Alys kept her eyes down and went to the side of the dais and climbed the three shallow steps. There was a small table by the dais door where four women were sitting on stools. Alys drew up a fifth stool and sat with them. They eyed each other with mutual mistrust while the servers brought Alys a pewter plate, a knife and a thick pewter goblet stamped with the Castleton crest.
‘Are you old Morach’s apprentice?’ one of them said eventually. Alys recognized a woman who had been left a widow with a fine farm near Sleightholme, but driven out of the house by a powerful daughter-in-law.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I lived at Penrith, and then I came to work for Morach.’
The woman stared at her. ‘You’re her foundling!’ she said. ‘The little wench. You were living with her when I left to come here.’
‘Yes, Mistress Allingham,’ Alys said, her mind working rapidly. ‘I did not recognize you at first. I left for Penrith just after your son was wed. Then I came back again.’
‘I heard you had gone to the abbey,’ the woman said sharply.
There was a muffled scream from one of the other women. ‘Not a nun’s servant!’ she exclaimed. ‘I won’t sit at the table with a nun’s servant! This is a godly household, my lord cannot wish us to sit with a heretic!’
‘I only stayed there for three days, on my way to Penrith, waiting for the carter,’ Alys said steadily, her fingers clasped lightly in the lap of the cherry-red gown. ‘I did not live there.’
Mistress Allingham nodded. ‘It would have been bad for you if you had done,’ she observed. ‘It was the young Lord Hugo himself who led the men to strip the abbey. They say he robbed the altar of popish treasures himself, laughing at the sacrilege. They were drunk – he and his friends – and he let his men fire the buildings. But they went too far, it was botched work, all the nuns were burned in their beds.’
Alys felt her hands tremble and clasped them together in her lap. She could still smell woodsmoke. She could still hear that one brief cry. I wish I had died then, she said to herself. I wish I had died in the same fire as my mother and then I would never have had to sit here and hear of her death told as tittle-tattle.
‘I’ll warrant he did more than that!’ one of the other women, the one named Margery, said in a low whisper. ‘An abbey full of nuns! He would do more than burn them in their beds!’
Alys stared at her in utter horror, but the women were watching Lady Catherine’s straight back.
‘Sssh,’ said one of them. ‘She has ears like an owl, that one.’
‘I warrant he did, though,’ Margery said. ‘I can’t imagine the young lord hanging back when there was lechery being done. He is as hot as a butcher’s dog, that one.’
Another woman giggled. ‘He’d have had a round dozen out of their beds before the fire got them!’ she exclaimed. ‘He would have taught them what they had been missing!’
‘Ssshhh!’ said the woman more urgently, while the others collapsed into giggles. Alys kept her face turned away and fought the bile which rose unstoppably into her mouth.
‘Hush,’ said Mistress Allingham in pretended concern. ‘This must be distressing for the girl. You stayed with them for three days, and they were your friends, were they not?’
A cock pecking under the tables in the hall squawked as a running servant kicked it aside. ‘No,’ Alys said, swallowing down vomit. ‘Old Morach owed them some labour in their garden in exchange for the use of their herbs. I was sent to work off her debt. I stayed until the work was done and then I came away. I did not know any of them well. I lodged with their servants.’
In the darkness of the hall she could suddenly see the abbess’ face, its soft wrinkled skin and the gentle smile. For a moment she could almost feel the touch of her hand as she leaned on Alys’ shoulder to walk around the garden. The cool, dry sweetness of the herb garden was very far away now.
‘I never even saw half of them,’ Alys said, proffering additional detail. ‘They were in the middle of some fast or feast and I was kept in the gatehouse. It was a dull three days, I was glad when the carter came and gave me a lift to Penrith.’
A serving-lad stepped up to the dais and presented a silver platter to the old lord, to the young lord, and only then to Lady Catherine. They took slices of dark meat.
‘Venison,’ Mistress Allingham said with satisfaction. ‘David orders a good table.’
‘David?’ Alys asked involuntarily. ‘Does David command the meals?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Margery said. ‘He’s the old lord’s seneschal – he commands all that happens inside the castle and manages the tenants, commands the demesne, watches over the manors, tells them what crops to grow and takes the pick for the castle. The young Lord Hugo partly serves as seneschal for outside, he rules the villages and sits in justice with his father.’
‘I thought David was a manservant,’ Alys said.
Mistress Allingham tittered, and Alys flushed. ‘Best not let him hear you say that!’ she said brightly. ‘He’s the most important man in the castle after my lord and the young Lord Hugo.’
‘And the most dangerous,’ one of the women said low. ‘As spiteful as a little snake, that David.’
They had to wait a long time for their food. It was brought on thin pewter platters, only the two lords and Lady Catherine ate off silver. They ate the meat with their fingers and knives, and then a bowl of broth and bread with a thick-handled spoon. The bread was a thick trencher of well-milled rye flour. At the top table they had a wheaten loaf, Alys could see its pale, appetizing colour. All the food was tepid, except for the broth which was cold.
Alys set her spoon down.
‘Not to your liking?’ one of the other women asked. ‘My name is Eliza Herring. Is it not to your liking?’
Alys shook her head. ‘It’s cold,’ she said. ‘And too salty for my taste.’
‘It’s made with salted meat,’ Mistress Allingham said. ‘And from the bottom of the barrel I’ll be bound. But it’s always cold. They have to carry it from the kitchen. I haven’t had hot meat since I left my own home.’
‘I daresay you’d rather stay, cold meat and all,’ Eliza Herring said sharply. ‘From what I hear, the new young wife your son married wouldn’t have fed you venison, hot, cold or raw.’
Mistress Allingham nodded. ‘I wish the plague would take her!’ she exclaimed, then she stopped and looked at Alys. ‘Can you work on a woman you don’t know?’ she asked. ‘Could you soften her heart towards me? Or even carry her off? There’s much sickness about – no reason why she should not take an ague.’
Alys shook her head. ‘I am a herbalist, nothing more,’ she said. ‘I cannot cast spells and I would not do so if I could.’ She paused to make sure that all the women were listening. ‘I cannot make spells. All I have is a little skill in herbalism. It was these skills that cured my lord. I cannot and I would not make someone sick.’
‘But you could make someone fall in love?’ asked the young woman called Margery. Unconsciously her eyes rested on the young Lord Hugo. ‘You have love potions and herbs which stir desire, don’t you?’
Alys was suddenly weary. ‘There are herbs to stir desire, but nothing can change what a man thinks. I could make a man hot enough to lie with a woman – but I couldn’t make him like her after he had taken his pleasure.’
Eliza Herring went off into hoots of laughter. ‘You’d be no further on then, Margery!’ she said delightedly. ‘For he has lain with you a score of times and despised you each time until he feels the itch again.’
‘Hush, hush!’ said the fourth woman desperately.