The Good Wife

Eleanor Porter

Description

'Eleanor Porter is a major new voice in historical fiction.' Tim Clayton
Where will her loyalty lead her?

Once accused of witchcraft Martha Spicer is now free from the shadow of the gallows and lives a safe and happy life with her husband, Jacob. But when Jacob heads north to accompany his master, he warns Martha to keep her healing gifts a secret, to keep herself safe, to be a good wife.

Martha loves Jacob but without him there to protect her, she soon comes under the suspicious eye of the wicked Steward Boult, who’s heard of her talent and forces her to attend to him. If she refuses, he promises to destroy the good life she has built for herself with Jacob.

Desperate and alone, Martha faces a terrible decision: stay and be beholden to Boult or journey north to find Jacob who is reported to have been killed.. The road ahead is filled with danger, but also the promise of a brighter future. And where her gifts once threatened to be her downfall, might they now be the very thing that sets Martha free...?

The brilliant follow-up to Eleanor Porter's first novel of love, betrayal, superstition and fear in Elizabethan England. A story of female courage, ingenuity and determination, this is perfect for fans of Tracy Chevalier.
'Eleanor Porter is a major new voice in historical fiction. With her beautiful use of language and compelling storytelling she conjures the past with a vividness that lingers in the mind long after the final page.' Tim Clayton

Praise for The Wheelwright's Daughter:

'It's a gripping story and such accomplished writing. I really enjoyed every moment of working on it.' Yvonne Holland, editor of Philippa Gregory and Tracy Chevalier

'A brilliant debut novel'

'An interesting read and an impressive debut novel'

'A wonderfully written story'

'A skilfully crafted story of love, betrayal, superstition and fear in 16th century England.'

'This is a story of courage, trust, betrayal and love.'

'A great historical novel I loved.'

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Policier
• Mashups
• Historical Fiction
• Thrillers
• Historical
• Women
• Casa de Tudor
• Historical romance
• Body (disambiguation)
• General officer
• Witchcraft
• Woman
• The Women
• General
• Tudor
• Romance
• Thriller
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 16 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838895327
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Good Wife


Eleanor Porter
For Chris
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’
Were it not better,
Because that I am more common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man,
A gallant curtal-axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand, and in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will.
We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside
As many other mannish cowards have

That do outface it with their semblances.
Rosalind, As You Like It 1.3,104-113
Contents



