The Good Wife by Eleanor Porter

Author:Eleanor Porter [Porter, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

We stayed in Bewdley for four days, at the house of a ropemaker – John Smallbone – a rough man, whose wife had died two years before. He had two male servants, as gruff as himself; neither he nor they concerned themselves with the children, a boy and a girl, as filthy as the rushes we slept on in the hall, scuttling under the feet of the men and boys running the sisal along the rope walk. When he noticed them, Smallbone bawled at them for being idle, useless things; they took care to keep a distance from his hands. One afternoon the boy was not quick enough; Smallbone discovered him sat with his book among the peas he’d been sent to pick. The clout sent him reeling onto the dry earth and split his lip.

Smallbone turned to Talbot. ‘Sometimes I think his mother must have opened her purse to a mincing player. What are you,’ cuffing at the boy’s tears, ‘some little whoreson, got by a milky priest? One thing I can’t bear the sight of, that’s effeminates.’

Talbot smiled narrowly and I said nothing, standing behind Smallbone’s immense back. I’d seen how his lip curled at the span of my hand when I took his in greeting. ‘Got yourself a catamite, Kelley?’ he’d whispered, so that I could hear.

‘Why does he call you Kelley?’ I asked later as we were lying down to sleep in the hall – there was no spare chamber.

‘It was my name.’ Talbot answered, offering nothing else.

The second evening they were locked in conference. Other men arrived. Through the crook of an open door I saw Talbot arranging papers on a table, Smallbone holding a candle over them, his small eyes gleaming. Afterwards they went to the tavern. I was not asked, nor did I want to be; there was a whiff of conspiracy about it. It was a market day and the streets were busy; both men came back with skinned knuckles, Smallbone a bleeding cheek, both were loud with ale and the breaking of noses. I had seen such giddiness in men at a cockfight; it was no better than the slaver of a dog. However long I spent in breeches I would never learn it.

Early the next morning I left Talbot to his snoring and walked out over the arched bridge to the other side of the Severn to look back at the town climbing the hill on the western bank. Every street laid out to view, as though it held no secrets. The sun rose behind me and threw its glitter on the houses so that for a brief while it seemed that they were made of gold.

‘It is just that the place is new,’ Talbot said at breakfast. ‘A score more years and it will be as stained as a drab’s skirts and its golden mornings as tainted.’

He rubbed at his cheek; it was swollen. ‘You were fighting last night,’ I said.

‘It was a choleric night.’

‘What?’ he said, when I

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