The merry mistress, p.3
The Merry Mistress, page 3
“Make way! Make way there for my Lord Hastings!”
The merry pelting ceased and I lowered my hands to see William, ah, poor William Lord Hastings of Ashby, the king’s chamberlain, come with his followers on horseback, men in bright garments, gold chains about their throats, underlips pushed out with scorn of citizens, their horses reined with rich stuffs, and caparisoned with gold-studded leather and tapestry-work. Laughing and reckless, with hooded eyes, they rode, but before our guests, they reined back, wanting no riot.
That was the first occasion on which I saw Lord Hastings. Had he not ridden that day into London how different might have been my life! On such accidents so much can rest. Had he come earlier, seen me before marriage — but then I was always locked away — others’ suffering might have been much less. The stars sent him to me just too late, when I had that ring around my finger — the two hands closing on the heart enclosing me — and Hastings then must ride down Chepe to see me with my unbound golden hair stand, laughing, on the steps. Ignorant of life I might have been yet I could not mistake the greedy admiration of his glance, nor fail to note how his gaze lingered over my bosom — tiny I was, and am, but my bosom even then was mature and, as many men have whispered, it is my chiefest beauty.
“Why, ‘tis Master Shore,” he cried lazily, his eyes still on my bosom. “Marrying again, are you, brave fellow?”
“My lord is merry,” said my husband coldly, and I felt him shake.
“Nay,” laughed Hastings, “I am drunk. I have my belly full of merriment, for I’ve been mouse-hunting in the king’s name and routed good sport from their holes. By the heart of God, master, I do envy you, and never did I think to envy commerce; but such a bride!… Master, I am in need of further… What be your trade, God strike me! Ay, ay, merceries, silks, satins, velvets, a soft bed for a bride… I am in need of further goods.”
White and trembling, my husband answered, “I’ll wait upon you, my lord,” and his hand caught mine and gripped it hard.
“Do not trouble your long legs, good master,” smiled Hastings, opening his eyes to look wide into my eyes while he grinned. “You will need all your strength, I warrant. I will wait on you…”
Still grinning and watching me, he bowed, dragging off his hood and almost falling from the saddle. Then suddenly he straightened and, waving forward his companions, galloped on; and as he rode, he turned his head and grinned at me.
“Who was that gentleman?” I dared ask, although I feared to speak.
“A very villain,” cried my husband, “a debauchee, although the king’s own friend. ‘Tis said he works to lure silly women to the royal bed, but takes first buss himself. Have naught to do with such. They are no friends to honest women.”
Friend or no, I had liked the smile in his eyes. Yea, even then, although I did not realize it, I was ripe for mischief. Already was I what I have become. Innocence was no protection from that devil bred in the heart of a woman so that often I think the preachers are right to damn us who retain Eve’s curiosity. There stood I, a child and ignorant, and already was I thinking what a brave fellow this Hastings seemed, how well he sat his horse, what merriment twinkled in his eye; and it was with a tinge of melancholy that I looked up to see my husband, white-faced, watching me. Drab, he appeared, and unexciting; and drab appeared his friends, boors and simpletons, scooping up dirt to fling at us.
*
Late did the guests tarry. It seemed that my husband no more than I wished for bedtime, which was contrary to all one believes of marriage. I had expected excitement, to have him fretting to be rid of these drunken folk with their crude jests, but he kept them as long as possible, as though he also feared the dark. At most marriages, the bedding is an opportunity for lewd pranks, the bride being laid in naked readiness between the sheets and the husband carried to her by his drunken comrades; but none suggested any such jollities this night. As though the mockery of Hastings had clouded our gaiety, from that moment laughter had grown forced, and I noted how with drawn brows my husband would look at me, seeming to seek to read my thoughts; and true it was that, although my melancholy soon went, I remained a little depressed, fretful, feeling a lack in these citizen gaieties.
