The Good Wife

by Eleanor Porter

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘No.’ A chill seized me despite the noon sun and the warm wall at my back. ‘It can’t be what was meant. It can’t be. The man was Jacob.’

  ‘You have looked under every stone in Lancaster. He is not here. He is lost. The man you are called to unite with is me. An angel came to me. You felt its presence.’

  I looked at his face; he was in earnest. A horror began to seep through me – that he was right – that it was him, not my own sweet Jacob I was travelling towards. I too had felt the presence of the angel. Was that why I’d been tempted to look into the stone?

  He shook my arms a little and then smiled, taking my silence for consent. His eyes were bright with excitement, but they didn’t move me. God’s word or no I would not do it. I could not marry him, even if I risked hell in refusing.

  ‘Even if what you say is true – which I do not grant – you do not love me Edward Talbot and I don’t love you.’

  He laughed. ‘Earthly love, what’s that? We can give each other animal satisfaction, Jabez. Love might come, and if it doesn’t, what then? I – we – are destined to soar high above this corrupted midden, to become purified, golden. I shall find the stone.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I will love you as a friend. No more.’

  He released my arms and stepped back. I watched shutters close on the gleam in his eyes, leaving only a malicious glint. His lip curled. ‘You prefer your peasant and a hovel life to me. Think girl! I could teach you Latin, take you with me to the courts of princes, lead you even into the company of angels – your sight sustaining mine.’

  ‘Then I would be your familiar,’ I said, ‘not your wife. You are a devil to tempt me with learning. Leave off this talk; you frighten me.’

  I turned to enter the tower, but he caught my arm. ‘Unsexed wretch. Your blood is congealed ice.’ He brought his face so close I could almost feel the sweat on his cheeks. ‘I could force you,’ he said. ‘I should have done it days and days since. I could do it here, now, at the heart of the maze; that would be fitting don’t you think?’

  I shook his hand away. ‘You would not,’ I said. ‘That is not what I meant. I am not afraid of you in that way. It’s your ambition makes me tremble. I don’t doubt your gifts, Edward Talbot, but you would eat Satan’s apple and chew the pips, yes and send me to the highest branches to pick you more, if you believed that it would serve your purposes. Listen to yourself, boasting of angels and threatening rape. You are the bull, Talbot, not Jacob.’

  For a moment he held my gaze, but the thrill of violence was gone. He passed his hand over his eyes then and fell to his knees and groaned. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I think there is a demon in me still. I almost have it crushed, but it is like a worm in the soft matter of my brain; its channels divert the proper course of my thoughts.’

  It went through my mind to lay my hand on his hat; I am sure he meant me to do it – to absolve him as though I were a priest. My hand hovered, but then I turned and leapt up the stone stairs of the tower. Let him feel some pangs. From the top of the tower the maze was laid out before me with all its angles and threads like a cobweb. How easy to find one’s direction when raised up above the jostle of blind circumstance. No wonder the nobility were fond of the game. As I leant on the rail Talbot came up beside me, easy as though nothing had happened between us.

  ‘I believe Lady Stanley will make me rich,’ he said, ‘I have great hopes of it.’

  ‘You’d better be going down, then,’ I said. ‘She may call on you early.’

  This he ignored, turning back from the view towards me. ‘She mentioned the legend of the tower. Do you know it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Long ago, in the East, a magician built a tower upon which he set a mirror whose properties were such that it could show if any enemy approached. In time its secret became known to the wizard Merlin, who crafted another, more wonderful yet, that revealed – however distant – how a man fared, who he dealt with. Men came to it to ask after their wives, girls their sweethearts, merchants to spy across the seas for pirates, the King to look into the intrigues of his court. It was round and smooth and could hold a world within it.’

  ‘Very like your showstone.’

  ‘Yes, but my glass exceeds it, for these showed the workings of men, but yesterday I called an angel.’ He pulled the stone from the bag on his shoulder and made it flash with sunlight. ‘I can command wonders. Not only what is, but what will be. A minister of heaven, Jabez. Think of that.’

