Twelfth Night (9 page)

Her days were busy. She had begun to help
Connie with the domestic chores, which during this season consisted
mainly of supervising the cooking and serving of enormous amounts
of food for each day’s banquet, and the cleaning of the resulting
mess in the kitchen and great hall so preparations could begin for
the next feast. As Aline had noticed soon after her arrival at
Shotley, for all her timidity with Blaise, Connie was a competent
chatelaine and the servants willingly obeyed her. Only the
temperamental cook occasionally challenged Connie’s authority in
the matter of food, but even she accepted offers of help with
peeling or chopping, or the apparently endless grinding of
ingredients with mortar and pestle. Aline quickly learned how to be
helpful, for she did not find the castle kitchen greatly different
from the old-fashioned one that she remembered in her grandparents’
house when she was a girl.

The differences, of course, were in the areas
of refrigeration and cooking methods. At Shotley, all the cooking
was done in a huge open fireplace fitted with iron hooks so kettles
could be hung over the open flames. There were also what looked
like large trivets on long legs, on which iron pots were set for
slower cooking. There was also a system of spits of varying sizes,
and a young boy whose chief duty was to keep the spits turning so
the meat would roast evenly.

Next to the fireplace an oven had been built
into the stone wall and in it bread, meat pies, and pastries were
baked. A heavy wooden table sat in the center of the kitchen, a
chopping block off to one side. The storage cellars where the
fruits and grains of the harvest were kept were directly below the
kitchen. Just outside the kitchen door was a smokehouse for meats,
and a coldhouse for cream and eggs and butter.

Aline found the kitchen a most efficient
arrangement. Working there and talking with Connie, the cook, the
spitboy, or the other servants, she felt a warm sense of belonging.
Since Connie and Adam accepted her, no one else questioned her
presence at Shotley.

The servants did think she was peculiar for
insisting upon a bath every day. When she offered to go to the
bathhouse, Connie was horrified.

“Oh, no,” she cried. “Aline, you cannot. All
the men of the castle go there, and sometimes a woman who lives in
the outer bailey joins them. Adam says it was different in the days
when Lady Judith was alive, but I have not had the courage to try
to change the bathhouse. When I wish to bathe, I do it in my own
chamber, and so should you.”

Thus admonished, Aline allowed herself the
luxury of hot baths in her private chamber and she afterward
anointed herself with the rose-scented lotion Connie had given her.
She now used a concoction of rosemary and mint to clean her teeth,
and after washing her hair she rinsed it with chamomile water. Adam
had commented several times on how sweetly her hair and skin
smelled, so she spared no effort to make herself attractive to him.
She noted that, following her example, he came to each day’s feast
freshly scrubbed and shaved and emitting the piney tang of
rosemary. She loved him all the more for his decision to please her
in this way.

So quickly that she scarcely noticed the
passing of time, the holiday season slipped by until it was the
early morning before the Twelfth Night celebration that would bring
Christmas to an end. Adam and Aline entered the great hall together
as usual, only to discover that Blaise and Connie had not yet
appeared.

“How glad I am to see you, Lady Aline,”
called a maidservant. “We have a crisis in the kitchen. The cream
has curdled and Cook threatens to leave. Lady Constance is still in
her chamber. Will you come and see to it?”

“At once,” Aline said, “though I believe Lady
Constance would advise Cook to put mint into the cream to sweeten
it again, and tell her she ought to know that without making such a
great fuss.” As she left Adam’s side, he caught her chin in one
hand and gave her a quick kiss.

“You see,” he said, “neither they nor I can
get along without you. How quickly you have learned how to sweeten
both the cream and our lives.”

Laughing, she hurried to the kitchen to find
the tearful cook threatening not only to leave the castle forever,
but to beat the spitboy with a large wooden spoon. It took her some
time to settle their dispute and to determine that the cream was
not curdled at all, but only needed more whipping.

“I know you are weary,” she said to the cook.
“You are perhaps the person in this castle who has worked the
hardest during these last two weeks, and I know you are anxious
about completing all of today’s chores before noontime. If you can
work long enough to produce just one more of your marvelous feasts,
then tomorrow you may take a well-earned rest.”

