The Two Confessions

by John Whitbourn

  There was a coin for each child at Christmas, and sugar-sweets on their saint's-day. People quite often donated toys. Then, once a year on St Pancras' day, the nearby priory would entertain the entire orphanage, laying on a stupefying meal, with the solemn, silent monks waiting on the little children (for their own mortification and instruction). Afterwards, the gaunt old prior, a sorcerer of great repute, would entertain them with his art, causing stone gargoyles to caper in a jig, or great flames to spring from his fingertips and singe the lawn. They were terrified of him even as they admired him, and wondered why it was such an infinitely powerful man should dress so poorly, shave his head, and do as he was told, spending his life in prayer and service. Thus there was a lesson for them there too, even in that innocent occasion (though to be fair, a more or less unintended one). In adult life they'd discover that every (Christian) wizard was the creation and property of Mother Church - and they'd draw the proper conclusions from that.

  So, all in all, it wasn't too bad a life; not the lap of luxury - far from it - but not grim endurance either. Father Omar, greater in height and bulk than any man in Lewes, expended himself and lined his face in warding off the worst the world could do to his charges. Whole decades passed and he was more or less successful.

  Despite that benign regime, the young Trevan came to realise that the table set before him wasn't the standard menu. To start with, normal children had parents and, however rough and ready (a mere generation or two back for the peasantry), a family tree and context. Whereas he had none of those things. If Father Omar or the Orphanage trustees knew how and when he was entrusted to the 'St Philip Howard's Foundlings Refuge', they failed to enlighten him. Laying awake at night in the restless dormitory, Samuel's mind often circled round that fact, probing the void from which he apparently sprang. Strangely though, those ponderings failed to awaken much curiosity or sense of loss. He didn't pester Omar with questions on the subject, as other children often did. Separately, both he and the priest found that instructive.

  Another difference sprang from the first, and was deepened by the self-containment just related. Samuel was driven by strong tides, but still retained complete control. From the very first, right from the initial anecdote retained in orphanage memory, Samuel competed - and nothing else but first and best would do. Even these victories, once achieved, were not celebrated but just shrugged at: transient stepping-stones on the way to greater things. Samuel Trevan never played childish games just for fun.

  He was focused. Whatever he set himself to do expanded in size to eclipse the rest of the universe and, for the most part, whatever he required he obtained. Not overly blessed in academic skills, Samuel would sacrifice sunny holy days to wrestle with his books, his lips moving as he repeated the words till they made sense. Contrary to each successive tutor's expectations, he graduated from class to class. Whatever Father Omar and other priests told him about the ordering of the cosmos, he took in without challenge as in accord with his worldview. It just made sense that there be a no-nonsense Pope, and then God, to cap the hierarchy he saw about him. At sports and amidst his peers Samuel's width and strength made him unstoppable. It was not in him to be a bully or be bullied. From under heavy brows and from an already bulldog-ugly, intimidating face, Trevan looked out upon the world without fear.

  And if any went in fear of him, it was only because they were up to fighting back, were in the way, and had been warned. He was very keen on 'justice', both received and meted out, and didn't see the need to be fairer than that.

  In life therefore, as at orphanage mealtimes, Samuel ate every scrap set before him, without comment as to quality, and extracted maximum benefit from it.

  For his part, Father Omar felt it almost a sin to cavil at such a success story. Some of his charges would perpetually lag in the game of life thanks to the poor initial hand dealt them. Samuel Melchizedek Trevan, by comparison, looked fit to cause Life problems, rather than the usual contrary. There was no good reason why so spirited a boy should cause his brow to furrow in projected concern. Yet he did.

  Samuel's start in life comprised the first horse hitched to his cart: a spirited beast as it turned out, but not quite up to gallop speed alone. The second member of the team arrived by chance. Thereafter, with ambition as his fuel and a prize in sight, he required a lot of stopping.

  ************

  On St Guy's Day Lewes came to a halt - or came to life, depending on your point of view. Business paused in despair and put up the shutters. Liberated from the mundane, most others were glad. Approving or not, every thought tended towards bonfire and anarchy.

