The Preacher's Bride (4 page)

Lucy barged through the door, breathing in heavy gulps. Her footsteps faltered when she saw Brother Costin, but then with eyes to the floor, she skirted around him and rushed to nurse the babe. Her movements were short and jerky, her hands trembling, her feet tapping while she hurried Thomas through his feeding.

“Feed ’im pap,” she said as she pried the sleeping infant from her breast after he’d filled his belly enough to lull him into an exhausted slumber. With shaking hands, she nearly dropped him when she handed him back. “If I can’t get here for his next meal, then make ’im pap—a paste of bread and water, thinned with milk.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Be careful, Lucy.”

Lucy didn’t respond. Straightening her bodice, she headed for the door.

“Lucy, wait.”

She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes sad and tired.

Elizabeth handed her a loaf of bread. “Don’t forget this.”

The woman took it and rushed out the door.

As Elizabeth turned to face the disordered room, she released a breath of relief. Brother Costin had disappeared into his closet, and she could begin her housekeeping duties without the worry of his sending her home—at least for now.

Chapter
4

By midday friends from all over Bedfordshire had gathered in front of the cottage for the funeral procession. John forced himself to leave his study and dress in his meeting clothes. He could hardly make his hands and feet move with the heaviness of his sorrow.

The men of the congregation had laid Mary’s body in the parish’s reusable wooden coffin and then loaded the simple box onto a wooden bier to transport her body from the place of death to its final resting spot. After draping the coffin with a black hearse cloth, John assigned his family and closest friends the job of carrying it. They lifted the bier by its handles onto their shoulders and led the procession from the cottage.

In a blur he followed the coffin, stumbling along with his children and other family members.

The funeral procession in Puritan style was simple and silent. In the days before the war, when the king ruled, the Anglican Church had dictated customs, and funerals had been ostentatious. But when Cromwell came into power, the Independent Puritans had eradicated much of the frivolity and pomp of the old traditions. The changes hadn’t always been easy for John, but today he received the solemnity with gratitude.

Vicar Burton met them at the stile and accompanied the coffin to the grave. The sexton had already dug a deep spot in an area without recent burials to avoid the probability of digging up the remains of another. Mary’s grave would be unmarked except the disturbance of earth.

The men gingerly lifted Mary’s body from the coffin and lowered it into the ground. Wrapped in a winding sheet, the outline of her delicate form was all that distinguished her. He wanted to shout at his friends to stop and unwind her, that she was only asleep. But he had sat at her side most of the night. She’d nary moved.

The women of their Independent Congregation had done all they could for her, but it had been a losing battle from the start. For over a fortnight she’d languished with fever and sweat, then skin dry and burning, pain in the head and back, vomiting, and swollen belly until she could not bear the lightest covering.

John gazed into the gaping hole in the earth, at the clods of dirt that had fallen onto the smooth white linen. His chest constricted.

He finally had to admit: the beautiful woman he’d wedded ten years past would never smile at him again.

Johnny’s small hand wound through his fingers. “Where’s Momma?”

John shifted his gaze to his son. The eyes peering up at him pooled with confusion. “Me want Momma.”

The ache in John’s heart pulsed outward. How could he begin to explain to this child that he would never see his mother again? How could one so young understand just how much he had lost?

Tears welled in the boy’s eyes.

John reached for him and swallowed him in an embrace against his chest. He breathed deeply of the boy’s soft hair. “I’ll be here, Johnny. I won’t leave you.”

Even as he whispered the words, a sliver of concern pricked him. How could he be there for his children in place of Mary? Over the past year, his preaching duties had slowly taken more of his time. People hungered for the true Gospel and were coming to hear him in greater numbers. He couldn’t pull back now, not when the harvest was so ripe.

John held the boy tighter. He numbly reached for a handful of dirt and sprinkled it on top of the woman they had loved.

“Earth to earth,” Vicar Burton spoke quietly, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life.”

Somehow, they’d have to survive without her. But how?

* * *

Elizabeth’s eyes stung with tears when young Johnny Costin, with his wide eyes and solemn face, tossed earth onto his mother. She could almost feel the moistness of the soil, the coarseness of it slipping through her fingers down onto the shrouded figure of her
own
mother.

