The Lady's Slipper

by Deborah Swift

  She looked at him in disbelief. He could not mean it.

  ‘I did not know. It was not on my orders, I mean. I saw her afterwards–it was a charnel house. That same woman who had given me sweetmeats and apples as a boy and welcomed me into her drawing room.’ He could barely get out the words, they seemed to choke him. He shook his head. ‘I swore then I was done with bloodshed, would fight for peace instead, with the Quakers.’ He took hold of her again in an iron grip, forcing her to look into his eyes. ‘But look at me,’ he said bitterly. ‘I see now, there will never be any peace in my breast.’

  His eyes were streaming–a salt river running down his face. She had never seen a man cry before. It wracked her to see him like this. She hushed him and wiped his face with her fingers.

  ‘Tell me, is one life worth more than another?’ he asked. The bones of his face were stark under his skin, his voice held an appeal, as if he wanted her to somehow absolve him. She knew she could not help him. It was a question she, of all people, could not answer.

  ‘Thou art a Quaker. Look to thy faith. Pray, Richard,’ she said. ‘Pray for us all.’

  Richard sank to his knees on the damp floor of Geoffrey’s cabin but did not utter a word. He stayed with his head bowed, his shoulders hunched, like a man awaiting an execution. The neck of his shirt was damp with blood and stuck to his back. She had the absurd notion of wanting to fetch him a dry shirt. Exhausted, she sagged onto the side bench. Her right hand twisted her wedding band round and round on her finger.

  The surgeon appeared at the door. Richard helped him heave Geoffrey over and undress him. The surgeon used a scalpel to cut away Geoffrey’s coat and shirt, cursing as the constant motion of the ship made steady hands impossible, and Geoffrey himself was moaning–tossing and turning now in a kind of delirium. The lacklustre light seeped in through the windows. When they turned him back, Geoffrey’s sodden shirt was slit open to reveal skin that was red and inflamed, a patchwork crusted with scars and lesions, scaly like a reptile. In the centre a deep hole oozed blood. The surgeon looked at Geoffrey’s scarred chest with astonishment. Nauseated, Alice put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘I have never seen the like,’ said the surgeon, fascinated. ‘But the blade has come from behind. I thought you said it was a duel?’ He looked at Richard accusingly.

  Richard could not meet his eye.

  ‘He meant to kill me,’ Alice said, ‘he had lost his reason.’

  The surgeon sniffed and turned his attention back to Geoffrey. ‘No wonder he carried himself so stiff.’

  ‘What is it? Is it a disease?’ Richard asked.

  ‘No. He must have had this all his life. I have seen it before, but not so severe.’

  ‘I knew him as a boy,’ Richard said. ‘He never said anything about it, but we used to make jest of his scratching, the way boys will. He never swam in the river with the rest of us, though, and I always wondered why,’ said Richard. ‘We thought he was putting himself above us.’

  ‘By the look of it, it caused him much pain. But maybe not as much as this wound.’ He fetched out needle and thread and carefully turned Geoffrey over to examine his scarred and crazed back, but then stood away, unsure what to do.

  ‘Will he live?’ Richard asked. His eyes were desperate.

  ‘It is too deep and narrow for me to sew,’ the surgeon said, at length, ‘but we can wash it with brandy, and plug it with cotton and woundwort to stop the bleeding–guard it from festering. But no, not a cat’s chance.’

  Later Alice would remember this scene as if it were a nightmare–the ship shifting one way and the other on the swell of the sea, the light alternating between pallid grey and greenish gloom, the red of Geoffrey’s blood and his screams of pain as the wound was plugged.

  Richard was wretched. It was evident in his lined face, the way he winced as the alcohol was poured into Geoffrey’s wound, his inability to meet her gaze. The next time she turned to look for him, he had silently left the cabin, but she felt his absence as a relief–his anguish had been an almost physical presence in the room.

  When the surgeon left, Geoffrey lay listless on the cot, his scabrous chest bound tightly with a muslin bandage, through which Alice saw a spot of blood was already emerging. She stayed well away from him near the doorway. His chest rose and fell erratically with his breath. Alice had not mentioned her shoulder to the surgeon, but he saw she was in pain and he had helped her clean and dress it with a wad made from a neckerchief. Now it felt as if she had been kicked by a horse. But in truth she barely noticed it, her thoughts were dazed.

