St. Edmund Wood

by Caitlin Luke Quinn

  “Here is Mary, Lady Isobel! Mary, come and greet Lady Isobel and Jane,” Emily instructed. “And Mr. Frankewell. It has been too long, Mr. Frankewell, since you entered our little parlor!”

  “As charming as ever,” Erland pronounced. “Both the hostesses and the room.”

  “And Pinkerton. I’ve not seen you for weeks, for I believe you went on holiday to the continent?” Emily inquired. “Wasn’t it when Mr. Frankewell toured Italy and France to sketch antiquities?”

  “Your memory is extraordinary, for that is correct,” Maeve replied, glancing sideways at Erland, who was smirking and finding more entertainment stirring his tea and making the bowl ring with irritating notes, and then stopped when he noticed the frown creasing Mary’s brow.

  “Mary! Come and greet Lady Isobel and Jane!” Emily harped and let out a nervous laugh.

  Jane Frankewell rose, smiling nervously and wanted to embrace Mary, but Emily’s darting eyes and scowl prompted her to think otherwise. They both came forward and greeted one another with awkward curtsies.

  Mary now stood in the center of the great parlor—a schoolgirl waiting for her punishment. Twenty lines to be copied out in a neat, elegant cursive hand: ‘I must conform; I must behave.’

  Jane refused to meet Mary’s straightforward gaze. Jane was pretty, but had not inherited the Frankewell beauty, or social grace. More often than not, wealth and beauty did not go hand in hand, for if a young lady had a substantial dowry to offer, what else mattered? Mary and Jane complimented each other and for reasons not quite certain to either, nor dwelt upon, they had been close friends, almost sisters. Emily’s eyes darted from one girl to the other and sighed, wondering why God had given her a daughter as beautiful as Mary when there was little else to commend her. Jane Frankewell was a dutiful, solemn and quiet young lady. What all wives should be.

  To Emily’s horror, Isobel had no such qualms about greeting Mary with familiarity. She put aside her teacup and held out her hands.

  “Child. Come and greet me with a kiss. And we must talk of London. You never spoke of it when you brought the christening clothes. Jane, here is our friend Mary. She looks well, doesn’t she, Jane?”

  “Remarkably, I think,” Jane replied and now offered a genuine smile.

  “Yes, a man’s love often does that to a woman.”

  “Lady Isobel!” Emily tittered, embarrassed.

  “There’s a wooded garden, I see,” Erland interrupted. “Pinkerton and I will explore Mary’s celebrated roses and leave you to your private confidences. I’m sure you have much to discuss after eighteen months.”

  Mary’s brow still held its frown and she glared as she watched them leave.

  “How considerate of your son to take his leave when such a delicate subject is being discussed—and it’s no business of a lady’s maid to hear our conversation,” Emily sighed.

  “You’re scandalized, Emily? Why should you be? Let us speak plainly,” Isobel admonished. “We are all women here. No, no, hear me out! We all pretend that love for us is unimportant, yet it is something we cannot live without. Mary has been to London and Oxford, and Athens, and for the life of me, I do not know why she returned to this miserable place!”

  “She had no other place to go,” Emily whined. “I am bound by my baptismal covenant to minister to widows and orphans, even if the widow is my daughter.”

  “Emily, the child is clever. She must be, if she can take the sweets from the tray right under our noses—and I think we all know what I mean.” Isobel turned to Mary, saying, “Justin Burnley, I think, was the most handsome man of spirit and form as any I have ever seen.”

  “Thank you,” Mary whispered.

  “Am I right to suppose so, Mary?”

  “Yes, Lady Isobel.”

  “Look at the child blush! She remembers something we will never know. She has known true pleasure, has lived the Song of Songs—”

  “Mary was raised to be a good Christian, Lady Isobel,” Emily said. “For you to insinuate…”

  “What insinuation do I make? I am only speaking the truth. She is too beautiful for widowhood. Find her a husband again, Emily!”

