The Good Wife

by Eleanor Porter

  When I woke the dew was falling and the western mountains were mantled red and orange. At first I felt the weight of sorrow but could not remember what it was and then, remembering, I tried to close my eyes again as though the knowledge of it would recede in darkness, but it did not go. All was as it was, or almost all – I sat up with a start. Someone had draped a cloak about me.

  He was a few feet off, kneeling and blowing on a small flame that trembled and seemed to die and then took heart and rose up stronger. He glanced across and nodded. How often at our hearth had I watched his breath stroke flame into the kindling? It was a workaday sight, so tenderly common that I felt the great grief begin to brim and swallowed hard to hold it back.

  ‘A cowherd down the way told me a strange boy had ridden up here. He was afraid he meant to do himself some mischief. Did you, Martha?’

  His voice had lost the choked harshness it had before in the stables; it was almost gentle again, almost the voice I was used to wake me in the dawn when he rose to work, or that spoke to me in the night when we lay softly knotted on our bed. Its edge was one I had not heard for years, not since I was a girl and he was torn between wanting me and thinking me a witch. We seemed to have come so far, I thought, but the wheel has turned and we are back where we began. Worse, he has forsaken me.

  ‘No.’ I said as harshly as I could. ‘I’m not the giddy chit you fished from Pentaloe ponds. You have broken my heart, husband, but I’ll not die of it. Or if I do, it will be far away from here. How long did you wait before you fucked her?’

  He winced and the flames bent towards his sharp inbreath. His voice grew harder. ‘It was after I learned that no sooner had you heard that I was dead – not one month after – than you were on your back, a circlet of daisies on your head, letting yourself be ploughed by some sweat-seamed oaf. And profitably too. You were with his child, the letter said. What, did you lose it? Did he cast you over for a passing jade?’

  The light was furring into night; the distant hills were smudged grey. For a second I felt again the kick that cracked my belly open. I dug my fingers into the thin earth and felt that I was sinking into it – I was like Eurydice when Orpheus looked behind too soon, when they had almost reached the upper world with its good fresh air. It had been a kind of death when he did not come home and now, when all had appeared restored, all found again, life had crumbled into dust. Not even dust, but a stinking midden heap. I could not speak; there was a fist of sorrow at my throat that choked me.

  The near and distant hills, and the great arching vault of heaven grew into night all round me; black and vast forever. How could my Jacob, my dear one, who I’d defied the world to find, how could he speak like this? I tried to tell myself I was not here, but in some other place, where Jacob had smiled and clasped me to him, but here was only darkness and the cruel delighted flames of the small fire; they played across his face, flashed in his angry eyes. ‘You don’t deny it. By Christ I should hate you Martha. I believed I hated you.’

  I rubbed the spiny grass with my flat hands. ‘You were a fool.’ I said. ‘A letter. From the Steward, no doubt, and you believed it, every word. You didn’t write to me. You didn’t come. What happened to you Jacob? How could you doubt me? You – who withstood your mother and your lord and even God’s minister – to stand beside me and to swear me honest.’

  He stood up, too quickly; his hand went to his side in pain. ‘It wasn’t only the letter, though that was enough. The man who brought it, Rhys his name is, a good Leominster man, warned me that it brought bad news. He’d a cousin who said that you’d been tramping the parish peddling salves, that a rich man had taken a liking to you and you weren’t likely to refuse him. All the parish were tattling how he’d knocked you up. I know how men looked at you, how little you understood how to guard against it. You were always wild.’

  There was enough truth in his words to make me bite back the sharp answer on my lips.

  ‘I was not false, Jacob.’

  ‘I turned the tables over; I pounded the walls until my fists bled. “Forget her,” old Jack said, “women are as hard to hold, as changeable as water till they have a baby at the breast.”’

  His face was a mask of shadow. I had thought it the map of my own heart, but I could no more see it than discover what lay in the dark star gaps. I stared at the absence where his face should be.

  ‘I was never false to you.’ I said again.

  I walked over to him and took his face between my hands and turned it to the fire. He would not look at me, but he did not take my hands away.

  ‘I healed the Steward’s leg and then he hounded me until I ran away. Look at me.’

