THE MANOR WAS GROWING QUIET, preparing for evening and supper and bed. Alyce passed men coming back from the fields, weed hooks and hoes and rakes on their tired shoulders; dairymaids washing out the churns, stopping every now and then to lick the sweet butter off their fingers; shepherds bringing in the sheep for tomorrow’s washing and shearing, the music of their pipes rising to the wide blue sky and disappearing into the silence.
Around the barn in the hen house she found Edward, egg basket still empty, kneeling before the chickens. “So then,” he said to the largest and most bad-tempered, “you be the king and you”—he pointed to a small hen with speckled feathers—“be the queen, for you look motherly and kind, and the rest of us will be knights and we will pretend we are about to have a great battle with the Scots but we don’t mind for we are sure to be
victorious.”
At that, Edward looked up and saw Alyce watching him. “Alyce,” he cried, leaping to his feet, the better to throw his arms about her waist. “Alyce, you have not forgot me.” Alyce remembered her imaginings as the boy hugged her, and she smiled. It would be well.
“Come, Alyce, you can be a knight, too, and we will march north to the stable.”
“Edward, I sent you here to work so you’d have food and warmth and a place to belong, and instead you’re playing knights with the chickens. What
be you thinking?” She tweaked Edward’s nose and pulled a speckled feather from his hair. “Come, I’ll help you find enough eggs to satisfy the cook, and then we will talk together.”
“Alyce, what you be doing at the manor?”
“I came to see how you be, and good thing I did, for it seems you have not the wits of an oat. Your sister, indeed. What are these lies you have been telling the cook?”
“Not really lies, Alyce. I just wanted a sister, for all Cook’s other children have brothers and sisters. Have you come to take me away?”
Before Alyce could reassure him that she was there to rescue him and all would be well, he continued, “You haven’t, have you, Alyce? For I am sore
content here and mostly have enough to eat, and when Cook is cross with me I sleep with the chickens and pretend. No one chases me away and even Lord Arnulf knows my name.”
So Alyce learned about the sometimes mighty distance between what one imagines and what is. She would not be bringing Edward back with her to make her heart content, but she knew she had not failed him, and she breathed a heavy sigh of sadness, disappointment, and relief. It felt so good that she did it again and again until her sighs turned to sobs and she cried her first crying right there in the hen house with Edward arming the
chickens for battle. Edward patted her shoulders and hands and comforted her as well as a small boy could and cheered her by wiggling his loose front tooth.
On the way back to the kitchen Edward began a campaign to convince
Alyce to stay the night and she agreed, though she knew Jennet would scold her for her absence, for she was not ready yet to completely abandon Edward and her rosy imaginings.
While they ate their bread-and-bacon supper, while Alyce helped Edward mound up straw in a corner of the kitchen, while she sat by watching for him to go to sleep, all the while Edward talked of life on the manor. He told her of the silken-robed lords and ladies who came for feasts and rode out to hunt and danced like autumn leaves in the candlelit great hall, of the visiting knights who clanked their swords against each other as they practiced in the school yard, of the masons who slapped mortar and bricks together to build a great new tower at the corner of the hall that looked to stretch near all the way to heaven. He described the excitement of buying and selling at the great autumn horse fair, the nervous preparations accompanying the arrival of some velvet-shod bishop or priest, and the thrill of watching the baron’s men ride out to confront a huge maddened boar who had roamed too close to the village. And he complained at his lot, doing all the smallest tasks, not being allowed to help with the threshing and ploughing, being teased for being so little and frail and tied to Cook’s
skirts and fit for nothing but gathering eggs. Finally as his eyes looked near to closing, he said, “Tell me a story, Alyce.”
“I don’t know any stories.”
“For sure you do. Everyone does.”
“Well, Jennet told me that one night a visiting mayor fell out of bed, hit his head, and thought he was a cat, so he slept all night on the floor
watching the mouseholes.”
“That is no story, Alyce. Cook tells me stories. A story should have a hero and brave deeds.”
“Well then, once there was a boy who for all he was so small and puny was brave enough to do what he must although he didn’t like it and was sometimes teased. Is that a story?”
“Close enough, Alyce.” And he closed his eyes.
When the moon shone through the misty clouds and two owls hooted in the manor yard, Edward and Alyce slept, each comforted by knowing the other was safe and warm and sheltered and not too very far away.
