ENGLAND, 1420He stares over at her, he does. Every day at noonemeal, their eyes meet. Now, the gossips tell me I have aught to be concerned of. He does not lie with her nor any other. Well, there was that little whore I sent him, while he fought by Lancaster's side. Mother did say that the trampes we send them mean we still hold their shorte hairs.
Oh, but she came back, crying of true love, and the childe she would bear for him, singing of his nobility. I know well of his nobility. It is why I trapped him, with whelp of my own. The red-haired thing he stares over at did not think of such schemes. The little whore did not think of them soon enough, and she and her unmade whelp fertilized my garden unknown to any. If she meant to live, she should not have told me of her plans.
But still the other ladies say, you have his bed, you have his purse, and your heirs will take what he has. He works for you, is not overfond of ale, does not strap you unless struck himself in the presence of others, and even keen eyes see him straying only with his eye. Then they laugh and add that they should have thought to trap him. But again, no one else did. I own him, all of him, and that includes his eye. He need not love me. He need only attend me, and he has failed in that.
So it was that I began to walk in low places, faking that I was a sot, bemoaning my fate. As sure as the tales speak, she was beside me, bantering away on men's failings as she queried me. Oh, she played coy, but every woman of brains knows the Sainte Anyanka, though I wager she is no angel, and she has no feast day. But she will give me my feast day. Straining careful to make my talk seem all bedlam, I arrived at what I wished to happen.
But my plans ran a cropper, when I told that only his eye did stray. Bluntly and crudely for a sainte, our kindly Anyanka asked me whether his member knew any woman but me. When I said that it did not, she allowed me no further explanation and vanished. I was a fool, for I had surely forgotten that Sainte Anyanka concerns herself only with a man's physicality. So I waited a long, hateful year, to make her forget me any at all, and it is said that she is greatly forgetful in any wise. In that year, my goode husband kept on his path, and kept to the looks he gave the fire-hair, failing me utterly in that one way.
But sure as mid-month is the time to trap a husband, she was in that same low place when the year had passed, and our sainte had showed the stories were all true. This time, I made my goode husband a ribald, his member having member-ship in every orifice that every woman for the whole county might have. I even mentioned that his sister dreaded his visits, and he has not sister, nor even lady cousin! He had once been well and meet, I described, til red-hair cast her spell. My heart jumped as she spoke her three little words, thrice over.
*It Is Done, It Is Done, It Is Done*
When next their eyes met, the unspoken passion overcame the two, as was my plan. Scandalously, he mounted her there in the tavern, going at it while the two burst aflame, unable to stop. It is said they passed while smiling still, but few saw this, so I am near to satisfaction. The wench's parents are even found out as heretics, who feigned Christian conversion when the expulsion orders came, centuries back. How complete I am in this!
Oh, my boys are not what they were, tis' true. No local girl will have them, for fear of a curse. They are hired and considered fit only for the basest work, stead' of the possible knighthood that had been their destinies. And they drink too much mead, as well as too much ale. Yet for all this, they now have more time to attend me, and this is greatly pleasing. No one at all connects this to me. They think that this sour luck is merely the deserved lot of the boys that are Harrys.
I, Goodie Corrie, praise and bless you, Sainte Anyanka. I Pray thee, do not ever change. So pressed are you with such singular concerns, you are so very easy to lie to.
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(I apologize for the mixed syntax and grammar. Trying to duplicate speech from another time and place doesn't always take--Rob)