Tradescant had died than share the bed that had belonged to John and Jane. Frances was moved into her father and mother’s old room and Baby John had his nursery room to himself.
John had made no comment about the arrangements except to say that it should all be done as she wished. He did not show any grief at moving from his first wife’s bedroom, nor did he object to the cost of replacing the curtains and wall hangings throughout.
‘They are ten years old.’ Hester justified the expense.
‘It doesn’t seem so long,’ he said simply.
The children were dancing on the garden wall, waiting for them to come down the road from Lambeth.
‘Are you married?’ Frances demanded. ‘Where’s your new dress?’
‘I just wore this one.’
‘Am I to call you Mother?’ Frances asked.
Hester glanced at John. He had bent to scoop Baby John from the wall and was carrying him into the house. He took care not to reply.
‘You can call me Hester, as you always have done. I am not your mother who is in heaven, but I shall do my best to love you and care for you as well as she would have done.’
Frances nodded carelessly, as if she were not much concerned, and scrambled down from the wall and led the way into the house. Hester nodded, she was not disappointed in Frances’s lack of warmth. This was not a child who could easily ask for comfort; but no child needed love more than she did.
The new family went into the parlour and Hester seated herself in the chair on one side of the fire opposite John. Baby John sat on the rug before the fire and Frances hesitated, unsure where she should sit.
Without looking at Hester she sank to her knees before the warmth of the fire and then slowly leaned backwards against the arm of Hester’s chair. Hester dropped her hand gently on the nape of her stepdaughter’s neck and felt the tight, thin muscles of her neck relax at the touch. Frances let her head lean back against her stepmother’s touch, trusted her caress.
‘We shall be happy,’ Hester promised in an undertone to her brave little stepdaughter. ‘All will be well, Frances.’
At bedtime the household gathered for evening prayers and John read from the new book of common prayer, enjoying the rhythm of the language and the sense of security which came from using the same words at the same time of day, every day. The household, which had prayed aloud, speaking freely from their hearts under Jane, now bowed their heads and listened, and when the prayers were over they went about their work of bolting the doors for the night, damping down the fires, and snuffing the candles.
Hester and John went up the stairs together to the big bedroom for the first time. The housemaid was waiting in the room.
‘Cook thought you might want helping off with your gown, Miss Hester – Mrs Tradescant, I should say!’
Hester shook her head. ‘I can do it.’
‘And Cook sent up this tray for the two of you,’ the maid persevered. There had evidently been a strong sense in the kitchen that more should have been done to mark the occasion. ‘She brewed a wedding ale for you,’ the maid said. ‘And there’s some cake and dainty blackberry pudding.’
‘Thank you,’ Hester said. ‘And thank Cook too.’
John nodded and the maid left the room.
The couple looked at each other, their embarrassment dissolved by the maid’s intervention.
‘Clearly they think we should be carousing and singing,’ John said.
‘Perhaps they think they should be carousing,’ Hester observed astutely. ‘I imagine that not all the wedding ale is in these two tankards.’
‘Shall you have a drink?’ John asked.
‘When I’m ready for bed,’ she said, keeping her tone as light and inconsequential as his. She moved towards the bed and climbed up into it. She did not draw the bed curtains against him, but managed, in their shadows, to undress from her gown and to get into her night shift without embarrassment. She emerged with her hair still braided to put her fine gown in the press at the foot of the bed.
John was seated in his chair before the fire, drinking his wedding ale. ‘It’s good,’ he recommended. ‘And I’ve had a little cake too.’
She took up the tankard and sat opposite him, curling up her feet under her night shift. She sipped at the ale. It was strong and sweet. At once a heady sense of relaxation spread through her. ‘This is good,’ she said.
John laughed. ‘I think it probably serves its purpose,’ he said. ‘I was more nervous than for my first day at school and now I am feeling like a cock o’ the walk.’
Hester flushed at that single accidental bawdiness. ‘Oh.’
John buried his face in his tankard, as embarrassed as his new wife. ‘Go to bed,’ he said shortly. ‘I shall join you in a minute.’
She put her thin white feet down on the bare floorboards and went with her quick boyish stride to the bed. John did not turn around as she climbed in. He waited until she had settled and then got up and blew out his candle. He got undressed in the half-darkness and then pulled on his nightgown.
She was lying on the pillow, lit only by a single candle and by the flickering light from the fire. She had unbraided her hair and it spread dark and sweet-smelling on the pillow. A sudden anguish of longing for his lost wife Jane, and the serious passionate desire that they had shared, swept over John. He had promised himself he would not think of her, he had thought it would be fatal to this night if he thought of her, but when he saw Hester in his bed, he did not feel like a bridegroom, but like an unwilling adulterer.
It was a business contract, and it must be fulfilled. John turned his mind to the outrageously half-naked painted women of the old king’s court. He had seen them at New Hall when he was little more than a boy and remembered them still with an erotic mixture of disapproval and desire. He held the thought of them in his mind and moved towards Hester.
She had never been touched by a man who was in love with her, or she would have known at once that John was offering her the false coin of his body while his mind was elsewhere. But she too knew that the contract of marriage was not completed until consummation. She lay still and helpful beneath him while he pierced her and then brutally moved in the wound. She did not complain, she did not comment. She lay in silence while the pain went on and then suddenly stopped as he sighed and then moved away from her.
She rose up, biting her lip against the hurt, and wrapped a cloth tightly around her groin. There was only a little blood, she thought; it probably felt worse than it was. She thought that she would have taken the whole thing easier if she had been younger, fresher, warmer. It had been a cold-hearted assault and a cold-hearted acceptance. She shivered in the darkness and got back into bed beside her husband.
John had turned to lie on his side with his back to her as if he would shut out the sight of her and shut out the thought of her. Hester crept back under the covers, careful not to touch him, not to breach the space between them, and set her teeth against the pain, and against the bitterness of disappointment. She did not cry, she lay very still and dry-eyed and waited for the morning when her
