We were halfway up the stairs when the yelling started.
‘Get that hook away from me! I’m warning you!’
It was coming from a bedchamber up on the first floor and made me freeze, mid-step.
‘Who the devil is that?’ I asked.
‘Master Ellis, making a fuss,’ Mistress Bagwell replied, and kept climbing the stairs as if it was all perfectly normal and people hollered their lungs out here every day.
So this was the boy I had to toughen up, though by my reckoning he sounded fierce enough already. I was beginning to wonder what sort of house I’d come into.
At the door to Master Ellis’s bedchamber, Mistress Bagwell turned to me.
‘He’s not a bad boy,’ she said, softening. ‘His father sometimes forgets he’s still feeling the loss of his mother.’
The door swung open on to a room that smelled of blood. Glimpsing round Mistress Bagwell’s shoulder, I couldn’t see a boy, never mind a bleeding one. I took in the high bed with its tapestried hangings, the leaping fire, the wood of the tables, walls, floor, all polished to perfection.
And then, the tooth-barber.
He was by the window. Despite being rather short, he managed to block out a good deal of light.
‘Just a back tooth removed today,’ he said to Mistress Bagwell. He had a strong local accent, soft and meadowy, which was at odds with the blood on his bare forearms. ‘More teeth-cleaning, less sugar-eating, that’s what this young man needs.’
Mistress Bagwell sucked in her cheeks like she didn’t agree, but replied, ‘Very good, Dr Blood.’
The name was fittingly grim.
From the bed, someone groaned, then spat. There was the sound of something solid hitting a pan. Master Ellis, I saw now, was tucked away in the far corner of the mattress, like an animal that was hurting. I didn’t blame him, either – Dr Blood had a brutal look about him that wasn’t only on account of his trade. He made the hairs at the back of my neck twitch.
‘I trust you have hot water and soap ready for me?’ Dr Blood asked.
‘Indeed.’ Mistress Bagwell opened the door, indicating that he should go with her.
And so he did, though as he passed he glared at me as if every tooth in my head needed pulling. Instinctively, I clamped my mouth shut.
Once they’d gone, and I was alone with Master Ellis, I moved nearer the bed.
Be polite, I told myself, don’t pick your nose, don’t chew the ends of your fingers where the skin sometimes flakes, and for goodness’ sake don’t stare.
‘Are you well, master?’ I asked, which was stupid to say but the first thing that came into my head.
Shuffling into a sitting position, he regarded me with huge grey eyes that even then glinted with mischief. I stared back – I couldn’t help it. He looked so much like Susannah, only a couple of years older, with brown hair that didn’t curl, and a face more given to smiling.
‘Who are you?’ Master Ellis spoke like his mouth was full of padding.
‘I’m Fortune.’
‘Intriguing name for a boy, though you don’t appear very fortunate,’ he commented.
Nor do you, I thought. His cheeks were whiter than clean laundry. A couple of thumb-sized bruises were coming up nicely on his jaw where the tooth-barber had gripped it.
‘Your father has hired me to be your servant,’ I said, just so he knew I wasn’t anything to do with Dr Blood. ‘He says I’m to help you become more of a man.’
A look flashed over Master Ellis’s face – part indignant, part amused.
‘More of a man, eh?’ he said, considering it. ‘Did my father speak those very words?’
‘Ummm … well, yes … in a way …’ But the more I tried to explain the more knotted my tongue became.
Anyway, Master Ellis was already laughing.
‘Oh, that’s quite the finest thing I’ve ever heard!’ he cried.
‘Is it?’ I was confused.
‘Oh yes! Thank you, Fortune. I haven’t laughed that much in months!’
Maybe it was nerves or tiredness or the fact I rather liked him, but Master Ellis’s laughter made me start to giggle. So when the bedchamber door opened and Susannah flew in, she found the pair of us cackling like old hens.
‘Oh!’ She stopped mid-stride. The baby was with her, bound in cloth and tied to her chest like working women did with theirs. ‘I see you’ve met our new servant, Ellis.’
Ellis wiped his eyes. ‘Dear sister! Can you believe it? Fortune here is Father’s latest attempt to turn me into the perfect son. No offence meant, Fortune,’ he added to me.
‘None taken, master,’ I said, though now the laughter had stopped I was confused all over again. I felt shifty too: Susannah watched me with the sort of cleverness that saw straight through my disguise. I was glad when her attention switched to Master Ellis’s tooth.
‘Oh, Ellis, did it hurt?’ she asked, climbing up beside him on the bed. From deep inside the folds of cloth, the baby gurgled.
‘Agony. I despise that wretched man,’ Ellis replied, then said to the baby, ‘Greetings, Busy Bea! You’ve come to entertain me too, have you?’
The baby, hearing his voice, squirmed enthusiastically. They looked a close, affectionate family all together like that, and it made me miss my own. Even Susannah was smiling, which made her whole face change. At least it did until she realised I was still here, standing awkwardly by the bed.
‘Have you no work to do?’ she asked sharply.
‘I’m to tend Master Ellis,’ I said.
‘His bedclothes need replacing. See to it, will you?’
But as I came closer she changed her mind.
‘Oh, I’ll do it. Here, take Bea.’ She was already unwrapping the baby and holding the wriggling creature towards me.
‘No, miss, I’ll do the bedclothes,’ I replied quickly.