  At last, stiffly, he turned and looked. There was fury and confusion in his gaze; I held it. We did not speak. I felt it, felt how his soul searched mine. Slowly, slowly the anger in his eyes gave way to horror.

  He took my hands in his. ‘Dear God, what have I done?’ he said, so quietly I could barely hear. Then he pulled away and walked off, gripping his head. ‘It drove me mad, the thought of another man’s lips, of you permitting … I think my brain was addled from the fever. Now I can hear you, touch you … it was not true, was it? It seemed so certain. Oh God! I have ruined us both.’ He sank to his knees and ripped at the turf and groaned.

  I came and knelt before him and he lifted his face to mine. ‘Oh Martha, my coney, my heart’s truth, what shall I do? I cannot lose you twice.’

  I placed his head on my shoulder and wrapped my arms about him, tight. I had no good answer, but for now the dark held tomorrow at bay. For a long while we clung like that together and the fire folded back to embers and all round us the still night opened to the stars. Then I stood and took the blanket roll from Juno’s back and laid it down. He blew on the embers and fed them twigs until the fire revived. We lay down gently side by side. He took my hand and kissed it, gently.

  ‘They made me swear,’ he said. ‘When I came to myself, at the inn, Coningsby’s man was there. I had committed a terrible crime, he said, Lord Croft was inclined to have me hanged or kill me out of hand, but my lord, out of the regard that he had held me in and his great clemency, had wrought on him so that, if I agreed to be dead to my wife and village, to bide here in the north under a new name, I could be allowed to live. Better, my lord would pay the good family of the inn to have me tended till I recovered from my wounds, if that was God’s wish. You would be afforded a living, allowed to keep the cottage. If I did not swear then I must suffer all the penalties of ingratitude. No protection from my lord and no provision for my wife at home. I must be thought dead to all. I must swear it.’

  He raised himself on an elbow to look at me. ‘Understand, Martha. I was at the brink of death. My shirt was black with blood, I could feel my life was ebbing from me – as the man talked the inn-room shrank to the pale moon of his face, growing and receding. Only his voice was clear. I was already dead and this my last act – that you would be provided for. I swore.’

  I could not bear his face so close, his eyes searching mine, his lips so near. If I touch your lips, I thought, if they brush against my cheek, I will be lost. ‘Lie back,’ I said. ‘Please. You did right, Jacob. You had no choice.’

  He lay back. ‘Jack Cockshoot brought me here; it was his younger daughter Lizzie in the alley that night. Alice sat by my bed hour on hour, defied the priest and her father when they said that she should give up hope.’

  I swallowed. The stars were bright and hard above me. ‘Then I must bless her for that.’

  We were both silent. Both uncomfortable with what must come next. It was a while before he began again. ‘It was Ascension. I was hale enough to walk the bounds a little. Oath or no I was preparing in my head to leave, to come to you, even at the cost of my neck and your safety. It would be a sore blow to old Jack, I knew, and a sorer one for Alice. Their hopes in me gave me more urgent cause to go – but I owed them both my life. I could not just up and leave without a farewell, like a thief.’

  Oh, I tho
ught, if you had only gone. It’s your gentle heart that undid you, Jacob, you saw the pain that you would cause and put it off; if you had thought more how every day I grieved and hoped; if you had known how Boult worried at me.

  ‘Every day,’ he said, as if in answer to my thoughts, ‘every hour of every day I thought of you, stricken, alone, unprotected. More than once I had borrowed Jack’s nag and tried to see how far I could get - only for my wound to stop me. There was to be a church ale. The whole town was making ready. I would go the day after, I decided, whether I was fit enough or no. Then Rhys came bearing money, and the letter. I was so glad to see a face I knew, hear a Marches voice. I pumped him for news of home, if he’d heard aught of you. He was no rumourmonger, Martha; he did not want to speak. It was like breaking walnuts with your teeth to make him open. And then the letter, confirming all. The words burned me, Martha. Boult wrote he had been working for my return, but that a new misfortune had befallen me. The words seemed writ in sorrow – there was money wrapped in the paper.’

  They told me you were dead, I thought, and I had far less cause to doubt, and I would not believe it. I said nothing, for what good was it to fight, now, with the sun wheeling towards dawn?

