Jayne Fresina (12 page)

“I daresay her talents lie elsewhere.”

Abruptly he laughed.

“Now get those thoughts out of your head, John. You know what I meant.”

It spat out of him as if he’d tried, and failed, to hold it in. “I’m surprised my cousin still has the strength to handle a wench like her at his age.”

“Strength is one thing Nathaniel never lacked. Restraint, yes. Good sense, yes. Strength of will, no.”

“But why only on a Friday?” he mused. “If she was mine, I’d want her every day of the week.”

Lucy almost dropped her candle. The slender flame rippled madly, pushed and pummeled by her breath.

“Variety?” His mother chuckled. “Nathaniel would never be content with one woman. He always feared he might miss something. Just like his father, your uncle.”

“Or else she had other…commitments…on other days.” She heard his chair scrape across the flagged floor. “I daresay he’s not her only lover. He couldn’t have kept her in all that finery,” he added grumpily. “Nathaniel seldom has two coins to rub together.”

“Well, she’s a very lovely girl, to be sure.”

He made some sort of peevish grunt in reply.

“And sweetly-mannered,” his mother went on. “So there’s no need for you to be coarse around her, John.”

“I’ll be the way I am,” he replied, contentious. “And she can put up with it, same as anyone else. If she doesn’t like it, she can leave can’t she?”

His mother said nothing.

“She must have some well-heeled patrons in addition to my cousin,” he added, “so why was she so eager to come here anyway?”

“Escape?”

She froze. Had his mother read it in her face when she’d examined her so thoroughly before?

“Whatever her reason, ’tis what Nathaniel wanted. I couldn’t leave her there, could I?” Again he seemed to want reassurance and, at the same time, to absolve himself of any blame for her presence there.

“Of course, John. You wouldn’t leave her behind.” His mother’s tone was quietly amused. “I suppose Nathaniel left her to you for a reason.”

“Then she can stay for now…on a trial basis. But she won’t stay long. Not when she has a taste of real work.”

Those soft hands, of which he was so scornful, tightened around her candle. Thought she might be frightened away did he? Trial basis indeed!

* * * *

“No, no, no!” he lectured, shaking his head. “The cow decides when you’re done milking. Keep going, Friday wench.”

Shoulder pressed to the beast’s warm flank, she continued the milking and when he heard the steady hiss of milk into the pail, he nodded sharply. “Ol’ Buttercup must like those tender hands of yours, she’s not usually so generous.”

His mother had provided Lucy with an apron to wear over her gown, but even this didn’t save that good scarlet damask from the stains of one morning in the farmyard. She’d been up since cockcrow and John put her to work at once. Breakfast, apparently, was not to be had until later, although he’d already taken a ladle of milk from her bucket and drunk it down thirstily, offering her none. When some dripped down his chin, he pulled his shirt over his head and used it to wipe his face. It was a swift, unconscious gesture, but with his finely-sculpted torso revealed so unexpectedly, Lucy forgot the task at hand and stared.

“I suppose you’re thirsty,” he remarked, noticing her peering up at him. “But you can wait for yours until you’re done with your duties.”

After the milking, there were eggs to gather and hens to feed, followed by mucking out the stable, the goat pen and the pig sty. Manure, gathered in a wheelbarrow, was taken to the pile beside the store shed and kept until it might be needed on the farm or garden. Lucy had never been so filthy in her life. She would now recommend the experience most heartily for rousing a goodly appetite. And a hot temper. By the time he found nothing more for her to do outside, the sun was high and her belly made as much disgruntled noise as the pigs. When the farm workers began to arrive at the gates, he hurriedly shooed her inside, out of sight.

“You can eat now,” he muttered, as she stood before him, beaten and bespattered, but still having the strength to scowl. “Go on into the house. Mother will feed you.” With his dog trotting at his side, he walked away, whistling and swinging his arms. Not a word of thanks.

