“But I am not a possession, am I?” she murmured.
He came close. “What did you say?”
She looked up. “What does this ring mean to you?” she asked.
Noah took her hand and kissed it. “It means you are mine. And I would die for you if need be.” He pulled her close and unbuttoned her dress. Then he saw her bra.
“A wedding present from Aunt Lavinia,” she said, and let the dress drop to the floor to reveal the lace panties.
“God bless Aunt Lavinia,” Noah said in a strangled voice.
She went to him and took off his coat and shirt, unbuttoned his breeches while he slid the bra straps from her shoulders and kissed her neck. He stood naked before her. Then he drew her onto the bed, where they knelt side by side, touching, kissing, exploring.
“How does this come off?” he asked as he tugged at the bra.
She showed him the front closure snap and he soon freed her breasts for fondling.
“With my body, I thee worship,” he whispered as his other hand pulled down her panties and moved between her thighs.
She stroked his cock, leaned close, and pleasured it with her mouth.
“I love doing this for you,” she said. “Is that a gift from God?”
“It is.” He pushed her back gently and entered her, moving slowly, then ceasing. “This is as close as we can come to God in this world.” He moved again, more insistent, then stopped, like one who, walking ahead, pauses and waits for the other to catch up. To slow himself he whispered, “Do you know the words of John Donne? ‘Batter my heart three person’d God…o’erthrow me, and bend your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.’”
He spoke against her mouth as she moaned softly.
“‘Take me to you, imprison me, for I except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.’”
Then he moved inside her again, now fast, now slow, listening for her cries, pausing, waiting for the desperate scrabbling of her fingers on his back as she urged him on before he once more resumed his thrusts, until she wept for pleasure and they rocked together like two angels wrapped in one another’s wings.
IN a cold bedchamber off Sheep Street, Jacob Woodcock, squinting beside his candle, dipped his quill in an ink pot.
In addition to making light of the further outbreaks of witchcraft in the town, he wrote,
I am become aware of other lapses in security. Although the district continues to be plagued by this band of smugglers, the constabulary is scarcely to be found at night. I came to know this by screwing up my courage to venture out several times after midnight, braving the possible assault of brigands or, worse, an emissary of the Devil. Nowhere did I find a constable and, from an offhand question to Constable Baxter, a dull and credulous fellow, I learned that Pastor Fallam has assured them only a single constable was needed after dark and he is allowed to stay inside the jail. The rest might tend to their families. Thus are we protected in Norchester.
Jacob Woodcock paused for more ink, thought a moment, and finished.
My skepticism about Fallam has grown as time has passed, and I now share your reservations. It was disturbing to hear of your experience of him in Ireland. I know not whether or no he is merely negligent or if more is involved. But I question the trust the Lord Protector places in him, whatever good service he may have done in the past.
Your servant,
W.
He read through the letter once more, then sealed it with a drop of hot wax and addressed it to Major-General Elisha Sitwell in Bristol.
Chapter 18
The Tempest
THEY FELL INTO a comfortable routine. At breakfast, Mary—who had arrived at the Bishop’s Palace in a state of high excitement—chattered with Simon as they ate their porridge and the maid Nan watched over the budding romance with a kindly eye. Nan was, like many servants, a widow, and since she had raised only boys, she took to the girl at once. Mary, for her part, could not get used to having servants around all day and kept trying to help with dishes or sweeping, and insisted upon making her own bed. She was quickly installed as the servants’ favorite and, when they were at their chores in the kitchen, was often called on to tell one of her stories of fairies and goblins. At their gossip the servants wondered if stern Pastor Fallam would tolerate such wild tales if he knew of them, but were too taken with Mary and her stories to give her away.
At table, Lydde and Noah must be circumspect. They sat quietly, now and then speaking formally for Nan’s benefit about the state of Lewis’s soul. Noah brought a Bible with him to the table and would read a set of verses, then challenge Lydde to parse them. As she struggled to explain what they meant, he would question her sharply, his face solemn except for his eyes, which seemed to her always full of mischief. When Nan left, they relaxed, but found it hard to pick up a thread of normal conversation lest she suddenly return. They contented themselves with smiling at one another. Smiling was something they could not help doing. Once, when Nan had closed the door behind her, Lydde whispered, “I suppose a day will come when we no longer smile each time our eyes meet and we shall begin to take one another for granted.”
“I suppose,” Noah said.
“Someday we will have a huge fight.”
“Will we?” he said, surprised. Then, sounding doubtful, “I suppose we will.”
They pondered this, their eyes met, and they smiled again.
Then Lydde would take Mary off to Soane’s Croft, where they helped Uncle John and Mother Bunch with the chores and ate their dinner, while Noah worked in his office and took his food at his desk. He dealt with his usual tasks—paperwork for London, disputes over this neighbor’s pig and that village’s well, correspondence with the local gentry, road maintenance, and tax collection. Boring stuff, and not how he would like to spend his time. But he was a competent administrator, as he must be to preserve his cover.