  ‘What an ass I was, led by the nose! A credulous fool. But remember – Rhys thought he was honest. I saw no cause for the Steward to lie and I was barely mended from a fever that had shivered my body and my mind into pieces. The letter sent me mad. I raged – a day, a night – I did not know I had such anger in me. Against my horns, the pig’s breath whoreson who rode you, against you. Jack said they were afraid they’d need the ropes. “She thinks you dead,” they told me, “it’s no wonder that she took another.” Then Alice quieted me, with honeyed mead and coyings and…’

  He paused and I waited, hoping for a better reason. At last he sighed. ‘I don’t know, Martha, I don’t know why I lay with her. All through the pain and fever I dreamt that you were there, mopping my brow, singing to me, but when I came to it was Alice. When she came to me, after the ale, I made believe her to be you.’

  He was silent again. I remembered how for a second, just a second, in Bewdley, I had been tempted by the thought of comfort.

  ‘And yet,’ he began once more, ‘that’s not it either, or not all. I think it was despair. To find that you had cast me off like a used shift. I hated you. My life was drained of hope or light. She and the ale offered comfort of a kind and damnation too. I wanted that.’

  He turned on his side again to look at me, to see how far I understood, if I could forgive him. ‘It was only that once, Martha. That one night, until July, when she told me she was carrying my child.’

  The embers cast a pale glow across his face, the strong line of his cheekbones, his full lips. ‘Oh Jacob,’ I said, and he was kissing my mouth, a long slow kiss that went beyond words. Tears ran into my hair.

  ‘No,’ he said, at last, ‘I cannot bear it’ and his kiss became more urgent; he leaned into me, drawing me to him. I pulled away.

  ‘You have to bear it, Jacob. We both do. It can’t be undone. She is going to have your child. I will survive. I am much wiser to the world now. One day, God willing, we will find each other again.’

  He threw himself back with something like a roar. ‘Damn Edward Croft and the Steward too. I will find them out and kill them. I will take Boult’s jowled neck and twist it till I hear it snap. With these hands I’ll do it.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t damn yourself for him.’

  I offered him a kiss for a book of tales, I wanted to say, I thought it would be nothing, but he put his fat wet tongue in my mouth and his fat hands squeezed my breasts. I opened my mouth to speak, but though the dark was gentle I felt how the words would eat at him. Like a worm in the guts. For now he would seek to destroy it by turning to me again and fiercely claiming back what had been taken and perhaps this time I would not stop him, but instead I’d pull him into me, the sharp pain blossoming into pleasure. And perhaps then we would not part in the morning, but go down, hand in hand, to a life somewhere. But afterwards, he’d feel the worm again. It would take months, years perhaps to die and it would whisper to him that I set Boult on.

  Better, far better that we parted loving, forgiving one another. If I wrought on him to stay with me this would be lost. More and more his thoughts would turn to the child growing up without him and perhaps too to the simple-hearted girl who’d trusted him. And I, I would know that I had torn him from a child that he yearned for with every breath, and from a good living, all for a woman at ease astride a horse in hose and doublet, who ravelled pagan tales in her dreams.

  I took his hand and pressed it and he put his head on my breast and I stroked his curling hair and neither of us slept. I think that night that we were closer than we had ever been before, threaded together like woven cloth.

  Slowly the east began to pale and the stars dimmed. The sun flecked the sky pink and lavender blue. I cursed it. What would I do, where would I go, now? I would carry this loss in my heart forever; I could not endure it. And yet I knew too that I would. I would find a way to live; I held my fortune in my fingers and my wits.

  We ate the bread and meat he’d brought by the ruins of the fire, without speaking, but when I began to rise he seized my hands and put his arms about me. I could not bear to think this was the last time. I buried my face in his chest.

  ‘I will leave her. She has kin, she’s young. Don’t hide your face, Martha. Kiss me again. I will not, I cannot let you go.’ He said the words, but there was resignation in his voice.

  ‘You must,’ I said. ‘Do you love her, Jacob?’

