The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  The shop bell jangled as the street door opened and Edward Howes walked in. He was in his early twenties, tall, and stoop-shouldered, rather like a heron, even to the untidy crest of drab hair on his narrow head. His gray doublet and breeches hung limply on his lean frame and were well spotted with ink and sealing wax. His eyes were vaguely blue, the eyes of a sensitive dreamer, and indeed of late he dabbled secretly in alchemy and mysticism. He had attended Oxford, and excelled in mathematics, he was thoroughly versed in law and the classics. In moments of embarrassment he often became pedantic, and he was never easy with Elizabeth whom he desired to the point of anguish at times, and who treated him with alternations of tolerance and boredom.

  His long eager face lit up as he saw her behind the counter, he walked boldly towards her with hands outstretched. "How do you, Bess? Nay, leave your pills and potions be—for as John Lyly has said, 'Where is that precious Panacea which cureth all diseases ... or that herb Nepenthe that procureth my delight?' Not on the shelves, Bess—but in your own heart—I hope?"

  She smiled faintly and let him take her hand. "I fear my heart will dispense no merry medicine today, Edward, and that it lacks the wish to."

  He swallowed, dropping her hand. "Cruel heart then, O Cor Crudelis! Why does it lack the wish?"

  "For I am in a sorry mood."

  "On Christmas?"

  She shrugged. "And what is Christmas to us, Edward? You know well what my Uncle Winthrop and my Aunt Downing think of Christmas. No matter, they aren't here, and we have for dinner a Christmas pie thick with plums. Come and eat it with us."

  They dined at the long oak table in the hall, all the Foneses except Thomas. Priscilla sat at the head in his place, with Edward on her right. She chattered at him and he was content to be silent and watch Elizabeth, whose discontent with life gradually lessened under the delectable influence of suckling pig and roast goose, of marrow puddings and herb tarts, and especially of the strong ale she had herself made last year.

  And when they had finished they sang madrigals together, softly so as not to disturb the ailing father upstairs, though he did not disapprove of singing which was part of the English inheritance back to the days of the wild Norsemen's invasion and the minstrels. Even John Winthrop had not yet come to frown on secular music, if it were seemly, for knowledge of part-singing and some instalment were signs of gentle birth.

  Elizabeth had enough skill with the lute to strike a few chords, and she dearly loved to sing, especially the silver harmonies of Thomas Campion. Martha had a sweet little voice to follow the air, the children Sam and Mary piped off and on tune, while Priscilla wheezed in an adequate contralto, but at the discovery that Edward had a true baritone, Elizabeth looked at him with startled, if momentary, pleasure.

  They sang "Now winter nights enlarge the number of their hours ... now yellow waxen lights shall wait on honey love," and as the young man caught her eye, she felt a quiver of sensual excitement, born of the song, though she tried to attach it to Edward. They sang "The Silver Swan" and they sang Christmas songs, "Wassail, wassail all over the town," and "The Holly and the Ivy."

  They might have sung all afternoon, except that Thomas sent word down by one of the maids that he wished to see Elizabeth. At once her gaiety was extinguished and her heart sank. He was going to ask her about Lady Carlisle! But he did not, for his thoughts were full of another matter.

  "Bess," he said, as she came in still flushed from the singing. "Edward Howes is here, is he not?" As she nodded, he went on, "He has asked for you in marriage, has he spoken to you yet?"

  She shook her head. "Not in so many words. I haven't permitted him."

  "'T'cha," said her father irritably. "Well, permit him then, for it's settled. 'Tis a good match for you, sober, steady young man, will go far in the law, and inherit fine Essex lands when his grandfather dies. Also Mr. Howes is quite satisfied with the dowry I can give you, the four hundred pounds left you by your mother, would have been satisfied with less, for he seems to have an immoderate attachment to you."

  Elizabeth glanced at her father, then at the small coal fire. "I don't want to marry him. I don't want to go and live with him in two rooms of Aunt Lucy's house, and I don't love him at all."

  Thomas's foot began to tap the floor beneath the blanket; he poured himself a draught of calming poppy broth from a pitcher at his elbow, and spoke with tense control. "Love will follow duty. I have been an indulgent father, I refused that offer for you from Master Thurlby last spring, because you said he was too old, but this is different. Mr. Howes is close to your Uncle Downing, near one of the family already, and your Uncle Winthrop feels it an excellent match for you."

