that. You’re just little girls, so forget every word! Your lady-mother would take a horsewhip to my buttocks if she knew I had been filling your heads with bawdy stories; the Good Lord above knows that she loves any excuse to do that! Let that be a lesson to you girls. Never marry a woman who lives in riding boots, for like as not she will wear them in bed as well, and the whip will never be far from her hand. Frances even wore them ’neath her bridal gown; I heard her golden spurs jingling as she walked up the aisle to take her place beside me. For the life of me, I could not figure out what that noise was, and when I bent to lift the hem of her skirt to see, she slapped my new feathered hat clean off my head right there at the altar in plain sight of everyone, and as I put the ring on her finger, I had a red and throbbing ear, the wedding guests sat there in the pews tittering as they watched it swell. But forget I told you that too!” he added hastily. “Your lady-mother wouldn’t like it! Have some more candy, girls!”
He snatched up the box and offered it around to us. “Here’s something more suitable for your ears and years that will help you understand, especially you, little Mary, what a grand match this courageous man is! Why, if I were a woman I would leap at the chance to wed Lord Wilton! But don’t tell him I said that; William deplores anything he even thinks hints at sodomy, so he would not take my words as the sincere compliment I meant them to be, for I hold him in the highest esteem! But forget I said that too, the bit about sodomy I mean—you girls shouldn’t even know that word or what it means! You don’t, do you? Please say you don’t and spare my hide your mother’s riding crop!”
He gave a great sigh of relief and mopped the sweat from his brow with his velvet sleeve when we all nodded obediently. Then he proceeded to climb up onto the long polished table that spanned nearly the entire length of the library and, enthusiastic as a little boy, began a vigorous one-man reenactment of “the wounding of Lord Wilton at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh,” spiritedly wielding pantomime pikes and swords and playing all the various roles, the enemy Scots and the brave Englishmen, falling back, gurgling blood, clasping his throat, and gasping for air as my affianced husband was stricken, then rolling over on his side to quickly inform us how John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland himself, or “the Earl of Warwick as he was then,” had himself thrust his fingers down Lord Wilton’s throat and brought up a handful of broken teeth to clear his airway so he could breathe, “thus saving his life.”
Then the wounded warrior valiantly mounted his horse again—Father swung his leg over a pretend steed and began to mime a brisk canter, neighing as his boots went clip-clop over the varnished table—explaining in an aside how, with Northumberland at his side, Lord Wilton had ridden hard through the swarming bodies of armored Englishmen and kilted Scots, wielding clanging swords, swinging spiked maces, and thrusting and clashing pikes. “When suddenly Lord Wilton began to droop, overcome by the heat, dust, buzzing flies, pain, and loss of blood, and seemed poised to faint. ’Twas then that Northumberland grabbed a firkin of ale, tilted the swooning man’s head back, and poured it over his head, and as much as he could down his throat, to revive him, thus saving his life yet again. And our brave kinsman finished the charge, a hero, though a trifle drunken with his face a torn and bloody ruin, he was a hero nonetheless, and for it by the Crown rewarded with a knighthood and the governorship of Berwick, and he was also made warden of the east marches and general of several of the northern!”
Our lady-mother walked in just as Father was reenacting the shower of ale, having first called to Kate to bring him the flagon from his desk. She stood, arms folded across her ample breasts, tapping the toe of
He snatched up the box and offered it around to us. “Here’s something more suitable for your ears and years that will help you understand, especially you, little Mary, what a grand match this courageous man is! Why, if I were a woman I would leap at the chance to wed Lord Wilton! But don’t tell him I said that; William deplores anything he even thinks hints at sodomy, so he would not take my words as the sincere compliment I meant them to be, for I hold him in the highest esteem! But forget I said that too, the bit about sodomy I mean—you girls shouldn’t even know that word or what it means! You don’t, do you? Please say you don’t and spare my hide your mother’s riding crop!”
He gave a great sigh of relief and mopped the sweat from his brow with his velvet sleeve when we all nodded obediently. Then he proceeded to climb up onto the long polished table that spanned nearly the entire length of the library and, enthusiastic as a little boy, began a vigorous one-man reenactment of “the wounding of Lord Wilton at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh,” spiritedly wielding pantomime pikes and swords and playing all the various roles, the enemy Scots and the brave Englishmen, falling back, gurgling blood, clasping his throat, and gasping for air as my affianced husband was stricken, then rolling over on his side to quickly inform us how John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland himself, or “the Earl of Warwick as he was then,” had himself thrust his fingers down Lord Wilton’s throat and brought up a handful of broken teeth to clear his airway so he could breathe, “thus saving his life.”
Then the wounded warrior valiantly mounted his horse again—Father swung his leg over a pretend steed and began to mime a brisk canter, neighing as his boots went clip-clop over the varnished table—explaining in an aside how, with Northumberland at his side, Lord Wilton had ridden hard through the swarming bodies of armored Englishmen and kilted Scots, wielding clanging swords, swinging spiked maces, and thrusting and clashing pikes. “When suddenly Lord Wilton began to droop, overcome by the heat, dust, buzzing flies, pain, and loss of blood, and seemed poised to faint. ’Twas then that Northumberland grabbed a firkin of ale, tilted the swooning man’s head back, and poured it over his head, and as much as he could down his throat, to revive him, thus saving his life yet again. And our brave kinsman finished the charge, a hero, though a trifle drunken with his face a torn and bloody ruin, he was a hero nonetheless, and for it by the Crown rewarded with a knighthood and the governorship of Berwick, and he was also made warden of the east marches and general of several of the northern!”
Our lady-mother walked in just as Father was reenacting the shower of ale, having first called to Kate to bring him the flagon from his desk. She stood, arms folded across her ample breasts, tapping the toe of
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