The Good Wife

by Eleanor Porter

  I worked a week binding and a week on the threshing floor and that was good, too, flinging the flail behind my head to pound the grain loose, then working the winnowing fan. When I needed to talk I did, but mostly I was silent. After the first night, when I was told I thrashed and groaned in my sleep, the people let me alone, deciding I was a little touched, and that suited me so well I let myself, more than once, be heard muttering.

  I thought of home, of Hope, where we had arrived at harvest time and been accepted. Had the last day of reaping come already? Were Meg and the other little ones chasing through the stubble for the gleanings? At home, on the last day, a stand of corn was left, tied together from four bunches like the legs of a mare and the best reapers would fling a sickle to cut it. Hours it took, sometimes, and the harvest supper waiting. Sally said she’d grown up with a man, Thomas Bengry, who could stand with his back to the corn and still cut it, clean off, from fifteen paces, but I thought it skilful enough to do it face on, to hurl a blade and catch her crown and slash it free. Back and forth the men called then. ‘I have her.’ ‘What hast thee?’ ‘A mare, a mare, a mare.’ By the time they came to eat they’d all be hoarse with shouting, but the man who’d cut her would sit opposite Boult, or Sir Thomas if he was at home, at the head of the table. They did not cry the mare here. I was relieved; it felt to me I should be cried out too.

  I did not visit Talbot. I knew the date of the trial; until then I lied to myself that he did not need me. It was not true, of course; in my heart I knew that the dank blackness of the prison would be eating at his soul; that he might be ill; that he would surely be hungry; but I clung to the sun and air to preserve me; the almost silent companionship of strangers; the oblivion labour offered. In the sun and in labour I felt closer to Jacob. The chaff was winnowed off for the beasts, but the good grain we poured into sacks so that it was dry and tight.

  I thrust a hand into the warm seed. Talbot would say that it was made of light and so it was, of course; conceived of earth and sun, cut only so it could be born again. Jacob, I thought, there is something to be held to in this, what we shared, the kernel – something to be grasped, to keep from canker.

  ‘I like to do that, too.’ It was the farmer himself, come up behind me. He scooped a handful of grain in his palm. ‘It’s been a good year.’

  I nodded, suddenly grateful for some talk. He was an old man, thickened but strong. I had seen him pick up a bumble bee and watch it crawl across his palm, and gently brush the pollen from its velvet back with his finger. My hand was too much a woman’s beside his.

  ‘I was thinking of the corn,’ I said. ‘How it dies to be reborn, as our Saviour did.’

  He looked at me a touch more closely, and I was afraid I’d been too open. ‘“The ploughman, be he never so unlearned,”’ he said, evidently quoting, ‘“shall better be instructed of Christ’s death and passion by the corn that he sows in the field, and likewise of Christ’s resurrection, than by all the dead posts that hang in the Church” – a bishop said that, and I believe it.’

  I smiled, but I said nothing. I had believed him a papist, like most people here, in their hearts, but often openly, too, even before foreigners.

  ‘You’re a strange one, Jabez,’ he went on, ‘folks say you’re witless, that they’ve seen you jabber to the moon, but I’ve seen the players and I think you act the part. And she’s too fine a mare for a common hand.’

  ‘I was not always poor—’ I began, but he held up his hand to stop me.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not about to pry. You work hard and keep quiet, that’s enough for me. There’ll be work here again next harvest if you want it. Spring too, if the winter keeps the parson busy.’

  I left soon after, in part because I felt I should be discovered if I had not been already, and in part because my unease grew at my neglect of Talbot. It felt good to be astride Juno again, with the green dairy land giving way to sheep and heather as we climbed towards Lancaster, but the hollow in my chest ached like an unset bone and I was glad that it was Juno who had the task of placing one leg and then another forward on the road. My heart had a blade in it. It would be like this for me always now, I thought. I could not imagine ever being happy. The best I could hope was to learn to breathe round the pining misery I felt. If only I could throw the vision of him off; he unsettled me moment by moment – how he looked in waking, the imagined process of his day. The words of the old song haunted me:

  Lully, lullay, lully, lullay,

  The falcon hath borne my love away …

  And she weeps both night and day;

  Lully, lullay, lully, lullay …

  Over and over the lines came and I did not care that they were meant for the love of God not man. The bleak hills wobbled through my tears.