Any man who wished could dance with me and I could not refuse, such being the custom; and rarely was I allowed a moment of rest. No sooner was I on a cushion, panting and gasping, than some other fellow would catch me up to kiss and toss me at the music’s pull. My husband danced little. With the older men, he sat over his wine, yet his eyes rarely left me. Always, frowning, he was watchful, and he forced his lips to smile while the eyes stayed stern when someone jested with him. I had no time to think. It was so hot and I so weary, my thoughts were tumbled as I was tossed hither and thither, men with my favours in their caps demanding the favour of my legs in a dance. Many-coloured were these favours tied in true-lovers’-knots, of all colours indeed save of gold which signifies avarice, of popinjay green which means wantonness, and of flesh-colour which means lubricity. Underfoot, the sweet rosemary was crushed to die in violet blood with the other flowers and the wheat-ears. Scarcely was there pause in that dancing as the sun died and the moon came up over London amidst the stars; the fiddlers scraped, the flutes sang shrilly, and my blood beat to the jigging time. Yet for all the laughter, the giggling, the kissing, it seemed to me that much of the excitement had fled the hour, and I wished there might be no bedding and I could dance till I dropped.
After that one angry cry against Hastings when he had squeezed my hand to hurt the bones, my husband had relapsed behind his usual courtesy, as though nothing could hurt or delight him. Tall and lean and dark with grave blue eyes and long white hands, he gave no appearance of a lover. Withdrawn from life and laughter he remained, seeming inhuman with his amiable smile that did not light the eyes; and I shivered before the prospect of being alone with him, not knowing what I, an ignorant girl, could say to so solemn, wise and honourable a man. He would soon weary of me, I sighed.
And as for Agnes, his sister-in-law… she terrified me. Although not very old, not more than twenty years, she gave the impression of ageless wisdom with her superior smile and efficient ways when she served our guests with wine and food. I felt as though she read my thoughts, and therefore, whenever our glances met, I blushed, and she would smile. For some reason, I knew that the woman disliked and despised me. And that was distressing. For the first time in my life I was sleeping in an unfamiliar bed with a stranger I did not love, and I felt I needed sympathy, a confidante. In that house I would find, I realized, no sympathy, with my husband courteous yet withdrawn and his late wife’s sister ever watchful with a tight and threatening smile and a condescending graciousness which concealed, I felt, a threat. Wife I might be but I was not the mistress of that house.
Like most girls, often had I dreamed of marriage, to be given not only freedom but rich things; and now I was surrounded by rich things. Shore was a wealthy man. On the walls hung embroidered and painted cloths, on the tables were carpets, and we drank from silver cups. Underfoot the rushes were sweet and fresh and the flowers and herbs of my marriage crushed amongst them smelt soothing, making one drowse odorously. Across the window opening on to the Mercery painted cloths were drawn and the candlelight glinted on the colours of birds and beasts and flowers skilfully depicted on the cloth to cheat the bees. Warm and comfortable was that room, yet to me not friendly; and with fierce-beating heart at last reluctantly I watched the guests leave while, like some enchanted princess in an old tale, I felt unable to move or to call to them to stay a little longer. They were departing, leaving me with this inimically smiling woman and a husband of stone. Yet I managed to smile, the blood fleeing my cheeks while I raised my lips for farewell kisses.
At last, the last steps had echoed to silence on the stairs, the bar had fallen behind the shop-door, and I was alone with my husband and Agnes. I dared not look at them.
“You are tired,” said Agnes harshly. “You are both tired. It is time for bed. Jane, will you sleep with me tonight?”
It was a statement rather than a request and it so startled me that I had the courage to look at her. Smiling, she sat in the only chair in the room like a deposed queen amidst the ruin of her kingdom, broken meats and spilt wine with dead flowers and rushes at her feet. My husband sat erect, gasping at her words.
“With you?” I remember whispering, not believing that I had heard aright.
“Yea,” said Agnes in a casual manner, her eyes a-glitter like glass. “This has been a long day. My brother is tired. I can see it in his eyes. You must remember, child, he is not so young as you and needs more rest. For all that he looks hale, he is not strong and wearies easily. His health has been long in my care and I know best for him. He should sleep after such a long day.”
