The Cursed Wife

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘A banqueting house is no place for children,’ Lady Ursula said sharply when Cat begged to go, but as always Sir Hugh took Cat’s side, promising her a dance after the banquet and letting her wheedle a new gown out of him too. Lady Ursula was very tight-lipped about that.

  Cat wanted me to go too, but there Lady Ursula drew the line. ‘Mary can help the servants,’ she said curtly. ‘It is time she learnt her place.’ I was ten.

  After that, we slept together still, but Cat lay in a curtained bed, while I was on a truckle bed at her feet. I combed her hair, but she did not comb mine. I stood with a mouthful of pins while I fixed her collar and sleeves into place, but I had to lace up my own kirtle. I brushed her gowns and made sure she had a fresh linen shift to wear every day. I brought her perfumed water to rinse her face and hands in the morning, and I helped rub her body to cleanse it. I kept her company and read to her and fetched her cakes and wine. So it was not so different to what I had done before.

  But it was not the same.

  I did not have to wash the laundry, which was bitter work that left your hands cracked and raw, or turn the spit or scrub the pots. Much of what I did should have fallen to Cat. Lady Ursula tried once or twice to suggest that she should learn how to run a household, but Cat was not interested in tedious tasks like cooking or casting accounts. She saw no need to learn how to brew or run a dairy or administer medicines. When would she have to make cheese or polish silver? Sir Hugh had told her he would make a good marriage for her, and she was as certain that it would happen as she was that the sun would rise every morning. She would preside over a great house and there would be others to worry about what everyone would eat and drink and how often the rushes were changed. As she grew older and ever more beautiful, and all the young gentlemen in the area paid determined suit, she did not hesitate to refuse each and every one of them.

  ‘Country squires,’ she would tell me, dismissing their pretensions with an elegant flick of her fingers as I dressed her hair.

  She could have been mistress of a solid manor nearby, with an indulgent husband. If it had been me, I would have taken the first who asked, to have known that I would be safe and my future assured, but when I said as much, Cat only laughed at me.

  ‘Oh, Mary, you are such a timid creature! You might be content to spend your life churning butter and inspecting crops, but I wish for more,’ she told me. ‘Pappa does not want me to hasten into marriage. He is content for me to make my own choice – and so I will.’

  She studied her reflection in the looking glass as I set a combing cloth around her shoulders, lifting her chin and turning this way and that to better admire her pure profile. Cat’s dreams glittered with richness and excitement. She imagined herself at court, sinking into a curtsey before the Queen, married to a great nobleman, with a coach of her own and a long gallery for when it rained, but for many years the most excitement Steeple Tew had to offer was the occasional visitor or travelling pedlar.

  If Cat coaxed and wheedled hard enough, her father would take us to Banbury for the Michaelmas Fair where there were stalls selling trinkets and ribbons and hot pies to be had, and the countryfolk jostled elbows with townspeople as they celebrated their hiring. I remember squeezing through the press of people, clutching onto Cat’s gown, while the babble of voices beat at me, and the smell of wool and straw and dung and cooking apples, of hope and pleasure and disappointment and sweat, tangled together in the crisp autumn air.

  I would have gladly stayed at home. I did not like riding pillion along the country lanes with the curse ringing in my ears, but Cat always insisted that I go too. ‘I would not enjoy myself without you,’ she said. ‘It would be as if just half of me were there.’ I knew what she meant. We loved each other, then, though we fought each other too, as sisters do. But we were not sisters, of course. The tenuous link of blood between us stretched thinner and thinner as the years passed, and my future dwindled to service while hers was bright with possibility.

  My own dreams were more practical. I wanted only security. I was always dutiful, always good, always careful. I did nothing to risk my place at Steeple Tew. I knew that I had to apply myself and work hard. So I did everything I was asked, and I found pleasure in learning household skills. I liked the kitchen with its warmth and busyness. I watched the cook and learnt how to make a custard, to stew an ox tongue and roast a deer. I plucked ducks and chickens and pigeons until my fingertips split and stung. I chopped onions and gathered herbs for salads. My favourite task was to go to the spice cabinet in the still room and bring back pepper or cloves or a finger of dried ginger for the cook.

