I stared awhile, quite forgetting my reason for calling, until she politely but not with servility, distantly but not with impudence, asked me my business. “Please come in, sir,” she said, when I told her. “My mother is out at the market; but she should be back any moment. You are welcome to wait, if you wish.”
I leave it to others to decide whether I should have taken that as a warning about her character. Had I been with someone better stationed I would naturally have gone away, not wishing to presume on her reputation by being alone with her. But at that moment, the chance of talking to this creature seemed to me the best possible way of passing the time until the mother returned. I am sure 1 half wished that the woman might be greatly delayed. I sat myself (I fear with something of a swagger, as a man of parts might do when associating with inferiors, God forgive me) on the little stool by the fireplace, which unfortunately was empty, despite the cold.
How do people converse in such situations? I have never succeeded in a matter which others seem to find simple. Perhaps it is the result of too many hours spent in books and manuscripts. Most of the time I had no trouble at all; with my friends over dinner, I could converse with the best of them and I pride myself still that I was not the least interesting. But in some circumstances I was at a loss, and making conversation to a serving girl with beautiful eyes was beyond my powers. I could have tried playing the gallant, chucking her under the chin, sitting her on my knee and pinching her bottom, but that has never been my way, and most obviously was not hers either. I could have ignored her as not worth my attention, except that she was. So I ended up doing neither, staring at her dumbly, and had to leave it to her.
“You have come to consult my mother on some trouble, no doubt,” she prompted after she had waited for me to begin a conversation.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you have lost something, and want her to divine where it is? She is good at that. Or maybe you are sick, and are afraid of going to a doctor?”
Eventually, I dragged my eyes away from her face. “Oh, no. Not at all. I have heard of her great skills, of course, but I am most meticulous and never lose anything. A place for everything, you know. That is the only way I can proceed in my work. And my health is as good as man might expect, thanks to God.”
Babbling and pompous; I excuse myself by pleading confusion. She assuredly had not the slightest interest in my work; few people have. But it has always been my refuge in times of trouble, and when confused or sad my thoughts fly to it. Toward the end of this affair, I sat up at nights, week after week, transcribing and annotating, as a way of shutting the world out. Locke told me it was for the best. Strange, that—I never liked him, and he never liked me, but I always took his advice, and found it answered.
“Amen,” she said. “So why have you come to see my mother? I hope you are not betrayed in love. She does not approve of philters and such nonsense, you know. If you want that sort of foolishness, you can go to a man in Hed-dington, although personally I think he is a charlatan.”
I reassured her that my quest was entirely different, and that I did not wish to consult her mother on any such business. I was beginning to explain when the door opened and the woman returned. Sarah rushed to assist, as her mother collapsed on a trestle stool opposite, wiped her face and got her breath back before she peered at me. She was poorly but cleanly dressed, with gnarled hands strong from years of labor, and a red, round open face. Although age was beginning to gain its inevitable triumph, in her manner she was far from the desolate, broken bird of a woman she later became, and moved with a sprightliness that many others more favored in life do not have at her age.
“Nothing wrong with you,” she said forthrightly after gazing at me in a way which seemed to see me entire. Her daughter had the habit as well, I later learned. I think it was that which made people frightened of them, and consider them insolent. “What are you here for?”
“This is Mr. Wood, Mother,” Sarah said as she came back from the tiny room next door. “He is an historian, so he has been telling me, and wishes to consult you.”
“And what ailments afflict historians, pray?” she said with little interest. “Loss of memory? Crabbed writing hand?”
I smiled. “Both of those, but not in my case, I am pleased to say. No; I am writing a history of the siege, and as you were here during that period…”
“So were several thousand other people. Are you going to talk to them all? A strange way of writing history, that.”
“I model myself on Thucydides…” I began ponderously.
“And he died before he could finish,” she interrupted, a comment which surprised me so much I almost fell off my stool. Quite apart from the speed of her riposte, she had evidently not only heard of that greatest of historians, she even knew something about him. I looked at her more curiously, but evidently failed to disguise my astonishment.
“My husband is a great book man, sir, and takes pleasure in reading to me, and getting me to read to him of an evening.”
“He is here?”
“No; he is still with the army. I believe he is in London.”
I was disappointed, of course, but resolved to make do with what I could discover from the wife until such time as Blundy himself might return.
“Your husband,” I began, “was of some significance in the history of the town…”
“He tried to combat injustice here.”
“Indeed. The trouble is that no one I have come across seems to agree on what he did and said. This is what I want to know.”
“And you will believe what I tell you?”
“I will set what you tell me against what other people tell me. From that the truth will emerge. I am convinced of it.”
“In that case you are a foolish young man, Mr. Wood.”
“I think not,” I said stiffly.
“What axe your religious persuasions, sir? Your loyalties?”
“In religion, I am an historian. In politics, an historian as well.”
“Much too slippery for an old woman like me,” she said with a slightly mocking tone in her voice. “Are you loyal to the Protector?”
“I took an oath to the government in power.”
“And what church do you attend?”
“Several. I have attended services in many places. At present, I attend at Merton, as I am bound to do since it is my college. I must tell you, I suppose, lest you accuse me again of being slippery, that I am of an Episcopal instinct.”
Her head bowed in thought as she considered this, her eyes closed, almost as though asleep. I feared very much that she would refuse, thinking that I would twist what she said. Certainly she had no reason to think that I would be in any way sympathetic to a man like her husband; I knew enough of him already to be sure of that. But there was nothing more I could do to persuade her of my honorable intentions. Fortunately, I was not stupid enough to offer her money, as that would inevitably have been my downfall, however much she needed it. I must say here that never once did I discern in her, or her daughter, any of the greed which others claim to have seen so easily, although her poor situation would have been ample cause for it.
“Sarah?’’ she said after a while, her head lifting from her chest. “What do you think of this angular young man? What is he? A spy? A fool? A knave? Someone come to disinter the past and torment us with it?”
“Perhaps he is what he says, mother. I think you might talk to him. Why not? The Lord knows what happened, and even an historian from the university cannot hide the truth from Him.”