Get her mattress back.

So I turn to it and stare. Jane, still on top of the mattress, stiffens under my look, but says nothing. I keep my gaze locked on the mattress. By and by, Jane begins to fidget.

I am a curse, I think at her, then take another sip of ale.

Her fidgeting grows to a discomfort, and before I’ve even drained the ewer, she moves herself off the mattress and onto the floor. In reply, I remove my gaze. The whole room softens. I take my mattress and go up the ladder to the loft.

A straw pokes through the mattress into my back, and I scratch where it bites. As I do, I’m surprised to find flesh where there’s always been just skin on bone. I look for Ruth’s shape in the mattress to see if I’ve come closer to filling it, but there’s only my shape now.

In the morning, my hearth is busy with a rare bubbling pot. The stranger woman, Jane, is making a pottage smelling of gurnards and onions. A smell that at one time would send me running for a bowl. Now, all I think on is tale bearing. My bones softened by a layer of fat; I leave the others to it.

Jane’s children clamber over Frederick, lean limbs falling and rising like mill wheel spokes. They look a fair bit like him. Mayhap he’s their father. The older child swats the younger, and the younger bawls. The older returns a smattering of abuse in not quite formed words. Jane adds her scoldings on top, but when I walk to the ale cask, she quiets them. I feel two ways about my squatters. They’re a kind of company, filling the house with their pleasant chatter and a good, warm fug. But sometimes I fear they’d just as soon bury me in the garden and take the place for themselves. I swallow a mouthful of ale and look around. Brida and Paul sit quiet before the hearth, eyes averted. Frederick and the others are still. This morning they fall on the side of company.

A fine spring day. What would my mother do on such a day?

The market is just beginning to do custom when I arrive. There’s a man selling codling apples with a girl that looks to be his daughter. My real da was a rich man, I think. How did my mother ever meet him?

In my head I see the Country Mouse with his pink nose from the day the Norman emissary arrived. Mayhap it was by the river that my parents met. My sire comes to town on a barge. My mother’s there along the banks collecting cockles. He calls to her, offers to buy her catch. She calls back that nothing she has is for sale, giving him a look that scolds.

He reddens. ‘No, I never meant anything untoward.’