Chapter Three #3
Isadora was still fearful but she didn’t argue.
She simply allowed her sister to pull her along, stumbling across the rocky ground at times.
By the time they reached Kellen and Ellice, who were standing in front of the kitchen door, the older adults were looking at them with varied degrees of curiosity, although Ellice’s expression was mixed with hostility.
At her limit of patience with her stubborn aunt, Courtly addressed the woman.
“Auntie, I mean no disrespect, but Papa invited a very important knight to sup with us this evening and I will not permit you to ruin it,” she said flatly.
“I do not know why you seem so willing to treat all of us as if we are your enemy, but it is ridiculous and selfish. If you are going to be nasty and rude, then do it with your own people. I will not permit you to ruin my reputation or Papa’s reputation simply because you do not know what it means to be kind and generous.
Now, get out of my way. I am going into the kitchen and see to the evening meal before all is lost.”
Ellice looked at her with a great deal of shock and contempt. It wasn’t the words that shocked her so much, but the look of steely determination coming from her niece. The woman meant what she said.
“You are not entering my kitchen, you little toad,” Ellice snarled. “If you step one foot in there, I will beat you within an inch of your life.”
“You will not,” Kellen said, his voice low and threatening. “If you lay a hand on her, I will forget you are my sister and kill you where you stand. Is that in any way unclear?”
Ellice looked at her brother, her eyes narrowing. “You would not dare touch me.”
“Try it and see.”
Ellice’s jaw worked furiously. It was clear that she was beyond fury but smart enough not to tempt fate.
Her brother was bigger and stronger than she was and could quite easily carry out his threat.
Now, she was losing ground in the argument and not liking it in the least. She had been holding her own until Courtly had appeared.
Now, the volatile situation had taken an ominous turn and she was trying to figure out how to prevent it.
“Well?” Courtly said, breaking into Ellice’s thoughts. “Will you move aside or will I push you aside?”
Ellice’s venom turned back to her niece. “If you touch me, you will regret it.”
Courtly smiled thinly. “If you touch me, you will regret it,” she replied.
“Papa has brought his men with him. They are camping in the courtyard and will take up residence in the hall shortly. You do not stand a chance against Papa and his men, so you may as well move aside before Papa has you physically removed from your own home. That would be shameful.”
It was a dig at her aunt’s obstinacy, something that did not go unnoticed by Ellice.
She was so furious that her face had grown pale and her lips were drawn into a tight, ugly line.
She knew she had no choice in the matter now that her niece was making demands and she furthermore knew that if she made any move to touch or push the woman, she could very well find herself with a broken neck because her brother was very protective of his daughters.
Jaw ticking, grinding her teeth, Ellice had no choice but to surrender. God, she hated that feeling. She took a small step away from the door, just enough so that Courtly and Isadora could slip inside. As the girls disappeared into the darkened structure, Ellice focused her hate on her brother.
“This is not over,” she growled. “This is my home. You cannot come here and make demands, Kellen. You have been trying to control my life since we were small children and our parents let you. I came to Kennington to get away from you and your controlling ways. I will not let you give the commands at Kennington now. This is my home.”
Kellen’s expression was impassive. He knew what she was alluding to but he refused to comment on it. To do so would only create worse of an argument.
“It is my home,” he said. “I only let you live here by my good graces. But I am coming to think that is a mistake. You are a nasty, embittered shrew, Ellice. God help you, for I cannot.”
Ellice’s jaw ticked and, for the first time since Kellen’s arrival at Kennington, a measure of emotion flickered in the woman’s eyes. Deep-seated resentment and deep, agonizing emotion. The reflection in her dark eyes was evident, hinting at old pain, long past.
“If I am a shrew, then it is of your making,” she said hoarsely. “You have created what you see. This is not over, Kellen. It is not over in the least.”
With that, she walked away from her brother, something she rarely did when they were arguing, and headed to the exterior stairs that led to the master’s chamber of the manor.
Kellen watched her go, surprised she had given up as she had.
It wasn’t like the woman to surrender an argument.
But he let it go, mostly because he was glad she had acquiesced as she had.
He didn’t want to fight with her all night and by her final words, he suspected that was where they were headed before she abruptly turned away.
Relieved, he went to check on his daughters.
Kellen stuck his head into the kitchen to see how the girls were getting along and noted that Courtly was on her knees in front of the hearth, trying to light it with a flint and stone. She was trying very hard but the flint was being stubborn and it was dark, making it difficult to see.
“Court?” he asked. “Do you require any assistance?”
Courtly nodded firmly. “Can you please start the fire, Papa?” she asked, handing the man the flint and stone as he ducked into the low-ceilinged room.
“When you’ve done that, I will need help.
Mayhap you can track down a serving woman or two.
Also, Issie and I are in desperate need of soap.
We smell like smoke and I cannot greet our guests smelling like a fire pit. ”
Kellen knelt down and expertly started the fire where his daughter had struggled.