  Sometimes the housekeeper, Bridget, would set me to reading recipes, knowing that I had learnt my letters and was quick, and I would help her mix up salves or measure out the spices to distil the special water she swore was a sovereign cure for every ailment. Even today, the smell of fennel and caraway seeds, of ginger and galingale, of pennyroyal and wild thyme, takes me back to the familiar fug of the still room at Steeple Tew, and to Bridget, angular and brusquely kind.

  So I was not discontented with my lot – until Avery came back to Steeple Tew.

  I was almost seventeen when he returned. For three years he had been in service with Lord Fairhurst, who had a large estate near Stow-on-the-Wold. We heard a good deal about how fine Lord Fairhurst’s house was and how fashionable their manners. The way Avery told it, our Lady Queen herself would be overawed by the state they kept. Certainly Avery felt himself too grand for Steeple Tew now. He spent a lot of time telling us how slow and old-fashioned we were, while Lady Ursula nodded along. Had she not been saying the same thing for years?

  The years away had not improved Avery. He was bigger, broader, meaner. There was a new sneer to his mouth, a calculating gleam in his eyes, and when I first saw him after his return, sprawled insolently on his mother’s cushions, my stomach tightened with foreboding. I kept my gaze downcast and tried to make myself unobtrusive, but it seemed that Avery had not forgiven me for having a sharper wit in the schoolroom, no matter that six years had passed and Master Gregory had long since gone. He sought me out, standing four-square in the passage so that I had to squeeze past him, or deliberately spilling ale onto his hose so that I had to fetch a cloth and dab at him close to his privy parts. Once he shoved me into a doorway and grabbed my hand to press it against his trunk hose where his yard reared hard and horrifying. Nauseated, I tried to pull away but his fingers clamped around my wrist, holding my hand in place as he rubbed it up and down over the wool, his eyes glazed. I had to kick him hard on the shin before his grip slackened enough for me to snatch my hand out of his grasp and back away.

  ‘Do you touch me again like that and I will go to Lady Ursula,’ I said, low and angry, rubbing my sore wrist.

  ‘Pah, what does my mother care for you?’ sneered Avery. ‘I will tell her you tried to seduce me, and she will turn you off for your insolence.’

  She would, too. Lady Ursula hung over her son just as dotingly as Sir Hugh favoured Cat. I could have told Cat, I suppose, but what could she have done? Sir Hugh might indulge her, but I was but a poor connection, a servant, easily disposed of, easily replaced. What would become of me if I had to leave Steeple Tew? I would end up huddled under the hedgerows like a beast, scratching in the earth for a root, begging for a crust of bread.

  Panic darted around my belly, but I managed to lift my chin. ‘Leave me alone, Avery,’ I said.

  But he would not. It seemed that I was an itch that he could not stop scratching. I tried to make myself invisible, but what could I do? I had to go where I was sent, do as I was told, accept what I was given. And be grateful for it. Bridget did what she could to help. She sent other servants when Avery shouted for wine, and she kept me out of the way as much as possible, but I was still Cat’s maid. Avery would throw himself down onto a seat if I was keeping Cat company in the parlour, and he would stare at me while we sang or read as if reliving that sordid scuffle in the passageway. I kept my expression
wooden, but I could feel his eyes scouring me, stripping the clothes off me one by one. When I heard that marriage negotiations for him were taking place, I was limp with relief.

  ‘They are talking of marrying him to Jocosa Lismore,’ Cat told me. ‘She is very folderol they say, and no beauty, but all previous arrangements have fallen through and if they do not marry her off soon it will be too late. She thinks herself too good for Steeple Tew, but Avery may be the best she can do.’