  “For you to put ideas into her head, I meant…”

  “Emily Witherslack, I may not be the widow of a vicar, but I do know more of what is most important in the world than you, who should, for all your piety and righteousness!” Isobel snapped, so that Jane and Mary both started in fright. “Do not hold that insufferable, perfect virtue of yours as something priceless, Emily! Learn something from your honest daughter. Look at her! It’s written in her eyes. She did not find marriage a duty, or the worst kind of punishment. She found pleasure where she ought to have.”

  “You are kind, Lady Isobel,” Mary whispered.

  “Mary…” Emily warned, glaring.

  “Not kind, but honest. I have some inkling of the truth about you. We are alike in many ways, for we have been fortunate in our marriages and many cannot say that,” Isobel said, adding more gently then, “London, Mary. How was London?”

  “Large and wonderful. In London you are but one among many and not so much an oddity. It was like taking my first breath. Villages can be stifling and unkind places.”

  Here Emily made an exasperated sound and then smiled nervously at Isobel, who wagged her finger and said, “Do not fault the girl, Emily. She’s one of the few who speak her mind. Mary, I am truly sorry for the loss of Mr. Burnley. He was a good man, and a scholar of great merit—but penniless and without means. That last I think is his only fault! I’m sorry to have only met him once.”

  Mary’s face softened now and took on a new radiance, which the other women could not help but notice. “When was that?”

  “He gave a lecture at the market hall—fourteenth century nobility and personalities of Salisbury.”

  “Justin did so love the west country,” Mary murmured.

  Emily’s brows rose, for she rarely heard her daughter speak her husband’s name and so tenderly at that.

  “He was a northern man, I hear?”

  “A Lancashire man, Lady Isobel. From Liverpool.”

  “And his father was a cleric? His grandfather a professor of history?”

  “Yes, Lady Isobel, but that would have been his mother’s father. Justin was given his love of scholarship with his mother’s milk. I am honored you would take pains to know something of him.”

  “It is my calling to know something of everyone.” Now Isobel raked her eyes up and down Mary’s curves and nodded. “And of you I suspect there is a child on the way!”

  Jane now interceded on Mary’s behalf, sensing her friend’s discomfort. “Mary, we’ve come to ask for your service. I’m to be married and would like you to provide the linens for my trousseau—and perhaps my dress.”

  “A dress? So soon? But when is the wedding?”

  “In a twelvemonth. No sooner than that. Lord Thomas and Lady Cecily believe we should wait; if only to know our minds, to be sure. I thought perhaps if I had the dress to look at now it would ease the time apart and make it fly—oh, Mary! How pale you look! How thoughtless! Forgive me.”

  And then Jane did something quite unexpected. She rose and embraced Mary tenderly, offering a kiss. Mary clung to her old friend and whispered: “You should never know my sorrow, Jane!”

  Nodding, Jane wiped her tears and Mary’s, saying, “Now then, we should talk of patterns.”

  The loom worked steadily, the gentle thud-dud, thud-dud, comforting as Mary mechanically yet gracefully pulled heddles back and forth, beat down the warp, smoothed the fine linen with a delicate hand. Down the street the bells of Saint Ælfgyva’s struck ten o’clock. In the kitchen, Cook was finishing up for the night and singing Mozart. It made Mary laugh to hear it. Cook was another woman in Knowstone that everyone thought they knew…

  Bright amber light suddenly blinded Mary; she threw her hands to her eyes to shield them. Emily had thrown aside the velvet curtains and held a lamp in Mary’s face.

 
; “Mother! The light, please.”

  “You think to make a fool of me, don’t you?” Emily growled.

  “I think nothing of—”

  “That display before Lady Isobel and Jane! You played on their sympathy and made me look a perfect fool! And the way you gaped at Erland! Lord knows what they were thinking, and if they had an inkling of what you had in mind—”

  “You are unfair—I wasn’t gaping and I didn’t play on anyone’s sympathies. I answered Lady Isobel truthfully, as is my custom to answer any question posed.”

  “You made me look a perfect fool, I tell you!”

  “I swear I didn’t!”

  “Don’t lie to me!” The words were short, clipped and vituperate. “They have every reason to hate you, despise you, and yet they love you! You’re no better than a whore!”

  “I am not—oh why do you think that?”

  “Well? Is there a child? Well? Answer me!”

  Mary beat down the weft too vigorously and moaned when she saw the threads snap.

