Thunder grumbled. Dame Claire looked up as if it were reminding her of something. “I must go.”
“One other thing,” Frevisse said. “Sir John has the toothache. Have you anything to help it until he can find an honest surgeon to draw it?”
Dame Claire, always ready to talk of remedies, brightened, thought for a moment, and said, “My oil of cloves is nearly gone but I’ll have more from the Michaelmas fair. He’s surely welcome to what I have left. Has he been troubled long?”
“Long enough that he bought a cure from a passing mountebank some time of late. He described it as all froth and little help.”
Dame Claire made a ladylike snort of contempt. “I know of that false cure. All smoke and dwale and fancy words. Then they show you the gnawing worm they’ve driven from your tooth, but it’s come out of their sleeve, not your mouth.” Thunder muttered in the clouds. “If he’s hurting, this weather will make it hurt the worse. Tell him to send to me for the oil of cloves when he wants it. Where are you bound for?”
“The kitchen, I’m afraid.”
Dame Claire nodded her sympathy and went away.
Frevisse, drawn by duty and against her own inclination, went to see how matters were coming between Dame Alys and her unfortunate staff. Thomasine, as ordered, hung in her wake. There should have been no need of that within the cloister, but Frevisse felt uncomfortable unless she actually had the girl in sight.
The kitchen was crowded. Frevisse paused in the doorway, waiting to sort out what was happening, and saw that besides the priory’s usual lay workers, there were three of St. Frideswide’s nuns and a half dozen Fenner servants hurrying under Dame Alys’s full-voiced orders.
The dame was presently declaring that the next hand besides her own that touched the pastry would be ground up and added to the meat for the pies, but her usual fury lacked full conviction.
“Here now, here now!” She poked one of the servants in the ribs with her bent spoon but scarcely hard enough to make the woman wince. “Do that chicken neck again! There’s a fistful of meat on those bones! Pick it all off, pick it all! We’ve too many hungry mouths waiting to waste a morsel!” (more…)
