Read Online A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin - Free Book Online Page B

And I wouldn’t have a cleaner I couldn’t trust, not round the Press.”
    His arguments for changing nothing emerge with the briskness of someone who doesn’t want to be persuaded, for reasons too deep to be uprooted by mere common sense. I look at him, and in the fading light see Mark’s photograph behind his shoulder. “You don’t want to sell the house, do you?”
    “Una, my dear, I’m seventy-eight, and I’m not getting anyyounger. I’ve faced that, you know, just as I’ve faced everything else. I thought I could face this too.”
    “You thought? Not now?”
    “Lionel rang up just before you arrived.”
    “I’m going to see him tomorrow.”
    “So he said. He’s looking forward to it so much. But it wasn’t about that, it was about selling the house. He says he’s been advised that it’s not sellable without the workshop. We’ve got to sell the whole Chantry, not just the house. The workshop, all the garden. Everything.”
    “What?”
    “Something to do with access to the road, and planning permission, because they’ll want to build.”
    “But—”
    “I know. I’d have to move. A flat, or something.”
    “Could you—” I swallow hard. “Could you not buy somewhere with enough space? Or even have a workshop somewhere separate?”
    He shakes his head. “I’m too old to start again…No. If it’s all sold, there’s no getting away from it: it would be the end of the Solmani Press.”
    Elysabeth—the 33rd yr of the reign of King Henry the Sixth
    In the end, after many months had passed, and with each my courses had brought a disappointment, I determined to go on pilgrimage. John was too busy with the manor, and with the endless struggle to keep the King on his throne and the Queen from driving all who wavered in their allegiance to Lancaster into the arms of the Yorkist rebels. But to my joy Antony came with me. Hejourneyed to seek the grace that he seemed always to yearn for, though I know few boys or men who lacked it less. I traveled all those miles to pray for a son.
    Two years married, and I was still barren. I could not understand why it should be so. John took me whenever he was at home, and with a little advice from Mal, I had learned to please him, and to be pleasured by him in my turn, for to do so, she said, would help a baby to come. Besides, she said, it was hard enough to be a woman, and no need to stint such pleasures as I could find. Such matters were privy to us, or as privy as the lives of the master and mistress of a manor can ever be. But with my belly thin and my breasts dry I was still a poor wife in the eyes of the world, and at each of her many visits to us at Astley, Lady Ferrars looked more sour and was secretly more pleased, for if I had no child the Astley lands would revert to her estate.
    Grafton was on my way from Astley to Walsingham, and I spent some happy days playing with the children and taking some of the household cares from my mother’s shoulders, for she had but lately been brought to bed with Eleanor, and with each baby, she said, it seemed more weeks before she found her full strength again. I said nothing, but she leaned forward and patted my hand. “All will be well, ma fille . Keep faith.”
    Then Antony and I set off for Norfolk. We rode by Northampton, Peterborough, and Wisbech, and stopped with our Haute cousins at Lynn, to hear the news and give it, and rest the horses and ourselves. Antony wrestled with our cousins and played quoits, while I asked advice of my aunt Haute for the getting of children. Then we rode on, the road thick now with pilgrims: Castle Rising, Flitcham, New Houghton. At Fakenham we left the horses and walked the Pilgrim’s Road in the bitter salt windthat comes off the Wash as if it would strip the very clothes from your back. I shivered and pulled my cloak close to my throat. But Antony seemed indifferent to the cold. He was no more than thirteen or fourteen summers, a boy, a little brother whose sins and hopes were