The Witch of Eye by Mari Griffith Page B

the estate workers on the monastery’s manor farm was the gift of a wild boar, a heavy beast, which had cost ten shillings and taken several hours to roast on the spit in the farmhouse kitchen. Its head, decorated with holly, now graced a large wooden platter in the centre of the long table at the top end of the barn. The fresh green apple in its mouth gave it a jaunty look belied by the puckered, shrunken lids which covered its dead eyes. Such an animal should satisfy the appetites of thirty or so estate workers but, just in case more wassailers should arrive than were expected, Mistress Jourdemayne had also provided a fat goose which should easily feed another twenty.
    Though she had been here at the farm for six months by now, Jenna had seen very little of her employer’s wife and still felt nervous about her. Kitty had said they called her the Witch of Eye or Old Mother Madge. But she wasn’t really old, so what did that mean? Was she really a witch? She certainly wasn’t snaggle-toothed and Gib, the farmhouse cat, was just there to catch mice. He was hardly a witch’s familiar. Surely a witch would have warty skin or a hairy lip? Jenna’s occasional glimpses of Mistress Jourdemayne had shown her to be a perfectly attractive woman, apparently quite well suited to be her employer’s wife. And Master Jourdemayne was a decent man with a ready smile, not at all the kind of man who would have married a witch.
    In fact, anyone less like a witch than Margery Jourdemayne was difficult to imagine. Tonight, she was wearing a close-fitting dark red gown under a sleeveless mantle of brown wool to keep out the cold in the draughty barn. Her long fair hair, plaited and coiled on either side of her face, was held in place by a plain white linen fillet. A casual observer might be forgiven for assuming she was at least the wife of a minor knight, rather than a tenant farmer. She had something about her, an air of easy breeding, though her complexion was marred by fine lines which would become wrinkles within a few short years. And she looked tired.
    Her husband looked tired, too. The day-to-day routine of the farm made few concessions to the celebration of Twelfth Night. The cows still needed milking twice a day, the stock had to be fed and the eggs collected. It had been a day much like any other for William, except for the traditional pouring of ale around the trees in the lower orchard, but that had to be done, of course, to ensure a good crop of apples in the coming year. As soon as the ceremony was over, William had returned to the farmhouse to clean himself up for the feast, though his leather jerkin, for all that it had been dressed with neatsfoot oil, was still only a leather jerkin and it had seen better days.
    ‘It’s all very grand, isn’t it?’ said Kitty, who was sitting next to Jenna on a bench at the far end of the barn with a gaggle of excited scullions and dairymaids. ‘I love Twelfth Night, it’s wonderful! We shall have the plum cake in a moment, then we’ll see who will be king and queen for the night.’
    ‘I think Mistress Jourdemayne looks like a queen already, don’t you, Kitty?’ said Jenna. ‘She’s sure to get the slice of cake with the pea in it.’
    ‘Then Master Jourdemayne had better get the slice with the bean in it,’ said Kitty, nodding her head knowingly. ‘Because Mistress Jourdemayne wouldn’t like it if anyone else came to sit next to her to be the king. She’s very high and mighty. She won’t talk to everyone.’ Kitty had opinions about such things.
    Jenna had rather taken the youngster under her wing since coming to work at Eybury Farm. Having first encountered her in the dimpsy half-light of the hay loft, she hadn’t realised quite how young Kitty was, and Jenna’s heart went out to the child when she realised she was entirely alone in the world.
    Kitty’s earnest little face clouded over as she told Jenna her story, or as much of it as she could remember. She had never