I DUMPED THE roll of linen into the river, icy water stinging my hands and rousing the twilight blue veins poking through my skin. After wetting the laundry, I soaked the cloths with the putrid-smelling chamber-lye in my wooden bucket to remove the stains, then rinsed once more.

The dull white bundle floated down to the parched, yellowed grass, and I used my washing bat to beat the fabric dry until no more moisture dampened my fingers. Beads of foam clung to my tunic, however, so I banished them with a swift brush of my hands. Foam also wafted into my eyes and ears, but I had grown used to this by now.

My duties were not enlightening or entertaining, but of great importance.

I was laundress for the mistress of the manor, which meant that the laundry I doused in chamber-lye, beat with a stick, and then rinsed with river water would soon be flat against her back, trimming her large canopy bed in the middle of her imposing crimson-walled chamber. If she were to find a spot or mark marring the crisp sheet or even a single strand of hair, my duty would be incomplete and my place in the manor compromised.

My eyes wandered listlessly to the other side of the gushing river, to green pastures and lowly serf's homes, poorly made from old timber and mud and reeking of farm animals that abided there with their human owners. The stretch of land was long and interrupted only by the mountains: white and grey peaks that acted like the jagged walls of a great fortress. The mountains were far too cold for any commoner to brave. Only nobles and knights with their horses could endeavour to accept such a feat as climbing up those rocky hills.

A fleshy hand clasped my shoulder, followed by a grim, strained voice, reading my innermost thoughts. "What a pity, dear Catherine. We all want the great wash to end."

I raised my shoulders slightly in a shrug, clearing the phlegm out of my throat with a slight cough. The winter had been cruel to me that year, and I had fallen quite ill. Though the sickness had passed, my throat still stung. "Yes. A great pity."

I should have been more grateful for the great wash, for it is what earned me the liberty to sleep in a sheltered place and eat aplenty, but the only reason I pulled myself through those long-winded, exhausting events was the liberation that my vivid imagination provided me. Pretending I was somewhere else, perhaps great Cologne or Constantinople, comforted me.

However, I was aware of the power of my kingdom and of how my fellow countrymen would scorn my desire to escape. Imagining I was someone else, an important lady with a velvet dress and deep fur cuffs, granted me hope. This aspiration was flawed, for I knew my place and had been taught that jealousy was a sin.

"Master will have company tonight. That means more mulled wine and cheese for us. We will enjoy even some oranges from the Southern provinces." Fleurine, another laundress from the manor, continued, hopeful to elicit a smile. Though she knew me as a mother knows her child, she could never understand my wandering mind. But by then, she supposed I had suffered a substantial loss as a child upon the death of my parents and was prone to strange acts.

"Tis wonderful news," I forced one sullen grin for her sake, then resumed with the wash, beating the linen as my palms bled and blistered from the splintering spikes of wood etched into the jagged handle of my washing stick.

The other women gathered around Fleurine as she gossiped about our master and his family.

I strained my ears to hear what they said but found it difficult as they wandered to the other side of the river to wash near a patch of pebbles and rocks when I allowed my thoughts to wander.

I had known Count Frederic of Toulouse and his wife, Countess Emeline of Navarre, since I was a child. Since I could walk, I had been laundering for them with my fellow countrywomen. They had been kind, godly, sympathetic, and good masters, though Count Frederic had grown old and sickly, and some said that he was nearing the verge of death.

My parents, if I had known them, could not have changed my fate. My father was a serf and my mother a laundress, and they worked the land around the manor for a small straw hut and a dozen chickens and geese. When they died of an illness, the apothecary could not diagnose, I was sent to live in the manor. I suppose Countess Emeline took pity on me, for I was a sickly child without kin. She gave me to Fleurine, for she was widowed and without children of her own to care for. I should have been grateful, for if not taken in by Fleurine, I would have starved or worse.

And yet, every day I dreamt of freedom, though I was not a slave. I suppose I could have run away, but I had no funds or kin to care for me. Besides, the land around the manor was vast and unknowable—a place I would not survive. Most breathed their first breath and their last in Toulouse, with few exceptions.

"Have you heard the news, my child?"

I lifted my head until my eyes squinted in the sun as Fleurine disturbed my trance-like daydream, gripping my shoulder to steady herself. She always had trouble walking, suffering from a limp one could only attribute to her toilsome old age of fifty-nine years. But no one worried much after her health, for she was a big-boned woman, with long, sturdy limbs and a robust figure. Her personality was larger than life itself, and she made sport of laughing loudly and singing as she worked. If any woman were immortal, it was Fleurine.

"If you are speaking of the mice in the cellar, I have already heard." I sighed, digging my palms into my knees as I stared down at the dirt. I could not sleep the night before, tormented by the scampering of little paws against the ceiling boards by my head.

"No, no, not the cellar. Master Bernard is to be married! They have betrothed him to Isabelle of Clement. They are to have a wedding celebration, though the Count has not announced when." She chuckled, patting me on the back with her firm hand. "We shall have a toast, to the young, happy couple. Perhaps we will wash play clothes for gleeful children soon after."

