The Tintern Treasure Read Online Free PDF Page B

way. If anything, we rather relish the opprobrium.
    A short time later, Oliver and I were warm, if not completely dry, and fed. In exchange for her hospitality, we regaled the goodwife with information about the outside world, although news of rebellion breaking out in other parts of Wales disturbed her. She said she wouldn’t tell her husband as it was more than likely he’d want to go off and fight for Henry Tudor, something of which, as a loyal supporter of the House of York, she couldn’t approve.
    She herself was a Gloucester girl and I asked her if she knew a Juliette Gerrish.
    A shake of the head preceded the fact that she hadn’t lived in the city for many years. ‘And yet . . .’ The goodwife paused, frowning. ‘Now you mention it, someone did pass this way a while back – a long while back – who mentioned her name. At least, I think that’s what it was. I seem to have heard it before. Whoever it was said she’d had a child, but the talk was that it wasn’t her husband’s.’
    â€˜She’s no longer a widow, then?’ I asked sharply.
    Our hostess shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know. If she was once, she must have married again.’ She regarded me curiously. ‘What’s the lady to you?’
    â€˜Nothing. Nothing at all,’ I said, with just a little too much emphasis. ‘I met her a year or so back when I was working the Gloucester streets.’ No need to say more than that. ‘A chance encounter, that’s all. I just happened to remember her when you said you came from the city, but I didn’t realize you’d been away from it so long.’ I changed the subject abruptly and nodded at Oliver Tockney. ‘We’ll be off at first light, mistress. We’ll retrace our steps to Gloucester and cross the Severn there. I hope we don’t keep you and your goodman awake with our snoring.’
    â€˜It won’t bother us,’ she answered, beginning to douse the fire. ‘We sleep like logs. You’ll find some old blankets and sacks and things in that chest over by the wall. You can see where our bed is. You’re welcome to the other half of the room. And if you’ll both look away while I take off my gown and shift, we shall get on tolerably well. We’ve no chamber pot, I’m afraid, so you’ll just have to piss in the corner where the pile of straw is, or out of the door.’
    The weather being what it was, we chose the straw, and half an hour later, in spite of the hardness of the cottage’s beaten-earth floor, Oliver Tockney and I were both fast asleep.

THREE
    W e set out betimes the following morning – after a breakfast of oatmeal and warm ale provided by our hostess and watched in glum silence by our reluctant host – to retrace our path to Gloucester. We had not gone more than a mile or two, however, before we encountered a sour-faced cottager, driving his pig ahead of him.
    He said something to us in Welsh.
    Oliver and I both mimed our inability to understand him, whereupon he dropped into English with the ease that many borderers have. Most of them, of necessity, speak both languages. ‘I asked where you’re bound for. Gloucester, is it?’
    I nodded and he came to a halt, letting his pig wander off to rootle among the wayside bushes, their leaves still dripping from the previous night’s storm. ‘You won’t make it then,’ he announced lugubriously. ‘There’s a great tree uprooted not three or four furlongs up the track from here. It’ll take a day or so before it’s moved, I reckon. I was hoping to get my pig to Gloucester market and sell him. I need to buy provisions before the winter sets in. Just my luck! Now I’ve to leg it to Marstow to get help.’ He glanced upwards, regarding the lowering sky, the full-bellied clouds pregnant with rain. ‘If you’ve any sense, you’ll turn around and head for