The Innocent (22 page)

With a flourish he bowed, handed the pot to Jassy, and was gone.

“Well…” was all that Jassy could manage as the door closed decisively behind the doctor. “Doctor indeed. More like some sort of pander if you ask me.”

“What is a pander, mistress?” asked Anne curiously.

“Nothing you need to know about. Come, girl, your mistress will return shortly, best clothe yourself and make the room straight again.”

Anne found her dress on the peg in the garderobe and dropped it over her head, as Jassy, being especially kind, tidied the little trundle bed at the foot of the bedstead. It was unlike the housekeeper to unbend to this extent and it made Anne curious.

“Come down to the kitchen with me, child. I’m sure Maître Gilles is still out of his bed—he’ll make you a posset with an egg perhaps—you must be famished.”

She was; she had had nothing to eat since morning, and now that she had shaken off the effects of that strange moment in the Abbey, her stomach grumbled for food.

Jassy was wrong. The kitchen was quiet and seemed deserted, though a fire was banked in one of the fire mouths and all the other hearths were neatly laid out ready for next morning’s cooking. Then, as their eyes adjusted to the low light, they saw Corpus asleep under one of the great benches in a heap of rags—snuffling in his sleep like a dog and scratching like one since he lay against one of the great alaunts—the war dogs much favored at court and prized by Mathew—for warmth.

Jassy looked at the old man with a certain sympathy. “There you see, age spares none of us. I remember Corpus when he was young. He was fair to look on then…”

Anne was startled.

“You needn’t look so amazed. He was, when I was a maid like you. And he looked to do well in the service of this house, but then, well…”

“What, Mistress Jassy? What happened?” Anne was curious in spite of herself. Corpus filled her with crawling dread after that night six weeks ago, but she felt a small flicker of pity for him. He was old and deformed and only grudgingly tolerated by the other servants. Soon the day would come when he had no strength left and then…She shuddered.

“It’s a long story, child, one that does credit to your master’s compassion. Corpus has always been a fool, but once he was a skilled cook, as clever as Maître Gilles. But he drank, you see, and stole—well, of course they all do, though I try to keep it in check here—but Corpus overreached himself. He used the profits from skimming the household accounts to keep a doxy for himself outside the household.

Trouble was, the doxy was a boy, a runaway novice from the Abbey.”

Anne was perplexed and Jassy, who had drifted away in the telling of the story, came back to the present.

“It happens, you know, some men love other men…”

“I know that, but he…that is, when Edward was being born, Corpus tried—”

“Tried to jump you? Yes. Of course he does that, disgusting old fool. But he does it out of hate of women. Can’t have what he wants anymore, you see, might as well get what he can.”

Jassy unlocked the bread cupboard as she spoke and found a good part of a quartern loaf. “Get me a small pot, child, and I’ll make us both a treat.”

The housekeeper broke the coarse bread up into the little iron kettle Anne found and then poured on flat small beer plus a quantity of precious loaf sugar and some grated nutmeg, both obtained from Maître Gilles’s special store with keys from the chatelaine swinging from her belt. She even added a little carefully preserved rind from lemons brought from Italy last year. Anne swung the pot over the fire on a trivet, and then, while the posset was heating, the housekeeper beckoned the girl to join her.

Anne was fascinated. Her relationship with the housekeeper had always been formal—she was just another servant the older woman governed with a sometimes heavy hand—and she had no idea why she was being treated so kindly now.

“Don’t stand there gawping, girl.” That tone was much more familiar and Anne hurried to sit down beside Jassy on the old well-used bench—one of the few pieces of furniture in the kitchen.

“There’s much you don’t know about this house, and this family. I’ve known them all my life and little goes on without my knowledge…even what happened to old dogsmeat over there.” The housekeeper was silent for a moment, gathering her thoughts. Anne said nothing, allowing the moment to take its own time. Then Jassy looked searchingly at the girl. “You’re an unusual girl, Anne. Very unusual.”

“Me?” Anne was astonished and her face showed it.

Jassy took pity on her confusion. “Yes, you are, but I think you are honest. Now, I believe that vanity is a curse, since all flesh is grass, but you’ve been given a pleasing face, and a pleasing body—to men, that is—yet you seem not to know that. Or perhaps you pretend well.”

