I looked about. There was none to overhear. ‘Surely between us you could be Caro.’
‘Why, Brother?’ Her voice was perplexed. ‘Don’t you like my name?’
For an instant I doubted myself. I stepped up closer and examined her. She was tanned and bore the marks of poverty and violence but she was Caro.
I took her by the shoulders, gently so as not to alarm, and crouched before her, our eyes on a level. ‘Lord, wife, we are in a pitiful plight! Though the fault be all mine, we must pull together. Do you know anything of them?’
She shook her head.
‘Did you know I was here before we returned from London?’
‘They talked mainly of Brother Christopher. But why do you call me wife? My name is Jane Allen. Do you feel well, Brother?’
‘You come from Beaurepair, do you not? Your voice! You talk like me.’ Why, I thought, am I arguing thus? We are insane—
Forcing myself on, I spoke into her face: ‘Caro. That little child is – is my child. We must decide what to—’
‘O no, Brother. The child is my husband’s.’
I was dumbfounded. Did she mean that she would never again acknowledge me, even in my private ear? That the child was Zeb’s and she would go about saying she was his wife?
Caro continued, ‘You are not my husband. Why, Brother,’ and she actually laughed, a pretty, innocent laugh, ‘when you were presented to me just now by Brother Wisdom and Sister Catherine, you called me Sister Jane to their faces! You never said I was your wife!’
She had me there. Either she was more cunning than I had ever dreamt, and determined that I should never claim her, or my poor wife had lost her wits along with everything else.
‘What was your husband’s name?’ My head felt tight as if a band were being twisted round it.
‘Thomas Allen,’ she returned, her face clear as the infant’s.
‘Very well,’ I said at last. ‘The child is your husband’s, I see it now.’
Caro nodded.
‘Tell me, Sister Jane,’ I went on, for now I thought to discern whether or not her madness was feigned, ‘does your son have the same eyes as your husband?’ My notion was, that if she were feigning she would not pass by this chance to stab me by hinting that the child was Zeb’s.
Caro smiled at me, head on one side. Something stirred in me at the sight of her wide gaze and rounded, trusting lips. I thought of days sitting on the stone bench, teasing one another, and of the fullness of a woman’s breasts heavy with milk.
‘Your son has blue eyes,’ I prompted.
She answered me, ‘I have brown eyes, Brother. Do you see?’
Confounded, I rose and turned to go. There was nothing I could do; but in time she might recover her reason. We might even make it up.
Look where she laughs. She has excellent sport of you!
I whirled about without warning and caught a squint of amusement before she could veil it. Though she at once dropped her eyes, that glimpse sufficed. Caro was very far from mad. Like the dog and like myself, she had lain and thought, but to greater effect. She had hit on this vengeance: I could never know her more, or make the restitution I craved. In our society, I saw, was protection for her, and I felt with horror my own impotence. She could live by my side, share my food and fire, and yet not be my wife.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Stuff of Jest
‘Poor girl,’ said Ferris. He frowned from under his old felt hat at Caro strolling in the field, rocking the little one in her arms and talking with Hepsibah and Susannah as they fetched the pails of milk up to the tent.
‘The rest carry the milk while she does nought,’ I said.
‘That’s right, Jacob, you stand up for Susannah,’ put in Jeremiah.
It was not worth the trouble of gainsaying him.
‘Where’s Catherine?’ asked Jonathan.
‘Gone to look at marble,’ I said, while the other two jeered his ignorance for the talk that morning had been of nothing else. Catherine and Hathersage had taken the ox-cart to the village to bespeak some marble from a stonecutter there. I guessed Ferris had dug into his private purse so that the sisters-in-law could at last make cheese. Hathersage, that reed of a man, was to help load samples.
All of the men were engaged in building a dairy, using the sods as before. I marvelled that Ferris could think we would be allowed to stay long enough to use it. Though the weather was cooler than it had been, it was hot work, and the long narrow shape of the thing did nothing to strengthen my faith. Already it seemed to lean inwards.
