John Saturnall's Feast (20 page)

‘ . . . but he may be handsome,’ a girl's voice was saying. ‘He may be charming.’

That was Gemma, thought John. And the other one . . .

But it was all too clear who the other one was.

‘A cowherd may be handsome, Gemma,’ answered a haughty voice. ‘More likely he has dung on his boots and a straw in his mouth.’

‘Piers Callock is no cowherd,’ Gemma answered. ‘He is the son of an earl. Sir Hector of Forham and Artois. Ginny heard Mister Pouncey telling Mrs Pole. Piers will be of age next year. He has been to Court.’

‘To Court?’ A curious note entered Lucretia's voice.

‘And he rides very well,’ Gemma continued. ‘As well as any on his father's estate, Mister Pouncey said.’

‘Then one might almost say,’ Lucretia rocked back and forth on her heels, ‘that he is a man?’

At shoe level, John felt a bubble of laughter try to force its way up. He choked it back.

‘Almost,’ Gemma agreed. ‘It is only that . . .’

But the boys never heard Gemma's reservation for at that moment Lucretia rocked forwards more vigorously. John heard a sharp rip.

‘Oh, by the Cross!’

‘Lucy!’ admonished a scandalised Gemma.

In the scullery, John stifled a snort. Behind him, he heard Philip do the same. Above, Lucretia Fremantle's boots shuffled back and forth as she tried to free herself. At last Gemma knelt to unhook the snagged calico. Her face appeared, framed upside down in the window. At the sight of John and Philip she frowned. Abruptly Lucretia's hem came free. Her skirt jerked up. John found himself looking at the whitest ankle he had ever seen.

A moment later the red hem dropped. The black boots stomped off and the brown boots followed, leaving nothing but the scent of rose water. John looked down again at Philip.

‘I didn't mean to lie to you,’ he said.

Philip looked up. ‘About what?’

‘My ma,’ he said awkwardly. ‘About what happened. It wasn't like I said . . .’

‘And how was it?’

He told Philip everything: how his mother had served at the Manor then returned to the village with John in her belly, how she had gathered plants and given him lessons on the slopes, how Ephraim Clough and the others chased him. He described Cassie and Abel Starling. Once he began he could not stop. The words spilled from his lips as he told how the sickness spread, how Marpot's examinations began. Then their expulsion, Buccla's Wood and the ruined palace. Last of all he told the story he had heard in its broken walls. Of Saturnus's garden and Jehovah's priests. Of Bellicca and Coldcloak. Of the Feast.

‘I thought my ma had kept the Feast for me,’ John said. ‘She had taught it to me. When she said it was for everyone, I ran. And when I came back . . . ‘

John fell silent.

‘But she sent you here,’ Philip said. ‘It wasn't to wash dishes, was it?’

John shook his head. ‘She served here before,’ he said. ‘But something happened. Something made her leave.’ He remembered his mother's bitter voice telling him of the man who could speak any tongue. Warning of those who bent the Feast to their purpose. She had wanted to tell him more. But he had run from her . . .

‘Scovell knew her,’ John continued. ‘That's why he took me in, I reckon.’ He looked at Philip. ‘It wasn't for John Saturnall's famous nose.’

He chanced a smile but Philip dropped his gaze.

‘I'm not like you, John,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You find it easy. But I can't stick my nose in a pot and tell you everything in it. No one banged a ladle when Philip Elsterstreet joined the kitchens. My first winter here I was in the yard plucking birds. It took me half a year just to get into Firsts. These kitchens are all I've got. And now we're stuck in the scullery . . .’

His voice trailed off but the complaint sank into John's thoughts. Philip had helped him when no one else had. The boy had risked his place. And this was his reward. He looked at his friend.

‘I'm sorry,’ John said. ‘We'll get out of here. I promise.’

An awkward silence fell. Both boys looked at their feet. At last John glanced away, craning his neck to peer out of the scullery window where sunlight glowed off the deserted paths. The Rose Garden was empty. Gemma and Lucretia were gone. He looked this way and that to make sure.

