thank you, Moss. It was good soup.’
Moss took it and trod slowly back down the Bell Tower stairs. She tried to picture the Abbot walking among trees with the song of birds above. She would give anything to walk in such a wood.
There’d been a strangeness about Pa these past days. A tetchiness that began each time she was about to leave for the kitchen.
‘Don’t talk to those kitchen girls. They’re trouble.’
‘You don’t have to tell me, Pa.’
‘Just keep yourself to yourself. We don’t mix with Tower folk. It’s best that way.’
‘Best for who?’ muttered Moss as she stomped across the courtyard. Had he even tried to get to know anyone here? Did he not mind being treated like a shovelful of scrapings from the garderobe? To the people of the Tower, she and Pa were a bad smell, to be avoided like the plague.
And yet the Abbot didn’t think so, did he? Moss had been taking his meal every morning and evening, and while she waited for his bowl, he talked to her. Talked. He didn’t turn away, or call her names, or flick apple, or try to trip her. And for those few precious minutes, Moss felt like an ordinary girl. Of course, she hadn’t told him about her basket. Or about Pa, who’d soon be standing over him, axe raised. But that was the point. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Pa. It was what they did that made them so repellent to the people of the Tower.
She pushed at the kitchen door. Inside, the room steamed and bubbled with the usual ferocious mix of boiling pans and shrieks from the Cook.
‘Mutton pie on the table!’ yelled Mrs Peak as soon as Moss walked in. ‘No nibbling! No licking! Or it’ll be tongue pie tomorrow!’
Moss grabbed the pie and was out of the kitchen with only a jab in the ribs as she darted round the kitchen girls.
It was dusk and the Green was quiet. Without a breath of wind to wheeze through the turrets, Moss could hear the creak of ships and the shouts of the watermen on the river. It was a rare sound. Like music, thought Moss. Notes from the world outside, fluttering into her cold stone box.
She didn’t see him coming until it was too late.
Before she knew what was happening, her legs were whipped from under her and Moss found herself falling backwards into the horse trough. Struggling to sit up, she peeled the wet hair from her eyes and scowled at the face leering down at her.
George ‘Two-Bellies’ Kingston. A squat version of his uncle, red-faced, with a stomach full enough to burst his jacket. With time on his hands, he roamed the Tower, picking on anyone he thought he could bully. He wasn’t fussy. Moss kept out of his way as much as she could.
‘What’s the matter, basket girl? Never had a bath?’
Before she could react, he grabbed her dress with his thick fists and plunged her head under. Suddenly she was gulping filthy water, spluttering as he yanked her head back out. Two-Bellies grinned at her, drunk as a tick on the sight of Moss rasping lungfuls of air.
‘Scum always floats to the surface,’ he said.
‘And pigs can’t help that they stink so bad.’
His ham fists forced her under again and this time when she came up, she spluttered, ‘Get your hands off me, meat boy.’
‘But that,’ sneered Two-Bellies, ‘wouldn’t be nearly so much fun, would it, forge rat?’ He gave her a last shove and stepped back, shaking his wet sleeves.
Moss heaved herself from the trough. She was soaking from her head to her waist.
The pie! Where was it?
‘Looking for this?’ Two-Bellies kicked the pie out from under the trough. It lay on the cobbles by his feet, broken in two. Two-Bellies tipped it with the toe of his calfskin boot. ‘Rat pie? For your supper?’
‘No,’ said Moss. ‘Mutton pie. For the Abbot.’
‘Pigswill pie. For a traitor.’
‘What do you know, Two-Bellies?’
‘I know this.’ He raised his boot and brought his foot down hard, crushing the pie into the cobbles. ‘In a week’s time, that stinking Abbot will be crow-food.’
He wiped his boot on Moss’s dress and walked away.
Moss knelt on the cobbles. She daren’t go back to the kitchen. All she could do was scrape what was left of the pie back on to the plate.
In the Bell Tower, the Abbot was on his knees, praying as usual. At least the guards had lit a fire tonight to keep him warm. Moss set the pie on the small table. The Abbot took his seat.
‘They gave you mutton pie tonight, Abbot, not broth. Only . . . there was an accident on the way.’
The Abbot raised his eyebrows at the state of his supper, but noticing Moss was dripping wet, he beckoned her towards the fire.
‘Pie is pie,’ he said. ‘Whole, halved or crushed, it is still pie. A man is grateful for pie in his last few days. Even that fearsome Cook has a merciful streak.’
He picked a chunk from the plate and offered it to Moss.
‘Here. Take this back for your supper.’
Moss shook her head.
‘No, thank you.’ Bitterness rose in her gullet. She swallowed it down.
‘Well, I may be a dead man, but I know a good meal when I smell one.’ The Abbot bit into a piece of pie.
‘Abbot . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you think about it ?’
‘You mean my fast-approaching execution? Well, there’s a serious question from one so young.’
He folded his hands into the loose sleeves of his robe. ‘When I was your age, I had no thought of death at all. It was too far away. But I will be honest with you, Moss. Now I do find myself wondering how I will be when the moment comes. Will I be steady? Will I cry out? Will I bow my head and give way to my fate with dignity?’
He munched, flecks of pastry bobbing on his beard. ‘But tonight I have a pie. I will think on that. And on the skilled hands of the Cook who made it. And you.’
