Kate Sedley: The Wicked Winter

Dame Judith drew herself up to her full height — not an easy thing to do whilst sitting down, but the old lady managed to give that impression — and said coldly, 'Bet brought this chapman to see me. She thought I might wish to purchase some of his goods.'

'Bet has no right to think,' was the terse response as the mistress of the house advanced further into the room.

The Widow Lynom was indeed, as the miller's wife had said, a fine woman with a high, broad forehead, slate-blue eyes, a long and impressively straight nose and a full, voluptuous mouth. In spite of this there was a hardness about the features which, to my mind at least, prevented her from being truly handsome. She wore a red woollen gown trimmed with squirrel fur at neck and wrists, and caught around her waist by a green leather belt studded with jewels. Her slender fingers were heavily beringed, but of the red hair, which might or might not be dyed with alkanet, there was no sign, all being concealed beneath a hood of fine, crisp lawn. Her skin was carefully whitened, her lips stained with a salve made from the distillation of strawberry juice — I was by now growing wise in the wiles and deceptions of women — and she carried herself well, as befitted someone born to command. Yet nothing could disguise the fact that she would never see forty again. Nevertheless, I could guess her attraction for any man tied to a sober and pious wife, however young. There was a raffish gleam in the blue eyes which suggested that she would not be niggardly with her sexual favours.

'Oh, I'm fully aware that you'd deny me anything that gives me pleasure,' Dame Judith snapped, her bony cheeks growing pink with outrage. 'Fortunately I have a few friends left in the household.' She turned to me. 'You needn't think I was treated like this when my son was alive. Then I was accorded all the respect that is my due.'

The widow sighed and tapped one leather-shod foot in exasperation.

'Don't be mendacious, Mother! You know very well that no one denies you anything you wish. We wouldn't be so foolish, knowing the tantrums we'd be subjected to if you were thwarted.'

'Tantrums is it?' Dame Judith was fairly spitting with annoyance. 'I'd have you know, Chapman, that I'm one of the most reasonable, sweet-tempered women living, but what I have to endure would try the patience of a saint!' The widow raised her eyes ceiling-wards and appeared to be praying for strength, but her mother-in-law ignored her. 'For one thing, why am I forced to remove up here every morning instead of being allowed to stay downstairs in the parlour, where I can at least look out of the window and watch who's passing on the road? Not,' she grumbled, 'that there's much traffic at this time of year. The only people I saw today were a holy man and a carter with a load of tree trunks bound for the sawmill. Oh yes, and the blacksmith, accompanied by a young girl muffled to the eyes and who looked to me as if she were keeping a tryst of some sort with him.' The old woman's sharp nose quivered. 'I must get Bet to discover if he's courting. But who could it be from hereabouts?' She tittered. 'Aren't I a nosy old woman?'

'You're brought up here to the solar, Mother,' the Widow Lynom interrupted forcefully, 'for that very reason; to stop you sitting with the parlour shutters wide open and catching your death of cold. In the summer you may stop there as long as you wish, and well you know it, so don't pretend that I ill treat you.' For the first time since entering the room she turned to look at me properly, and her forbidding gaze softened slightly. 'Well, Chapman, as you're here, you can show us both what you have to sell. We don't often get pedlars around in the depth of winter. You must be a hardy young fellow to be on the road in January.'

Dame Judith let out an unpleasant cackle. 'You've discovered he's both young and good-looking, have you, Ursula'? You want to be careful, my girl! What if Sir Hugh found out that you've a wandering eye?'

Her daughter-in-law flushed scarlet. 'I don't know what you're talking about, Mother. What has it to do with Sir Hugh, pray? He has a wife of his own to look after.'

The older woman sniffed derisively. 'Little Mistress Good and Saintly. Well, he's not likely to have any worries concerning her on that head. But he'd do well to look to his own conduct — and to that of his precious son — if he wants to escape trouble in his household. Jeanette Cederwell's not one to brook misconduct lightly.'

Contrary to all expectations, I began to feel sorry for Ursula Lynom, so much the victim of her mother-in-law's scathing tongue. I tried to divert the old lady's attention.

'I didn't think, from what I've been told, that Lady Cederwell is old enough to have a grown son.'

'Lord bless you, he ain't her child! Jeanette's only two years older than Maurice. No, no! He's the son of Sir Hugh's first wife, who died when he was born.' Dame Judith leaned back in her chair and smiled expansively, delighted with the a chance to gossip. 'We all thought Sir Hugh was going to remain a widower for life — or until such time as he could gain his heart's desire.' Here, she stole a sideways glance at her daughter-in-law, but the widow began to examine my goods with exaggerated care. The dame continued, 'But then, nigh on six years ago, he went up country to visit a cousin of his who lives in the neighbourhood of Gloucester, and came back married to a child young enough to be his daughter; a wool heiress recently orphaned. The old woman's smile broadened into a malicious grin. 'Wealthy, but not so wealthy as Ursula here became when my poor son, Anthony, died two years later.' She threw up her head and gave a high-pitched whinny of mirth.

I rapidly reassessed my ideas of Sir Hugh Cederwell. I realised now that he must be roughly the same age as Ursula Lynom.

'That will do now, Mother.' The younger woman turned away abruptly. 'Buy what you want from the chapman and then you must sleep for half an hour before your dinner.'

'I'm not a child to be ordered around,' Dame Judith snapped. She added spitefully, 'I was mistress in this house long before you.'

Ursula Lynom sighed. 'A fact of which you are never tired of reminding me. Nevertheless, you will do well to remember that it is I who am in charge here now.' There was the slightest undertone of menace, and I saw the old lady suddenly wither and withdraw into herself. My sympathies, which had been in a constant state of flux, somersaulted back to her. I should have known, though, that she was fully capable of standing up for herself.

After only a momentary silence, she counter-attacked with, 'Sir Hugh must have left early this morning. I hadn't expected to see you until noon.'

Colour once more tinged the widow's cheeks, but she answered calmly, 'We had completed our business. He has advised me against buying the extra land to the south of the eastern pasture.'

Dame Judith let out a sound like the hoot of an owl.

'Business, she says! There's only one kind of business you and Hugh Cederwell carry on, and it's got nothing to do with land south, north or west of the eastern pasture!' And while her daughter-in-law struggled to find her breath, the older woman continued, 'A pretty hash the pair of you have made of your lives between you. When he and Anthony went a-courting you, twenty-odd years and more ago, you chose my lad, even though it was plain to everyone but yourself that you were in love with Hugh. And as for him, he's as big a fool as you are. Having lost his own wife after only a year of marriage, he waits fifteen more in the hope that you might one day be free, only to shackle himself to a child almost young enough to be his daughter, a mere twenty-two months before Anthony succumbs to a putrid fever. Bunglers, both of you!'