JUST BEFORE THE ROAD from the inn turns and makes for the village, there is a hidden path to the manor. Visitors use the main manor road, crossing through the gatehouse and past the apple trees and the stable. Some of the villagers know about the path, but few use it, for it passes too close to the dark woods. Alyce, in her comings and goings through the village, had
come upon the path, although she had never before had need to follow it all the way up to the manor. Until one afternoon, when golden-yellow
blossoms first appeared on the laburnum trees and Girtle the cow gave birth to her first calf, a sweet and sticky thing Alyce thought to call Rosebud, for she was as red as the hedgeroses near the village church.
As she watched Girtle nuzzle and suckle Rosebud and tuck her against her warm body to give the calf her warmth, Alyce was filled with a sudden longing to go to the boy Edward at the manor and see for herself that he
was there, fed and dry and content. Mayhap he was unhappy and longing for her and she would bring him back to the inn and take care of him as Girtle did Rosebud. For days she thought about this, and the more she thought, the righter it seemed.
She imagined Edward’s first sight of her at the manor. “Alyce, you have not forgot me,” he would cry, throwing his arms about her waist. “Have you come to take me away? I pray you have, for I am desolate here without you and as well am starving and beaten and forced to sleep outside in the snow and no one cares for me.” She would scoop the boy up in her arms and they would go together back to the inn and Alyce would take care of Edward and this would make her heart content.
All she needed was Edward and all would be well. She was certain of it. So one day when Jennet had gone to the market fair at Edenwick to buy a copper pot, a young pig, and a bit of lace for her best kirtle, and no guests but Magister Reese cluttered the table, Alyce put the cat in the stable so that he would not follow her and, the sun warming her wintry spirit, climbed to the manor on its graygreen hill.
Passing the village fields, she saw Roger Mustard and Thomas the Stutterer swinging their weed hooks and felt the familiar feelings in her
chest and her throat, but turned her eyes away so she would not have to think about what she had had and what she had lost.
The manor was bustling in the sunshine. She went first to the barn, where the men were sharpening hoes and sickles in preparation for the summer hay cutting. “The boy Edward?” she asked a tall, red-nosed man. “The small boy who arrived after harvest to help with the threshing, is he still
here?”
The man turned and looked at Alyce. “Forget this Edward, curly top. My name is Mat and I am six times the man he is. Climb up here on this hay
bale and give me a warm, sticky kiss.”
“My hair may be frizzled but my wits are not,” Alyce responded. “Save your sticky kisses for your wife or your cow.”
Alyce left the barn and went next to the smithy, where the manor blacksmith and his apprentices were hammering lumps of iron into shoes for horses. “The boy Edward?” she asked again. Her answer was rude remarks, laughter, and kissing sounds from men too ill-tempered or too busy or too tired to care about the questions of a strange girl.
“The boy Edward?” Alyce asked the kitchen maid skinning a pig in the manor yard, the laundress boiling great kettles of goose fat for soap, the
carpenters fashioning a coffin for Old Ned, who had died that morning.
None answered. “Corpus bones!” said Alyce. “I might as well be asking the fence.”
Finally she found her way to the shed that served as the manor kitchen and there found a cook who, judging from the words pouring forth from her mouth with none to listen, would not be reluctant to talk to Alyce.
“Please, ma’am,” said Alyce, who had learned that ma’ams and sirs served her well even with cooks and stableboys when asking favors. “Please, ma’am, the boy Edward who came after harvest to help with the threshing, is he still here? Have you seen aught of him?”
“Ah, the lamb,” the cook cooed, waving her ladle at Alyce, the little lamb. He be here. But too small he is to be swinging that great heavy flail about or wrestling with the oxen and ploughs and the taunting of the men, so I try to watch over him, the wee duckling, and find him simple tasks to do, suited for a small boy.” The cook sat down, her face red from the heat and emotion and the boiling and stewing going on about her, took off one great leather shoe, and used it to fan her face. She peered closely at Alyce. “Surely then you be the sister he talks about, for you look just like him and
could pass for twins.” The cook muttered and crossed herself. “You not be twins?” she asked Alyce, peering closer. “I cannot abide twins.”
“No, ma’am. We be not even brother and sister.”
“Ah, never say that, sweet pudding, for you are as alike as two peas. Just so you are not twins.”
“No, ma’am, not twins,” answered Alyce again, wondering why twin cows such as Baldred and Billfrith should be such a joy and a boon while twin babies were ill-starred and unlucky.
“Well, then, my little turnip. Go find your brother in the hen house behind the barn, where I sent him to gather eggs for a parsley omelet. And bring yourselves back here for a dinner of bread and bacon.” The cook wiped her wet red face on her skirt, picked a struggling fly from the great pot of soup she was stirring, and began a new conversation with herself, for she found such talk interesting and hardly ever disagreed with what was said.
