Christian Cameron: Castillon: Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part One

And shoes. A lifetime of sizing up a tip caused him to look at the man’s shoes. Elegant, fitted, black with a narrow piping of red leather at the instep, they were utterly at variance with the man’s plain garments.

Swan rose, stretched, and watched the young men taking down the trestle tables and moving the chairs from the dais. The cardinal was long gone. So were the merchants. The man-at-arms sat and drank, alone. Swan’s curiosity almost got the better of him, but the possibility of clean clothes won out over the possibility of hearing stories of chivalry, however genuine. The man was interesting – a sort of problem. A challenge.

But not as interesting as the kitchens.

However, it took no great daring or sleight of hand to pick a pewter cup full of wine off the sideboard and carry it out, across the yard, to the stable. In any great hall there’s always someone too rich, too drunk or too stupid to remember his cup. Swan carried it to Peter and left it by his head.

Then he walked along the edge of the French merchant’s wagons.

No one challenged him.

Wagons – especially unattended wagons – interested him almost as much as tales of war and chivalry. He walked slowly along them, tapping them idly with his fist. He wasn’t able to stop and search any of them – the courtyard was far too full of monks and visitors.

But it was interesting that at least one wagon was empty.

He walked on, around the back of the great central building, past the herb garden and the dispensary, to the back of the kitchen. The heat pouring out of the kitchen was visible as ripples in the air, and the summer night was hot enough to melt wax. Most of the trestles were now here, in the back, and a bagpiper was playing while a circle of men danced. There was a lot of food.

Swan smiled. He walked in boldly and took a large chunk of pork. He didn’t even have an eating knife, so he had to eat it in chunks, like a dog.

‘You’re really just an overgrown boy, aren’t ye?’ Tilda said. ‘But you’re a gent. I saw you up there.’

‘I tried to catch your eye,’ he said. ‘You ignored me.’

She shrugged. ‘You weren’t an archer, were ye?’

He shook his head.

‘Too many teeth,’ she said. ‘I should ha’ known.’

‘You have all your teeth,’ he said.

She shrugged. Hugged herself despite the night air’s warmth.

‘But you know we’re here – eh? You know your way around a kitchen. And a cook.’ Tilda smiled, but it was a hesitant smile as if a wall had grown between them.

He smiled and nodded.

‘And you aren’t going to tell me any more,’ she said.

A few feet away, a very thin girl hit a man so hard he went down. Everyone laughed.

‘I’m a bastard son. I haven’t a penny, and I’ve promised the cardinal that my father will pay a thousand florins for me.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the truth.’ He looked at her from under his eyelashes to see her reaction.

She was smiling a little and looking elsewhere.

‘I’m Thomas,’ he said. ‘That’s the truth, too.’

She nodded, pursed her lips, and nodded again. ‘I can find you a pricker and an eating knife, maybe,’ she said. ‘I admit it – I like that you sound like a gent.’

He decided to risk telling the truth. ‘I’d rather have clean clothes,’ he said.

She looked at him – just out of the corner of her eye, the way grown women look. ‘If I do your clothes, you’ll be naked,’ she said.

He tingled. ‘I could perhaps live with that, if you won’t sell me to the cardinal.’

‘Naked?’ she asked.

‘I’m told it’s what he likes,’ Swan quipped.

She nodded. ‘Mmm.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve been a fool twicet, youngling. Once I followed a soldier what told me he’d marry me, and then, to atone for a life o’ sin, I thought I’d work in the abbey.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Godly people.’ She shook her head. ‘There are some, I allow. And some as ought to have done what I done.’

A heavy pottery jar of hard cider was thrust into Swan’s hands. He took a drink and handed it to Tilda, who drank.

Then she took his hand – hers was a curious mixture of rough and smooth.

It took time to get a fire lit in the laundry. There were coals from the day’s fire, but no wood in the hamper, and again he was carrying wood. He stopped for more cider, and another slice of pork. There were a hundred people dancing.

Cesare was leaning against the cool stone of the abbey, watching. He put a hand on Swan’s shoulder. ‘If you work like a servant, they’ll treat you like a servant,’ he said in Italian.

Swan smiled. ‘I know,’ he said with far too much honesty. ‘I’m getting clean clothes.’

Cesare smiled in understanding. ‘Ah!’ he said. He looked at Swan. ‘Would you wash me a shirt?’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I’ll cover your wine.’

‘We poor men of letters have to stick together,’ Swan said. He wondered if it would sound better in Latin. ‘ Pauperes homines de litteris opus haereat iuncto .’ He made a face. ‘ Opus ?’

‘ Pauperes scriptores manere simul ,’ Cesare said. ‘And I agree.’ He pulled off his doublet and his shirt and tossed Swan the shirt. Then he pulled on his doublet over his hairy chest.

Swan looked at the crowd of dancing servants. ‘Do you know any of these people?’ he asked.

Cesare smiled bitterly. ‘Not really. When you are a lawyer, you are not a gentleman and not a servant.’ He shrugged. ‘I know the men that serve L’Oustier, but not well enough to share a cup of wine. They’re most of them in the blue and red livery of the Paris guilds – eh? See?’

Swan felt foolish. ‘I thought that they were soldiers.’

‘You must have a low opinion of soldiers. Marechault’s men are in blue and gold – his wagoners are hired men, so no livery. We travelled with them at the tail end of winter – again, I’ve seen them before, but I don’t know any of the wagon men.’

Swan shrugged. His theory about the French knight was dashed. ‘I’ll see your shirt is clean,’ he said.

‘I’ll be in your debt, English,’ Cesare said.

Swan went back to the laundry. It was dark, except for a pair of rush lights going in the corner by the hearth.

‘Strip,’ said Tilda.

‘I have an extra shirt to wash,’ Swan said.

Tilda shrugged. ‘A woman’s work is never done,’ she said.

The whole laundry area was hung with linens – many of them religious. There were chasubles and surplices and altar clothes; shifts for nuns, long and coarse, and men’s shirts and braes.

‘Wouldn’t it dry faster outside?’ Swan asked. He’d stepped between the rows to strip.

‘Thieves,’ she said. ‘We hardly ever get thieves here. It does happen, mind,’ she said. She emerged in front of him, and pulled a shirt off the line and held it up to him. It was a fine lawn shirt with embroidered cuffs.

‘He’s a right bastard,’ she said. ‘And a bad priest. Pity thieves took both his shirts and his braes.’ She leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

He’d expected – or rather hoped – for something of the sort, but the moment of contact was . . . lovely. Very exciting.

She vanished amidst the laundry.

He followed her.

‘Unlace me? There’s a dear,’ she said. ‘The water in the smaller copper is clean, which is more than I can say of you. Wash. Jesus and the saints. Is that blood?’

Swan poured warm water into a shallow bowl and used a coarse cloth – a dry, clean coarse cloth – to wash. His left arm had an enormous bruise and a long cut – even in the flickering rushlight, it looked bad.

She got out of her kirtle and helped him wash the arm. ‘So you are a soldier,’ she said.