‘I thought you weren't so fond of our Lady Lucy?’

Philip's half-smile had returned.

‘I'm not,’ John retorted.

‘You were staring at her.’

‘I was staring at her
foot,’
John corrected him. ‘I hope I never see the rest of her as long as I live.’

Lucretia slid the fine linen drawers up her bare white legs, pulled them over her hips and tied the drawstring about her waist. Pointing a toe, she slipped the first stocking over her foot, smoothed the fine silk over her calf then reached for a garter and tied it below her knee. The other stocking and garter followed. Half-clothed, she contemplated herself in the pier glass.

Pale blue veins showed faintly through her white skin. Her hipbones jutted. Her mouth was too wide and her lips too thin while the hair falling over her shoulders better belonged in a horse's tail. The finer down on her arms had darkened that summer along with some sparse wisps at the base of her belly. Gemma had more, she knew. A dark smudge she glimpsed when they undressed together. And her maid had breasts. Small but plump, while her own remained fiat as a pair of plates. She stared in the glass. At the sight, verses from the book she had taken popped into her head.

Have ye beheld, with much delight,

A red rose peeping through a white?

Or else a cherry, double-graced,

Within a lily's centre placed?

Or ever marked the pretty beam

A strawberry shows half-drowned in cream?

No cherries ‘double-graced’ adorned Lucretia's chest. Her dark brown nipples more resembled bullets. She made a face at the girl in the mirror then glanced at the blanket chest where the volume lay concealed.

A prayer book, she had thought, marching back to her room. Or a manual of devotions. Mrs Gardiner never tired of telling her how devout her mother had been. In truth, she did not care what the little volume contained. Her mother's hands had held it. That was enough.

The spine had crackled as she opened the covers. The chamber's musty odour rose from the page. A commonplace book, she thought, seeing handwriting. Pole had one in which she copied out parts of Father Yapp's sermons after chapel, making a great show of her labours and comparing them with Mister Fanshawe's notes.

Sure enough, passages from the Bible filled the first leaves. Notes from homilies and sermons followed. Passages from Bishop Jewel. Her mother had added her own comments.
This way I too am convinced. Or, So the Virtuous also must guard against Temptation.

Her mother's words, thought Lucretia. But as the passages multiplied she began to skip. Then she turned a page and looked down at a different hand. These letters were bolder than her mother's rounded script.

Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That valleys, groves, hills and fields,

Woods, or sleepy mountain yields .
. .

Lucretia's brow furrowed. She was no innocent. She knew as well as the maids why the last tally man had been dismissed when he was caught with a woman from Callock Marwood. And only that spring she had crept into the stables with Gemma when the stallion brought over from Carrboro was put to the mares, staring wide-eyed from behind a bale of hay. Now she gazed again at the words before her. Such devotions as these, she knew, had no place in church. Eagerly she read on.

A belt if straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me and be my love.

Little hearts decorated the margins. Romantic curls and swags hung from the verses that followed. The shepherd would make his lover a bed of roses. He would clothe her in a cap of flowers, a mantle embroidered with leaves and a gown of lambswool. Lucretia imagined her own waist, cinched with woven straw and adorned with studs. Despite herself, she felt her cheeks begin to burn.

‘Gemma!’ she had called from her bed. ‘Come here!’

She hid the book in her blanket-chest, burying it among the folds of lavender-scented wool where Pimpernel, Lady Whitelegs and the others were consigned. Every night, when the last maid retired, the two girls wedged Lucretia's chair against the door and huddled together on the bed.

Let me .feed thee such Honey-sugared Creams

As cool the Quodling's
’scaping Steam

That thy hottest Tempers doth oft-times bake

Then let my cool Words thy Thirst to slake .
. .

‘That's just baked apples in sweet milk dressed up in fancy words,’ Gemma declared. ‘My ma used to feed us them when we were babes.’

