but Lady Anne had never spoken to her. Why would she? Any instructions she had to give to a villein would be passed on through the steward, reeve or bailiff. And Elena mostly worked in the fields, as her own mother had done and her grandmother before that.
The closest Elena had ever come to the house was the kitchens outside in the courtyard where she was sent to take herbs and vegetables for the cooks. She hated going there, a great noisy place with people flashing knives and rushing about bellowing orders. Worst of all was the stifling heat from the fires, and the smoke, steam and burning fat so thick in the air that it made your eyes sting and water before you'd even set foot through the door. She always imagined that the torments of hell would be just like the manor kitchens. Holy Virgin, surely they weren't going to make her work in there?
She stared down at a daisy struggling to grow in the dust between the cobbles. 'How . . . how does she . . . Lady Anne know me?'
'I knew she was looking for a new tiring maid, since that foolish girl got herself with child.' He smiled. 'I've been keeping an eye on you. I think you'll do very well.'
Lady Anne was standing at the window of the chamber, her greying hair covered by the soft folds of a linen wimple. The afternoon light streaming in cruelly exposed the dull flaking skin and sharp bones of her face. She was not yet in her sixtieth year, but to Elena she looked ancient, older even than her grandmother, which she probably was. Deep lines were gouged around her eyes and mouth from years of anxiety, and little wonder, Elena's mother said, for the poor soul had been a widow for nigh on twenty years. Cecily knew all about the sorrows of widowhood, for hadn't her own husband died of the marsh fever before Elena was even weaned?
Elena glanced only briefly at Lady Anne as she dropped a wobbly curtsy, for she was far more fascinated by the room than by its occupant. The chamber was vast in comparison to cottages in the village, with high ceilings and heavy tapestries. Heavy carved wooden chairs and even bigger chests stood against walls. The wooden floor was not strewn with rushes but with several rugs gleaming like water in the sun. Elena had never seen silk before. She longed to run her hands over them and trace the intricate patterns of blue, red and yellow flowers which spiralled into one another till you could not see where one ended and another began. They were not like any flowers that grew in the meadows of Gastmere.
A large bed stood in the far corner. It was hung with drapes which were pulled back into graceful loops to reveal a richly embroidered bedcovering. Elena guessed it to be where Sir Gerard, Lady Anne's son, slept when he was at home, for surely such a magnificent bed could only belong to the lord of the manor? The bed looked as wide as the entire room in which Elena and her mother lived, cooked and slept. Rumour in Gastmere was that Sir Gerard had recently been laid low with the fever. A wicked thought popped up in Elena's head that she too would declare herself sick, if she had a bed like that to lie in all day. She hastily crossed herself to ward off" the evil she had tempted.
Like his father before him, Gerard had been away fighting for many years, first for King Richard in the Holy Land and then for King John in Aquitaine. Cecily said it was a wanton shame for an only son to leave his poor mother with the burden of running manor and village. But all the village women and not a few of the men were forced to concede that in her son's absence Lady Anne ruled the manor as well as ever her husband had done — better, in fact, some whispered. 'She's the spirit and tenacity of a sow-badger,' Elena's mother confided to Marion, and Cecily was not known as a woman who scattered her compliments freely.
From outside the open casement came the distant hum of voices, the clatters and bangs of dozens of people going about their work, but inside the chamber only the buzzing of bluebottles which had wandered in through the open casement broke the silence. Elena shifted uneasily,