Gaining her confidence was no easy matter, and I am not convinced I ever won it entirely. Certainly, had I made my approach to her later, when her husband was dead and the king was back on his throne, she would inevitably have assumed I was sent to trap her, especially as I knew Dr. Wallis by then. Such a connection would have made her suspicious, as she had no cause to love the new government, and especial reason to fear Wallis. Understandably so—I learned soon enough to fear him myself.

Then, however, I had not yet had my introduction to the man, Richard Cromwell was still holding on to power by his fingertips and the king was in the Spanish Netherlands, eager for his inheritance but not daring to grasp it. The country was stirring and it seemed that the armies would soon be on the march once more. My own house was searched for arms that spring, as was that of everyone I knew. We had only sporadic news of the world in Oxford and the more I have talked to people over the years, the more I realize that in fact virtually no one knew what was going on. Except for John Thurloe, of course, who knew and saw everything. But even he fell from power, swept away by forces which, for once, he could not control. Take that as proof of how distempered the country was in those days.

There was little point in approaching Anne Blundy politely. I could not, for example, write her a letter introducing myself as I had no reason to assume that she might be able to read. I had little choice but to walk to her lodgings and knock on the door, which was opened by a girl of perhaps seventeen who was, I believe, the prettiest thing I had ever seen in my life—a fine figure (if a little thin), a full set of teeth and a complexion unblemished by illness. Her hair was dark, which was a disadvantage, and although she wore it loose and largely uncovered she still dressed modestly and I do think that, had she been attired in sackcloth, it would have seemed a wonderfully becoming garment in my eyes. Above all, it was her eyes which fascinated, for they were the deepest black, like raven’s wings, and it is known that of all colors, black is the most amiable in a woman. “Black eyes as if from Venus,” says Hesiod of his Alcmena, while Homer calls Juno ox-eyed, because of her round, black eyes, and Baptista Porta (in his Physiognomia) sneers at the gray-eyed English, and joins with Morison in lauding the deep glances of languorous Neapolitan ladies.

I stared awhile, quite forgetting my reason for calling, until she politely but not with servility, distantly but not with impudence, asked me my business. “Please come in, sir,” she said, when I told her. “My mother is out at the market; but she should be back any moment. You are welcome to wait, if you wish.”

I leave it to others to decide whether I should have taken that as a warning about her character. Had I been with someone better stationed I would naturally have gone away, not wishing to presume on her reputation by being alone with her. But at that moment, the chance of talking to this creature seemed to me the best possible way of passing the time until the mother returned. I am sure 1 half wished that the woman might be greatly delayed. I sat myself (I fear with something of a swagger, as a man of parts might do when associating with inferiors, God forgive me) on the little stool by the fireplace, which unfortunately was empty, despite the cold.

How do people converse in such situations? I have never succeeded in a matter which others seem to find simple. Perhaps it is the result of too many hours spent in books and manuscripts. Most of the time I had no trouble at all; with my friends over dinner, I could converse with the best of them and I pride myself still that I was not the least interesting. But in some circumstances I was at a loss, and making conversation to a serving girl with beautiful eyes was beyond my powers. I could have tried playing the gallant, chucking her under the chin, sitting her on my knee and pinching her bottom, but that has never been my way, and most obviously was not hers either. I could have ignored her as not worth my attention, except that she was. So I ended up doing neither, staring at her dumbly, and had to leave it to her.

“You have come to consult my mother on some trouble, no doubt,” she prompted after she had waited for me to begin a conversation.

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you have lost something, and want her to divine where it is? She is good at that. Or maybe you are sick, and are afraid of going to a doctor?”

Eventually, I dragged my eyes away from her face. “Oh, no. Not at all. I have heard of her great skills, of course, but I am most meticulous and never lose anything. A place for everything, you know. That is the only way I can proceed in my work. And my health is as good as man might expect, thanks to God.”

Babbling and pompous; I excuse myself by pleading confusion. She assuredly had not the slightest interest in my work; few people have. But it has always been my refuge in times of trouble, and when confused or sad my thoughts fly to it. Toward the end of this affair, I sat up at nights, week after week, transcribing and annotating, as a way of shutting the world out. Locke told me it was for the best. Strange, that—I never liked him, and he never liked me, but I always took his advice, and found it answered.

“Amen,” she said. “So why have you come to see my mother? I hope you are not betrayed in love. She does not approve of philters and such nonsense, you know. If you want that sort of foolishness, you can go to a man in Hed-dington, although personally I think he is a charlatan.”

I reassured her that my quest was entirely different, and that I did not wish to consult her mother on any such business. I was beginning to explain when the door opened and the woman returned. Sarah rushed to assist, as her mother collapsed on a trestle stool opposite, wiped her face and got her breath back before she peered at me. She was poorly but cleanly dressed, with gnarled hands strong from years of labor, and a red, round open face. Although age was beginning to gain its inevitable triumph, in her manner she was far from the desolate, broken bird of a woman she later became, and moved with a sprightliness that many others more favored in life do not have at her age.

“Nothing wrong with you,” she said forthrightly after gazing at me in a way which seemed to see me entire. Her daughter had the habit as well, I later learned. I think it was that which made people frightened of them, and consider them insolent. “What are you here for?”

“This is Mr. Wood, Mother,” Sarah said as she came back from the tiny room next door. “He is an historian, so he has been telling me, and wishes to consult you.”

“And what ailments afflict historians, pray?” she said with little interest. “Loss of memory? Crabbed writing hand?”

I smiled. “Both of those, but not in my case, I am pleased to say. No; I am writing a history of the siege, and as you were here during that period…”

“So were several thousand other people. Are you going to talk to them all? A strange way of writing history, that.”

“I model myself on Thucydides…” I began ponderously.

“And he died before he could finish,” she interrupted, a comment which surprised me so much I almost fell off my stool. Quite apart from the speed of her riposte, she had evidently not only heard of that greatest of historians, she even knew something about him. I looked at her more curiously, but evidently failed to disguise my astonishment.

“My husband is a great book man, sir, and takes pleasure in reading to me, and getting me to read to him of an evening.”

“He is here?”

“No; he is still with the army. I believe he is in London.”

I was disappointed, of course, but resolved to make do with what I could discover from the wife until such time as Blundy himself might return.