The Butcher's Daughter

by Victoria Glendinning

  ‘One way would be to cross Exmoor. I am not sure that I could take so much time away from the farm.’

  ‘I would not expect you to.’

  ‘It is quicker the other way, to the south.’ he said. ‘To Bridport or Lyme and the long empty shore down there.’

  I might catch a glimpse of Peterkin in Bridport.

  If I stayed with Peter in this pleasant place, it would be like being in Shaftesbury Abbey, in a very small way, and I the Abbess, in a very small way, in an abbey without visible walls. What kept arising in my mind was the one word, ‘Wife’. Even if we did not marry in church, I must commit myself, I must take as it were a Vow of Stability.

  Wife. Wife. Wife. Why does that word make me flinch? Thomas had hated it too.

  For the Wife of Bath, being a wife was a trade or a profession, it was about money and amusement and manipulating the lust of men. That would not be my way, nor most women’s. I have seen women who are wives aged before their time, working until daylight end and beyond, keeping the man and the children fed and clothed. And sometimes washed. They are their family’s servants. Like Martha in the story. No time for books. Most probably no books at all.

  I did not know if Peter reads and writes. I was sure he could, like my dear father, calculate.

  Good wives know what they are for. They have an unquestioned function, as does a hammer or a spoon. And then there is love, the sweetener. Love for a man – and ending up as his nurse. Love for children. If Abigail had lived, this would have been a good place for her. I still however would be the wife. Wife. Wife. Wife.

  No.

  My mother could not be a wife, not really. She withdrew and sickened, finding no other way to be. I am more like her than I knew.

  I do not care to think of Eleanor Wilmer. But I do remember things she said to me, and in particular: ‘From now on, for us, it will be just one thing after another.’

  That may suit me. I shall have a dog again, a companion dog who will read my mind as I read hers. I’ll easily find some farmstead at this time of year which has a litter. And she, the little bitch I choose, will see the sea with me. I may become one of those women seen as deranged, walking the roads from nowhere to nowhere. But there will be no walls around me.

  By nightfall I was definite in my own mind. It was easy for me to let Peter make love to me when he came to the bed because I had a plan and because he was kind. I wanted to leave him with something good to remember.

  Anne Cathcart, late one night in her parlour, had treated me to a disquisition on the varieties of the male member. The largest one she ever saw had given her no more pleasure than others. She did not care either for thin, whippy ones. I have mercifully no recollection of her conclusions, though she discoursed between one and two of the clock on the subject. I do recall deciding not to enquire about the endowment of the newt, Master Piers Perceval, because I did not want to know.

  This conversation only comes into my mind because Peter’s was short and thick and strong – reliable, like everything else about him. Our coupling was easy and unremarkable, as I imagine practised marital coupling might be. We did not speak afterwards. We just went to sleep.

  At dawn Peter rose and dressed and went out to check the sheep. When I was sure he had gone, I left the bed and put together my bundle.

  I did not want to leave without a word. A door downstairs opened into a windowless closet arranged as an office. In the light from the hall room I made out ledgers, papers, bundles of quills, ink-blocks, candlesticks. Peter was more lettered than I knew. I found a scrap of paper and wrote:

  ‘Thank you. I cannot be your wife. I have to go.’

  I put down the quill then picked it up again and added:

  ‘I have to see a man about a dog.’

  I left the paper on the trestle in the hall room. I opened the door and looked about me. No one to be seen. I ventured out, looked round again, and set off across the farmyard and down the track. I had left the half-door swinging wide at the top, and thought of going back to secure it.

  Was I a little disappointed, not to be discovered, embraced, cajoled, brought back? Maybe I was. Maybe I still am.

  It was a delicious morning, the sun coming up into a clear sky, birds singing, the trees heavy with growth, berries reddening on the hawthorn, sweet small yellow plums overhanging the track. They were my breakfast. Anyone would feel her heart rise, walking the lanes on such a morning.

  What if there had been rain, and a biting wind? There well could have been, at that time of the year. I might then have thought, three days and nights like this and I shall be dead in a ditch. I might have turned around and crept back wet and shivering to Peter’s house and remained there. It was the fine weather, not my fine thoughts, that allowed me to leave. Choice and chance.

  I walked to Wincanton. I knew the way by now. Having all my remaining money about me, I hired an attic room at the Lamb Inn. I was learning to take care of myself in the interest of survival. Then began the all too familiar business of asking around, trying to find some wagoner who was going south, to the coast. This turned out to be a woman, a Mistress Rachel Dortch.

  She was not young. Her face and the backs of her hands were sun-browned and wrinkled. She was born in Wincanton and retained some small family property in the town where she had rents to collect. She was on her way back to her family in Pucknole, Pucknowle, I do not know how to write it.

