While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell Read Free Book Online

by the huge hearths I saw inside, I guessed they led to the kitchens. To our left, workers were loading supplies off carts into storerooms. As we passed, I glimpsed a basket the size of a horse’s trough, filled with nothing but onions. Next to it were sacks of flour and meal that stood almost as tall as I was.
    “Careful!” Hannolt shouted.
    Distracted by the sights, I had come close to stepping into a mix of mud and rotting food. I pulled my skirt above my ankles and wrapped it tight around my legs.
    A voice from behind me barked, “Look sharp!” Before I had time to turn around, Marcus had wrapped his arm about my shoulders and pulled me back from an almost certain collision with a barrel that had been tossed from the storerooms. It was the closest I’d ever been to a young man of my own age, and I was surprised by the sturdiness of his grasp, the firmness of his chest when I fell against it.
    “Oy!” shouted Hannolt to the men inside. “Watch it!”
    “Watch your lassie, more like it!” someone shouted back. “This is no place to prance about!”
    I began to thank Marcus for his vigilance, but he drew back and turned his face before I could finish. Had the seemingly imperturbable Marcus been shaken by our near miss? Or, like me, had he been momentarily unsettled by the sudden press of our bodies together?
    “Best get on,” Hannolt urged. “I don’t know where to find the housekeeper exactly, but we’ll ask in the kitchens.”
    We walked gingerly through the muck, following Hannolt until we entered a room with three blazing fireplaces, each filled with a hanging cauldron. The heat was stifling.
    A sweaty woman in a stained apron and matted hair stepped before us. “What d’you want?” she asked suspiciously.
    “I have a delivery for Lady deWey,” Hannolt said, as grandly as a knight readying for a royal audience. “I am expected in the Great Hall. This young lady is to see Mrs. Tewkes.”
    She looked me up and down. Evidently unimpressed, she sighed in annoyance. “You’ll find her in the Lower Hall.” She pointed across the room. “Through that door, down the passage, and up the stairs.”
    “This is where we part, then,” said Hannolt. “I will tell your aunt we saw you here safely.”
    I looked at Marcus. We had barely spoken, but he had a steadiness of demeanor that made me regret the briefness of our acquaintance. He appeared to be on the verge of telling me something, but his father interrupted with a flurry of good wishes before turning to go. Marcus dropped his head in a brief nod and then followed his father out of sight.
    Lonely and afraid, I felt my spirits falter, but I would not risk the cook’s wrath by dawdling in that chaotic kitchen. I followed her directions, walking with one shoulder pressed against the walls to avoid being knocked down by men and women carting bags and buckets around me. The dogged procession brought to mind the ants that used to march across our dirt floor in search of crumbs dropped by my brothers. Flushed from the kitchen’s heat, then jostled in the narrow passage, I felt light-headed as I climbed up a set of wide wooden stairs and emerged into a long room that extended as far as I could see.
    I later learned that this Lower Hall—so named because it was beneath the castle’s Great Hall—was the central gathering place for all who worked in the castle. It was here the servants ate their twice-daily meals, received their orders from the housekeeper, toasted the New Year, and mourned the death of one of their own. I took in the long expanse of space, calmed by its impression of symmetry and order. Simple wooden tables and benches were lined up along either side. Above my head, gray stone walls soared upward toward the massive beams supporting the ceiling.
    Slowly, I walked forward, glancing into the workrooms that opened off the hall. One held looms and baskets of yarn, another engraved serving plates and candlesticks. The next was filled with bolts