The Book of the Maidservant (13 page)

i
was a fool. The saints didn’t hear my prayers after all. If I had had any inkling how hard this journey would be, I would have run away the first time my mistress mentioned it. In England, at least there were places I could run away
to
. Here, there are only mountains, and beyond them, more mountains.

Wind whistles around cliffs and makes me pull my hood close to my face as I stumble along, alone with my thoughts. Before we left Constance, Father Nicholas saw my mistress. The friar had found her a guide to help her reach Bolzano, an old man from Devonshire, Father Nicholas said. But I don’t know how an old man and a woman can survive this journey alone. What if they don’t make it over the mountains? I look up at the craggy peaks surrounding me, blocking out the sun. If I can’t find my mistress when we get to Bolzano, how will I ever get home?

Our path suddenly opens onto a wide meadow, still green. As we cross it, goats dance away from us. Beyond the meadow, the way narrows and loose shale makes it hard to climb. I slip and bruise my shin on a rock. Limping
along behind the others, I don’t realize they’ve come to a stop until my nose hits Bartilmew’s pack.

A lake blocks our way, but someone must have seen us coming, because on the rocky shore, a man readies his boat. He agrees to take us across, negotiating the price with gestures and nods since none of us can under stand him.

The boat doesn’t seem big enough for all of us, and it tips far more than I would like as I clamber aboard. We all have to sit smashed up against each other. Dame Isabel moves so that she’s next to John Mouse, but he stands and guides me into his seat, taking hold of my arm to steady me. It would be easier to be smug if the boat didn’t choose that moment to rock, pitching me forward in an unbecoming fashion.

I take my place beside Dame Isabel and hold on to the side of the boat for dear life. But the ride turns out to be smooth, and by the time we’ve reached the other side, my shin no longer aches as much.

The boatman points us toward a village where we can find food and a barn to sleep in for the night.

The next evening, we’re not so lucky. Darkness descends when we’re nowhere near a village, and we have to sleep in the open, wrapped in our cloaks, the wind whistling around us and rocks biting into our backs. When I wake, the water I carry in my pig’s bladder is frozen. It stays that way all day long and the next day, besides.

Then, the morning after that, Petrus Tappester increases the pace. Dame Isabel and her husband have trouble keeping up. Father Nicholas pleads with Petrus to slow
down, but he won’t. Finally, the rest of us begin walking more slowly, letting Petrus get far out of sight, even though we all know we should stick together on these paths.

John Mouse becomes our leader over stones and across icy brooks, but he asks Thomas and Father Nicholas for advice about which way to go.

Late in the afternoon, we come to a wide, rushing mountain stream. John Mouse and Thomas search up and down its banks for a good place to cross; there’s no sign of Petrus or where he forded it.

John Mouse pokes his staff at stones in the water, then stretches out a foot. He is halfway across when a rock under him wobbles. He struggles like an acrobat balancing on another man’s shoulders, then collapses into the icy water, his head striking a rock.

Thomas is in the stream instantly. The water batters his legs, and he slips on stones. He pulls John Mouse’s head above water, but I don’t see how he’ll get him back to shore. I lift my skirts to rush into the water, but Bartilmew pushes me back and wades through the rapids.

Together, he and Thomas drag John Mouse through the water and over the rocks. They heave him onto the bank, where his body lies in a crumpled heap.

“He breathes,” Thomas says.

Father Nicholas kneels beside him, praying. I whip off my cloak and lay it over him, whispering a prayer.

“Fire,” Bartilmew says.

There’s hardly any fuel, just bracken and twigs, but I rush to gather them. My hands shake as I pull out my flints and a few bits of wool, but I get a flame going.

I am spreading wet garments on the stones before the fire when John Mouse groans and opens his eyes.

“Blessed be God,” Dame Isabel says, and bursts into tears.

Tears spring to my eyes, too, and I murmur another prayer to the Virgin.

As I watch, John Mouse tries to sit up and quickly lowers his head again, groaning. Thomas leans toward him.

