Aunt. I bring it to your attention in case you wish to try elsewhere next market day. That stallholder clearly carries inferior goods.’
Rose squeezed her temper into a corner of her heart. She wanted to shake her niece, mess up her appearance until her fine blonde hair looked a bird’s nest and her prim ruff wilted, bring her down into the dirt with the rest of humanity. No wonder poor Mercy spent all her time trying to curb her natural spiritedness; her sister was as perfect and heavy as a marble angel hovering over the family. Faith was so utterly good and patient that Rose could not endure being in her presence for long.
‘I think I’ll walk to meet Mercy.’ Rose plucked a wrinkled apple from the pantry to make a portable breakfast.
‘It’s a long walk, Aunt. I’m sure the Belknaps will send a servant to accompany her home.’ Faith gathered the utensils for the family breakfast while the maid set the board on the trestles in the parlour.
‘All the same, I wish to go. Will you see to my mother when she wakes?’
‘But of course. I have the porridge ready for her.’
Rose had to allow that Faith was unflagging in tending Mother Isham, her only failing there being her strict adherence to truth. But what could Rose’s poor distracted mother do with ‘truth’ when her mind had become a ragbag of snippets, the past far more real to her than the present?
Stepping outside the Harts’ house felt like escaping a prison. Rose wrapped her cloak about her, this day considerably colder. February had snapped icy jaws again after the sunny yawn of yesterday. She liked living on the bridge: it was neither one thing nor another – not serious-minded, money-orientated City; not pleasure-seeking, immoral Southwark – suspended between the two like a maiden unable to choose between two suitors. Houses covered the entirety of the bridge, leaving only a narrow street down the centre. This passage was thronged with people crossing into the City, lingering to buy goods in the many shops. You could get everything from a pair of fine leather boots to a fashionable plumed cap within a short walk: all you need do was look overhead for the sign denoting each craftsman. Here the sober guildsman could head south, shedding his respectability for a scarlet cloak and dive into the Southwark stews; travelling the other way, the drab could spend her earnings on a prim bodice and petticoat and fool the folk of the City that she was an irreproachable goodwife.
Rose paused outside her favourite shoemakers. She had a weakness for elaborate footwear and recently she had fallen into the habit of admiring a pair of red pointed slippers that sat in the window awaiting collection. Not that she wanted to buy them, for they reminded her too much of her own shame. After her lover Henry Talbot had cast her over five years ago without making good his promise of marriage, she had plucked all her own plumage, got rid of her gaily embroidered petticoats, gaudy shoes, jaunty caps and even cut her blonde hair off at the neck in a fit of self-punishment. These gewgaws had become a symbol of her stupidity to fall into thepattern of the silly maiden gulled by the handsome, but selfish man who cared for none but himself.
Rose wiped the fog of her breath from the pane, thinking it an apt image of how blind she had been. She hadn’t even had the excuse of youth. She had been twenty-five when Talbot had swept into her life in her home town of Norwich and waited until she was thirty still thinking they would be married when he got round to it. Oh, his excuses had been plausible enough, and she had thought herself in love. First he had told her that they had to move so could not stay long enough to have the banns read; next he could not afford the special licence; then the priest in their parish was too disapproving; and so the excuses went on. It had taken Henry no more than three weeks to meet, woo and wed the woman who now called herself Mistress Talbot,
Rose squeezed her temper into a corner of her heart. She wanted to shake her niece, mess up her appearance until her fine blonde hair looked a bird’s nest and her prim ruff wilted, bring her down into the dirt with the rest of humanity. No wonder poor Mercy spent all her time trying to curb her natural spiritedness; her sister was as perfect and heavy as a marble angel hovering over the family. Faith was so utterly good and patient that Rose could not endure being in her presence for long.
‘I think I’ll walk to meet Mercy.’ Rose plucked a wrinkled apple from the pantry to make a portable breakfast.
‘It’s a long walk, Aunt. I’m sure the Belknaps will send a servant to accompany her home.’ Faith gathered the utensils for the family breakfast while the maid set the board on the trestles in the parlour.
‘All the same, I wish to go. Will you see to my mother when she wakes?’
‘But of course. I have the porridge ready for her.’
Rose had to allow that Faith was unflagging in tending Mother Isham, her only failing there being her strict adherence to truth. But what could Rose’s poor distracted mother do with ‘truth’ when her mind had become a ragbag of snippets, the past far more real to her than the present?
Stepping outside the Harts’ house felt like escaping a prison. Rose wrapped her cloak about her, this day considerably colder. February had snapped icy jaws again after the sunny yawn of yesterday. She liked living on the bridge: it was neither one thing nor another – not serious-minded, money-orientated City; not pleasure-seeking, immoral Southwark – suspended between the two like a maiden unable to choose between two suitors. Houses covered the entirety of the bridge, leaving only a narrow street down the centre. This passage was thronged with people crossing into the City, lingering to buy goods in the many shops. You could get everything from a pair of fine leather boots to a fashionable plumed cap within a short walk: all you need do was look overhead for the sign denoting each craftsman. Here the sober guildsman could head south, shedding his respectability for a scarlet cloak and dive into the Southwark stews; travelling the other way, the drab could spend her earnings on a prim bodice and petticoat and fool the folk of the City that she was an irreproachable goodwife.
Rose paused outside her favourite shoemakers. She had a weakness for elaborate footwear and recently she had fallen into the habit of admiring a pair of red pointed slippers that sat in the window awaiting collection. Not that she wanted to buy them, for they reminded her too much of her own shame. After her lover Henry Talbot had cast her over five years ago without making good his promise of marriage, she had plucked all her own plumage, got rid of her gaily embroidered petticoats, gaudy shoes, jaunty caps and even cut her blonde hair off at the neck in a fit of self-punishment. These gewgaws had become a symbol of her stupidity to fall into thepattern of the silly maiden gulled by the handsome, but selfish man who cared for none but himself.
Rose wiped the fog of her breath from the pane, thinking it an apt image of how blind she had been. She hadn’t even had the excuse of youth. She had been twenty-five when Talbot had swept into her life in her home town of Norwich and waited until she was thirty still thinking they would be married when he got round to it. Oh, his excuses had been plausible enough, and she had thought herself in love. First he had told her that they had to move so could not stay long enough to have the banns read; next he could not afford the special licence; then the priest in their parish was too disapproving; and so the excuses went on. It had taken Henry no more than three weeks to meet, woo and wed the woman who now called herself Mistress Talbot,
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