  As she said nothing but gazed frowning into the fire, he said, "Come, come, Elizabeth, what is this stubborn silence? I feel death near, my days are numbered, and I wish to see you, at least, settled, before Merciful God terminates my sufferings."

  This plea did not affect her; for as long as she could remember, her father had been prophesying his imminent death; but her mind seemed stupefied, she could think of nothing to say except a plaintive "I love somebody else" and regretted it, as her father naturally asked "Who? Why have you not told me? Who is it?"

  "No matter—" she said on a long breath. "I've not seen him in months and he doesn't love me."

  Something in the droop of her head reminded Thomas of her mother, Anne. This and the sadness in her voice pierced the wall of his own discomforts.

  "Bessie—" he said gently. "Come here."

  She obeyed, and sank to the stool he indicated beside his chair. He put his gnarled hand on her dark shining hair. "I would not be harsh with you, my child, nor force you to obey, except that I have prayed on it and know what is best for you, and your wayward heart, which has learned as yet nor discretion nor moderation."

  She sighed, grateful for the touch of his hand on her head, moved by the rare softness of his voice, but suddenly twisting and looking up at him, she cried, "No, I am not moderate, Father! Or tame, or sober of thought—God forgive me—sometimes I feel torn in two—by the strength of passion in me, by a longing for wildness and freedom..." She checked herself. "This I know you cannot understand."

  Thomas Fones felt sharp apprehension as he stared at the flare of her nostrils, the lush curves of her mouth.

  It was not Anne Winthrop whom she resembled now, but Thomas's own grandmother, the passionate Cornish woman, with the long lewd eyes of a gypsy. And he remembered that there had been sorry stories about her in the Fones family, stories that many men had desired her, while she had loved too well a Spanish sailor cast up from the Armada on the Cornish coast near her home. Wanton blood, he thought with shame, and for the girl's own safety she must be bled of it quickly. "So, Bess," he said, "you are condemned out of your own mouth, my dear. You admit fierceness of passion and need for guidance, and Our All-seeing Lord has given you through me the means to subdue the one and find the other. You know your duty to your father, indeed you've proved it, and I am mindful of how well you've learned the arts of the apothecary and stillroom, and of the help you've given me in the shop."

  She turned quickly to him, delighted at the compliment, but he, fearing to incite her to vainglory, hastily went on, "'Tis a pity you've not the same skill in ordinarv female tasks as well, your mother tells me you have scant interest in stitchery or spinning ... but let that be. You will have to learn those skills when you are a wife—the wife of Edward Howes."

  His voice ended on a much sharper note, for still he was not sure of her obedience, and his knee had begun to throb again. There was a swimming in his head that always came with anger. "Enough of this!" he cried, pounding his fist on the chair arm. "Have you no regard for me? Do you not care that I am ill and weak, and that your obduracy increases my sufferings?"

  "Yes, Father," she said dully. "Forgive me." What's the use? she thought. What else is there for me to do, and Edward's naught so bad, he loves me ... and Jack himself wanted me to marry him. "But one thing I ask, Fathe
r ... give me a few more months ... let not the marriage be till summer."

  Thomas slumped back in his chair. "There, there, Bess. I knew you'd be a good lass. No doubt the wedding may wait a bit. Now I want you to go to the Downings and inquire for your Uncle Winthrop's health. Mr. Howes can escort you. Take your uncle the Purple Electuary. It may cure him. And send your mother to me. And ask cook for a warming pan well filled with coals, the bed was damp yesterday."

  "Yes, Father." Elizabeth lingered a moment, wondering if he would offer to kiss her in reward for her submission, longing for more of the affection he had shown her so briefly. But she saw that he had sunk back into his own preoccupations.

  Elizabeth and Edward walked down the Old Bailey, turned west up Ludgate Hill, then mounted the Fleet Bridge. She walked very fast, wishing to ward off her capitulation and ignoring Edward's tentative clearings of the throat as he shambled beside her. But on the bridge, the mud-spattering passage of a nobleman's coach forced them into one of the jutting safety nooks for pedestrians, and Edward seized her arm.