After dinner Lydde and Mary together delivered Mother Bunch’s medicines. If there was a meeting of the players they stopped by Mossup’s livery stable for an hour or so, Mary serving as audience. More and more often they played scenes from The Tempest, for Mossup was determined to master Prospero’s speeches. Sometimes they drew Mary in, and Lydde loved to watch the girl deliver her lines, her dainty features alive with the joy of living a story. When they did The Tempest, she played Miranda to Guill’s Caliban, and brought tears to Lydde’s eyes with her care and disgust for the hapless wild creature. In another time and place, Lydde thought, she would have been a wonderful actress. Were it not for the fire—Lydde turned abruptly from the thought.
The rest of the afternoon and early evening were spent in the upstairs library at the Bishop’s Palace, where Lydde gave Mary lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. After supper the servants retired to their homes. Mary and Simon were allowed to sit downstairs or walk about the grounds on Simon’s solemn pledge he would do nothing to compromise Mary’s honor. Then Lydde and Noah were on their own.
Usually they went back up to the library, where by hearth and lantern light they explored Noah’s books. He was inordinately proud of his collection of some forty volumes which would have given scandal to Jacob Woodcock and his ilk. It included the 1632 First Folio of Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (when Lydde asked, “Isn’t this illegal?” he had smiled and said, “Performances are banned, but I read what I like”), the poetry of Anglicans John Donne and George Herbert, medieval theologians Thomas Aquinas and William of Occam, St. Augustine’s City of God and Confessions, and Milton’s Areopagitica, with its defense of a free press. There were volumes of Plato’s Dialogues and Aristotle’s Ethics, Physics, and Metaphysics, and books on the new learning—anatomy, astronomy, botany, mathematics.
Noah liked to read aloud to Lydde and she was content to listen, for she had not yet adjusted to the closely set Gothic typeface and—to her—archaic spellings of the printed volumes. They sat on pillows with their backs to the hearth, Noah’s arms around Ly
dde, who held the book in her lap while he turned the pages. He paused now and then and they talked about what he had read. One night, after a discussion of what constituted matter, she said, “I wish you could spend more time with Uncle John.”
“I would love to spend more time with him,” Noah said wistfully. “I want to know what he knows.”
“I don’t mean just that,” Lydde said. “I think you will come to love each other because you both are seekers.”
Noah smiled. “We are already on our way to loving one another,” he said, “for we have you between us.”
Then he kissed her in a way that promised they would make love that night.
LYDDE was exploring him like a foreign country, a new continent. Her past experience of relationships was that they were fleeting, a drive across barren ground in a fast car. Best not to get to know the other too well, safer to spend more time noticing if the end was coming so as to be prepared. To study one’s partner in a leisurely way was a luxury for those unfamiliar with abandonment, and that had never been Lydde Falcone.
Being married to Noah was like traveling on foot with plenty of time to survey the lush landscape, and she took him inch by inch. She noted the differing textures of his skin depending upon which part of his body she caressed, the various consistencies of the brown hair on his chest and groin and the nape of his neck, the shape of his toenails and the size of the dimple on his chin, the red birthmark on his shoulder and the black mole on his buttock, the taste of his fingertips as compared to his nipples and cock, the varying calibration of his kisses.
She loved to press her face against his underarm and take a deep breath, preferred his natural odor to the chemical tang of deodorant. He kept himself scrupulously clean in the places most desirable; the rest of him had a rich Noah Fallam smell. His essence was changeable. When he went out once or twice a week on the Raven’s nighttime duties, she fancied she could tell by the smell of him when he climbed into bed whether he was too tired for love or desperately craving it.
On her first Sunday at the Bishop’s Palace she started to crawl from the bed at the cock’s crow, reluctant as always to move to the other bedchamber. But he put his hand on her arm and pulled her to him.
“It’s the Sabbath,” he said. “No servants about, and no church for hours. You don’t have to go.”
Later she lay bundled in the feather comforter and watched while he stood in his breeches before the cloudy mirror and shaved, his only equipment a bowl of cold water, rough soap that produced little lather, and a long sharp razor. He stood still except for the small quick movements of the blade, with an air of one whose mind is preoccupied.
“You are so quiet,” she said. “You look as though you are praying.”
“I am,” he replied. “While I shave, I look inside myself, and then I look beyond. When I cut myself, I am reminded of my mortality. When I look into my own eyes, which front my soul, I pray I continue.”
She was afraid to say anything more, not wishing to disturb him, but after a moment he said, “Come here. Stand behind me and wrap your arms around my waist while I finish.”
She did as he asked and saw her own gray eyes staring from the mirror behind his shoulder. Twenty-first-century eyes.
Noah smiled. “We continue,” he said.
LYDDE had not spoken with Noah about her time spent at the livery stable with Mossup, Guill, and Sharpe, but she assumed he recalled that he had himself, as the Raven, told Mossup of her acting. It was not the only thing she hadn’t talked over with him; she had never explained about the birth control pills. Nor had he mentioned whether they should try and avoid a pregnancy, which—given his personal history—bothered her somewhat when she thought about it. She decided not to think about it.