  Behind her the cabin door banged. ‘Why?’ said Richard, evidently trying to make sense of it all. ‘Why would Geoffrey want to harm thee?’

  ‘Some sort of madness. He was not himself. He kept talking to Margaret.’

  ‘Margaret who?’

  ‘Margaret Poulter, the woman they accused me of killing. We had become friends. Geoffrey must have been involved in her death somehow. And maybe Ella Appleby, my housemaid. But it is all so confusing. I can’t make sense of it.’ She glanced towards the bed, where Geoffrey lay on his back, his face waxy. ‘Don’t leave me alone with him though, Richard. I’m afraid of him.’

  ‘I have murdered him,’ said Richard, ‘even after all my vows, my pledge for peace.’

  Alice reached out for his hand. ‘In heaven’s name, Richard. He would have killed me–’ she tugged at his arm–‘and thee. Now let me look at the back of thy head,’ she said. But he twisted away from her.

  ‘What am I, Alice?’

  She shook her head, unable to fathom the question.

  ‘All my fine Quaker principles, all my talk of God. That’s easy enough in times of peace, easy enough when the wolf is not at my own door. But am I different when the time comes? Should I have turned the other cheek rather than raise a hand against another?’

  Alice’s heart flooded out towards him and her mouth opened to comfort him, but his face stayed her from speaking.

  ‘Tell me–’ he came towards her and loomed over her, filled with a sudden rage–‘if I had not acted, would I have been more human? Or less?’

  She could not answer.

  ‘I thought I had found God. But look at me.’ She bowed her head, embarrassed. He pulled at his bloodstained shirt and thrust it close to her face so that the stench of it filled her nostrils. ‘This is the kind of man I am.’

  Alice began to weep. He snatched the shirt away and turned, presenting her with his back, rigid, like a wall.

  ‘Richard…’

  ‘Keep away from me.’ She stopped in her tracks, his words were harsh and brittle. ‘I should have reasoned with him. I cannot be trusted. I cannot trust myself. I make bold promises but cannot trust myself to keep them.’

  ‘No…’

  After a few moments he strode out of the cabin without looking back.

  Alice looked over to where Geoffrey lay on the wooden cot. She walked purposefully over to him.

  ‘Is it not enough that you should try to kill me?’ she said. ‘I wish you would die. You have destroyed us. Richard will never forgive himself.’

  Chapter 39

  The fog lifted but the sea had become as calm as water in a well; the sails would not fill and the ship bobbed in one place–a cork in a teacup, surrounded by her own detritus. The surface of the water was littered with discarded sacks and floating bottles, excrement and oily slicks of the caulk and tar used for repairs. They had been at sea two weeks. The horizon seemed a long way off–an expanse of dead flat, grey water, topped by a paler grey sky, separated by a vague muddy line.

  Over the following days Geoffrey’s mind sometimes swam back towards them, and he would look at them with recognition, only to sink again and fall into a deep oblivion. Richard hardly spoke. He spent the nights pacing in Geoffrey’s chamber, would not come to bed. Anger was etched on his face but it was turned in on himself, so he closed himself to her. When she touched him, he shook her off with an excuse and walked away. Did he blame
her, she wondered? Did he wish he had stood away instead of reaching for a sword?

  Geoffrey’s madness she still did not fully understand. The man she had once invited into her summerhouse for chocolate was nowhere to be seen. She wondered, tussled it in her mind, finally accepting that she could find no answers. She wished he would die. Meanwhile she went on washing out his bandages, folding and refolding them; she set to, she scrubbed the bloodstained cot, brought in fresh rainwater from the barrels. She wielded a broom to the water on the floor and remembered old Margaret. Alice kept herself cloaked, and her head low whenever she ventured on deck, but she knew the men watched her as if she were a bad omen, blaming her for the lack of wind.

  In a few days Geoffrey seemed to shrink, his cheeks sagged, his face was pale and veined as marble and clammy with sweat. He did not open his eyes. He would not get up again, that was clear. She gradually began to see him as the Geoffrey she used to know. Filled with sudden compassion, she knelt by his side and felt his forehead. She dabbed at his face with her sleeve, knowing that, unless some miracle should happen, he was going to die. And yet she was still alive; out of all this, she had been spared, and there was even now a chance for her and Richard. They, at least, had time–something that was slipping away from Geoffrey. Give me strength to make it right, she thought.

