A Lady Under Siege

30

Mabel lived for her thrice-daily trips to the castle’s kitchen to collect meals. The kitchen was in an outbuilding in the bailey, so it was quite the jaunt just getting there. First she was brought down from her Lady’s chambers in the castle keep, through the Great Hall, which often as not was crowded with courtiers and visitors, sycophants and supplicants, a lively cross section of folk, from ratcatchers to ropemakers, tinkers to needlers to ploughmen to garlic sellers, all hoping for a word with the Lord on some issue of import to them. Then she skirted the chapel, and exited the castle through a stout gate into the open air of the bailey, past the quarters for the knights in training, where handsome young boys and men engaged in all kinds of simulations of acts of war, past the workshops where the clothiers and embroiderers toiled to keep all the servants and courtiers dressed so well, past the brewery where the ale wife produced as creamy and potent a beverage as Mabel had ever tasted, to the great kitchen with its massive, ever-smoky oven, where a dozen maids busied themselves producing the wheat, rye and oat breads that were the staple of everyone’s diet, and an equal number of butchers and cooks prepared meat and game of all sorts, all of them chattering in that smoky cacophony with a teasing, good natured camaraderie that was to Mabel a blessed and cherished antidote to the dismal hours she spent locked away with her brooding Mistress.

Meal times were extremely regular. Breakfast at seven, dinner—the main meal of the day—at eleven, and supper at four o’clock. Mabel could feel herself grow impatient as those times approached, and any delay in the arrival of her guard was agony to her. Today the guard had been at least half an hour late, and she had felt herself on the verge of leaping from a window. Even Lady Sylvanne, so typically bound up in her own thoughts, noticed Mabel’s agitation, and remarked, “Am I really such painful company as all that? I’ve taken your advice, and tried to be more likable to our captor. Please don’t expect a similar performance here in private. Here I am myself, and I am sorry if you suffer for it.”

“No, no, Ma’am,” Mabel protested. “I wish only for my Mistress to be herself. To be at peace. To be contented.”

“Really? I’ve only asked one thing of you, and you’ve failed me thus far,” Sylvanne said sharply. “I don’t ask for peace and contentment. I ask for a knife. Bring me a knife. No more excuses, Mabel. I want it today. Do you hear me?”

Mabel nodded. Before she could speak they heard the long delayed knock upon the door. It swung open, and a handsome lad, so young as to be unable to grow a beard, beckoned her to follow him.

“You’re a new one—what happened to the other, the one who usually accompanies me?” Mabel asked him as they descended toward the out-of-doors.

“I just follow my orders, m’Lady.”

“Oh, I’m not a Lady, I’m a servant, just as you are. You can treat me as you would an auntie. A boy so young and fair as you, I feel as if you should call me auntie.”

“I’m neither boy, nor servant; I’m a squire, a knight in training,” the young man said huffily.

“Well pardon my ignorance,” Mabel said teasingly. “Perhaps I should call you Your Majesty.”

The boy said nothing further, and soon enough they neared the kitchen. Just outside the open double door Mabel was surprised to spot Gwynn, pulling a chicken from a wicker basket for the cook’s inspection. There were nine birds squeezed in there, and he sought the fattest, but they were so jumbled up together—tumbling, pecking at each other, and squawking indignantly at their loss of freedom—that he mistakenly grabbed hold of one of his skinniest birds, a sorry specimen that had lost the feathers on its chest to an unknown ailment.

“They’re not nearly so plump as last week’s,” scoffed the cook, a brawny old crone by the name of Hellen.

“Plumper, ma’am, plumper,” Gwynn proclaimed. “Now that I’m home from my military adventures, I’ve got ’em back on a proper diet. Feel that thigh there, lots and lots of fat and tender meat.”

The cook examined the bird’s naked belly. “What, have you been plucking her while she’s still alive?” she demanded.

“No, no, it’s common in that breed,” he lied. “They moult at this time. I’m telling you, this bird, nicely basted, would suit the table of the Lord himself.”

“Don’t tell me my business,” she barked at him. “I must have meat, so I’ll accept your poultry, however piss-poor. Boiled, it’ll serve to fill the bellies of the men at arms, they’re not particular.”

