Red Adam's Lady Read online

  “No, my lord,” she declared. “Your lady orders your household.”

  He looked doubtfully at her. “That’s truly your wish? Constance is an idle slut, but I’d not be a tyrant to you, Julitta, and I feared to lay so heavy a burden on you, young and untried.”

  “It’s every woman’s desire to govern her own establishment,” Julitta corrected him, her heart leaping, “and by Our Blessed Lady, here’s need beyond words.”

  “Best borrow Odo and a broom. And now we must stir ourselves to provide for our guests before they are through the gate.”

  7

  The company, to Julitta’s merciless eye, wore the aspect of a flock of hens in a rainstorm; even with due allowance for seasickness and exhaustion, whoever hired them would find these third-rate cutthroats a dear bargain. Baldwin’s acquisitive gaze flicked over the hall, lingered briefly on the paltry display of plate on the sidetable, and surveyed his host and hostess jauntily as the formal greetings were exchanged.

  “I’ve to felicitate you on your bridal, I hear,” he commented, his leer proclaiming he had been regaled with the scandal. “A triumph of virtue, eh, Adam?”

  “I might retaliate in the same terms, but you are my guest. Sweyn!” The garrison’s senior sergeant stepped forward. “Take these fellows, find them dry clothes and fill them with ale. Odo will see to your comfort, Baldwin. Mistress Adela, the women will take you to the bower.” He caught the wondering stare of the little boy, an elf of three or four with his mother’s eyes, and smiled at him. “Hey, my bold sailor! Hot milk and a warm bed for you, and when you wake, will it please you to inspect my castle?” He held out his hand, but the child gazed without comprehension and made no answer.

  “He does not understand you,” his mother said flatly. “He is deaf and dumb.”

  Shock held them all rigid for a moment. “That is great grief,” Red Adam said gently. She looked not at him but at Julitta, who murmured whatever confused words of sympathy came to her and led the procession to the bower. Water steamed and clothes were laid out. An officious girl tried to take the child, and he clung to his mother in panic, the terror in his eyes stabbing to Julitta’s vitals. He must be paralyzed with fear, she reflected, after the storm-driven voyage and the abrupt entry into this strange place.

  “Let be!” Adela ordered sharply. “So many strangers frighten him.” Over the draggled head buried against her breast her face turned to Julitta in command rather than appeal, and the girl nodded.

  “Bring that empty cradle and lay bedding in it,” she ordered. “Gertrude, fetch soap and towels. Eadgyth, Arlette, wait to take these wet clothes to the laundry. I fear they are beyond saving, Mistress Adela—”

  “That’s a slight matter,” the woman replied, deftly peeling the garments from her son’s body, “since most of this past week I’ve reckoned our lives in that case.” She popped him into the large bowl of water and set about him with soap and washclout.

  “Have you all you require?”

  “You’ve been most competently gracious,” she said, glancing up with a grin that had little mirth in it, “and even Red Adam must deplore his wife’s attendance on a routier’s whore and her bastard, my lady.”

  Julitta caught her breath. “You are none the less our guest,” she declared. She had stayed to supervise the women because Constance had ostentatiously withdrawn the hem of her garments from contact with a camp strumpet, however improbably she might claim to be a wife, and the wenches followed her lead as though she were still mistress.

  “On charitable sufferance.” She lifted the child from the bowl. Julitta’s flush scorched up face and neck. The girl Gertrude drew back as from a leper, and she turned ferociously on her.

  “Hand those towels! Don’t dare pretend to be dainty when all here know you for a trollop yourself!” She added coldly to Adela, “I oversee the service because otherwise it would disgrace a bawdyhouse, and I’ll have some decorum in my household.”

  Adela hoisted her child to her knee and swaddled him in a towel. She grinned again. She had magnificent teeth. “If you set about it so forcefully, Lady Julitta, it will be decorous as a nunnery. And now, with your leave, we’ll dispense with your trollops and I’ll cope for myself.” She carried the child, already asleep, to the cradle and laid him down. As she covered him Julitta saw the tenderness in her gaze and forgave her high-handed dealing with Brentborough hospitality. A jerk of her head dismissed the servants to impart their toothsome scandal to the rest of the household, and the two looked at each other across the cradle. In the far corner Hodierne sewed silently, her own cradle creaking faintly under her foot’s rhythmic pressure.

