As Meat Loves Salt

I turned to her and saw her face quite innocent. I pictured Zeb, how he would have answered, perhaps mopping up sauce on a bit of bread, and his eyelashes lying modest on his cheek like a girl’s.

TWO Beating (#ulink_93723fd9-085b-5129-b480-2b2a3a2b551c)

After the mutton and cider I felt the need of fresh air. It was Peter’s turn for scouring the dishes, so I went out into the rosemary maze. I loved this maze, its pungent scent, the blue blossoms which besprinkled the dark hedges in the summer and the fragrant knot garden at its heart, where one could sit on the bench and doze. Caro went along with me, stealing a few minutes before going back to the house and Mervyn’s wine-stained shirt, for he no sooner fouled a shirt than he changed it, no sooner changed than he fouled. His laundry had often robbed me of courting time.

We sat on the warm stone seat, carved with suns and hourglasses, and twined ourselves in an embrace. My hat fell off onto the chamomile behind the bench and so that we should be equal I pulled off her cap and kissed her stiff yellow coil of hair. She laughed and put her face up to mine. There was cider on her breath. I touched my mouth to hers and she looked straight at me, then closed her eyes. Very slowly, softly, she nibbled my tongue as I slid it between her lips. I closed my eyes also, the better to feel the inside of her mouth. We stayed like that some time, tasting and toying, while bees droned up and down the rosemary hedges, until Caro broke away and kissed me on the nose. ‘I should go, Jacob.’

‘A little longer—’ I pulled her onto my lap. The skin of her breasts, as much as I could see and stroke, was like petals of the purest white roses. I wondered, not for the first time, how it must feel to embrace a woman without her stays, without even her shift. My breath came faster and I strained her to me.

Caro whispered, ‘The Mistress may come out.’

‘She may indeed.’

A tussle followed, with much laughter and tickling, but at last I let her go and she went back to sitting at my side. Holding hands, we contemplated the knot garden while I suffered the familiar pain which would only be eased upon our betrothal.

Once, in that garden, I had put my hand right down her bodice while we kissed, and felt the tender bud of her breast swell and push greedily between my fingers. My own flesh had straightway begun to ache, and I caught such a look in her eyes as told me plainly what would happen next if I did not stop. I did stop; I withdrew my hand, and heard her moan with disappointment. I had passed up a chance, but gained a knowledge inexpressibly sweet. Many men are wed for their purses, the man being taken, oft grudgingly, along with the money. I knew with proud certitude that this was not my case. There was no need to hurry, to take her in that furtive way in which Zeb conducted his loves. We would wait until the appointed night. It might even be that something in me took pleasure in teasing her. Sometimes, as we worked together or sat decorously side by side, I recalled that pleading moan of hers, and smiled.

‘Poor Chris.’ Caro interlaced her fingers with mine. ‘A hideous death.’

I had forgotten Walshe. The eager shoot that was my body shrivelled as if she had thrown cold water on me.

She frowned. ‘And yet—’

‘Yet?’

‘Now that I think on it – he was always strange. What was his business here? Wandering at night, on another’s land?’

‘Perhaps he was stopped by someone from the house,’ I said. My stomach fluttered; I wondered would she notice the sweat which had begun squeezing from my hand.

‘Folk naturally defend their own,’ Caro went on. ‘Or a servant who kills a trespasser by chance, shall he be blamed?’

My guts coiled within me for I thought I saw a way out of my gaol. ‘So,’ I put it to her, ‘if it were one of us dispatched Chris, would you deem him guilty?’

‘’Twould depend why he did it.’ She straightened suddenly. ‘Why Jacob, do you suppose it is one of us?’

I hesitated.

‘Yes! You have a man in mind,’ she insisted.

‘For myself, none. But we are servants, we must look to be suspected.’

Caro seemed satisfied with this. However, in speaking it, I had slammed the door of the gaol on myself, and now felt my courage begin to slip away.

‘I saw you from the window,’ Caro went on, ‘dragging the pond. I had made up my mind for Patience.’

‘Well, you knew what cause she had to despair,’ I said. ‘Her condition.’

Caro’s hand stiffened in mine but she said nothing.

‘I am not Godfrey, that things should be kept from me,’ I said.

‘Zeb asked me not to.’

There was a thunderbolt! I had thought to receive some such answer as, I did but yesterday find out, or I do not like such talk. My love, the woman I had near entrusted with my secret, with my very life, was all the while in private conference with my own brother.

I put Caro away from me and searched her face. ‘Zeb told you—’

‘Asked.’ She looked back frankly, without shame.

‘But why should I not know? He is my brother. I am the child’s uncle!’ I went on, growing more angry as the full sense of it came to me. Why, he had gone so far as to mock me for my ignorance.

‘He said he must tell you himself,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you not think that was right, Jacob?’

‘Aye! Would that he had told me before he told you!’ I got up and retrieved my hat. Then, not wanting to sit down again, I put it on and stayed behind the bench, away from her.

‘It was Patience first broke it to me, not Zeb,’ protested Caro. She twisted round to speak to me; there was a flush beginning in her cheeks.

‘I do not think he would ever have told me,’ I brooded. ‘Had we pulled her out of the pond, how happy he would be!’

‘No, Jacob! How can you say such things of him?’

‘Well, does he look miserable? Does he weep, is he unable to eat?’

‘Not while you are there. But I have seen him weep.’

‘Frightened he’d be made to marry her, most like.’ I circled the bench. ‘And had I known it, he would have been.’

‘Well, you know now,’ Caro said. Her eyes were dry and not as soft as I had seen them when we came into the maze.

‘He has angered me. And so have you.’

‘You are too easily angered.’ She sat very straight with her fingers intertwined on her lap. ‘That is why you are not told things.’

I was amazed. ‘Is this how you speak to your future husband? So you have let Zeb give an account of my character!’

‘No indeed. I have eyes and ears of my own.’ Caro stood up and arranged the top of her gown. ‘It may be he would not marry her, but to say he wishes her dead! You are too fierce with your brother.’

‘Was it not you, yourself, told me of her filthy braggings? Said it sickened you? Would a man want to marry that?’ I grimaced in disgust.

‘Such women do marry. What would you have him do?’ She replaced her cap. ‘But you are troubled, it is natural with Chris’s death. Surely that’s more terrible than—’

‘What has Chris to do with this?’

‘Jacob! Zebedee has lost both friend and love. Have some pity.’ Caro turned and walked through the first gap in the maze.

‘He plays on the pity of silly maids and then he ruins them,’ I shouted after her.

It is a woman of all people who should see the danger in such a fellow, and a woman who never will. I sat arguing it out with her though she could no longer hear me. She was as obstinate as Izzy, who was forever telling me that Zeb was not really bad, for all the world as if he too were a wench dazzled by Zeb’s eyes.