“Let me show you a more typical foul, this one,” he exclaimed, retrieving another squawking, thrashing bird from the basket. “Aha! Now here’s a real beauty!”

Just then the young soldier interrupted to announce, “I’ve brought the Lady’s servant for to take her dinner.”

Gwynn looked round excitedly. “Why Mabel,” he crowed. “Here we be talking of tender meat, and speak of the devil, here you be! I’ve been wondering about you, and how I was to catch a moment for a chat. Are they treating you well?” He looked her over thoroughly from head to toe, without shame. “You look plumper too—it suits you, truly it does.”

“Sir, you make me blush,” replied Mabel.

Gwynn called into the kitchen to the girls and women working there. “Ladies, come out, come out for a moment, I wish you to make the acquaintance of my new wife.” He called toward the nearby ale house, where a handful of vagrants and drunkards could as usual be seen loitering in a strip of shade down its side wall. “Come one, come all, I’ve an announcement to make! Here’s my future bride—feast your eyes upon my prize! I’d marry her today if I could and be a widower no more. This one is robust and cheerful, all I look for in a spousal companion.”

Mabel, flattered by his attentions, responded with mock severity. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m still prisoner here.”

“The spoils of war, you are, but I won’t let you rot. My boys need a mother, too!” He pointed to three snot-nosed feral brats, wrestling in the dust of the yard.

“Concentrate on your business,” the cook scolded him. He ignored her, holding a chicken by its neck for Mabel’s inspection, encircling its flapping wings and tucking it almost tenderly under his arm.

“You’ll be feasting on one of my birds by suppertime, my dear,” he proclaimed. “They tell me the master demands only the best for you and your lady. Cookie here will select the finest of the fine, and I’ll decapitate, gut and clean them, all for a modest sum of course.”

“Chickens were one of my duties back home,” Mabel told him. “May I have a look?”

“No time for that,” stated her young guard. “We’re here for one purpose.”

Gwynn raised himself up and towered over the lad. “I’ll take charge of her,” he informed him. “Go over to the barn and chat up the milkmaids awhile, there’s a good boy. And don’t forget, the hay in the loft is comfortable and soft.”

“I don’t mind a-meeting them girls,” the young man replied.

“Wash your face and hands on the way,” Gwynn advised him. “Girls like a gentleman. Cleanliness is next to God-given good looks, ha!”

The guard wandered off. “I admire your array of knives,” Mabel said, looking over his collection of tools.

“Most belong to the kitchen,” he replied. “These three are mine. Tools of the trade. You won’t find a sharper blade anywhere hereabouts.”

Mabel picked up the largest of the three. “May I borrow it?” she asked.

“What for?”

“I lack a tool to trim the cuticles of my lady’s fingers and toes.”

“Ha! That’s too massive for such a delicate job. Take this one.”

He handed her the smallest knife. The blade was hardly longer than her middle finger, and about as wide. She raised it experimentally, holding the handle so that the blade protruded from the bottom of her fist, and made a jabbing motion in the air.

“Sits well balanced in the hand, does it not?” Gwynn said proudly. “I carved the handle my own self, according to my own principles.”

“It’s beautiful,” Mabel said.

“Consider it a present. The first of many, I hope.”

“You truly are aggressive,” she remarked.

“A man needs to be, to gain what he desires.”

The old cook interrupted. “I desire you to slay me some poultry, and leave your romancing for another day,” she snarled. Glancing across the yard, she announced, “Ah! Young guardsman makes a hasty return. What happened, lad? Did you meet your milkmaids?”

The guard felt the back of his head, and checked his hand for blood. “Their father was lurking about, and drove me off with a stick,” he told them.

“Don’t despair, my boy,” Gwynn said cheerily. “The girls will love you the more that you suffered for them.”

The cook picked up a wooden mallet meant for softening meat, and threatened Gwynn with it. “Shall I crack you a good one then, so your lady love here grows more fond of you?” Then she did just that, whacking him across the back of his head.

“Owww!” Gwynn cried. “Leave off, crazy old crone!”

“Love hurts, hahahahaha,” she cackled happily.

“Are you all right?” Mabel asked, coming near and inspecting his head tenderly. He knelt down and leaned against her like a dog wanting to be petted.

“You see? It works!” the cook shouted happily.