The Good Wife

by Eleanor Porter

  The village boys didn’t care for Erasmus and proud as I then was, I didn’t care for them. I blushed now, remembering how I had belittled Jacob when he came to join the boys and learn, how he had kicked a bench and left. Boult looked at me slyly.

  ‘You like the gold, don’t you? You people always do, drawn to glitter like crows. Be glad you don’t understand it. Give thanks you can live a simple life, girl. The poets are right, it’s a blessed state. Free of the cares that bedevil our sleep. We envy you. As long as you are hale you can sleep soundly.’

  How useful that we villeins must lower our eyes. There is so much we can avoid revealing. Some of the passages from Erasmus’s book Owen and I learned by heart. Anyone who loves extremely, Erasmus says, lives not in themselves but in the object of their love, and the more they can move out of themselves into their love, the happier they become. I am not here Jacob, I thought, I am with you, wherever you are.

  ‘I will sleep much more easy now, sire, with the generous gift of your thatch,’ I said, bobbing.

  ‘Ha! Surprised you, didn’t I? Thought I’d send you packing for your insolence. You’ve got a bit of spirit, girl. I like that. Raise your eyes.’ I looked up at him, taking care to shut my mind tight. ‘Yes, a bit of spirit is good. But not too much, eh?’ He stepped back and sat heavily in the chair, sticking his leg out. ‘Roll down my hose, will you?’

  I knelt and did as he asked. The stockings were flecked with skin. I noticed how a vein bulged out below his knee. His skin smelt old, sweet, like lice. On other days, when I had rubbed behind the wound to move the blood, he had been indifferent, but I felt now this had changed. When I began to chafe his thin shank his leg tensed; without looking up I could see he had turned to me. All at once he thrust his hand beneath my cap, rubbing at my hair. I stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, his hand holding my head from rising.

  ‘I must not,’ I said, ‘it will bring too much heat to the sore.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ he said, releasing me.

  He let me alone, then, and I finished up as quickly as I could. ‘I think, sire,’ I said, as I prepared to leave, ‘that you have no more need of me, the wound is so nearly healed.’

  He was staring at the papers on his desk. ‘I will decide that, girl. Come tomorrow.’ He waved me away. When I had my hand on the door he spoke again, so quietly I was not sure I had heard aright. ‘Whatever you may have heard, mistress, there is no cause to fear me. I do not force.’

  That night I lay awake and thought about our home, with the thatch undone and the rain feeling its way into our room. How easily we could lose all that we had. Houseless we would be nothing: afraid of the morning, like the dew snails that left their moon threads over the floor at night and in the morning were gone. Might the thatching be left half done if I refused him? ‘I do not force,’ he’d said, moving his finger down the rows of figures. Yes, I thought, it’s buying he’s after. It wasn’t belly flame that moved Boult, not much; he was slack and spent. No, it was the pricing up, finding what his gold could do, how much might bring a girl to yield. Well, he’d find I cost more than a few bunches of longstraw. I could do my own reckoning. ‘No, Jacob,’ I said, as though he’d sent his spirit to upbraid me, ‘you are not here. I must manage how best I can.’

  It was good of Sally to take me in, though the bed I shared with the little ones was cramped enough. Mary slept like a dormouse, warm and still, but Meg wriggled down the bed until her feet were level with my nose. Meg was my favourite of the children; she had a lively eye and wit, where her brother was only dull. She called me ‘nuncle’ because, she said, she used to think I was a boy dressed up. It was a tender joke from such a chit, and everybody laughed at it, even I, until moon after moon my belly failed to quicken. I wondered if I was not made right. But that was changed; as I drifted off she flung a leg across my chest – how full my breasts were! I felt a smile curling in my heart but I would not own it, not yet. I lay and listened to Sally and Michael snoring, Jack turning in his sleep, the snuffle of the baby and, nearer, the soft outbreath of the girls, gentle as a wind that stirs the leaves. Across the bolster Mary’s face in the moonlight was so smooth, so round! I reached out and touched the petal down of her cheek and in her sleep she smiled.

