Chapter Three
For the next few weeks, Bronwyn learned the ins and outs of Winchester Castle. The inner hall was grand, with great stained-glass windows, bearing portraits and names of saints. She spent hours with the other kitchen servants toiling in the expansive garden, tilling the soil and pulling up weeds.
It was hot, sweaty work in the September warmth, but she appreciated the change of routine. It beat working inside the underground kitchens, where she never saw the light of day usually.
But all was not well. She was safe, and for that, she was grateful.
But there was trouble afoot. More than once, she found Master Hugh giving the other servants dirty and suspicious looks.
One morning, Bronwyn had opened the grain stores and storage cupboard to find an entire loaf of bread gone, but when she’d asked the other servants, no one had known where it had disappeared to.
Worse, she spied Lady Alice walking around the gardens at times with the other ladies of Empress Maud’s, but there seemed a distance between them. One morning, Lady Alice approached Bronwyn in the garden and asked, “Might I have a word?”
Bronwyn glanced at the other servant facing her and straightened from her weeding. She nodded and motioned for Lady Alice to precede her whilst wiping her hands clean on her apron. “Yes?”
Lady Alice walked quickly, not wanting the other servants to hear. “I dislike this. Your hair is piled up around your head like a washerwoman or a kitchen maid, and your dress and apron are dirty.”
Bronwyn arched an eyebrow. “I am a kitchen maid?”
“Yes, well… You’re more than that and you know it.
Anyway, I wish you would dress better. I dislike having to walk about with someone so unkempt.
What would people think?” Lady Alice’s face was pale and pinched, her lips pursed tightly.
Her eyes squinted from the midday sun, and her jet-black hair rippled behind her shoulders.
She was anxious, Bronwyn realized. She wondered if Lady Alice knew Rupert had quit the empress’s army.
“What’s wrong?” Bronwyn asked.
“Nothing. I am perfectly fine.” Lady Alice kept walking. “It’s just… Everything is wrong. And I have no one else to talk to but you. You can be sure, I wouldn’t do this if I had someone else, of my own station and rank.”
Bronwyn realized that Lady Alice was definitely unhappy, bordering on upset. The young noblewoman was sometimes fair, sometimes foul, but more often than not, she was a friend. Lady Alice only pointed out the differences in their situations and was particularly cutting when she was upset.
“You have the other ladies-in-waiting,” Bronwyn pointed out.
“Ha. What a joke. You should train with the fool; he’d find you funny too.” She paused and, finding a bench nearby, sat on its cool, stone seat.
Bronwyn sat beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“I… Rupert is gone.”
Bronwyn tensed.
Lady Alice sighed. “He’s stuck at that blasted St. Swithun’s with Sir Robert and the men, and I haven’t heard from him since the battle began. He’s not sent me any messages to tell me of his affection for me, and I don’t know if he’s all right or not. He could be wounded or…What if he’s dead?”
Lady Alice will lead herself into a fit if she isn’t careful, Bronwyn thought. But her words struck a chord within her, and Bronwyn rested her hands on her knees. What if Lady Alice was right, and Rupert was injured? There was no way to know. And what about Theobold? Was he safe and well?
Bronwyn looked away, at a small row of herbs that were growing nearby. So Lady Alice didn’t know. Was Bronwyn the right person to tell her? And if so, was this the right moment? She bit the inside of her left cheek.
Lady Alice said, “I can see from the way your brow wrinkles that you’re thinking about this too. You’re worried about Theobold, aren’t you?”
Bronwyn blushed and instantly felt guilty. “I worry for them both.”
“As well you should. Theobold has practically fallen at your feet and Rupert thinks of you like his own sister. I know because he told me. So, you see? We are stuck like this together, waiting.”
“We’ll hear about them, for certain. I know they’re all right.”
“How can you say that when you don’t know? They could be lying in a ditch somewhere,” Lady Alice said.
“I just know.” Bronwyn felt they were all connected, somehow. If Rupert or Theobold were dead, she felt she would know it, the moment it happened. She brushed at a piece of nonexistent lint on her skirt and said, “There’s something you should know.”
“What? Do you know something?” Lady Alice’s gaze was hopeful.
Bronwyn swallowed. “Rupert defected.”
“What?” Lady Alice froze.
“He went back to Stephen and Matilda’s army.”
Lady Alice gave her a flat stare. “No. It can’t be. You’re wrong.”
“I’m not.” Bronwyn winced. “I wish I were. I was sent to deliver a message from Sir Miles to Sir Robert at St. Swithun’s. Theobold was there, but Rupert wasn’t. There was no sign of him.”