  ‘No!’ he said, then, ‘No. Or not as I love you. She’s good and kind and she loves me and…’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘And she carries your child,’ I said. I would not look at him. There was a grey rock in the stream, grown over with liverworts, grey and grey-green and yellow, like interlocking hands or a flat pattern of land and water. I willed myself stone. If you ask again, I thought, I shall not be able to refuse.

  He did not ask. Instead he took a ring, the ring I had given him so long ago at our handfasting and handed it to me. I looked down at it and shook my head but then I took it. How like a knife love was, how like a blade in the heart!

  ‘What will become of you?’ he said.

  ‘I will go south.’ I was glad he could not see how my eyes brimmed.

  38

  I watched my husband slowly ride away. When he reached the valley road he stopped and looked up. Come back, I thought. Oh, turn back to me, don’t leave me here. I even flung my arms out towards him, but I doubt that he could see me in the heather, and the next moment I dropped them to my sides and simply stood and watched. He had no choice but to go; I had no choice but to let him. We craned to look, with the steep mountainside between us; at last he turned his horse’s head and rode away. I watched him dwindle between the hedgerows – till he was small as a blown leaf, till he was gone.

  I sank down to the heather next to Juno then and sobbed till I was wracked and dry. I have lost him, I thought, I will have to find a way through this world without him. All this way north I had the hope of him; in his strong arms, I thought, all I’ve lost will be restored; in them I’ll find a home again, I’ll know myself again, and God willing one day perhaps we’d have a child. No more. ‘I am my own guide now,’ I said aloud to Juno. I would help Talbot if I could, and then I would set out alone. How big the world was! Near and far the slopes were brushed with purple, but just next to me a clump bloomed white. My grandam brought me white heather once from the market, I remembered, for the luck it gave. Keen and fresh it smelt, just as this, when I pinched a woody stem. Where were you yesterday? I thought bitterly, I had no luck then. I picked some now, nonetheless. God knew, I still had need of it; I had nothing else. I was like the children in my grandmother’s stories who set out on the road. Youngest sons, but girls too, odd times, and what was I but a mixture of the two? If they were clever and good they got three
gifts to help them. I twirled the heather in my fingers. Maybe I was like them in that too, a little. I had my simples and the book; the skills I had in both could bring a living. Who knew but a third gift might come?

  Sometime before noon a boy ambled past with a dog and a flock. He was playing on a pipe. When he saw me he started back – I must have looked a ragged sight – but I hailed him and he came and sat beside me. He had no shoes. I gave him a penny to play some more.

  ‘What’s that one called?’ I said when he finished an air.

  ‘En’t got a name. I made it up. You can give it a name if you give me another penny.’

  I smiled at his cheek. ‘Call it “Martha’s Farewell”,’ I said, ‘and play if for me again.’ When he’d finished I clapped his shoulder. ‘It’s a good tune. You must play it at the inns and ales in Kirkby Lonsdale. Will you do that?’

  ‘I will,’ he said grinning, ‘I’ll say a fairy boy came out the hill and gev it me.’

  ‘Good. And be sure to say its name, there’s another penny for your promise,’ I said. ‘You play your pipe well. It’ll make your fortune for you.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, grinning, and whistling the dog to be off, ‘I’ll be a gentleman by and by, see if I en’t.’

  I unlooped Juno and led her to the road to follow him, tucking the heather in my doublet as I went. The hills and valleys rolled down before me, threaded with choices.

  Talbot’s trial was set back and I was half grateful, for it put off the end I knew was soon coming. It was harvest and there was work for any hand that asked it, despite most of the land being given up to pasture; I tarried at a place in Arkholme; the farmer would give me only 2d a day ‘being so slight a lad’, but I got food and a space in a barn to sleep and stabling for Juno. As soon as the sun had dried the yellow corn in the morning, the reapers advanced with a long slow slice of the sickle, curling round the field to its centre, but my hands were nesh and unpractised and an hour after the men had left at the day’s end I was still there, binding the sheaves and stacking them. The stems cut welts and ridges into my palms; my back was a stiff board. I was glad of it; the pain pushed back my desolation. At night I took the jug that was offered and drank it down and drank it down again. Only briefly, in the moments before I pitched into a black sleep, and the moments when the bell woke me, was I forced to look my sorrow in the face; day by day I bound it, tighter than the wheat and rye.