  The tavern outside St Leonard’s Gate had no rooms when I arrived, which suited my pocket, since they were happy to lodge Juno. At length, although the tapster made a show of being loath to lodge a gentleman so meanly, he dealt with me for a space in the loft above the stable. The rats were not so bad, he said, and I could take his cat Barbel, if I was afeared. I did not care so much about the rats, but I took her. She was large and stippled grey with yellow eyes and when I buried my face in her warm fur she hummed. She made me think of another cat, long ago, before Hope, when I was called a witch and thrown in a makeshift cell above the stables, with old Ruth Tranter and the cat they said was her familiar. Poor brave Ruth, whose only crime was pity. She combed my hair and sang to me and it saved my soul. It was as Talbot said, or like my reckoning of it, the world was threaded like a lyre, and in the harmonies our spirits purr one with the other, allaying sorrow.

  39

  Dawn was barely wisping in the east when I donned a bonnet and limped through St Leonard’s towards the market where the pillory had been set up, on a kind of stage. Talbot had been sentenced the day before. He looked thin and grey in the courtroom, but had brightened when I came in. The justice noted it.

  ‘That’s a pretty vessel to leak tears for you, Talbot,’ he said. I bent my head and clasped my hands piously together on my skirts. ‘And to pray for your soul, I warrant.’

  He was lucky, the justice said. Since Babcock had attested that the debt was paid there need be no further imprisonment. There was no mention of scrying, of Hornby Castle, of spirits raised from the dead. One day of punishment for his counterfeiting, and he would be free to go. He should fall on his knees and praise God for the leniency shown him. Talbot hung his head and said nothing. He was led away. They would not let me in, but for a price the gaoler – a new man, far less obliging than his fellow – said that he’d pass on the vial I had brought.

  The day before had been blazing and to walk into the courtroom was to duck into darkness; the heat and ceremony closed about you, with only the dust-specked shafts of sunlight and the mooning flies offering relief. The night, however, had brought rain; the gutters that ran through the middle of the cobbles gurgled and spilled and the streets were puddled. At first all we women held up our skirts and stepped daintily enough, but the barrows and carts and running boys soon mocked our efforts and most of us abandoned our hems to the dirt. I watched the market setting up and waited.

  I felt his arrival as a prickle of excitement in the air. A couple of boys ran past me westwards to where the road led to the castle, hooting; the maids and matrons, lads and men left off their haggling and turned to look, a gleam in their eyes despite the lowering sky. There was Talbot, shackled, with a board about his neck declaring him a forger. He mounted the pillory with a set face, glancing round a little, and I drew close enough to see his owl eyes were glassy. So either the gaoler was honest, or Talbot had saved what I brought when I saw him first.

  The crowd drew a little closer, grinning, jostling one another.

  ‘Where’s all your art, now, dog-leech?’ a man cried as the board descended on his neck and wrists.

  ‘Jarkman!’

  ‘Dungshark!’

  ‘Look how his tongue
droops like a spent prick!’

  A man pointed, ‘It’s the conjurer!’

  ‘Aye!’ another answered. ‘Him with the devil’s looking glass – where are your spirits now, where are your demons?’

  ‘Heretic!’ a pretty woman screamed at my elbow. ‘What’s he doing in the stretchneck, it’s the gibbet should have him.’

