.

      Next to Caro, Patience showed cumbersome as a cow. Impossible, I thought, that she should hold Zeb, who was constantly seeking new pleasures. Whereas Caro, delectable Caro, should hold me for ever. More than once of late I had been woken at night by Izzy laughing and punching me, and when I asked him what was ado he would not tell.

      ‘Haste and get married,’ was all the answer he would give. Peter and Zeb, who shared the other bed (only Godfrey had a chamber of his own) laughed along with him. In the dark I blushed worse than before, for I suffered hot, salt dreams and had some idea of what I might have done.

      I was slow with her. After Kiss Day, as I afterwards thought of it, after she called me a man to Zeb’s boy, I was still unsure and sometimes thought that for all she said, she must like Zeb better than me, for all women did. At times I even fancied, God forgive me, that she had perhaps turned to me following an earlier adventure with him.

      One day I looked out of the window and saw her talking most earnestly with Zeb some yards off. I rose and quietly opened the window a crack before ducking beneath the sill.

      Caro’s voice came to me: ‘…and sees nothing of my difficulty.’

      ‘Jacob all over,’ Zeb said. ‘But to the purpose. He must be put out of hope, you know.’

      ‘I cannot do it!’ she cried. ‘Two brothers…(here I missed some words, for my ears were throbbing)…to do something so cruel.’

      ‘But the longer it goes on, the crueller,’ said Zebedee.

      There followed a silence. I rose and peeped out of the window: they had joined hands.

      ‘Shall I undertake to tell him?’ asked Zeb.

      Caro cried, ‘Indeed, Zeb, you are too kind!’ and then, before my very eyes, they embraced, out there in the garden where any might see. I pulled the window to and sank to the floorboards, trembling.

      The rest of that afternoon was passed in planning Zeb’s death, various ways, and devising punishments for Caro. During the evening meal I spoke not a word to either, even when directly addressed, and saw my fellow servants exchange puzzled or offended looks. Afterwards, when all was cleared away, I sat by myself at the kitchen fire polishing the Master’s boots. Zeb and Caro were most likely keeping out of my sight, and they were wise, for every time I thought of Zeb taking her in his arms, my jaw set and my own arms and shoulders became hard as iron.

      The door opened and I glared upwards. It was Izzy.

      ‘I have made a discovery today,’ I said at once.

      ‘Have you?’ His voice was mild. ‘Will you tell me what?’

      ‘Acting the ambassador? Be straight. You are come to make their excuses.’ I bent forward and spat into the grate.

      Izzy contemplated me. ‘Who are they? My business with you concerns no excuses.’ He pulled up a chair next to mine.

      ‘Well?’ I snapped.

      ‘Nay, I can’t talk to you in that style. Would you rather I went away?’

      ‘Zeb is courting Caro,’ I burst out before I could stop myself. ‘Don’t you know it?’

      ‘You amaze me. How did you make this – discovery?’

      I told him what I had seen and heard. Izzy’s face quickened with some inner revelation before I was halfway through.

      ‘This is – none of it what you think,’ he began slowly.

      ‘What, not the embrace!’

      He scratched his nose. ‘Jacob…there’s a thing I must break to you. Somewhat ticklish.’

      I thought, You are in the right of it there.

      ‘Caro has sought Zeb’s counsel.’

      ‘Why not mine?’

      ‘It concerns you.’ Izzy glanced up at the ceiling as if wishing himself anywhere else in the world. ‘She has sought mine also, and her difficulty is—’

      ‘How to break off with me!’

      ‘She wonders why you wait so long to declare yourself.’

      I was silenced.

      He took a great breath and went on, ‘If I may speak my mind – take note, this is none of her saying! – you make a fool of her, keeping company so long and the day not settled on. She has never wanted any but you. I thought you had a great mind to her also, and you can be sure the Mistress would be pleased. Where then lies the impediment?’

      ‘She is mighty familiar with Zeb,’ I answered slowly, and then, filling with stubborn anger, ‘I will not espouse her, or any, where I think my brother might have been before me.’

      That was the only time in my entire life I saw Isaiah in a passion.

      ‘Do you ever raise your eyes and look about you?’ he hissed. ‘Everyone knows where Zeb’s delight lies, except the hulking idiot who is his brother.’

      I gaped at him.

      ‘Besides, now is too late,’ Izzy went on, his eyes gleaming, ‘for such talk! You have kept company with her for months and given no hint. I repeat, you make a fool of her, and – I promise you! – if one word of your – madness – gets out, you’ll make such a fool of yourself as you’ll never live down.’

      ‘He embraces her.’

      ‘Because he sees her unhappy! And should they kiss, what is it to you? You are not espoused, and if you like it not the remedy lies in your own hands.’

      I was stunned, partly at this view of the matter, but mostly at what he had said of Zeb. ‘Zeb in love? Who?’

      ‘O, a certain maid whose ear he has been nibbling, full in your view, these past months. She has two eyes and a mouth and her name begins with P.’

      Things that I had taken for jests came back to me: Zeb arm-wrestling Patience, or begging a lock of her hair ‘for lying on a maiden’s hair brings a man sweet sleep’.

      ‘Caro does not wish to break off, then—?’ I faltered.

      Izzy rolled his eyes.

      I went on, ‘Yet they spoke of cruelty – said it was cruel.’

      ‘You. You’re cruel to Caro.’

      ‘To Caro…?’ They had talked of a be. I was about to explain his mistake when the truth came to me. The cruelty Zeb had spoken of was my own, and the sufferer Izzy. My elder brother had never ceased to love Caro, that was it; he had but loved her more tenderly as she turned away from the shared kindnesses of their early years towards something different with me. O Izzy, Izzy: he was the better man of us two, I own it freely, but he was not the sort of man a maid dreams of taking to her bed, and he had been forced to learn it over and over as he watched me win her. I could hardly bear to look at him as he sat there, smiling in defeat.

      ‘Cruel to Caro, yes.’ I must now conceal my pity.

      ‘I would see her happy,’ he returned simply. ‘I thought her happiness must lie with you.’

      He it was, I remembered now, who had first told me of her preference.

      ‘But I begin to think I was mistaken.’ Izzy stared ahead of him. ‘Lord, what brothers I have. One eats women and the other starves them.’ His voice trembled as he rose to leave the room.

      ‘Don’t go, Izzy.’ I flung my arms round him from behind. ‘Wait and see – I will declare myself.’ Even as I said it I felt what a bittersweet promise this must be to him.

      He turned to me and we pressed our faces together, the way we had always made up our quarrels as children. I had to bend down now, having so far outgrown my childhood protector. His face was damp around the eyes and for a moment I felt with horror that he was about to cry, but his