“Someone forgot to put a bowl of milk and a
scrap bread out for the fairies last night,” sniffed the cook with
one eye on the spitboy, whose duty this was. “The fairies were
annoyed and placed a spell on the cream so it would curdle and not
whip properly.”

“My grandfather once told me that fairies
cannot work their enchantments during the blessed Christmas
season,” Aline said, silently blessing Gramps for imparting this
particular bit of folklore to her. She knew better than to try to
argue about any superstition. She had seen enough food left for the
fairies, or salt thrown over Cook’s left shoulder when it was
spilled, had heard enough special prayers and whispered graces to
know the kitchen ran on magical belief as well as on practical
common sense and tasty recipes. Her comment about the sacred season
apparently pacified the cook, who sent the spitboy back to his work
of turning a haunch of venison.

“As for you,” Cook said to one of the kitchen
wenches, “do not let your basting brush rest, or the meat will be
dry and not to Lord Adam’s liking. Oh! Good day to you, my lord,”
she broke off, staring toward the door.

Adam stood there, surveying the busy scene.
At the cook’s exclamation all work stopped, for Adam never came to
the kitchen. This was the domestic side of the castle, and thus the
province of the lady of the castle.

“Forgive the intrusion,” Adam said, treating
the cook with the respect she considered her due from her master.
“Lady Aline, are you able to leave your work? There is something I
want you to see.”

“I think all is well here.” Aline smiled at
the cook. “The feast is in excellent hands.” She followed Adam
through the screens passage from the kitchen to the great hall.
They came out beside the dais and the high table.

“Look there.” Adam pointed to the other end
of the hall, where Blaise and Connie stood together before the
fire. Connie was just giving her husband a cup of wine and a plate
containing bread and cheese. The grin on Blaise’s face could have
warmed the entire hall. He put Connie’s food offerings down on a
nearby bench, then drew his wife into his arms for a long kiss.

“They came in together just a few moments
ago,” Adam said. “We need not ask what has caused Connie’s face to
glow as though a hundred candles were shining in her eyes, or why
Blaise looks like a proud conqueror.”

“I’m so happy for them.” Aline turned her
head to look at Adam. “And for you. Now you will have the peaceful
home you want.”

“And I have you.” Adam wound his arms around
her from behind, pulling her back against his chest. “You have
brought blessings beyond measure into my life, Aline.” His lips
brushed her ear and then her throat. “Dear lady, might I coax you
upstairs for an hour or two?”

Aline was tempted. The touch of Adam’s mouth
on her skin, his one arm around her waist and other arm sliding
upward to press against her breasts, all made her heart beat
faster. She felt the melting warmth begin deep inside her. She
opened her lips to whisper that she would, indeed, escape with him
to his chamber, and do it gladly.

But their swiftly rising desire was not to be
fulfilled just yet, for Connie had seen them.

“Aline! I am sorry to be late and leave all
the morning’s work to you, but it was so – I mean, we were – oh,
dear. Oh, dear.” The stream of words stopped abruptly, with both of
Connie’s hands against her flaming cheeks. But she wasn’t crying.
As Adam had noted, her eyes were shining.

“Good day to you, Daughter.” Releasing Aline,
Adam kissed Connie on the cheek.

“Good morning my lord. I am sorry to be
tardy. Truly, I did not mean –“ Connie’s face was by now bright
red. Adam wagged a finger at her.

“Enough. You need not apologize if your
husband has kept you long abed. It is his privilege. And, Connie, I
have asked you many times to call me Father, as Blaise does. Since
you never knew your own father, I hoped you would be glad to find
one in me, but if you cannot bring yourself to call me as I wish,
then Adam will do. ‘My lord’ is much too formal between close
family members.”

“I think I could call you Father now,” Connie
whispered with a tremulous smile. “Now I feel worthy to do so –
Father.”

“Thank you. It means much to me. Aline, I
believe Connie wishes to speak with you in private, so you and I
will finish our discussion later.”

“Yes, my lord,” Aline replied demurely, and
had in return a wink from her love before he took himself off to
join his son. As far as she could tell, in the manner of men in any
period of history, they did not talk about what had happened
between Blaise and Connie. Adam merely clapped his still-grinning
son on the shoulder and said something about seeing to an ailing
horse, and off they went together to the stables.