  ‘It is a small village near the sea.’

  ‘How near? How near to the sea?’

  ‘You can walk it in less than an hour.’

  ‘Is it close to Bridport?’

  ‘Five or six miles.’

  So I threw in my lot with Mistress Rachel Dortch for a small payment. We travelled south and south-west in her farm cart, drawn by a piebald pony. The wheels looked and sounded as if they might not last long on rocky ground. As we bumped along we talked about dogs easily, about marriage and children warily, about the weather, and divulged nothing of importance to one another. This suited us both.

  I found my dog at one of several farms where we stopped on the off-chance. This one was just south of Sherborne. As we rattled through the town I did not tell Rachel Dortch that I had spent many years there, even though my eyes were out on stalks. We drove past the Abbey and very near to where Eleanor and I had lodged. It was not a market day, I saw no one that I recognised in the streets, and then in no time at all we were crossing the river and away. There is nothing for me in Sherborne now.

  The farm where we found my dog was run down, the outbuildings neglected.

  ‘Yes,’ said the old man who came out to meet us in his yard. ‘Yes, our Tilly is one too many for me. A crossbreed,’ he said, ‘six months old and skittish. She is named after my grandmother. She has a boss eye like my grandmother.’

  ‘Like yourself too, sir,’ I nearly said, but stopped my tongue in time.

  ‘You can take our Tilly, if you have a mind to, and for nothing. She is no good to me.’

  He whistled and three dogs came running up. Which one was Tilly?

  She was medium-sized, mostly white with some black, lean and long-legged, with ears that flopped over, a clever questing face and eyes that were not crossed like her master’s, but looked outwards in opposite directions. I glanced at Rachel and she nodded.

  Had Rachel frowned, I might have taken notice. But I already knew that Tilly was mine. The cross-eyed farmer gave me rope for a leash, and Tilly, Rachel and I left the farm, regained the main track and continued our journey.

  It is interesting, travelling with a woman. We stopped and greeted whomsoever we met, we were friendly with men and dogs we would never see again. With Tilly quiet between my feet we spent two evenings in inns, talking of this and of that with whoever was there. Or at least I did. Rachel Dortch was more taciturn. She had got to that age when life has taken so many twists and turns that you cannot impart to casual acquaintances much of your hinterland. I feel this reticence coming upon myself also. You do not even wish t
o. You tell them what you choose or chance to tell – enough for them and enough for you. Rachel had a grasp of the limitations of occasions and encounters, including hers and mine, even though we shared a mattress.

  Each morning, from my diminishing funds, I bought from where we stayed enough to eat to see all three of us through the day. We drank from the streams. Tilly caught a rabbit. Gradually we were coming closer to the sea coast. Gulls screamed above our heads.

  Rachel left me and Tilly at the inn in her village towards daylight end. She handed down my bundle and pointed out the grass track up which I should walk to reach the sea. She said a place name which I did not grasp. She did not ask what my purpose was, nor where I would pass the night. Yet as I left her I was content. Many women crave protestations of continuing friendship. Rachel Dortch did not want anything of me. This is to my mind admirable. Sister Isobel was like that but then Sister Isobel walked with God. Rachel Dortch walks with God unknowingly. Or else she is of limited understanding and no curiosity. Possibly, two sides of the same coin. I do not know.

  What do I know, about anybody? No one should wear a placard around her neck with just one word written upon it: Virgin. Saint. Servant. Mother. Wife. Nun. Or like those unfortunates who are put in the pillory: Witch. Slut. Pervert. Hag. Whore. The parable which preoccupied me so much in the past has lost its bite. I can be Martha and Mary both. Or neither. I do not have to choose. There is no point seeking an answer if the question is the wrong question in the first place. No one is the same all the way through like the transparent apple jelly we made in Shaftesbury Abbey. A good Christian woman may share her soul with a vixen or a she-wolf. Or a rabbit.

  I took a deep breath, called Tilly, and began to walk.

  *

  Although not far it was hard going, uphill all the way. Then I came over a crest and saw a great stone.

  A boulder, I suppose you would call it. Higher than myself, its base buried in long grass. The left side sloped down to a point, the other end was rounded. Like an egg. I touched its pitted surface. I put my cheek against it and it felt warm. I walked all around it and felt its weight and bulk.

  Tilly ran on beyond the stone and I followed her, calling. A hundred yards beyond the stone the ground fell away.

  I saw the sea, deep blue in the twilight, stretching to the curved line at the end of the world just as Thomas said. Headlands fingered the sea on either side. I could smell salt. Streaks of silver light fell upon the sea from the setting sun.

  I sat on the grass and looked and looked. I saw a little ship with a rust-coloured sail, zig-zagging towards the land. Tilly came running back and sat panting beside me.

