Chapter 14: A Face Like A Rose
"Your mother would be pleased to see that you seem to be working hard on your sewing," said Mary to Hermione.
Hermione's needle flew in and out of a dark blue piece of cloth. Just because she detested sewing didn't mean couldn't sew well. She was concentrating so hard on finishing a seam that she didn't reply to Mary's casual observation.
Mary smiled at her mistress. Since midsummer, the girl's spirits had improved. She had stopped losing weight and a bloom had appeared on her cheeks. Mary wondered to herself if the ritual of Feill-Sheathain had anything to do with it, but was too prudent to ask Hermione. Some things, Mary knew, a girl wished to keep in her heart.
Father Lorenzo too had also been pleased with Hermione's improved attention after Midsummer. The girl was smart, just as he and her father had always known, and had a good grasp of Latin. She could memorize passages with ease these days and hardly missed a single one. Besides that, she had stopped quarreling with him over the bible, and preferred to partake in interested questioning.
"Father Lorenzo, you said that wives must submit themselves to their husbands in all things, but what does the bible say that Husbands must do on their part? For it seems unfair to me that we wives serve them like animals."
"Husbands, mistress, must love their wives and be not bitter against them. They are responsible for their happiness and care. So you see, the Christian family is one filled with love."
"You are right, for it is surely impossible to serve without love. I would rather not marry than have to serve without love. Did we not read in 1 Corinthians 13… et si distribuero in cibos pauperum…"
" …Though you bestow all your goods to feed the poor, and though you give your body to be burned, if you have not love, it profiteth you nothing." The priest eyed her thoughtfully, continuing, "Your father is wise not to force you into a loveless marriage. For it is the greater sin than to let you remain a virgin for life."
Hermione nodded and turned her attention back to the Psalms.
Father Lorenzo watched Hermione's lips move silently as she committed to memory yet another Psalm. He found himself filled with a feeling of relief and satisfaction.
She would be saved.
He had always known that she would start to show a genuine interest in scripture one day, despite her unsteady start to Christian life…
Hermione didn't know all these thoughts that passed through Father Lorenzo's mind. A lax church-goer back in her own time, she now found plenty of time to reflect on Christian teachings in the long summer days and slow routine of manor life. Besides a genuine emotional interest in the scripture, she also had an academic interest in the craft of the Latin language and the history of the Semites. Studying scripture reminded her of her days spent studying in Hogwarts, days which she missed sorely.
As she carefully joined another two seams of her cloth, Mary patted her on her shoulder kindly.
"May I ask what you are sewing, M'Lady?"
"I am practicing my dress-making on this practice pattern. Senor Vittorio has sent the fabrics I have chosen to be tailored in London, but I have reserved a piece for myself. I want to try my hand at sewing."
"You are industrious indeed. Your mother will be glad to hear of this. And I am glad to see you had the sense to practice on a piece of coarse cloth before attempting your dress on one of Senor Vittorio's fabrics."
Hermione mentally chided herself for telling a little white lie.
"Yes, Mary."
Mary left the room eventually and Hermione slipped across the room and locked the door. Excitedly, she lifted up the blue material of simple cotton and laid it over the bed. Hermione tucked the selvedge inwards under the bodice and ran a line of tacking along the edge. She had copied it from memory after seeing what the under-servants wore. The fabric she had stolen from a large store of scrap cloth her mother kept for practicing stitches.
She had told Mary a white lie. This wasn't a practice dress. Every stitch she made in this dress was a stitch closer to sneaking out to the fair with Draco dressed as a peasant girl. In five days, her new dress would be finished.
In another hour, Hermione rubbed her eyes. It was difficult to sew by candlelight, but she had no choice if she wanted to finish it on time. She decided it was time to stop for the night and she carefully packed up the nearly-complete dress and placed it in an enormous chest and locked it. The key she slipped under her bed. Then, taking her candle with its stand, Hermione let herself out of the room and crept down the worn stone stairs to the kitchen. Running swiftly through the deserted kitchen to the tiny corridor with the side door to the outer compound, she knelt down and her fingers felt for a gap under the paving stone that was situated half-way in and half-way out of the door.
Her excited, shaking, fingers moved the heavy stone upwards. She grinned when she felt the tiny sheet of parchment hidden in the narrow gap under the flag-stone.
By the flickering candlelight, Hermione read the written message from Draco:
Thanks for the ink and quill. Leave me a sign you got this.