  Poor Jocosa, I remember thinking. Imagine being married off to Avery. ‘Mamma says that it would be a good marriage,’ Cat chattered on. ‘I dare say she will have her way. I hope Avery does marry her. It would be a grand wedding and the Lismores have connections. Perhaps I will meet someone with more to offer than a little manor. It would be a fine thing, don’t you think?’

  I did. I wished fervently for the negotiations to succeed, hoping that Avery would turn his attention to his betrothed instead, and when a date was announced for the wedding, I let myself feel safe.

  May you never be safe, never. I forgot what the vagrant woman had said.

  I forgot that I was cursed.

  Chapter Nine

  Mary

  Steeple Tew, January 1574

  It was a bitter morning early in January when I carried Cat’s chamber pot outside to empty it in the jakes before she awoke and complained of the smell. A few stars still sprinkled the sky to the west, but to the east beyond the water meadows, the horizon was flushed pink. The air was iron-hard and unrelenting, every blade of grass, every twig, every reed in the stable thatch aglitter with frost. My clogs skidded on the icy cobbles in the yard and I had to pick my way carefully past the stables to the privy. I wished I had thought to put on some mittens. Pressing my lips hard together, I tried to breathe through my nose. If I forgot and sucked in a breath, the cold jabbed at my teeth and made me wince.

  There was blood in the pot that morning. That meant that Cat’s flowers had come down, and I would need to go in and prepare her rags. I knew her body as well as my own by then, and I could read the stretched look around her eyes when her head ached, could track her monthly cycle by changes in the scent of her skin. That was the one time her sparkle dimmed and she lay still and sluggish. For three days a month she would lose her beauty. Her skin dulled and greyed, and her hair grew lank, and she lay on her bed tormented by vicious cramps, clutching the warm plaster I made for her belly. When she was like that, the whole manor seemed to fall silent. But then she would be bright and gay again, and her sweet voice would fill the house as she sang, and her laughter as she rode out on the spirited grey mare that Sir Hugh gave her made us look at each other and smile indulgently. When Cat suffered, the whole world suffered with her, and when she was joyful, we were all cheered in spite of ourselves. It was a gift that she had.

  On the way back from the privy I paused, empty pot in hand, to listen to the silence. In the distance, I could hear the faint sound of Hob, the kitchen boy, being berated for not stoking up the fire quickly enough, while the cook bad-temperedly banged pots around. But out beyond the stables, all was still. There were no birds hopping and twittering, no bleating sheep or cattle grumbling to each other in the barn. Every living thing seemed to be holding its breath against the cold.

  I was thinking about making a purge that Bridget taught me. I had already infused the powdered rhubarb overnight, knowing from the signs that it would be needed that morning. I had noticed that my own terms happened at almost the same time as Catherine’s, and the purge helped me, although I was not allowed to curl up in the bed and hold my stomach. I had to continue with my own tasks, however leaden the pull in my belly, although in truth I did not suffer as badly as Cat did.

  I rarely had a moment to myself, and I stopped to savour it, that was all. Just for a minute. I was alone, but the manor was just there. I didn’t feel unsafe.

  More fool me.

  I had spent so long being afraid of the vagrants outside that I forgot that danger sometimes comes from the inside.

  I remembered little of my arrival at Steeple Tew by then, just a muddled impression of the carter and the mob pressing around me, of the feral creature who had appeared in front of me and then was gone. But if anyone ever shoved at me, or pushed past me, however accidentally, it sliced through me afresh, a butcher’s knife flashing high, spilling out memory, gleaming and steaming like a pile of entrails: my hand thrust forward, the tingle of my palm where it had touched the stinking rags, that scream. My gut would twist sickeningly then, and I would choke as an invisible noose tightened around my neck and I would push the thought of it away like a physical thing, sparring the door to my mind so that I could breathe again.

