CHAPTER TWO #4
She had understood - or thought she understood - the bargain she was making when she agreed to stay on in Hilda's household.
By law, she had no rights to her child: her husband had willed his guardianship to his family and left her no recourse but to beg permission to stay with him.
She'd accepted the offer to work, unpaid, for her niece in exchange for the ability to stay with and look after Walter: at the time, she would have agreed to anything to keep from being separated from her son.
Now it was nearly a year later, and doubts had begun to creep in.
She'd known Hilda was likely to be peevish - her experience with Geoffrey had taught her to expect as much.
But she had not grasped, before meeting her in-laws, just how many demands they would make of her, how much delight they took in taunting her like mastiffs at bear-baiting, or how their conduct would affect Walter.
How could she shield him from this, when she had no way to escape and no choice but to stay and bear it?
More than once, she had thought it might be better for Walter if she gave him up.
Geoffrey's choice to make his eldest son the guardian of his youngest had been borne of nothing more than spite - but was her own subsequent failure to keep him safe not a sign that he'd been right?
Perhaps if she did leave, Hilda and the others would be more kindly disposed towards him; perhaps he could become part of the family in truth rather than theory, if his hated mother was no longer there to plague her in-laws.
But she couldn't bear the thought. It was the most selfish she had ever been, and she knew it - more selfish even than praying for and then having Walter to begin with, knowing what sort of family she was bringing him into.
But the thought of giving him up tore her in two.
She would bear everything Hilda and her daughters subjected her to, because the alternative was losing her child, and if that happened, she didn't think she could bring herself to go on.
She just had to get better at looking after him, find ways to protect him from the reality of their situation until he was old enough to understand.
She'd survived a similar fate as a girl: surely she could pass that on to her son.
Walter was fast asleep, now snoring slightly in her arms and drooling on her shoulder.
She lifted him gently from her lap and into the cradle, bending to tuck his blankets in securely around his shoulders.
He didn't stir, but she hadn't expected him to - he was a deep sleeper, once she'd gotten him to sleep. Small mercies.
With the girls downstairs and Walter asleep, she had a brief window of freedom in which she could do as she wished.
She had put aside most of her former pastimes with the advent of Geoffrey's death and Hilda's arrival - with so little space of her own in the house, she could no longer keep a loom or a spinning wheel, nor did she have money for other diversions.
The one thing she had kept was her little box filled with needles and thread for sewing and embroidery: she could justify their presence with the fact that the whole household benefited from her labour.
Of late, she'd been working on a little purse for her sister-in-law, as thanks for the times she'd hosted Isabel at her table.
It was almost done, but it still needed some finishing touches: she should be able to manage it before Walter woke up.
She stretched an arm up to the shelf where she kept the embroidery box, then frowned: her dress had tightened around her upper arm so much that she couldn't lift it above her head. When she looked down to unlace the front of her kirtle, her frown deepened. When had she put on a pink dress?
Owing to her exhaustion, the answer was slow in coming: this wasn't her dress at all, it was the one Constance had loaned her.
In all the commotion with Walter and the girls, it had slipped her mind entirely.
She made short work of the laces and wriggled her way out of the sleeves, then stepped out of the dress and held it out in front of herself for inspection.
What was it Constance had said? She said it wasn't worth a brass farthing, and I suppose she wasn't wrong.
Isabel hadn't paid much attention to the construction of the garment when she put it on, but now that she was examining it more closely, she could see what Constance meant.
The gores had been cut on the bias, and so they hung unevenly, dragging at the seams; the sleeves, meanwhile, had been cut on the grain, and so they were tight and stiff where they should have been yielding.
It shocked Isabel somewhat that Constance hadn't known better: how did she run a tailor's shop and still make such common mistakes?
It was no great surprise that the woman who'd ordered it had refused to pay, though Isabel did feel a pang of sympathy for Constance at the thought.
Poorly made or no, it must have taken several days to finish.
For all the errors in construction, it was still a pretty dress.
The wool was a soft shade of pink, the colour of a blush: Isabel could easily imagine a young girl donning it to impress a sweetheart.
She herself always looked sallow in pink, but that was down to her complexion.
And while the garment couldn't really be salvaged for sale - not without new sleeves, anyhow - it could at least be embellished in places.
Embroidery along the seams would hide the spots where the gores sagged, and if the sleeves were replaced or patched, the embroidery could disguise that as well.
It would be nice to look at, at least. And Isabel knew very well how to make ugly things presentable.
She reached up again for the embroidery box and took it down from the shelf.
The purse she'd intended to work on was sitting on top of the box, but she set it back on the shelf and rummaged through the box until she came up with a spool of deep green thread.
Vines along the hem and around the waist of the dress would do the trick nicely, and green would complement the colour of the wool.
It would be more than an hour's work to complete, but the more she thought on it, the more she liked the idea of the project.
She could return the finished dress to Constance as a gesture of thanks for her help, and exercise her own skills into the bargain.
# # #
"I can do nothing more for you." Avram's tone was apologetic, but it was also firm.
It put Constance in mind of her father, when she had been small and begging for a last song or story before bedtime.
"I am sorry for it, but I could not bear the weight of my conscience if I took advantage of your situation any further. "
"Would it be taking advantage?" Constance asked. She could feel her heart sinking. "If I were the one to make the request? You have forced nothing on me, and your terms have been more than generous."
"As generous as I could make them, matters being what they are," he agreed.
"And even then, you've struggled to keep payments up.
If I were to offer you another loan, you and I are both aware you would be unable to pay it.
I take no joy in demanding what cannot be given.
" His eyes, when she looked up into them, were soft.
"You may do better to ask your family or your priest for assistance.
Is there not a parish purse to help those in dire need? "
"I would not say I am in dire need just yet," she said with a little flare of pride, though she knew he was not far from the truth.
"Just yet" encompassed a great deal about matters as they stood: she had checked the coffers that morning before she left to see Avram, and they had only a handful of shillings left to their name.
It would carry them through the end of the month; beyond that, she would have to find a source of income very quickly if she did not wish to be reduced to begging.
Avram sat back in his chair, hands folded over his stomach.
Constance ducked her head. Avram reminded her of her father in more than manner: they were (or had been, in her father's case) both short, round men with an abundance of dark hair and kind eyes.
Of course, her family had no link to Avram's, nor had they ever crossed paths in her childhood: the town's Jewish quarter was not precisely off-limits to Christians, but few ventured there except on business, and the Jews likewise kept to themselves.
She had had no cause to come and speak with him until years after her father had died, and she was far too old then to seek fatherly guidance from anyone.
But this knowledge hardly kept her from wishing to sit at his feet and pour her troubles out to him.
She had so few confidants these days, and even fewer who seemed to take notice of her increasingly precarious circumstances.
The fact that he only knew this because she was there to ask him for money did nothing to stifle her yearning for a sympathetic ear.
But she was grown, and he was little more than a stranger to her.
He was here to do business, and so was she; she would not burden him with her woes.
She straightened in her chair instead, raising her chin.
"If I were to come by some source of money," she said, "and I was able to provide you with proof that it was forthcoming - might we then decide on acceptable terms for a further loan?
" Surely, surely there was some way she could procure enough money to offset a loan.
There had to be. The alternative was unthinkable.