Maid Marian (27 page)

“And the next word from Hugh was that he had died?”

He nodded, but said nothing. I was relieved to see that I needn’t be the one to put the notion of a murdering mother into his head—’twas a thought he’d clearly had already.

Chapter Twenty-three

F
ROM THAT DAY FORWARD,
Stephen and I found time to work with the quarterstaff each rainy day, and as there were many that June and July, I learned a good deal from our chats in the stable. I was surprised to see that Stephen reminded me more of myself than any person I’d ever met, and I felt some relief in realizing that had I been forced to wed him that day, I might have found a friend as a husband. But he still was such a boy! Even now he struggled always against it, fighting valiantly to suppress his tears or swallow back any appearance of fright.

In thinking this over I came to see how lucky it was that Robin and I were such warm companions, while our thoughts and views were still so different. I was never sure what Robin might be thinking and his words surprised me nine times for ten. Talking with Stephen was easy and smooth, but his opinions were too often the very ones I’d considered myself and discarded as unworthy of expression. He lacked the spark that could amaze me, and this I prized over all other things.

A
T LAST, ONE DAY,
the words I’d been praying and longing to hear trickled blandly from Lady Pernelle’s lips. Her noble cousin, Sir Thomas Lanois, would pay a visit to Sencaster Manor to celebrate Lammas, the loaf mass, at which the first harvest loaves would be blessed. In a thousand ways I attempted to learn if his staff would attend him, but none knew or would tell me, and I was forced to wait and see.

But I needn’t have feared. Good Sir Thomas brought with him the best of his household and this included his jolly cook, our own Nick Atwood. The manor was all chaos and turmoil when Sir Thomas arrived, for every servant had fifty new duties and had to go at a run to manage them all. I too had been charged with a host of new tasks, but even so I found time to slip into the kitchen to greet Master Atwood, for had I not done it, I feared my face would crack from smiling and Lady Pernelle would find me out.

“Why, Katie Thatcher!” he cried aloud when I rushed forward to greet him, dodging pheasants and casks of wine. “How pleased I am to see you, my bonny thing. Tell me, have you been good since we parted?”

All of this was mostly said for the benefit of his fellow cooks, but at last we found a quick moment alone, squeezed tight in the pantry with a candle for light. He held me close and kissed me, and I grasped him as though he were the air itself.

“You’re looking well, my love,” he said after a moment, “though I’m a mite surprised by the change of your hair. Perhaps you’ve taken too much boiled pork and turnip in your meals? I can amend that for you now, for I’m a cook.”

I smiled and dipped my head to show off my locks, newly reddened from a fresh batch of henna, then straightened my mouth to a serious line, for I had information to share. In a hasty second I told him everything, of Lady Pernelle and her struggles with Stephen and how we’d had cudgel practice on rainy days. But even reports of such importance were delayed at times for a kiss or caress, for to have Robin here was such a longed-for thrill that I scarcely believed it for the seeing.

Robin agreed to keep his eye on the weather and to meet young Stephen in our stable if a stormy afternoon passed by, but the days continued on so fair that I began to fear rain would never come. Each day I stole moments to speak with Robin, and at night we crept to the newly filled hayloft and passed the sweet hours in each other’s arms.

The hayloft was warm and snug as a den and as such might have made the perfect bed for two sleepy bears such as we were had it not been for the rats. The hungry rodents were everywhere, pawing and squeaking, searching for left-behind seeds and kernels. Their constant presence grated on me and put me in mind of some thoughts I’d had since we’d been apart.

“Rats,” I said to Robin one morning as we pulled rough straw from each other’s hair. “Rats are the bane of every farm and farmhouse, is it not true? So I propose, Nicholas love, that together with the Christmas boots we also give each village a pair of mousing cats, that they might populate all the homes in town and keep these wretches from eating the grain. Do you know I heard in Thetbury that a babe was once bit by a rat and died two weeks later of no known reason? It isn’t right, I tell you, Nicky, to have these creatures so populous that one might bite a sleeping babe.”

Robin laughed right hard at this, and I suppose it was a bit funny, though at the time I’d never been more serious.

“I like your idea of giving cats,” he said, when he had straightened his face. “A puss and boots for every laborer who comes to the manor on Christmas Day. What can be more Christian than that?”

While Robin and I passed our nights rolling and tumbling in the hayloft, I believe Lady Pernelle entertained a guest of her own, for as the one who cleaned her bedclothes, I can attest that stains were found during Sir Thomas’s Lammas visit. This sealed my theory about their love and, added to Stephen’s own words of fear over Hugh’s strange death, made Robin acknowledge that I had been right.

The pride that this meager success brought lasted me through many long days of cleaning and clearing, but when Lammas mass had been sung and heard, I began to fret about the weather. Fine day followed after fine day in aggravating perfection, and while Sir Thomas showed no signs of departing, I woke each morning sure that he would go before Robin had managed to meet with young Stephen.

For this had become the lintel block in my scheme’s foundation. In my whispered nights alone with Robin, I’d done my best to convey to him the urgency of our plight and the need to win young Stephen to us. I was convinced that if we could bring Stephen to understand our place, our rightful claim to the rule of Denby, he might find his way to help us.

Stephen, I knew, bore no great love for Sir Thomas and considered him as unhealthy a wine sack as we two did. I knew too that at age fifteen, Stephen had the right to push his mother from Sencaster Manor and seize control of it for himself. This, I thought, more than anything other, was the cause of their spats in the great hall each day, for Lady Pernelle knew his rights and feared the day when he’d cast her down, just as Hugh had threatened to do.

