Ironically, the lower down the social scale women were, the greater freedom they had the wives of laborers and craftsmen could work alongside their men-even, sometimes, when they were widowed, take over their husband’s trade.Īdelia trudged on. Lord, how disregarded I am in this damned country. In the other was her riding crop, which she trailed with apparent casualness so that it brushed against the hedge on her left.Īs she went, she chuntered to herself. She stumped along in front, holding Walt’s mount’s reins in her right hand. Women were defenseless enough without revealing their secrets. “My business.” Be damned if she’d tell him. Between them, he said, “The Bishop of Saint Albans presents his compliments to Mistress Adelia and please to escort him out of this hag’s hole, for the love of God. She saw his teeth grit in the pretense of a placatory smile he always had good teeth. “Stop bellowing at me,” she yelled at him. She’d a mind to stay where she was and let him sweat. “I do, actually.” God’s rib, he was sneering at her, sneering. “And I suppose Mistress Clever-boots knows how to get us out?” “I don’t want mythology, mistress, beautiful or not, I want to get to that sodding tower. Softening, and hoping that he would, too, she added, “Like Ariadne’s. Labyrinths twist and turn, but they have a beginning and an end, through darkness into light.” It’s a symbol of life or, rather, of life and death. A labyrinth has only one path and you merely have to follow it. “Same difference.” Puffing at the horse: “Get back, you great cow.” ![]() ![]() “We are not in a labyrinth, my lord,” she said clearly. ![]() Why was it women who were to blame for everything-everything, from the Fall of Man to these blasted hedges?
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