  Lewes Town had been rough-handled by the 'Reformation' (or 'The Devastation' as popular usage now termed it). Whereas Henry 'VIII-and-last' ransacked a monastery or two, Edward, his son, closed churches, and Mary 'the Great' burnt a few fanatics for reneging on the faith of their fathers, 'Black Betty', Elizabeth I, had visited the Downs and Weald country with a scourge of iron. For all that it had been sacked and burnt after smallpox called her to judgement, Lewes still bore scars from that reign. Later historians would note a centuries long absence of 'Elizabeths' from the Town's baptismal registers, a small token of their memory and appreciation.

  Worse followed. Cecil's rebels briefly held Lewes, attempting a 'Protestant' utopia by fiery purging of 'ungodly' elements of the population. The unceasing sickly sweet pall over the Town provoked its besiegers to assault and massacre. Likewise, Spanish volunteers and the furious English amongst the royal army were not always able to distinguish between oppressors and oppressed. Fire broke out with no one minded to control it. Lewes almost died that day and surviving Lewesians, even the priests amongst them, wondered in their hearts if God slept.

  Their waking nightmare continued, though with less intensity, through 'Armada' and 'King Essex' days. There were both good and bad years, but men were more inclined to repair town walls than their houses, and to stockpile arms rather than children. Lewes, in common with many places, grew grim.

  Then Guy or ‘Guido’ Fawkes and his band of heroes blew the whole establishment asunder, beheading the state.

  Headless nations may feign frantic activity, just like chickens in a similar predicament - but death is on its way all the same. After final paroxysms of violence born of fear, better times eventually returned - and the Church came with them so that the two appeared connected.

  Lewes town had suffered more than most and keenly recalled the event that heralded liberation. On St Guy's Day, November the fifth, the daytime was therefore spent in holiday and pious remembrance. A sense of anticipation then grew as the hours passed and authority and propriety alike prepared for temporary withdrawal. Nightfall saw town-wide surrender to wild indulgence; to masked processions, bonfire and licence. Glass was broken and wild oats sowed, but nothing worse (generally). Good St Guy was toasted again and again and the 'Black Betty' atop each towering bonfire damned to hell in chorus. The next day was an unofficial holiday, devoted to repairs and repentance.

  Every parish in the town had its own bonfire confraternity, joined at birth and for eternity, thanks to the obit Masses they also arranged. In-between those two alpha and omega events, the organisation was always there to be turned to should poverty or sickness descend on any 'bonfire brother'. Over the centuries they acquired land from bequests and invested the means-tested subscriptions of the brethren, and thus came to prosperity. In Sussex County life they occupied a curious position; as institutions of great age and wealth and benevolence - yet still a league short of respectability, akin to a banker with both philanthropist and hooligan tendencies.

  The Cliffe Bonfire Society chanced to own the land on which Samuel's orphanage stood, and had granted it in long, free, lease to the Church for that purpose. Accordingly, all the boys within were honorary members of 'Cliffe' and marched beneath its skull-and-crossbones black banner on the great and glorious day. It was also customary for each society to construct huge effigies ('Black Bettys' of course, but also others) t
o parade behind and confine to the fire. Every group vied to produce the biggest, most life-like, most insulting, figure, and pains were taken to ensure secrecy around it until unveiling. The walls of 'St Philip Howard's offered ideal concealment and for decades past the orphanage served their benefactors in this way. It was the merest return it might make, and if Father Omar didn't always approve of the grotesques constructed before his very eyes he was powerless against such a weight of tradition and indebtedness.

  It was partly as a result of this, and chance, and - as with so many matters in his world, a certain Tudor King - that Samuel received his mission.