Anne was stung and unwillingly, remembering the shock of Piers’s attacks, said hotly, “Men cause much sadness and terror with their lusts; I would be invisible if I could.”

The housekeeper was startled and began to speak but saw the posset was boiling over. “Ah, now, quickly or it’ll all go to waste!”

Anne rushed to find two wooden bowls and a spoon to share as the housekeeper jumped up to save the liquid from the flames. Soon they were companionably settled in front of the fire again and the housekeeper continued to muse aloud.

“Being young and pretty, well, now, that’s a bit of a blessed bane in a way, though it gives you power, for a while. That’s what I wanted to say to you…after the visit of our good doctor, just gone…” The

“good” was said with just enough asperity to alert Anne.

“What do you mean, mistress?”

“I do not trust Doctor Moss and I shall tell Lady Margaret of my feelings. I believe that our young king has a light fancy where women are concerned and I do not think it was for your health that you were attended by his doctor. It’s said he uses this man as a way into the homes of the girls he covets.”

Anne felt warmth in her groin and a chill down her spine. Fear, uncertainty, pleasure, and guilt became one muddy lump. “You must be mistaken, Mistress Jassy. The king could have no special interest in me. He would care for each of his subjects, given to him by God, as he has cared for me today.”

It was a dignified little speech that Jassy spoiled with a snort of laughter. “You aren’t the first and, believe me, you won’t be the last. Plainly, you’re innocent in the ways of the court and men, and that is a very good thing. If what I suspect is right, Master Mathew should speak to your foster mother—

Deborah, is it? She seems a good and decent woman who has cared for you well. She placed you here in this household for your advantage and she would be the first to agree that it’s time you were safely married before there’s any trouble. Someone here, in the household—a good steady man—would be best for you. Perkin Wye needs a wife; his goody’s been dead more’n a year and he has five children to be seen to. You’d have status then—if he married you—and a secure place in life. I presume you’re dowerless so such a thing should be welcome.”

Married to Perkin Wye! He was an old man and his breath stank. Anne shivered violently. “Oh, please, mistress, please. I don’t want that. Not now, or ever! I’d rather be pledged into a convent than marry a man I did not love.”

Jassy suppressed another snort—no convent would take a girl without a dower. But Anne was so clearly distressed the housekeeper softened momentarily. This silly little thing must have been infected by the ideas of courtly love while reading to Lady Margaret in the solar from all those tales of courteous knights and their fair ladies. Jassy herself had not been unmoved by such stories, on the occasions she’d been invited to bring her mending and listen as well, but any fool could see that life couldn’t work on that basis. If people chose for themselves, chaos would result quick as you could say

“knife.” She sighed. The professional side of her, the woman who ran the household and was concerned by the havoc this girl might unwittingly cause if she found favor from the king, fought with shreds of compassion, long buried. However, practicality would win here, in the end, for it was her duty to tell her master if anything questionable came from Doctor Moss’s visit to Anne, anything at all.

“Look, child, since it makes you so upset I’ll say nothing for this time. But if things should change, if I should hear—” Jassy was interrupted by the scrape of stone on stone behind them as the little concealed door to the solar stair opened.

Guiltily, Anne jumped to her feet, expecting to see her mistress looking for her, but instead a horrifying sight—truly shocking—paralyzed both women.

Aveline was standing there vacant-eyed. She was dressed in a long shift that left her arms bare—

covered once more in new bruises—and the front of her garment was soaked in blood. Her face was chalk white and her hair was wild, eyes staring out above a dreadful wound that had laid open half of one side of her face from her cheek to her mouth.

Anne ran over to her, her first thought that all the blood must be coming from some other, unseen gash, while Jassy ripped a piece out of her undershift to staunch the wound on her face.

Aveline swayed when they reached her, as though she might fall. Jassy screamed at Corpus to wake up and find the master and mistress, at once. The old man did as he was told, stumbling to his feet in a daze, but one look at Aveline sent him at a run out of the kitchen door, while Anne lowered Aveline to the floor and ripped open the front of her shift, trying to find where all the blood was coming from.

