Chapter Text
“I like this place,
And willingly could waste my time in it.”
—Celia, As You Like It
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Celia’s first thought is that Corin spoke truth. The surly, hard-favored fellow from whom they purchase the cottage, the flock, and the folds looks every inch the miser the aging shepherd had described.
But it matters not, as he parts with his property quickly enough once he sees their gold. According to Corin, he has no love for the sheep-herding trade and believes he could do better elsewhere.
Godspeed to you then, Celia thinks, just before stepping foot over the threshold of their new home.
The cottage is well-situated, within a dell west of the forest, past a stream and a row of willows, and ringed round by olive trees. When spring yields to summer, Celia thinks it will be quite pleasing to look upon.
Within… there is no luxury of the sort to which she, Rosalind, and even Touchstone are accustomed. But there is a sort of rough comfort: the floor is wood instead of dirt, the furnishings—chairs, table, bed—are sturdily made. And there is more than one room, which might almost count as a luxury in these parts.
Even better, there is still some food in the larder: a flitch of bacon, a sack of grain, a loaf of coarse bread, a round of hard cheese, and a store of winter apples, wrinkled but still sound. Even a cask of small beer, the sight of which cheers Touchstone immensely.
Simple fare, of the sort a duke’s daughter might scorn… had she more hair than wit, which Celia knows is not a fault to which she or her cousin can lay claim. Especially not since Rosalind has cropped her own hair to the shoulders, the better to suit her disguise.
But they have traveled for several days, their provisions dwindling despite their care, and it has been more than a full day since any of them have eaten. To the hungry and weary, the contents of the larder seem a veritable feast.
She catches Rosalind’s eye and they exchange a smile, their thoughts as closely aligned as ever.
“Well, Ganymede?” she queries lightly.
Her cousin’s—no, her brother’s—lips twitch. “Well,Aliena? Like you this, our new home?”
She takes a breath, ignoring Touchstone, who is regarding their surroundings with a far more dubious eye. “I like it well, dear brother! Let us build up the fire, and make haste to dine!”
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Corin has a widowed sister who keeps house for him at his cote, and is glad indeed to learn that her brother has a new master and mistress, who will pay him far more generously than the old.
She calls upon them the next day, bringing more than her thanks. Another loaf of bread, still warm, a small crock of butter. Her daughter married a dairyman, she tells them, and brings butter and cheese when she visits.
Even better, to Celia’s way of thinking, the widow brings some cast-off clothing. From her daughter and her son, who is apprenticed to a joiner in town: faded homespun gowns, some patched linen shirts, a worn leather jerkin, broad-brimmed straw hats, even an extra pair of boots.
Celia wonders just how much Corin has told his sister of them. Perhaps that they are city-bred and unused to country life? That, despite the money they gave him for the cottage and the flock, they have little else in the way of possessions?
Either way, she is grateful. The widow’s daughter appears to have been a buxom country maid, taller and fuller of figure than Celia, but her gowns can be altered easily enough to fit, likewise the linen shirts. Celia gives silent thanks to her mother and her nurse for insisting that she become proficient with a needle.
A slight melancholy assails her at the thought. Both women have been gone for several years—O, Mother, if you could but see your daughter now!—but her mother had ever been one for making the best of her circumstances, and she had kept a good household of which not even Celia’s father, cross-grained and hard to please as he had been, could complain.
Despite their far humbler state, Celia is determined to do no less. Although she knows that Rosalind will shoulder her share of responsibility, running the household is the provenance of the mistress. Which, by default, Celia has become.
There is much that Corin’s sister and their new neighbors can teach her about country life, and Celia resolves to learn all she can. How to maintain and even to improve their modest dwelling. How to prepare meals from their simple stores. And to discover what might be bought, traded, or even foraged for in the fields and the forest. What remained of their money and jewels would be carefully husbanded, used only when most necessary.
Somehow, she will make their new home a place where they might not only survive but thrive, far from the intrigues of court and her father’s tyranny.