Noah came to the library one afternoon when Lydde and Mary were happily chattering about the scene from The Tempest rehearsed earlier with Mossup. Ariel the fairy had passed the years as faithful servant to Prospero the magician. Ariel was not human but longed for human feeling. When Prospero commanded a further service, Ariel replied with a fairy rhyme,
“‘Each one tripping on his toe Will be here with mop and mow.’” Then a pause, as Lydde acted it, a turn to Mary, who was standing in as Prospero, and a stroke of the girl’s arm. “‘Do you love me, master? No?’”
At this Mary, melted by the yearning in Lydde’s voice, forgot her line, which was to be “Dearly my delicate Ariel, do not approach,” and instead cried, “Oh, poor fairy!” and held her arms wide to Lydde.
They fell laughing into one another’s arms.
From the doorway, Noah said sharply, “What’s this?”
Mary immediately stepped back and ducked her head.
“Mary is helping me with my lines,” Lydde said.
“Lines?”
“For The Tempest. It is what I practice most with Mossup and his fellows, though we have also tried Macbeth and Richard III.”
“You are acting?” He frowned.
“Of course,” she said, growing irritated at his tone. “Remember? You-know-who told Mossup I played women’s parts, and I have been going to the livery stable since to rehearse.”
“Well,” he said as he turned away. “You must stop.”
“What?”
He stopped and turned back. “I said, you must stop. Indeed I had forgotten, you must forgive me for that. But it was one thing when you were simply a woman who intrigued me. It is quite another when you are my wife.”
“Why?” she demanded.
He stared at her, taken aback at her defiance. Then a hard glance at Mary that clearly said, Go along. Mary curtsied and fled the room. Noah stepped inside and closed the door.
“Because,” he said, “you are living under my roof and if you are noticed it will cause trouble. But also because it is not seemly.”
“‘Not seemly’?” Lydde struggled to control her temper. “How dare you say such a thing to me? You know I am an actor.”
“It is one thing to imagine and another to see with my own eyes,” he said. “I did not like the way you cajoled Mary just then. It is not a way I am comfortable seeing my wife behave, and I forbid it.”
“You—” Lydde felt as though the breath had been knocked from her. “You forbid it!”
“Yes.”
“You can’t forbid me to do something!” Her voice rose. “Do you understand? You sound as ignorant as Jacob Woodcock!”
He stepped close and seized her arm. “Will you be reminded,” he said in a low angry voice, “that there are servants in this house?”
She pulled away from him. “And will you be reminded that I am not a servant and I am not a child? I do not take orders.”
He gripped her arm again. “You vowed before God,” he said, “to obey me.”
“How dare you bully me!” Lydde pushed him away and flung open the door, not even pausing to look for a coat. She ran out of the house and along the River Pye to Soane’s Croft.
SHE lay across her old bed, weeping so hard it was a while before she was able to explain to Uncle John. Bounder leaped onto the bed and tried to comfort her, pressing her muzzle against Lydde’s neck, licking her ear. After Uncle John heard her out, he shook his head and said, “I was afraid something like this would happen.”
“How could he turn into such a tyrant all of a sudden?” Lydde sobbed. “He swore to me he wanted a strong woman.”
Uncle John sighed. “What he means by that and what you mean may be two different things.”
“He said he agreed with the Quakers that men and women are equal.”
“Lydde, I’m not sure even the Quakers here see that the way you do.”
“What have I done? How could I go and marry a Neanderthal? What was I thinking?” She sat up, rubbing her face. “Was it just the sex? Did I want him so badly I wasn’t thinking clearly?”
“Maybe,” Uncle John said. “For a while there you could have chewed through leather.”
“Oh, God,” she wailed. “Now what do I do?”<
br />
“You take a deep breath,” Uncle John replied, “and you remind yourself of all the things you love about him. Unless you’re ready now to go to the future.”
They heard the door at the foot of the stairs open and close, and heavy footsteps on the stairs. Uncle John had his back to the door. Lydde raised a tear-stained face when Noah entered, but Uncle John continued as if there had been no interruption, his words clearly meant for Noah to hear.
“Let me tell you something. He’s a good man. He’s a better man than a lot of the ones back home who talk a good game but treat women like dirt. He’s human, though. You can’t make him over into someone from our time. That means this will take a lot of work by both of you. Think about how he felt. You probably damn near gave him a heart attack when you left the way you did. And I’ll tell you another thing. I asked Lavinia once if she’d ever thought about leaving me. She said, ‘I’ve thought about killing you. But not leaving you.’ Hell, there’ve been plenty of times when Lavinia and I could have killed each other. Let anybody come after either one of us, though, and they’d have a hell of a fight on their hands. From both of us. That’s what marriage is—at least the ones that work.”
Lydde and Noah were staring at one another. “The first time you came here to harass me, you didn’t knock,” Lydde said, “and you didn’t this time.”
Noah ignored this. “I was stopped five times on the way here by people wanting to know why young Lewis was so upset,” he said.
“What did you tell them?”
He went to a bench by the fire and sat. “I told them you were upset because I’d had to discipline you.”
Lydde smacked the bed with her fist. “Damn it, Noah, that’s just what I’m talking about. You don’t discipline me.”
“I was talking about the character you’re playing,” he said. “Not you. You are an actor, are you not?”
Fallam's Secret Page 24
