knife.
“You any good at toasting bread, tibber? I can’t seem to get the trick of this,
at all.”
“Perhaps we
could eat it as is?” she suggested, and he raised a very sardonic eyebrow.
“Only if they
also left a hammer and chisel.”
But she did her
best, with great ragged lopsided doorsteps of rock-hard bread. “Hunger is the
best salt,” he said hopefully, and she looked at the curling grey slabs of meat
laid on the smouldering crusts.
“You reckon?”
"Well.
Perhaps a little more salt, then."
The house looked
better in the sunlight. Such sunlight as there was, in mid-November, but it
streamed through the sparkling window-glass onto spotless stone flags, onto
pristine plaster and new wood.
It was bare and
somewhat comfortless and very, very clean, and that was her husband all over,
really. He'd been a soldier for so long he didn't know how to be else.
Scrupulously clean, and very neat, and with no more baggage than he could
carry. She thought of her own clean, but cluttered, chamber at White Notley. Of
the kitchen there, with the mending basket under the settle by the fire,
because everyone ended up in the kitchen at White Notley. Her father's habit of
leaving his boots by the kitchen door, a habit he claimed was the result of
twenty years of persistent reminders from his wife about tracking mud across
the clean floors. Nell's embroidery, systematically being dismembered by one of
the kitchen cats. (Not infrequently, the kitchen cats themselves, strewn across
the patches of sunlight in the kitchen, or belly-up on the settle.)
It made her a
little sad, because White Notley was home, and Four Ashes was a house. It was
going to be her house, hers and Thankful's, and yet it was empty, there was
nothing about it that made it their own.
And yet, there
were the beginnings of hope, and of laughter, here: of the things that might
make it more than four walls and a roof, but a home. There was a smear of soot
on his patrician nose. Thomazine wondered if she ought to point it out. Shortly
after dawn this morning, she might have thought it would bother him. Right now,
looking at her bright-eyed, dishevelled husband, who couldn't grin, but was
nonetheless radiating joy like a wriggly pup, she wasn't so sure. On his knees
in front of a hearth that hadn't been swept in months, if not years, with his
shirt-sleeves pushed up to his elbows (and he had rather nice, muscled, solid
swordsman's forearms, she thought absently) blowing onto a very reluctant pile
of grubby, smouldering shavings, and getting pinker and pinker with the effort
of it -
"Oh,
Thankful, I do love you," she said, quite without thinking, and he looked
up, blowing his hair out of his eyes.
"Well. I
thank you. I should feel considerably more loveable if I could get this thing
to stay alight, mind."
He was a dear,
funny thing at times, and she was torn between the desire to stand there being
unhelpful and ruffle him yet further, and do something useful.
In the end, she
decided in the interests of domestic harmony it was better to be helpful, and
she whirled and set off into the body of the house, to see what scraps and
splinters might have been left from the construction work.
And it was an
odd thing, but that bare, empty, plaster-scented house felt more like home,
already.
13
They had just about managed to achieve
something that was almost edible, with much laughter and restrained cursing,
when they heard hoofbeats on the cobbles, and the sound of boots running. And
Thomazine had barely had time to extinguish the present smouldering crust,
before the barton door slammed open.
He had not
knocked, and nor did he stand on ceremony.
The stocky,
black-haired man with the brace of pistols about his person was evidently not
in the mood for discussion, because he had that very scarlet, blotchy look
about his face that very angry fair-skinned people often got when they were
vexed beyond endurance, and with a remarkable presence of mind
“You any good at toasting bread, tibber? I can’t seem to get the trick of this,
at all.”
“Perhaps we
could eat it as is?” she suggested, and he raised a very sardonic eyebrow.
“Only if they
also left a hammer and chisel.”
But she did her
best, with great ragged lopsided doorsteps of rock-hard bread. “Hunger is the
best salt,” he said hopefully, and she looked at the curling grey slabs of meat
laid on the smouldering crusts.
“You reckon?”
"Well.
Perhaps a little more salt, then."
The house looked
better in the sunlight. Such sunlight as there was, in mid-November, but it
streamed through the sparkling window-glass onto spotless stone flags, onto
pristine plaster and new wood.
It was bare and
somewhat comfortless and very, very clean, and that was her husband all over,
really. He'd been a soldier for so long he didn't know how to be else.
Scrupulously clean, and very neat, and with no more baggage than he could
carry. She thought of her own clean, but cluttered, chamber at White Notley. Of
the kitchen there, with the mending basket under the settle by the fire,
because everyone ended up in the kitchen at White Notley. Her father's habit of
leaving his boots by the kitchen door, a habit he claimed was the result of
twenty years of persistent reminders from his wife about tracking mud across
the clean floors. Nell's embroidery, systematically being dismembered by one of
the kitchen cats. (Not infrequently, the kitchen cats themselves, strewn across
the patches of sunlight in the kitchen, or belly-up on the settle.)
It made her a
little sad, because White Notley was home, and Four Ashes was a house. It was
going to be her house, hers and Thankful's, and yet it was empty, there was
nothing about it that made it their own.
And yet, there
were the beginnings of hope, and of laughter, here: of the things that might
make it more than four walls and a roof, but a home. There was a smear of soot
on his patrician nose. Thomazine wondered if she ought to point it out. Shortly
after dawn this morning, she might have thought it would bother him. Right now,
looking at her bright-eyed, dishevelled husband, who couldn't grin, but was
nonetheless radiating joy like a wriggly pup, she wasn't so sure. On his knees
in front of a hearth that hadn't been swept in months, if not years, with his
shirt-sleeves pushed up to his elbows (and he had rather nice, muscled, solid
swordsman's forearms, she thought absently) blowing onto a very reluctant pile
of grubby, smouldering shavings, and getting pinker and pinker with the effort
of it -
"Oh,
Thankful, I do love you," she said, quite without thinking, and he looked
up, blowing his hair out of his eyes.
"Well. I
thank you. I should feel considerably more loveable if I could get this thing
to stay alight, mind."
He was a dear,
funny thing at times, and she was torn between the desire to stand there being
unhelpful and ruffle him yet further, and do something useful.
In the end, she
decided in the interests of domestic harmony it was better to be helpful, and
she whirled and set off into the body of the house, to see what scraps and
splinters might have been left from the construction work.
And it was an
odd thing, but that bare, empty, plaster-scented house felt more like home,
already.
13
They had just about managed to achieve
something that was almost edible, with much laughter and restrained cursing,
when they heard hoofbeats on the cobbles, and the sound of boots running. And
Thomazine had barely had time to extinguish the present smouldering crust,
before the barton door slammed open.
He had not
knocked, and nor did he stand on ceremony.
The stocky,
black-haired man with the brace of pistols about his person was evidently not
in the mood for discussion, because he had that very scarlet, blotchy look
about his face that very angry fair-skinned people often got when they were
vexed beyond endurance, and with a remarkable presence of mind
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