Hermione's heart was beating so loudly she was sure the whole manor could hear it. Her plan had worked! They could finally communicate without seeing each other directly! She felt in the folds of her dress and took out a small piece of parchment. It contained her neat handwriting, saying:
This works. Am excited about the fair. Five more days! Give details for meeting up.
Putting it into the small gap in the earth, she shifted back the paving stone.
Grabbing up Draco's small bit of parchment and her candle, she crept back to her room. Her heart was pounding with excitement. This was just like all those adventures with Harry and Ron back in Hogwarts!
Snuggling into bed, Hermione gave herself up to sleep. By now, the little golden flower had withered under her pillow and all that was left was a fragrant, dried, brown scrap. Hermione didn't remove it, because its sweet scent reminded her of a very special midsummer night's dream.
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Audley patiently explained the accounts again to his mistress. The new barn would be ready to take in the extra-large harvest by October- but, even if they kept at it night and day, the mill was not ready to grind so much extra wheat. They would have to arrange transport for the extra wheat to the neighbouring town to be ground. This would mean paying tax to the neighbouring lord for use of his mill…So, was there any way she could think of to avoid that?
"Why didn't you ask my father this question?" Hermione asked, at a loss.
Audley looked apologetic. "It was a problem that was overlooked."
Hermione thought hard, "Well….how far is it to this next town?"
"Aldeburgh is fifty miles North"
"Can it be covered in a day?"
"With a swift horse, yes."
"And how long will it take for peasants wheeling their cartloads of grain there?"
"About four days – two there and two back"
"So we lose four working days…Do we even have enough carts for that?"
Audley looked perplexed. "Oh dear…"
"Is there no other way of milling?"
Fanhope spoke up, "There are handmills. A few peasants own them, but we stopped them from using it because then they wouldn't pay taxes for using Lord Granger's water mill."
"Handmills! Of course! Let the peasants use their handmills!"
Audley and Fanhope exchanged glances, "But M'Lady" said Fanhope, "Lord Granger specifically told us not to let them use their handmills. Because of the taxes we would not collect from the use of our mill if they did so…"
Hermione smiled, "Well, that's very simple then. You simply have to let them…or we not only not collect the money, we lose money to Lord Aldeburgh."
Audley looked grim and wrote some figures down into his book of accounts. His mistress was right. At least the plan she devised would save them from paying money to Lord Aldeburgh. Fanhope was looked at Hermione in admiration.
Hemrione smiled back at him.
"Mistress, you have a keen head for figures." Fanhope said. "Why, I understand now why Lord Granger oft wish'd you were a lad. You would have goodly charge of this manor."
"My father often wish'd I was a boy?"
Audley looked up from his accounts, "Aye, heard him myself just before he left for Lancashire. He is full proud of his house and his lands, and wish'd it did not have to go to another when you marry, mistress."
Hermione shook her head, "Perhaps I shall never marry then."
"But if you enter a nunnery, all his lands will go to the Church."
"Is that the only option for me?"
"Aye, and should these lands be sold to the Church, us villagers of Mildenstowe will till and plough for a harsh master indeed. For 'tis well known that no master is as harsh as the church." said Audley.
"Your family has done right by us. Lord Granger has stood against the County when they wanted to raise tithes. He looks after us well- in the town, your family is spoken of fondly." added Fanhope.
"Your father takes his duties most seriously. Your family is greatly esteemed. But Mildenstowe will suffer if the church gets its hands on our land- its thirst for taxes and tithes is boundless, and the Crown will back it."
Hermione was surprised. So far, her only encounter with the church had been lessons with Father Lorenzo. He seemed a kind and gentle priest, she could not imagine him as a task-master.
"You are thinking perhaps of Father Lorenzo…" said Fanhope, reading her thoughts. "Father Lorenzo is a rare piece. His merciful nature and ideas are not often found in the clergy. It was exactly this that endear'd him to Lord Granger in the first place and caused him to be installed as permanent Chapelmaster. For Lord Granger needed comforting when you…." Fanhope turned red. Audley made a quick movement with his hand and the two men exchanged glances.
"When I what?" Hermione asked, intrigued.
Fanhope had turned away and took the book from Audley. The steward looked very upset at what the bailiff had revealed.
"When you…were younger, your father faced some… troubles. But which Lord does not? The crown and the church and the peasants pull him in all directions" finished Audley, on Fanhope's behalf.
"What trouble in the past?"
"T'was nought." Said Fanhope, avoiding Audley's furious glare. "A mere trifle."