  ‘I do. I am afraid of it. I believe you saw an angel. But if an angel can speak through the stone, why not a devil? Are you strong enough to bear such visions?’

  ‘I am stronger when you stand behind me,’ he said miserably, but then held up his hand, ‘don’t worry, I have done. I’ll not speak of it again until you ask me to.’

  ‘I never will,’ I said, stepping down the stairs to leave.

  If things were not resolved, at least they were quiet between us; we prepared for the second audience and as the hour approached Talbot grew nervously excited, praying urgently upon his knees, then taking out the stone and wiping it over and over with a piece of silk, talking of the great canvas of redemption he had been shown the day before, spelling out to me its meaning. He broke off only when he reached the final pictures, the angel’s gift to me and here he begged I would forget his conduct, that he didn’t understand it himself, I was nothing other than a boy to him – indeed he liked me better as a boy – it had been the vision, its seeming command that had moved him.

  His contrition upset me almost more than his violence; it attested more than threats could ever do that he read the moon and the bridge and the limping man sincerely. I looked out of the casement and wondered if it was time now to go on alone. Tomorrow, I thought, I would ask Juno of Talbot and leave. And if the angel were right and to leave was to act against God, well then, I would take the punishment.

  We waited and nobody came. Talbot began to pace the room. At last he declared we should present ourselves without a summons, but at that moment a servant knocked.

  The Lady Elizabeth, the man informed us, was indisposed. If Talbot could attend her tomorrow she would be pleased to consult with him again. He should know that she held him to be gifted beyond the ordinary measure of mankind and was of a mind, if he consented, to engage his services forthwith. As a pledge of her good faith she sent this ring and out of her unparalleled munificence, this – he extended a scroll, frowning some displeasure as he did so – the deeds to a property, a moated grange with a couple of acres of land, from her father’s holdings near the border of your own county. And to prevent all disputes she had added with her seal a letter that it was freely given. I listened while Talbot offered up dishes of gratitude for the man to carry back.

  As soon as the servant had gone however, he fell to cursing. The ring and scroll he flung from him as though they were slick with dung. ‘I am cursed, cursed. A ruin, she said it was a ruin, and no land! I am being paid off. That hag Mary is behind it. And I can feel the spirits tugging at my eyes. I could have shown her marvels.’

  I picked the ring up and unrolled the parchment. The grange was in a parish called Mathon; I had no idea where that was. The ring was a band of gold with a small green stone. I tucked them both away.

  ‘There is tomorrow,’ I said. ‘This is already generous.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I tell you, Jabez, I cannot wait. There are spirits at my shoulders pushing me to revelation. I burn with starlight. You must let me scry for you. Now.’

  ‘No!’ I said, more loudly than I meant to. ‘You are not my master, Edward Talbot.’

  To avoid further discussion I left him and went to the stables, to ride until my head was clear. I did not want to hear more now from yesterday’s angel nor any other. I would never marry Talbot, but the world he offered plagued my peace. The dread I had felt when I looked into the stone was for what I might see – Jacob dead, or lost to me – but it was not only for that; I
had seen the light begin to grow and felt a hunger for knowledge, for revelation, that frightened me. It would do me no good, all that. The image I must cling to was the one I had seen in the pool – Jacob with his arms wide in welcome and the moor rising up behind him. It was like Satan himself to tempt me so, to hold the wide world open before me. I clattered out, repeating the words from Matthew as I went: ‘“Again the devil taketh him up, into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”’

  33

  When I returned that night Talbot was not there. Good, I thought, a ride will calm him as it did me. I ate the supper that had been left out for us alone and went to bed, glad to be rid of him for a few hours. At midnight I drifted out of sleep to the sound of the bell tolling the hours and saw that his bed was empty. When I called his name there was no reply.