They read on. Her father had written out these lines, she knew. Her mother had read them and written more back. Lucretia knew what lay beyond the lovers’ breathless exhalations. But how could such lofty exchanges portend that act she had seen in the stables?

Reign in my thoughts, fair hand, sweet eye, rare voice .
. .

She and Gemma examined their eyes for sweetness in the pier glass. They compared the fairness of their hands. They debated the rarity of their voices. They read until the candle guttered then yawned before Pole the next day. Sitting in the stuffy nursery schoolroom
,
they copied out passages dictated by the governess from
The Offices of Christian Children.
When Pole raised her hand in a furtive wave to Mister Fanshawe below, Lucretia thought of her shepherds and nymphs. The girls exchanged looks and stifled their sniggers. Pole rapped the desk with her rod.

‘Perhaps you wish to make a copy in Latin?’

The shepherds were princes in disguise, Lucretia told herself. The lovers were knights. Lying on her lumpy mattress, she thought of beds of roses. Pulling on her dark green dress, she imagined gowns of fine wool. That winter, shadowy suitors stalked the dusk beyond her ice-rimed window. Alone in bed, she pressed her palms to her cheeks, pretending her hands belonged to another. When Gemma tugged her laces before supper, Lucretia fancied a belt with coral clasps and amber studs was being tightened about her waist.

But the shadowy suitors remained shadows. When Gemma finished dressing her, she descended only to the winter parlour behind the Great Hall. There the usual tray awaited. No honeyed words, only Pole's frozen frown. No Ladies of the Queen's Closet, only Pimpernel, Whitelegs and the others. She had lain all night in the Solar Gallery, dreaming of passionate shepherds or princes in disguise, courtiers who would usher her away from Buckland . . .

Instead a ragged boy had burst in.

She recalled his tufted scalp and filthy blue coat, drawn about him to hide the foul state of his breeches. But he was well made beneath the dirt, she conceded. His dark eyes had watched her carefully. Strong cheekbones lent his face an almost noble cast. A prince in disguise might disguise himself thus, she had fancied for an instant. She might have excused his untutored manners, sprawled on the floor instead of standing before her. She might have overlooked his rudeness after she had condescended to conversation. But then her belly had asserted its dominion, trumpeting its hunger. And instead of pretending an unbroken silence or owning to the eruption himself, John Saturn all had laughed at her.

The memory still brought a flush of anger to her cheeks. Half-dressed before the pier glass, she looked down at her traitorous belly and recalled the ruffian's succeeding smirk. Of course she had called out to the servants. She should have screamed the instant he sprawled before her on the floor . . .

But now he was of no account. Gemma's revelation in the Rose Garden had banished him from her thoughts. Not a prince in disguise but a real earl's son was coming to Buckland. And a courtier! One who had actually been to Court.

‘Lucy?’ Gemma stood in the doorway, part-dressed as Lucretia was. ‘Hurry or we'll be late.’

Lucretia picked at a strand of hair. She and Gemma were to show themselves to Mrs Gardiner in rehearsal for Lucretia's presentation to the Callocks. The two girls wriggled into cambric shifts then reached for their stays. Enclosed in the tight-sleeved tunic, Lucretia sucked in her stomach. Gemma slid the stiff plate of the husk into its pouch. She turned to be laced, giving a quick gasp as Gemma pulled on the strings. Their bodices went over the top. Next came skirts, Gemma wrapping the heavy cambric about her mistress's waist, fastening laces to eyelets.

She would powder her face tomorrow, Lucretia decided. She would have Gemma dress her hair as the verses described. She would discipline her stomach with gruel until it submitted to silence. She imagined the youth dismounting his horse, herself in the doorway of the Great Hall, awaiting discovery . . .

Now she was the one in disguise, sewn into her costume and pushed onto Buckland's drab stage to play the part Mrs Gardiner demanded. And behind the housekeeper, Mister Pouncey. And behind the steward, her father. But whatever his purpose, she glimpsed beyond it the glittering world the verses described, where grand ladies glided and maidens were courted. The world her mother had meant for Lucretia herself.