“Thomas. When did you multiply yourself?” John Mouse says, and shuts his eyes.

“How’s your head?” Thomas asks.

“Two hundred stonemasons are building a cathedral inside it. All hammering at the same time.” He shivers. Al though he jests, his voice quavers.

Dame Isabel’s eyes widen. She’s thinking what I’m thinking, I’m sure—what if he catches a fever?

“Well, amicus, have a master bring those journeymen under control while we dry our clothes. Next time you want a swim, may I suggest summer?”

“It’s God’s punishment for leaving behind the holy woman,” Bartilmew says, the longest speech I have heard him make.

“Nonsense,” Dame Isabel’s husband says. “It’s that fool who went on ahead—it’s Petrus Tappester’s fault.”

“We should thank God we are all alive,” Father Nicholas says. He begins to pray. I drop to my knees. So does Bartilmew. Side by side, Dame Isabel and her husband sink to the ground, and Thomas folds his hands in prayer.

When John Mouse can walk, shakily and with the help
of Thomas and Bartilmew, we set out again. Crossing the stream takes us forever, and even after that, our progress is painfully slow. John Mouse sees two stones for every one the rest of us see, and he says the stonemasons inside his head will take no rest. We stop every few steps for him to catch his breath.

A few paces beyond the stream, the path turns sharply. Just after the turn, we come upon a pile of four stones set up like a little tower—a waymark. We pass three more of them as we walk.

“Look!” Thomas calls. We can see a building atop a steep incline, and as the light fades, we hear bells.

We follow the bells, moving more and more slowly as the sky darkens and John Mouse grows weaker.

Three figures appear on the path ahead of us, and as they come toward us out of the darkness, I can make out the shapes of Petrus Tappester and two monks.

Petrus and one of the monks take John Mouse’s arms over their shoulders and drag him to the hospice, the building we can see. Here in the midst of the mountains, the other monk tells us, monks have built a place for travelers like us. The brothers who live in the priory have vowed to serve pilgrims. Their infirmarian will look after John Mouse.

I hear Bartilmew mumbling a prayer and Father Nicholas saying one aloud. I add my voice. We all do. Never has a hospice appeared at such a moment of need.

We are treated to warm porridge, which I don’t even have to serve. The monks act like I’m a pilgrim, not a servant—I get to sit on a bench and stretch my feet toward
the fire while my gown dries. Then they show us to warm beds with plenty of blankets. This is what Heaven must feel like.

In the morning, we go to the chapel to hear Mass. I know I’m not the only one who prays for John Mouse, but I doubt anyone else says a prayer for my mistress. Except maybe Bartilmew.

Then we gather before the fireplace for another meal. While we eat, the monk who speaks English tells us what the infirmarian has said about John Mouse. It will be several days—perhaps weeks—before he can leave.

“If you’re to get over the mountains before the snow and avalanches trap you, every day counts,” he adds.

“We can’t break up our party,” Dame Isabel says. “We have to wait for him.” I look at her face. When we left Zierikzee, she was pink and fat and healthy. Now her skin is as rough and brown as mine from the sun and wind. Her face looks drawn and frightened. When she speaks, she avoids her husband’s gaze.

“We’re leaving, and we’re doing it today,” Petrus Tappester says.

“You’ll go without me, then,” Thomas says.

“And without me,” Dame Isabel says, staring fiercely into the fire.

“My dear,” her husband says, but she cuts him off with a wave of her hand.

“We vowed to stay together and help each other. We can’t leave without him,” she says.

Where was that vow when they kicked my mistress out of the company?

The monk settles the battle for us. We can’t all stay here for the winter, he tells us. “You, yes,” he says, pointing at Thomas. “But not the rest of you.” He says the hospice has to be ready for other travelers in need, so we must move on.

Dame Isabel lowers her head, and as I turn, I see a tear hesitating on the tip of her eyelash.

Tears prick at my eyes, too. Go on without John Mouse? As I gather my pack, the tears spill over. What if I never see him again? I wipe at my nose, but it does no good.