  Something was wrong, I was sure of it. He had taken the showstone. I pulled on my breeches, reproaching myself. I should not have left him, distracted, goaded by voices, as he was. Yet all might be well; the apprehension I felt merely the flutter of my own unease. Juno was surprised by the lantern, but I stroked her and talked to her gently and she let herself be saddled up. Softly, softly, I led her out of the yard. The village was silent, puddled in darkness. I took the road towards Lancaster, for no other reason than it seemed the better track. We picked our way slowly; I held up the lantern – in part to light the road and part in fear that I might find him strewn senseless on the ground. There was a heavy silence, broken only by the odd sheep and the constant rushing of the river.

  I passed a village and then another; nobody marked me but a chained dog that startled Juno with its barking. All the lights were tamped. More than an hour had passed; I began to chide myself for taking on such a fool’s errand. He did not need a nurse! When I returned I would find him sack-sopped, snoring. And anyhow he might as well have taken the road north. Then at last I saw lights ahead of me. I looped Juno’s bridle round a branch and put out my lantern so that I could approach unseen. It was an inn, with a bar room well lit, but no one, it seemed, within. The door was ajar and there was a jug of ale on a table with half-full tankards and chairs pushed back.

  A little further on, where the black shape of the church rose up, I heard men’s voices. There were half a dozen or so, huddled in the churchyard. I climbed the wall at a distance and trod gently up behind them, so close I could smell the beer on their breath. For their part they were intent on peering forwards; they did not notice me. Then the jostle shifted a little and across from me, in the lamplight, I saw Talbot, at the foot of an open grave.

  He was on his knees, hatless, rocking slightly back and forth in prayer. Drunk. His right cheek was black with blood and when he extended his arms over the grave his hands too were bloody. On the lip of the pit lay the showstone, lit all round by candles.

  I scarcely dared breathe. This was no calling of angels. What madness had entered his soul? Kneeling beside him was a tall man, with a boy beside them holding the lantern high. All at once, in a strong clear voice, Talbot’s voice rang out.

  You charms, enchantments and thou earth, whose herbs

  Have furnished wizards at their greatest need,

  You elves, fairies, spirits of hills, brooks, woods

  Approach me now. For I by charms have made

  the calm seas rough and made the rough seas plain

  I’ve raised such winds the very mountains shook

  The bowels of earth have thrown forth stone and trees

  And dead men have come walking from their graves.

  The simple men beside me trembled with wonder but I knew the verses, they were mangled from Ovid, words the witch Medea used to summon her awful magic.

  I pushed through, calling his name, but he did not appear to hear me. He was caught in his own drunken spectacle, mountebanking magic; the whites of his eyes gleamed in the lamplight. Two men took me by the arms and half flung me over the stone wall so that I sprawled on the yew-rich earth. Behind me a man cried out.

  ‘Rise and talk,’ Talbot said, ‘I command you, speak to me, if you are not a fiend of hell. There are questions you must answer.’

  I felt stick to my stomach and crawled away. Let him damn himself, I thought, I have done with him. A pink dawn was weakly glowing by the time I had settled Juno in her stall; I threw myself down in my clothes and let an uneasy sleep take me.

  It seemed barely an hour later that a servant came knocking with my breakfast and a message. Mistress Mary, Lady Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting, had requested Talbot’s presence. I was thinking how to respond when the door opened to the lady herself. She swept a glance round the room.

  ‘He is not here,’ she said.

  ‘Mistress,’ I said, ‘he is gone out to pray. It is his custom.’

  She laughed and poked a finger in my face. ‘I know you for a pair of charlatans. Your master, I am told, is famous in Lancaster as a gamester and a drunk. I am here to tell you that you are to leave. The Lady Elizabeth was taken ill in the night; she is like not to recover. Her husband is expected daily and although he is as big a fool as she, I will see to it he does not welcome you.’

  I bowed. ‘Of course, ma’am, if we are not welcome, we will leave.’

