‘It sounds like a bad deal to me. You should leave him to work for himself, and then it’s him who would starve.’ Tyballis handed her the wooden spoon. ‘Will you stir? It’s forcemeat for stuffing the hens, and I made it with rather too much cider, so it has to boil up and condense or it will be horribly sloppy. But I still have the suet codlings to make, and it’s getting late.’
‘What hens?’ demanded Elizabeth, dutifully stirring.
‘The ones Drew and Ralph are out catching in the shed right now,’ Tyballis said. ‘I’d planned on two or three, you know. But Drew says four. He said if we didn’t kill four, none of us would get more than a wing and a burnt feather. But that means a lot of forcemeat, or the birds will never hold to the spit.’ She eyed the bedraggled woman now bent over the cauldron. ‘Elizabeth, do you – know anything about cooking?’
‘Not much.’ Elizabeth peered into the pot and sniffed, then smiled reluctantly. ‘Smells good, I’ll say that for you. All I ever done was porridge and barley soup. There weren’t much to cook in my house when I was little. But I reckon I can stir, if you do the mixing.’
A few hours later, Davey appeared with a gittern, and announced to the household’s surprise that he could play it with moderate competence. ‘Has one string broken, but that won’t put me off,’ Davey said, gleefully rubbing the old veneer with his thumb. ‘There’s no cracks and the other seven strings are good. I’ll fiddle while we dance, and Jon has a fine voice if he stays awake long enough to remember the words.’
‘We have fine voices, too,’ Ralph and Nat said together.
‘You both sound like frogs on a wet night,’ said Davey. ‘What about you, Tybbs, my dear? Do you sing like an angel?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘But with an upturned bucket, I can play the drums.’
‘Two buckets, then, to make a knackerer,’ grinned Davey, ‘though will be strange from a female, with no knackers in sight.’
‘I can rattle spoons to the rhythm, and I shall make sure Jon sings all our favourite songs,’ said Felicia. ‘The poor dear is tired out, you know, and needs his nap. But tomorrow he’ll certainly be awake for the feast, and will lead us all in the carolling.’
‘I can sing a little,’ murmured Elizabeth cautiously from the shadows. She had been plucking chickens and there were still feathers in her hair. The scratches on her face looked like deep scarlet welts in the firelight.
‘And I got a wooden whistle,’ Ellen said, tugging at her mother’s skirt. ‘Drew whittled it ages ago, and give it me when I were littler. I kept it special. But I don’t know how to play it.’
‘Now that’s something I can do, my dear,’ announced George Switt from the corner. The elderly widower had hovered for some time in the hope of catching Ellen for a quick cuddle. ‘I have an ear for a tune, and used to pipe with a small band of minstrels in my youth. I played for nobility, you know, and all the city aldermen.’
‘But where is Drew?’ demanded Davey. ‘Not planning on sneaking away, is he, like he’s always done before?’
Tyballis shook her head. ‘He and Luke are out in the big shed chopping that old fallen pine in half for the Yule log. He said it fell in the gales last March, so it might still be rather green, but it’s huge and dry, and it wouldn’t be Christmas without a great big fire and a Yule log.’
‘Would be a better Christmas without Luke Parris,’ muttered Davey.
‘But Drew will surely have the biggest fire,’ grinned Ralph. ‘And not one of us will complain about that.’
‘Father Horace will complain, all right,’ Nat said. ‘If there’s not one of us at midnight Mass tonight, and he hears of mistletoe and us buggers feasting without giving a penny to the poor nor lighting a candle to Our Lady.’
‘Drew don’t buy candles,’ muttered George Switt.
‘Wax is too expensive, and Drew don’t like the tallow ones. Says they stink,’ Nat nodded. ‘Firelight is all we need. But I were talking of Mother Church and that little bald priest at St Mary’s. Isn’t there none of us going to remember what the day is, and do the proper thing?’
‘Drew don’t buy candles and he don’t go to church.’ Ellen sat with her brothers, who were aggrieved at the blissful smells coming from the kitchen yet with nothing put in front of them to eat. Ellen hugged them all and said, ‘I’d be proper happy to go to church.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I have nothing decent to wear,’ she said, ‘and nor do you, my dear. But we could put on our own nativity play. We all know our Bible stories, I hope.’
‘Prefer mummings myself,’ objected Davey. ‘I could play the dragon and Ralph can be St George.’
‘I believe that part should rightly be mine,’ said George Switt, looking up.
‘But mystery plays are more the proper thing, you know,’ said Nat, ‘and them mummings is nearly as shocking as the mistletoe. Ralph and Davey and I can be the Magi. Well, we’re wise and we live in the east, don’t we! We got three choices for Our Virgin Lady, and perhaps Luke can play Joseph, having been a monk once. Then there’s Gyles for the holy babe Himself, and it’ll be shepherds and sheep for the rest of you.’
The rain finally stopped as, with a thumping and thudding, Andrew and Luke dragged in the massive pine trunk, still sticky with straw and chicken droppings from its summer bedding. Casper heard and hurried in with a tray of mulled wine he had prepared, and platters of honeyed bread rolls stuck on little twigs and stuffed with raisins. The children all started to squeal and crawled to Casper’s feet, which unbalanced him somewhat but he and the wine made it to their destination unspoiled.
Andrew hauled the log onto the hearth, kicking it far back into place as Luke and Ralph pushed from the front. Without even being doused in alcohol, the bark took flame with a burst of sparks and small scraps of straw flew in cartwheels up the chimney. The smoke made them all cough but the mulled wine helped exceedingly with all problems and everyone raised their cups to the glorious birth of Christianity, to Tyballis, her lucky release from gaol and the miraculous fact that none of the rest of them had yet been arrested that year. Finally they drank to the generosity and unaccountable wisdom of their enigmatic host, who was enabling them all to celebrate the best Christmas of their lives.
Chapter Twenty
Just a few miles upriver, the royal court at Westminster was much involved with a similar although considerably more lavish celebration.
His gracious highness King Edward IV had momentarily slipped behind the tapestry screen in order to piss, fart and heave out a small space in his belly sufficient to fill anew, while still complying with the etiquette of the occasion. The king enjoyed his food and, thankfully, the strictly prescribed diet of milk sops and gruel had been long abandoned. However, even though the sudden and terrifying bout of dysentery that had inspired the diet, the enforced sickbed and the frequent rebalancing of the humours by regular bleeding was three months in the past, the tyranny of memory remained. Certainly the Christmas season might now pass in the accepted style.
The king returned to his seat on the high dais beneath the golden canopy, sat heavily and folded his hands over his paunch. He gazed out at his courtiers with benign approval. During his disastrous illness an excess of vomiting had left him almost concave; he had felt strangely slim for the first time since his buoyant youth, but he had been far too ill to enjoy it. Now the satisfaction of a middle-aged rotundity had returned, and his grace had every intention of spreading himself even wider.
Although the feast was confined to three courses, each course consisted of eighteen separate dishes, and King Edward intended to sample them all. His brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester, and his friend William, Lord Hastings might fuss about their monarch’s health, but that, the king held, was the business of the physicians. Her grace his queen had been even more frightened about his illness than he had himself, and now, invigorated by relief, encouraged all his appetites once again. Not that he particularly cared for those more strenuous desires these days, but he found it pleasant to have his wife refrain from the complaints and criticisms with which she had previously endowed him. Her son, his stepson, the Marquess of Dorset encouraged him too, as long as he and Hastings were kept safely apart, of course. Meanwhile the king’s own two sons were far too young to raise objections about anything except when being told to practise their archery in the rain.