  All about her people who had been intent on chipping pennies off a weaned pig, or testing the weave of a basket, or deciding between pies, found that they were angry beyond measure, in proportion to their righteousness. Then the sheriff’s man raised an arm and they fell silent like the dogs they were, open-jawed, for the treat. He took a nail from his pouch and nailed Talbot’s ear to the board; the second took longer for he dropped the nail and, swearing, had to scrabble for it at Talbot’s feet, but then that too was hammered in. Blood trickled from the iron and at that moment the sun shone out of the clouds lighting it scarlet. A cheer went up from the crowd, the officer stepped back and a pile of muck landed on Talbot’s head. It was like a signal to the crowd; the air was thick with the festering waste of the market.

  I nudged the young man at my elbow. ‘What did he do?’ I asked, ‘I cannot read the writing.’

  ‘Why,’ he said to me, ‘and nor can I, but that’s no matter. I’m told he draws circles for the fairies and guides them to the cribs of bairns to take them in the night. There’s a woman out at Caton who was left a changeling in her child’s stead. Screeched night and day it did, unnatural. Her neighbours were praying for the crows to come.’

  ‘Aye and there’s worse,’ a woman near him said, ‘they say he has a book of magic that the devil himself gave to him, but his boy ran off and there’s nobody been able to find him – or the rope would have had them and good riddance.’

  I made the sign of the cross to quiet them and then I saw that he had seen me and I brought my hand before my lips and looked back, so that only he could see I blew a kiss; his eyes half smiled. My intention had been to drug him. I had made a paste so that he would scarcely feel the hours or the refuse and worse, that the rabble would throw, but I saw now that was no good. When his head drooped the pain of the nails jerked it back upright; to sleep would be to rip his ears across. It struck me I had done him a disservice with the dwale.

  A man stepped up to Talbot with a cup, turning to grin at the crowd as he did so.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you must be thirsty, brother.’ He tipped the cup at Talbot’s mouth and hooted. ‘Drink piss, earwig.’

  Talbot cried out as he snatched his head away and a fresh welt of blood dripped from the board, but his eyes grew more focussed. I bustled forward with my bottle.

  ‘Here’s more for you,’ I shouted, climbing the platform. I tipped the ale to his lips. ‘What can I do?’ I whispered.

  His right eye was too bruised to open, but his left swivelled up to mine. ‘Marry me,’ he said, ‘pillow my head on your soft breasts, salve my hurts with your sweet cunt. The gallows are more kind than this.’

  The day grew hot, but heavy, so that the warmth felt like a threat. Over the fells dark clouds would be piling. Perhaps Jacob would be securing shutters at the tavern, talking softly to the horses. The crowd was looser now, people came and went between shopping and jeering. The flurry of dirt, eggs, fish heads, cock’s combs, offal, slacked and started more wearily, like the waves of an ebbing tide. I did what I could; I weaved in front of boys with onions, carrots, bones, stones; I lay my arm round the neck of a man who caressed a flint in his fingers, leering up at his black teeth, his plague-sore mouth, until he dropped the stone.

  A rumbling began from the east and a thunder wind scurried at skirts and caps, rattled the shutters of the houses. The traders made haste to close and bundle up. People began to think of shelter. Talbot was not due to come down for another hour or more, but the officer was glancing at the sky. A large drop plashed and burst on the platform; there was a moment while the clouds breathed in and held their breath; large drops fell singly here and there, cooling upturned faces, spattering the dust; then, like a curtain, the downpour.

  ‘Here, you!’ the sheriff’s man was calling me. ‘What are you, his cockatrice? Take him.’

  He drew out a blade and deftly, as though cutting stems of corn, sliced through the tops of Talbot’s ears and threw them to the ground for the dogs to find. Then he lifted the board and pushed his body so that he crumpled like a child on the platform, his ears bleeding into the pooling rain. I bound his head tightly with a scarf and with his arm round my shoulder somehow hoisted him upright.

  It was not far to the alley off Fish Market, but I barely made it; his legs buckled every second step. At first Betsy would not let me in.

  ‘What kind of business is this?’ she said, pointing at Talbot. ‘Did your lover let you down? I warned you. Very well, but a few minutes only. I’ll not be a harbourer of rogues and felons.’