As the rather large hearth began to burn, he lay a good deal of wood and peat on top of it to spark up the blaze.
The kitchen began to fill with warmth and light, illuminating a rather cramped and evidently well-stocked kitchen.
There was food in its raw form everywhere.
“I will see what I can do for you,” he said. “If I cannot find any soap, then I will send one of my men into town for it.”
Courtly pleaded with him. “Then why not do that now?” she asked. “Do not waste time searching Kennington when Auntie has probably hid all of the soap, anyway. She knew we needed it.”
Kellen nodded as he headed for the door. “Very well,” he said. “Is there anything else you require?”
Courtly began to look around the kitchen.
Fowl hung from the ceiling overhead, tied with hemp to the beams, and there was a massive, cooked leg of pork propped on a table that was shoved into a corner of the room.
Furthermore, she could see sacks of something underneath another table and she went to it, opening the sack to find dried multi-colored beans inside.
Another sack had sand-colored flour, half-empty.
Quickly, she began calculating what she had to work with.
“Give me a few moments before you send the man off,” she said to her father. “I may need something from town but, as of yet, I am not sure.”
Kellen stood in the doorway. “Then I will wait,” he said. “What do you intend to do?”
Courtly pointed at the leg of pork. “I can boil that with the beans to make a stew,” she said.
“There is flour here to make bread, but I need a few more things for the bread before I can actually make it. Papa, would you check and see if you can find a store of wine or ale? If not, then we will have to find some quickly.”
Kellen went on the hunt as Courtly began pulling out the sacks from beneath the table. Isadora still stood over near the hearth, uncertain as she watched her sister work, and Courtly turned to the girl.
“Issie,” she said. “Go and see if you can find any cheese or butter or even milk. I would hope there is some. And I need eggs. Find as many eggs as you can. Will you please do this?”
Isadora nodded and began her search, sticking her head under tables and into crevices as Courtly pulled a very large pot out from underneath a table and dragged it over to the hearth.
There was a big, iron arm affixed to the mortar of the hearth, made to hold big pots, and she heaved the pot onto the arm. Now, it was time to go to work.
The well for the manor was just outside the door and Courtly filled several buckets, pouring the water into the pot and putting several pounds of beans in to soak.
She managed to find great bunches of vegetables near a half-filled bowl of dirty water, baskets of carrots and little, brown onions that had been harvested but not cleaned.
They were covered in mud. She set about cleaning them in the water she had drawn from the well, washing and re-washing until the dirt came off.
With the only knife she could find, she then chopped up the carrots and onions, putting the chunks of vegetables into the pot along with the beans.
As she worked on the stew, Isadora returned with her hands full of small, brown eggs.
She had located the chicken coop and had collected all of the eggs she could carry, but Courtly sent her back for more.
Isadora fled out the door, frenzied, as only a young girl could be.
It was fortunate that Ellice’s kitchen was well-stocked.
Courtly was very thankful to come across a bag of salt and another sack half-full of peppercorns.
Salt and peppercorns, smashed with the bottom of a small, iron pot, went into the stew pot, which was now starting to steam.
The feast was on the fire but Courtly was feeling a distinct sense of urgency as she turned her attention towards the leg of pork.
The guests would be arriving at any moment and the stew would take time to cook, so she fed off her sense of urgency, hurrying to put the meal together.
Using the dull knife she had used to chop up the vegetables, Courtly began cutting pieces of pork off of the leg and putting it all into the pot of beans and vegetables.
The meat was shriveled and looked as if the household had been eating off of it for some time, but she didn’t care.
At this point, some meat was better than no meat, and she hoped that cooking it with the beans would give the pork new life.
Throwing in more salt, she watched as the pot began to bubble.
As she watched the roiling in the pot grow livelier, she couldn’t even think about disappointing a man she wanted to impress.
She simply had to move onward and hope she could produce an appetizing and even tasty meal.
As she continued to cut off more pork and Isadora shuffled back and forth between the chicken pen and the kitchen, bringing in more eggs, a timid servant girl appeared and declared that she had been sent by Kellen.
Courtly put the woman in charge of making the bread, something she evidently knew nothing about, so Courtly switched places with her.
As the servant gingerly cut away at the pork leg and threw the meat into the pot, Courtly went about trying to remember how to make bread.
Although Lady d’Umfraville had instructed her charges in how to run a kitchen and even how to cook items, Courtly’s strong point had never been making bread.
She knew that bread needed to be made with two- or three-day-old bread dough, so that it would rise, but neither she nor the servant girl could find anything that resembled old bread dough.
The woman that usually worked in the kitchen was missing, obviously kept away by Ellice, so there was nothing to do but try to make a fair semblance of bread.
Courtly prayed it would be acceptable. She had one chance to impress Sir Maximus and everything in the world seemed to be against her – her dress, her lack of an opportunity to clean herself or even brush her hair, and now the food.
Everything was against her. But she wasn’t going to give up, not in the least.
Pushing up the sleeves of her smoke-scented surcoat, she went to work.