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Elizabeth descended reluctantly, and pouting murmured that she had been looking at the beautiful coloured window.

Thomas Fones gave the window an impatient glance. “Bah! An idolatrous Roman bauble left from the old days. Hurry up, Bess!”

His daughter obeyed, feeling dismay. “Roman” and “idolatrous” were both bad things, she had been told that often enough while learning her catechism. She climbed on to the cart seat beside her mother and soon forgot the window in the excitements of the journey.

The vanishing sun deepened the low Suffolk hills to violet, but the afterglow would last a long time yet, for it was May. Under a great oak beyond the blossoming hedge, a brown-smocked shepherd began to pipe a little homing tune to his flock. Elizabeth heard the tune and the obedient answering tinkle of the bellwether, then the admonitory barks of the sheep-dog. The wagon trundled and bumped onward, but Elizabeth gazed eagerly back towards the shepherd, loving his strange little tune. And soon we’ll be at Groton, she thought. Jack would be waiting for them, and Harry too. There’d be custard tarts and sage honey for supper, her mother had promised it

Elizabeth looked up into her mother’s face and was puzzled to see sadness in the grey eyes; puzzled and faintly resentful because her mother did not share her own anticipation - and it was seldom that communion between them failed. “When will we be there, Mama, tell when?” She plucked at her mother’s velvet cloak.

“Soon,” said Anne Fones. “You must have patience, Bess.”

Elizabeth sighed and turned to her sister Martha for response. But Martha sat very straight on the other side of their mother, clutching the bunch of primroses they had picked earlier. She looked frightened, her eyes were fixed on the carter’s broad sweaty back, she was chewing her lips. But then Martha was only six and frightened more often than not. Sammy, of course, did not count, he was nothing but a swaddled lump on their mother’s lap, sucking greedily at the breast beneath the concealing cloak. And Father? She peered around the carter on the front seat to look at Thomas Fones. He was jogging on ahead and having some difficulty managing the horse they had picked up in Chelmsford. Father hardly ever rode and didn’t like it He was a Londoner and hated the country; besides he had pains in his joints. Pains were part of Father. Elizabeth was used to running upstairs from the kitchen with fresh coals for the warming pan, or up from their apothecary shop with a jar of leeches to suck Wood from an aching knee or gouty toe.

“Ah, there’s something flying by. I
want
it!” cried Elizabeth, distracted by a swift rush of desire for a tiny yellow shape that danced above the hawthorn hedge like a fairy. “Perhaps it if a fairy!” she added, catching her breath. Elizabeth’s nurse had come from this part of Suffolk, and had seen many fairies.

Anne Fones put a firm hand on her child’s shoulder as Elizabeth started to jump from the wagon. “Sit still, Bess,” said the mother quietly. “ Tis only a common brimstone butterfly. You’ll see many more in the country.”

Elizabeth subsided while she watched the ruby-spotted golden wings .flitting off so free and airy into the gloaming, then some disturbing echo from her mother’s voice reached her. She looked up and said with wonder, “Are you weeping? There’s tears on your cheeks.”

Anne Fones bent her head quickly. “My heart is full because I’m coming home, Bess. These are Winthrop fields, and that wood there is where I used to play when I was seven years old like you. In a moment you’ll see the pinnacles on Groton church, and behind them the chimneys of the Manor.”

“Where?” cried Elizabeth. “Where?” She peered towards the skyline of elms. “Oh,
why
does this old nag walk so slow!”

But Martha shrank against her mother, and whispered, “I don’t want to get there - I’m afraid ...”

“Afraid of what?” cried Elizabeth impatiently. “It’ll be rare sport with all our cousins to play with, and the ponies, calves, lambs, and dogs. Isn’t it so, Mother?”

“No doubt,” said Anne gently, feeling Martha stiffen. Martha ever shrank from new experience as much as Elizabeth exulted in it. May God bless and guide both of them in the years to come, since I think
I
shall not be here to help them. Anne felt the baby tugging angrily at her breast. The milk was lessening each day, though Sammy was but three months old. That might be because of the cough that wracked her at night, and the distaste for food which had come upon her of late. But it might be - aye. There was no use hiding from or rebelling against the Will of God which had certainly sent into her womb yet another tiny soul. Was it sin to exhort God that
this
new baby might live, as three had not? Dorothy, she thought - her first. Born right here at Groton, she had been found dead in her cradle after their return to London. And little John and Anne - God had taken them back too, almost at once. His Will was inscrutable, and must not be questioned. There came into her mind a blasphemous comparison. A husband’s will was inscrutable too, and obedience to it was dreary hard at times. She glanced at the meagre figure plodding ahead on the Chelmsford horse, at the wide beaver hat flopping over the hunched shoulders. A sickly man in middle life who loved her in his fashion, and yet would not contain his lust and forbear a few weeks longer - as she had implored.