  ‘At once,’ she said, turning on her heel to go. Then she threw up her hand. ‘Wait,’ she said, without turning. ‘You were given a ring, yesterday. My lady is not well, she did not mean to part with it. You must return it to me.’

  ‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that the ring was freely given to my master. He has it now about him. I shall tell him it has been asked for.’

  She wheeled round and slapped my face. One of her stones cut a line across my cheek. ‘Slave!’ she said. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Jabez Foxe,’ I said, looking straight into her small blue eyes.

  ‘Return the ring,’ she said quietly, ‘or I shall swear you stole it and the people here will affirm it on the Bible. I shall prevent your leaving. I shall seize your horses. I shall let you rot in Lancaster castle until the noose or the fever take you.’

  For a moment I played at defiance still, feeling the blood prick along the cut and drip down. Then I went into our chamber and retrieved the ring. I placed it in her open palm.

  ‘Be gone by noon,’ she said, ‘and do not tarry in the town, Jabez Foxe. It may not be convenient to ruin your master. Nobody will notice if I ruin you.’

  Talbot had crossed the country to reach this place and we were cast out after a single audience. Perhaps he would have tried to brazen it out. I doubted it. Lady Stanley was bound tight in her linen sheets, with leeches and nurses about her bed, priests hovering in the shadows. I packed away both our bags and pitied him a little. He had come so close to a position; a nest under the house eaves like the swifts that flew in and out under the roof above the casement. Poor Talbot, he was like the swift, the martlet; restless, never able to pause, yearning for heaven, even as he fed on flies.

  The stablehand was only a boy, open-faced and curious and easy with the horses. He could almost have been Jacob a dozen years ago. I fell into conversation with him as I helped him brush Juno down and strap the bags to her back. The manner of our departure made me wary, but he was eager to talk. It was not often a stranger came to the parishes hereabouts I asked? No, he said, not often, outside fair times, unless they were pedlars or visitors to the castle. Had he heard of a wounded man being tended in a village a few months back – a southern man, stabbed in a brawl in Lancaster? He paused a while, long enough for my heart to lift and my breath to catch, but he was only sifting for an answer and at length he shook his head. There was no one like that, he said. I turned my face to Juno’s flank. Except, he brightened, catching my arm so that despite myself I sparked again, a cousin of his mother’s in Westmorland had just married a stranger, a taverner, they said he was, from London. He was keeping the tavern now for her father, doi
ng no end of business. They were in a fair way to being rich. I nodded, feeling my eyes brim. Perhaps I was out of practice with disappointment, perhaps it was the foolish sense that here, in a stableyard so like the Court at home, I was more likely to hear of him, but for a moment I had felt such hope. As it sank the flame of it scorched.

  A rider came into the yard behind us and the boy hurried out, leaving me to lean into Juno. I would grow old, I thought, with looking, the wound growing a little harder, the pain familiar month by month, until I barely remembered my unscarred self, or what it was I longed for, unless it was the innocence we’d shared. We had loved each other, Jacob and I, long before we knew our proper selves. All our youth was twined together, like the rings of rushes that we used to weave to slip on one another’s hands. And yet it struck me that if I did not find him I would go on living and build a life that he would never know. Already, impossible as it seemed, I was forgetting him – how could I think this ruddy uncouth stablehand, gabbling to a stranger in the yard, resembled him at all? For almost the first time I tried to picture the days that would come after I found him and felt afraid that what we had might have unravelled.

  The boy was running back with a mouthful of news; I took Juno’s bridle and began to lead her out in hopes of forestalling him, but he skidded up to me.

  ‘It’s a rider from Caton,’ he said. I frowned, the name meant nothing to me. ‘You’d best be off. Your master’s been taken to Lancaster gaol. There’s others coming here; they say he has magic books, that he’s a sorcerer, they’ll take them and you, too, if the mistress don’t prevent it.’