Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

Chapter Five

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Monday: from dawn to Compline

Sunday passed, clear and fine, and Monday came up no less sunnily, a splendid washing day, with a warm air and a light breeze, and bushes and turf dry and springy. The Aurifaber household was always up and active early on washing days, which were saved up two or three weeks at a time, to make but one upheaval of the heating of so much water, and such labour of scrubbing and knuckling with ash and lye. Rannilt was up first, to kindle the fire under the brick and clay boiler and hump the water from the well. She was stronger than she looked and used to the weight. What burdened her far more, and to that she was not used, was the terror she felt for Liliwin.

It was with her every moment. If she slept, she dreamed of him, and awoke sweating with fear that he might be hunted out already and taken and she none the wiser. And while she was awake and working, his image was ever in her mind, and a great stone of anxiety hot and heavy in her breast. Fear for yourself crushes and compresses you from without, but fear for another is a monster, a ravenous rat gnawing within, eating out your heart.

What they said of him was false, could not under any circumstances be true. And it was his life at stake! She could not help hearing all that was said of him among them, how they all united to accuse him, and promised themselves he should hang for what he had done. What she was certain in her heart and soul he had not done! It was not in him to strike down any man, or rob any man’s coffers.

The locksmith, up early for him, heard her drawing up the bucket from the well, and came out from his back door to stroll down into the garden in the sunlight and pass the time of day. Rannilt did not think he would have troubled if he had known it was only the maidservant. He made a point of being attentive to his landlord’s family, and never missed the common neighbourly courtesies, but his notice seldom extended to Rannilt. Nor did he linger on this fine morning, but took a short turn about the yard and returned to his own door. There he looked back, eyeing for a moment the obvious preparations at the goldsmith’s house, the great mound of washing in hand, and the normal bustle just beginning.

Susanna came down with her arms full of linen, and went to work with her usual brisk, silent competence. Daniel ate his breakfast and went to his workshop, leaving Margery solitary and irresolute in the hall. Too much had happened on her wedding night, she had had no time to grow used to house and household, or consider her own place in it. Wherever she turned to make herself useful, Susanna had been before her. Walter lay late, nursing his sore head, and Dame Juliana kept her own chamber, but Margery was too late to carry food and drink to either, it was already done. There was no need yet to think of cooking, and in any case all the household keys were on Susanna’s girdle. Margery turned her attention to the one place where she felt herself and her own wishes to be dominant, and set to work to rearrange Daniel’s bachelor chamber to her own taste, and clear out the chest and press which must now make room for her own clothes and stores of linen. In the process she discovered much evidence of Dame Juliana’s noted parsimony. There were garments which must have belonged to Daniel as a growing boy, and could certainly never again be worn by him. Neatly mended again and again, they had all been made to last as long as possible, and even when finally outgrown, had still been folded away and kept. Well, she was now Daniel’s wife, she would have this chamber as she wanted it, and be rid of these useless and miserly reminders of the past. Today the household might still be running on its customary wheels, as though she had no part to play, but it would not always be so. She was in no haste, she had a great deal of thinking to do before she took action.

On her knees in the yard, Rannilt scrubbed and pummelled, her hands sore from the lye. By mid-morning the last of the washing was wrung and folded and piled into a great wicker basket. Susanna hoisted it on her hip and bore it away down the slope of the garden, and through the deep arch in the town wall, to spread it out on the bushes and the smooth plane of grass that faced almost due south to the sun. Rannilt cleared away the tub and mopped the floor, and went in to tend the fire and set the salt beef simmering for dinner.

Here quiet and alone, she was suddenly so full of her pain on Liliwin’s account that her eyes spilled abrupt tears into the pot, and once the flow began she could not dam it. She groped blindly about the kitchen, working by touch, and shedding helpless tears for the first man who had caught her fancy, and the first who had ever fancied her.

Absorbed into her misery, she did not hear Susanna come quietly into the doorway behind her, and halt there at gaze, watching the fumbling hands feeling their way, and the half-blind eyes still streaming.

“In God’s name, girl, what is it with you now?”

Rannilt started and turned guiltily, stammering that it was nothing, that she was sorry, that she was getting on with her work, but Susanna cut her off sharply:

“It is not nothing! I’m sick of seeing you thus moping and useless. You’ve been limp as a sick kitten this two days past, and I know why. You have that miserable little thief on your mind—I know! I know he wound about you with his soft voice and his creeping ways, I’ve watched you. Must you be fool enough to fret over a guilty wretch the like of that?”

She was not angry; she was never angry. She sounded impatient, even exasperated, but still contemptuously kind, and her voice was level and controlled as ever. Rannilt swallowed the choking residue of tears, shook the mist from her eyes, and began to be very busy with her pots and pans, looking hurriedly about her for a distraction which would turn attention from herself at any cost. “It came over me just for a minute: I’m past it now. Why, you’ve got your feet and the hem of your gown wet,” she exclaimed, seizing gratefully on the first thing that offered. “You should change your shoes.”

Susanna shrugged the diversion scornfully aside. “Never mind my wet feet. The river’s up a little, I was not noticing until I went too near the edge, leaning to hang a shirt on the bushes. What of your wet eyes? That’s more to the point. Oh, fool girl, you’re wasting your fancy! This is a common rogue of the roads, with many a smaller deed of the kind behind him, and he’ll get nothing but his due in the noose that’s waiting for him. Get sense, and put him out of your mind.”

“He is not a rogue,” said Rannilt, despairingly brave. “He did not do it, I know it, I know him , he could not. It isn’t in him to do violence. And I do fret for him, I can’t help it.”

“So I see,” said Susanna resignedly. “So I’ve seen ever since they ran him to ground. I tire of him and of you. I want you in your wits again. God’s truth, must I carry this household on my back without even your small help?” She gnawed a thoughtful lip, and demanded abruptly: “Will it cure you if I let you go see for yourself that the tumbler is alive and whole, and out of our reach for a while, more’s the pity? Yes, and likely to worm his way out of even this tangle in the end!”

She had spoken magical words. Rannilt was staring up at her dry-eyed, bright as a candle-flame. “See? See him? You mean I could go there?”

“You have legs,” said Susanna tartly. “It’s no distance. They don’t close their gates against anyone. You may even come back in your right senses, when you see how little store he sets by you , while you’re breaking your fool heart for him. You may get to know him for what he is, and the better for you. Yes, go. Go, and be done with it! This once I’ll manage without you. Let Daniel’s wife start making herself useful. Good practice for her.”