her house. She’d struck Joanna as extremely pretty
then, in a delicate, rarified way. Now she just looked sick.

Very sick.

“If you can help me to sit up,” Ada said
weakly, “I’ll take the tonic.” She spoke the continental dialect of
Norman French, rather than the anglicized version that was in
common use in England, and with a refined manner of speech that
signified gentle birth.

Sliding an arm beneath Ada’s shoulders,
Joanna urged her into a sitting position and uncorked the phial.
The tonic smelled pleasantly minty. She held it out to Ada, but the
young woman shook her head. “I’ll drop it if I try to hold it. My
hands...they don’t always do what I want them to.”

Joanna supported Ada and held the phial to
her mouth while she drank its contents, taking small sips that were
clearly difficult for her to swallow. When it was empty, Joanna
helped her to lean back against her mound of pillows.

“There, now,” Joanna said, switching to the
classic French she’d been tutored in by her father’s clerics, “that
will make you feel better.”

Ada shook her head listlessly. “I feel even
worse after the tonic.”

“Worse?”

“For a while. I get to feeling cold all
over, and numb in my mouth and throat
—
and sometimes I get
nosebleeds. Master Aldfrith says it’s just the medicine doing its
job.”

“Master Aldfrith the surgeon?”

“Aye, my husband sent for him when I first
took sick. He still comes round from time to time. Sometimes he
brings his son-in-law.”

“Is his son-in-law a surgeon, too?”

Ada shook her head wearily. “A
mercer
—
or wants to be. Master Aldfrith’s trying to get him
into the guild, but Rolf says he’s too inexperienced.”

From the looks of her, Ada le Fever needed a
proper, university-trained physician, not the neighborhood
bone-setter. “What does Master Aldfrith say is wrong with you?” she
asked.

“A rheum in the head. They linger like this
sometimes, he says.”

“I see.” But Joanna had never known anyone
to waste away like this from a head cold.

“Master Aldfrith told Olive what kind of
tonic I need, and she brings it to me every day. He says I’ll feel
better very soon.”

“How long have you been taking it?”

Ada frowned in concentration. “Since
Christmastide. How long ago is that?”

“Almost six months.”

Ada turned her head toward the wall.

“I know what you need,” Joanna said
cheerily, rising and crossing to the window on the back wall. “A
bit of fresh air and sunshine.”

“Nay.”

“Aye, it’s too dark in here, and dreadfully
warm. I don’t know how you can bear it.” Joanna unlatched the
shutters and threw them open. When she turned around, she saw that
Ada had an arm thrown over her face.

“Close it,” Ada pleaded. “The light hurts my
eyes.”

“You’ll get used to
—
”

“No I won’t. Close it
—
please.”

Joanna shuttered the window and returned to
stand at the side of the bed, where Ada was rubbing her eyes with
trembling hands. She was trembling all over, Joanna saw; her body
was racked with shivers. “Are you cold?”

“Aye,” she said, turning onto her side and
tucking her legs up.

Joanna pulled up the extra blanket folded at
the foot of the bed and tucked it around Ada. “You should see a
physician.”

“Nay. Rolf...my husband...he says it isn’t
necessary. ‘Tis but a rheum in the head, he says. Master Aldfrith
says so, too
—
and he’s a surgeon.”

“Still, I think you should ask to
see
—
”

“I did
—
the last time Rolf was up
here, back before Lent. But he won’t send for one. He says
physicians charge too much, and that I’m not really as sick as I
seem, that I’m just...” Ada let out a shaky breath. In a tone of
weary defeat, she said, “He says I’m just melancholy, and making
too much of a head cold. They both do, Rolf and the surgeon.” She
shook her head. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear these
things.”

“I don’t mind. Is it true? Are you
melancholy?”

Ada closed her eyes and nodded.

“Do you think that’s all that’s wrong with
you?” Joanna asked. “Apart from a head cold?”

