My Lady Midnight. Laurie Grant
caught her gently by the arms. “Listen, child. Remember I told ye yer Ivy was already in heaven? ’Tis just her earthly body they’ll be burying, Peronelle. She’s already left that worn-out old body, and she has a new body, a perfect one that isn’t old, that won’t ever die,” she said, praying the child would believe her.
“And her hands won’t have all those painful knots, and in heaven she won’t get the dropsy whenever she eats salt pork like she did on earth, Peronelle,” Guerin put in. “Why, I’ll vow her hair is long and curly black as a raven’s wing, just as she always told us it was when she was a girl.”
Claire felt the moment when Peronelle’s rigid body sagged against hers, and she gave Guerin a grateful smile, silently blessing Guerin for his help.
Peronelle took a deep, shuddering breath. “That’s good that she’s all beautiful and happy in heaven, but I’ll miss her.” Then she started. “But I’m glad you’re going to be our new nurse, Haesel! Here, let me show you which bed is yours,” she said, tugging Claire’s hand and moving forward into the room.
They didn’t see Lord Alain again until just before sunset, when all the castle folk gathered for supper. Peronelle and Guerin, their faces washed, and wearing fresh clothing, led the way into the great hall and headed straight for the dais, where their father waited at the high table.
As they went, Claire took the time to look at her surroundings, which she had not done when she first entered. Hawkswell’s great hall, like Coverly’s, was two-storied and rectangular in shape. Old banners, their colors faded, hung from the ceiling rafters, and tapestries hung on the walls. The high-set windows faced the open eastern wall; the western wall formed part of the inner curtain of the castle, so the lighting that evening was from candles set at intervals on the tables and torches set in wall brackets. The rushes beneath her feet were relatively new, she noted approvingly, and their sweet smell hinted at mint and tansy strewn among them.
“Ah! There you are!” Alain said to his children. “Did you not hear the supper horn a few minutes ago?” He watched the three as they drew near.
“Yes, my lord father, but Haesel said we must change our tunics, for we looked rumpled as serf children who’d been plowing the fields!” Guerin informed him, using English where his father had spoken in French, a courtesy that warmed Claire’s heart.
Lord Alain regarded his son solemnly as Guerin stopped below the high table. “That is true,” he said, speaking also in English, “but mayhap next time you will make the magical transformation earlier? You have kept a score of Hawkswell’s hungry inhabitants waiting, my son. A chivalrous man considers others before himself. Next time we will not wait on you.”
Claire struggled to keep her face expressionless as she saw the boy flush with embarrassment. She’d thought at first Lord Alain had answered in English to be polite, but now she saw that he merely wanted her to know the reprimand was for her too.
“I beg your pardon, my lord father,” Guerin said. “I will not let it happen again.”
Holy Mary, why was Alain of Hawkswell always so harsh with his son? This was the second time in a matter of hours that she had seen him wound Guerin with few words! She longed to tell him there were more important things between a father and son than mere promptness at meals, but she knew she could not.
Lord Alain indicated a trencher next to his. “As we have no important guests this even, you may sit next to me,” he said. “Now come and be seated, and the meal will begin.” As the children moved toward the end of the dais to reach their places, Lord Alain clapped his hands, and a young lad moved forward with a towel over one arm, carrying a laver of water.
Automatically, Claire began to follow them, until she heard the first titters of laughter. Then a tall, angular man she would later learn was Sir Gautier, the seneschal, stepped forward to intercept her.
“Nursemaids do not sit at the high table, girl,” he said in thickly accented English. His gaunt face was scornful. “Your place is below the salt.” He pointed a bony finger behind her, to where two trestle tables stretched out at right angles to the dais.
He was right, of course. Her chagrin was so great she wanted to run from the great hall. She was miserably aware of the low hum of amusement as she reversed her direction and headed away from the dais. She knew very well a humble nursemaid did not presume to sit above the salt with the lord and his family, but for that one vital moment she had forgotten her role, and the habit of a lifetime had directed her footsteps toward the high table. As the daughter of the lord of Coverly, she had sat at the high table as soon as she was old enough not to disgrace the Coverly name—except when her father had been entertaining many important guests.
But how could she have made such a stupid mistake when it was vital that she convince everyone at Hawkswell Castle that she was what she appeared to be? She must never allow her concentration to slip again, not even for an instant!
Claire found the last vacant seat at the far end of one of the lower tables. She would be sharing a trencher with a man she recognized as one of the soldiers who had been riding with Lord Alain when she had first encountered him this morning.
“Thought ye were to sit at table with the lord, did ye?” he asked in passable English, grinning, as it became clear she would have to sit there.
“I didn’t know no better—I’ve never served in a castle afore,” she snapped. “There’s no need t’ make sport o’ me!”
He raised a brow. “Rather haughty for a nursemaid, aren’t you, my fair one?”
Quickly reproving herself for answering the grinning fool as he deserved, rather than as a runaway English serf woman would, she ducked her head in apparent humility. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m just ‘shamed of my mistake, ’tis all. Ye don’t mind if I share yer trencher, do ye, sir?”
Her fawning apology apparently convinced the soldier to forgive her, for his grin reappeared and he patted the place next to him.
“Sit down, and welcome, my fair one,” he said magnanimously. “I’m no sir, not being knighted and all. Just plain Hugh le Gros, they call me—that means Hugh the Large,” he explained, winking at her. “’Tis to distinguish me from Hugh la Jaune-Tête, Hugh the Yellowhead,” he added, pointing to another soldier seated halfway down the table, who had a thick thatch of tow-colored hair. “He’s the captain-at-arms. Here, let me give you some coney stew,” he said, grabbing a serving ladle nearby and dipping it into a large bowl within reach of his massive, hairy arms. “’Tis not as fine as the venison they’ll be having at the lord’s table, where ye wanted to go, but I reckon ’tis well enough.”
Claire thought about upending her wooden bowl, now full of the stew, on this grinning lout’s head for reminding her of her humiliating mistake, but controlled herself. She was going to have to grow a thicker skin, she decided. She said, “Thank ye, Hugh. And I am Haesel.”
“Where did ye come from, Haesel?” he asked. As she hesitated, wondering what was safe to tell him, he winked at her. “Confess, my fair one—I hear the lilt of the marches in your speech. Did you live near Shrewsbury?”
If he didn’t stop calling her his fair one, she would pour her bowl of stew on his head, and damn the consequences. Did he fancy himself an authority on accents, as well as irresistible to women? His guess on her origins couldn’t be farther wrong! But it little mattered where this Norman idiot thought she was from, so she let him think he was right.
Pretending to be absorbed in the food, which was humble but hunger-satisfying fare, she avoided further conversation for a while. Every so often she glanced up at the high table to check on the children, but apparently Ivy had taught them well, for they ate quietly and with good manners, wiping their faces on folded squares of linen and sharing their goblet fairly.
Then her eyes strayed to their father, but he seemed determined to remain in deep conversation with the the chaplain on his right. Never once did he look in her direction.
Saints, he was a handsome