  So we remained, my dog and I, as the light failed, the silvery streaks disappeared, and then a shifting darkness was all there was. All I heard was a rhythmic roar, rising and falling. It was the sound of waves breaking on the shore.

  I go back to the rock and settle myself in my blue cloak in the lee of the round end. There is an overhang which will protect the dog and me from the chill of the night.

  I have seen the sea. At long last I have seen the sea.

  In the morning I will go down to the shore and watch the foam creeping up and I will bathe my feet and Tilly will bark at the waves.

  Now that I have seen the sea, what else do I want? What next?

  I shall walk to Bridport. I will see Peterkin, working on the boats. I will surely recognise him. I may announce myself to him or I may not. I gave him birth, I gave him life. He knows who I am. That may be enough in this world both for him and for me. I remember what the Abbess said, in the words of some long-ago sister: ‘All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’ What will happen will happen.

  I think of those who touched and changed me, apart from my father and mother. Hugh Backwell and John Harrold. Dame Elizabeth Zouche. Dick and Weasel. Dorothy Clausey. Sister Mary Amor. Father Robert Parker. Sister Isobel whom I never knew. My Melancholy. Even the Winterbournes. Poor Colin from Sherborne Market, and Jacob the cheese-man. John Leland. Anne Cathcart, oh yes. Honor in Southwark, and just now Rachel Dortch. Eleanor Wilmer, whose name I cannot inscribe with serenity.

  And the loves of my life – Thomas Wyatt and in another way, tinged with tenderness and regret, Peter Mompesson.

  Even though in the eyes of the world I may seem a vagabond, picaresque as Thomas said, I am supremely fortunate.

  I ask myself what it is that I now want, in these few hours before the darkness becomes total.

  I shall have no more truck, ever, with the world into which Thomas was born. Silk and velvet are lovely. So are emeralds and pearls. A butcher’s daughter may aspire to those things even though it is unlikely, the way things are, that they will come her way. But too much dross comes with all that gold.

  I want to hear no more Court gossip, to hear no more about power-mongering or plots and betrayals and violent deaths, no more about jostling for place and favour and influence, or for riches and properties. Not that I ever played any part in all that, but I was a little intoxicated, infected, by my proximity to it. I want to find, before the End of Days, whether my own or the world’s, a perfect refuge and retreat, so remote that no one will ever find me. I want to have books again and to read and to write.

  It sounds like a return to the religious life. That is not what I mean at all. In this place of trees and grass and water and birdsong that I imagine, nothing and no one will restrict my liberty. I shall grow plants for food, and flowers. I shall raise animals. I shall know every inch of my small realm, every tree and rock, every rough place and every sweet spot, I shall know my whole fine world all the way up through my bare feet to my heart and through my careful hands.

  Sometimes I will be apathetic and despairing and find no meaning in any of it, especially in winter. I will be like a dry-souled nun, like my Melancholy.

  I shall always recover when the summer comes. There will be butterflies.

  Will there be anyone with me in my retreat? In a shared solitude, and not all of the time. A companion who thinks as I do, whose work is important as mine is to me. Someone self-sufficient, contented and kind. Someone who prefers being with me, together but apart as we shall be, to all the splendours of the great world.

  I do not yet know this person. But he – I think it is a he – is there somewhere waiting and when we meet we will both know at once.

  I shall always read and I shall always write, but not any more about my own life. There is so much to do, and so much that is more interesting, outside myself.

  And I may later want something else, something quite, quite different. Nothing is for ever.

  Sleep now.

  END NOTE

  Agnes Peppin’s accounts of contemporary events and public figures are necessarily limited by what she happened to see and hear, but she gets it mostly right. Some of her more surprising assertions are also true. It has proved impossible, for example, for me to discover where Elizabeth Zouche, the distinguished last Abbess of Shaftesbury, fits in to the Zouche family pedigree. And the head of Sir Thomas Wyatt really was stolen from the gibbet on Hay Hill, no one ever knew by whom. Since Agnes Peppin is fictional, her part in its disappearance is also fictional.

  Agnes Peppin’s vision in the last pages of a future life in a remote retreat, and of the companion who will share it with her, is a paraphrase of a poem by the Countess of Winchelsea, who lived more than a hundred years later.

  VICTORIA GLENDINNING is an award-winning biographer, critic, broadcaster, and novelist. Educated at Oxford where she studied modern languages, she later worked for the Times Literary Supplement. She is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. Her acclaimed biographies include Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer and Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography. Glendinning is also the author of three widely acclaimed novels: The Grown-Ups, Electricity, and Flight.

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he United States of America © 2018 The Overlook Press

  Jacket design: Chelsea Cutchens

  Jacket art: Rogier van der Weyden, Portrait of a Woman with a Winged Bonnet, c. 1440

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