I placed myself at all times by Ferris’s side or opposite him where he might see me, and observed him at his work. Twice or thrice I caught him eyeing my body, but could not make him meet my gaze, for he constantly moved away or changed places with another man. I followed him as constantly. It was easily done as if by accident, circling about the hut, filling gaps here and there. Sometimes I would pause to watch him cut wood or stack turf. I always knew when he had remarked me at this game, for he at once lost his natural grace. Thus did I hunt him.
The men fell to talking of the new arrival, downright gossip as to whether she would work with the dairymaids or in the fields with Hepsibah, and of whether Catherine would continue to work with her sister-in-law or would fall in more with Brother Wisdom.
‘You are as bad as midwives,’ said I.
Unabashed, Jonathan went on, ‘My Hepsibah says Sister Catherine dislikes Sister Jane.’
‘Oh, aye?’ Ferris turned sharply towards him. ‘And why might that be?’
Jonathan shrugged. ‘She sees it whenever they are in company. As to reasons,’ he pressed together two pieces of turf, ‘best ask Catherine.’
‘As soon ask the cow there,’ declared Jeremiah. ‘There’s no why with women.’
The talk no longer struck me as empty. I at once determined to hear Catherine and Caro speak together. Aloud I said, ‘How will we prevent soil dropping from the roof into the milk?’
Ferris ignored me.
‘Brother Christopher has had some thoughts on that,’ Jonathan answered. ‘There will be a roof of planks, packed very close together, with sod on top.’
Jeremiah was of the opinion that the thing would not stand firm enough.
‘One day it will be stone,’ said Jonathan. We were silent a moment and I wondered why everyone behaved as if Sir George did not exist.
‘Jane Allen,’ said Ferris. He bent to take an armful of turf and straightening, laid it across the frame as if dealing cards. ‘We must be gentle with her. It seems her husband was as cruel as the beasts she met with on the road.’
I held my breath and looked into his face. There was no special meaning there, no freshly disgusted glance at me, and I concluded that Caro’s husband was still named Thomas.
‘He beat her excessively?’ asked Jeremiah.
Ferris frowned. I knew it was for that word ‘excessively’ but he went on without taking up Jeremiah. ‘Something like. He persuaded himself she was unfaithful.’
‘Could he not keep her indoors?’ I asked. Jeremiah laughed.
‘It was his own brother he suspected her with,’ said Ferris. ‘They all three lived together.’
Jonathan shook his head.
Dissembling vixen, I thought. Well go on, torture me. Soon would come the Unsealing threatened by the Voice, and I would leave. Let them all be spitted by Sir George, and Caro first on the point of the sword.
‘Am I the only man working here?’ asked Ferris. We bent again to the walls of the dairy, straining our muscles to the useless task.
‘Her tale is one a guilty woman might tell,’ I suggested.
‘She seems to me not wanton,’ said Jonathan. ‘More innocent-like.’
Ferris said, ‘She puts me in mind of my own wife.’
‘Her hair has something of that colour,’ I agreed, ‘but Joanna was more beautiful.’
He looked as if that were a matter for debate, but would not answer me. Instead he said to Jona
than, ‘When I see her with the child, I think, had Joanna lived—’
‘Your boy would have been fair, like you,’ I told him.
He raised his eyebrows at me and I flamed hot with the sense of my stupidity. Now he would think I had forgotten, whereas I had often thought with admiration of the shame he had borne for his Joanna.
‘And we – we should all of us remember,’ he went on. ‘When Elizabeth left, she said that husbands and brothers are for protectors to women.’
‘Husbands? None of us can be her husband if her first still lives,’ I said.
‘Her brothers, then,’ said Ferris.
‘Or something else,’ said Jeremiah. ‘It has been known, even under the husband’s nose. Shall I race you to her, Jacob?’ He winked at me.
‘You are welcome,’ I told him.
I saw Ferris scowl, and it came to me why Catherine did not like Caro.
