Free The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding Page B

left of them now but a handful of dry and brittle strands. All that he has is dried, salted, preserved,
rancid. It is almost a pain to him to imagine greenness, the first bite of an apple, or to think of the freshness of milk,
butter, new cheeses, white foods soft as women.
    Johanne drank much milk. She had a child's milky breath, a fringe of white about her upper lip. And he brought her sweetmeats
as if she were a child, exotic foods, cakes cooked with cinnamon. Any delicacy she wanted, he would go out into the city and
find it for her. He allowed himself a little money for luxuries from what he had put by.
    'These I got from a sailor from Portugal, candied plums. They are said to be the finest in all of Europe.'
    The fruit was the size of a bantam's egg, green like an artificial jewel and glistening with sugar. She ate it delicately,
savouring its strangeness. 'You must not do this, Thomas Cave. Not only will you make me fat but you will spoil me for a lady.'
    But giving it to her was like giving a sweet thing to a child. He could not resist the way she glowed at a treat. Her eyes
lit up and her cheeks became all the pinker, so touchingly young and round beneath her little cap.
    That January ice stretched right out across the Sound and the city authorities paid gangs of vagrant men to cut a channel
more than a sea mile in length, from the edge of the ice all the way into the town. Down this came a brave Dutch vessel laden
with other precious goods from Spain, fancy metalwork and tooled leathers as well as foods and wines. This ship became the
centre of a great market on the ice to which all kinds of pedlars came, and also the farmers of the district bringing their
produce in carts and sleighs. He thought it a fine and memorable sight, the festive crowd spilling out from the quay on to
the frozen sea, lone figures of skaters in the flat white distance, the tall buildings of the town behind, the static ship
at the heart of the crowd, sails furled, masts bare, tall like a building itself above the ice.
    'Come out this once, Johanne, it'll do you good.'
    In two weeks she had barely left the house. She said that her head ached and that she felt a throbbing in her, and her legs
hurt when she stood, for all that the old woman had pressed and soothed with her fingers and fed her ales and potions. 'No,
I shan't come with you,' she said, 'not into such a crowd. But you go, go and then tell me all about it after.'
    'Then what shall I bring you?'
    'How can I say until I know what there is?'
    'Just give me a hint, my love, of what you would most like. The ship's come from Spain, you know. A land of sun and gold,
the richest country in the world.'
    Johanne laughed at his eagerness and looked about her at the simple room, the whitewashed walls, the wooden floor, the square
glassless window with the shutter half across it and the grey chill of winter outside.
    'Bring me a piece of its sun then!'
    So he went out alone and saw the spectacle. The ice was frozen right across to Sweden and from there came sledges pulled by
tough shaggy ponies that looked far too small for the weight behind them, for the drivers who were huge men in wolfskins and
for their loads of furs and meat and wood; and other sledges driven by men and women in coloured and fur-trimmed felts who
sold hunting knives and fish hooks carved out of bone. There were braziers where men stood and warmed themselves from the
inside with fiery shots of liquor, and he stopped at one of these and went on with sparkling eyes and bought himself bread
and charred meat to satisfy the sudden sharp hunger that came upon him.
    Close beneath the ship he found a crowd gathered about three of the Spanish sailors who played pipes and drums, and in the
space before them was a tiny creature dancing. At first he thought it must be a very small child, but fine and nimble and
not sturdy like the toddlers he was used to knowing, a delicate child in a green silk dress weaving gloved