Free The Ladies by Doris Grumbach

end.’
    On the twenty-second of April, at six in the morning, eighteen days after their first attempt to achieve their freedom, they leave again, but this time without hampering by difficult plans, darkness, and illness. They are accompanied by Mary-Caryll, who happily volunteers to carry their bags and Frisk as far as Waterford. It is a fine spring morning. For the last time, they pass through the hawthorn hedge and under the great trees. Overhead, hawks wind their slow, commanding way through a flock of starlings. Sarah looks back at the gardens she has loved, at peacocks making an early morning progress from their thicket, and then, she turns quickly ahead.
    Exhausted by the emotional turmoil of the past fortnight, Sir William stands at his upstairs window, watching them through half-opened eyes. They are laughing, they move rapidly along the road that curves past Woodstock toward Inistiogue. The sight of Eleanor’s dark male clothes and cap, the smiling Sarah, the laden-down bulk of the maid, offend his sight. He closes his eyes on the little procession and turns away. Lady Betty is seated at the other end of the room. She refuses to witness the departure and weeps quietly into her handkerchief.
    â€˜Stop such silliness. We are well rid of her.’
    Lady Betty stares at him. ‘You … You …’ and then cannot bring herself to finish what she had in mind to say to him.
    â€˜When that ungrateful Bruiser of a maid returns, dismiss her.’
    Lady Betty replies: ‘Oh yes. Of course, I had intended to do that.’
    â€˜We are well rid of them all,’ he repeats and sits down heavily in his upholstered chair. His legs are painful, his head aches. He puts his foot on the high stool. ‘I feel my age today, Betty,’ he says.
    â€˜It is time,’ she says, looking him directly in the eye.
    At Waterford they bid Mary-Caryll goodbye and promise to send for her when they are settled. She tells them: ‘I will then come fast, my Ladies.’ They pay the fifteen guineas for each passage, murmuring at the outlay from their capital, and sail across St. George’s Channel, safely avoiding the rude approaches of the American privateer, Paul Jones, landing at Milford Haven. They have decided they will travel north first, through Wales. They are sustained by the astonishing glory of each other’s loving company; their hearts are set on a journey that will bring them to the haven where they plan to spend the rest of their days savouring their curious union. Their destination, they believe, is London.
    Thirty days later, Sir William Fownes is stricken and starts to die. His doctors decide on bleeding until he is too weak to leave his bed. Leeches are placed on his chest, his arms and thighs and back, but the suppurating blisters raised by the cantharides cause him extreme pain. They cure nothing. He endures a week of such violence against his weakness. One night he wakes with the sense that half of him has died: speechless, blind, and paralyzed, his body is finally rid of its lubricious energies. By morning he is unconscious; he lies mercifully unaware of mortal deprivation. He does not hear Lady Betty praying at his bedside; he does not know of Death’s unwelcome arrival. Death, a libertine figure not unlike Sir William himself, claims the Squire and then, as though a high price had not already been paid for all the unnatural acts of the spring, he returns to Woodstock three weeks later to take weakened and bewildered Lady Betty. Woodstock is now without squire and lady, Mary-Caryll has gone to Ross to await the Ladies’ summons, and Sarah Ponsonby: where is she? Travelling the highways and towns of Wales with her beloved friend, gone from Woodstock forever.

WALES: 1778–1780
    Later, when they were settled, the Ladies would refer to it pleasantly as their wanderjahr, forgetting to add how terrible it was. Like harassed gypsies they moved from place to place, pursued