I laughed. “You planned this,” I said, “because of what happened here when I came with my mother.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I had business to transact so I thought, why should I not do it at The Traveller’s Rest? I will take my wife with me and we will share the Oak Room, for it will bring home to her the fact that she has a husband who will have his way sooner or later.”
“I can never understand why a man who is acknowledged as the king of his castle should have to go to such lengths continually to stress the fact that he is.”
“Because he is not sure that one person fully realizes it, and to tell you the truth, it is that person he is most anxious should.”
I laid my head against his chest and put my arms about him.
“I am content with life as I have found it, Colum. You are a strong man. I should be the last to deny it, but whatever I was made to accept I should always have my own views … you appreciate that.”
“I would not want a foolish simpering creature … like …”
I was glad he stopped, but I knew of course that he was referring to Melanie.
To change the subject I said: “You say you have come here to do business. Do tell me, Colum, I am most eager to know.”
I saw a shadow pass over his face. He went to the window and looked out; then he turned his head and said to me: “What do you know of my business?”
“Nothing much at the moment but I should like to learn.”
“There is nothing to learn,” he said. “I have some merchandise I wish to show to a merchant. We are meeting at this inn.”
“So it was because it is business, not because of that night?”
“Shall we say a little of each.”
“What merchandise have you to dispose of, Colum? Where does it come from?”
He did not answer that question.
He said: “Ere long two of my men will arrive with pack-horses. They will bring the merchandise.”
“What merchandise is this?” I persisted.
“It varies.”
He drew me to the bed and removed my cloak.
“Colum, there is much I wish to know. When I come to think of it there is so little I do know. You are my husband. There is nothing I want so much as to share my life with you and if I do so I must know …”
“Know what?” he said, loosening my hair from the net which held it. “What should you, a good and obedient wife, wish to know but that you please me?”
“I want to please you, yes. In every way I want to please you. But I want to help you too.”
He kissed me with more gentleness than I was accustomed to. “You please me and you please me most when you wait for me to tell you what I will.”
“You mean this business of yours is a secret?”
“Who talks of secrets? What a woman you are for creating drama from ordinary events. You store up ghosts in the Red Room.”
“You were secretive about that.”
“Secretive! I! Because I forgot something in the past which it can do no one good to remember. You should be grateful that my first marriage was a failure. It makes me more than ever contented with my second.”
“I know you are content, Colum, but I want to help you. I want to understand … everything.”
He laughed and pressed me back on the bed. He kissed my throat. Then he said: “Nay, the host’s table is awaiting our attention. We will eat and then mayhap I will attend to my business and when that is finished you and I will be together here in this Oak Room as I yearned to be when I first saw you here.”
He rose and pulled me to my feet.
“But, Colum …” I began.
“You have a hungry husband, Madam,” he told me. “He must needs eat before he can answer more questions.”
We went to the dining-room. Memories came back. I pictured his sitting there eating with gusto, catching my skirt as I passed. How I had hated him then! It was incredible that in so short a time that hatred could have turned to this passionate love.
He ate heartily, doing full justice to the muggety pie made of sheeps’ entrails, and taken with cream—a Cornish custom which we of Devon had never indulged in, although we were as famous for our clotted cream as the Cornish were. He drank the metheglin but rather sparingly, I thought, and while we were eating two men put their heads into the dining-room.
He acknowledged them but he did not introduce me. They did not remain in the dining-room but went away—I believed to wait until Colum was ready, and had come in either to see that he was there or assure him that they had arrived. They looked like merchants in their best clothes. One wore a russet jacket with camblet sleeves and there were pewter buttons on it. The other was in brown with grey kersey hose and they both wore steeple-crowned hats.
“They are friends of yours, Colum?” I asked.
“They are the men whom I have come to see.”
“On business,” I said.
“Aye, business.”
“I had thought you a man of means, not a merchant.”
“Merchants are men of means, wife. I have rich lands, a castle and many servants. To keep up such an establishment and maintain a wife is costly in these days. So now and then when the mood is on me I am a merchant.”
“What is your merchandise?”
“Whatever comes my way.”
“So it is no particular commodity?”
“Enough of questions. Your curiosity will make a scold of you yet.”
“It is only because I would serve my husband that I wish to learn his habits.”
“He will keep you acquainted of the best way to serve him. Now I must leave you for a while so I will take you to the Oak Room and then you will go to bed. You may be sure that the moment I have completed my business I will be with you.”
He took me to the Oak Room and left me there. I sat on the bed and thought of him down there transacting his business. What business? The men had arrived with the pack-horses. I wondered what they had brought. It was strange for the squire who owned a castle and was the lord of his neighbourhood to barter over merchandise. I wondered again what it was, and why he should be so reluctant to discuss this with me. There could be two reasons. The first was that wives were not supposed to share in their husband’s business affairs. They were not supposed to understand them. That was something I would not accept, as my mother would not either. I knew that Colum, while delighting in my spirited nature, was also determined to subdue it. He wanted me relegated to what he would call a wife’s place. He seemed to ignore the fact that if he ever did he would lose interest in me. Perhaps deep down in his heart he wanted to. Perhaps he wanted to keep me as the mother of his children and go off in search of erotic adventures with other women, I was sure that was what he did before we had married. In a way he chafed against this passion between us. Once he had said with a sort of exasperated anger: “None will satisfy me now save you.” He was a strange man. He hated above all things to be shackled. It might well be that he wished to keep his business apart from me because he did not want to share everything. He wanted to exclude me because he feared I was becoming too important to him. The other reason was, of course, that it was something of which he was ashamed. Ashamed! He would never be ashamed. Something that must be kept secret perhaps.
So I pondered and I longed to creep down the stairs and into the room which the host would have set aside for them and listen at the door.
Instead I went to the window and sat there, and thought over every detail of what had happened on that other occasion at the inn. It had been the most important of my life in a way, for had I not come here I should never have met Colum. How easy it would have been for us to have taken another road, to have stayed at another inn. It seemed incredible that life could be affected by so flimsy a chance.
I sat at that window for a long time thinking of this and I was still there when I heard a bustle below. Looking down, I saw the two men who had looked in at the dining-room. A groom was leading two pack-horses. They were not ours. Then came Colum with the two men. I drew back but not so far that I could not see them.