A Love For All Seasons (6 page)

Johanna breathed the worry from her lungs as she turned to run ahead of them to the wooden cooking shed. In Helewise's reaction was the offer of aid. The housekeeper would watch that no foot was put wrong, but say nothing to Papa about how she'd helped. Freedom from Brother Mathias was within reach.

Set in the small area between the rear wall of the house, the stable, and the apothecary shop's back yard, her father's kitchen was hexagonal in shape. Johanna blinked as she stepped inside, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness within the room. Smoke from the ever-burning fire on the kitchen's central hearth flowed upward, drawn out through a shielded vent at the apex of the shed's thatched roof. A great pot, its bottom blackened by constant use, hung over the flames on its ratcheted chain. Thick bunches of herbs dangled from the crisscrossing rafters overhead, while stoppered containers of hardened leather, some so big she could barely put her arms around them, stood on shelf and floor. Wedged between casks of oil and wine were sacks of shelled almonds, while the morrow's fish swam hopelessly in a broad, lined barrel at the far wall.

At his worktable with knife in hand, Old Philip looked up from the cubes he was making of yesterday's bread. Small and wiry, the cook's hair lay flat against his skull beneath his cap, his skin slick with a day's worth of sweat. "And who do you seek to heal at my hearth this day?" he called to Helewise as she and Aleric followed Johanna into the room.

"Not Helewise," Johanna responded before the housekeeper could speak, "me. Papa sent me a lad to heal." With her words came a strange sense of ownership. Papa had given this lad to her, trusting she would care for him as she ought.

"Is that so?" Philip replied, his grizzled brows lifting in tune to his question.

Philip's son, Tom the Lackwit, looked up from scouring the remains of lamb stew from a tureen. Although only a little younger than Katel, Tom's round face was yet childlike. His bottom lip hung slack as he watched Aleric bear the lad into the room. "Hurt," he said after a moment.

"Aye, Tom," Johanna replied. "I'll be needing one of your cleaning cloths and hot water to wash him."

Tom hesitated, pondering this unusual command coming from an even more unusual source, then nodded and trundled past the hearth to do her bidding. Pleasure shot through Johanna. Now, this was how life should be, she the mistress, while others did as she commanded.

When the makeshift bed was ready, Tom set the basin at its head, and Aleric lowered the unconscious boy to the pallet. The lad freed a muffled cry then lay still. Kneeling at his side, Johanna began to wrestle his filthy, bloodstained tunic from him. It caught on his arms and would not move. The lad moaned as her efforts made his head joggle against his hard bed.

Helewise knelt beside her to cup the boy's skull in her hand. "Shall I bathe him for you?" she asked quietly as she lifted Johanna's patient a little so his tunic could be eased over his head.

"Nay," Johanna said, grunting against the effort it took to remove clothing from an unresponsive body. "Papa has made this boy mine, and I must do for him."

"Why, Johanna of Stanrudde, you surprise me. Even as I watch, the babe in you is being replaced by a sober woman."

The pride in Helewise's voice made Johanna's heart glow. Her lips tried to curve into a smile, but she kept her mouth tight in an expression appropriate to the mistress of the house. Aye, she would show Papa she was of more use to him as a housewife than a scholar.

There was a fire burning behind Rob. Although the hiss and crackle was comforting, he lay too close. Even nude with but a single blanket atop him, sweat trickled down his back. If he moved, he'd lose the final tendrils of the dream he'd been having about Mama and Blacklea.

Something brushed against his face. Rob clenched his eyes shut, drawing a breath to keep from reacting to the tickle of it. The air around him smelled of day-old fish. There was an awful lump covered with prickly fabric beneath his cheek. Grimacing in discomfort, he shifted his head until it no longer troubled him.

Again, that something brushed his face. Raising a hand, he batted at it. With that, the ragged ends of his dream slithered into some hidden recess of his mind. Sighing in disappointment, Rob opened his eyes.

