Read [Roger the Chapman 06] - The Wicked Winter for Free Online Page B

me, but nothing would suit her better than to be rid of me. Where is she, eh? Not a soul's been next nor nigh me since I was brought up here earlier this morning. What's she up to? Why hasn't she been to see me?'
    'The mistress is busy,' Bet answered, colouring. 'Look, here's a chapman come selling his wares. I've brought 'im to visit you.'
    Dame Judith peered at me with short-sighted, laded blue eyes, but for the moment evinced no further interest.
    'Don't change the subject,' she ordered Bet sternly. 'You tell my daughter-in-law to come and see me.' She added to the network of wrinkles already lining her face by screwing it up in disgust. 'I know what she's at, the harlot! She may think she's pulling the wool over my eyes, but you can tell her that she ain't. I wasn't born last September! That Sir Hugh Cederwell's here again. It's no use your denying it, girl! I saw him ride in this morning not long after breakfast, while I was still downstairs in the parlour.' She gave a sudden grin, grinding her toothless gums together. 'I see a lot of things that people don't reckon on me seeing.'  
    'That's 'cause you sits with the shutters wide open,' Bet reprimanded the old lady. She beckoned me forward. 'Here's the chapman, like I told you. You talk to 'im fer a bit and look at what 'e's got to sell you.'
    Bet whisked herself out of the solar before Dame Judith could protest or hinder her further. I was left alone with this indomitable old lady whose fragility made me feel even gawkier and more overgrown than usual. In her grey gown and slippers, untidy locks of white hair pushing out from beneath her hood, she was like a wisp of smoke waiting to be blown away by the first puff of wind. She eyed me sharply.
    'They think I don't know what goes on in this house,' she snorted. 'But I do. Oh yes, I do indeed. That Sir Hugh Cederwell! Lovely young wife by all accounts, but he prefers a maturer woman with more experience between the sheets.' l felt the blood steal up under my skin. Dame Judith saw it and laughed. 'Embarrass you, do I? Why does a little plain speaking make you uncomfortable? I'm sure a good-looking lad such as you is no virgin, and you must have exchanged plenty of ribaldry in the alehouses and taverns. But you don't care to hear it on a woman's lips, is that it? Ah well! I shouldn't chide you. It's good to know that you hold womankind in such esteem. So!' She clapped her dry, fleshless hands together. 'Show me your wares. I promise I'll buy something, even if I don't really want it. It'll be payment for your time and company, which are the two things I chiefly need.'
    She was seated in a high, carved armchair and instructed me to draw up a flat-topped oaken coffer which stood against one wall. It would serve, she said, as a table on which to display my goods. But when I had spread them out, she showed no immediate inclination to look them over, but folded her hands in her lap, leant back in her chair and began to reminisce about her youth; a youth spent, as a young and beautiful woman, at King Henry's court before what she called 'all the troubles and upheavals'.
    'From time to time he was completely mad, poor man, like his grandsire, the French king that his father beat at Agincourt. And when he wasn't mad, he was on his knees praying, or exhorting all us women to cover our breasts.
    Low-cut gowns, he said, were the work of the devil. And Queen Margaret wearing the most daring of any of us! When he first saw his son, Prince Edward, him who was killed a few years back at Tewkesbury, he said the boy must be the child of the Holy Ghost.' Dame Judith cackled with amusement. 'The child of the Earl of Wiltshire or of Somerset more like! At least, that's what the rest of us thought. We '
    The door of the solar opened and the old lady broke off her narrative at once, snapping her jaws together like a pair of tongs cracking nuts. An authoritative voice demanded, 'Mother, what are you up to? Who is this man? And what is he doing in