  I bought good wine to mollify her and revive Talbot and then I left through the rain to rid myself of my clogging skirts and to harness Juno so that I could fetch him back to the tavern.

  40

  Juno was badly named – she was nothing like the jealous queen of heaven; she was the sweetest-tempered mare that ever lived. Talbot was mad with pain and wine and fury as she bore him back; he beat her about the neck as he cursed and spat until I could stand it no longer and pitched him into an open trough, threatening to leave him there unless he could be gentle with her. Even after this she stood by while I hauled him again into the saddle.

  The rain fell without stint. It plastered our hair to our heads and our clothes to our backs. It spewed out from the gutters and the drains, till all was slick with mud and the only colours in the world were grey and brown. The tavern was emptier now; the night before I had taken a room for us both that was reached round the back, with only the ancient one-eyed servant to see how we came and went. It was nothing to him if a woman was in my room, just so long as he was tipped. Nothing to him either if I had to haul my companion, cursing to his bed.

  ‘Liquor had his legs has it?’ he said. ‘It’s a terrible thing, a liking for swill. Want me to look out a skeel in case he throws it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and a kettle of hot water, Tom, if you would. My friend’s fallen and I have to clean the hurts.’

  I could scarcely manage him; he threw himself, filthy as he was, on the bed and I thanked myself for stripping the linen and laying sacking down. When I tried to come near to undo his filthy doublet he flung his arm at me and called me an iron-papped scrat, unnatural, a man-woman.

  ‘I will not let you die, Edward Talbot.’

  ‘I want to, damn you. I am ruined, maimed. Every bald-rib starveling, every hollow-cheeked scrag and stick-legged ragged brat in every street will point at me and mock. I will be stoned out of the meanest middenstead as a branded man, a rogue, a cozener. I, Edward Kelley, who could have held in his hand the flower of the sun.’

  ‘So you are plain Edward Kelley now?’

  ‘What is it to you what I am? I need more wine. Never be a woman, Jabez, it doesn’t suit you. You have the heart of a toad. A woman’s gentle soul could not bear the weight of such a conscience as yours. To cast me off for a muck-shoveller! I offered you my learning, my bared soul.’

  ‘It was your body, chiefly, I refused. Not your mind, although lately that’s grown rank enough.’

  There was nothing to be gained from this. I left him on the bed to go in search of wine and the promised kettle of water. When I returned he was snoring, but already beginning to shiver in his wet clothes. Without care the wounds would soon fester. I mixed the wine with enough hemlock to quiet him a little and spooned it into his mouth and then I stripped him of his wet clothes and piled blankets on him. Afraid they would not warm him quick enough, I picked up my faithful Barbel and settled her at his side.

  His wrists and neck were swollen from the boards and there were open sores where he had been shackled. I worked from the feet, wrapping the bruises with com
frey and applying yarrow and garlic and woundwort to the sores. A week since I had gone to the moors to collect the bog moss that grew there and now I had it dry and clean. The Queen herself would not get a better dressing, unless there were London cures that I knew nothing of. He twitched a little but slept on as I worked and the cat purred with the rise and fall of his raw-boned chest. As soon as I was done, I thought, I would have pottage sent up; he was all shrunken and gaunt. Then I turned to his head, and all the thrown mullock of the market that had crusted and cut it. A gash above his right eye I stitched with waxed thread. I thought he would wake at that, but he merely threw an arm feebly to the sky and mumbled a curse. At last I unwrapped the cloth to attend to his mutilated ears. It is good you had a goblin face, I said to him as he slept. There is less to lament.

  I sent the clothes to be laundered and ordered the food. Then I sat by the bed, waiting to see if he fell into a fever while the pottage grew cold and night slowly gripped the street close and then slowly released it, scooping day from the east. At some point I must have dozed for I woke to find him watching me out of his one good eye.

  ‘What rat hole is this Jabez?’ he said when he saw I was awake.