Free The Sempster's Tale by Margaret Frazer Page B

there and today gave welcome shade. They were none of them so grand as those along Cheapside but all were well-kept, and people called out ready greeting to Dame Clemens from shop and doorstep as she passed before she stopped beside one house’s yellow-painted door and said, “Here’s my family’s place. That’s Kerie Lane just there.” She pointed across the way to another, narrower lane. “Mistress Blakhall’s house is the blue door on the left side along it. You’ll not miss it.”
     
    Frevisse had never found being assured she could “not miss it” certainty of anything, but she thanked Dame Clemens, and with Master Naylor still following her crossed to Kerie Lane, where Mistress Blakhall’s blue door, with a sign of silver scissors on likewise blue hanging above it, was indeed easy to find. The wide shutter covering the shop window was still closed, but the top half of the door was swung open into the shop’s shadows, and at Master Naylor’s loud knock an old woman in a brown gown and with a clean, white apron and headkerchief hobbled into sight from somewhere beyond the shop. As she peered out across the door, Frevisse stepped forward and said, “Mistress Blakhall expects me, I think. I’m here about the vestments for Lady Alice.”
     
    ‘My mistress will be pleased to see you,“ the woman said, bobbing a curtsy and opening the door.
     
    The shop was a single open-beamed room the full width of the narrow building, with a closed aumbry with locked doors against one wall, and a tailor’s wide wooden table for the cutting of cloth, although there was no sign there had been any tailoring of late.
     
    Then a woman who must be Mistress Blakhall herself came through the doorway at the shop’s rear. She was a moderately made woman, in a quiet blue gown with a simple, rounded neck and plain, straight sleeves, with no flourish to her white veil and wimple; but the gown was of finely woven linen, its skirts falling in full and graceful folds to her feet, and her veil was of starched and crisply pressed white lawn. If what she wore were of her own making, she displayed well both her tailoring skill and quiet good judgment.
     
    Frevisse said, “I’m Dame Frevisse. I’ve come on the Lady Alice’s business.”
     
    Understanding beyond the outward meaning of that flickered in Mistress Blakhall’s eyes, but she only said, making a deep curtsy, “My lady. You’re most welcome here.”
     
    ‘It’s my pleasure,“ Frevisse returned, which was, strictly speaking, untrue.
     
    Looking past Frevisse to Master Naylor still outside, Mistress Blakhall asked, “Will it please you to come in, too?”
     
    Her servant-woman did not give him a choice, beckoning at him briskly, saying, “No need to loiter there in the street. Come you in. You can keep me company in the kitchen the while they’re at talk.”
     
    ‘We’ll leave you to Bette, sir,“ Mistress Blakhall said; and added to Frevisse, ” If you’ll come upstairs, please?“
     
    Frevisse had quick sight of the kitchen beyond the shop— a cleanly kept room with a wide-hearthed fireplace against one wall, a well-scrubbed wooden table, several stools, and a window and back door opening to a garden’s greenery— before she gathered her skirts away from her feet and followed Mistress Blakhall up the steep stairs into a pleasant chamber that was plainly where Mistress Blakhall mostly lived.
     
    Frevisse guessed she much worked here, too. An embroidery frame stood near the wide southward window, and while Mistress Blakhall crossed toward a small table set with a pewter pitcher, pewter cups, and a cloth-covered plate, Frevisse went to see what work she had on the frame. Her soft exclaim, though, was for what she saw beyond the window, and Mistress Blakhall, coming with a filled cup in one hand and a plate with sugared borage petals and small ginger cakes in the other, said, “It does startle, doesn’t it?”
     
    ‘It does,“ Frevisse agreed. She