As Meat Loves Salt. Maria McCann

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      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.

      They were both of them deluded. He would never be anything but fickle, tasting one love and flying on to another. There had been a tramping woman, older than himself and no innocent, when he was but fifteen: I had caught Peter letting him in late at night, flushed and exhilarated. Being once alerted by Izzy, I had observed Zeb’s steady heating of Patience, who was only too hot already: his tickling her, putting the point of his tongue in her ear, and generally laying siege to that tottering fort, her virtue. Whenever I saw him at it, rage choked me. Had he been younger, and under my authority, I would have prescribed him a beating.

      

      Back indoors, I again took up the tray and went on with my scouring, pressing the grains of sand against the pewter until each dish would have passed, at a distance, for silver. Near me sat Izzy, scraping teasels over Sir Bastard’s coat to raise the nap.

      ‘That will have to do.’ He stood and held up the garment. ‘What do you think?’

      ‘You’ve wrought marvels with it.’

      ‘It stinks of wine. God, how the man slobbers and sicks!’ He threw it aside. It was not like my brother to let ill temper gain on him and I saw in his petulance how weary he was.

      ‘The house is quiet without Zeb,’ I ventured.

      ‘Why do they keep him so long!’ Izzy moaned. ‘Is he suspected?’

      ‘No reason he should be.’ I rinsed the pewter clear of sand and began drying the pieces on a cloth. At that moment the sound of rapid footsteps came to us from the corridor. With a quick glance at me, Izzy ran to the doorway and looked out. I heard someone whispering and saw him gesture in reply. He closed the door and came back to where I was stacking the dishes.

      ‘That was Caro. Zeb’s back.’

      ‘Has he seen the Master yet?’

      Izzy shrugged. We left the scullery and made our way to the hall, where we found our brother in council with Godfrey.

      ‘If the Mistress would be so good,’ Zeb was saying.

      Godfrey listened judicially, nodding from time to time. ‘I will inform her. And when does he expect to have the cart, did you say?’

      ‘Tomorrow. O, and he asks that the boy’s friends here may be let go to the funeral.’

      ‘We shall see,’ the steward answered, frowning. The frown meant nothing, for Godfrey had never been known to grant anything on the first request and we would most likely get a half-holiday if we wished it. For my part I had just as lief stay home.

      ‘That is all the message he sent,’ Zeb prompted.

      ‘Thank you, Zebedee. Now, have you and your brothers sufficient work?’

      ‘Were we not to beat the hangings?’

      ‘Indeed. Pray do so.’ Godfrey turned and strode towards My Lady’s parlour. I groaned inwardly, for if there was one task I detested, beating hangings was it. ‘In God’s name, why remind him of that?’ I СКАЧАТЬ