Although the fire behind him barely managed to keep night at bay, the shimmering golden light was strong enough to show him a thick table, legs like small tree trunks, just a few feet beyond his reach. From where he lay, he couldn't see the table's surface, but the floor beneath it was bare earth, long since beaten into rock hardness. Beyond the table, dancing shadows played along the wall, curling around large casks and finding glittering beads of sweat on the waxen surface of the great wheel of cheese. On the wall above these items hung six long knives, four rasps, three large ladles, and five sieves, all of them gleaming in the low light.

Rob frowned. Wherever he was, it wasn't the kitchen at Blacklea Manor house where all the village women baked their bread. John the cook had only two long knives, two ladles, one rasp, and three sieves.

In dreadful realization, Rob closed his eyes. This was Master Walter's kitchen. Despair followed fear. His world was destroyed. No longer could he proudly call himself Robert the Counter, heir to Ralph AtteGreen, the richest man and only freeholder in all of Blacklea. Instead, he was disowned by his sire and sold like a slave to a merchant from someplace called Stanrudde.

A touch of outrage joined his despair. What if Master Walter forever after called him Robert the Bastard, instead of Robert, son of Ralph? It was neither right nor fair that he should be called so when he was no bastard.

"I know you are awake." It was a girl's voice. "Look at me, Robert of Blacklea!"

The girl sat on a stool beside him. Her reddish gold hair was tangled and loose. Bare wisps of that same golden-red color rose to peaks above her blue eyes and freckles were strewn like golden seeds across her face. Her gowns were blue trimmed with a band of glittering stones, but they were rumpled as if she'd slept in them. In the same hand that she had clenched around his blanket's edge she held a long straw.

Anger flared into being at this indignity. "Drop my blanket," he croaked.

A superior smile blossomed on her face, as if daring him to make her do so. He reached up to take the blanket from her, but his arm trembled so badly, he couldn't jerk it from her grasp. It was she who released it to him, and she knew it.

"Don't do that again," he warned in an effort to save some shred of pride, once again gathering the woolen sheet around him.

His gaze lowered to the kitten writhing in the crook of her elbow. Mama disapproved of any attempt to hold a cat, especially scolding when he let it dangle so. Rob leapt on the girl's misdeed. "You're not sup-posed to hold a cat that way. Don't you know anything?"

Her eyes widened at his insult, then her jaw firmed and thrust ever so slightly forward. A quirk of appreciation shot through Rob. She wasn't one of those weak-willed lasses, but the other sort, the kind that punched first and cried after.

"Puss is mine, and I may hold him any way I like. I can do anything I like, because I am Johanna, daughter of Walter le Espicer," she announced in a grand and lofty voice. "You are my servant and cannot tell me what to do."

Her words tore through his already aching self-image. "I'm no girl's servant! Master Walter hired me as his scullery lad," he cried, then struck out again at her. "Once I have earned the value of the ten coins he gave my papa, I will be a free man, unlike you, who will always be a girl."

That tweaked Johanna the spice merchant's daughter right prettily. She dropped Puss to the floor and set tight fists on her hips.

As the kitten skittered away to chase after mice and shadows, Master Walter's daughter leaned toward him, her skin reddening until her freckles stood out as pale, cool spots. "I am the mistress here! You are not being respectful. Everyone must be respectful of me."

Merchant's daughter or no, she was younger than he. No babe in arms was going to lord over him. "Respectful! Hah!" He paused a beat then threw out the comment that always destroyed the village lasses. "You are so nasty, I think no man will want to marry you."

This lass only lifted her chin, her lips again curving into that superior smile. "I will so wed. I am already betrothed to Katel."

Rob shrugged as if unaffected by her claim, all the while hiding his surprise. She was only a little girl. How could she know whom she would marry? In Blacklea no one thought of wedding until they were ready to start their own families. Stanrudde was, indeed, a strange place. Even more disturbing was the realization that her retort left him both weaponless and defenseless against her. Rob sorted desperately through his muddled thoughts for some way to put her in her place. When he'd found it, he smiled and raised a haughty brow.

"I am surprised he wants you. You are ugly, and your nose is too big."

Hurt far deeper than he'd intended flashed across her face. She set a hand atop the bridge of her nose, a much smaller version of the merchant's great, arching beak, as if to shield it from his eyes. "Papa says I have a nose of authority." Her voice was low and uncertain as if she'd been teased about this many times.