After breakfast, Mistress Carver took her through the household chores, but she was not such a hard master as her son. That morning John had rarely spoken to her, except to give a command or chide her for being slow, but once he was gone to work on the farmland, which kept him absent for most of the day, the women of his house were left to work at their own pace and even, God forbid, to chatter. They shared a luncheon of cold meat, cheese and cider, which, for the first time in her life, Lucy thoroughly appreciated. In her previous world, food was brought to her and sometimes, if she was hungry and in the mood, she ate it. Seldom did she taste it, never had she considered all the work that went into bringing it to her.

Later, as they gathered herbs in the sun-drenched garden, Mistress Carver told her stories of John as a young boy. Apparently not always this hard working, disciplined farmer, he had been a wild, unruly youth. Her daughters, she told Lucy, were already grown up when she had John. A pleasant surprise, he was much beloved by her husband, whom she blamed for spoiling the boy.

“John was an incorrigible little monster for most of his childhood,” she said, shaking her head at the memories.

He hadn’t changed much then
.

“Would never do a thing he was told and always might be found in scrapes of one kind or another. His father thought it all most amusing.” Captain Carver, she explained, had been away at sea for most of John’s youth. “Leaving me to the thankless task of raising the little devil,” she added. “After my husband died, John made an abrupt change. Suddenly he was the man of the family. Since then he’s thought of naught but this farm. I like to imagine he makes amends to me for all he made me suffer when he was a young lad. Oh, such a child he was, such a trial on my patience!”

She told Lucy how, when he was only thirteen, John stood on his pew in church one Sunday to call the parson a “scurvy, prattling knave.” He accused the man of stealing from the collection to keep several “saucy harlots” and more than one local widow in new petticoats. His mother explained how John always kept a long list of people he disliked and to whom he would never, in his own words, “give time o’ day”. He thought nothing of expressing his opinions, however unwelcome, quite frankly and without the slightest fear. Anyone with whom he took offense, anyone who quarreled with him, usually ended up with a black eye. His visits to the local tavern had always ended with a stumble home across the common, while he loudly sang slanderous rhymes about any villagers who met with his wrath.

“Many a time I sat up into the small hours, waiting for that boy to find his way home,” his mother said, shaking her head. “Wondering who he’d found to pick a fight with now and if, one day, his opponent would win. They never did. Perhaps if they had, once in a while, it might have taught him a lesson.”

Lucy was amused to hear all this. Now, when he lectured her, turning up his nose, she would laugh inwardly, imagining him as a wild and wayward young savage, running naked around the yard as, according to his mother, he often had as a boy.

She thought of his hands. Despite those scarred knuckles, they were incredibly gentle and soothing, when they wanted to be.

“He tells me he’s done with fighting now. Claims he’s ready soon to settle down with a wife,” his mother said. “Thankfully. I’m surprised he managed to keep all those fine teeth in his head.” Then she paused, head on one side. “Just like his father. My Will always had very good, strong teeth.”

Lucy nodded solemnly. Mistress Carver talked of her husband often that day. It seemed her son bore many resemblances to his father and Lucy supposed this was why the old lady let him get away with his cheek. It was no cause for her to do the same though, she reasoned.

At the end of the first long day, she asked if she might have a bath. The old lady looked surprised, but told her where to find the copper tub. “John can help you carry it in when he gets back from the fields. I’m afraid my back won’t take the strain. But if you start heating the water by the fire now, it should be ready for you by then. There are two buckets in the store shed.”

Perhaps a bath was not necessary after all. Stupidly, the work involved hadn’t occurred to her, but there were no maids here to obey her every whim.

“Well, I suppose it is only a little dirt,” she muttered. “It can wait.”

Mistress Carver smiled kindly. “Light the candles then, will you, dear. If John sees them in the window he’ll know it’s time to come in for his supper, otherwise he’ll stay out there all night.”

She looked around and saw a few stumps on the mantle. “These are almost used up. Shall I get new ones out?”

“Gracious no, dear. There’s a good few hours left on those.”

Biting her lip, she quickly gathered up the stumps, lit them in the fire and then set them in holders by the windows. She felt stupid, lazy and naive, but Mistress Carver good-naturedly ignored her many stumbles.

