Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [591]
He never went to church and she did not try to make him. “He can be reformed,” she believed, but never in Mason’s manner.
He still drank, but only a little. The binges in Salisbury seemed to be a thing of the past. His hair now was always sleek, his black eyes clear.
As she looked at him, she could not believe he did not have women, but she never saw them, and never asked.
How she relished her time in his presence. In a place where she saw only a lonely furze bush, in a bare landscape that in certain lights, could almost have been the tundra, he would find tiny bright flowers; a quarter of a mile away, he would somehow discern a hare or a rabbit; with a pointing finger, he would seem to bring to life from the motionless landscape a pipit, a wheatear or another of the tiny birds that inhabited the plain and would burst with sudden life over the rim of the valley. He would see, where she peered and made out nothing, a cranefly or even the elusive hoverfly. Once, when they were walking by a field, a huge cloud of light blue butterflies rose directly in front of them, without warning and in their hundreds, so that the air was suddenly full of a flickering blue haze. She was so taken by surprise, that without thinking what she was doing, she grasped his strong arm and burst out laughing at the wild pleasure of the place.
She spoke of these experiences to no one. They were her secret escape, and often she would pass most of the day with him, insisting on the same food that he and the men ate – a piece of bread, if they were lucky, a piece of cheese for lunch and then, in the farmhouse, some potatoes and a little bacon at teatime, prepared by the old woman who continued to gaze at her in surly silence.
She enjoyed these days. An instinct told her it would be better not to discuss the matter with anyone, beyond telling Daniel Mason that she had made a loan to Jethro Wilson in the hope of keeping the farm going, and providing for the children. Once a month Jethro would now come into Sarum, see Mason, and then visit his children. “Who I really believe, in time, will become members of our church,” Mason delightedly and optimistically assured her. But she had no doubts about the wisdom of what she was doing herself.
Once, it was true – the only time she had spoken to her – the old woman had suddenly turned to her when the men were out of the kitchen and said:
“You’re a proper fool. He’s no good – not where women is concerned.”
But she had put this cryptic sentence out of her mind as merely spiteful.
No, she thought, he belongs to the subtle, silent life along the edges of Salisbury Plain.
The spring, so-called Lady Day market was held in April. It was a modest affair, given over mainly to selling cloth, and now falling into disuse, but Jane insisted that he buy some blankets for the farm there and even gave him a small present of money to do so. She had been careful not to interfere in his house, though she longed secretly to do so, but she felt some basic improvements could be made.
It was in the afternoon during this fair, while her Uncle Stephen was at tea in the house of one of the canons nearby, that, on her instructions, Jethro Wilson presented himself at the back door of the house and was ushered into the library.
He looked about him with mild curiosity, as she sat at the bureau where she had been working. Though she had never seen him trouble to write anything down, she knew he could read, and discovered, when it came to doing business, that he had a shrewd head for figures.
“I have prepared accounts,” she told him, “and I want you to see them.” She showed him what they had spent on livestock, and other improvements, and the anticipated returns. “We shall have sheep to sell in July, and lambs. The cattle I think we should hold until December. There’s the corn too.”
He picked up the sheet of paper and walked over to the window, leaning against the panelling