The case of Hugh, in fact, intrigued me, for at the age of seventeen he could easily have loosened Sencaster from his mother’s clinging hands. But Hugh’s love of the tournament had kept him in France and kept him dependent, for someone was required to finance his losses. His last threat to his mother made me think, however, that his patience for jousting had reached an end in the months before his death, and he’d turned his eye back to Sencaster.

For a moment these thoughts made me pause to chuckle over Lady Pernelle, for she must now be in a bitter state. The very scene she’d played out with Hugh repeated itself each rainy day with her younger son. What, she must wonder, was to be her remedy? Would she truly be forced to either relinquish her rule or murder both her sons?

This, of course, was what I feared she might try, and it was what gave me such a sense of haste. Months and weeks were not to be wasted, or we might lose our best opportunity, the chance of winning Stephen as ally. Together, I fantasized, we might vanquish the pair of plotters in one blow, placing both Denby and Sencaster into more capable hands. But Robin disliked this plan of mine, which hinged, precariously, I must admit, on convincing Stephen to join with us against his own mother.

What son will turn traitor against the woman who bore him? Robin asked over again. Why should he wish to join with us, solely because he dislikes Sir Thomas? Might he not hold out hope of winning Denby for himself? No, Robin thought it far too early for such a bold move. The risk of it worried him, and he refused to agree to my plan.

I ought to admit that I too was nervous about what reaction Stephen might give, but the gains seemed so great if he sided with us that I was unwilling to discard my scheme. And so, in a state of disagreement, Robin and I sat in the stable one drizzly afternoon and waited for young Stephen to arrive.

“We simply aren’t ready—why not wait a month or perhaps two? Where’s the harm?”

“I fear,” I cried out, “that she will act faster than we do, and in a month or more our young friend might be dead!”

“You’re close to her, aren’t you? Cannot you make certain that his life remains safe while we win his love in other ways?”

I was weakening, for my stiff resolve had begun to shake, but I tried to hold on to my convictions.

“But what if I cannot manage it? Where will we be if the boy is killed?”

“No worse off than we are now,” he said firmly, causing me to sigh. “Our fight today is with Sir Thomas, and if the boy is murdered, ’twill be no different.”

At that moment we heard a rustle, and Stephen entered, blinking in the dim stable light and peering at Robin in a cautious way.

“Hello, Master Stephen,” I cried out as merrily as I could, considering the vicious words I’d had on my tongue not a breath before. “Pray, come and meet my quarterstaff teacher, Nicholas Atwood.”

Robin went forward and bowed to the boy, composing his face to look gracious and kind.

“Good day, Master Atwood,” Stephen began, then stopped and started, and spoke with a laugh. “But I know you, indeed I do! You are Sir Thomas’s beloved cook, are you not he?”

Robin admitted to being the same, and Stephen enjoyed a laugh over the notion that my mysterious instructor was merely Sir Thomas’s cook. Robin then turned and gave me a look that confirmed he had not changed his mind, and with a sigh I opened my hands and allowed my plan to fly away.

“Tell me if you would, Master Atwood,” Stephen went on in a cutting voice, “how is it that our manor maid Kate knows what she does of the world? To this day I believe she has advised me on farming, on the levy of taxes, on aid for the poor, and on the proper degree of solemnity one ought to command at church. Does this not seem an odd range of topics for an embroideress born in . . . Titfield, was it?”

I pretended to laugh, though I truly felt bruised by his offhand treatment of my precious advice. To Stephen we had clearly become a comic pair. Robin’s face was a witch’s brew of thoughts, and I could not tell what he felt the most, but he answered in regal defense of me.

“I am sure you will learn, good Sir Stephen, that there is more to Kate Thatcher than a manor maid, an embroideress, or anything that seems simple to you. That one has lived more lives than a cat, and as she’s been a curious kit throughout, she’s picked up a few tricks in her way. I’ve always found her advice worth hearing.”

Stephen laughed a bit more at this, and I was just becoming angry with him when a noise in the yard startled me. Like a panicked rabbit I cried out “Robin!” and ducked behind a stall of hay, not one instant before the stable doors both flew open and Sir Thomas entered with three of his men.

Robin, in a flash, tossed Stephen a cudgel so they both might appear to be armed for practice, and that was the way Sir Thomas found them, smelling of wine from twenty feet off.

“Hallo, Stephen. Oh, and Nick Atwood, ’tis strange to find you both out here. I suppose you’ve had a bit of a skirmish, eh, lads?” Apple Man tottered forward and clapped Stephen heavily on the back, landing, I might add, on the very shoulder that I had bruised two weeks before. “Well, don’t let me be in the way of your sport. I came out this way to find young Stephen, but now that I’ve found him my words can wait.”

From my hiding place—from which I had no inclination to move—I could see Robin and Stephen eye each other, unwilling to take up staffs together, strangers as they were. But Stephen looked long at Sir Thomas and, perhaps from dread of an interview, raised his staff and touched it to Robin’s, signaling his willingness to start.

As I sat viewing this scene, the first traces of laughter rose in my throat, tickling my eyes and dusting my nose. For here sat Sir Thomas on a firm bale of hay, there stood his men like bored bulldogs, and here I crouched, rolled tight in a ball behind a great rack of fresh-cut hay. Through a lace mesh of grass blades I could see all the action, and I stifled a laugh at the best part of the scene—my two friends preparing their cudgels. While they’d never fought before, their habits and manners were identical, for what Robin had shown me I’d taught to Stephen, and so they moved in rhythm together despite their discomfort.