Lament for a lost lover

Poor Tamsy! Poor Barbary! Jasper would say it was God’s punishment for their sins. “Oh, it were terrible, terrible,” cried Tamsy. “To see her horror ?.. her fear when the horrible sores started to come. She screamed out to God to take them away, that she’d do anything to be rid of them... And there they were ... horrible to behold, and they would not break open either ... great sores, they were, like carbuncles. If they break there’s a chance you can live but not if they don’t... Then one day I saw it on her breast... She saw it too ... the macula they call it. They say when it shows on the breast that’s the end. She saw it and she thanked God for it because she wanted to die by then. And she did ... she died within an hour. And there was I ... alone ... in the house with her. The cart had come to take him. So it would come to take her. I had been out in the dead of night and painted the red cross of death on the door. Now I waited at the window for the cart to come and I wrapped her in a sheet and I dropped her through the window. And there I was alone in the house behind the red cross of death.”

“My poor, poor Tamsy’ I cried. “You were a brave woman.”

“Brave, mistress? Tweren’t nothing else to do. I knew then, for the faintness and the sickness was getting me and there was I alone. I dunno. Perhaps because I was alone ... I had to look after myself and funny like I said, ‘If I die, how’ll they know at Eversleigh? Master Carleton will never know he is a widower. So I mustn’t die.’ It seems funny now to live for such a reason. But I was half dazed with fever and I just had this feeling that I had to live. I saw the horrible sores taking over my body but I knew I’d never see the macula on my breast. Then they started to open ... those sores did, and the plague came out of me and I knew I’d live. And gradually, they faded away and the sickness and the fever left me. And there was I alone in the plague house ...

“I sat at the window and the pest cart came and I shouted: ‘I’m here. I’ve had the plague and I’m well again.’

“They wouldn’t come near me for two days and then they shouted to me. I had to burn everything in the house. I had to light fires everywhere. Burn all my clothes and everything on the beds. They passed food in to me and they sent me clothes and I came out.

“People came to look at me. It wasn’t many who had come through the plague. “Then I set out for Eversleigh because I knew what I must do. I had to come and tell Master Carleton that he hadn’t got a wife anymore.”

THE SEDUCTION

GEOFFREY INSISTED THAT WE KEEP OUR PROMISE, AND WE HAD met several times during the year. He would ride out to Eversleigh on the slightest pretext, and it seemed as though some business constantly brought him our way. Both Edwin and Leigh delighted in his visits and used to vie with each other to ride on his shoulders. He would carry them through the house and allow them to make crosses on the beams with a piece of chalk which meant that we should have good luck.

Carleton had accepted the news of Barbary’s death without emotion. I supposed it would have been quite false for him to have pretended grief considering the nature of the relationship between them. He merely shrugged his shoulders and said: “Poor Barbary. She had a talent for getting herself into awkward situations.” He looked at me quizzically and went on: “I know you are thinking that the most unfortunate of these was her marriage to me and you’re right.”

He went back to London but it was not long before he was back and he made a point of spending time in my company.

I was not really displeased about this although I pretended to myself that I was, which was foolish of me, of course, but I’m afraid I was rather foolish at this time. It was becoming clear to me that Geoffrey’s visits were not without some meaning. We liked each other very much. We had both been widowed. We had loved and lost and perhaps were both looking for someone who could give us companionship and fill that void which I was sure he felt in his life as I did in mine.

Geoffrey was a cautious man. I should admire that in him. He would not be the sort to rush into a relationship without having given it considerable thought beforehand. I believed that now he was weighing up the situation. He wanted to know so much about me; he wanted to make sure that we should be happy together. It was wise, I told myself, and if not as romantic as my love for Edwin and his presumably for his dead wife, it was sensible.

I would never love anyone as I loved Edwin. I kept telling myself that. But should I deny myself the pleasures of marriage because I could no longer share them with Edwin?

There was my son, too. Perhaps he needed a father. He was surrounded by love. He lacked nothing really, and yet I had noticed how he loved to be with Geoffrey who could give him a certain kind of companionship which I couldn’t. These were the thoughts which were in my mind on a lovely, sunny June day in that year 1666.