The samples of marble lay on the grass and Caro patted the palms of her hands on one of them for coolness, as Hathersage had once pressed his palms to a table. On that occasion, I recalled, Ferris had covered the hands with his own. Now he stood back, listening to Susannah and Catherine’s opinions of the stone. The rest of us, having each said which we found the handsomest, bent down from time to time to stroke the blocks and perhaps remember the touch of city life. There were two whites, a rusty-hued marble like polished sandstone and an adamantine black.
‘Each is good,’ said Susannah. ‘This is what we used in London and we always found it answered, eh Catherine?’
‘The other white takes a higher polish and is more easily cleaned,’ Catherine replied. ‘Sister Jane, would you—?’
Caro lifted her hands from the ‘other white’.
‘See, there are none of those little pocks in it,’ pointed out Catherine.
Susannah turned to Ferris. ‘The cheaper will do just as well, Brother Christopher.’
‘Perhaps,’ he returned. ‘What do the rest of you think?’
‘Marble slabs in a sod hut! Too dear at any price,’ I said. Susannah looked at me as if I had struck her a blow in the face.
‘I am sorry, Sister,’ I went on. ‘I would see you content, and I suppose I have as great a wish to eat cheesecakes as the next man. But fitting out a dairy, well, that argues long years of use from it.’
‘All that we do here rests on faith,’ Susannah’s gentle voice reproached me. ‘Drainage, ploughing, everything.’
‘We have been in God’s hand from the start,’ intoned Hathersage.
‘The slabs can be moved into a better place, when we make one,’ Catherine pleaded.
‘But will we?’ asked Jeremiah. ‘Suppose we should be driven off, will we be let to go carrying the marble? I can’t see it.’
‘We will gain by keeping more milk as cheese,’ Hepsibah said. ‘But not enough to defray the cost of the stone. Not in years.’
‘Those of you who are against having any,’ Ferris said. ‘Why did you join in building the dairy?’
‘I was not thinking on the price of marble,’ I answered. ‘Other matters have occupied me of late.’
Ferris scratched his neck. ‘You have put a deal of labour into the walls. Is not that a kind of argument in favour?’
‘None,’ I said.
The women looked indignation at me.
‘We should have only what we can afford to lose,’ said Hepsibah.
They debated a while, while I held aloof as having said all I wished to say. Hathersage was for, Jeremiah very much against.
‘Sister Jane,’ said Ferris. ‘Have you no thoughts on this matter?’
I watched Catherine. Hepsibah had been right. The young woman’s face became tense with dislike as she waited for Caro to speak against her.
Caro dandled the babe as if thinking. It seemed to me that she saw, and understood, Catherine’s fear.
‘It were pity to have two of us unable to practise their craft for the sake of a piece of stone,’ said my wife. ‘Women so skilled, too.’ She turned her brown gaze up to Ferris. Catherine, waiting, breathed out.
Caro pleaded, ‘You told me, there was much the sisters might do here.’
Admirable, I thought, seeing him smile as if warmth were welling up inside and about to overflow at his mouth.
‘I will pay for the marble,’ he said. ‘No one else shall be asked to spare a penny. But I hope you will be content with the cheapest kind.’
Catherine and Susannah ran to him and embraced him. I thought Caro might do so, but she remained sitting on the grass, beaming her pleasure at the other women’s good fortune, to let all see that she, at least, was innocent of ill will. Her eyes, however, shot admiration at Ferris when the sisters had let him go. He blushed and looked away.
Hathersage and Jonathan each took two samples and carried them towards the tent. Jeremiah, not best pleased, shuffled towards the turf hut to begin again on his pointless labour and the women moved off together, seemingly all friendship.
‘A word, Brother,’ I said as Ferris made to go.
He cut in, ‘Before you start, the money is my own.’
‘Marble will always come in for tombstones,’ I struck back. ‘But I warn you, our new Sister is feigning.’
‘You are jealous now of a widow and her helpless babe?’
‘The mother’s not so helpless. Take care lest you end as her servant.’
‘Why would I? I was never yours.’ He began to walk away. I followed, trying to find the words which would soften him.
‘You’re always at my elbow, these days,’ he went on. ‘Don’t think to wear me down.’