  ************

  The idea was to get your figurine to the main procession's start without any other society catching sight. That way its impact was maximised by novelty. There were few things more gratifying to a true 'son-of-bonfire' than to hear gasps of acclamation, outrage and surprise greet the revealing of your labour of love. Since each grouping had the same task before it, the same urge to speed and discretion of delivery, it wasn't all that hard to achieve success. Everyone was too intent on their own project to much hinder or thwart another's. On the other hand, in honour of the day, a token amount of prying and mischief making was expected, as were exertions to evade it. By late afternoon the Town was swarming with conspiratorial parties. That was how Master Trevan came to the forefront and his fateful moment.

  Lewes was strung through with short cuts, called 'twittens' in local dialect, just as other places called them 'gates' or 'passages'. Survivals of the medieval street pattern, they'd once been run-offs between tenements, stretching down to the defensive walls. Now hallowed by time and formalised into pedestrian ways, cold-shouldered by and walled off from neighbouring houses, they ran for long distances, offering a discreet means between many an A and B.

  'Church Twitten', with its high flint walls and overhanging trees, was perfect, albeit a tight squeeze, for Cliffe Bonfire's purpose. It stretched right from the river and priory up to the High Street. With partisans to guard either end, the effigies, all shrouded in tarpaulin, could be dragged along to commence a brief public life in relative privacy. This was the Society's favoured route, even though it entailed first pontooning the figures over the Ouse, and they'd have used it every year save that such lawyer-caution wasn't in the spirit of the feast.

  The Orphanage was always entrusted (and honoured) with pulling one of the creations, and that year, 1988, it chanced to be the principal parody and main effort. By virtue of his size and spirit, Samuel was chosen captain of the selected boys. He ordered awaiting the chimes of five and serious dusk before sallying out. The cold nipped at faces and fingers but at least it was dry: perfect Bonfire weather.

  Soon he and his team merged into the protective midst of the swarming, excited, Cliffe contingent; a multitude all too willing to offer assistance should youthful muscles flag. Then, with such an abundance of helping hands to haul the precious charge, Trevan felt free to press ahead, to scout the route and secure the twitten's further reaches against surprise. Two-score Cliffe rascals were with him, in ribbon-enlivened Sunday-best and war-painted faces. Each brandished the traditional 'Black Betty's fan' (illegal on any other day): a stout hardwood club decorated with that dead queen's screaming face lapped by hellfire. As fully intended, they looked a desperate crew, merely half-feral at this decorous stage of proceedings, yet hungry to commune with the wilder-still heart of 'Bonfire'. Samuel felt fitted; part of the group and in his place. It wasn't in his mind to leave or change, and the years ahead seemed set to roll on pretty straightforward.

  He shouldn't have presumed.

  Two thirds along, Church Twitten took a right turn. Strolling around that corner came his future.

  ************

  ‘Oh....’

  ‘No passage here, miss,’ said Samuel. ‘Cliffe's coming through.’

  ‘I'll go back.’

  ‘'Ain't offering much choice, am I?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  She was his age but educated: well spoken - very well spoken - though light on the haughtiness that usually rode tandem. Outside of the licence of Bonfire day Samuel might not have spoken so briskly to her. Then one of his bonfire-brothers felt free to push the boundaries even further.

  ‘About turn and show us y'rear view, dolly-dumpling, 'fore we tread you in!’

  Samuel had learnt the knack of shutting people up with just a look. He used it on his coarse friend.

  ‘Walk with me,’ he told the girl, who had blushed most arousingly. Issuing orders against the current of the class structure was presumption in itself, but there and then Trevan could pose as her protector and thus be excused. They drew clear of the slow oncoming mob.

  Trevan escorted her back whence she came, to the junction with High Street. The expected gawpers were waiting and his companions got distracted in dispersing them with waves of the betty-fans. There was an opportunity for unpressured discourse. He wondered why he felt so tense.

  ‘You'll have to wait till we pass. Where were you going?’

  ‘Out.’

  And so Samuel learnt she wasn't so soft or flustered as she looked. Nor did she feel obliged to elaborate. Samuel was... unsettled by his strong wish to learn more. There was a queasy feeling of ebbing control.

  ‘Are you in charge?’

  Her question was a killer, perfectly exploiting his sudden self-doubt. Could she detect it? Or was the girl simply up to turning the tide of interrogation?

