Annabel stared at her.
“I don’t care what the master says, you’re not working in the fields anymore. I have need of you here in the kitchen.” She bent over and yanked up Annabel’s skirts.
Annabel gasped, scrambling to push her skirt back down. The same angry red rash covered her legs.
Eustacia scrunched her face disapprovingly and turned in Beatrice’s direction. “That butter can wait. Take Annabel down to the river to wash, then put some mud on this rash.” Facing Annabel again, she said, “Lots of mud. Smear it on these legs and hands and sit on the bank until it dries. But before you go …” Eustacia pulled out a small table from the wall, laid out with a chunk of cheese, some bread, and two pitchers. “Eat.”
Both girls sat and Beatrice quickly sliced the cheese. More tears pricked Annabel’s eyes. This time they were tears of gratitude.
After a cooling dip in the river, Annabel’s legs and hands still stung, but the discomfort ebbed after she washed off the mud. Another relief came as the villagers went home at midafternoon, finished with their fieldwork for the day. Work at the manor fell into a rhythm as Beatrice began her duties in the dairy while Annabel helped Eustacia prepare supper for the servants and the workers building Ranulf le Wyse’s new home.
Though careful to stay out of her lord’s way, she glimpsed the plans for the new house as she brought the food into the upper hall. The plans were laid out on the trestle table while Lord le Wyse discussed them with his master mason.
House was not a strong enough word for what the lord had planned. It was to be a castle with many rooms and three towers, one rising up a full two stories higher than the rest of the building. Annabel was one of the few villagers who had traveled outside the demesne, and the only place she had ever seen anything as grand as this was in London.
The grand house was at least two years from completion, although she overheard that a portion of it would be livable in several weeks.
To prepare for the meal, the servants set up trestle tables end to end down the middle of the upper hall floor to accommodate all the servants now living at the manor. Despite the crowd, Tom atte Water managed to sit across the table from her. She stared down at her plate, the table, anywhere but at him, knowing he was probably leering at her. When he spoke to her, she pretended not to hear.
After long, uncomfortable minutes of trying to ignore him, she heard him scrape his chair back to leave. She breathed a sigh of relief to see him leave with the rest of the men after the meal and leapt to help the other maidservants clean up, clearing tables and tossing the excess food into the slop bucket.
By the time the room was back in order, her legs trembled with fatigue. All the maids began to scatter and she wondered where she would sleep. Annabel looked for Beatrice, hoping the girl could provide answers, but she realized the dairymaid had been strangely absent since dinner ended.
Eustacia was busy giving instructions to a serving girl about what to purchase at the market the next day, so Annabel retrieved her bag from behind the small screen and stood nearby. She prayed Mistress Eustacia would notice her soon and tell her where she might sleep. She hoped she didn’t look as exhausted as she felt, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that she wasn’t accustomed to such hard work.
Feeling nearly invisible in her shadowed corner, Annabel watched Lord le Wyse cross the room and address Gilbert Carpenter, the master mason and foreman over the skilled craftsmen working on the castle.
Lord le Wyse was almost a head taller than his foreman. In the dim twilight of the upper hall, he looked darker than he had in the fields. His hair lay in a heavy swath across his forehead, grazing his black eyebrows. His shoulders were massive next to the much-smaller Gilbert. But while comparing him to Lord le Wyse, she realized Gilbert’s features were perfect and symmetrical. He had a well-formed nose, light-colored eyes, and light brown hair. He looked to be no more than thirty years old and was quite handsome.
Lord le Wyse’s looks were harder to sort out. One side of his face, the side with the leather patch, was thrown into shadow, giving a soft glow to his good eye and strong, prominent cheekbone. He would have been considered handsome before his face had been scarred and he’d lost his eye. Annabel watched as he gestured with his right hand while keeping his left arm tucked against his midsection. She’d heard someone say he was only five and twenty years old. It was hard to tell, as his face was obscured by the patch and the beard. He held his head and shoulders at a commanding angle, the posture of a powerful man.
She had every intention of avoiding him as much as possible. She was his servant and as such was at the mercy of his harshness. But she felt oddly mesmerized by his scar, eye patch, and maimed hand.