The next day being the day the woolly blackfaced sheep were washed
before shearing, Alyce and Edward ate their bread-and-beer breakfast down by the river to watch the great event.
Edward finished his breakfast first. “I’m still hungry, Alyce, and there is nothing about here to eat but grass. Do you know if grass is good for people to eat?”
“Try it.”
He did. “It be good for exercising my teeth and making my mouth taste better, but it tastes like . . . grass, I would say.”
“Then do not eat it.”
“What is the best thing you ever ate, Alyce?” “Hot soup on a cold day, I think.”
“Once long ago a monk gave me a fig. It was a wonderful thing, Alyce, soft and sweet. After that I had nothing to eat for three days but the smell of the fig on my fingers. Are you ever going to finish that bread, Alyce?”
And Alyce gave him her bread, which is what Edward wanted and Alyce intended all along.
Part of the river had been dammed to form a washing pool. Men stood in the waist-deep water while the hairy shepherds, looking much like sheep themselves, drove the woolly beasts into the water to have their loose
fleeces pulled off and then be scrubbed with the strong yellow soap. The river was noisy with the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep, the calling and cursing of men, and the furious bawling of those lambs separated from their mothers. Edward soon took on the job of matching mothers and babies. He snatched up the bawling lambs and ran from mother to mother until he made up the right pair, whereupon they would knock him out of the way in their hurry to nuzzle each other.
As the day grew hotter the river looked cooler, and finally Alyce tucked her skirt up into her belt and waded in. The weary men were glad of another pair of hands and soon had Alyce helping. First she held the woolly black
faces while they were scrubbed, but one old ewe took offense at Alyce’s handling and, standing up with her front feet on Alyce’s chest, pushed the girl into the water. Alyce, coughing and sputtering, traded jobs with the man who was lathering their backs. Fleeces clean, the sheep swam to the bank and scrambled out of the water, nimble as goats and hungry as pigs.
By midafternoon they were finished. While Edward and the shepherds
drove the sheep to their pens across the field, Alyce stretched and wiped her wet hands on her wet skirt. What a wonder, she thought, looking at her hands. How white they were and how soft. The hours of strong soap and sudsy fleece had accomplished what years of cold water never had—her
hands were really clean. There was no dirt between her fingers, around her nails, or ground into the lines on her palms. She sat back against a tree, held her hands up before her, and admired them. How clean they were. How white.
Suddenly she sat forward. Was the rest of her then that white and clean under all the dirt? Was her face white and clean? Was Will Russet right— was she even pretty under the dirt? There never had been one pretty thing about her, just skinny arms and big feet and dirt, but lately she had been told her hair was black and curly and her eyes big and sad and she was mayhap even pretty.
Alyce surveyed her surroundings. The washing was finished, and the sheep had been herded to the barn, ready to dry off for tomorrow’s shearing. The river was quiet now, except for chunks of greasy yellow soap drifting lazily on the surface. Seeking a cleaner spot upriver, away from the sullied washing pool, Alyce stripped off her clothes and waded into the cool water.
She scrubbed herself with the yellow soap and a handful of gritty sand until her skin tingled, then crouched down, letting the water rise to her chin. As she washed her hair, she watched it fan out around her, floating like a dark halo until the chill finally set in.
Standing in the shallow water, Alyce glanced at her reflection. She was cleaner now, her skin pink and wrinkled from the soak. And… perhaps even pretty? She had all her teeth and limbs, a face untouched by pox or misfortune, and, maybe, a new light in her eyes—happiness and hope replacing the sadness that had once lingered there. Even the midwife had remarked on those eyes.
She washed her clothes, pulled them back on while they were still damp, and ran to the kitchen, eager to warm herself by the fire.
Too soon, it was time to bid Edward farewell. “I won’t be far,” she promised. “And I’ll come back for Christmas, Easter, and your saint’s day—and to see when that front tooth grows in.”
Edward grinned wide, showing the gap in his smile. The day had been full—a man’s work done, a triumphant ride home on the shoulders of Hal, the towering shepherd. He felt content with his place at the manor, the cook’s affection, and Alyce’s friendship. For the first time, he didn’t feel so small.
Alyce hugged him tightly, gave him a playful smack, and felt the familiar sting in her eyes and tightness in her throat. She might cry again—something she had only recently learned to do. As she walked down the manor path, she paused every few steps to turn and wave, until the curve of the path finally hid Edward from view. All that remained was the way ahead.