“No!” my husband squeaked, and I saw then for the first time that he was not what I had thought, a passionless ageing man who had married me for gold. There was rage like fire in his eyes and his body shook. “I am no weakling, I need no rest!” he cried.
“I tell you, you need rest.” Momentarily, the honey left Agnes’s tongue, the look of fond amusement fled her eyes, and I noticed how tense her thin body had become, seeming crouched within itself. “I have had instruction from Dr. Malking,” she continued, striving to speak casually, and I saw that the effort cost her dearly, “and you need sleep. He warned me. It is your heart.”
“My heart is strong and I am master in this house—”
“If you would kill yourself… for a silly girl—”
“My wife.”
“A child, a minikin scarce five foot high who’ll grow fat as a turnip in a year or two. For that you’d risk your life, you fool I Did you not note how she gleered at that springal, Hastings, raking him from crown to codpiece? You’ll have the twiggers sniffing here, flies to carrion, making you the horned jest of Chepe. I say you will not sleep with her tonight for your own sake. I will not have you kill yourself.”
“O, glory of God, God, God!” Amazed, I saw that there was foam on the edges of my husband’s lips as, arms raised aloft, he leaped to his feet to tower above his sister-in-law who watched him calmly. “Have I befriended you these years,” he stuttered, “cared for you, kept you since my first wife died, to have you talk like this, insult my wife!… I will not have it, I will not have it!”
“William,” said Agnes gently, sympathetically, “you had best sit down. Excitement might be dangerous. The doctor warned you—”
“To Satan with the doctor!” He gasped, choking with rage and, I am certain, fear. Yea, I read fear in his eyes and in the cheeks emptying of blood. Towards me he darted an entreating glance, but I could do nothing. If he was ill, I knew naught of it and I felt I had been cheated. Ill men should not marry, I thought angrily.
“I will not have it,” he stuttered. “I tell you, I will not. Think you I married to keep a statue? You take too much upon yourself. You are my dead wife’s sister, but I’ll not have it.”
“I spoke for your good—”
“I know what is good for me, I know what’s best.” He clutched his throat and swayed, groping with his other hand to hear his heartbeats. All was so strange and had happened so suddenly that I did not feel that it had aught to do with me. As though watching mummers on a cart, I felt that their acting was of a different world from mine. And yet that was my wedding-night.
“O, O, O,” wailed my husband, still holding his chest and gasping for breath, “who is master here? All those years of work, work, work, no pleasures, rarely even the tavern, never a woman, because God sees all, an honest life, if wearisome, and now this! You cannot do this to me! She is my wife.”
“She is a child,” said Agnes contemptuously.
Both turned to look at me as if until then I had been forgotten in the passion of their argument, and I fidgeted, lowering my eyelids, embarrassingly aware that my feet did not touch the ground while I sat on the tall chest. My unbound hair added to my feeling of childishness and I wished I might hide it to show that I was now a woman. And I did not want to sleep with this man. Whatever curiosity might have been mine had been douced in the quarrel and I prayed he might submit to Agnes’s will and let me go to bed alone. When I peeped at him I saw, to my anger and dismay, that for all his bluster, he too wished to sleep alone. It was not because he did not want me. His looks spoke plain enough of his desire, but he seemed relieved as though he had escaped some test in which he might have failed. Furious and puzzled, I turned to Agnes. Her calling me a child had hurt me deeply and I cried at her:
“I am no child. I am fourteen.”
“A child,” she scoffed, eyeing me from hidden toes to golden head. “My brother’s baby if he wants such luxuries and I doubt not you’ll soon return his condescension with a gilded horn. But do not think to cheat him easily. Long have I been guardian of his chattels and I’ve a sharp eye, girl.”
Tears were behind my lids and I was terrified lest they fall. “Why do you hate me?” I cried, not understanding such unmeaning hatred; for what had I done to her?
“Hate you?” she laughed. “Child, one only hates those whom one fears, and who could fear a little frappet like you?… Come, ‘tis time for bed.”
