Behind the White Walls

The woman at the gate wanted to know what Sabina had brought in the chest.

“Clothes,” Sabina said.

“And beneath the clothes?”

“More clothes. I packed according to depth.”

The woman looked at her without amusement. Rain had collected in the crease above her upper lip. She wore a brown wool gown with the sleeves turned back, and held a sheet of paper against her stomach to keep it dry.

“Anything of silver?”

Sabina put her hand inside her cloak. For a moment she touched the spoon through the lining of the pocket.

“One spoon.”

“It will be entered as yours.”

“I had hoped that might be understood.”

“Things are understood until someone dies.”

Beyond the woman stood a little courtyard, two rows of doors facing one another across wet paving and a narrow strip of earth. A chapel closed the far end. There was no tree. The whitewash had worn away near the foot of the walls, leaving patches of brick the color of raw meat.

Sabina had passed this gate for nineteen years. Once she had stopped outside it while Everard fastened her glove. She remembered his bent head, the dark hair still thick above his ears, his irritation with the button. He had been gentle with difficult things when they were small enough to hold.

Inside the court, the houses were lower than they had seemed from the street. Dark roof tiles descended toward the white walls, and chimney stacks rose at intervals along the ridge. Each dwelling offered the court a door and a window. The wash followed the uneven brickwork instead of hiding it; beneath one sill, rain had drawn a dirty line through the white. Someone had set a broken tile under a flowerpot to lift it off the paving.

The carter shifted the chest on his shoulder.

“Shall I bring it in, mistress?”

He had called her mistress at her old door that morning. It had sounded ordinary there. Here she heard the effort in it.

The woman stood aside.

“I am Rozemond Spriet. I keep the house accounts and see to the provisions. You have the ninth dwelling.”

Sabina followed her through the gate. A curtain moved in the first window. At the next, an old woman remained openly visible, a piece of yellow cloth held in one hand as if she had forgotten what she meant to do with it.

The carter set the chest down inside the ninth door. The room contained a bed behind a curtain, a table, a chair and a hearth. There was a cupboard with one hinge lower than the other. The window looked across the courtyard into another window. Sabina could see a loaf on the sill opposite, wrapped in a cloth.

“The chair is the foundation’s,” Rozemond said.

“I shall try not to become attached to it.”

The carter laughed before he could stop himself. Rozemond made a mark on the paper.

Sabina paid him from the small purse she had kept separate from the money for food. He looked at the coins, then at the chest.

“I can put that nearer the bed.”

“You have carried it far enough.”

When he had gone she wished she had let him move it. She could not lift one end without feeling something pull beneath her ribs.