  “Answer me!” Emily growled, taking Mary’s braid in her hand and twisting it gently to get a firm hold.

  “There was,” Mary snapped in a tone wrought with impatience. “Now leave me alone.”

  “Do not take that tone with me! You whore! You’ve made a fool of me!”

  Emily yanked on the braid so that Mary screamed in pain. Mary wrenched free and blocked the hand her mother raised to strike. “Tell me how I can make a fool of you when you do it every day?” Mary said low. Her voice was even and controlled, belying the measure of her anger.

  The hand came up suddenly and Mary now saw bright blinding flashes of color, of red and yellow as she was struck repeatedly. Mary tried to escape and only got as far as under the loom and thus caught she made no effort to defend herself and allowed Emily to rant, to call her filthy names and untruths, to let the blows fall where they might. “You’re no use to me!” Emily shouted as she kept administering blows. “You’ve ruined everything you’ve touched! Your husband is dead, your father’s dead! You would be better dead, too!”

  Emily made one last growl of disgust and left her daughter curled up on the carpet beneath the loom. Only when Mary heard the footsteps fade and the slam of an upstairs door, did she come out and sit quietly for a moment.

  She didn’t dare look in the mirror or touch her face. She could feel the blood sliding down her cheek from an old wound that was freshly opened. Her face grew warm. In the morning she would look a fright. When her heart stopped pounding and her hands steadied, Mary took her chair before the loom and resumed her work, trying her best to repair the broken threads. They would be part of the pattern; no one would notice. Nothing in life was perfect, anyway. She sang to comfort herself, one of the familiar hymns by the Wesleys. It was past five in the morning when Mary finally left the parlor and was amazed by the gray streaks of light coming through the window.

  Cook was coming down to light the fires and start the day’s baking when they met on the stairs. The woman gasped when she saw Emily’s hatred so evident on Mary’s sweet and beautiful face.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Mary told Cook when she began to rant about the cruelty heaped on the young woman.

  “But there’s a great deal you can!” the woman swore passionately. “Come, Mistress, I’ll find a poultice for that welt.” When Mary cried out as Cook placed a guiding hand on her shoulder, the cook swore under her breath, adding, “I’ll go to market today and see to the household, Mistress! We’ll patch you up and put you to bed once we take care of the damage done!” Seated before the vanity mirror in her bedroom Mary tried her best to ignore the distorted image and wondered how much of what she saw was real; ignored the Cook’s maternal clucking and sighing as she did her best to clean and salve the wounds. “I provoked her,” Mary said at last.

  “Why do you not listen to the whispers, Mistress?” Cook moaned as she daubed Mary’s face with an herbal salve that smelled wonderfully of flowers and sage. “You can only pretend for so long.”

  “Do you think I cannot hear?” Mary replied. “Dear Meg, it is what everyone wants. They would be glad if I left Knowstone.”

  “You would be better off—”

  Mary took the cook’s soft yet leathery hands and kissed them. “I know this. But where do I go? I have not enough money yet. A few weeks, months, that is all. I shall have enough, then. Besides, it is not yet time to give them satisfaction. Not before I’ve had my chance.”

  The cook’s eyes grew wide and she put a hand to her mouth. “Surely you wouldn’t…!”

  “It all depends,” Mary whispered cryptically and then smiled.

  Chapter 5

  Mary was still sleeping.

  Emily glanced skeptically at the maid and repeated her question.

  “And have you looked in upon her?” she demanded. “Perhaps she went out early, as is her custom while the weather holds.”

  The maid for once did not glance down at her shoes nor at the widow’s peak on Emily’s unlined brow, but met her gaze for gaze and said, “Cook bade me bring Mistress Mary a tray and I went in and she was still asleep. I left the tray and came back an hour later. She is still sleeping, ma’am.”

  “There was a disturbance outside the park last night, some screaming. No doubt highwaymen at their practice, for the roads are dark and wild this way; I know it kept me awake. Surely my daughter, too,” Emily sighed, turning away to pull on her kid gloves. They would hide the swelling and the bruises she’d given herself while giving a few to Mary last night. When she turned back to take her bonnet from the maid she couldn’t help but notice the smirk. So what if the girl knew? She could stand a beating herself! “Well, when she is finally awake, tell her I’ve gone to market, though it is a great inconvenience and we shall have words when I return.”

