Suzannah’s white face stared down at me with raw, unseasoned hatred. "Just like she who planted them," she spat, "they never bore worthy fruit. Neither will they die."
"She?"
Her lips twisted, tormented by the word. "Grace."
Mistress Cobb had hinted that my mother haunted the residents of Souls Dryft, and now I knew she was right. Something spurred Suzannah’s hatred of me, for surely it was white hot, while I had never done a thing to cause it.
On my return to the Keep I encountered Millicent Bagobones in the courtyard. Since the stabbing, she would not speak to me, but today, she could no longer hold her vitriol. I was accused of casting some spell over the Captain that made him stop writing to her. As I wordlessly walked away, she shouted, "And what have you done with his letters?"
I was startled. "What have I done with them?"
"Give them back to me."
"I have not got your wretched letters," I exclaimed. "I thought you had them somewhere safe."
She hissed in my face. "Apparently not safe enough from your thieving, bastard fingers!"
"I did not take them. I swear, I did not."
But my protestations of innocence were frequently heard and just as frequently disbelieved in that house. Worried those mischievous "love" letters that Hugh and I had written in jest would fall into the wrong hands, I searched everywhere, but they were not to be found.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chirpy as a little bird, Tilda set to work, momentarily forgetting all my wickedness, as if she thought there might yet be hope for me. I had finally agreed to let her put my hair up and suddenly she could overlook my past sins. The heavy lengths of troublesome hair were dampened, twisted and coiled up onto my head, then held in place by a rather flimsy net of black ribbon, which I sincerely doubted would outlast the day. She wanted to embellish the final effect with little seed pearl hairpins, but I drew the line there, knowing I would be blamed if someone’s eye got poked out. Before she let me out of the chair, she dabbed a perfume water of her own making behind my ears, ignoring my squirming protests. If she were not such a pious girl, I would think her up to mischief – a Mission of her own.
During our journey down the lane that day, Broad Bess made several sinister comments about that perfume and trouble-a-foot, as if the two things were somehow connected. I assured her quite firmly that this was not the case and then advised her to move her little stool under the shade of the elder, in case I was longer than usual.
There was no one in the house when I entered. The warmth of the sun-bleached flagstones could be felt, even through my shoes. White light filled the room, almost blinding me, but something guided me into its heart, to the lattice windows. A cloud shifted over the sun and there, on the grimy window, a fingertip had left three words.
emoc sah ecarG
Pressing my hand to the warm glass, I felt that light filling me with strength. More clouds chased across the sun, but the house absorbed the heat and kept it. The beams of the house exhaled and then were still.
She’d been dead as long as I was living, yet now I saw my mother’s name spelled out in the dirty windows of Souls Dryft. A caution for me, or for the residents of the house? If she did haunt this place, why did she not show herself to me, her daughter? I traced the letters on the glass with my fingers and wondered what she would think of me? I knew little about her, other than snide gossip. I had a picture of her in my head, although it was formed entirely by my imagination. How she spoke and moved and thought – how she laughed and what she dreamed – these are all things I longed to know, but never would.
I stood a while, until I heard the invalid banging impatiently on the floor above, just as his father once did. Naturally, I took my time answering his ill-mannered summons.
He was on his bed as usual, but today he was dressed.
"You are improved," I said, surprised. "You should have sent word and I would not have come."
He considered my new hairstyle, while I hovered in the doorway. "’Tis better loose," he muttered, as if I sought his opinion. Which I did not.
"Come," he said suddenly, patting the bed beside him.
"It is not proper to sit with you on your bed."
He was amused. "You sat upon it before this."
"But you were in it," I replied. "You were safely under the sheepskin."
"Safe for whom?" With one hand he rubbed his thigh gently, reminding me.