She blinked back tears. Her mother had died during childbirth, along with a baby girl who would have been the eighth Whitbread daughter had she lived. ’Twas no secret her mother had hoped to give their father another son, one to replace his firstborn. ’Twas also no secret she had blamed herself for Robbie’s murder. No matter how much Elizabeth’s father had reassured her and had taken the blame upon himself for not having been there to protect his family, her mother had died with the regrets.

Thomas squirmed in Elizabeth’s arms with the grunts and fusses of hunger. ’Twas past time for another nursing. She’d instructed Lucy to meet her at the church. But it was becoming apparent this time she’d have to search for the woman if she wanted Thomas fed. He couldn’t survive on pap.

“Let’s go, Anne,” she said.

Anne, the more willing of her sisters and most like-minded, followed her as she made her way around the church, past the rectory that had been a hospital in ancient times. She glanced over her shoulder as they started up St. John’s Street, half expecting Brother Costin or one of his kin to come after her and accuse her of stealing the babe.

But amidst the large gathering no one had noticed their disappearance. She could only hope that grief kept them from showing an interest in the babe rather than a conviction he would die.

Their walk back over the River Ouse to the north side of Bedford was a short one. Past businesses and the homes of tradesmen like her father, they made their way into the area of town where the poor laborers lived.

When they approached the warehouse, the voices of children playing under the steps turned to stony silence. The children stared, the whites of their eyes too big against the dirt that covered their faces.

“Nick,” Elizabeth said, picking out Lucy’s oldest from amongst them. His matted hair still had enough red visible to set him apart from the rest. “Is your mother home?”

The boy nodded and his eyes darted to the upstairs door.

“Is she awake?” She jiggled the increasingly unhappy Thomas.

Nick shrugged his bony shoulders. None of the others said anything.

She listened a moment then started up the flight of steps.

“Mum said not to disturb ’em,” Nick blurted, taking a step toward her, his scrawny body tightening. “Or Fulke’ll beat our backs.”

“I’ll be quiet. I promise.”

When she reached the top, her neck prickled, as if someone was watching her. Of course half a dozen pairs of eyes from the children below were fixed on her. But the strange feeling didn’t originate with them.

She glanced over her shoulder, down the street, past the row of dingy cottages packed tightly together. There on the corner across from the school, not far from the poultry market, stood a man with a tall black hat. It shadowed his face, and she saw nothing but his short beard.

She may not have given the man a second thought—only to consider him a curious onlooker—except that when he realized she had spotted him, he ducked his head and limped away, almost as if he wanted to keep his identity hidden from her.

For a moment she watched the corner around which he had disappeared. Why would anyone be interested in her doings? She could think of several lame men in Bedford who had sustained injuries either during the war or in the course of their work. But what reason did one of them or anyone have to stalk her?

She shook off the unease. ’Twas likely a passerby who had stopped to wonder what a woman like herself was doing down Calts Lane.

Elizabeth pushed open the door. “Lucy,” she whispered to the dark room.

When her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw two couples—one on the bed and one on the floor.

“Lucy,” she whispered again, louder.

The woman on the floor sat up and pulled a ragged blanket against her. Even in the darkness, Elizabeth could tell the woman was naked. She averted her eyes as the woman stood up, wrapped herself in a thin blanket, and made her way to the bed.

Elizabeth hoped it wasn’t Lucy’s homeless sister, Martha. If so, Lucy was asking for more trouble.

Of late, the ordinances had grown stricter. Many parishes didn’t want to support the poor who didn’t belong to their towns, and the churchwardens had made new rules to keep them out. No one was permitted to house someone from another town without the consent of the mayor. Elizabeth doubted Lucy had presented a request or received permission for Martha to stay with her.

The woman shook Lucy.

“I have the babe,” Elizabeth whispered as Lucy raised her head. “He needs to nurse.”

Lucy didn’t move.

“Please, Lucy. I can pay you.”

Finally she nodded.

* * *

At dawn the next morning, Elizabeth hesitated outside the Costin cottage door. Brother Costin had insisted he didn’t want a housekeeper. But she was sure she could convince him of his need if she got the chance.

With firm set of her shoulders she pushed open the door and stepped inside. She stopped short when Mary staggered toward her and held out the wailing Thomas.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” The young girl stared past her with unseeing blue eyes. She cocked her head to one side, golden curls dangling across her face. “Thomas has been hungry and crying.”