  The sound of hooves and the jingle of harness brought me back to myself with a start. I turned to hurry back into the warmth, but it was already too late. Avery was upon me, bearing down on a great horse, laughing as I was forced to flatten myself against the wall while he clattered past me into the yard and shouted for a stable boy.

  He must have been carousing all night. He was still drunk and dishevelled, and even from a distance he stank of stale wine. Vexed at having put myself in his way, I tried to slip past unnoticed, but he had pulled up his horse between me and the door into the back of the house.

  ‘Well, look who it is,’ Avery slurred as he slid clumsily from the saddle. ‘Mistress Know-it-all carrying my sister’s slops!’

  I said nothing, merely ducking my head and making to go round him, but he barred my way, swaying slightly, and ignoring the boy who ran out to take his horse and led it quickly away.

  ‘What, no set down? No clever reply?’ he demanded. ‘That’s not like you, Mary.’

  I set my teeth. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What, do you still look down your nose at me?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No, sir. No, sir,’ he mimicked me. ‘Is that all you can say now? You were quick enough to show me up in the schoolroom. There was no No, sir then, was there? It was all look at me, look how clever am I, oh, Avery, how can you be so slow?’

  I thought about saying ‘No, sir’ again, but that would have only enraged him further. I stayed silent instead and wished that the stable boy would come back. But why would he? He had the horse and was probably glad there was someone else to take the brunt of Avery’s ill humour while he hunkered down in the warm hay.

  ‘What good does all your lettering do you now, eh?’ sneered Avery. ‘You look at me as if you are a queen and I a peasant, but that lewd mouth of yours gives you away. You’re nought but a harlot.’

  I could not help myself. My eyes flashed up in protest, but it was a mistake to show a reaction. Slow and drunk as he was, Avery did not miss my fury. ‘Oho, not so demure now, are you?’ he leered, staggering towards me, and hurt my pride as it did, I took a step back and then another until I came up against the wood store. ‘Swiving and slopping out pots is all you’re good for now, Mistress Mary.’ He laughed wildly. ‘No answer for that, eh? I wouldn’t mind swiving you myself. That would teach you a thing or two!’

  ‘No,’ I said before I could help myself. Another mistake. His small eyes lit with excitement.

  ‘No, sir,’ he prompted me, leering closer, and his breath enveloped me in a stinking cloud that hung white in the frozen air.

  I turned my head away. ‘No, sir,’ I said woodenly. The smell of his breath mingled with the smell of the logs stacked in the store behind my back and I felt my gorge rise.

  ‘You’re a servant now, Mary. You don’t get to say no.’ Gleefully he brought up a hand to squeeze my breast, and I didn’t stop to think.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ I said and I pushed (pushed) at him hard with my hand. In his unsteady state he teetered back, his boots skidding on the cobbles and sending him crashing to the ground.

  There was a catastrophic silence and then he roared with humiliation and lumbered to his feet. ‘You will pay for that, Mary,’ he said.

  I could not move at first, but I felt the air shift an
d splinter with menace, and something fixed in his face made me cast the pot aside and turn to run while the crack of shattered pottery still bounced around the yard and my clogs slipped over the cobbles and panic pounded in my ears.

  I must have known there was no hope of escape, but I ran anyway. Avery caught me up with ease. His hand clamped on my shoulder and he span me round.

  ‘By God, you have asked for it now!’ he said, grabbing my waist.

  ‘Leave me be!’ I cried out as I struggled against his painful grip, but he only backed me against the stable until I could feel the timber frame digging into my spine.

  ‘Still giving orders, Mary? Perhaps it is time you used that mouth of yours to do something instead of answering back.’ Then his lips were on my face, devouring my mouth in great, slobbery kisses that had me twisting and writhing in panicked revulsion.

  ‘Help!’ I called when I could, spitting the feel and the taste of him from my mouth. ‘Save me!’

  Avery only laughed excitedly. ‘No one is going to help you, Mary. No one cares about you. You think you’re so grand because you can read and write, but all you’re good for is spreading your legs like any other whore.’