  One morning she saw Richard take hold of Geoffrey’s hand between his palms and rub it, as if to kindle it to life. ‘What happened to us, Geoffrey?’ Richard said. ‘What happened to the two boys who used to fish together?’

  All the fight had gone from Geoffrey. He was too weak to move. ‘War.’

  The single syllable was barely audible. It sat between them with all the pain of the past knotted into its three letters. Alice looked on helplessly. She did not know what to do, was powerless to understand what was happening between these two men. She bit her lip. She was excluded. It was men’s history. Richard had said they were friends but it was more than that; she would never be able to understand fathers and forefathers carving out territories for their sons in blood.

  ‘It’s over. The war, I mean.’ Richard closed Geoffrey’s fingers in his own. ‘But thou must still fight, Geoffrey. Fight for thy life now.’ The vehemence of his words was startling in the quiet cabin. ‘I did not want to harm thee. I cut thee down because I feared to lose Alice. On account of love.’

  Geoffrey roused himself and opened his eyes. ‘Love,’ he said. He tried to laugh. His voice took on new strength. ‘My son,’ he said between faltering breaths, ‘he shuns me and talks only of you.’

  ‘No, that’s surely not true.’

  ‘It is. You’ve turned him to your damned Quaker ways.’

  ‘No,’ said Richard. ‘Stephen will always be his father’s son. Boys are wayward. As we were, Geoffrey, when we were young.’

  ‘I am dying. I will never see my son again now.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘No, old man, New England awaits thee.’

  He got to his feet and turned to Alice. His eyes were full of self-reproach. He took a long shudder of a breath to get a hold of himself. ‘I swear, I did not know Stephen was his son. Not until the night of the firing of the barns. I thought I could put the bloodshed behind me. I thought to dodge its grip by joining the Quakers. But I am somehow come full circle.’

  He returned to kneel by Geoffrey’s side, his jaw determined.

  ‘Geoffrey,’ he said, and he took hold of the side of the cot with white-knuckled fingers, ‘forgive me. I am a fool. Hold fast to life, friend, for we will soon be in New England, and thy plot in Virginia awaits thee, where the air is warm and the land fertile and the fruits drop sweet from the trees, and thou canst rest, and build a fine future for Stephen and thyself.’

  Geoffrey nodded, his eyes closed, his breath ragged.

  The wind picked up, the cabin toppled from fore to aft and water dripped through the ceiling from the deck above onto Geoffrey’s bed. Over the following week, the surgeon came and went, as did the Master. ‘By rights,’ he had said to Richard, ‘I should have you taken off and imprisoned for duelling. But the laws of England have no hold on us here–at sea we are betwixt lands, and we sailors see fit to make our own rules. And I’m prepared to turn my eye from this sorry matter so long as my men are paid.’ So the bustle of the ship went on above without them. They were silent, except for their prayers, caught in the thin thread of Geoffrey’s life. She marvelled that he could cling on for so long. Alice stopped reaching out for Richard, stopped expecting his touch in return. She watched the man she loved pass the days like a man of wood, blundering from one task to the next, seeing nothing, his gaze fixed on the rise and fall of Geoffrey’s chest. It was as if he was willing Geoffrey to stay alive, not for Geoffrey’s sake but for his own.

  ‘Let him die,’ Alice prayed at night in her empty bed, ‘oh merciful God, let him die, and Richard come back to me.’ Then she hated herself, and was more tender with Geoffrey than ever.

  In the third week, she entered the cabin to see Richard had procured a flagon of rum. She spoke to him gently.

  ‘Is it for him? Or for thee?’

  He swallowed hard. ‘I thought he was fighting, but he grows weaker. I cannot let him die.’

  ‘’Tis not in your hands.’

  He took a drink from the bottle. ‘I should have made amends years ago. When Geoffrey and I first spoke harshly to one another. When I decided to support parliament against the king. You know, he thought it a dishonour, he could not comprehend my reasoning, that the common man should be able to govern his own affairs. And I could no more understand him, cleaving to the old order.’