However, the only damage to Aveline’s poor thin body was the deep cut on her face, and while Anne rushed to get water to clean it, Jassy implored Aveline to speak to her, to tell her what had happened.

But Aveline would not, or could not talk. The gash on her face was very deep and Jassy knew it must be hurting the girl as she did her best to clean it, but Aveline made no sound.

“Anne, bring me linen. Quickly!”

The girl did what she was told, scurrying up the solar stairs. She burst into the chamber and began riffling through the little coffer just as her mistress entered with Corpus hot on her heels. Margaret’s voice was sharp with fear: “What is all this nonsense, Anne? Where is Aveline?”

Unwilling to waste time with talk, Anne led the way at a run down the perilous, shallow stairs where, in the kitchen, Jassy was supporting Aveline across her lap, still trying to get her to speak, to no avail.

“There now, Aveline, here’s Lady Margaret. We’ll just get you cleaned up and you can tell us what’s happened.” But the housekeeper looked at her mistress with a terrified expression as Margaret hurried over to her daughter-in-law. Beside Aveline on the floor there was a hunting knife with blood all over it.

Margaret’s bowels filled with ice. “Anne—go to the baby, find out if he’s all right. Now!”

Anne turned and fled back up the stairs, grabbing a torch from a wall sconce as she went, while her mistress tried, like Jassy, to get Aveline to talk.

For once, Corpus had used the few remaining brains he had. He hadn’t raised the household, only gone to find the master and mistress, so the house was still asleep as Anne ran through the dark upper passages, as she had done all those months ago, to Piers’s chamber, only this time she was running toward him, not running away.

She knew that the baby slept with Melly and the wet nurse in a small chamber that was separated from the main room—which contained Piers and Aveline’s bed—by a sturdy plank door. However, the little space the three of them occupied could only be reached by passing through the greater room. When Anne arrived breathless outside the bedroom, relief flooded through her, for she could hear the baby screaming. He was alive! And she could hear Melly yelling as well.

The door to the main room was standing open and Anne hurried in. It was dark and as she rushed toward the door that led to the baby’s room she stumbled over something and fell full length on the floor. Despite the rushes on the floor she hit her head quite hard—it took her a moment to realize she was lying with her face inches from someone else’s. Piers. Open eyes stared into her own and everywhere there was the iron smell of blood.

Anne screamed as she scrambled to her feet, and then, when Piers did not move, she snatched up the torch, which had fallen dangerously among the dry rushes on the floor, and held it high above her head, ready to fend him off.

It was then she saw that the whole front of his body had been slashed and slashed again with a knife and there was blood wherever she looked—the bed, the floor, the rushes.

“Who is it? Who’s there?” It was Melly’s terrified voice she heard over the screams of the child and that snapped Anne out of the desire to howl with terror.

“It’s me, Melly—Anne. It’s all right now, shush…” Saying the words automatically, Anne brought herself to touch Piers’s face, putting her fingers near his mouth. Was he breathing? No. And his face felt cold. Time to tend to the living.

She ran to the plank door and saw that a wooden bar had been dropped across the outside. Melly and the baby, and the wet nurse, had been locked in, but by whom?

Feverishly, she hauled at the bar and in her panic found it hard to pull it out of the catches. At last, she opened the door and found Melly and the wet nurse both trying to soothe the screaming child. He was frightened but unharmed.

Melly stumbled over to Anne, sobbing bitterly. “Oh, Anne, it was so dreadful. He was beating her again and she wouldn’t beg for him to stop—that’s what he always wanted—and then she started screaming.

God’s handmaid, she called herself, and then he must have really hit her because she howled like an animal, and then he started screaming…and then…it all went quiet…Aaaah, Jesu…”

Melly’s shocked sob was swallowed in silence as the women looked down at Piers, dead in a spill of moonlight.

Anne gathered her wits. “Give me Edward.”

With Anne clutching the child, the three women fled from the room, leaving Piers to stare sightlessly into the rushes of his floor, as his blood slowly dried and stiffened the hangings of his marriage bed.

Chapter Fifteen