A pounding noise filled my ears, and all the blood was drawn from my face.

"What... joyful news." A smile tightened my skin as Eleanor and Ursule—two serfs from the village, gathered near us with their wash baskets gathered close to their waists.

"If I were a guessing woman, I would bet you are jealous." Ursule prodded, bending to collect her washing bat from the stones by the river. Unlike Fleurine and I, she was not given the liberty of using wooden washing boards from the manor to scrub her laundry but relied on large pebbles, rocks, and stones from the river's edge to scour her families clothes because she lived with her husband in one of the serf huts.

Ursule was older than I but years younger than Fleurine, with a long curtain of brown hair and dull slate-grey eyes. Her stomach was full and rounded beneath her woollen blue tunic, leading me to guess that she was again with child. I pitied her, for her husband was cruel and possessed a quick temper, leaving Ursule with a bruised face and nervous habits.

Like Ursule, Eleanor was also married to a serf. She kept a tidy house on the edge of the manor, working a lean strip of land alongside her husband. She was a waif-like girl, with strawberry blonde hair and brows as pale as blades of wheat. She was not as physically adept as Ursule and Fleurine, and I often wondered if she experienced great trouble undertaking such physically hard labour alongside her husband in the fields. Alas, she was good in spirits and close in age to me, and I had seen her often when her mother, a kitchen maid, brought her to the manor.

"I do not know of what you speak. I am thrilled for Master Bernard." I flinched, my gut cramping against my ribs. I wanted desperately for them to overlook my embarrassment and dismiss it as ignorance or stupidity. "May the Lord bless the couple with an enduring happiness and many sons."

My heart thumped. I turned away from them, watching the stream cackle like a witch as it swerved around rocks and pebbles.

"I cannot help but notice the blush upon your lovely cheeks." Fleurine poked me in the ribs and I balked, my embarrassment igniting within me like a flame. "You have noticed, young Bernard, have you not?"

"I do not know of what you speak," I beat the foam from a linen shirt. Ironically, the shirt belonged to Bernard, of whom we were speaking.

"I only jest, for the look of love is easy to discern. Or, at least, the look of a young girl with a young man in her heart." Fleurine cooed, as though there was no doubt in her mind.

I had always admired the young and honourable Bernard of Toulouse. He was the son of Count Frederic and Countess Emeline and brother of sweet Lady Adeliza. Their family was kind to me, and they had never been harsh masters.

Although I had never spoken to Bernard or stood nearer to him than a generous ten paces away, I had been charmed by his laughing eyes and quick tongue. Whenever I glimpsed him in the hallway, at dusk when the family was supposed to be retired to their chambers, I became silly and foolish, concealing myself in the shadows as I watched him march down the corridor with his head held high. He had a way about him, one that promised he would carry the family name with pride and honour.

Him being in his twenty-second year and I in my nineteenth meant we grew together, or rather, I grew to observe him and Lady Adeliza being raised under the guidance of several intelligent Germanic tutors and eccentric Italian dance instructors. Many afternoons I spent dancing in the passageways that weaved around the great hall, watching them between the glow of candlelight as they practised courtly dances amongst colourful rolls of the tapestry.

I had not seen Bernard about the manor as of late, as his father had enlisted him to travel to Cologne for business, a journey which took weeks, if not months.

I shook my head again, angry at myself for paying such close attention to Master Bernard and his prolonged absence. "No, I am not in love. With any man."

Perhaps I could not have been blamed for my beguilement with Bernard. I never saw men my age about the manor, aside from various grooms and pages. Being my guardian, Fleurine had tried to persuade me into an ill-advised match with William, one of the valet de chambres, but I rejected her attempts because I did not see him as a suitable man to marry. He was foul-mouthed and crude, and I had seen him err into many a drunken fight over a game of knucklebones with the cook.

A blue ember ignited in Ursule's look, her blackened teeth showing in a smile. "Perhaps if you had a husband, you wouldn't be so sombre. You know Raymond is at present unmarried."

I almost laughed aloud, picturing myself standing outside the cathedral doors whilst wedding Raymond, Ursule's youngest brother. He was five years younger than I, only fourteen, and it was rare for a boy to marry when he had not yet reached manhood. Raymond acted more like a child than a potential suitor, and the idea of marrying him repulsed me.

"Thank you Ursule, but I am happy to be of service to the master and mistress. I should not want to leave my post now for marriage unless the Count wills it."

Though I was expected to marry one of my fellow servants or a serf, I would rather have joined the convent than marry a man against my will. If my father were still alive, he would have given my hand to another villein. The duty then fell to Count Frederic, but he had overlooked the matter, so for the meantime, I was a free woman, allowed to live in the manor with Fleurine and the other servants rather than with a brutish husband like so many of my friends.

If Bernard were to ask for my hand, I would not hesitate in giving it to him.

I shook the absurd thought from my head. I was not foolish, though quite enamoured. I was a laundress and orphan. I would marry no one but another peasant such as myself. "I am not sombre, Ursule, but thank you for your kindness."