'The House at Old Vine' (2) - Elizabeth's Tale Quiz | Literature

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. What colour were the beads which were highly regarded by both the child Elizabeth, and the grown woman she was to become?

Answer: blue

They were given to her on her eighth birthday by her grandfather, who was Josiana's grandson. He was a secret Papist in Elizabethan England, and the beads were a present to his beloved granddaughter - blue being 'Mary's own colour'. Elizabeth's view of her mother's attitude towards her is first shown here:

The beads stayed round my neck and were a comfort to me later in the day when Mother gave me one of her talks.

It was so like her. In the morning I was eight, too young to be trusted with a string of beads; in the afternoon I was a 'great girl of eight', and it was time I mended my ways, became responsible, sensible and helpful.

In future I was to spend more time learning to cook and to sew and tending Harry and Arthur. What a dismal outlook.

But for the beads I should have wished to be seven again.

2. Elizabeth shared a bedroom with one of the maids in the older part of the house, but what was her name?

Answer: Betty

Betty is to feature in the book through the next tale as well as this one - when Barbara came to the Old Vine Betty was still one of the servants in the house, and totally devoted to Madam Elizabeth.

3. Just a week or so after her birthday, Elizabeth noticed the first of the strange events surrounding her beloved grandfather when a man came up to him furtively in the market place. He sent his granddaughter and the maid to buy something else while he spoke to this man, but what was it he sent them to get?

Answer: gingerbread

I felt that we were being got out of the way. Also I was offended because he gave the money for the gingerbread to Betty, which was an insult to me after I'd gone to such pains to learn the value of coins and how to take the price you had to pay from the worth of the coin you proffered, so that you knew what change to expect.

It was the first time that my grandfather had been careless of my feelings in just that way and I resented it.

4. The next strange event Elizabeth witnessed was when her grandfather took the bowl pieces she had found in the Abbey ruins some weeks before and had them made into a complete bowl, regardless of the fact that she considered them to belong to her. When she overheard him giving the instructions to the boys who were selling their potteryware, to which address did her grandfather say they were to deliver the complete bowl?

Answer: the Hawk in Hand

In Antony Flowerdew's Tale the Old Vine was known affectionately as the 'Bunch o' Grapes' as it was then an inn with an iron sign showing a single vine leaf and a bunch of grapes. A generation earlier, it was to Mrs Webster at the Hawk in Hand that the old man entrusted the mended Venetian aspersorium.

5. Summer gave way to autumn before the next strange event was to take place, when Elizabeth ran to fetch her grandfather because a visitor came to see him at the house. Her father had gone to see to the visitor because he was also Mr Kentwoode, and was not sympathetic to the tale (most likely hastily invented) of a poor widow with many children who was unable to claim poor relief because she was not a local. What was Elizabeth's mother's reaction to the tale of Widow Tompkin?

Answer: she fetched some food from the kitchen to give to the woman

She rushed to the kitchen while her husband was arguing the toss with the visitor, about the fact that he paid poor rates in three parishes and was not inclined to be known as a person who had a name for putting his hand in his pouch. When the old man came and saw what she had done, he said in a voice I'd never heard him use to her before, 'God bless you, Margaret.'

6. The very next day Elizabeth's grandfather set about working on his closet, and we learn later that he was fashioning a priest hole. Elizabeth was to help him, and tells of how pleased he was when he found the wood all rotten and stinking as he cleared out the area. His daughter-in-law was horrified when she saw the state of the stuff which was to be burned, but what else did she say?

Answer: that the old half of the house should be rebuilt and the passageway blocked off

'But then,' she said, 'all that part of the house is so old. Too old.' She glanced at my father. 'If I had my way,' she said, with the air of knowing very well that she never would, so she could make whatever wild statement she fancied, 'I'd have it all down, and some new rooms built; and I'd make an entrance for the pack pones at the side. How many other women, I wonder, if they want to go from their kitchen to their parlour, must stand and wait while twelve ponies trot clean through the house?' It was one of those questions to which there was no answer, and the subject lapsed.

7. A couple of days later was the day which Elizabeth was to say was the turning point of her life. Left to tend to her brothers, an accident occurred when one of them wanted to play with the fire, leaving him screaming after smacking his head on the pile of logs and her precious beads scattered all over the floor. Which of her two brothers was to be cosseted while Elizabeth was scolded?

Answer: Harry

It was not so much this event which was to affect Elizabeth so acutely, rather it was the fact that her Grandfather did not rush to her aid when she ran to him. Later she was to surmise that he was locked in his room with the Priest at the time. The beads, which her mother said were to be thrown into the fire, were hidden in Betty's monthly bag which hung in their closet while she threw pebbles into the fire, to be restrung and reappear at the end of the tale.

8. When Sir Richard Dury came visiting later that day Elizabeth's mother offered him a meal, thankful that she had made one of her special pies just the day before. While she allowed her servants to make the everyday things, she insisted that the special things, such as saffron cake, syllabub or pies, were only made properly by the lady of the house. What was in this particular pie?

Answer: venison, hare, partridge and pigeon

. . . but the pie had vanished. The finger of suspicion fell on each of the servants in turn, and even on the priest-at-large for whom the whole countryside was looking. It wasn't until after the old man's death that Margaret considered that her father-in-law had taken it, and the matter was closed.

9. Suddenly remembering seeing an empty platter in her grandfather's room earlier that day, Elizabeth started putting together all the different things she had witnessed, to conclude that the missing priest was hiding in her grandfather's closet. A very bright child, she was about to act on her conclusions then remembered how the incident with her brother earlier had been misread by her mother, so decided to gather just one more piece of evidence, something not remembered or supposed. What was that final piece of evidence to be?

Answer: a stolen piece of bacon

After witnessing this, Elizabeth went to her grandfather to ask him to save her blue beads by lying and telling her mother that he bought her another string. Pushed to it, she admitted that she knew about the priest, and the old man collapsed with a stroke, and died.

When she was finally able to get up Elizabeth openly wore her beads and told the family that her grandfather gave them to her to replace the old, burnt beads.

10. Did Elizabeth marry?

Answer: No

Elizabeth was to be known as Madam for her adult life, once she took over the business of the Old Vine from her brother.

The years passed. In Baildon, where memories were long and entertainments few, today's gossip tended to become tomorrow's legend.

It was not forgotten, for instance, that once before at the Old Vine, a woman had revived a moribund business, and when, in the year 1587, another woman, Elizabeth Kentwoode, emerged from a self-imposed seclusion and saved - by cunning innovations - the business which her brother Harry had ruined, it seemed as though history were repeating itself.

It seemed strange that at the same place more or less the same thing should happen.

The secret of Josiana's parentage had died with her; nobody knew how closely the Kentwoode family and the Rancons were connected. Had the blood tie been visible they would have understood better why it was that Harry Kentwoode, gay and irresponsible, extravagant and profligate, was so much like one of the Rancons who had come to a bad end in London, and one of the Reeds who had come to a bad end somewhere far away in the west country.

Source: Author ArleneRimmer

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'The House at Old Vine' (2) - Elizabeth's Tale Quiz

Elizabeth was Josiana's great-great granddaughter, and her tale speaks of the religious intolerance of the Elizabethan era - but what possible part could an eight year old have to play in that?

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