Anne O'Brien - The King's Concubine

‘Feed her. Give her a bed. Clothe her and put her to work.’

‘Ha! Look around you, Jos! What do you see?’

I looked also. The kitchen was awash with activity: on all sides scullions, spit boys, pot boys, bottle washers applied themselves with a racket as if all hell had broken loose. The heat was overpowering from the ovens and open fires. I could already feel sweat beginning to trickle down my spine and dampen my hair beneath my hood.

‘What?’ Sir Joscelyn growled. I thought he did not approve of the liberty taken with his name.

‘I don’t employ girls, Jos. They’re not strong enough. Good enough for the dairy and serving the dishes—but not here.’ The cook emphasised the final word with a downward sweep of his axe.

‘Well, you do now. Princess Isabella’s orders. Kitchens, she said.’

Another grunt. ‘And what the Lady wants …!’

‘Exactly.’

Sir Joscelyn duly abandoned me in the midst of the teaming life of Havering’s kitchens. I recognised the activities—the cleaning, the scouring, the chopping and stirring—but my experience was a pale shadow to them. The noise was ear-shattering. Exhilarating. Shouts and laughter, hoots of ridicule, bellowed orders, followed inevitably by oaths and complaints. There seemed to be little respect from the kitchen lads, but the cook’s orders were carried out with a promptness that suggested a heavy hand if they transgressed them. And the food. My belly rumbled at the sight of it. As for the scents of roasting meat, of succulent joints …

‘Don’t stand there like a bolt of cloth.’

The cook, throwing down his axe with a clatter, gave me no more than a passing look, but the scullions did, with insolent grins and earthy gestures. I might not have much experience of such signs with tongues and fingers—except occasionally in the market between a whore and a dissatisfied customer—but it did not take much imagination. They made my cheeks glow with a heat that was not from the fire.

‘Sit there.’ Master Humphrey pressed down on my shoulder with a giant hand, and so I did at the centre board, sharing it with the pig. A bowl of thick stew was dumped unceremoniously in front of me, a spoon pushed into my hand and a piece of stale wastel bread thrown down on the table within reach.

‘Eat, then—and fast. There’s work to be done.’

I ate, without stopping. I drank a cup of ale handed to me. I had not realised how hungry I was.

‘Put this on.’

A large apron of stained linen was held out by Master Humphrey as he carried a tray of round loaves to thrust into one of the two ovens. It was intended for someone much larger, and I hitched it round my waist or I would have tripped on it. I was knotting the strings, cursing Isabella silently under my breath, when the cook returned.

‘Now! Let me look at you!’ I stood before him. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Alice.’

‘Well, then, Alice, no need to keep your eyes on your feet here or you’ll fall on your arse.’ His expression was jaundiced. ‘You’re not very big.’

‘She’s big enough for what I’ve in mind!’ shouted one of the scullions, a large lad with tow hair. A guffaw of crude laughter.

‘Shut it, Sim. And keep your hands to yourself or …’ Master Humphrey seized and wielded his meat cleaver with quick chopping movements. ‘Pay them no heed.’ He took my hands in his, turned them over. ‘Hmm. What can you do?’

I did not think it mattered what I said, given the continuing obscenities from the two lads struggling to manhandle a side of venison onto a spit. I would be given the lowliest of tasks. I would be a butt of jokes and innuendo.

‘Come on, girl! I’ve never yet met a woman with nothing to say for herself!’

So far I had been moved about like the bolt of cloth he had called me, but if this was to be my future I would not sink into invisibility. With Signora Damiata I had controlled my manner because to do otherwise would have called down retribution. Here I knew that I must stand up for myself and demand some respect.

‘I can do that, Master Humphrey. And that.’ I pointed at the washing and scouring going on in a tub of water. ‘I can do that.’ A small lad was piling logs on the fire.

‘So could an imbecile!’ The cook aimed a kick at the lad at the fire, who grinned back.

‘I can make bread. I can kill those.’ Chickens clucking unsuspectingly in an osier basket by the hearth. ‘I can do that.’ I pointed to an older man who was gutting a fish, scooping the innards into a basin with the flat of his hand. ‘I can make a tincture to cure a cough. And I can make a—’

‘My, my. What an addition to my kitchen.’ Master Humphrey gripped his belt and made a mocking little bow. He did not believe half of what I said.

‘I can keep an inventory of your food stuffs.’ I was not going to shut up unless he ordered me to. ‘I can tally your books and accounts.’ If I was condemned to work here, I would make a place for myself. Until better times.

‘A miracle, by the Holy Virgin.’ The mockery went up by a notch. ‘What is such a gifted mistress of all crafts doing in my kitchen?’ The laughter at my expense expanded too. ‘Let’s start with this for now.’

I was put to work raking the hot ashes from the ovens and scouring the fat-encrusted baking trays. No different from the Abbey or the Perrers’s household at all.

But it was different, and I relished it. Here was life at its most coarse and vivid, not a mean existence ruled by silence and obedience. This was no living death. Not that I enjoyed the work—it was hard and relentless and punishing under the eye of Master Humphrey and Sir Joscelyn—but here was no dour disapproval or use of a switch if I sullied the Rule of Saint Benedict. Or caught Damiata’s caustic eye. Everyone had something to say about every event or rumour that touched on Master Humphrey’s kitchen. I swear he could discuss the state of the realm as well as any great lord while slitting the gizzard of a peacock. It was a different world. I was now the owner of a straw pallet in a cramped attic room with two of the maids who strained the milk and made the rounds of cheese in the dairy. I was given a blanket, a new shift and kirtle—new to me at any event—a length of cloth to wrap round my hair and a pair of rough shoes.

Better than a lay sister at St Mary’s? By the Virgin, it was!

I listened as I toiled. The scullions gossiped from morn till night, covering the whole range of the royal family. The Queen was ill, the King protective. The King was well past the days of his much-lauded victory on the battlefield of Crécy against the bloody French, but still a man to be admired. Whilst Isabella, a madam, refusing every sensible marriage put to her. The King should have taken a whip to her sides! As for the Countess of Kent—my ears instantly pricked up—who had married the Prince and would one day be Queen, well, she was little better than a whore, and an ill-mannered one at that when it suited her. Thank God she was in Aquitaine with her long-suffering husband. Unaware of my interest, the scurrilous gossip continued.

Gascony and Aquitaine, our possessions across the channel, were in revolt. Ireland was simmering like a pot of soup. Now the buildings of the man Wykeham! Water directed to the kitchens to run direct from a spigot into a bowl at Westminster! May it come to Havering soon, pray God.

Meanwhile I was sent to haul water from the well twenty times a day. Master Humphrey had no need for me to read or tally. I swept and scoured and chopped, burned my hands, singed my hair and emptied chamber pots. I lifted and carried and swept up. And I worked even harder to keep the lascivious scullions and pot boys at a distance. I learned fast. By God, I did!