The Good Wife

by Eleanor Porter

  ‘Jacob,’ I said bitterly to the embers, ‘what good are you alive, and far away? It’s here I need you. Here, now.’ It was still two weeks till the shearing. Perhaps I could buy a little time, bargain for my cottage; perhaps Sally or Rowland could take my part? But what could they do, what had they to offer? All it would do was bring them trouble and anyhow, there was little chance he would let me stay in my house if I denied him what he asked. If Sir Thomas had been at home I could perhaps have thrown myself on his mercy, pleaded the love he had once borne Jacob, but he had stayed barely two nights at the Court. There was no hope there. Every way I cast it I could not see my way free. Tell me Lord what I should do, I prayed, but God did not answer. I sat so long that when a neighbour came by for a salve my pottage was cold and the fire all ashes.

  All that day and the days that followed I let the hours unfurl. I was a leaf, existing for the sun. I knew a storm was coming that would blow me to the mud, but it seemed to me I was fixed and powerless to help myself. All might yet be well – wasn’t the world busy with beginnings? We had days of soft warm weather, light breezes where it seemed the woods were swishing skirts. The earth was merry with burgeoning. I abandoned myself to soft thoughts and silly fancies – conjuring over and over Jacob’s look of glad surprise as he put a hand to my belly, imagining myself big already, my stomach hard and strange like the moon. Other times I would drift into absence, my hoe raised to the earth, a ladle poised above the pot, looking into nothing, tears I had not noticed coursing down my cheeks. ‘What could be more natural,’ people said, ‘than that she weeps?’ When she was by, Meg would put her hand up to my face and wipe it dry.

  ‘Come back, nuncle,’ she would say and I would shake myself and smile and hug her hard, all the terror that awaited me returning.

  In the small hours of the night when the world had shrunk to the close quiet of my room, I determined I would leave – soon, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow – I would take only what was needful and find a cart going north. There was time yet before the baby came; we might be home by harvest. Or if not, if I had to wear out my shoes searching, why then I would not be the first great-bellied woman to find herself roofless. Our Mother had not flinched, not even when they led her to a stable in the dead of winter, when the trough water curdled into ice and the ox breath steamed. In the morning the confusion of the world leaked through the shutters and I would hesitate again. Go where? And if I did not find him, if he was cold – oh but I could not think of that. Next to me, warm and tangled, Meg would begin to wriggle, and then she’d sit and smile, pink with sleep and I’d stroke her hair. Not today, I’d think, I cannot bear to leave. I’ll wait another day; he might come home.

  The good weather held for the shearing. Light fell in yellow folds through the great barn doors and dust motes sparked gently upwards. Below, all was bleating and sweat; the men knelt on the threshing floor, holding down the ewes to cut them. We women passed round the cider, gathered fleeces and tied them. I was careful to stay close with the others. Old Rowland could not stay long on his knees and so between shearing himself, he minded the others, chiding them for roughness, watching that they did not nick. On the last day I was refilling the jug from the barrel in the brown back reaches of the barn when Boult strode in. He poked about at the tied fleeces and then came up to the second shearer as a fresh ewe was hauled to him. I watched her terrified striped eyes as he held her fast and clipped the fleece from her shoulders, so that it splayed back like a shawl. Boult leant in to watch.

  ‘You ought to go in closer,’ he said to the shearer, ‘you’re leaving half the wool on her back, she’s all in petticoats when she should be stripped.’

  ‘Ain’t possible to go in no more,’ the shearer answered, undaunted, ‘without I make her bleed.’

  He let the ewe go and she stood up surprised and naked, before a boy took her to the pen to be tarred with the Court stamp.

  ‘Hey, bring the jug,’ the man called, and I had no choice but to start forward.

  Boult saw me and thrust out a cup and drank it off then wiped his mouth with his hand and smiled, looking at me all the while.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said to the shearer, grabbing my elbow as I was about to move off. ‘Why do you start here?’ He put down his cup and put his finger to my neck.

