The Wet Nurse's Tale Read Online Free PDF

horse.” So that’s what I recall every time I eat an apple: my father’s hand and that boy.
    Twasn’t long before the rider I’d seen came along up the hill. The tree was all over green leaves and I knew I’d stay hidden if I didn’t shift sudden, so I sat still and moved only my jaw with chewing. Wasn’t I surprised to see Master Freddie on that black horse. After those few words about the picture of the lady and her babe, he’d never talked to me again, and of course, I’d never met his eye. I’d never wanted to. I felt sorry for him, is how I felt, and that’s an uncomfortable feeling for a servant to feel, is pity for her master.
    He walked right over to the tree and stood with his back to the trunk of it so that if I’d have had a mind to, I could have jumped down and ridden on his shoulders the way my brothers did with each other when they swam in the pond. Truly, I was looking at the crown of his head. I was half amazed with not knowing what to do when of a sudden, he undid the front of his breeches, and before I could even clear my throat, he had his thing in his hand and was pissing, a great arc. I was so stiff with fright I dared not even look away lest he hear my eyeballs move, so I couldn’t help but see his thing, though his belly was big enough to jut out.
    I’d seen one before on my brothers and on animals but this was the young master and that was entirely different, of course. Oh, Susan, I said to myself, you’ll lose it now, for sure, your position. Master Freddie finished his piss and I thanked God, but he didn’t put it away! Instead he held it for a minute and seemed to look at it, for I know not what reason, and then I belched out of the sheer shame of it and the apple, too. It was a huge belch and he started and looked up and there I was looking straight down at him, straight into his eyes.
    Neither of us said anything for a tiny second. Then I said, “Beg pardon, sir,” but I wasn’t sure whether it was for belching or for just being there.
    Quick now, he tied his breeches back up and then looked up at me again.
    “Is that you, Susan?” said he, much like he didn’t believe it himself.
    “Yes, sir,” I said.
    “Were you spying on me, Susan?” he said, angry-like, though I was there first.
    “Oh no, sir,” said I. “I was eating an apple, if you please, sir.”
    “Could not you eat your apple on terra firma then, Susan?” he said but as I did not know what he meant, I didn’t answer. So he said, “Well then, you’d better come down, I suppose.”
    “Yes, sir,” I mumbled but could not move. There was not a way I knew to climb off the tree without showing him more than he ought to want to see. He seemed to understand this and turned his back while I came down which I did without much grace, more like I fell out of the tree than anything else, in my haste to fix myself up a bit.
    “You’re at home in a tree, then,” said he after he’d turned around. I nodded and smiled though I dared not meet his eyes.
    “That’s a high branch,” said he, surveying it, like, and I nodded again. Generally, I am not a shy person but I know my place and more than anything I wanted to curtsy and walk away and leave him there under that oak. It seemed, though, that he wanted to speak to me.
    And then, Reader, I’ve never been more surprised. “It is too bad about your sister,” said he, and at that, my mouth fell open, I could feel it, and I stared right into his face.
    “Ellen, wasn’t it?” he said, not meeting my eyes but staring off in the direction of the Great House.
    “Yes, sir,” I said and then, because I couldn’t help it, “she was a darling.”
    He looked at me, but this time I couldn’t tell whether it was pity or maybe just he’d had enough of talking to a servant and he said, “Yes,” and then looked away at the view once again. I bobbed my curtsy and I mumbled a good-bye and then I walked off, quiet-like, as if there was a polished floor for me to not