Talisman Chapter 7

Chapter 7 “Talisman de Malherbe. Don’t just stand there all agape. These plants need tending.”
Her words were brisk but affectionate. And this Talisman stopped gazing at the sunset and went to help her mother weed the plants. For the first time in my life, I knew what it was like to have two parents! Talisman’s mother Anna, and her father Pierre were both still alive: my own father had died when I was no more than two, and I didn’t remember him at all. And Talisman had brothers and sisters as well, although at this moment her two sisters had gone to visit their aunt, Anna’s sister. The brothers were away from home too, but that was not surprising, as they were both training to be knights. The younger was still a page, but the older of the two had been made squire. With Talisman’s sisters away though, there was a lot of extra work to do. Ship House looked more like a little castle to me than a house. And Talisman’s father was a knight; Sir Pierre de Malherbe. But he held the house and the estate from his overlord, who in turn held it from the King. King Henry – the year was 1107 – now ruled England, with his brother Robert keeping the Dukedom of Normandy. They had been turbulent years, the years of Talisman’s childhood, years of revolts and intrigues, and something perilously close to civil war, but now the times looked to be more peaceful at last.
“We will need to be thinking of your betrothal soon,” Talisman’s father said to her. “But your mother and I would have you taste something of the happiness we have known, and as I am neither rich nor powerful, I doubt that the King will care where I bestow you. I hope that we will find you a husband with whom you can be happy.”
Talisman thanked her father for his kindness, with a grave formality. Manners really mattered in this time! I could tell how much they loved each other, but she still spoke to him as a much-respected elder. Come the evening, if Talisman could get away, she liked to go up onto the roof of the castle and watch the sun set. She definitely had her dreamy side, though she was also unbelievably competent. I mean, the things the girl knew how to do! She was my age – fifteen – and she could bake, brew beer and ale, cook, preserve food by salting and drying (no cans, no fridges, no freezers) make medicines from the herbs they grew in the garden, spin and weave…the list went on and on.
People sometimes said to me “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Nobody ever said that to this Talisman. When she grew up, she was going to get married and run a household – hopefully, just as well as her mother ran this one. But she did daydream a little about marrying someone she could love as her mother loved her father. And she knew that she was lucky in that the family was not important; she wasn’t going to be a bargaining counter in someone’s power games, married off merely to help some-one’s political ambitions. When I first looked through Talisman’s eyes, I thought that the castle had a number of sheds built around it. But they were houses, for the male servants who worked in the castle. All the servants were male, and they all went home at night to their own homes. Some lived here round the castle, and some lived in the village that had grown up by the river in the forty years since the de Malherbes arrived. It had been Talisman’s great-grandfather, Sir Guy de Malherbe, who had built the castle, and built it well. Despite the moat, the stones always felt dry and sun-warmed, and the place had a welcoming atmosphere to it as well. And I thought: Ship. Ship trying to restore herself, spreading herself through the walls and collecting energy from the sunshine.
Sir Guy had been a poor younger son, coming over from Normandy with William the Conqueror, hoping to gain a bit of land for himself here, as there was nothing for him to inherit in Normandy. He hadn’t even been Sir Guy then, just Guy de Malherbe, but he had fought well at Senlac, and been rewarded with a knighthood, and this piece of land to hold from his overlord. He’d come with his brother Hugo, but they had fallen out over something, and now the two sides of the family didn’t have much to do with each other. There had been rumours that Hugo’s grandson had been involved with the Mowbray revolt, but only rumours – he had kept his skin whole. I was really glad Ship had sent me to 1929 first, though. This time was so different! Clothes to start off with, of course. I wore a chemise under everything – this was a bit like a long nightie, and in fact Talisman slept in it in winter. This was made of linen, and it was changed and washed from time to time. No bra – they hadn’t been invented, and no knickers either. Which didn’t matter, because all the clothes were floor-length, but it still seemed weird to me.
Over the chemise, Talisman wore a robe, and this was made of wool, dyed with dyes made from plants. No buttons, no zips – everything laced up, or had drawstrings. And this just wasn’t washed at all, but what surprised me was that it wasn’t all smelly like unwashed things were back in my time. Instead it smelt of woodsmoke and, well, wool.
The food was different too – no potatoes at all! And we drank ale or beer or wine with everything, not water.
But the real horror story was the toilets! Just a plank with a hole in it, over a hole in the castle wall! Everything you did just fell down into a sort of chimney, with a door at the bottom – and some lucky person had to open that door every so often and shovel out the mess! All the fur garments were hung up in the toilet because the smells helped to keep the moths at bay – whenever Talisman used the garde-robe, it made me feel as though I was Lucy going into Narnia. And of course, toilet paper hadn’t been invented yet (neither had any sort of paper) so it was big leaves, moss…I’ll leave it to your imagination. The work was endless! – but with good company, surprisingly enjoyable. Everything was used, and nothing was wasted. I remembered Granny Thomas telling me what it was like during the war, and afterwards when rationing was in full swing, how you didn’t throw anything away. It was like that, but here one of the things that was never wasted was time. Any spare time Talisman and her mother had, they would be spinning thread as well, using a distaff and spindle. A whole year’s spinning would yield enough thread to make one set of clothes! One set only from a year’s work! And I thought of some people at school who would buy an outfit, wear it a few times and then get tired of it and throw it away. Talisman had been down to the village one afternoon on several errands for her mother. There had been a pair of fine beeswax candles to take to the priest’s house, for putting on the altar in the church. Then there had been a soothing syrup to take to the forge for the smith, who had a sore throat that wasn’t getting any better. Talisman was crossing the grass to the small stone church where Father Anselm now held his daily services, instead of the chapel up at the castle when she heard hoofbeats in the distance. Visitors! You didn’t always get advance warning, or if you did, it was of the “I will be arriving some time next month” type of warning. After all, someone had to carry the message, so why not just go yourself? She headed for home, instead of going to say a prayer for her grandfather’s soul as she had meant to. The visitors were all male, and mostly men-at-arms. Their horses were stabled at the back of the castle, with their own horses, and the men were fed. Their leader was someone Talisman had never met before. Talisman’s father obviously knew him though – and to Talisman, it was clear that, although he afforded his visitor every courtesy, her father was not happy to see him. It was Hugo de Malherbe – not Sir Guy’s brother, but his grandson. Talisman’s father took him up onto the roof of the castle to see the lie of the land, and Talisman was sent up after them to bid them come to the table. Her feet were light and quiet on the stone stairs, and the men didn’t hear her coming. Their voices came down to Talisman, and when I heard what they were saying, I told her to freeze in her place and listen to the rest of it.
“The truth is, I want one of your daughters as a wife for my third son.” Hugo’s voice was hard and uncompromising. “I like the look of your eldest.”
“We haven’t even met your son. And why would you want an alliance with our branch of the family in any case?” Talisman’s father was not best pleased with Hugo’s blunt demand.
“After Tinchebrai, and your deeds there – yes, I’ve heard about them – you’re in the King’s favour. An alliance with your house won’t hurt me at all. It might even go some way to allaying any suspicions anyone has about me.”
“I have other plans for Talisman.”
“Then forget them – fast.”
They began to move towards the stairs, and I sent Talisman hastening down a few steps, and then turning and beginning to mount again as they came to the top of the stairs.
“My mother bids you both to table, Sirs.” As we took our places at the table and waited for the serving-men to bring in the food, I could feel Hugo eying up Talisman with a cold, hard gaze.