From the smirk on Master Ellis’s face I guessed I’d spoken out of turn. But I was wary of babies, not like Abigail, who crooned and clucked every time she saw one at market. In truth, I found them slightly terrifying.
With Master Ellis moved to a nearby chair, I set to work on the bedclothes. There was clean linen in a chest at the foot of the bed – bedsheets, pillow slips, mattress covers, top sheets. I’d no idea rich people slept under so many layers of cloth, or how to arrange them. By the time I’d finished the bed was no neater, but at least it was clean.
Master Ellis crawled between the sheets groaning in discomfort.
‘Fetch me something for the pain,’ he pleaded.
‘A glass of port wine?’ Susannah suggested.
‘My mother swears by yarrow root for toothache,’ I said, scooping up the soiled linen. ‘Or willow bark, and a touch of vinegar for infection. Tastes vile but it works wonders.’
Susannah fired a look at Master Ellis. He tried to say something, but his mouth had filled with blood, and he needed to spit it out. I pushed the pan in front of him with my foot.
‘Fetch the port wine from the kitchen,’ Susannah instructed me.
‘But, miss,’ I suddenly remembered. ‘Your father said no pain relief—’
She looked at me. ‘Fortune, you don’t seem the type to follow every single rule. Am I right?’
Under that knowing gaze of hers, I felt nervous again.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I mumbled, and hurried out of the room.
With the door closed behind me, I paused just long enough to take a deep, deep breath. Inside the room, the hum of voices started up. I didn’t mean to listen but they were talking about me.
‘You know Fortune is usually a girl’s name, don’t you?’ This was Susannah.
I froze.
Ellis mumbled something I didn’t catch.
‘Really, brother, I don’t know what Father was thinking of, hiring such an imbecile to tend you,’ Susannah went on. ‘We’re a wealthy, landowning family, not an alms house for the poor.’
‘I like Fortune,’ Ellis answered. ‘He’s got spirit. Though I can’t imagine what Father’s hoping to achieve with him.’
‘Well, I believe he’s hiding something,’ Susannah said.
‘And we’re not, I suppose?’ Master Ellis replied.
There was a shuffling. A sound of floorboards creaking.
‘Though if Father heard him recommending herbs like that, he’d put him out of the house in a moment.’ This was Master Ellis again.
‘Really!’ Susannah’s temper flared. ‘What happened to our mother had nothing to do with herbs!’
‘No, but Father’s convinced it did.’
‘Then he’s wrong,’ she snapped.
The baby started crying. A proper roar it was too, like the world had suddenly ended. Remembering my errand, I hurried away.
*
Down in the kitchens, I found Mistress Bagwell swilling out a bucket of bloody water. The tooth-barber, thankfully, appeared to have gone.
‘Messy work, tooth-pulling,’ she sighed, taking the sheets from me and filling more buckets. ‘Especially when he’s doing it.’ Which I took to mean she didn’t think much of Dr Blood, either. I’d already made a note to keep out of his way.
‘What do you make of our young master, then?’ Mistress Bagwell asked. Like my sister, she had a nose for gossip, which might be useful, especially in a house like this, where I knew nothing yet and was feeling it keenly.
‘He’s probably not at his best just now,’ I ventured.
‘True enough,’ she agreed. ‘What with his poor mother dying and leaving a baby, and he was already so angry at his father.’
‘What about?’ I asked, keen to hear more.
We were back in the kitchen now. Mistress Bagwell, having guessed I’d been sent down for wine, took a bottle from a high-up cupboard and poured some into a tiny glass without spilling a drop.
‘All this, that’s what he’s angry about.’ Mistress Bagwell gestured to the pewter plates, the meat, the locked cupboard where sugar was kept. Everything breathed luxury and wealth. ‘One day Master Ellis will inherit everything – the house, the staff, his father’s business – and he doesn’t want any part of it. It’s bought with merchant’s money, you see, got from trading sugar.’
‘Mr Spicer trades sugar?’ She might as well have said gold. Everyone wanted sugar these days, but only the very wealthiest could afford it, which was probably why rich people like Master Ellis had rotten teeth.
‘Does that tooth-barber come here often, then?’ I asked, hoping he didn’t.
She pulled a face. ‘Often enough. Dr Blood’s an acquaintance of Mr Spicer’s mainly, an investor, like, so he’s mostly here on sugar business. Master Ellis despises him.’
‘So I gathered.’
‘To be fair, he did need that tooth pulled today,’ she confided. ‘It’s the business side of things he’s most unhappy about. Mr Spicer and Dr Blood have ambitions, you see, to expand trading.’
With a glance over her shoulder, she dropped her voice, so I guessed we were getting to the nub of the matter.
‘They’re trying to get the backing of King James himself. But father and son don’t agree on the king’s views, either.’
‘Because of the new Bible?’ I asked. There’d been plenty of cross words over King James’s new version of God’s book, even in Fair Maidens Lane.
‘Not just that. Mr Spicer thinks wise women are evil. After what happened with his wife.’
‘When she had the baby, you mean? When she died?’ I asked, wary of where this was heading.
Mistress Bagwell blinked very slowly. ‘He got a midwife in to tend her, though it was a difficult birth and a few plants were never going to save her. When she died, he was a broken man. He swears that the herbs poisoned his wife. Claims the midwife was practising witchcraft.’
I gulped, my throat suddenly tight. ‘Witchcraft, you say?’
‘That’s right. He thinks women are a treacherous lot and not to be trusted, any of us. Think yourself lucky you’re not a girl.’