Regret destroyed Rob's moment of triumph. He'd only meant to bludgeon her into submission, not draw her heart's blood. He shrugged then offered an olive branch. "It's not that big and, mayhap, I do remember you gave me water when I ailed."

Puss meowed, the frightened sound coming from the nearby tabletop. With a frantic cry, Johanna leapt from her stool. Rob lifted himself up on his elbows until he could see. The kitten dangled over the edge of a large bowl on the tabletop. Before Johanna could reach it, the bowl rolled over the table's edge, crockery shattering around the cat.

With a wordless cry of horror, the master's daughter snatched up the dripping creature and turned on Rob. Her expression twisted in fear. "That was curded cheese for the morrow. If Philip learns Puss did this, he'll tell Papa, and Papa will take Puss from me. You must say you did this," she demanded.

"What?" he croaked, surprise making him tumble back onto his mattress. He liked the cat, but not enough to be punished for what Puss had done.

Johanna crouched down next to him. "You have to help. I'll die without my cat, I love him so. Say you were rising and stumbled into the table, please?" This time there was more pleading than command in her voice.

Rob frowned in consideration. Although he didn't much like to lie, Johanna was the master's daughter. Setting his jaw, Rob lowered his brows into the expression Papa had taught him to use when bargaining. "What do I get for taking your beating?"

"There’ll be no beating. If you help me, I vow to share Puss with you."

He shook his head. True, she might not be beaten for a broken bowl, but there was no guarantee the same would apply to him, were he to claim responsibility. Sharing the cat wasn't enough reward for the risk involved, and she knew it.

Johanna's eyes filled with tears. "I'll never again say you are my servant," she offered, suddenly sounding as young and helpless as Gretta. A teardrop dribbled down her cheek, and her lips began to tremble. "You'll be my friend, this I swear."

Even as the thought of friendship with a girl made Rob grimace in disgust, his long habit of protecting his sister wouldn't let him refuse her. Ah well, what could it hurt to let her think on him as her friend? He caught himself. Except if some other lad knew of it.

He offered her a nod. "As long as you vow to tell no one of this night's work and there's no beating, I'll say I did it. In return, you must vow to grant me a favor when I ask it of you." He went on in explanation, since she was just a lass and might not know about giving her word. "Be careful how you swear, for an oath is a promise made before God. You'll be damned to hell if you break it. Place your hand upon your heart as you say the words."

Johanna of Stanrudde placed her hand upon her chest. "I will grant you a favor, this I vow." When she was done, she breathed in relief and smiled. "Thank you, Robert."

"Rob. My name is Rob." He yawned. "Just know that if anyone's truly angered over this, I'll spill the truth."

"No one will be," she assured him. "I won't let them be."

He snorted in disbelief. "You're barely more than a babe. What can you do to stop them?"

Johanna shot him an impatient look. "I told you, I am mistress here. Everyone must do as I say. I have been mistress for six years, ever since my mother died with my newborn brother, just as your mother did."

Stunned, Rob gaped at her. "How do you know it was a babe's coming that took my mother?"

Johanna laid a hand on his shoulder. Oddly enough, his skin didn't crawl at her touch. "Aleric told us your tale before he returned to Papa."

All the pain of Mama's death and Papa's betrayal poured over him, the wave of sadness dragging him down into despair once more. A shudder shot through Rob. If Master Walter's servant had said this much, it was certain everyone here also knew Papa had disowned him. He could never again return home. Tears stung at his eyes, and he buried his head into the folds of his blanket in shame.

"Rob?" Johanna's voice was hesitant. "Papa always says a good master is like unto a father to all those who dwell under his roof. If you like, I will share my papa with you."

Her words lit a fire in his heart. Rob wrenched himself around, not caring that she might see his tears. "I don't need your father, I have one of my own!" he shouted. "Go away, go away and leave me be."

He threw himself back down onto the mattress and pulled his blanket up over his head. To his horror, a sob escaped him, then another. Even the knowledge that Johanna listened did not stop them. Not only could he never go home, but there was no one left to love him.