  The man stood and stretched, signalling the boy bringing a shearling to wait. ‘Open her up steady at the neck and collar and she’ll let you undress her all the way to her tail.’ He clapped his knee and grinned and the others laughed.

  Boult pulled my elbow so that I was forced to bend back beneath him. Carefully, he took the jug from my hand. Glancing round he put two fingers to my bodice, and mimed the descent of the clicking shears. The men laughed again, but did so, some of them, nervously. Then he let me go so suddenly I fell down to the straw. My head must have hit the flags beneath – for a moment the air was knotted with stars – and then his face appeared among them as he leaned down to haul me up. I tried to bat him off but he grabbed my wrist and smiled; his lips shaped the word ‘tomorrow’. It was all over in a moment. He turned his back and I brushed my skirts down and picked up the jug.

  I could not get out without walking the length of the barn so I retreated to the barrel and pretended to be filling my jug till the voices and bleating told me I was forgotten. Then, glancing to see that no one observed me, I slipped behind the baskets of new shorn wool to let my heart grow calm. The heat here was thick and rich with the wool oil and would have sent me as giddy with sleep as a drunk fly if I had not been so agitated. Little by little it soothed me and I picked up some scraps which had fallen down, remembering how I loved to push my fingers through Jacob’s thick locks and press my face into them to breathe their horse-hay scent. How at night he would rise through his dreams to turn to me and press his lips against mine.

  I shook myself. There could be no more of this see-saw off and on dreaming. Jacob had not come home; I could wait no longer. Tomorrow, Boult had said. By nightfall I would be houseless – or his whore. And what use Jacob returning then – to find his wife a harlot, his child an acknowledged bastard? Better that he thought me dead than that. Better that I was. I was not a mare to be ridden till I was broken meat, good only for the hounds to chew on. I would leave tonight, before first light, while the village slept off the shearing feast.

  A man’s voice, close by, started me up. ‘Where’s she gone?’ it said, ‘the lame girl who was handing out the cider?’

  ‘She’s no girl, Martin Bright,’ Sally’s voice answered, ‘you’ve been coming here to shear long enough. She’s Jacob Spicer’s wife. Or widow I should say, poor thing.’

  ‘I remember him well enough. So that was her. Seemed a good man to me. A shame for a man to end like that.’

  ‘There’s more to it, I’d swear it on the Bible, though Sir Thomas himself bore witness to the truth of it. She’s taken it hard, as any wife would and them so much in love, it were a delight to see, I tell you. It weren’t right of the Steward to use her so and urge the men on to laugh at her, her with her husband barely cold in his grave.’

  ‘From what I heard, he’s been making use of her a good while now,’ a younger man put in, ‘popped a bastard in her belly.’

  ‘Why! How dare you say so, how dare you spread such mischief.’ Oh Sally, I thought, don’t defend me with so shrill a voice. ‘I’ve a good mind to throw this cider in your poxy snout. See if I don’t.’

  ‘Peace woman!’ Martin, put in, ‘we could barely set foot in the village before hearing how Spicer had gone to a brawling death and his wife become the Steward’s jade. The jostling leaves in the orchard whisper it. Maybe she’s not the Steward’s whore, not yet. He’s as good as shown she will be. He might as well have tarred her with his stamp like one of the ewes.’

  ‘Then shame on all of us,’ Sally said, ‘“Thou shalt not go up and down with tales among thy people; neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour”, that’s what the Bible says. Good day to you.�
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  There was silence for a while then, so that I thought they had gone and I might be able to edge out, but then the bell was rung and they sighed and spat.

  ‘Well I pity the girl,’ the older one, Martin, said, ‘if she doesn’t wish it, but who’s to say? Maybe she fancies lying on feathers, even with Boult’s sour breath in her neb.’

  ‘It en’t fair though, is it? She looks like a fierce one, wouldn’t mind blunting my edge on her myself.’

  ‘You’re a coward, Thomas Pike, and cowards don’t get to die like that.’

  They laughed and moved off back to the work.