Connie was much more verbose than the men.
She threw herself into Aline’s arms, hugging her hard.

“Oh, Aline, it was so wonderful! Blaise was
marvelous, so tender and gentle at first, and this time I was not
frightened when he became fierce. It was like sailing to the stars!
And cares for me. He said he does. He said I have changed from a
silly fool into an interesting young woman. He even promised to
take me to Normandy when spring comes. I am so happy!” She stopped,
looking hard at Aline. “Why did no one ever tell me it could be
like that? If I had known, I would not have been so frightened
these past months. I would not have refused Blaise so often, nor
believed that I must only endure what was pleasure for him.”

“Love is something each woman must discover
for herself, in her own way,” Aline said.

“I have watched you and Adam together.”
Connie sounded just the slightest bit resentful. “It has been so
easy for you.”

“No, it has not,” Aline told her. “You don’t
know this, Connie, but many years ago I was married. I was even
more unhappy than you and Blaise were. With Adam, I also had to
learn to set aside my fears and trust him.”

“Are you happy now?” Connie asked. “I want
you to be happy with Adam.”

“I am,” Aline said. “I’ve never been so happy
before.”

“So it is with me.” Connie hugged her again.
“This morning, for the very first time, I feel like a true
woman.”

Twelfth Night was different from the other
days of Christmas. On this last day of the holiday season, the
servants ruled the castle from midday to midnight, while all those
usually in authority acted as servants. On the morrow the castle
would return to sobriety once more and all the festive greenery
would be removed and burned, but for this one afternoon and night a
hilarious madness reigned.

Displaying a fine sense of the ludicrous, the
servants chose the spitboy to be their Lord of Misrule during the
festivities. In an uproariously foolish ceremony they crowned him
with a lopsided homemade circlet of leather trimmed with pieces of
multicolored glass for jewels. They then installed him at the high
table in the lord’s chair and placed the cook on the lady’s chair
beside him as his consort. To her credit, the cook accepted this
accolade with a graciousness worthy of a true queen. Servants and
ordinary men-at-arms filled the other chairs along the high table
and at the upper ends of the two lower tables. Adam, his family,
the priest, secretary, the captain of the guard, and officers of
the men-at-arms, along with a few others who held important offices
at the castle were relegated to places below the salt and they were
not allowed to sit down until after they had served the meal.

Adam himself carried in the haunch of venison
and carved it for his people. Blaise passed meat pies. Connie
poured wine, and Aline had a huge bowl of vegetable stew and a
ladle with which to serve it. The brawny captain of the guard was
delegated to carry the silver tray containing dainty sweetmeats,
which he did with good humor. Several barrels of wine were
broached, and there was plenty of ale, cider, and perry.

During the afternoon rowdy games were played
in the spaces between the tables. A group of men-at-arms sang a
series of funny, if somewhat off-color ditties about the castle’s
inhabitants. Adam’s usually solemn secretary engaged in a game of
leapfrog with two kitchen maids and one of the stableboys. The
mistletoe was all but denuded of its remaining berries, as one
berry was plucked for each kiss stolen beneath it.

“Come and dance with me.” Adam pulled her
into a group of people.

“I don’t know the steps,” she protested.

“You will soon learn them.” He caught her
hands and swung her out, then back into the pattern of the dance
while her new friends laughed and clapped and cheered her on.
Before long she discerned what the pattern was and found she could
keep up with the others.

Aline noticed that never did the servants
carry their merriment too far. They enjoyed a noisy, cheerful day
and made a few observant comments about Blaise and Connie, or Adam
and Aline, but they did nothing that might offend their noble
masters. And when midnight came, like Cinderella with her coach and
horses and footmen, they would all resume their ordinary lives.
Aline thought this night was a wonderful idea, a time for masters
and servants alike to let off steam and release a few discontents
that might otherwise fester through the long winter months yet to
come. In a place so closed in upon itself by cold and snow and ice,
this celebration was needed. For it had begun to snow again, the
second blizzard in twelve days.