Kate Sedley - The Wicked Winter

In that case, I reflected, it was small wonder that he appeared to be in the last stages of exhaustion, for he had now been nearly eight hours on the road without food or rest. He must have passed Lynom Hall only a short while before I quit it, and for most of the way been less than a half-mile ahead of me. I could have caught up with him sooner had he tired more quickly or had I not stopped to speak to Ulnoth. I was sorry, for even his company would have been a welcome relief from the tedium of a winter journey, when there were so few fellow travellers to be met with.

I offered him my arm, saying, 'We can at least walk the last half-furlong together.'

But he spurned my proffered support.

'God will provide all the strength I need, Chapman. When that fails me, I shall know the time has come to prepare for death.'

His words made me remember Ulnoth.

'Do you recall passing a boulder house, some mile and a half back, just after you turned westwards from the Woodspring track?'

Friar Simeon shook his head. 'I look neither to left nor right when I am walking, but keep my eyes fixed on the road ahead, towards that place where God has called me next. Why do you ask? What significance does this boulder house have? Is there a lost soul there who is in need of my ministrations?'

'No, no!' I exclaimed hastily as the friar paused, ready to retrace his steps if necessary.

As we descended the last few yards to Cederwell Manor, I explained as well as I could my connection with Ulnoth and what he had said to me during our second brief meeting this afternoon. But Friar Simeon made nothing of it, merely hunching his thin shoulders.

'We are all of us concerned with thoughts of death, Chapman. Or we ought to be if we are wise. For the one thing we can be sure of from the cradle onwards is that we shall die, and we must see to it that we are always in a state of spiritual grace, ready to meet our Maker.'

Threading our way between two or three of the outbuildings, we found ourselves at last in full view of Cederwell Manor. This was of somewhat curious construction, with what I later discovered to be the great hall and, behind it, the servants' quarters, built at an angle to the entrance passage and kitchens. The barn stood opposite the main porch on the other side of a wide courtyard and a fish pond, and beyond that the land stretched, empty and desolate, towards the estuary. Only a few feet of ground separated the back of the house from the lee of the cliff which rose, steep and barren, behind it. A strange, remote spot, even, I guessed, in summer; a place in which there was plenty of time to brood on real or imagined wrongs and ills.

A little earlier it had stopped snowing, but suddenly it began again, more heavily than before, falling in sudden flurries from an iron-grey sky. The wind, too, had strengthened so that the air was a mass of dancing, whirling flakes, biting and stinging every exposed part of the body until the skin burned under their touch. Hurriedly I led the way round to the back of the house where, against the angled wall, a flight of stone steps led up to a narrow, slate-tiled gallery and two doors which opened into the second storey.

But it was the ground-floor room, whose shutters opened on to the cliff face and now stood wide in order to let out the steam and smells of cooking, which focused my attention. I rapped on one of the shutters as I passed the window, entering the door alongside and finding myself in the main passage which ran the whole length of the house. An archway immediately to my left led into the kitchen.

At first glance this seemed to be full of women, all arguing vehemently with one another. A stout body, whose shiny red face and greasy apron proclaimed her to be the cook, was standing, arms akimbo, confronting a younger, slenderer woman dressed in an unadorned grey woollen gown and a plain linen hood, yet whose general demeanour suggested that she was not one of the servants. As I made my appearance, the latter stamped a foot in frustration.

'When my sister-in-law is absent, you should take your orders from me,' she cried. 'I am next in command!'

'You! You're a nobody!' the cook retorted indignantly. 'A nothing! You're here on sufferance, through the master's bounty! I'm not obliged to do anything you tell me! Isn't that so, Mistress Talke?'

Thus appealed to, a third woman, probably as old as the cook but taller and of a sparer build, wearing a large bunch of household keys at her waist, raised her own voice to make herself heard above the others'.

'You're both wrong. I am the housekeeper and I am in charge when my lady is not here.' Her handsome, sallow-skinned features creased into an expression of contempt. 'And at every other time,' she added; a remark which her companions, now united against her, were too angry to heed.

'No one's in charge in my kitchen except me!' proclaimed the cook, picking up and brandishing a spoon.

The younger woman exclaimed, 'You're not family, Phillipa Talke, much as we know you'd like to be!'

'And what does that mean, my fine madam?' the housekeeper demanded, rounding on her furiously. Without however waiting for a reply, she continued, 'Martha Grindcobb is right. You have no place here but as a dependant of my lady. It would be as well if you remembered that.' The younger woman let out a high-pitched scream and thumped the kitchen table, making all the pots and pans standing on it rattle.

'My husband is my lady's brother! Perhaps it would also be as well if you remembered that!'

I felt Brother Simeon, who had followed me into the kitchen and was now pressed close against my shoulder, flinch at the sudden crescendo of noise. The next moment he pushed me aside and, striding forward, quelled the cacophony with a single word.

'Silence!'

He had not raised his voice, but his naturally penetrating tone commanded their immediate attention. All three women turned slowly in his direction, their quarrel momentarily forgotten, in mutual astonishment. The housekeeper's mouth flew open to demand an explanation of this intrusion, but when she saw the friar's habit and tonsured head her protestation faltered. The younger woman, however, she whom I understood to be the sister-by-marriage of Lady Cederwell, was not so reticent.

'And who might you be, Brother?'

'I am Friar Simeon,' he announced majestically, drawing himself up to his impressive height, the blue eyes flashing with the promise of hellfire and brimstone for anyone who was foolhardy enough to challenge his authority. 'I have been sent for by Lady Cederwell. Where is she?'

The housekeeper, recovering her nerve a little, said, 'My lady's in her private chapel in the tower, fasting and praying, where she has been since daybreak.' Her glance went past the friar to me. 'Who is this you've brought with you?' I took my pack from my back, dropping it on to the kitchen table, and spoke cheerfully in an attempt to lighten the general atmosphere.

'Oh, I'm nothing to do with Brother Simeon. We met by chance on the road and just happened to arrive together. I'm a chapman, trying to make some extra money in this bleak mid-winter.'

A little kitchen-maid, whom I had not previously noticed, crept from the comer where she had been quietly observing the antics of her elders, her eyes round with anticipation of possible, unlooked-for delights.

'Got any pretty ribbons, Chapman?' she asked in a husky whisper.

'I may have one or two,' I answered, 'that will suit a pretty girl like you.'

She giggled, then self-consciously put up a hand to touch her face which was afflicted with the weeping pustules of youth.

'Go on with you!' She giggled again.

Brother Simeon rapped his knuckles on the table.

'Enough of this!' he exclaimed harshly. 'Things temporal are of no importance when God's work is waiting to be done.