  I waited till the barn was quiet. At the further end men were pulling tables for the supper, but they did not mind me. My heart ached at all I was leaving – the soft light falling in chords through the wide barn doors; the dappled orchard; the familiar toing and froing of my neighbours in the lane. It was no use weeping; there would be time enough for that.

  14

  I took very little with me. Near the whole village was at the shearing supper, but it would be understood, expected even, that I should not go. Before she left for the feast, Sally had knocked at my door with oatcakes and cheese, and clasped me to her ample bosom, stroking my hair.

  ‘What is it Sally?’ I said, pretending ignorance, hoping she did not notice my blotched cheeks, my breathlessness.

  ‘Just remember, Martha,’ she said, ‘you’re not friendless. You’re my kin, just as much as if we shared blood.’

  I felt myself falter then, wrapped in her warm clasp with her love about me. It was at the edge of my tongue to talk, to utter some folly that would hint at my leaving: Bless you Sally I wanted to say, God be with you, think well of me, forgive me. The words pressed in my throat so hard I thought that I would sob, but I hugged her and said nothing.

  When she was gone I gathered what I had of value. It was good, after all, that I had not returned the chain. It would sell for a good price. The book troubled me; I resolved to leave it. After all it was not mine and to take it would be to brand myself a thief. Jacob’s knife I put in my satchel along with my purse and the chain. Even without the book my bundle was heavy enough, what with simples to sell and candles and the blue kirtle and all the food I could carry on the road. I waited while the moon rose and the first revellers returned, letting the dark gather round me. The years in this house with Jacob had been the happiest I had ever known. They were pinned to this place. As soon as I stepped away the memories would loosen and begin to fall out of shape. I walked round the cottage brushing my hand over its surfaces – our bed, his chair, the dimpled wall, as if to take the knowledge of them into my palm, my fingers. If our life were only a book that I could open and read at will, every time the same with the same words clear on the page! But perhaps we should find a way of returning. Perhaps we could be just as we were that March morning when he said goodbye.

  At length I went out to see from the height of the moon how far into the night it was. Before me, very still on the path, a pale shape hovered, for all the world like a fairy child.

  ‘Come, Meg,’ I said. ‘Whatever are you doing up so late? Couldn’t you sleep, child?’

  ‘I dreamt about you, nuncle,’ Meg said.

  ‘What was your dream?’ I said, drawing her into the house.

  ‘Well, rightly, it warn’t about you, but uncle Jacob. He was sitting on a big wooden chair with a smile all over his face and a baby on his knee, dandling it up by the arms, so.’ And she raised her arms up high. ‘Then I woke up and thought to myself that the devil must have sent the dream, because uncle Jacob’s in his long home and en’t never coming home.’

  Her lip trembled and I hugged her head to my bosom. It was a sign, of course it was, that the child should dream of Jacob living and happy now, just as I was preparing to leave. ‘That wasn’t the devil, Meg,’ I said. ‘Would the devil send you such a picture of joy – and innocence? An angel sent you that dream. I’d swear it. It means Jacob is living.’

  Meg stepped back to look at me, although I hadn’t lit a candle and there was only a thread of light, where the shutters were ajar. ‘You know he’s cold, nuncle. They said prayers for him in church.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it true, Meg. Why would you be sent a dream like that if he were under the earth? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘That’s doubting, nuncle. Ma Sally says that she’s afeard for you, because doubting is like to turn your wits.’

  ‘Does she so?’

  ‘Yes, she says it all the time.’

  I turned then and lit a candle, and sat down, drawing Meg before me. ‘Listen. They wouldn’t let Rowland’s John see his body. They left with too much haste. Who knows but that he might have got better. Do you understand?’

  Meg solemnly shook her head.

  ‘Never mind. Listen. I am not brainsick, Meg. I am going to find him and bring him home. I will be gone awhile; you must have faith. When they miss me you can tell them that I’ve followed his path to bring him home. It’s an adventure.’

  Her eyes were large in the candlelight. What a foolish thing to tell the child. She would be sure to rouse them. I ploughed on. ‘But don’t tell them till tomorrow, till the sun is sliding down again. You can keep my house clean for me while I am gone.’

