Maxton wasn’t sure, but thoughts of Andressa were weighing more heavily on his mind than they ever had before. He was coming to think that meeting the starving woman that morning hadn’t been a coincidence… perhaps it had been a sign from God, sent to help him prevent the murder of a king.
He couldn’t think of it any other way.
“I am not certain as of yet,” he said, “but I will meet you at the docks when I am done. Wait for me there.”
Alexander nodded, giving him yet another slap on the shoulder as he departed the chamber, heading down the stairwell. Maxton wasn’t far behind him. Suddenly, he wasn’t sleepy any longer. His mind was working furiously on what he’d been told, and what he needed to do.
An eventful morning was about to turn into an eventful day.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She was washinglaundry for other people.
Andressa’s main duty at St. Blitha was the laundry– she washed clothes for the nuns as well as religious cloths and other things that belonged to the abbey. Anything that was washable, she took charge of. But three years ago, the Mother Abbess began to take in laundry and charged a hefty price for it, telling the rich of London that the clothing was washed in holy water and, therefore, cost more to wash. It was Godliness on a whole new level, and being that there were many pious people in London and the surrounding areas near the Bishopsgate area, there was often a good deal of laundry to wash.
Of course, the clothes were only washed in ordinary water from the small creek that ran alongside the abbey and the Mother Abbess pocketed the money that was paid for the privilege of having a starving, overworked woman pound out the dirt on the clothing. Sometimes, Andressa even delivered the laundry back to the rich clients, taxing her already-strained body. But at St. Blitha, hard work and laundry were all Andressa had ever known, because when she had first come to the abbey,she’d been put where she was needed, and that was in the laundry helping an old nun who was clearly dying.
The woman could hardly breathe, and hard labor was difficult, but she gamely did her best. She had been kind to Andressa and had taught her what she needed to know about doing the laundry and pleasing the Mother Abbess. She taught her how to boil the water for washing and use the wood ash from the fire to make the tallow soap for the laundry.
Andressa had become quite adept at making the soap from wood ash and tallow that was gathered from any fat source– beef was preferable, but she had also used mutton. Goose fat was frowned upon because it smelled so badly, and Andressa made new soap about once a month. Lumpy, slimy bars of yellowish soap, but it was a good product because it cleaned well.
Sometimes, she even added lavender to it from the wild bunches of lavender that grew in the herb garden of the abbey, and the nuns throughout St. Blitha used her soap on hands and dishes and even bodies from time to time. Her soap, along with the starch she made from flour and water, made her quite a skilled laundress thanks to the old nun who had taught her.
But the old nun had soon passed away after teaching Andressa what she knew, so for the past four years, Andressa had been the laundress of St. Blitha. The skin on her once-soft, pale hands had long turned red and chapped. Sometimes it even bled. She would rub oil on it, oil from the lamps inside the abbey when no one was looking, and that provided her with some relief. But even now, she’d been scrubbing most of the morning and her knuckles were already raw and chaffed. She was down to her last few items to wash for the day and thankful for it. Most of it was hanging to dry, kept off of the ground by hemp rope strung up in the yard. The Mother Abbess didn’t give a care to many things around the abbey, but she cared about the laundry, so Andressa had everything she needed for quality work.
St. Blitha was located outside of the city walls of London, but built with sturdy walls of its own. It had a neighbor in St. Mary’s Hospital to the south but, for the most part, the order kept to itself. The chapel and dormitories were clustered together on one end of the rectangular-shaped compound, while the kitchens, stable yard, and vegetable garden were on the other.
Because the Mother Abbess didn’t like the smell of the barnyard, a large and strangely out of place flower garden was between the stables and the chapel and dorms, including the Mother Abbess’ fine quarters. It was out of place because it looked so luxurious in the midst of a poor order, and no one was allowed in the flower garden but the Mother Abbess and Sister Petronilla. Carefully tended rose bushes filled the area, as well as foxglove, nightshade, hemlock, a variety of lavender, and other things.
The laundry was lodged by the kitchens, as they shared many of the same big fires for water boiling, but Andressa had an area all to her own. There were several large willow trees on the other side of the wall, hanging partially over her area and creating pleasant shade on warm days. The postern gate was here, a heavy iron gate with an enormous lock on it, through which a small stream was accessed.
Andressa passed through the gate several times a day, hauling water from the stream to boil, so much so that the gate was only locked at night. They didn’t worry about anyone invading their sanctuary; no one ever had, so they moved rather freely even outside the massive walls.
On this particular day, Andressa had moved better and faster than she had in some time because of the meal she’d had that morning. Her belly had been full for the most part, and she’d returned to St. Blitha feeling satisfied, which was a rare occurrence in her world. She began her chores immediately, hauling water from the stream and putting it on to boil. It was somuch easier to work with food in her belly, but all the while she kept thinking of the enormous knight with the deep blue eyes who had made the food possible.
A man who had been as handsome as he had been generous.
It was strange, really… Andressa had spent the last four years living with women, essentially isolated from men, which had been a drastic change from her days at Okehampton Castle. Not that Lady de Courtney allowed her charges to interact with the men at the castle without restraint, but she had been around them constantly. There had even been one man she’d been fond of but she didn’t think of him any longer, a young warrior who had lied his way into her heart and then had ripped every last shred of dignity she had from her.
A relationship that had been as tragic as it had been disappointing.
As Andressa went to the stream for more water for the last of her afternoon washing, she found herself entertaining thoughts of Rhyne de Leybourne. After that fateful August day when he’d seduced her, she’d fought to put him out of her mind. Her humiliation ran bone-deep, humiliation in her own foolishness for having believed him in the first place. She’d known him the entire time she’d been at Okehampton Castle, a vain but handsome knight, someone she’d been very attracted to, and he towards her.
For the first year at St. Blitha, she’d thought of him quite often, wondering where he was and if he was well. Secretly, she hoped he’d come for her at St. Blitha, but the truth was that he probably had no idea where she was and she was sure her aunt would never tell him. He’d been away when her aunt had summoned her from Okehampton, and then she’d been sent straight on to St. Blitha.
But Rhyne had been clever. She saw that in hindsight now. In Andressa, he saw the opportunity to marry well and inherit asubstantial fortune, and he wouldn’t let her get away so easily. She remembered when he finally came to St. Blitha and had laid in wait for her to tend to her washing, as she did every day. It had been in this very spot by the stream when he’d found her and coerced her into the barn of a neighboring farm, where he’d told her how much he loved her before stealing her innocence away.
Oh, he’d promised to return for her, but that promise wasn’t as important as a marriage to a French heiress. In truth, Andressa didn’t even really know why he’d come to St. Blitha that day; it was clear she had nothing to give him. Her aunt had seen to that. Perhaps Rhyne thought he could fight for her inheritance and steal it back from the aunt, but it must have been too hard for him to work for it. The French heiress he married must have been an easier catch. Or, at least, he probably hadn’t had to fight for her. It had been wealth for the taking, leaving Andressa at St. Blitha with nothing but a memory she had all but pushed from her mind.
She wouldn’t think of him.
She couldn’t.
Kneeling down beside the stream for the twentieth time that day, she fought off thoughts of Rhyne. Any fondness she’d ever felt for him had turned into bitter hatred those months ago. Lost in thoughts of the brash young liar, she was startled from her thoughts when a deep voice came from behind.
“I’ve never been to St. Blitha before. And when I do, I see that you are drawing water? Have you no well?”
Stumbling forward and nearly falling into the stream, Andressa was able to catch her balance in time, looking over to see Maxton approaching beneath the willow branches.
