side of her gaunt face, as if she were encased in a cage. ‘Well?’
‘Is this the house of Janyn Perres?’
‘What’s it to you?’
Her gaze flicked over me, briefly. She made to close the door. I could not blame her: I was not an attractive object. But this was where I had been sent, where I was expected. I would not have the door shut in my face.
‘I have been sent,’ I said, slapping my palm boldly against the wood.
‘What do you want?’
‘I am Alice,’ I said, remembering, at last, to curtsey.
‘If you’re begging, I’ll take my brush to you …’
‘I’m sent by the nuns at the Abbey,’ I stated.
The revulsion in her stare deepened, and the woman’s lips twisted like a hank of rope. ‘So you’re the girl. Are you the best they could manage?’ She flapped her hand when I opened my mouth to reply that, yes, I supposed I was the best they could offer, since I was the only novice. ‘Never mind. You’re here now so we’ll make the best of it. But in future you’ll use the door at the back beside the privy.’
And that was that.
I had become part of a new household.
And what an uneasy household it was. Even I, with no experience of such, was aware of the tensions from the moment I set my feet over the threshold.
Janyn Perrers—master of the house, pawnbroker, moneylender and bloodsucker. His appearance did not suggest a rapacious man but, then, as I rapidly learned, it was not his word that was the law within his four walls. Tall and stooped with not an ounce of spare flesh on his frame and a foreign slur to his speech, he spoke only when he had to, and then not greatly. In his business dealings he was painstaking. Totally absorbed, he lived and breathed the acquisition and lending at extortionate rates of gold and silver coin. His face might have been kindly, if not for the deep grooves and hollow cheeks more reminiscent of a death’s head. His hair—or lack of—some few greasy wisps around his neck, gave him the appearance of a well-polished egg when he removed his felt cap. I could not guess his age but he seemed very old to me with his uneven gait and faded eyes. His fingers were always stained with ink, his mouth too when he chewed his pen.
He nodded to me when I served supper, placing the dishes carefully on the table before him: it was the only sign that he noted a new addition to his family. This was the man who now employed me and would govern my future.
The power in the house rested on the shoulders of Damiata Perrers, his sister, who had made it clear when I arrived that I was not welcome. The Signora. There was no kindness in her face. She was the strength, the firm grip on the reins, the imposer of punishment on those who displeased her. Nothing happened in that house without her knowledge or her permission.
There was a boy to haul and carry and clean the privy, a lad who said little and thought less. He led a miserable existence, gobbling his food with filthy fingers before bolting back to his own pursuits in the nether regions of the house. I never learned his name.
Then there was Master William de Greseley. He was a man who was and was not of the household since he spread his services further afield, an interesting man who took my attention but ignored me with a remarkable determination. A clerk, a clever individual with black hair and brows, sharp features much like a rat, and a pale face, as if he never saw the light of day. A man with as little emotion about him as one of the flounders brought home by Signora Damiata from the market, his employment was to note down the business of the day. Ink might stain Master Perrers’s fingers but I swore that it ran in Master Greseley’s veins. He disregarded me to the same extent as he was deaf to the vermin that scuttled across the floor of the room in which he kept the books and ledgers of money lent and reclaimed. I was wary of him. There was a coldness that I found unpalatable.
And then there was me. The maidservant who undertook all the work not assigned to the boy. And some that was.
Thus my first introduction to the Perrers family. And since it was a good score of miles away from Barking Abbey, it was not beyond my tolerance.
‘God help th’man who weds you, mistress!’
‘I’m not going to be married!’
Holy Mother! My vigorous assertion returned to mock me. Within a se’nnight I found myself exchanging marriage vows at the church door.
Given the tone of her remonstration, Signora Damiata was as astonished as I, and unpleasantly frank when I was summoned to join brother and sister in the parlour at the rear of the house, where, by the expression on the lady’s face, Master Perrers had just broken the news of his intent.
‘Blessed Mary! Why marry?’ she demanded. ‘You have a son, an heir, learning the family business in Lombardy. I keep your house. Why would you want a wife at your age?’ Her accent grew stronger, the syllables hissing over each other. ‘If you must, then choose a girl from one of our merchant families. A girl with a dowry and a family with some standing. Jesu! Are you not listening?’ She raised her fists as if she might strike him. ‘She is not a suitable wife for a man of your importance.’
Did I think that Master Perrers did not rule the roost? He looked briefly at me as he continued leafing through the pages of a small ledger he had taken from his pocket.
‘I will have this one. I will wed her. That is the end of the matter.’
I, of course, was not asked. I stood in this three-cornered dialogue yet not a part of it, the bone squabbled over by two dogs. Except that Master Perrers did not squabble. He simply stated his intention and held to it, until his sister closed her mouth and let it be. So I was wed in the soiled skirts in which I chopped the onions and gutted the fish: clearly there was no money earmarked to be spent on a new wife. Sullen and resentful, shocked into silence, certainly no joyful bride, I complied because I must. I was joined in matrimony with Janyn Perrers on the steps of the church with witnesses to attest the deed: Signora Damiata, grim-faced and silent; and Master Greseley, because he was available, with no expression at all. A few words muttered over us by a bored priest in an empty ritual, and I was a wife.
And afterwards?
No celebration, no festivity, no recognition of my change in position in the household. Not even a cup of ale and a bride cake. It was, I realised, nothing more than a business agreement, and since I had brought nothing to it, there was no need to celebrate it. All I recall was the rain soaking through my hood as we stood and exchanged vows and the shrill cries of lads who fought amongst themselves for the handful of coin that Master Perrers scattered as a reluctant sign of his goodwill. Oh, and I recall Master Perrers’s fingers gripping hard on mine, the only reality in this ceremony that was otherwise not real at all to me.
Was it better than being a Bride of Christ? Was marriage better than servitude? To my mind there was little difference. After the ceremony I was directed to sweeping down the cobwebs that festooned the storerooms in the cellar. I took out my bad temper with my brush, making the spiders run for cover.
There was no cover for me. Where would I run?
And beneath my anger was a dark lurking fear, for the night, my wedding night, was ominously close, and Master Perrers was no handsome lover.
The Signora came to my room, which was hardly bigger than a large coffer, tucked