  ‘We all hold to something,’ she said, ‘some vision, some story of a glorious future. You were both young and full of ideals.’ She tried to touch him on the shoulder but he flinched away.

  ‘What use are ideals to any of us now? We are just three more souls in a floating cask, caught in different ways between one world and another.’

  Alice took the bottle from his hand. Then she poured water from the lidded jug into a cup and passed it down to him. ‘How can we know what lies ahead?’ She wiped a drop of water from the lip of the jug. ‘We can only deal with what is here before us. And we must let the past lie. Take this cup now, drink, and make sure he sups too, and suffers little.’

  ‘I will not let him die,’ he said.

  ‘The world has never bent to my will, and it will never bend to thine. Come away now, let him alone a while.’ She held out the cup again.

  Richard drank, and said haltingly, ‘I do not deserve what I have. I cannot touch thee with blood on my hands.’

  ‘The blood was shed on my account. Do not torture thyself with harsh judgements. Even mortal sins can be forgiven. Jesus forgave the Iscariot, for without him the world would not have been changed.’ She reached out and placed her hand on his arm. ‘In pity’s name, Richard, we are far from home, and do not know what may yet befall us. We have only each other. Thou hast been so cold. As if thou wouldst begrudge me my life. But I miss thee, my love, I am an empty husk without thee. You promised me life, but a life like this is no life at all.’

  He took tight hold of her. ‘I had lost sight of thee.’ He touched her cheek with a faltering hand and said, ‘Thou art my strength. I need thee to stand beside me, I am a fallen man without thee.’

  He took her to their own cabin and his lovemaking was hot and urgent, and when it was finished he slept, peaceful at last, his head a dead weight on her shoulder.

  The next day she awoke stiff, and when she went up onto the quarterdeck she could hear sounds from Geoffrey’s chamber. She pushed open his door and saw that he was sitting, his eyes very bright, a hot flush over his face. His bandage was frayed and bloody, and it was clear he had been scratching for his skin was full of weals. Alice rushed over to him to calm him.

  ‘’Tis I, Alice. Lie still whilst I fetch a cloth.’

  ‘What time is it?’ He looked around wildly, tried to get up but then sank back, too weak to ho
ld himself up. He fingered the bandage as if puzzled it should be there.

  ‘What time is it?’ he repeated, distressed.

  ‘’Tis early yet,’ she replied, wringing out the muslin into the bowl. She pushed him gently back down and wiped carefully over the scratches with the cloth. He watched her for a moment like a child, but his skin was aflame with fever, the cloth grew warm in no time, and he could not lie still. He rocked from side to side, talking all the while, most of it nonsense, words Alice could not make out. It was clear he remembered nothing of earlier events. At one point he turned to Alice and asked her lucidly:

  ‘Will I die, Mother?’

  Alice did not know how to reply, but he became distraught then, shouting out, ‘I’m not ready to die. Not yet, the old woman will pull me down, don’t let me go yet, I’m not ready.’

  Richard, having sensed Alice had risen, arrived at the door, tousle-headed, his eyes still heavy with sleep. Geoffrey stopped his noise and stared as if trying to place him.

  ‘I know you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Richard went to him and leaned over, the better to hear. ‘It is Richard.’

  ‘Richard.’ He lay more quietly, his eyes wandering, accepting. ‘Where is my mother?’

  ‘She died a long while back. Lie quiet now and rest.’

  Geoffrey slumped back, his mouth contorted in pain. When the spasm was over he said, ‘Richard, fetch the parson. I have need of him.’

  ‘’Tis all right. Rest now.’ Richard brushed the moment aside.

  ‘My mother is calling me,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I can hear her voice, she has a sweet voice, like the sound of the sea. Please, before it is too late, fetch the parson.’

  Richard hesitated. Quakers did not hold with parsons or inter-cession with God. Alice watched him wrestle with himself, and nearly wept with relief when he finally nodded to her and she hurried above deck to find the cleric. At first the men were rowdy when she emerged from below, but when she asked in distress for the parson they fell silent and respectful. The parson hurried down the stairs, his black robe swinging above bare feet, a warped Bible in his arms.