The Nameless Day by Sara Douglass

Lord Christ! Thomas had heard stories of the depth of German resentment to the taxes and dues exacted by the Church, but to this hour hadn’t ever realized its depth.

“Then I shall seek sustenance elsewhere,” Thomas said. “But I wonder if I might trouble you to inquire—”

“Begone!” The man grabbed his horse’s bridle, and attempted to pull the gelding’s head about.

Thomas had endured enough. He reached down, seized in his turn the man’s arm, and gave it a mighty wrench.

The man’s hand dropped away from the bridle and he let out a howl of pain.

Out of the corner of his eyes Thomas saw several other men running, and he silently cursed. What had he done! He’d never get any information out of—

“Ernst,” a woman’s voice said, “he is only a friar, needing a moment of warmth and some gruel. He shall not eat us out of house and field, I am sure.”

Then, stunningly, the woman spoke in skillful Latin. “Good friar, I regret my neighbor Ernst’s hasty actions and words. Will you be so kind as to sup with myself and my husband?”

Thomas finally looked away from Ernst, standing well back and rubbing his arm and growling softly with the several other men who were now grouped at his shoulder, and down at the woman who’d walked up to his horse’s near side.

She was thirty-ish, with a broad pink-cheeked friendly face, curious eyes the same shade as her dark brown hair, and a five-month belly rounding out her apron. A year-old infant was slung across her back in a cloth, and a toddling boy clung to one of her hands.

“You speak wondrous Latin, good wife,” Thomas said. “How did you learn such?”

“Ah,” the woman said, and smiled, revealing surprisingly good teeth for a peasant woman. “I have led a charmed life, and have been privileged to learn of many things.

My name is Odile, and my husband is Conrad. Please, will you grace our home? It is humble, but we have warmth, a place for you to sit, and an extra plate for you to eat from.”

“I do thank you, Odile. But… I do not want to turn your neighbors against you.”

“Ah,” Odile said, and, turning slightly, waved the surly group of men away. “They will bear no grudge against me or mine for this single act of hospitality.”

She spied an eight-year-old boy standing curiously to one side. “Wolfram! Come, attend to the friar’s horse.”

Wolfram wandered up, and shyly took the reins from Thomas, who had dismounted when the men had walked away.

“He is my eldest,” Odile said, “and an honest lad. He will take good care of your

mount.”

Her good humor had infected Thomas— Saint Michael must have set this good woman in his path!-—and he returned her smile.

“I am indeed hungry, Mistress Odile, and would eat a blanket if you boiled it for me.”

She burst out laughing, and—

— and for an instant Thomas thought he saw another woman’s face superimposed over Odile’s… a younger woman, with a shining cloud of bronze-colored hair and infinitely sad, dark eyes—

—took Thomas’ arm with a little too much familiarity, but Thomas was still so startled by the momentary impression of seeing another woman’s face he did not object.

Odile led him to a house set back a little further than the others, and a little larger.

She noted the expression on Thomas’ face when he saw the house.

“This was my parents’ house, and when my Conrad took me to wife, he built this room here, see? And added the attic and side barn. We live well.”

And then again she turned and smiled, and said: “I have lived a charmed life.”

And then they were inside.

It was a typical peasant’s home, in spite of being slightly more spacious. There was no chimney, and the smoke from a central hearth drifted out a small window set to one side.

Most of it. The rest drifted about the interior, giving everything a slightly dingy appearance.

There was a tripod set above the fire, a pot suspended from it. It gave off such a delicious aroma that Thomas’ mouth instantly watered. Bread from the village oven lay wrapped in a cloth to one side, a bowl of beans by it.

There were several stools and two benches about the fire, a large, curtained bed at one end of the room, and at the other end were several chests, set against the wall, which had pegs for the family’s few spare clothes. A variety of farm implements—rakes, shears, a scythe and a sickle__leaned against the wall by the door, and scattered about the rest of the room were the accoutrements of peasant life: a spindle, baskets and pails, torn nets waiting to be mended, some leather tackle, storage pots, and around and about all scurried chickens, a goose, and two cats chasing a mouse.