“Mother, is it Groton Manor there?” cried Elizabeth, grabbing Anne’s arm. Anne looked towards the four high chimneys twisted like barley sugar, saw the many gables, the oak beams or the half-timbering stoutly brown amidst the cream plaster walls. “Yes, dear.”

“It’s large,” cried Elizabeth. “And grand, fine as the Lord Mayor of London’s Manse!”

“No,” Anne shook her head, ever watchful to curb Bess’s exaggerations, “but it is a fair manor house.” It had been built way back in 1558, the first year of the good old Queen’s reign. It was partially constructed with bricks and stones from a little priory which had belonged to Bury St. Edmunds and once flourished here, before King Harry had seen the wickedness of papacy and decreed the Dissolution. Anne’s grandfather, Adam Winthrop, had been a wealthy Suffolk clothier at Lavenham but he had by no means confined his talents to the country since he had risen to be Master of the Cloth-workers’ Guild in London. And like many another he had felt the need
to
celebrate his successes by joining the gentry. This was easily accomplished by means of a coat of arms awarded by the Royal College of Heralds and a manor grant bought from the King. The Winthrops were henceforth esquires and Lords of Groton Manor. To this position Anne had been born, and had not escaped pangs when she exchanged it for that of a London apothecary’s wife, and had gone to live in a cramped town house above the shop in the Old Bailey. But Thomas Fones had been handsome enough eleven years ago, and he was well educated and prosperous; moreover, the eldest of three daughters must not be laggard in accepting her father’s arrangement for any suitable marriage.

They entered the drive between two stone gateposts bearing the Winthrop arms. The carter’s whip flicked the horse, Thomas Fones’s mare whinnied greeting towards the stables’ and jumped forward, nearly unseating him. At once a half-dozen dogs rushed towards them barking furiously, the great front door swung open, and two boys tumbled through, calling welcome.

“Lord, Lord, what a hurly-burly!” cried Elizabeth with satisfaction.

“Bess!” said her mother nervously. “You
must
guard your tongue; we’ve taught you not to take the name of God in vain, and especially not here. Your grandmother and your Uncle John would be angry.”

Bess, waving with abandon to her cousins, scarcely heeded the rebuke, though one part of it penetrated. She was afraid of Uncle John, who had stayed with them in London and once given her a severe lecture on her sins.

At her mother’s nod of permission she jumped off the wagon and ran towards the boys. Jack rushed to meet her and the cousins exchanged a hearty kiss. She would have kissed Harry too but he ducked and said, “Let me be, your face is dirty - hug
him
instead” - and thrust a woolly ball of mastiff puppy at her. Elizabeth willingly complied. Harry was always teasing, his two visits to London had taught her that, and she preferred kissing the puppy. She loved Jack better anyway, he was merry and kind and always seemed to like her. They went into the huge firelit hall to be greeted by the rest of the family and there was a lot more kissing; an irksome interlude for Elizabeth and a terrifying ordeal for Martha, who clung to her mother and choked back tears.

Kisses of welcome and departure were ritual. The men kissed each other gravely on the cheek, the women were nearly as ceremonious, the Winthrops each said solemnly as they kissed, “God be praised for your safe journey here,” to which Anne and Thomas Fones replied, “God be praised that we find you all in health.”

“Except Forth and Mary,” said Mistress Winthrop, the grandmother. “They are sorely ill with the measles, but will no doubt mend in God’s own time. Anne, cleanse yourself and your children, you have your old room, then descend for prayers before we sup.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Anne Fones, curtseying, and the years she had been away melted to nothing. Her mother was as erect, assured, and sharp-eyed as ever. Her pointed chin rested upon a ruff so starched and glossy white that it dazzled. Her cap and apron were edged with the finest pillow lace. Her gown of dove-grey silk rustled as it always had from the brisk motions of her body. In her father too there was little change, thought Anne, deeply comforted. Adam was stouter perhaps, his cheeks and nose redder from the tiny broken veins, his vigorous curls greyer, but as he stood by the fire, legs wide-spread, warming his back and beaming at her, he looked as he always had - the contented English squire and patriarch.

