Kate Sedley - The Wicked Winter

I stepped forward with meekly lowered eyes for inspection by this she-dragon, who gave me a basilisk stare: But after a moment her expression softened somewhat and she nodded.

'Very well.' Her blue eyes narrowed. 'Are you hungry, my lad?' And when I assured her that I was, she instructed a tow-headed girl to give me one of the apple pasties which were cooling on a marble slab close to the half-open door.

'Best give him the large size with a frame like his.' The child shovelled a pasty on to a wooden platter and handed it to me with a self-conscious giggle. Hamon and Jasper immediately began to moan that good looks and a fine physique gave a man an unfair advantage over his fellows.

'Oh… give them a pasty apiece, Bet,' the cook instructed at last, pursing her lips in exasperation. 'But you eat them outside, the pair of you. You reek of horses!'

The two men seemed to take no offence at her tone but, grinning broadly, accepted their apple pasties from Bet's hands and vanished through the kitchen doorway. I was allowed to eat mine in peace, sitting beside the fire and warming my chilled bones by its leaping flames. When I had finished, not even a crumb of pastry remaining, Bet was told to conduct me to Dame Judith.

'The late master's mother,' the cook explained, basting a couple of fat chickens which were roasting on the spit, 'complains of being neglected since her son died, three years since. And it's true that there's not much love lost between her and the mistress. But,' she added judiciously, 'old people do tend to exaggerate their hardships in my experience.'

'Is Dame Judith upstairs or down?' asked Bet, and was told that the old lady was in the solar.

She led me out of the kitchen and into a narrow passageway where the draughts from open doors lifted the rushes on the flagstones; and the sudden chill, after the heat we had just left, made us both shiver. As I followed Bet, I could see into the various rooms on the opposite side of the corridor, the counting-house, justice room and parlour, all their windows facing frontwards to the track beyond the moat.

The reason I was able to see this was because the shutters in the parlour had been set wide in spite of the inclement weather, and Lynom Hall had no surrounding walls for protection. In this remote comer of the world they plainly did not fear attacks from their neighbours.

'Someone in this house is fond of fresh air,' I remarked to Bet as she preceded me up a twisting staircase.

'Oh, that's the old mistress,' she said with another giggle. 'She don't seem to feel the cold, not even when it's bitter. Leastways, she says she don't, but it's my belief she's just nosy. She likes to sit by the window and look out to see what's going on. Makes the young mistress fair mad, I can tell you. I'd best close them shutters when I come down again, before she discovers they've been opened. Dame Judith was ill the parlour earlier,' she added by way of explanation.

At the top of the stairs, I was conducted into the solar, as dank and chilly on this bleak winter's day as the rest of the house. But it was a comfortable room with many indications of wealth from the candelabra of latten tin, supporting a number of pure wax candles, to the tapestries which decorated the wails and the cushions strewn across the window seat.

Two of the windows were glazed — a greater rarity then than nowadays, when you, my children, take so many of these modern luxuries for granted — and a third had panes of horn.

A fourth window of stretched and oiled linen had been set wide to the elements. Bet at once hurried across and closed it.

'You d' know what the mistress says about openin' windows this weather, Dame Judith,' she scolded. 'You'll catch yer death, you will surely.'

The upright old woman, seated in a chair near the fire, sniffed scornfully.

'And what if I do, pray'? That's what she hopes will happen. The lying jade just pretends to be concerned about me, but nothing would suit her better than to be rid of me. Where is she, eh? Not a soul's been next nor nigh me since I was brought up here earlier this morning. What's she up to? Why hasn't she been to see me?'

'The mistress is busy,' Bet answered, colouring. 'Look, here's a chapman come selling his wares. I've brought 'im to visit you.'

Dame Judith peered at me with short-sighted, laded blue eyes, but for the moment evinced no further interest.

'Don't change the subject,' she ordered Bet sternly. 'You tell my daughter-in-law to come and see me.' She added to the network of wrinkles already lining her face by screwing it up in disgust. 'I know what she's at, the harlot! She may think she's pulling the wool over my eyes, but you can tell her that she ain't. I wasn't born last September! That Sir Hugh Cederwell's here again. It's no use your denying it, girl! I saw him ride in this morning not long after breakfast, while I was still downstairs in the parlour.' She gave a sudden grin, grinding her toothless gums together. 'I see a lot of things that people don't reckon on me seeing.'

'That's 'cause you sits with the shutters wide open,' Bet reprimanded the old lady. She beckoned me forward. 'Here's the chapman, like I told you. You talk to 'im fer a bit and look at what 'e's got to sell you.'

Bet whisked herself out of the solar before Dame Judith could protest or hinder her further. I was left alone with this indomitable old lady whose fragility made me feel even gawkier and more overgrown than usual. In her grey gown and slippers, untidy locks of white hair pushing out from beneath her hood, she was like a wisp of smoke waiting to be blown away by the first puff of wind. She eyed me sharply.

'They think I don't know what goes on in this house,' she snorted. 'But I do. Oh yes, I do indeed. That Sir Hugh Cederwell! Lovely young wife by all accounts, but he prefers a maturer woman with more experience between the sheets.' l felt the blood steal up under my skin. Dame Judith saw it and laughed. 'Embarrass you, do I? Why does a little plain speaking make you uncomfortable? I'm sure a good-looking lad such as you is no virgin, and you must have exchanged plenty of ribaldry in the alehouses and taverns. But you don't care to hear it on a woman's lips, is that it? Ah well! I shouldn't chide you. It's good to know that you hold womankind in such esteem. So!' She clapped her dry, fleshless hands together. 'Show me your wares. I promise I'll buy something, even if I don't really want it. It'll be payment for your time and company, which are the two things I chiefly need.'

She was seated in a high, carved armchair and instructed me to draw up a flat-topped oaken coffer which stood against one wall. It would serve, she said, as a table on which to display my goods. But when I had spread them out, she showed no immediate inclination to look them over, but folded her hands in her lap, leant back in her chair and began to reminisce about her youth; a youth spent, as a young and beautiful woman, at King Henry's court before what she called 'all the troubles and upheavals'.

'From time to time he was completely mad, poor man, like his grandsire, the French king that his father beat at Agincourt. And when he wasn't mad, he was on his knees praying, or exhorting all us women to cover our breasts.

Low-cut gowns, he said, were the work of the devil. And Queen Margaret wearing the most daring of any of us! When he first saw his son, Prince Edward, him who was killed a few years back at Tewkesbury, he said the boy must be the child of the Holy Ghost.' Dame Judith cackled with amusement. 'The child of the Earl of Wiltshire or of Somerset more like! At least, that's what the rest of us thought. We '

The door of the solar opened and the old lady broke off her narrative at once, snapping her jaws together like a pair of tongs cracking nuts. An authoritative voice demanded, 'Mother, what are you up to? Who is this man? And what is he doing in the solar?'