  In the morning as we broke our fast Michael grinned at me, pushing his tongue through the gap in his teeth.

  ‘Off to the old lecher again are ‘ee Martha? That’s what’s put a bit of colour in your cheek is it?’

  Sally gave him a friendly clout. ‘Don’t take any notice, Martha dear. Pretty girl in the house and he thinks he has to play the wit. You be off to work Michael.’

  ‘Are people talking, Sally?’ I asked, when he and Jack had gone.

  ‘A course they are dear,’ she beamed. ‘But it’s mostly on account of your healing him. You’ll have no end of business now. As for the other, folks know he’ll be trying it on, but nobody’s foolish enough to think you’ll fall.’

  I leant towards her and laid a hand on her arm, ‘I’m afraid of rumour, it almost put a rope about my neck. It’s why I’ve not liked to offer my healing.’

  Sally put a finger to her lips. Hanging talk was unlucky, especially in front of the children. ‘Mad tattle that was. Dark house and a whip they needed for talk like that. Wouldn’t happen here, that kind of nonsense. Not with a master like Sir Thomas. But you’d best be off.’

  I’d had faith in a great house to protect me and keep the world on a just course, once. Almost to the last I thought Miss Elizabeth would save me. It pleased me that Sally could have lived so long and not grown bitter. She’d had her share of hardship, but her world had never fallen out of joint. However she liked to gossip, Sally would walk a sharp mile barefoot before she’d believe malicious tales of me. I had cured the Steward and no harm was done.

  It was a beautiful day, blue and young, with a fresh wind tumbling the clouds across the sky. In the wet lane the puddles from yesterday’s rain shone like metal. I lifted my face to the sun and felt as strong as the morning. I will tell him, I thought, that I can no longer come. A reason will present itself to me.

  As I reached the house I saw the Steward’s horse was being made ready. My heart lifted. I was shown into the library as usual and, as I’d hoped, he was in travelling clothes.

  ‘You are late,’ he said, not looking up from the scrolls on the table. ‘You were right yesterday, I don’t need you.’

  ‘Thank you sire,’ I said and smiled inwardly. I turned to go.

  Did he catch a wisp of the smile? At any rate he strode across the room and caught my arm. ‘Stop,’ he said, oily now, ‘I did not give you leave to go.’ His pale eyes were only inches from mine, his lips hung open in a loose smile. ‘Wait while I pack these documents. I have to go to Shrewsbury on business. Not sure how long – several days perhaps. I have told the thatchers they must be done by the time I return.’

  ‘Thank you sire, I – and I speak for my husband, too – … it is very good of you.’ That smile again. He lifted his hand to my face and regarded me slowly, until I shifted foot to foot. ‘Your husband,’ he said at last, ‘who is very far away. You can spare me a few minutes, I think.’

  He turned back to packing scrolls into his bag. Presently he shouted for his man. ‘Where the devil is my Ovid? Richard, have you packed it?’

  The manservant rushed over to the large desk and both began looking, uselessly lifting the same piles of books and scrolls. The book was on a chair beside me; I had seen it as I prepared to leave. A little pleased with myself I picked it from the cushion, and held it out. The leather was soft beneath my fingers – how I yearned to open the covers. My father had talked of these stories, he had read them at school in Latin. Of all they had had to study he had loved them the best, he said; pages and pages of stories, of girls becoming trees and stars, of a boy flying too near the sun; falling.

  Boult was looking at me with narrowed eyes. The manservant, too, was staring. It struck me what I had done.

&
nbsp; ‘Well,’ Boult said, ‘so you can read, too, can you? Bring it here.’

  ‘O…Only a little,’ I stammered as I came forward. I did not like the look he gave me.

  He opened the book at random. ‘What word is that?’ Daphne, I thought, but shook my head. ‘That one?’ He pointed at another, a couple of lines down. Apollo. I shook my head again. He took my chin between his fingers and regarded me. ‘Liar!’ he said. ‘I can see how your eyes skim the lines.’

  I twisted to face him, bold, reckless. ‘I can read,’ I said, ‘My father taught me.’