Ada shrugged. “Perhaps. I suppose so. Master
Aldfrith, he tried to explain it to me, but it’s so confusing, all
that business about humors and the stars and the balance of earth
and water and fire and so forth. My sister Phillipa would
understand
—
she’s very clever
—
but I just can’t
make sense of it. Apparently it has much to do with an excess of
black bile. That’s what’s making me melancholic
—
that’s why
I think I’m sicker than I am.”

“Ah.” Joanna couldn’t completely discount
the theory; if the soul was ailing, could not the body suffer as
well?

“Rolf says it has naught to do with humors
and such. He says I want attention and...and pity, and...and...”
She shook her head. “You didn’t come here to listen to this. I have
no one to talk to except for Aethel, my maid
—
that’s why
I’m subjecting you to this. You want to leave, and
I’m
—
”

“No, I don’t.” But nor did she intend to
solicit a commission from her; Ada le Fever was far too ill to take
an interest in a new seat cushion or purse. Lifting the book down
from the little shelf over the bed, she opened it and found it to
be a psalter.

“My uncle gave me that,” Ada said. “He’s a
canon of Notre Dame.”

“It’s beautifully done,” Joanna said,
admiring the gilded capitals and borders on the neatly inked pages
of tissue-thin vellum. “Do you read from it often?”

Ada shook her head. “My eyes...it hurts to
read. I used to, though. I love the psalms.”

“Would you like me to read to you?” Joanna
asked, taking a seat.

“You can read?”

“Aye.”

Ada looked at her speculatively. “You don’t
seem like any merchant’s wife I’ve ever met.”

Joanna smiled. “Nor do you.”

Ada returned her smile. “Yes, I’d like for
you to read to me. I’d like that very much.”

* * *

The bells of vespers were pealing when
Joanna left the le Fever house, stealing out the same way she’d
stolen in. She had just enough time to pay a call on Rose Oxwyke
before heading home to start supper.

There was a lovely garden behind the
Oxwykes’ grand stone house, with a slate path leading to the back
door. Joanna was halfway down the path when the door opened. Young
Damian Oxwyke emerged, wearing his black mantle and felt hat, his
jaw set, his eyes glinting.

Joanna nodded as he passed her. “Good
afternoon, Master Damian.”

“Mistress,” he muttered, slamming the gate
on his way out.

From the back stoop, Joanna watched him
stalk across the croft and into the alley. Turning toward the door,
she raised her hand to knock, but hesitated when she heard the
muffled bellowing of Lionel Oxwyke’s voice from within. “He’s been
sneaking over there to see her! He didn’t even try to deny it!”

His wife said something in a high, wheedling
tone that Joanna couldn’t make out.

“Of
course
my bloody stomach is
bothering me,” he raged. “It’s on fire, and it’s that boy’s
fault.”

Rose Oxwyke tried again to placate her
husband, but he would have none of it.

“Damn him for his impudence!” the money
changer roared. “Damn him! Damn him to hell!”

Joanna turned around and walked swiftly
away. Perhaps she would try to visit Rose Oxwyke some other
time
—
some time when her husband wasn’t home. Of course, if
this fruitless afternoon was any indication of the kind of success
she’d have seeking commissions from the local matrons, she should
simply abandon the idea right now. She’d closed her shop all
afternoon for what was beginning to look like a doomed
enterprise.

But if she couldn’t find some better way to
support herself than the shop, what would become of her once
Graeham Fox’s four shillings ran out? Penniless women did not fare
well anywhere, but particularly in a city like London. No wonder so
many women ended up spreading their legs for tuppence. Could Joanna
make her living that way if the only option was starvation? If
things kept on as they were, she would find herself facing that
choice by next winter.

According to Hugh, all she needed was to
marry the right man, and her problems, financial and otherwise,
would disappear. The more she thought about it, the more sense it
made. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Robert of
Ramswick as a potential husband; he hadn’t contacted her since the
fair, but Hugh assured her he meant to. She’d been humoring Hugh
when she told him she’d think about Robert’s suit
—
if and
when he broached it
—
but upon cool-headed reflection, there
was a measure of merit to the idea.