Elizabeth took the babe from the girl and slid her finger into his mouth. He latched on to it and sucked with greedy gulps. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mary. But I’m not the wet nurse. I’m the housekeeper.”

“I know. The wet nurse is the one who smells like the chamber pot, and you’re the one who smells like fresh-baked bread.”

Elizabeth smiled. Indeed, Mary was perceptive to have gleaned so much when she had scarcely been near her or Lucy yesterday. After the funeral most of the congregation, along with family, had returned to the Costin home, where matrons of the congregation had assembled a modest feast of roasted lamb, bread, cheese, biscuits, and ale. In her efforts to help with the meal and cleanup, as well as tend to Thomas, she’d had little opportunity to seek out the other children.

“Momma.” Johnny’s broken wail tugged at Elizabeth’s heart. “Momma. Me want Momma.”

The young boy sat at the table, and tears trickled down his cheeks. Betsy hunched next to him, nibbling a piece of leftover cheese. She stared at Elizabeth with wide, scared eyes. At two and four, Johnny and Betsy wouldn’t understand why she, a stranger, stood there in place of their mother.

“Mom-ma!” he wailed louder.

Mary turned and, with outstretched arms, shuffled to the table, feeling her way toward him. “It’s all right, Johnny.”

Elizabeth saw the mug and Mary’s hand gliding toward it but only had time to say “Take heed—” when the girl bumped it. The liquid rushed into Betsy’s lap.

The girl squealed. Johnny began to wail louder. Mary tried to calm them and clean the spill, but in the process knocked over another mug, this time drenching Johnny.

Elizabeth shook her head at the chaos that had erupted in a matter of seconds. She strode to the cradle and placed Thomas down. However, without her finger to suck on, he started crying again—piercing, hungry cries.

Mary plopped onto the floor and burst into tears too.

“What has happened?” The door to the study banged open, and Brother Costin stumbled out, rubbing his eyes.

Elizabeth caught only a glimpse of him before shrieking and yanking her apron over her face to shield her vision. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Brother Costin was immodestly attired—from his breeches upward, his chest was bare and his broad shoulders exposed.

’Twas embarrassing to happen across the immodesty of another woman, as she had with Lucy from time to time, but to see a man unclothed, even if only partially, was altogether horrifying. ’Twas not decent nor appropriate for her, a young unmarried woman, to be anywhere near such a man.

“With all of the crying and screaming, methought the house was afire or someone was hurt,” he bellowed above the squalling. “But it’s only a woman with an apron over her head scaring my children.”

“ ’Tis the housekeeper,” Elizabeth called through the white linen.

“I don’t have a housekeeper.”

She’d never in her life seen a man in such a state of undress, not even her father. She squirmed and prayed he would disappear.

“All was calm until you arrived.”

She saw his form through the material as he moved across the room toward the children. He hoisted Johnny into one arm and Betsy into another and murmured soft words in their ears until they ceased their crying.

Even through the apron she could see the thick bands in his arms expand to hold the weight of both children.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block him out. “I’m only here to help.”

“Help?” He snorted. “You were the one who broke my nose yesterday, weren’t you?”

“And a few of your ribs. But ’twas an accident. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“Reassuring. I suppose this was all an accident too? Frightening my children?”

“No. I mean, yes. What I mean to say is that I didn’t frighten them—not intentionally.”

“Then why are you holding your apron over your head?”

“Because of you.”

“Me?”

She nodded, heat scalding her cheeks again.

“You don’t wish me to see you?”

“No. ’Tis the other way around.
I
do not wish to see
you
.”

For a moment the room was silent except for Thomas’s pitiful cries.

Elizabeth cracked open her eyes and strained to see him through the fabric. He stood motionless, his head tilted to one side.

“If you do not wish to see me, then why are you here?”

This was going poorly. For once her words had deserted her, and she could speak nothing but nonsense. “I do wish to see you. But I don’t wish to see you this way.”

He shook his head then set Johnny and Betsy down. “Woman, you are making about as much sense as a vicar reading the
Book of Common Prayers
in Latin.” He began walking toward her.

“Stop. Let me explain.”

But he didn’t stop. He came toward her until her back was pressed against the door, leaving her no escape from his over-powering presence.

“What exactly are you hiding?”

“Nothing. Really. Only mine eyes.” She was in the most indecent of predicaments, and she couldn’t think straight to get herself out of it.