  He looked at me suspiciously and then, abruptly, he smiled again and placed the book in my hands. ‘Leave us,’ he said to the servant, who bowed and left.

  ‘Go on then,’ he said as the door closed. ‘Read it. I shall pack my bag a moment.’

  I opened the book and read.

  ‘Aloud, girl!’ he shouted from the table.

  ‘“Of shapes transformed to bodies strange”,’ I read, ‘“I purpose to entreat"’. The meaning of the words tumbled into and through me. Shapes transformed, I thought; my father was right, it is a book of dreams.

  ‘Before the Sea and Land were made, and Heaven that all doth hide,

  In all the worlde one onely face of nature did abide;

  Which Chaos hight, a huge, rude heape …’

  Chaos. I had felt that once, the earth, churning itself undone. I could imagine a beginning of the world like that, at strife, all things waiting their proper shape. As I read it felt to me as though the Steward’s walls had thinned, and I was looking out at wonders. I thought I had dulled this hunger for words, for stories, but it came roaring. Then, as I turned the page, his hand was there.

  ‘Hand it back,’ he said.

  I swallowed, but I closed the book, and placed it in his hand. He left it there between us, the gilt caught by the sun through the window. ‘Unless,’ he said, ‘you would like to borrow it awhile, a few days?’

  I nodded, half in a trance.

  ‘Then kiss me. One kiss, that’s all.’

  His face hovered near mine; he was smiling, but there was the hint of a sneer on his fleshy lips. His breath was of sour wine and meat. I glanced at his blotchy skin, the hairs growing from the mole on his chin. Outside the window horses were being brought round to the front of the house. Quickly, I leant forward and pecked his greasy cheek.

  He grinned with all his mottled teeth. ‘Have you never been kissed, girl?’

  With a lunge he pressed his lips on mine, pushing his thick tongue into my mouth, twining it, as a toad puts out its tongue to catch the fly. His free hand grabbed my breast roughly. I willed the wall behind my back to swallow me, but it merely pressed me back into him, so I tried to reduce myself to the fingers still clutching the soft dry leather of the book. Then there was a knock on the door and it was over. He gave me a quick look, up and down, his eyes merry with triumph, and dismissed me.

  ‘Wait,’ he called, grinning, as I pulled at the door, ‘any soiling and you will have to pay.’

  There was more laughter behind me when I took my cloak by the servants’ door – was it written on my face, I wondered, had one of the men glanced through a window? But perhaps not, perhaps the cackling was not thrown at me at all. I hurried out and filled a cup at the pump to rinse my mouth – over and over I did it; until I reflected how I could be seen.

  The taste of him lingered as I walked away; it made my gorge rise so that more than once I bent over the verge to retch into the grass. My bosom, too, was sore. I felt sure that if I were to strip, the mark of each finger would be there upon my breast. If they should stay! Jacob coming home would see the bruises of another man’s hand upon me! I had heard of such happenings, the mark of guilt on the body. There was a murder years back – a miller down at Eardisland – where nobody suspected the pious brother weeping at church, until it was noted that at a certain time of the afternoon his hands turned bloody. Nothing he did could prevent it: even though he plunged them in the millstream an hour together, the blood ran down his nails.

  For the first time since we had come here I had done something that would anger my husband; that could cause bitterness between us. He would not take it lightly; it would rankle and fret. How could he, in all his simple goodness, understand the desire I had felt, with the pages in my hand, to unravel those stories? It had seemed such a nothing to give, at least till Boult’s fat tongue wormed within my mouth. That taste! There was a coppice hard by, thick already with wild garlic. I picked a skirtful and sat down in a patch of sunlight, stuffing handful after handful into my mouth until its fresh bitterness cleaned through to my throat and I felt rid of him.