  “We will meet again at dinner, if you are then sufficiently rested,” Julitta said, and withdrew.

  On the stair she admonished her unruly speculations and fixed her mind on her duties. In the hall she found Lady Constance surrounded by serving women all gabbling together, and was pleasurably surprised that they fell silent at sight of her and made motions of dispersal.

  “Lady Constance, it is more than time that I inspected the household,” she announced formally.

  “It shall be my privilege to conduct you, my lady,” the fair woman answered, mounted the dais and held back the tattered hanging that covered the door to the privy stair. Julitta clattered through the keys at her girdle, but before she could discover the right one, the door was swinging open for her without a creak. It had not been locked.

  Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing. That was a grave breach of housekeeping, an incitement to pilfering, and under some circumstances an imperiling of the whole castle, and Constance knew it as well as she did and was blandly awaiting her disapproval. She motioned to the woman to lead the way, conscious of a strong reluctance to have her at her back on a dark stairway. She hesitated, looking oddly at Julitta, and then started down. Julitta circled after her, two floors down the dim spiral to the undercroft’s odorous gloom, with only the scuffle of their shoes and the whisper of their gowns to sound in the stairwell, until a squeak and a giggle above told that at least two of the girls had chosen to follow.

  At the stair-foot a lantern hung on a bracket, its feeble glimmer showing a bunch of rush-dips and half a dozen unlit torches handy on a ledge. Constance opened the lantern, kindled a dip and then a torch, and beckoned Eadgyth to light the way.

  Squat pillars supported the low ceiling. Barrels, bales and bundles were stacked between them and against the walls, leaving narrow alleys for their passage. Squeaks and scuttering, a glint of tiny eyes in the torchlight, a whisk of tails, betrayed rats. The well-housing, carried up to the floor above, loomed like a greater column. A bundle of arrows had broken, scattering shafts across the path. She stooped to gather them together, and noted that they had been lying for some time, for most were damaged by treading feet. The cool dry air was heavy with commingled scents. Predominant was the pungency of wool in grease, warring with the yeasty fragrance of ale, the sharper odor of wine, and the aromas of hides, cheese, tallow and honey, but her nose also detected undertones of mice, musty meal, weevily grain and ill-cured meat that cried alarm to her mind. Matters went badly with the major stores that were held from one year’s end to the next.

  “We must have the rat-catcher down here with his ferrets,” was all she said, as they turned between two tiers of barrels and heard the vermin scurry.

  “He shall be commanded for tomorrow, my lady,” Constance agreed.

  Julitta was noting where and how everything was disposed so that another day she could dispense with guidance. The arrangements were intelligent, the food and drink and stores in constant demand nearest the stairs, but the slovenliness and neglect that pervaded Brentborough had prevailed over the original order. For two or three years no one had troubled over the household, and it was as though a decent housewife had suddenly degenerated into a slattern. Still she said nothing to the woman responsible, but gravely inspected the smith’s stack of bar-iron and a heap of rusty horseshoes in the furthest corner,
and returned to the stairs. She halted at the rank of wine-casks to sound them, moved by a suspicion that proved accurate. Only two remained untapped. A smile was on her mouth as she signed to Eadgyth to extinguish the torch. The end of Reynald de Carsey’s wine-swilling was speedily overtaking him.

  The still-room, in one of the wall-chambers off the hall gallery, was dusty and forlorn, its locked wall-cupboards all but empty of the spices, sugar, dried fruits and almonds, the preserves and syrups, the drugs and purges and remedies that should have ranked there. “Is no one in the household skilled in physic, Lady Constance?” she inquired.

  “No one, since Sir Brien’s wife died last winter, my lady.”

  So they would go into the winter with little to help or comfort the sick; it was already too late in the year for Julitta to procure most of the herbs and simples needed. Still she was silent, which should have been a warning to the seneschal’s wife. Instead it misled her into contempt.