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42


Historical Note

Book Club Questions

Acknowledgments

More from Eleanor Porter

About the Author

About Boldwood Books
1

Again the clay on my tongue. Wet and bitter, and the roaring weight of the slope piling on my chest. If I scream, the sludge will slide through my lips and press at my throat till I gag. But I must scream.
In the blackness I opened my mouth.
‘Martha! Martha! My sweeting, my coney! You are safe, safe.’ A man’s voice, gentle and close by my ear; he lifted his arm from my bosom and stroked my face until the hill retreated and I knew myself. I was in my own bed and Jacob beside me. All the horror of years ago, when Marcle Ridge crumpled and fell on me, was done with. It was only the dead were buried now.
We lay close. I breathed in the scent of the straw and lavender I had packed in the tick; the hay smell of the horses Jacob carried with him. I turned in the darkness and kissed his warm face.
‘They will pass, Martha, these dreams, they always do. It is the month, is all. It throws back its memories. It’s like the plough unfolding what was hidden.’
The month. February, when even winter was dying. It was my father’s worst month too. He would drink till his face scattered in the ale and he did not know himself. Each year, in the weeks after Candlemas, it felt to me as though the dead stirred; they looked for the bones that had been hurled about when Marcle hill fell down. They came into my dreams and whispered that I should be with them, for hadn’t I too been laid in the cold earth, wasn’t I the one who had pulled at the land with curses till it tumbled down?
For three days the ridge had roared and then advanced, ripping Kynaston chapel and its yard of graves, pulling the fields along like blankets, with the terrified ewes bleating and ancient trees wrenched like pegs and put down somewhere new. I had been out thieving wood and young Owen, closer to me than a brother, had been shaken out of his bed; the slip picked us and scattered us and covered us over. It was the freezing mud that I tasted again in my dreams, but what came after was worse. Someone, my good neighbours said, must have brought down God’s house, torn His hill, struck Owen dumb with terror. I must have lain with the devil. How else would a youth like Jacob turn from a golden sweetheart to embrace a small dark cripple such as me? Eye-biter, they called me, sorceress, Satan’s whore, abomination. They could barely wait for the gallows.
‘Whenever I close my eyes she’s there, Jacob, the night-hag. The mire puddles in my mouth and chokes me. It is as though there is no light left in the world. I’m sorry. I was never afraid of the night before.’
‘Come’, he said, ‘come outside with me. I must be at the stables soon.’
We stepped out from the cottage. The day had been a wet one and at first I placed my feet warily, but there was no need. Above the cleeving field the sky was clear. The stars sparked as though they’d been flung up by the chiselling frost. We laced hands to trace the constellations, the great bull, the hunter Orion with his girdle, the leaping hare, the hounds who chased after it forever. The great dog burned brightest. I liked it that the most flaming star in the whole of heaven was given to a cur. Nobody stirred in the lane, there were no sounds but the owls, and the yearning bark of a fox. We were alone with the vault of stars and all the world round us. I shucked the dread from my shoulders.
‘See, Martha,’ Jacob said, wrapping my cloak about me, ‘there is light even in the blackest middle of the night. All that life is over, gone. We live here now, in Hope.’
It was an old jest between us, but I couldn’t help smiling. After the acquittal, he had come to fetch me. He had a position already. He was to be a groom on the Coningsby estate – the clerk of the court had helped him to it out of pity for us both. I should have rejoiced, but I sat on the floor of my cell and looked up at the flies that buzzed in the narrow slit of light from the window and felt I would never leave prison, not really. I was the Witch of Woolhope by then, there was a ballad about me, or so the guards said, although they couldn’t whistle it. Wherever I went folks would revile me and call me all to nought. But Jacob sat down beside me in the dirt and took my filthy hand to his lips and smiled. All will be well Martha, he said, you’ll see. I am taking you to live in Hope.
Weak as we both were, it took us two days walking. It was the dog days of summer and the roads were thick with heat. As dusk fell I picked loosestrife, corncockle, willowherb, campion and we lay down on a bed of flowers. At Leominster he asked directions and I understood. Hope under Dinmore, in a crook of the Lugg before it falls into the Wye.
The harvest had begun when we arrived. Rain threatened. No doubt my reputation came before me, but when I limped out to the fields to help with the gleaning, the village was too busy to take much note. The women simply nodded me a welcome. At the harvest supper we took our places like the rest and shared the cup, and if people were a little quiet near me, or cast a glance or two at one another, it was far less than I had feared.
I fell into loving Jacob in the unfledged days when trouble seemed a game. I owed him my life three times over. He drew me out of the earth when it buried me; out of the water when I went mad and sought the moon in Pentaloe Well; then out of prison when he spoke for me in the court. The days of my imprisonment are blurred except that one. For days I had given depositions; I felt emptied of words. The cell was all murk, but in the walk between the prison and the courthouse I passed a garden full of roses, pink and red and white. It seemed like a picture of a far-off land. I don’t believe I was afraid any more; they hadn’t enough to hang me after Owen stepped out of his cottage white-gowned, white-haired like an angel and stilled the mob by calling out my name. The chief charge remaining was that I had bewitched Jacob into loving me. In his fever, I was told, he raved against me and the devil both. They read the words out in the court. He was too ill to testify himself they said; it was thought he might die. It was likely I would receive a year in prison. If I survived that I was free to starve wherever I wished, so long as I was not a vagrant. I felt as lonely as the shrinking moon I watched for through my bit of window, white and cold, with the gaping emptiness of the night round her always.
Then, as all was nearing a close, I heard a rustle in the courtroom and stirred myself to look up. Jacob – gaunt as a ghost, pale as one, but walking without a stick. I had not practised on him, he declared, he had chosen me freely, though in defiance of his mother. It was enough to set me free.
I was a wife. We agreed I should not work with herbs and healing. Hearing of my past, people came to me from time to time for charms and preparations, but I put them off, almost always, except when I could not bear to turn them away. It is just a little knowledge I have, I told them, nothing your own mother doesn’t know. My fingers ached to be busy, to collect simples again; my skirts brushed seeds and leaves that had power in them and I let it all drop into the mud. I would be Jacob’s wife now, not Martha Dynely, prickly and unwelcome as a thistle in pasture. In the evenings, when the work was done, we sat together and I taught him letters on a slate, or sometimes we lay down and I traced them with my fingers on his back, his thighs, or with my tongue in the hollows of his ribs.
It was good to walk the paths and not be known, or barely, even if my history was all about me still, like the echo of a cry. Whenever a child mimicked the roll of my bad leg an older one would whisper and the mocking stopped. I tried not to mind it, for Jacob’s sake, because he was determined not to notice it at all. One spring night I walked out to meet him in the grazing fields and he pulled me up on a nag that was kept for the serving men and began to teach me to ride. All my life I had been little Martha. Suddenly I was taller than a bishop in his hat. I felt the strength of the horse beneath me and all the promise of distance and speed. There, he told me, you are not lame, you lack a horse, is all.
Perhaps I could have lived like that forever, for as long as I was allotted, in the turn of the years and the warmth of Jacob’s kisses. It was only when the nights were at their blackest and the rains did not let up that the mare-hag came. In Februaries like this, when the land was numb, strewn here and there with bedraggled jags of snow. In the visions I was buried still; even when I woke it seemed to me I w