Anne’s two sisters were present too. Jane Gostlin, with her new husband, had driven over from their home for the welcoming, and sixteen-year-old Lucy; but having greeted them, Anne lost no time in obeying her mother, which meant retrieving Elizabeth who had already run out to the entrancing dog- and horse-filled courtyard with the boys. As Anne passed again through the hall with the mutinous Elizabeth in tow, she asked of Mistress Winthrop the question which had been fretting her.

“Where is Brother John, my mother? Does he not mean to greet us too?”

Mistress Winthrop frowned down at Elizabeth. “You are too lax with that child, Anne, I can see she wants chastisement.” The old woman added in a lower voice, “John is in his closet, wrestling with his soul and the weakness of the flesh. He fasts much and groans and prays. He has been thus since the affliction God sent him in December.”

Anne nodded slowly, then motioned Elizabeth to pick up a candle. With Sam in her arms, she led her two little daughters upstairs. Elizabeth, carefully holding the lighted candle, said nothing as they went down a dark twisting passage to another wing and entered a richly furnished bedroom, where a little maid in a mobcap was poking at the fire. The child even, with unusual restraint, waited until the maid had gone, and Anne had put the sleeping baby on the great four-poster bed, before saying, “Why does Uncle John groan and pray, Mother? What affliction did God send him?”

Anne did not answer, while she poured hot water from the copper kettle the maid had left by the fire and began to wash Martha’s pallid face.

At last she said, “Your Uncle John’s young wife died in childbed, Bess, last winter.”

Elizabeth frowned. “I thought my cousins’ mother went to heaven
long
ago.”

“That was the first one,” said Anne, startled as she often was when her feather-brained child showed awareness of mature concerns. “The mother of young John and Harry and Forth and Mary died two years back, not” - she added in spite of herself - ”so
very
long ago.”

Two wives dead, Anne thought - Mary and Thomasine, and John himself just twenty-nine. Soon there will be another wife, no matter how much he is groaning and praying now. How soon? And when my own time comes - she looked at her two little girls and the baby on the bed. How soon will Thomas find a new mother for these? She shut her eyes, then walked to the window. Martha curled up on the brocaded counterpane with the baby and fell instantly asleep. But Elizabeth followed her mother and pressed in beside her at the leaded easement. “There’s the moon,” said the child softly. “It looks nearer than in London. I can see the man in it with his lantern and his dog.”

“Can you, Bess?” Anne put her arm around Elizabeth. “So could I once, and from this very window.”

“Sing the ‘Man in the Moon’, Mother - sing it, I pray you.” Anne smiled and sang in a low breathy voice:

“The man in the moon came down too soon
and asked the way to Norwich.
He went by the south and burnt his mouth
with eating of cold pease porridge.”

Elizabeth gurgled. “Such a silly man, but perhaps on the moon - “ She stopped because her mother had gone into a paroxysm of coughing. Elizabeth was not disturbed, Mother always coughed a lot, but she did hope it would not wake Martha or the baby; it was seldom she had her mother all to herself. The younger children did not wake, but Elizabeth’s moment passed anyway, for Thomas Fones flung open the door saying, “Come, come, wife, what’s keeping you, your family waits below.” His scraggy eyebrows drew together and he added with a blend of irritation and concern, “Where’s the hoarbound potion I made you for that cough, why don’t you take it?”

Anne sank on to the bed and motioned towards the travelling coffer. Thomas took out a flask, poured some drops into a cup and gave it to her. “There’s damp in this house,” he said peevishly. “I feel it. See that these maids warm the bed properly. I dislike very much sleeping away from home, I shall suffer for it Had it not been that you implored me---”

“The country may do you good, Thomas,” said Anne faintly, “and it does give me pleasure - to be here once more . . .”

“Well,” he said with an anxious smile, not devoid of tenderness, “since we
are
here - but hurry. The Winthrops do not like to be kept waiting, especially your brother, John. He has come down and will lead the evening prayers.”