The air was warm and sweet, sprinkled with sunbeams that danced to the melody of giddy birdsong. His was the only window I’d ever seen opened in that house. As if summer itself tried to squeeze inside through that one obliging window, the air in his chamber was almost intoxicating. From the bowers at the side of the house, the scent of honeysuckle drifted up, trailing a delicate ribbon around the full bouquet. Even a beetle on his window ledge, crawled with a lazy, drunken gait, forgetting its purpose.
He beckoned again, this time luring me with the offer of a reward. "You deserve something, I suppose, for coming each day."
Dazed by the mix of warm scent, I nodded drowsily, agreeing it was a great trial. A curl escaped Tilda’s knots, as if he corrupted it, simply by looking.
He held out a fist to me. "Here. Now, say thank you, sir."
I asked how he expected me to be thankful, before I knew what he gave me. He exclaimed that I should be thankful, no matter what.
More of my hair spilled loose, tumbling down my neck. "And if you have a gift for me, you should give it freely without demanding something in return." Then, afraid he might change his mind, I ran to him, put both my hands around his fist and tried to pry his fingers apart.
"You are an impatient wench," he muttered, finally opening his fingers to reveal a small key. He jerked his head toward the coffer at the foot of his bed. "’Tis in there."
"A disembodied head?" I cried.
"Look for yourself, woman."
I went to the coffer and fit the little key into the padlock. Leaning back, his hands behind his head, he purred dangerously, "Afraid?" In answer, I took a deep breath and flung open the lid. "Look further," he commanded. With greedy hands, I tossed his clothes aside, until I found it — a small package wound in cloth and tied clumsily with string. I looked at him over the lid of the coffer, still suspicious. He nodded his head. "Open it!"
I wondered what a woman should say, when a man gave her a gift. My husband never gave me anything but beatings and lectures.
The contents of the package slipped out onto the bed.
"Stockings?"
"If you do not like them…"
I snatched them up quickly, before he could take them away. They were beautifully soft.
"Silk," he grumbled awkwardly. "From Italy…should you care to know."
It was the sort of gift the Widow Tuppenham might receive from one of her gentleman callers. The villagers talked already and now, when I wore my stockings, they would look on knowingly; there is, after all, no smoke without fire.
"I’ll put them on for you," he said softly, "if you like." I knew, by then, how his eyes — their constant shifting color — were a bellwether for his mood. He was daring me again and I, being a wicked sinner too easily tempted, tossed the stockings into his lap, accepting the challenge.
Inside the package there were two red velvet ribbons, which, with great solemnity, he laid over his knee. Then he set about warming his hands, rubbing them together. Finally he gathered the first stocking into a ring for my foot.
"Have you done this many times before?" I inquired saucily.
"Only in my imagination."
"I did not know you had one."
"Hmm." He smirked.
There was nothing else for it; I had come this far, after all, and when one is sure to be punished in any case… "Make haste then!" But his fingers were very slow, dedicated in the fixing of every wrinkle and then the tying of one ribbon around the top. "You are quite adept," I said begrudgingly.
I gave him my second foot and again he set
to the task with a serious face. For such large hands they were remarkably gentle; it was difficult to imagine these very same hands severing the heads of his enemies with little provocation, perhaps for nothing more than a sideways look that caught him in a bad mood.
The second stocking took even longer, requiring the smoothing of wrinkles that only he could see. When I complained, his fingers crept higher and I caught that lopsided smile, boyish and devilish all at once. And there he was, the boy of Mary Sourpout’s stories; the reckless lad who once tossed Mistress Cobb out of her pew at chapel.
With the window open, Broad Bess would surely hear my screams and I had hearty lungs when I chose to use them, but I did not, for reasons I shall leave to your own determination.
"You will not think this so amusing, when I tell my uncle," I whispered. "He has a dungeon you know."
"But you like games." His fingertips stroked my thigh. "And if I am to be punished, best make it worth my while."
I gasped, outraged.
His grin widened, "Like recognizes like, Scrapper."
I recovered my leg, slapping him away.
"This is fine thanks for my gift!" he chuckled, ducking his head.
"‘Tis gift enough for me that I shan’t have need to come here and see your ugly face again."
