My granddaughter, Elizabeth, is come after church with Susanna to sew with my wife, our hall being larger and better lit than theirs. A pretty girl, and with her mother’s wit, and with her dower will be no hard task to find her a good husband. Judith once more has gone to her friend Catherine, to help make sugared fancies for their Christmas feast. This skill at least she has. Her mother has taught her well.
The river has swum above its banks, flooding the turnip fields and Brussel’s sprouts, making naught happy but the ducks too stubborn to leave for winter. And I up here with a good fire, not for the warmth but to keep away the damp. Boredom stitches morning to the evening now, the days shorter, greyer and more dull. In summer I may spend a whole day admiring my fields, walking to inspect my granary, seeing the increase of my tenants’ sheep. But memory shines brighter than firelight on this autumn day, even when the past is bitter. And yet not each part of those days was wormwood. I had sympathy for Mistress Anne, and even liked her. It was no hardship to meet with her again, were it not for the whispers, ‘Judyth! Judyth!’ that sang about me every hour.
I met Anne the next day just beyond their garden gate. She wore a brighter gown than the day before, blue sprinkled with flowers. I wondered if it be her best, and if her sister-in-law might question her about it.
I realised I had naught to say. ‘Marry me and let me have your dowry’ was all that filled my mind. I stumbled on. ‘Fine day, is it not?’
The breeze was cold, and wet grass nibbled at my stockings, and an autumn mist shrouded the trees.
But she seemed to like the comment. For this, at least, she had an answer, as she had not for my fine words. Her smile again was pleasant. ‘It is fine indeed.’
‘How much bread must you get?’ I managed.
‘Ten loaves, sir. Four for today, and four for tomorrow, and two to thicken the pottage for young James.’
‘A heavy burden for so sweet a frame.’
Once more she looked startled. ‘Sir, I can carry a sow about to farrow. The bread is no weight, I assure you.’
Could a poet be wedded to a woman who boasted she could lift a sow?
‘That is most . . . admirable,’ I said.
‘And a basket of wet washing, sir, is no small burden.’
Did they make this girl do the washing too? Even tenant farmers hired a washerwoman.
I said with sudden feeling, ‘It is a hard life for you, Mistress Anne.’
She flushed. ‘It is the one I was born to, sir.’
‘But it is one that marriage may change. Do you wish to serve your brother’s family all your life? To be nursemaid to their children, and not your own?’
For once I had no cunning. I truly wished to know her answer.
It came softly. ‘No, sir.’
‘Anne, may I kiss thee?’
‘I . . . I do not know, sir.’
That was answer enough for me. I bent and kissed her lips gently. They tasted of hearth cake, no doubt left over from yesterday, while she made fresh for her brother’s family. For a moment she was still and then her lips moved on mine. I took her basket, laid it on the road, then kissed her again, the early mist a white cloak about us. When I at last broke away, her lips were flushed, her cheeks too. She looked almost pretty.
I picked up her basket and offered her my arm. We walked together to the fork near the village. I left her then, in case there should be gossip and her sister-in-law would scold her, and wended my way home.
No. To this book I will be true.
I left her that we be not seen and the talk repeated to my Judyth. For still I hoped that somehow my father’s fortune would be restored, the ship would return in time to save me with a good cargo of cloth or pepper, Spanish treasure. It was not Anne’s reputation I guarded, for if hers were lost, then she must marry me, but mine own.
Dinner: forced stuffed sirloin of beef; knuckle of mutton with oysters; an ox palate, baked, with mustard sauce; a dish of cockscombs; whipped syllabub with trifles; savoury soup of duck; a dish of coleworts with sweet butter; hartshorn flummery with rhubarb, it still growing well in our hothouses, despite the cold; apples; cheese; spiced wine.
Bowels and waters: exceedingly fine.