Lucy had imagined on her first day that all the rising early and working hard was merely John Carver’s plan to crush her spirit and prove a point, but as each subsequent day passed much like the first, she realized this was their life, no scheme for her undoing. It was their everyday routine, and now hers too.

Gathering her dogged strength, her courage and a considerable helping of competitive spirit, she got on with her new tasks.

Chapter 9

John reluctantly conceded that Nathaniel’s trollop was not so useless after all. She threw herself whole-heartedly into the chores he gave her, no matter how demeaning and dirty. It wouldn’t last, he reassured himself. But whenever he gave an order and she set her mouth in a determined line, eyes smoldering with defiance, like a sun-lapped forest soon to be consumed with flame, he knew she would prove him wrong if it killed her. He’d never known a woman so tenacious. On the outside she was small and delicate; on the inside she was strong as an ox.

She puzzled him, intrigued him, challenged him.

He didn’t like the way she answered back with her quick tongue, as if she thought he was her servant. She criticized his manners, called him ungrateful and suggested he didn’t appreciate his own mother. Even when she should be exhausted after a long day’s work, she often still had breath to argue with him.

John was accustomed to women who did what they were told, thankful for his notice. It was true his mother had her moments of sauciness, especially after a cup or two of plum wine, but she generally understood it was best to keep him in a good temper. To have the table set for supper when he came in, to have his clothes clean and dry when he needed them, his boots brushed and set by the warm fire on cold mornings. His mother knew how to take care of him, and had done so for thirty years without feeling the need to question or raise her voice much. Even the occasional threat of a smack across the head with a ladle was never actually carried out.

Nathaniel’s trollop appeared to take issue with this.

“Your mother is a sweet, loving woman. You should be ashamed of how you treat her. You take her for granted.”

“Who asked your opinion?” he growled, at which she merely pursed her petulant, resolute lips and spun away in a flurry of muddied petticoat.

In his opinion, he treated his mother very well indeed. He worked hard, saved money, kept the house and farm maintained, even let her keep brewing plum wine, against his better judgment. So where this impertinent Friday wench came by the gumption to shout at him and tell him he was a “spoiled rotten little bugger,” he could hardly guess.

She’d called him it twice now: once when he’d laughed because she fell in the dung heap and once when she’d caught and ripped her skirt in the stable door after he let it shut too quickly behind them. Both occasions had been in the midst of an argument. He couldn’t even remember what started it, but it was probably one of her bossy remarks, or one of those imperious gestures she often used to send him on his way. A careless flick of her slender wrist, perhaps. That was always enough to spark his temper. So too was her coy ability to always be just out of his reach, avoiding his touch.

Lofty and obdurate, she was keen to repudiate anything he said, but it was obvious she had no grounding beneath, no proper education to back her up. For example, she insisted the sun revolved around the earth. Apparently she’d never heard of Copernicus. He wasn’t surprised to learn she thought the world was flat, when everyone should know by now that it was round.

“Have you forgotten, wench?” he’d yelled at her, “I’m the son of a sailor. I think he’d know more about the world than you would.”

“Why don’t we fall off, then if the world is a big ball?” she’d yelled back.

“Sometimes people do. Skinny, light-headed creatures like you, for instance.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.” And there went the irreverent flick of her fingertips, the toss of her cynical head.

The Friday wench possessed an oddly scattered stream of ideas, as if she’d been schooled by someone with their own beliefs to promote and no real intent of teaching her anything important or useful. He’d never bothered arguing his point to any woman before now, yet he took the trouble to set her straight. Not that she appreciated the time and effort on his part. He was convinced she frequently fell asleep by the fire in the evenings on purpose. Unless it was sheer coincidence that she began to snore in the midst of his lectures.

“See mother, I was right. She’ll soon give up when the novelty wears off,” he whispered smugly one night, while Lucy slept by the fire, curled up in the old rocking chair, knees drawn up to her chest, bare toes peeking out beneath the hem of her gown. “She’ll soon start missing her wealthy gentlemen patrons.”

“I think she likes it here.” His mother bent over her sewing. “She never speaks of any other life left behind.” She swept a fleeting glance at her son. “Or any other man.”