When she stood briskly up and caught my arm my husband made a moaning noise. Then:
“Go!” he shouted, stamping on the floor. “This night, yea, yea, perhaps it were the best. But only this night, understand?” He put his arms over his face and I heard him weep, but he would not look at me as Agnes caught my wrist and drew me from the room, rushes and dead flowers clinging to my skirt-hem. Into a small chamber on the floor above she led me and it contained only a narrow bed and a little chest.
“You will sleep here,’ she said, raising high the candle so that inkily the shadows raced across the beams and plaster. Very tall she looked with the light beating up under the sharp chin to show black nostrils and black-rimmed eyes that glinted in their hollows.
“Sleep well,’ she said yet did not move away. Long she stared at me, keenly, and I felt shy before that regard that was sharp as a man’s, noting my shape and lingering over my breasts. On them the light shone, deepening the shadows below to define them more fully, the nipples showing through the cloth. “A child,” she said between her teeth, “yet soon a woman. I am mistress here, do you understand? Since my dear sister died I have tended this household, I have been to him a mother, a daughter, ay, and a wife in all save buxomness. I thought he was content. Yet behind my back he was sneaking off to buy you. Men are vile, vile, vile, snared by a golden hair and a puffed-out bosom, forgetting heaven for the hell of carnality. What can he see in you? a child, and a wicked child, I doubt not. Tell me, child, have you not wantoned with your dad’s apprentices? have you not slipped into the yard at night when all else slept? Those innocent eyes will never bubble me.”
I could not speak. She frightened me, seeming a witch in the bright light and velvety shadows. I could only stand, playing with the ends of my hair, watching how the threads glittered when I turned them, and hoping she would go.
“Are you dumb?” she cried. “But, listen. My brother is not strong and you are lusty. The leech has given me warning that you might be his death. You would not want that, would you?”
“No,” I whispered, not caring whether he lived or died so long as this mad woman would leave me.
“No, no?” she mimicked shrilly. “You have no heart. And out of all London, he must choose you! A child in wanton flesh. He will suffer for it, poor man. When I saw how you looked at Hastings, prick-eyed, and you but a minute married, I said to myself: Poor man, poor man, here is more than a thorn for your bed. But take heed…” Closer she drew towards me while I shrank away. So close she came that I could feel the warmth of the candle on my face and my hair began to sizzle and stink. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, and showed such hatred that I feared she might kill me. “Take heed,” she said again, “I will be watching. Think not you have come to queen it here because you wear his ring. Whatever you do, I will see; I can even read your filthy thoughts; and as you are his wife, God save us, I’ll not have you bescumber his name with any foul tricks. You will stay honest and you must not trouble him.”
“No,” I murmured, trying to look away.
“You swear you will not trouble him? Remember, he is weak.”
“O God,” I cried, for my woes were such I could no longer keep silent, “I did not want to marry him. I didn’t want to come here. I care not if I sleep with him or sleep alone so long as you will go and not torment me.”
“I have your word?” she said.
“Yea, yea,” I sobbed, “I swear before God, whatever you wish. I’ll not sleep with him.”
She smiled, taking a deep breath, then moved silently to the door.
“Remember,” she said before she left. “He is a sick man.”
I nodded, too miserable to speak, shutting my eyes on tears as blackness, with the going of the candle, closed about me. I heard the key scrape in the lock and, dressed though I was, I flung myself on the bed to weep, too frightened even to think, feeling that I was doomed for ever to remain, unloved, unwanted. Recalling how tremulously I had prepared for this bridal and how last night I had lain in a fever of excitement and hope and doubt and fear, I wept and sobbed and beat the pillow. I did not love this Shore, but love and marriage rarely joined, and I had thought that in being taken by one who seemed so kind and gentle I was more fortunate than most girls. Only to find this — myself a prisoner to a madwoman and my husband too weak to love me…
My pain was such I thought that I’d not sleep, but the body was tired and dragged the mind to slumber. Then, as I lay half-dozing, hiccuping on my sobs, the hair stuck to my wet cheeks, I saw behind my eyelids the smiling face of Lord Hastings and I stiffened awake again, shivering with a new terror which I could not understand.