  Julitta was hardly surprised to find few sick in the hovel in the bailey that served as hospital; a groom with a broken leg, a child with fever and a skin rash, and an elderly man wheezing and coughing in a huddle of foul straw and blankets. The girl in charge was willing but ignorant, set to that distasteful duty because she was unfit for other labor. One look at her in a fair light told Julitta that she was far gone in a decline, though she protested desperately that she had naught but a cough and all men knew that a summer cold was hardest to be rid of. She would scarcely last the winter, and Julitta was inwardly furious that the medicines which might have eased her would not be available. Those sick who could drag themselves about their affairs were, she learned, mostly afflicted with fluxes and bellyaches, a sure indictment of water supplies or kitchen practice.

  The dairy was a slut’s rancid domain. The brewhouse was in reasonable order, but that did not surprise her; idleness and ale-swilling had demoralized Brentborough, and a strict limitation of brewing and consumption must be one of her first reforms. The bakery too was not ill-run, though the baker complained of insufficient firing for his ovens. The laundry was a dusty chaos, no drop of water in it and the fire a scatter of cold ashes. Julitta’s wrath mounted. Whatever deficiencies were uncovered, Constance remained shameless.

  The garden under the northern wall’s shelter was well-tended, its grass scythed, fruit trees and bushes staked and trained, beds weeded, hives throbbing with well-doing. The gardener was soon expounding plans for improvement to match Julitta’s.

  “And we must have an ample planting of medicinal herbs.”

  “Aye, m’ lady. And if so be as you’d come by seeds or cuttings in southern parts, I’d try ’em in sheltered corners.”

  “Lady Julitta will have more important considerations on her journeyings, Wilfric,” Constance chided his presumption.

  “But will find time for lesser matters none the less,” Julitta finished, as he stammered apologies. “And you must have a stout lad to help dig.” He escorted her to the gate, snatching a fistful of marigolds as they went and twisting them into a chaplet which he presented on one knee.

  Embarrassed and delighted by the pretty compliment that no man had ever paid her before, she settled the flowers on her head and smiled at Wilfric with a silly sparkle of tears in her eyes. One person in this inimical household was her supporter. It heartened her as she turned towards the kitchen, wearing the marigolds as triumphantly as a tourney queen her crown.

  In the bailey Red Adam was putting his destrier through his paces, cursing the redhaired groom for some sin of omission, and supervising the endeavors of Sir Brien and Sir Giles to turn as unpromising an assemblage of herring-gutted, sheep-witted, duck-footed, cow-fisted mothers’ lapses as ever shambled out of a guardroom into a troop a lord might bear to have behind him. At sight of her he clouted the groom, raised an arm in greeting, and sent his chestnut stallion thundering down on the spearmen muddling through their drill. His scathing denunciation followed her. She was not the only person in Brentborough attempting to remedy the neglect of years.

  Julitta had left the kitchen until last so that the head cook should have no excuse to deem himself persecuted; he had had three hours’ warning to amend his domain’s state. A tightening in her entrails stiffened her as she approached the flimsy wooden shed.

  Stench and uproar smacked her to a standstill on its threshold, and she peered into a very lifelike semblance of Hell. The acrid stink of burning flesh billowed about her, while shrieks of torment and yells of brutal mirth assaulted her ears. Then her eyes adjusted themselves to the gloom; a roast was scorching on a halted spit while the cook belabored the spit-boy’s hinder end with his huge wooden spoon and his acolytes applauded. The lad, head down between the cook’s legs, suddenly twisted his head and sank his teeth behind the man’s knee. Squalling sharply, he jerked away. The boy wrenched free and bolted, swerved round Julitta and sheltered behind her skirts.

  The cook almost rammed her before he realized who stood in his way, and lowered his avenging spoon. He shifted from foot to foot, truculently scowling, while the smoke of burning mutton swirled nauseously about them.

  “While you gawp the roast burns!” Julitta reminded him, and he bellowed at an assistant. The spit turned, and when suffocation no longer menaced her she stepped inside.