  "Wait, Bess! I never see you alone, and I must know. Did your father speak to you of me?" His urgent clutch hurt her arm; she moved away from him, pulling her fur-lined cloak tight around her. She leaned on the stone parapet, so that her hood concealed her face, and gazing on the frozen canal below, she said, "Aye. He told me of your offer. He is in favor of it."

  "And you, Bess—are you in favor? Will you not look at me?" She had raised her eyes and was staring at the huge gloomy pile of the Fleet prison, where there was a man's hand clenched from inside on one of the thick iron window bars.

  She turned slowly but did not look at the anxious face beside her. "I will marry you, Edward, because you wish it, and my father and uncles wish it, but I do not love you."

  "You will, my sweet," he cried. "In time you will. 'Amor gignit amorem," Plutarch has said it, and Seneca too, 'Ut amaris, ama,' Love begets love."

  "Let us hope so," said Elizabeth with a small laugh. She was suddenly sorry for him with his long storklike body, his myopic eyes, and the stock of quotations with which he bolstered his speech, fearful that it would not stand alone.

  "Will you please to kiss me, Bess?" he begged. "I'll not hurry you or do anything you don't like, I vow it."

  Dear Lord, what a wooing, she thought, with a contempt she could not help. Tentative, humble, fearful of rebuff ... there might be women would be won by this approach, but—She raised her face and offered him her cheek; as he kissed it furtively she felt him tremble, and her eyes went back to that clutching prisoner's hand on the window bar.

  "So," she said briskly. "'Tis getting cold now the sun's gone, let's hurry to the Downings." They walked off the bridge.

  "We'll tell them, Bess? Tell them our news?" He was discouraged by the coolness she showed him, and yet so inexperienced with women that he wondered if she were simply being modest. "We'll tell them now?" he asked again, hoping that public affirmation would bring the triumph he had hoped to feel.

  "If you like," she said..."Oh, look, Edward, here comes Lady Carlisle's coach returning from the City!" They flattened themselves against the house wall as the four black horses came trotting up Fleet Street, the postilion blowing blasts on his trumpet, the coachman shouting, "Make way! Make way for her Ladyship of Carlisle!" The masked face flashed by in profile.

  "They say she is a meddling woman, an intriguante," observed Edward as they regained the cobbles, "and has far too much influence with the Queen and thus the King."

  "She is certainly no friend to our form of worship. 'Puritans' she calls us, of course."

  "How do you know?" asked Edward astonished, and Elizabeth, willing enough to talk of impersonal matters, told him of the morning's episode with the Countess.

  "That was perhaps unfortunate," he said gravely, as she finished. "She might make trouble."

  "How could she?" said Elizabeth frowning. "Neither a greal noblewoman nor certainly Their Majesties will bother over the conformity of a little apothecary!"

  "No, I think not, though the King has lately concerned himself with a great many strange things when it comes to suppressing our forms of worship and foisting the old Roman ceremonies on the Church of England. And now with Laud become Bishop of London ... we may soon be forced to bow at the Name of Jesus, kneel to painted images, say no prayers that aren't in the prayer book, and profane the Sabbath with sports and games!"

  "Why not?" she said without thinking. "All these things my grandfather believed in, and kept Christmas too. I vow I like it better."

  Edward turned and looked down at her. "Never talk that way before your uncles, Bess—Mr. Winthrop especially would be appalled."

  "I know it," she said quickly, but she had noticed a faint reserve in his voice, and she added, "Are you truly a Puritan, Edward?"

  He was startled by a question he had sometimes put to himself, and he laughed. "Nay, I don't know. I fear I'm not overgodly. At least I think everyone should worship as they like. Religion has not my interest as it should." He thought of the things which did hold his interest—the search for the philosophers' stone, study of the new logarithms, and of the law.

  Elizabeth suddenly laughed too. When he was not trying to make love to her, he had directness and some humor. "I'm not godly either," she said. "Nor do I worry enough over the salvation of my soul..."

  "And yet," he went on still following his thoughts, "the man I love best in the world, Jack Winthrop, has a true piety I can admire, it sits on him well and quietly, not like some ranters. Bess," he added reaching for her hand, "how pleased your cousin Jack will be when he knows we're betrothed."

  Though candlelights were pricking through the windows of all the huddled houses, Fleet Street darkened for Elizabeth. The mention of that name combined with Edward's pleading touch gave her a sick pang that was physical. She said nothing, and withdrew her hand.