‘I love to look at you,’ I said.
I watched the dust on my skin sift itself into the water, clouding it as the motes that rise from sieved flour cloud the air. The basin beneath the spring was just big enough for me to rinse and splash in it, and if I went in quickly with one great gasp the iciness of the water seemed less. The leaves overhead, warmed by the sunset, glowed as if held in the eye of God.
Near me on the grass lay two piles of clothes, dirty and less dirty, and one of the washballs I had meant to offer Caro, but in the end had kept for myself. No one knew where I was, for this cleansing was my secret celebration.
The dairy was complete, and there would be no more of that particular misery. Ferris had wanted windows, frames spread with cloth, so that the place might have more air and light than was needful for the other huts. Jeremiah said it would weaken the sides. We had struggled to shape and fit the things until Ferris, exasperated, flung down a hammer, almost crippling Jonathan, and I said only a fool would dream of windows in such a place. He yelled at me that he had proven himself a fool over and over again, and then suddenly quietened, seeing the others’ faces.
We finished with two windows, facing one another for ventilation. The roof also had been done as Ferris wanted, though Jeremiah and myself still thought it would not endure. Jonathan had nailed cloth to the inside of the planks, proof against creeping things. That was a refinement I approved of, as one morning I had found a large spider in some milk I had begged from Susannah and had flung the cup away over the furrows before casting up all the milk with much retching. The creature had seemingly not enough time to impart its venom to the milk, for I did not fall sick, yet the disgust it caused in me took many hours to go off. The marble was also fixed in place, and by its side a stone sink. The sisters-in-law had brought the churn and butter pats out from the tent. I guessed they were that minute at work, laying out their tools and perhaps training up Hathersage to the mystery.
By lying back in the water I was able to lower my head into it until my ears were under the surface and my face an island. Gazing at the transfigured trees above, I heard the strange throb and squeal underwater as I scratched the scars on my thigh. When I closed my eyes the noises filled my skull. Suppose, I thought, a man were to drown—
No, no. I jerked upright and began rubbing the washball on my head. It did a poor job, but took off some of the stink from my
skin. I thought of Ferris, dirty and clean, and his smell. By the time I had rinsed out the hair I was in London and he was sitting astride my lap. I made myself finish my wash and stand up. Lonelier than a solitary ape, I shook out my seed onto the grass.
I wondered did Ferris do likewise. Did he think of me because he could not help it? I saw no weakening in him. Far from giving way, he had sprung or sidestepped every snare I had laid. Once, working opposite him, I surprised him in a look of longing but directly he met my eyes his face closed and he changed places with Jonathan. During the construction of the dairy he had suffered some renewed pain from his shoulders, and had to rest a day. I had therefore waited and gone in to him in the morning, when the others were abroad in the field, for I knew that he could be lascivious on waking. On seeing me come in he had sat up at once and bidden me leave his hut.
‘Let me just ease your back,’ I had begged, only to be told that should I stay he would call out. Walking away from the hut I heard him put the wedge in the door. He often did this now – I knew that, for I had heard the others talking of it one day as we hoed. I was working a patch on my own and the other three were a few rows off.
‘So what do you reckon he’s up to in there?’ The voice was lowered but I knew it for Jeremiah’s, salacious and relishing.
Jonathan answered, ‘Where I don’t know I don’t judge. But it seems to me—’
He broke off. I heard Susannah’s voice, low and urgent, and concluded that she had silenced him. But, I thought, neither of the men seemed to know he was keeping me out, or they would have spoken much more quietly than they did.
That day of weakness was the only one when he did not go to the inn for news. Letters came more often than not; brief, for Becs had little time for writing, but to the point.
Susannah and Hepsibah enquired frequently after Aunt, so Ferris took to reading out parts of the letters at the evening meal. It seemed that the patient grew stronger and could speak a few words, only it was hard to make them out. As he recounted such details his voice softened, and since he looked always at the page, I could freely drink him in through my eyes. These readings were thus some of my happiest, and most painful, times.