Does he remember that we share a name day? Or the song he turned from Latin into English for me? I touch my arm where he put his hand on it so long ago, when I was sick on the English Sea. Now I know what he meant when he said, “Dreams, dreams, they mock us with their flitting shadows.” Dreams I didn’t even know I had evaporate as I think of the road ahead, and of John Mouse here in the infirmary without me.

i
t takes us fifteen more days to reach Bolzano. So says Father Nicholas, although Petrus Tappester argues that it was only fourteen days. Without the warmth of John Mouse’s smile, I am too cold to count the days of our misery.

I know that two nights we camped under rocks, and I awoke to find snow on my cloak and my fingers too stiff to build a fire. And that because I couldn’t get a fire going the first night, Petrus threatened me.

Bartilmew helped me, showing me how to drop the glowing char-cloth into a bird’s nest of kindling so it wouldn’t blow out in the wind. The next night that we spent outdoors, my fire caught so quickly that Petrus never had a chance to complain.

The monks told us to follow the path marked by the little towers of stone, which would take us from hospice to village to hospice. If we had followed their advice, Dame Isabel’s gown wouldn’t have caught on fire.

On one of our nights outside, she got too close to the flames trying to get warm. Bartilmew stamped out her
burning gown fast enough that she wasn’t burned, but the singed edges make her even more sour than usual.

If she is sour, like an apple eaten too early, Petrus Tappester is as rotten as an apple whose core has been gnawed by a wasp. He’s the one who ordered the rest of us to follow him on a trail of his own devising, away from the waymarks. We nearly froze for his folly and spent two nights in the snow.

Our mornings begin with arguments, our dinners are spiced with quarrels, our suppers are served with squabbles like large helpings of thistles. Surely God will never allow Petrus Tappester into the Holy Land after all the things he has said and done. A pilgrimage is supposed to be a kind of penance, but he’ll need to do penance for his pilgrimage. We all will. Maybe even me.

Descending is as hard as climbing, except for the knowledge that each step takes us closer to Bolzano, with its warm beds and hot food. Snow and icy rocks begin to give way to scraggly trees, and trees to snow-covered fields. Curls of smoke and crowing roosters signal farms and villages. We sleep in barns, warmed by cows and goats.

One night in a village, everyone sleeps in an inn. I survey the kitchen, trying to find the best place to curl up, when the inn’s maidservant, who must be about Cicilly’s age and has black braids that shine in the firelight, takes me by the hand and leads me out and down the snowy street. We stop in front of the huge village oven, built right into the mountainside. She opens the door, touches the warm stone, and climbs in, gesturing for me to follow.

There’s room for us both, and the heat left over from
the day’s baking seeps into my back, my legs, my aching bones. The smell of warm bread envelops me. In sleep, I am home with Rose on her baking days and the warmth of our garden in summer.

Just as light begins to seep around the door’s edges, an old woman with eyes deep in her wrinkled face shoos us out, but she smiles and gives us each a hunk of barley bread that she has tied up in her apron. We race back to the inn.

After a warm night and kind strangers, I find my way over the rocks easily all day long, my head full of the sound of John Mouse’s laughter, the sight of him winking at me.

Then, after fifteen days, or fourteen if you believe Petrus Tappester, we arrive at the hospice in Bolzano.

My mistress isn’t there.

“Too soon,” Bartilmew says when he sees me looking through the dormitory. “Wait.”

That’s what he says, but what if she’s lost in the snow somewhere? What if she has fallen down a cliff or been overtaken by robbers? What if the mercenaries found her? I pray to St. Margaret to keep her safe.

When I go back to the common room, a pile of clothes greets me. “Those need to be washed,” Dame Isabel says. “And some need mending.”

“Where’s our supper? Hurry up, girl,” Petrus says.

I want to kick the pile of clothes and storm out of the hospice. Don’t they think I get tired? Don’t they know how hungry and cold I am?