‘Fourteen marks the sack,’ Jack Nym put in with quiet satisfaction. ‘But seemingly it’s to be used for a special order.’ He held out his hand. ‘Here’s your letter, Mistress.’
Reminded of the reason for his visit, Margaret took it. ‘Who can it be from?’ she wondered.
‘The name’s Adela Juett,’ Jack answered promptly. ‘Claims to be a distant cousin of yours.’
My mother-in-law gave a little screech of excitement. ‘Adela! Adela Woodward that was! Dear heaven! Many’s the time I’ve looked after her when she was young. She used to play with Lillis as a child, but I haven’t heard from her in ages. She married a man from up country that she met one time at Saint James’s Whitsuntide fair, and went away to live. That must be all of seven years or more ago. How does she go on?’
Jack Nym nodded towards the still-unopened letter. ‘Widowed last year and left with a little lad, now two years old, to rear. That’s how I came to meet her. I had to stay overnight in Hereford and, in order to earn a crust for her and the boy, she serves at table in the inn where, as chance would have it, I chose to lodge. We got talking. She recognized my accent and told me that she, too, came from Bristol. She mentioned a kinswoman of hers, a Margaret Woodward who had married an Adam Walker a twelvemonth after she was born. When she found I knew you, she asked after Lillis, so of course I had to tell her the sad news.’ Jack Nym’s eyes flickered towards me for an instant before being hastily lowered. ‘Anyway, Mistress Juett asked me to tell you that she wants to come home, and she wondered, if she were to make the journey, could you possibly take her and young Nicholas under your roof for a while, just until she gets settled in. I have to go that way again in two or three months’ time. I could give her your answer then, and maybe bring her back with me if you’re agreeable.’
My mother-in-law handed me the letter. ‘You read it, Roger. You know I’ve no book learning to speak of.’
The handwriting was almost illegible, and the message would have made very little sense without the carter’s explanation. And when I had deciphered it, it added nothing to what we had already been told. Margaret thanked Jack Nym profusely for his time and trouble on her cousin’s behalf, and insisted that he accept part of a newly baked batch of oatcakes to take home to his wife.
‘Well, don’t forget to tell me if you want this cousin of yours fetched from Hereford when next I’m up that way,’ the grateful carter said as he departed, carefully depositing the oatcakes, wrapped in a clean cloth, on the floor of his now empty wagon.
Margaret thanked him a second time, closed the door and returned to her combing, a thoughtful expression on her face. I rescued Elizabeth, who was trying to scale the mound of logs piled up in one corner of the room, and sat down once more by the fire, ignoring her wails of protest.
‘Will you have your cousin here?’ I asked at last, when the silence became oppressive. ‘There isn’t much room.’
‘Enough,’ my mother-in-law replied serenely. ‘Adela and I can share the top half of the bed and the children can sleep at the foot. You’ll have your mattress, as you always do, in this part of the room, with the curtain drawn between us. It will answer for a month or two, at least, and it will be a treat for Bess to have another child to play with, especially one so close to her in age.’ She began winding some of the combed wool around her spindle, a reminiscent smile hovering at the corners of her mouth. ‘Adela is the daughter of one of my father’s cousins. A very pretty girl, if I remember rightly, who grew into an even prettier woman. There were plenty of young men hereabouts who would have been happy to marry her if she would only have had them.’
Margaret spoke so nonchalantly that the hairs started to rise on the nape of my neck, like those of an animal scenting danger. I knew my mother-in-law’s desire for me to marry again, recollected her attempts at matchmaking during the past year or two, and decided there and then that long before Jack Nym set out again for Hereford, I would be off on my travels.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to take another wife, but I wished it to be in my own time and of my own choosing. Besides, although my mother-in-law did not know it, I already had a lady in my eye. She was a certain Rowena Honeyman who lived with her aunt in the town of Frome, and whom I had met during the past summer in circumstances which I was not, as yet, prepared to divulge to Margaret, who was bound to disapprove of them. In any case, I had no idea what Rowena’s feelings were towards me, and until I did, silence was golden. Our acquaintance had been brief and difficult, confined to a few days in early September, and we had not seen each other since. But I thought of her often.
I realized that Margaret was speaking, and was forced to beg her pardon.
‘I’m sorry, Mother, my mind was elsewhere. What were you saying?’
She gave me a sidelong glance and cleared her throat, starting to spin.
‘I said I thought it was a long time for poor Adela to have to wait for Jack Nym. Two or three months he reckoned, before he gets sent that way again.’ Margaret was suddenly very intent on her work, avoiding my eyes. ‘I thought that perhaps if you went to fetch her as soon as the Christmas season is over, she and her little boy could be settled in here well before the end of January.’
There was a protracted silence, while Elizabeth escaped my slackened grasp and crawled away, unchecked, to pursue her investigation of the logs.
At last I answered coldly, ‘You have begged me, after what happened last year, never to go more than a mile or so beyond the city gates in wintertime. But now you’re asking me to travel to Hereford. And what about your cousin and her son? Do you think it will be better for them to walk so many weary miles in the coldest part of the year, rather than ride the whole way with Jack Nym in the spring?’
There was another silence while I waited with interest to discover how my mother-in-law would deal with this eminently reasonable argument. I knew exactly what was in her mind; that this Adela Juett and I would be forced into each other’s company for ten or twelve days, in circumstances that could not help but forge some sort of bond between us. I watched, in grim amusement, the various expressions which flitted across her face as she struggled to find an answer, and smiled at her obvious vexation as she came reluctantly to the conclusion that there was none. But Margaret Walker was not a woman to be worsted when she had set her heart on something. She stopped spinning, raised her head, chin jutting belligerently, and looked across at me.
‘I want my cousin and her son here, under my roof, as soon as possible. I should have thought, after all I’ve done for you, that it would be a small repayment for you to oblige me in this.’
I returned her stare, as nonplussed as she had been a moment or two earlier. I was caught, and I could tell by her triumphant smile that she knew it. She had never before reminded me of all that I owed her, looking after Elizabeth for the past two years while I went my carefree, irresponsible way. She wasn’t going to pretend that what she was asking me to do had any rhyme or reason to it, except of course to herself. She was simply calling upon me to pay my account. Not to do so would be worse than churlish.
‘Well?’ she demanded, raising her eyebrows.
I glared back at her, but then my anger evaporated. I had no real objection to being on the road, for I was already growing restless, and I reflected that there was no way in which she could make me fall in love, or even contract a marriage of convenience with her cousin. She had no idea that I was already armoured against such a possibility, bewitched by a pair of periwinkle-blue eyes and hair the colour of ripe corn. And who was to say that Adela Juett would wish to have me for a husband even if I were to offer for her?