Kate Sedley: The Tintern Treasure

Adela snuggled closer and wound me in her embrace. (The serpent in Eden must have been a female.) ‘Would you go to Hereford and visit Goody Harker for me? If she’s in desperate want, give her some money. We can afford it just at present and I owe her such a lot. You could make it a working trip.’

I was staggered and far from pleased at the suggestion. I had been away in London for most of the summer and had only finally returned home in the early weeks of July. A few days’ time would see the end of September, which meant that after a mere two and a half months and with the worst of the year’s weather ahead of me, I should be on my travels again.

‘You could be home easily before October’s out,’ Adela wheedled, cuddling even closer. Then, when I remained silent, she withdrew a little and said in a sharper tone, ‘You’d do it fast enough if the duke asked it of you.’

‘The king,’ I corrected her. ‘And that’s unfair. You can’t refuse royalty; at least, not without making things very uncomfortable for yourself.’

‘Well. .’ Her sense of justice came into play. ‘I suppose that’s true. All the same’ — a shapely leg slid sinuously across one of mine and she nibbled my left earlobe suggestively — ‘I don’t often ask you for a favour.’

She might, with perfect truth, have said that she had never asked me for a favour in all the six years of our marriage and that I was an ungrateful oaf even to think of refusing her now. But after my near death by drowning and subsequent debilitating illness of the summer, I had been looking forward to a long autumn and winter of comfort and coddling in the bosom of my loved ones.

Now, this!

I was just plucking up my courage to say flatly that I couldn’t — and wouldn’t — go, when Adela heaved a forlorn sigh and said no, she supposed it was too much to demand of me in the circumstances and that she was deeply ashamed of herself for having even suggested it. It was just that Goody Harker and her husband had been so very kind to her and Nicholas after Owen died that. . And there she let the sentence hang on the breath of another sigh.

Women! They have more tricks up their sleeves than a conjuror! They are the wiliest creatures on God’s earth. (But if I’m honest, I suppose I must admit that they have to be. It’s their only armour in a world ordered always to the advantage of men.)

Of course, the moment I was offered a way out, a refusal with honour, I was unable to take it. The old, familiar urge for freedom stirred my blood. It was true that I should have to spend the second of October, my thirty-first birthday — a date and age I shared with our new king — away from my family, but other congenial company was certain to be found on the road; plenty of wayfarers like myself who would be more than willing to drink my health in the convivial atmosphere of tavern or ale-house. It might not be what I had planned, and it might be that I was reaching an age when independence was not quite as important as it had once been, but the thought of the open road and being my own man still held its attractions.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said, adding nobly, ‘for your sake, sweetheart.’

I had my reward, and this time it was Adela who was the more enthusiastic of the two of us. If the truth be told, I found it a bit of an effort, a fact which worried me considerably and led to something of a sleepless night. Thirty-one might be creeping on towards middle age but it wasn’t that old, surely?

In the morning, we decided that I should set out as soon as possible in order to avoid the worst of the autumnal storms, so I fixed my departure for the following day, the last but one day of September. The children were as indifferent as always to my going. Or were they? In recent months they had all three demonstrated resentment and, in one instance, downright hostility, to my absences from home. On this occasion, however, realizing that their mother was actively encouraging my journey and that it was a favour to her, they only repeated their usual demand that I bring them something back.

‘Promise!’ my daughter Elizabeth demanded.

‘Promise!’ echoed her half-brother, five-year-old Adam.

My stepson, Nicholas, contented himself with giving me a steely look, but one, nevertheless, that spoke of serious consequences should I forget.

I gave my solemn promise.

It was little more than a fortnight later that I reached Hereford, on Monday, October the thirteenth. I might have covered the distance in less time had I not taken Adela’s advice and stopped to sell my wares along the way. For the first week I had done good business and my pack was considerably lighter than when I started. But for the past seven days, the weather had deteriorated with frightening speed, bringing lashing rain and high winds to flood the countryside and uproot trees. By the time my destination came in view late on the Monday morning, I was, in spite of my good weatherproof cloak and hat, soaked to the skin, in a foul temper and cursing myself roundly for being such a fool as to set out on such a lengthy journey at that time of year. Discomfort might not have worried me once, but my recent illness and advancing age made me less and less inclined to endure adverse conditions with any sort of stoicism. As for actively enjoying pitting my strength against the elements, that kind of nonsense had vanished long ago.

Nor was my state of mind in any way improved by the discovery that the object of my journey was in no sort of distress. Goody Harker was living comfortably in her old home, well looked after by kindly neighbours and, far from having been unable to pay the tinker for his services, she had given him more money than he demanded, having been pleased by the speed and dexterity with which he had mended her broken pot.

‘He was having you and Adela on, the rogue,’ she chortled, after inviting me in to partake of a bowl of her winter pottage and a mug of her home-brewed ale. ‘He saw a way of getting double the money out of you,’ she added, setting my cloak and hat to dry before the fire burning merrily on the hearth. ‘Now, tell me, how is Adela and that dear little son of hers?’

I’m afraid she found me a poor conversationalist, my mind being preoccupied with devising all the worst forms of torture I could think of to inflict upon the tinker should he ever be unfortunate enough to cross my path again. I was furious with the conniving little toad’s duplicity, with my own and Adela’s gullibility and most of all with having allowed my wife to persuade me into undertaking this journey against my better judgement. But in time, my sense of well-being slowly began to return. The warmth of the little parlour and a bellyful of excellent food gradually did their work and I was able to answer Goody Harker’s enquiries with tolerable politeness. However, the arrival, just as I was finishing my meal, of an elderly woman who, it soon became clear to me, was the goody’s lodger, made it plain that I should be unable to beg a bed for the night before setting out on my homeward voyage, it having been obvious from the exterior that the cottage boasted no more than two bedchambers. Instead, I asked for the name of a decent inn where I might rest my weary bones.

Both dames having heartily recommended one in Behindthewall Lane, I thanked Goody Harker for her hospitality, donned my still-not-dry hat and cloak and emerged once more to brave the elements. The rain had eased a little, but the clouds piling up in the western sky suggested that there was more to come, so I wasted no time in making my way to the inn — whose name, after all these years, escapes me — and paying for a bed for the night.

The landlord at first eyed my pedlar’s pack askance, but the colour of my money put paid to any qualms he might have had about offering me a room. I suspected, too, that the sudden burst of bad weather was making him short of customers because, just before suppertime, another pedlar with his pack, urgently seeking shelter from a further violent storm, was ushered into the room next to mine. I had been standing on the covered courtyard gallery as he arrived and we gave one another a nod of mutual understanding. Then a sudden flurry of hailstones made me descend to the ale-room and the comfort of a sizzling bacon collop served with pease pudding and a mazer of rough red wine.