Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [594]
They were surprisingly good. He had presold the corn at exceptional prices; he had obtained figures for their lambs and some of the cattle that could only have been achieved, she knew, with incredible cunning. If the December sales went as well – several times, as she looked over the figures, she laughed out so loud that it brought a message from her uncle Stephen in the drawing-room below to ask if she could be quieter.
To have got so far, in their first year: she could hardly believe it. Her respect for Jethro increased further.
It was early afternoon when she finished, and so great was her sense of triumph that she decided to go and tell him the good news at once, even though he would not have expected to see her for another week. Within an hour, she was riding out, past Old Sarum, on the familiar route.
He was coming down the slope when she arrived. He had left the boy tending the sheep on the ridges above; the mid-afternoon sun was still warm.
“Come inside,” she told him in triumph, “and see what you have done.”
When she had taken him through the figures he seemed pleased.
“’Tis better than I thought,” he confessed.
“It’s wonderful. Indeed,” she said on impulse, “I think we should have a glass of beer. Could you procure such a thing?”
It came in large pewter mugs, wonderful to handle. There was nothing she knew of more cool and refreshing than Wiltshire beer. They drank slowly.
“There is enough to mend the thatch,” she ventured.
He did not seem to mind this.
“It should be done,” he agreed.
“Does it leak?”
“A little.”
She sipped her beer reflectively. She was curious to see the rest of his house, but was not sure if she dared to ask. One was never taken out of the parlour of a farmer’s house. Then she thought of a solution.
“The children: may I see where they sleep?”
He stood quietly. “’Tis upstairs. You have to stoop.”
He led her to the narrow wooden staircase that was set opposite the front door; she followed him up.
The children’s room had two small windows, one each side of the house. It contained a wooden rocking-horse, a chest of drawers made of pine, and two low beds. She walked over and gently pulled the rocking-horse by its stiff mane.
“I made that, for the first,” he said quietly. It was beautifully worked.
“I didn’t know you were a carpenter.”
“Have to, to farm.”
“I suppose so.”
She turned and went out onto the little landing. The room in which he slept lay opposite; the door was open.
“My room,” he said half apologetically. “Not much furnished.”
She stepped in.
There was a huge oak chest at the far side, opposite it a mahogany chest of drawers. By the door, on a stand, hung a long, embroidered smock. The bed was covered by a white cotton counterpane with a pattern of blue flowers upon it: left, she imagined, from the days when his wife was alive. It was somewhat bare, but pleasant. She moved to the window and stared out at the little valley below.
Then she turned.
How strange it was. They came from worlds between which the boundary was not just wide, but completely, irrevocably impassable. Neither would ever normally expect to penetrate beyond one room in the other’s house; he had come to her back door and, were she not such a regular caller, she would walk to his front.
And now he was watching her, from the other side of the room. Yes, he was tall and handsome, she thought. He did not belong to any class when he was up on the high ground; yet what was he here, in this cottage? At that moment, she hardly cared.
The late afternoon light was streaming in through the window; she felt it warm on her arm. There was a faint aroma of beer in the room. She found that pleasant. Her eyes travelled