Bedeswoman
by Susan Waters

Plain as hessian.
Too plain to wife and then to quicken,
I tend the twelve like a mother,
Men who were as poor as I.

We keep close company
Safe in the house of high rafters,
Bell-cot marking holy hours
Above the ironstone stripes.

But O, the shriving Winter –
Our breath a smoke of praying
For our Masters to a Father God,
To Our Lady, full of grace.

Dear Mary, grant endurance
As I pail the water
As I stir the potage
Your hands easing mine;

And courage for the sickbed,
A bolster pillow cradling,
Comfort at our leave taking,
Folding his red-starred cloak.
Betimes, I catch a soul’s last looking
A telling of much sweetness
I am made beautiful as the May.

Have mercy, Holy Virgin,
Mercy for this sinning
And my prideful wondering,
Even as the bell is ringing,
Who shall hereafter
Know my name?

December Song
by Susan Waters

History rings
When we walk the high path,
Remembering Jane
Counting toll-coins in her small hands;
Flowing forward
By the house of Henry’s birth
(The boy will do)
Our Chartered town,
Place of constancy and change.

The Chapel sings again
As white lights thread
Along the shops
To the Square, the sparkling tree,
The bollards wearing Christmas coats.
A small child hugs
The knitted man in red,
Festive dreaming
Catching ghostly music –

A marching band’s parade
A shoe-press crack
A clack of carts and train wheels,
Unseen streams splashing under streets,
A cold moat sighing to the Nene.
There is gold here
In this river.

The poem takes us for a walk from the Rushden border at Tollbar
into Higham Ferrers.

Mrs Jane Litchfield was the Tollgate Keeper. She remarried and as
Mrs Wilby became the Bedeswoman. She died in 1936 aged 91.

The Boy Will Do is a play by John Roddis about Henry Chichele’s life.