"Thank you for your help, M'Lady" said Audley, "We will report to you tomorrow." The steward and bailiff bowed and quickly took themselves off.
Something had happened in the past that made Lord Granger seek solace in Father Lorenzo's merciful and comforting words. What had happened? Hermione was mildly curious, she would ask Mary, first. Then if that didn't work, she would tackle the old priest himself.
As for now, Hermione stretched and stood up from her father's desk. She went up to her bedroom and locked herself in quietly. Taking a small piece of parchment from inside a hidden pocket of her dress, she read it for the tenth time that day.
I'll see you at my place 3 tomorrow. Don't get caught. Don't be late.
She held it to the candle flame and watched its edges curl and blacken. Tomorrow seemed so far away!
A few hours later, Hermione still had not forgotten Audley and Fanhope's strange behaviour and comments.
"Mary," Hermione placed a hand on her maid's hand as she sat playing cards with her.
"What is it?"
"I would like to know how Father Lorenzo got to be appointed Chapelmaster here at Granger Mansion."
If Hermione hadn't been looking for efforts of concealment in her maidservant, she would have missed it. As it was, she noticed how Mary's hands began to shake as she dealt the cards.
"It was a long time ago, I'm sure I can't remember. He was appointed soon after your birth."
"You said you came here one year after my birth to be my nurse, surely you know something of it."
"Why, the church appoints such positions," said Mary brightly, as if relieved to have hit upon a good excuse. But Hermione knew more than that.
"No, my father was the one who installed him as Chapelmaster." She said gently. "Why did my father choose him? What trouble was there in the past?"
Mary's fingers nervously fingered her hand of cards.
"It's your turn," Mary said. "What do you call?"
"Mary" Hermione took the cards from the old lady's hands. "Please, please tell me. You are dear as mother to me."
"Child, why do you ask me now? Eighteen years we have not spoken of it. Why do you ask now? Who did you hear this from?"
Hermione nearly gave out the names of Audley and Fanhope, but she stopped herself. No point getting them involved. "I heard it from a reliable source. But they would not tell me more."
Mary put her hand on Hermione's face. There was a far-off look in her eyes as she said, "A child with a face like a rose. I dreamt of you. It was on Feill-Sheathain. But you were not a dream, you are real. I cared for you eighteen summers…you are real."
"Why shouldn't I be real?" Hermione was scared. The old lady's voice was scaring her. She looked like Professor Trelawney about to go into one of her trances.
Mary patted Hermione's soft brown hair and squeezed her arm. "I never regretted a moment of it. I know you are a good, holy, child of god. You have a playful nature, and are too beautiful… but that does not make you…" The maidservant smiled and picked up her cards again.
"What?!" said Hermione desperately. "What is wrong with me!"
Mary laughed, "Don't be silly child. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. I bathed and fed you since you were a wee baby and you are as strong and healthy and beautiful as daughters are made. So put all these silly notions out of your head. As for Father Lorenzo, he was here when I arrived and I have asked no questions since then. If you knew what was good for you, you'd ask no questions too!"
Mary's voice had taken on a stern edge. Hermione knew the conversation was over. Frustratedly, she picked up her hand of cards and savagely threw one down onto the table. She made up her mind to get to the bottom of this. She would work on the priest next, then on her parents. There was something strange going on here. That it involved her in some way was what troubled her. She would get to the bottom of things.
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Draco yawned and turned over on his hard straw bed. He had swept out his cottage after coming home from work, somehow, he didn't want Hermione to think he couldn't keep a clean house. He had washed his clothes and scrubbed himself off in the stream. It was now warm enough to bathe in the stream and it was one of the things he looked forward to after a hard day's work.
The next day was Wednesday, and the servants had been given three days off to go to the fair where they could trade goods, watch plays and generally make merry. Draco looked forward to it. The thought of going to a medieval fair would have bored him silly back in Malfoy Manor, but, after two months of hard labour without a single chance at frivolity, the fair seemed to him a wildly exciting event.
He also knew that he looked forward to it because Hermione would be going with him. He hoped she had managed to plan her sneaking out properly. So far, she had managed to think of a great many devious ways for them to sneak in touch- but sneaking out to go to a fair with him? How on earth was she going to manage that?
He thought of the small piece of parchment which rested next to a red hair ribbon in his pocket. It read,
Will be there at 3 tomorrow. Have a surprise for you!
Tomorrow he would tell her everything.
Tomorrow he would see if his wish had come true.
Tomorrow was sweet with promise.
He blew out his candle and went to sleep.