“He might have gotten lost in the fighting. It was chaos, for sure.” Lady Alice tugged on her skirts. Her voice was too high-pitched and hopeful-sounding.
“It was chaotic,” Bronwyn admitted. “But Theobold told me he’d defected. He said Rupert had rejoined Matilda’s ranks as soon as the fighting had broken out.”
“No. No, he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t be so dishonorable.” Her voice rose. Lady Alice gripped the edge of the stone bench with her hands. “He wouldn’t leave me.”
Bronwyn sat by her. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t. Not without telling me.” Lady Alice was quiet.
“I’m surprised too.”
They sat quietly together. Sometimes, Bronwyn thought, you don’t need to say words in order to support someone.
“How long have you known?”
“A little while.” Weeks, but she had busied herself with life at the castle under siege and hadn’t given Lady Alice a second thought.
But that wasn’t true. She had thought about Rupert, and how Lady Alice would react to the news of his defection had crept into their thoughts each day.
Would all be over between them? Her very thoughts sounded traitorous to herself.
What kind of a friend was she? She bowed her head.
“You should have told me straight away. A friend would have done that, as soon as she heard.” Lady Alice’s shoulders drooped. “You didn’t say anything, did you? You didn’t encourage Rupert to go back to their side?”
“No.” Bronwyn let a firmness enter her tone. “No, I didn’t. I wasn’t able to talk to him after you asked me to.”
“Watch your tone with me, Bronwyn. We may be friends, but I am still a lady, and you are a commoner. Don’t forget that.”
Bronwyn cocked her head at her. “You seem to choose when we are friends and when we aren’t.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“Sometimes we are friends; sometimes we aren’t. But you always seem to decide when we are and when we aren’t, and it makes me dizzy at times.” Bronwyn stood.
“What?” Lady Alice stood as well. “Don’t tell me you’re offended.”
“I am, a little.”
The young women faced each other.
“I bet you did. I bet you did say something to him. Tried to convince him to come back and leave me. Well, I won’t have it, you understand?
I won’t. I always get what I want, and I want him.
And no one is going to stand in my way.” Lady Alice’s eyes flashed in anger.
“You’re a baker. Go bake me a cake or something. ”
Bronwyn snorted and began to walk away, when Lady Alice said, “Wait. Um… What do you know about Mistress Agatha Carre?”
Bronwyn’s interest was piqued. “The empress’s taster? Only what you’ve told me, and her being rude and imperious toward the servants. Why?”
“No real lady of quality would treat others so. I think she’s a nobody. I think she’s common as dirt,” Lady Alice said maliciously, in a rush.
Bronwyn blinked. Lady Alice spoke with venom, as if she’d been holding these thoughts in her mind for some time, and now it was a relief to get them off her tongue.
“What makes you think that?” Bronwyn asked.
“Just the way she acts and talks. She wears fine dresses and eats at our table like she’s one of us ladies, but her manners are coarse, and she doesn’t have the manners for a fine table like the empress’s.
She barely washes her hands, hoards the best bits of meat, and I think I even saw her slipping some into her sleeve for later. Can you imagine?”
Bronwyn nodded. She well could, for since they were being besieged, food was becoming scarce, and the grain stores and preserved dairy were getting lower by the day.
“But that’s not the worst of it. She… I think she’s vicious.” Lady Alice flicked her hair over her shoulder and glanced around, as if to see whether they might be overheard.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I was walking with Lady Susanna the other day and she saw Agatha in the same dress she’d worn the day before, with grease stains around the bodice and sleeves.
Lady Susanna asked an innocent question and asked Agatha whether her maid had seen the state her dress was in.
Lady Susanna is sweet and kind but not always thinking before she talks. ” Lady Alice huffed.
“Well, Agatha thought she was poking fun at her and was offended. She walked away and we thought nothing of it, until that evening, when Lady Susanna sat on the bench at dinner. We always sit in the same places usually, and she got up with a start. She’d sat on a bit of grease and ruined the seat of her dress. ”
Bronwyn’s eyebrows rose. “Really.”
“Yes. The servants were asked, of course, but no one had dared spill grease on the bench. So Lady Susanna had to leave immediately and change, and by the time she returned, most of the food was gone. You know how these people are. Hardly anything left for her.”
Bronwyn nodded. Lady Alice didn’t know that what leftovers the nobles didn’t finish, the servants ate. For days there had stopped being leftovers, and the servants were getting leaner. “And you think Agatha did it? That she put grease in Lady Susanna’s spot?”