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Authors: Jackie French
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benches, and fresher blood seeped onto frost-cold ground. My wife and Judith and I ate meat out with the motley so none shall say that we who were once yeomen and traders keep ourselves too high, and later gave fresh ale and spiced wine with wafers and small cakes to the yeomen we asked indoors to take a drink with us.
Today our servants feast too, out in the forecourt. Tomorrow begins their winter work: manuring of the hot beds to force the vegetables for winter; the sowing of peas and beans in the upper field that does not freeze; and earthing up the celery and endives. It is the time of year when two weeksâ delay may mean a barren table. I have striven too hard for peace and plenty to be niggardly of my familyâs comforts now.
Is this old age too, that I think more of my stomach than my heart? No, I am not yet old, for I still remember the wonder of a girlâs hand, so small, so white, except for its smudge of ink, that held me in its spell more than her white breast.
Is it the flowing blood of the slain beasts that makes my ink flow so sweet today, when it stayed sluggard in its well all week? So here is Judyth, ready for the page, and here am I, a youth; and here too is our love.
And it was love not of her body, which was sweet, but of the whole of her. We were, as Plato wrote, two souls ripped apart before their birth that join together once again, and poetry and words had done so.
There was a hollow in the beech tree where we left our writings in oiled cloth, with a ribbon tied to a high branch as a message to say she or I had left another there. Meetings of the mind, most sweet; meetings of our hands and lips were sweeter still.
It was easier for me to reach the tree. The glove trade was not so steady that I must ply the needle all the day, and my father, best of men, knew that young men must have their way at sport with friends.
Her road was harder, for a womanâs life is lived with other women, under many eyes; and a young girl under stricter eyes than most, for she was just sixteen. But she had four sisters, all married, besides the brother and sister-in-law with whom she lived since her fatherâs death, and so plenty of good reasons to visit them all; and so near that she had no need of maid or footman to accompany her, not in the quiet estates and fields of Stratford, except on market days when strangers and tinkers might walk the streets, or men who had been too free with ale.
And on her way to visit them, we met. We talked, as well as kissed.
She told me more of the school in France where her father had sent her on her motherâs death. He had indeed been inclined to the Roman faith. Not so her brother, who had put away all Romish things upon their fatherâs death, painted over the frescos in the family chapel and had the priestâs hole nailed shut.
Gone too were the hopes that Judyth might make a high match among the gentry. Her father, no doubt, had intended to dower her well, as he had her sisters, but her brother had inherited all on her fatherâs death, except the three small fields that she had from her motherâs dower; nor in her brotherâs house was she likely to meet anyone of noble birth.
âOr noble mind,â she said, and smiled at me.
That day we discussed Caesar, and did a man do wrong to aim for kingship when Godâs grace had given him the skills and temper for it, but not the station?
And then I went back to my glove-sewing, and she to embroidering linen, each dreaming of the other.
Dinner: a rooster in a blanket; a collar of pork, spiced; beef collops with mustard; a green goose with spinach; sprouts in butter; a rhubarb pie, grown in our own hothouses, which Dr Hall says will be good for my digestion. Ale hot, and spiced with cloves.
Bowels: improved. Waters no longer frothy. I will drink none but warm ales until the spring.
Tuesday, 17th November 1615
Today be St Hildaâs Day, proclaimed by our late Queen as a holiday
Today our servants feast too, out in the forecourt. Tomorrow begins their winter work: manuring of the hot beds to force the vegetables for winter; the sowing of peas and beans in the upper field that does not freeze; and earthing up the celery and endives. It is the time of year when two weeksâ delay may mean a barren table. I have striven too hard for peace and plenty to be niggardly of my familyâs comforts now.
Is this old age too, that I think more of my stomach than my heart? No, I am not yet old, for I still remember the wonder of a girlâs hand, so small, so white, except for its smudge of ink, that held me in its spell more than her white breast.
Is it the flowing blood of the slain beasts that makes my ink flow so sweet today, when it stayed sluggard in its well all week? So here is Judyth, ready for the page, and here am I, a youth; and here too is our love.
And it was love not of her body, which was sweet, but of the whole of her. We were, as Plato wrote, two souls ripped apart before their birth that join together once again, and poetry and words had done so.
There was a hollow in the beech tree where we left our writings in oiled cloth, with a ribbon tied to a high branch as a message to say she or I had left another there. Meetings of the mind, most sweet; meetings of our hands and lips were sweeter still.
It was easier for me to reach the tree. The glove trade was not so steady that I must ply the needle all the day, and my father, best of men, knew that young men must have their way at sport with friends.
Her road was harder, for a womanâs life is lived with other women, under many eyes; and a young girl under stricter eyes than most, for she was just sixteen. But she had four sisters, all married, besides the brother and sister-in-law with whom she lived since her fatherâs death, and so plenty of good reasons to visit them all; and so near that she had no need of maid or footman to accompany her, not in the quiet estates and fields of Stratford, except on market days when strangers and tinkers might walk the streets, or men who had been too free with ale.
And on her way to visit them, we met. We talked, as well as kissed.
She told me more of the school in France where her father had sent her on her motherâs death. He had indeed been inclined to the Roman faith. Not so her brother, who had put away all Romish things upon their fatherâs death, painted over the frescos in the family chapel and had the priestâs hole nailed shut.
Gone too were the hopes that Judyth might make a high match among the gentry. Her father, no doubt, had intended to dower her well, as he had her sisters, but her brother had inherited all on her fatherâs death, except the three small fields that she had from her motherâs dower; nor in her brotherâs house was she likely to meet anyone of noble birth.
âOr noble mind,â she said, and smiled at me.
That day we discussed Caesar, and did a man do wrong to aim for kingship when Godâs grace had given him the skills and temper for it, but not the station?
And then I went back to my glove-sewing, and she to embroidering linen, each dreaming of the other.
Dinner: a rooster in a blanket; a collar of pork, spiced; beef collops with mustard; a green goose with spinach; sprouts in butter; a rhubarb pie, grown in our own hothouses, which Dr Hall says will be good for my digestion. Ale hot, and spiced with cloves.
Bowels: improved. Waters no longer frothy. I will drink none but warm ales until the spring.
Tuesday, 17th November 1615
Today be St Hildaâs Day, proclaimed by our late Queen as a holiday
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