"I’ll have them back then."
"You cannot take back a gift once given."
He lunged forward, dragging me down into his lap, arms tight around me. "Then say thank you," he warned, his breath blowing on my neck.
"You mean to do your worst now, I suppose?"
"Not until you marry me. I intend to make an honest woman of you. ’Tis time someone did."
Frustrated, I hissed that he was a Rotten Lecherous Rogue.
In return he gave this verdict: "And you are a wary, skittish creature, just as likely to take a treat from my hand and then kick me in the backside the moment I turn away. Of your former masters, one has beaten you and one neglected your training. The result is a filly that flinches one day, bites the next, and does not know when it can trust."
I fought me way out of his lap. "Charlatan! I can resist you!"
He licked his lips, laughing, not believing. "Before you go, Scrapper, put my clothes back as you found them."
As I peevishly flung his possessions about, my eyes alighted on a palm-sized object nestled there among his shirts. It was a tiny portrait with initials on the back of it. K.A.
Thus ended his laughter. He snatched it from me and would not answer my polite inquiry into her name, as if I had no right to ask. After all, I was an insignificant woman who had never traveled further than Yarmouth, nor even had a lover; the most interesting thing in my life had been the sight of a pineapple. But, while angrily tossing his clothes back into the coffer, something else came into my possession, unnoticed by him. I recognized the ring box at once. It was the box Nan Gawtry had found when she argued with him in the barn. Surely, it would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity as it was presented.
Chapter Thirty-Three
My uncle rode out with me every day during the harvest. On those rare occasions I was no longer a troublesome burden, but a companion, listening to stories of when he was a small boy and joined in the farm work with his father’s serfs, discarding his little tunic to grow brown in the sun.
One day, as he looked away over the fields, his eyes moist, he told me how he once carried his little sister out there in his arms. I was stunned to hear him speak of her and so I sat silently, listening. He had a little cap to keep the sun off her head, he said, but she, being contrary, threw it to the ground, forcing him to stoop again and again, replacing it on her naughty head. He could still smell the hot sun on her black hair and hear her laugh, as she held up her plump little fists, reaching for the cap again.
"I should have known, even then, that she’d always fight to have her own way. Just like you, Scrapper." We rode on a while, and then he said to me suddenly, "What keeps you so quiet? You’ve not quarreled with me these last four and twenty hours at least. Something has you in a melancholy."
I’d been preoccupied, it was true. Since I saw my mother’s name in the window at Souls Dryft, the tide had turned inside me. Usually I was in haste to make my way, blundering along with my mind set on one goal, but the house had raised its hand to me in caution. Perhaps, in my eagerness to escape the dark forest, I trampled bluebells that grew in the shade.
Pensive regret was not in my nature, so undoubtedly I sickened for something.
Having reached a slight crest, my uncle turned his gaze to the distance, down the gentle dip, to the warped rooftops and chimneys of Souls Dryft. I too contemplated the house in the distance, my fingers touching the leather chord around my neck. Hanging on the end of it, hidden under my gown, I kept that ring I’d found in the Captain’s coffer; requisitioned as security, just in case his brother never returned with my coin.
"Souls Dryft," I murmured. "’Tis an odd name for a house."
"’Tis what the local folk took to calling it," he said. "When the Normans came, it were a bit o’ land belonging to a Saxon feller named Saul. Saul’s Dryft, you see. They say that Saul guarded it like that bit o’ land were the last Saxon stronghold." He shook his head. "Some folk never know when they’re ruddy conquered."
The sun sank behind the house and the windows were dark, all but one, where a solitary candle burned, that tiny smudge of gold twisting and stretching. From a distance the house watched me, as he once did, with one eye open. Like the Captain, it had devious motives, no doubt. I thought suddenly of Rufus shouting at me that day, oozing bitter discontent and something more than that – a much deeper hurt. I’d seen the way he treated his wife and the way she looked at him in return, full of stifled resentment.