  She had to elevate her head to address Samuel eye to eye. That contact was fleeting but long enough for him to note the flash of cobalt blue under long lashes. He felt eight foot tall and clumsy with it.

  Samuel looked down into the pale face and, quite unlike him, wanted to say the most impressive instead of truthful answer.

  ‘Sort of.... Well, not really. Just of that one.’

  He pointed behind. By application of brute force and ignorance, the star effigy was negotiating the twitten's corner. Beneath the covers the rough shape rocked and wobbled alarmingly.

  ‘Is it any good?’ the girl asked.

  That was almost saucy, though he couldn't detect any mockery in her modestly evasive gaze. If Cliffe didn't think it was ‘good’ they'd not have entered it! There was a prize that went to the finest creation, and a full year of honour and boasting besides. Up to that moment Samuel would have said their 'Henry-Abomination-Tudor, VIII-and-last' was 'good'. He'd even been caused to grin at it as the monstrosity took shape. Certainly it was the best, a walk-away winner, and local patriotism would have had him say so even if it wasn't.

  Strangely though, just then, he'd rather the girl wasn't about when it was unveiled, to associate it with him. Samuel knew how King Henry's codpiece swelled obscenely up to meet a drooping gut. The titanic arse they'd grafted on him would raise laughs - but also embarrassment. Then he recalled the naked maidens being devoured in Henry’s bloody maw....

  ‘You ought to go.’

  He’d bluntly ignored her question, and she visibly registered that and the new rough edge of his tone. Directly repenting it, Samuel sought to explain.

  ‘Only it's like... well, the Cliffe boys will speak ripe - and there'll be beer flowing and the flaming tar barrels.... Look, miss, ain't you got your own society to go to?’

  She ought to, for every locality banded together to celebrate the day, and only the most prim and proper and unpopular stayed away.

  As answer she just nodded. And left. Leaving Samuel unsure whether he'd upset or frightened her, or if she'd simply cut short an inconsequential exchange, forgetting him already. He found he didn't want any of those things to be true.

  She was still visible for a little while, a pint-sized plump figure threading her way, not noticeably distressed or hurried, up the rapidly filling High Street. He tracked her with his eyes, a hard and hungry, single-minded stare that others spotted but thought better than to comment on. There was a final sight of her bonnet and hennaed hair, glimpsed in a gap between a d
ecorated dray and the Martyrs' monument, and then no more. But Samuel wanted more.

  After that he was occupied with things to do; with positioning King Henry and divesting him of ropes and sheets to be shown forth in all his sordid glory. The animal cheer that greeted the sight showed straightway this would a great day for Cliffe.

  Samuel took full part in it, not stinting himself in anything, from procession, to Mass, through to pyrotechnic evening; right until Orphanage gate-time. Even under that last spoilsport restraint, he found time to taste beer and break glass, amply honouring Lewes' long ago deliverance. After that spell of weakness in Church Twitten, transfixed by the 'elf arrow' as the Downs shepherds would have called it, no one would have noticed anything different to him.

  Yet, all the time, Samuel Trevan was thinking on. Thinking on a single thought.

  He had to have her.

  U[U[U[U[U[U[U

  cHAPTER 6

  It wasn't romantic 'love' or anything daft like that. Romance was not exalted in Samuel's world. There was 'lust' and 'friendship' and 'affection', but the only 'love' his civilisation recognised was as mentioned in its holy book - a very different concept. True, infatuation featured in some popular ballads but by and large it stayed there. Too close to the harsh facts of life to revere mere sentiment, Christendom (and everywhere else as best they knew) looked for better reasons in choosing a companion for one’s pilgrimage on earth. Piety, inheritance or childbearing hips rated way above attraction.

  Samuel knew all this - and accepted it. Even aged fifteen he could well distinguish between lechery and deeper longings. It was all the more strange therefore that, from that day on, without doubt or decrease, he was fired with a new ambition. Like a prophet heeding revelation, humbly accepting the new dispensation, he just got on with the unavoidable.