  Near the Fleet Street conduit, a weathered old sign of a Bishop's Head swung at the corner of an alley. They silently turned up the alley which was virtually a tunnel since the lattice windows of the upper floors projected within two feet of each other. At the end of the alley was Peterborough Court and the imposing Downing mansion which occupied three sides of it.

  Elizabeth and Edward were admitted by a liveried manservant—the Downings lived elegantly—and received by Emmanuel Downing himself beside a roaring oak fire in the elaborate Hall. He was a stout, rather pompous man of forty, dressed in a plum velvet doublet, on which he had loosened the buttons for greater ease during his after-dinner doze. He was shrewd about finance and the law, and had last summer entered the Inner Temple as an attorney of the Court of Wards and Liveries, a remunerative position which his brother-in-law, John Winthrop, had already enjoyed for a year. Downing had been born in Suffolk and rejoiced in the acquaintance of several prominent Puritan lords as well, so that his religious views coincided with John Winthrop's. But in Emmanuel these were more a matter of custom and expediency than conscience. It was not fear of the King's possible papacy that worried him, it was the need for resistance to the King's shocking unconstitutional raids on citizens' rights and purses.

  Today he awoke from his nap and greeted his niece and clerk hospitably if somewhat absent-mindedly. "Well, well, youngsters—where have you been, Edward? I thought you were working on the Hankin petition, or is it the Stewart wardship?"

  "You gave me the half day off, sir, to dine with the Foneses."

  "Ah, to be sure—so I did." Downing yawned, belching slightly, reached to the mantel for his long clay pipe, stuffed it with tobacco from a cannister and motioned to Edward to light a spill at the fire. When the clerk obeyed, Downing took a deep pull, voluptuously emitted a cloud of smoke, and said, "Bess, you look most pretty, lass, is't the walk in the cold, or perchance something else?" He gave a broad wink.

  "I don't know, Uncle," she said, and hesitated, so that Edward threw her an anxious glance, then gulped out, "Elizabeth and I are to wed, sir."

  "Excellent! E
xcellent!" cried Downing heartily. "Though scarcely a surprise. We must drink on it, eh?—my best malmsey put down in '19! Lucy—" he bawled suddenly. "Wife, come! Here's a joyful occasion!"

  Lucy Downing was in the nurseries, supervising the swaddling of Joshua, the latest baby, and scolding the nurse. She did not hear her husband's bellow, but one of the servants went to summon her, and she presently came down to the Hall. "What's ado, what's ado?" she said with irritation as she entered and saw only their clerk and her niece.

  Lucy, now twenty-eight, had been married seven years to Emmanuel, had duly presented him with three children and was six months pregnant with the fourth. Maternity, position, and a sojourn amongst the wild Irish in Dublin had mellowed some of her tartness, but in brisk angularity of face and manner she increasingly resembled her mother, Mistress Winthrop, who still presided at Groton Manor.

  "'Tis these two..." said Emmanuel, "who are now betrothed this Christmas Day. We must have up the butt of malmsey on 't."

  "Is it so?" said Lucy smiling thinly. "Felicitations." She motioned to Elizabeth who came up and curtseyed. Her aunt kissed her on the cheek and turned to Edward. "Well, young man, you've got yourself a balk-mare. Bess Fones has ever had a will of her own, but since you'll be bringing her under my roof for a bit, I'll lend you a hand with the bridling of her!"

  "Thank you, ma'am," said Edward flushing, and though he was in awe of Mrs. Downing he went on to quote Chaucer in a reproachful tone. "I feel that Bess will ever be 'her husband's help and his confort, his paradise terrestre and his disport.'"

  "Ah, my lad, we all feel that in the beginning," cried Emmanuel laughing. "Eh, Lucy, my dear, don't glare at me like that! Have up the malmsey!"

  Lucy turned to the bell rope and rang for the servant, but her lips were tight. No reason to waste their most costly wine on an occasion of small importance, but Emmanuel was generous, and besides like most men he tended to spoil Bess, who was even now looking at her uncle with the soft seductive smile which infuriated her aunt. Lucy knew that the smile owed more to nature's fortuitous arrangement of the girl's features than to deliberate intent, but found its dithering effect on men nonetheless tiresome.