"Uncle," I ventured, "is it not preferable to be a lover than a husband?"
He could not believe his ears, the tips of which turned red, where they peeked out through his curly hair.
"You had two wives," I reminded him, as if he could have forgotten. "Were they not merely trouble? They gave you daughters, instead of sons, and then they died, leaving you with burdens. Are you not more content with your mistress, Beth Downing?"
Still he could not speak, his eyes popping.
"Surely any man would rather have a lover," I persisted, "than be troubled with the responsibilities that come with marriage — household accounts, the expense of raising children. With a lover there is no time to talk of woodworm, or colic, or thieving servants."
"That Foolhardy Captain! This is one of his ideas, I warrant."
I groaned, exasperated. "I know that wives are merely burdens, with no role in life but to bear sons. I never want to spend my life with a man who regards me thus, while he is free to do as he pleases."
Completely misunderstanding, he consoled me with this advice, "A husband should not trouble you much above once a month. If ‘tis more than that, say you have the head ache." When I looked away, so he would not see me laugh, he misinterpreted my quivering shoulder and patted it soothingly. "Don’t you worry none. There’s naught for you to do, but lay still and shut your eyes tight." Then he added, "And for the love o’ Saint Pete, Scrapper, don’t ask the feller none o’ them ruddy questions o’ yourn."
* * * *
My "punishment" continued. When he grew weary of my chatter, the Captain brought out a pack of cards to fill the time and, while he was absorbed in the game, I studied his face, marveling at how he grew into my pirate, feature by feature, as if I truly created him with my imagination. The shock of all those scars had long since faded. His face was not easy on the eye like Hugh’s; it was rough hewn and crooked, marked by the adventures of his life. Whereas Hugh might be the work of a master artisan, cunningly sculpted to appeal to the eye, Will was shaped by nature, by time and seasons, and could not be copied with a craftsman’s tools.
Occasionally his gaze rose above the cards, to follow the leather chord around my neck. He never asked what I wore on the end of it,
so I took a secretive delight in that ring – hidden under my shift, next to my skin.
"You are restless, Scrapper," he grumbled suddenly.
"I wait for you to play your hand. Shall we finish this game by Michelmas?" It was late. The sky smoldered and the scent of honeysuckle thickened as the flowers opened on the arbor below, luring hawk moths to flutter at his window.
"You distract me." Again his eyes moved to the leather chord and down to where it slipped out of sight. His gaze lingered a little too long, and too hot, for a man who claimed to be ruled by his scruples.
"You distract yourself," I remarked, amused, wondering if he might give me another gift, as further excuse to put his hands upon me. I liked gifts, so I had discovered.
His fingers tapped his cards. "Your cousin, the red head, was here today."
"Bagobones?" I was alarmed. "What did she want?"
"She talked of some letters I sent her, or some such nonsense." He looked at me, waiting. "When I told her I do not even know her name, she screamed that I was bewitched. I think she might be right about that."
Relieved, I shrugged.
For several minutes we played on and then he threw down his cards, so suddenly I was startled. He ground his jaw, frowned out of the window, cracked his knuckles and finally exploded, "Marry me."
I laughed. "To see how miserable we might make one another?"
"It is meant to be."
I reminded him wearily. "You want a wife to lay at your feet and lick your boots."
"And you want a man to wipe your feet upon. If not for binding vows, you would leave me for greener pastures at the first opportunity."
Apparently I was not the only one with ingrained distrust of the opposite sex and I wondered how he came by his. Thinking suddenly of the woman in the little portrait, I grew unaccountably angry. "I will not be any man’s chattel, ever again!"
"I will never lay a hand on you in anger. You have my word on it."
If only I could believe…Ah, but what is the word of a Carver worth? It was all well and good now, while he wanted something from me, but what would happen once he had it, once I was no longer an amusing novelty, but a woman who preferred writing her stories to doing laundry? The rattling door latch brought an end to the discussion in any case.
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