  The mere act of grasping the latch made Emily catch her breath from the pain. She would see the doctor while in Knowstone—better still, the apothecary; he wouldn’t ask questions. When the maid looked concerned and asked what was amiss, Emily waved her off with an impatient hand and hurried out to the yard where her pony and trap waited. Once secure in the vehicle, she forgot the pain her daughter caused and by the time she arrived in the market square, the confidence in her superiority that had been nurtured and refined over the years in this dismal backwater returned; she merely glared at the boy who offered to tend the pony and trap as she disembarked and pushed past him to the apothecary’s.

  Her hopes of finding sympathy and a willing audience were dashed when she entered the shop and discovered Lady Isobel and The Reverend Mr. Godwin in animated conversation with Mr. Gray the apothecary.

  “Mrs. Witherslack,” Nathaniel Godwin said with a polite bow and tip of his hat.

  “Ah! Emily! How fortunate you should come to Knowstone today. I was going to call upon you!” Lady Isobel exclaimed.

  “Indeed? Twice in a week; how fortunate indeed,” Emily tittered while examining the tinctures and unguents displayed in blue glass bottles on a shelf behind Mr. Gray. “Mr. Gray, I injured my hand doing work in the gardens. Do you have a salve that will reduce swelling and bruising?”

  “Mary was to come by this morning to look at the cloth for Jane’s dress. Yet she did not. I hope she is not indisposed?” Lady Isobel continued.

  “Perhaps she has another engagement,” Emily snapped impatiently, and then under her breath, “For the life of me, this village does not exist for Mary Burnley! It seems that no one else is of any import!”

  “Pardon, Mrs. Witherslack?” Nathaniel asked, catching her.

  Emily turned from him and gave a charming smile to Mr. Gray, the colorless man holding two vials for inspection. “I will take both; one never knows when another joust with a rose bush is the order of one‘s day!” she announced, and after the transaction moved towards the door and came eye to eye with Nathaniel. Now here was a handsome man! Why was it that all the men who perturbed Emily so were those given beauty and an inclination towards
kindness? Ah, if she was younger! Was that a look of appreciation she saw in the way his eyes raked over her? The shy smile? Poor woman; she either refused to or could not distinguish a look of contempt when it was tossed her way.

  “I was greatly impressed with your daughter’s work—the fair linens,” said Nathaniel. “Please convey my regards to her and let her know that St. Ælfgyva’s appreciates her offering.”

  “That is for Mr. Talbot to decide, sir!” Emily said and with a curt nod of her head and a direct glare at the handsome clergyman, left the shop.

  “What do you make of that?” Lady Isobel whispered to Mr. Gray.

  “Little,” Mr. Gray said and looked up when another customer came into the shop, excusing himself.

  “And you, Mr. Godwin?”

  “It is easier to explain the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, Lady Isobel, than to cipher an angry woman, for Emily Witherslack is surely that. Good day. I hope you will come to evening prayer.”

  “You may be sure of it!”

  Out in the street, Nathaniel paused to watch Emily push and negotiate her way through the market and considered the episode. He did not know what to make of it, or this place to which God had sent him.

  Nathaniel Godwin was a stranger in Knowstone, having only come nine months before from Canterbury. He was learned, liberal in thought—and not at all surprised at finding himself in a Marcher outpost after three years of service as a secretary to the Archbishop. He assumed it was a test; whether he would pass it was yet unknown. In the last month he‘d made strides: the villagers were more apt to smile in greeting when he strolled through the market square, such as that afternoon, or stop to ask how he was fairing, or ask a question or for a blessing. His progress from the market to the vicarage was impeded only by a bookseller‘s stall. He caught sight of a book he hadn‘t seen in months—a copy of Malory‘s Le Morte de Arthur—and paused to browse. Nathaniel smiled as he flipped through the pages once edged in gold but now tarnished, finding passages he‘d loved as a boy, and came across Sir Gawaine and the Loathly Lady. The conversation he‘d exchanged with Mary Burnley in the church after evening prayer came to mind.