stepped after her and was about to take her hand but some stupid shyness checked the movement. ‘Elizabeth!’ he said more gently.
She hesitated, but she did not turn. ‘I was afraid you were never coming back,’ she whispered. ‘I was afraid that you had married me to fulfil the agreement, and to get my dowry, and that you would never come back to me at all.’
‘Of course! Of course I would come back!’ He was astounded at her. ‘I married you in good faith! Of course I would come back!’
She dipped her head down and then pulled up her apron to rub at her eyes. Still she did not turn around to him. ‘You did not write,’ she said softly. ‘And it has been two months.’
Now it was he who turned away. He looked away from the house, over the little plot where his horse grazed, and towards the hill where the square-towered church pointed up at the sky. ‘I know,’ he said shortly. ‘I meant to …’
She raised her head but still she did not turn around. He thought they must look a pair of fools, back to back in their own yard instead of in each other’s arms.
‘Why did you not?’ she asked softly.
He cleared his throat to hide his embarrassment. ‘I cannot write very fair,’ he said awkwardly. ‘That is to say, I cannot write at all. I can read a bit, I can reckon very swiftly, but I cannot write. And anyway … I should not know what to say.’
She turned to him; but in his embarrassment, he did not see her. He was digging the heel of his riding boot into the corner of her little square of hen-scratched dust.
‘What would you have said, if you had written?’ she asked and her voice was very soft and tempting. It was a voice which a man would turn to and rest upon. John resisted the temptation to spin on his heel, snatch her up and bury his face in her neck.
‘I would have said I was sorry,’ he confessed gruffly. ‘Sorry to have been ill-tempered on our wedding night, and sorry that I had to leave you that very morning. When I was angry with them for making a noise I had thought that we would have the next day in peace, and that anything troublesome could be mended then. I had thought to wake early in the morning and love you then. But then the message came and I went up to London and there was no way of telling you that I was sorry.’
Hesitantly she stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘I am sorry too,’ she said simply. ‘I thought these things were easier for men. I thought that you were doing just exactly what you wished. I thought that you had not bedded me because …’ her voice became choked and she ended in a thin whisper ‘… because you have an aversion to me, and that you went back to Theobalds to avoid me.’
John spun around and snatched his wife to his heart. ‘I do not!’ He felt her whole frame convulse with a deep sob. ‘I do not have an aversion!’
She was warm in his arms and her skin was soft. He kissed her face and her wet eyelids, and her smooth sweet neck and the dimples of her collarbone at the neck of her gown, and suddenly he felt desire sweep over him as easy and as natural as a spring rainstorm across a field of grass. He scooped her up and carried her into the house and kicked the door shut behind him, and he laid her down on the hearthrug before the little spinster’s fire where she had sat, alone and lonely, for so many evenings, and loved her until it grew dark outside and only the firelight illuminated their enfolded bodies.
I do not have an aversion to you,’ he said.
At suppertime they rose from the floor, chilled and uncomfortable. ‘I have some bread and cheese and a broth,’ Elizabeth said.
‘Whatever you have in the larder will do for me,’ John replied. ‘I’ll fetch some wood for the fire.’
‘I’ll run up the road to my mother’s house and borrow a jug of beefstock,’ she said, pulling her grey gown on over her head. She turned her back to him and offered him the ties on her white apron. ‘I’ll only be a moment.’
‘Give them my good wishes,’ John said. ‘I’ll call up and see them tomorrow.’
‘We could go up to the house for supper,’ she suggested. ‘They would be glad to see you tonight.’
‘I have other plans for tonight,’ John said with a meaning smile. Elizabeth felt herself warm through with the intensity of her blush. ‘Oh.’ She recovered herself. ‘I’ll get the beefstock then.’
John nodded and listened to her quick step down the brick path and out into the main street. He stacked the fireplace with a liberal supply of logs and then went out through the back yard to the little field to see to his horse. When he came back Elizabeth was stirring a pot hung on a chain from the spit, and there was bread and new cheese on the table and two jugs of small ale.
‘I brought my book,’ she said carefully. ‘I thought you might like us to look at it, together.’
‘What book?’
‘My lesson book,’ she said. ‘My father taught me to read and write and I did my writing in this book. It has clean pages in it still. I thought, if you wished, I might teach you.’
For a moment John was going to rebuff her; the idea of a wife teaching her husband anything was contrary to the laws of nature and of God; but she looked very sweet and very young. Her hair was tumbled and her cap was slightly askew. Lying on his cape on the floor of the little cottage she had been tender and ready to be pleased, and at the end, openly passionate. He found he did not feel much like supporting the laws of God and nature; instead he found that he was rather disposed to oblige her. Besides, it would be good to know how to read and write.
‘D’you know how to write in French?’ he asked. ‘And Latin words?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you want to learn French?’
‘I can speak French, and a bit of Italian, and enough German to see that my lord is not cheated when I am buying plants for him from a sea captain. And I know some plant names in Latin. But I never learned to write any of it down.’
Her face was illuminated with her smile. ‘I can teach you.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But you must tell no-one.’
Her gaze was open and honest. ‘Of course not. It shall be between the two of us, as everything else will be.’
That night they made love again in the warmth and comfort of the big bed. Elizabeth, free from her fear that he did not love her, and discovering a sensuality which she had not imagined, clung to him and wrapped her arms and legs around him and sobbed for pleasure. Then they wrapped their blankets around their shoulders and sat side by side on the bed and looked out at the deep blue of the night sky and the sharp whiteness of the thousands of stars.
The village was all quiet, not one light showed. The road away from the village, north to Gravesend and London, was empty and silent, ghostly in the starlight. An owl hooted, quartering the fields on silent wings. John reached for his waistcoat folded on the chest at the foot of the bed.
‘I have something I should like to give you,’ he said quietly. ‘I think it is perhaps the most valuable thing I own. Perhaps you will think it foolish; but if you would like it, I should like to give it to you.’
His