  Nothing in her experience matched the kitchen’s state, and she had witnessed what passed for cookery in an army’s tail and had entered a routiers’ den immediately behind its captors. The fires glared on filthy half-naked louts; on tables and chopping blocks black with blood and grease; on unscoured utensils, and on a floor that was a welter of meal, fat, blood, spittle and dung. An acrid reek proclaimed that Odo’s culprit had but conformed to custom, and now that the burned roast’s stink had dissipated some of its pungency, a heavier stench assailed her.

  The cook blocked her passage. She recalled his name. “Stand aside, Godric. I will inspect this midden.”

  He failed to budge. “There’s not time!” His bruised lips did not altogether account for his thickened utterance, but a gust of ale-laden breath explained it when next he opened his mouth. “There’s nobbut an hour to dinner, and all to ready—m’ lady.”

  “Indeed it would be wiser to return later, since we entertain guests,” said Constance.

  Julitta ignored her. “Out of my way and to work!” she snapped, and Godric recoiled from her venom. Lifting her skirts clear of the floor, she marched past him, and Red Adam’s oath exploded from her. “Hell’s Teeth! You’ll cleanse this den before you cook another meal in it!”

  “Cooking’s allus mucky work,” Godric argued, and appealed over her head to her predecessor. “Lady Constance, you’ll bear me out. There’s no keeping a kitchen clean.”

  “True, I know. Godric works well. A certain liberty—”

  “Liberty!”

  “Nay now, m’ lady, there’s nowt amiss wi’ t’ dinner. Lord Maurice never interfered—”

  “Nor would Lord Adam neither!” The girl Thyra pushed belligerently out of the shadows to stand beside the cook. “He’d not come finding fault wi’ t’ dinner still on t’ spit—”

  Beyond noting that the two had plainly dipped from one barrel, Julitta paid her no heed, but thrust between her and the table. She had traced the worst stink to its origin, a heap of heads, hooves and entrails in a corner, humming with blowflies and aquiver with maggots.

  “Holy Mother, I wonder the whole household’s not dead of the flux!”

  “Nobbut the killings from Saturday, m’ lady,” Godric growled.

  “That foul offal should have been thrown to the dogs and swine three days ago.”

  “We’ve been that pressed—”

  “Clear it! Though the only way to purify this lair would be to burn it down.”

  “I doubt Lord Adam granted you authority for such drastic measures, my lady,” Constance declared sweetly.

  That was incitement enough for Godric. “I’ll take orders from none but m’ lord hisself,” he asserted, and the gi
rl behind him sniggered.

  Julitta did not deign to dispute with him. “Mend your manners and set this den to rights,” she commanded, turning to the door. Encountering the girl’s smirk, she checked. “If you loiter here, stay to do kitchen labor!”

  “You’ll not let me visit wi’ me own brother—m’ lady?”

  Julitta glanced from her to Godric, who grinned and nodded.

  “Aye, he’s me brother, own uncle to Lord Adam’s son!” She laid her hands on her belly, so great for one but seven months gone that Julitta wondered whether she carried twins. “And m’ lord for sure won’t have his son born in t’ kitchen, m’ lady!”

  “Kennel where you choose, but outside my bower!” Julitta blazed, and stalked from the kitchen in white fury. The girls flinched away, but Constance billowed serenely after her. Beyond earshot of the kitchen Julitta whirled.

  “Countermanding my orders was an insolence you’ll rue!”

  She smiled in purest malice. “Go whine to Lord Adam, my lady, but he was regretting his charity before he learned he’d wedded a whore’s daughter bred up in an army’s tail.”

  Comprehension came. The whole household, knowing that she had quarreled with Red Adam last night, had instantly concluded that, though he had publicly condoned her assault on Reynald de Carsey, in private he had upheld his friend, and therefore her status was negligible and her authority safe to flout. The realization chilled her rage but did not extinguish it.

  “I am Lord Adam’s wife and mistress here, and you’d best acknowledge it.”

  Constance’s face, its beauty faintly blurred in the merciless daylight, convulsed with despair and malevolence. “Acknowledge you—you to supplant me! A surly wench wedded in penance, and not grace enough to be thankful or to ask advice! And you’ve nothing—not a penny dower, no beauty, no birth, no breeding! And you stand and bid me—Mother of God, where is justice?”