  I sat very quiet and still in the sunlight, though I could feel the damp through my dress. There had not been such a warm day yet. The trees were busy with it – as I sat and listened it seemed the leafbuds, pressing to unfurl, sounded a high thin music. Above me on a branch a blackbird sang full-throated to his mate. All the world was quickening. I placed a hand on my belly – but any mystery there was hidden. If it were true, how Jacob would smile and smile. Unless … no, I would not think it. Damn the Steward. It had only been a moment; I lifted my face and told myself the kiss of the sun on my lips made everything new. It may be that Jacob would never find out; that I would never need to tell him; that nobody had seen. I looked at the bag beside me. There, wrapped in the cloth I used for my simples, lay the book. I took it out and opened up the pages to the light.

  At first my hands shook and I felt too giddy to read steadily, but skitted from page to page. Then a name caught me. Ceres, I read, goddess of the corn, who drew plenty from the earth as we draw water from a well. I closed my eyes and the spring sun glowed through my lids – golden, like ripe wheat in the summer. Ceres had a daughter, Proserpine, who swore she’d never marry, but liked to play with her fellows in the woods, gathering flowers. It was always spring and she filled her skirts with violets, lilies – perhaps windflowers too I thought, looking about me at a bank of anemones, bright as stars on the wood floor. One day the Lord of Hell came thundering into her glade behind his great black horses. He plucked her from the ground and carried her away. How she must have drooped in his fist! If only her mother had been by – however the horses reared and stamped, Ceres would have held them; she would have prized apart Hell’s fingers one by one to release her child. But she was far away and didn’t hear her daughter’s cries. All that was left were the scattered flowers, dying.

  I had never known a book like this one. It was thick with stories like the ones my grandmother told me, of spirits and gods who were fairies; ungodly, wicked stories the minister had called them. Yet they were taught in the grammar school. I wondered how the Church could allow them. One tale was plaited into the next, twisted together like a fine rope or a woman’s hair. Surely a book like this one was worth a bit of sullying? What was a moment of bile in the mouth compared with this? Jacob would not suspect me of foulness. This winter, when he came home weary and the candle had burnt down I would have such stories for him, folded beneath my tongue.

  It was only when I noticed the grey cast of the sky that I considered how much time had gone by. Such sluggardness would not do. Until I was back by my own hearth I resolved to keep the book close. Sally knew I could read a little, but not that I could unravel such a text as this; besides, even she was sharp enough to suspect there’d been a price for the loan. What would she think, I wondered, if she discovered what I’d done? Sally wouldn’t understand the fierce longing that had gripped me when I held the book, to peel back the edges of my world and follow where it led me. She’d be uneasy, she would think it a wildness in me, she’d fear my ruin. My neighbours, good people all, would take a simpler view; skittish they’d think me, weak-willed, hankering after what wasn’t proper in a woman, what was unnatural. Or else they’d look straight to the kiss; I was a wanton, a trollop, after what I could get.

  I would take it to the church and read it there. The vicar never locked the door in day
light, nor entered until his luncheon had been well slept off. If he saw me at all he would take it for the prayer book. I placed the volume back into my bag and set off home. After a little way I glimpsed Jack Robbins and another lad following on behind me, mimicking my gait. I turned very quickly so they knew they were seen, but then I smiled; Jack turned redder than a robin and sheepishly asked if he might carry my bag. Sally was right; he had taken to stooping a little, afraid of his own scrawny growth. It could not have been easy, losing his parents and his home.

  ‘Stand up tall Jack,’ I said. ‘You’ve a right to look at heaven as much as any other man.’

  6

  I dreamt Jacob stood over me as I lay between Sally’s girls. He bent, smiling, to kiss me, but as his candle caught my face he frowned and shook his head very slightly. I raised my lips, but the mouth that bore down on mine was wet and greasy and tasted of meat.

  I must have gagged as I slept, for I woke to little Meg pounding my back.

  ‘Do you need the bucket, Martha?’ she asked in a whisper. I turned towards her; her hair smelt of warm hay, it restored me.

  ‘I’m well Meg, don’t mind me. It was the mare-hag visiting. You sleep now.’

  I could see her wide dark eyes in the gloom, gazing at me without blinking, as young children will. At length she nodded. ‘You can hold my hand if you like. She doesn’t come when you are holding hands.’

  ‘Has she come to you then?’