  Suddenly, she smiled. ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘No, no darling, it’s too far and Sally needs you. But I shall bring you home a present. A doll from the fair, should you like that?’

  Meg nodded. ‘Good girl,’ I said. ‘And Jacob will sit and dandle his baby like in your dream.’

  It was like a cloud gone from the moon; she was all bright excitement and pride at the weight of a secret to carry. When finally I persuaded her to go back to bed she waved at me from the door of Sally’s cottage and put her finger to her lips and giggled. It was all I could do not to rush and hug her to me and cling to her, but I merely raised my hand in farewell. I had little faith she would be able to keep her knowledge from bubbling out, but all the same I was glad to have told her; I had said goodbye. It might be put about I had gone mad, but in her heart she would know it was not true.

  However, there was no time to lose. If I lingered till she babbled I would be prevented. I took one last look at my cottage. The book was lying on the tick. Without letting myself think too hard I picked it up and placed it in my satchel, then bound the bigger load to my back. After all, I might not be gone long.

  My first thought was of Owen in Hereford. He might know people who could help me, who could send ahead. In the last letter he had written to me he’d talked of finding great favour with his teachers, said he was bound for orders and the University. But Hereford lay due south and what good could a grammar school boy do me? It would be wrong to ask it of him. I turned along the road the party had taken in March. It was a bright night that promised a good clear morning. The roads would be dry and sound and nobody would notice a pedlar woman stooped under her load. I could be at Leominster by breakfast time, perhaps even Ludlow before nightfall. I shivered at that. When I had last seen Ludlow my wrists and ankles had shackle sores. I was the Witch of Woolhope, who had scattered the graves of the dead and the chapel walls, who had brought a hill down on her own head. I tried to shake the fear off; it was doubtful I would be recognised, and if I was, what of it? I had been acquitted. Jacob had delivered me and walked me home; us both so weak we advanced like caterpillars feeding on sunlight and when we were weary of walking we lay in some dappled shade and unwrapped one another with our lips and hands till we were butterflies.

  It was no use; I could not bring myself to go to Ludlow. In any case, I told myself, if I were to be followed or asked after it would be in Leominster. There would be nothing so easy as overtaking me, the slowest old nag in the stable could do it. Boult would stand me before him; perhaps he would lay out my choice – cunt, or neck – and he’d pull out the book from my satchel and the thin gold chain. Perhaps he would not bother even to do that; it’d be too late for choices.

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nbsp; I turned east towards the glimmering dawn and took the road to Worcester. The night held past Bodenham, where the restless thatcher lived. At Pencombe I startled a pedlar out of a ditch. We eyed each other warily, for the light was too grey for ease. Soon after, cottagers began to emerge for the day’s work, but I was beyond my own lands and although some turned to stare after they said their good days, there was nobody to know me.

  For hours I walked; the track climbed and fell and I did not mind it. After the days of indecision it felt good to move; I welcomed even the pain in my shins, the dull ache of my ankle. Whatever the road brought, whatever dangers it had in store, it was better than Boult’s rank bed. It was months before I’d grow too big for walking. I would not think about that, yet. My father had a silver medal of St Christopher with the Christ child on his shoulders, striding the stream; he wore it on a chain about his neck. It had been his own father’s and he kept it for that, he said; he had no truck with charms or trinkets, but I saw how he touched it, without fail, on setting out. One night on a drunk he gambled it away. I wished I had it still, next to my chest, to ward off evil. But no matter, I thought, I could pray as well without it and I knew how to pick luck from the hedges and lanes. Here was mugwort, tall as my chest, that St John wore as a girdle in the wilderness. I twined myself a bracelet that I tucked under my cuff; the scratch of the stems lessened my loneliness.

  Near noon an old carter passed me and offered me a ride as far as his master’s farm. I told him my mother had died and I was joining my brother in Worcester. He nodded as though to say he expected as much and gestured to the parcel at his side.