Four Kids, Three Cats, Two Cows, One Witch (Maybe) by Siobhan Parkinson

Author:Siobhan Parkinson [Siobhan Parkinson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847173997
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2012-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

GERARD’S TALE

GERARD DREW IN A BREATH, swallowed some chocolate and began: ‘Once there was a young woman. Well, a girl, really; she was like a princess, or an heiress, or something. Very rich, very good family. When she was fourteen, her father made her get engaged – what do they call it in stories?’

‘Betrothed?’ Elizabeth suggested.

‘Yes, that’s it, thank you, betrothed. He betrothed her to a young man from another good family, a family he wanted to make an alliance with. The girl hadn’t met the young man. It was an arranged marriage. But she didn’t mind. That was how she had been brought up. She didn’t know any different.’

‘Huh!’ said Elizabeth.

‘Hmph!’ said Beverley.

‘Because she was only fourteen, it was agreed that it would be a fairly long engagement. Her fiancé wouldn’t come to claim her until her sixteenth birthday. In the meantime, she could finish out her girlhood, learn the things she needed to know in order to be a wife, and adjust to the idea of marriage.’

‘Grrr!’ said Elizabeth.

‘Crumbs!’ said Beverley. Was this boy only eleven? Where did he get these ideas from?

‘The girl was quite excited about it all. Getting married was a very important step in a girl’s life.’

‘Oh my!’ said Beverley, shaking her head.

‘Rats!’ said Elizabeth, through gritted teeth.

‘Give over, you two,’ said Gerard. ‘You’re spoiling it.’

‘Well, it’s a stupid story,’ said Elizabeth.

‘No, it’s not. It’s just the way things were in those days.’

‘Oh well, in those days,’ said Elizabeth, giving in, because she wanted to hear what happened next.

‘Getting married,’ Gerard went on carefully, challenging Elizabeth with a frown not to interrupt him again, ‘was when she stopped being a child and started to live the life of an adult. She looked forward to that. She would have her own house, and her own servants, and she would be in charge. And some day, she would have babies of her own too, and that would also be nice, better than dolls. This was how she was thinking. But she hardly thought at all about the young man she was supposed to be marrying. You see, she had never met a young man before, and had no idea what to expect. The only man she had ever known was her father, and he only came to see her on her birthdays, and anyway he was old, with a beard and a pot belly. So the girl concentrated on thinking about the house and servants and children she would have, and didn’t think at all about the husband.

‘One day, just before her fifteenth birthday, she was out riding in the woods, which she liked to do most days. She loved riding along as fast as her horse would go, leaping over fallen tree trunks, feeling her long black hair streaming in the wind behind her and being gently brushed back from her face by the twiggy hands of the forest.’

‘Mmm,’ said Elizabeth. This sounded better.

‘Yes,’ agreed Beverley.

Only Kevin heard a soft, soft echoing ‘Mmm’, or thought he did.

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