Odile sent the toddler she’d held with her other hand toward the fire, where the boy obediently scrambled atop a stool and sat watching his mother, who lifted the infant from her back and put him in a crib.

She turned and grinned at Thomas, her hand splayed across her swollen belly. “A girl, I pray,” she said, and then made a face. “A girl would be useful about the house, for the boys will be no use when they’re old enough to work alongside Conrad in the fields. Not that I was happy, mind, to find myself breeding again so soon after the little one’s birth. But Conrad does demand his rights …”

Thomas sat down hurriedly on the stool Odile indicated, hoping she wasn’t going to go into too much more detail about Conrad’s lusts when her husband himself

came in.

He was a huge man, all muscle and dark beard, and he grunted in Thomas’

direction as Odile explained his presence. He sat down on the stool next to Thomas’, belched, then picked at his teeth with a thumbnail.

“Odile’s led a charmed life,” he said in thick German by way of conversation, then lapsed into silence as he stared into the fire.

Thomas tried to find something to say, then realized Conrad didn’t expect a reply.

And so he, too, contented himself with staring into the fire as Odile prepared a simple meal.

As she started to slop portions into large hollowed-out sections of bread, her son Wolfram came back in.

“Horse is rubbed,” he said, averting his eyes. “And eating.”

“I do thank you,” Thomas said, and risked slipping a small coin from his purse to hand to the boy.

“Oh, no, no need for that,” Odile said. “Please, put away your coin! We’ve no need for payment. Why—”

“I know, I know,” Thomas said. “You’ve lived a charmed life.”

Odile grinned happily, and handed Thomas a wooden spoon and a bread trencher filled with a thick vegetable and grain broth.

He wolfed the broth down, making no pretense to manners. It was very, very good, strongly flavored with herbs the way only a peasant woman could do it, and as tender as if it had been simmering the entire day.

As soon as he’d spooned out the last mouthful, Odile was at his shoulder, her ladle brimming, and rilled his trencher to the top again.

Thomas nodded his thanks, and resumed his dinner.

When all had eaten—the bread trenchers as well as the broth—Odile put away their spoons after giving them a cursory wipe with a corner of her apron, then sat down herself, her infant son in her arms. The baby was whimpering, and Odile unselfconsciously pulled down her blouse to expose a full, dark red-nippled breast.

The baby didn’t instantly respond, and Odile cooed and sang to him, encouraging him to suckle.

Thomas stared; he couldn’t help himself. He found himself wanting to reach out and cup Odile’s breast in his hand: it looked so smooth, so warm… so full…

The baby twisted his head, and latched on to the nipple, and the spell was broken.

Odile looked up as Thomas averted his eyes and her mouth lifted, as if at a secret thought.

“You’ve come about Wynkyn de Worde,” she said, and Thomas stared back at her again.

“How—”

“We’ve always known someone would come a-looking for him,” she said.

“Strange, horrible man that he was.”

“You’re too young to have known him.”

“Aye. I was but an infant in my mother’s arms the night Wynkyn passed through

for the final time. My parents told me all I know.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Oh, aye. But it is best to show you, rather than try to explain.”

And Odile lifted her head from her infant and smiled at Thomas, but again the face of the strange, beautiful woman hovered over hers, and the woman wore the face of dread.

Thomas’ eyes filled with tears, although he did not know whether at the momentary vision, or with gratefulness that Odile should know what he needed. During recent months he’d seen so many women who had succumbed to their weaknesses. Odile reminded Thomas, as he needed to be reminded, he knew, that not all women were weak or susceptible to temptation. Some, like Odile, were of noble spirit, even if, again like Odile, they were of base birth. He returned her smile, and hoped she understood it was a smile of admiration.