An Instance of the Fingerpost

by Iain Pears

  My Lord Bacon, in his Novum Organum, discusses this point, and investigates with his habitual brilliance the various categories of evidence and finds them all flawed. None conveys certainty, he decides, a conclusion which (one might think) would be devastating for scientists and lawyers alike: historians and theologians have learned to live with this, the former modestly tempering their claims, the latter resting their glorious edifice on the more reliable foundations of revelation. For without certainty what is science except glorified guesswork? And without the conviction of certainty, total and absolute, how can we ever hang anyone with an easy conscience? Witnesses can lie and, as I know myself, even an innocent can confess to a crime they did not commit.

  But Lord Bacon did not despair, and claimed one instance of a fingerpost which points in one direction only, and allows of no other possibility. The perfectly independent eye-witness, who has nothing to gain from his revelation, who is, in addition, schooled in observation and report through a gentlemanly status and education: this is the nearest we can get to a reliable witness and his testimony may be said to be conclusive, overwhelming all lesser forms. I claim here that status, and assert that what follows eliminates all possibility of further argument on the subject.

  I sent a brief note to Dr Grove, begging the favour of an interview, and in due course received a note saying that he would see me that evening. Thus, perhaps some two hours after Mr Cola had left the college, I knocked on the door.

  Naturally, I did not refer to the purpose of my visit immediately; I might be a beggar, but I did not wish to appear an uncivil one. So we talked for a good three-quarters of an hour, which was interrupted by Grove’s frequent belching and farting as he complained loudly of the food that his college chose to serve up to its Fellows.

  ‘I wish I knew what that cook did to it,’ he said after a particularly bad attack. ‘You would not have thought a good simple roast could be so massacred. I swear it will be the death of me in the end. Do you know, I had a guest in this evening. Young Italian man, about your age, I’d guess. He chewed his way through with no complaint, but the look of shock about him was so great I almost felt like laughing straight in his face. That’s the trouble with these foreigners. Too used to fancy sauces. They don’t know what real meat’s like. They like their food like their religion, eh?’ He chuckled at his metaphor. ‘All dressed up and elaborate, so you can’t tell what’s underneath. Garlic or incense. It’s the same thing.’

  He chuckled again at his little sally, and I could see he was wishing he had thought of it earlier, the better to irritate his guest. I did not point out that his attitude to the food seemed to me a little contradictory.

  Here he groaned again, and clutched his stomach. ‘Dear God, that food. Pass me that little packet of powder, dear boy.’

  I picked it up. ‘What is this?’

  ‘An infallible purgative, although that pompous little Italian says it’s dangerous. It isn’t; Bate says it is safe, and he is the king’s physician. If it’s good enough for a king, it’s good enough for me, I should think. It is vouched for both by authority and by my own experience. Then this Cola tells me it is useless. Nonsense; two pinches and your bowels empty on the instant. I bought a large amount four months back against such occasions as these.’

  ‘I believe Mr Cola is a doctor, so possibly knows what he says.’

  ‘So he says. I don’t believe it myself. He’s too Jesuitical to be a real physician.’

  ‘I understand he is treating Anne Blundy of a broken leg,’ I said, seeing my chance of bringing the conversation around.

  At the very name, Dr Grove’s face darkened with displeasure, and he growled menacingly, like a dog warning a rival for a bone.

  ‘So I hear.’

  ‘Or was, for she cannot afford the treatment, and Mr Cola, it seems, cannot afford to work for nothing.’

  Grove grunted, but I did not take the warning, so eager was I to do my business and depart.

  ‘I have pledged myself for two pounds and five shillings.’

  ‘Good of you.’

  ‘But I need another fifteen shillings, which I do not possess at the moment.’

  ‘If you have come here to ask me for a loan, the answer is no.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘That girl near cost me eighty pounds a year. I nearly lost the living I have been promised because of her. I don’t care if her mother dies tomorrow; it would be no more than she deserves, from what I hear. And if she cannot afford treatment, then that is the consequence of her own behaviour, and it would be a sin to obviate the punishment that she has brought on herself.’

  ‘It is her mother, I think, who is being punished.’

  ‘That is not my doing, and no longer my affair. You seem to concern yourself greatly with this servant of yours, if I may say so. Why is that?’

  Perhaps I blushed, and that gave the man the hint, for he was quick-witted in his malice.

  ‘She works for my mother and . . .’

  ‘It was you who recommended that she come to me as a servant, was it not, Mr Wood? You who are the fons et origo of my troubles with her? And you pay her medical bills as well? That is very caring, unusually so, if I may say it. Perhaps these rumours that have been circulating about her sluttishness should properly refer themselves to you, rather than to me.’

  He looked carefully at me, and I saw a slow, unmistakable look of understanding spread across his face. Dissimulation has never been a skill I have either cultivated or perfected. My face is an open book to those who can read, and Grove had that sort of malice which delights in other men’s secrets, tormenting and persecuting by his possession of them.

  ‘Ah, the antiquarian and his servant, too wrapped up in his learning for a wife, contenting himself with some sluttish rubbish between his books. That’s it, isn’t it? You possess this little whore, and think it love. And you play the gallant with this grubby little bug, thinking her in your mind a verïtable Eloi’se, pledging money you do not have, and expecting other people to stand you credit so you can impress your lady. But she is no lady, is she, Mr Wood? Far from that, indeed.’

  He looked at me again, and then laughed outright. ‘Oh, dear me, it is true. I see it on your face. This is the perfect joke, I must say. “The bookworm and the slut,” almost the subject for a poem. An heroic epistle in hexameters. A theme worthy of Mr Milton himself, for no subject is too hideous for his pen.’

  He laughed again, for my face was burning red with shame and anger, and I knew that no denial would persuade him, nor deflect him from his entertainment. ‘Come now, Mr Wood,’ he continued, ‘you must see the joke. Even you must see that. The meek little scholar, dedicated only to his learning, mousing away in his nest of papers, eyes red from never seeing the light, and we wonder why all this endeavour produces nothing. Is it some great work that is taking shape in his brain? Is it the difficulties of conception that delays the birth of a masterpiece? Is it the sheer magnitude of his task that means the years pass by with no result? And then we find out. No, ’tis none of these. It is because, while everyone thinks he is working away, he is instead rolling in the dust with his servant. Better still, he has persuaded his mother to have the girl in her house, turning his servant into a harlot and his mother into a bawd. Now, Mr Wood, tell me that is not perfect.’

  The theologians tell us that cruelty comes from the devil, and this may be the ultimate cause, for it is most certainly evil in intent. But in its immediate cause I do believe that true cruelty comes from a perversion of pleasure, for the cruel man enjoys the torment he inflicts on others and, like an experienced musician with his viol or virginal, can play upon his instrument and make all manner of harmony, exciting torment and humiliation, distress and empty anger, shame, regret and fear at will. Some can produce all of these, together or singly, with the most delicate touches, sometimes playing more loudly on his subject until the motion excited in the mind is all but unbearable, then more softly so that the misery is summoned gently and
with seductive delight. Such a man as Grove was an artist in his cruelty, for he played for the pleasure of his creation, and the delight of his skill.

  If Thomas Ken (as I suspect) had regularly been subjected to such treatment then I could only admire his humility in bearing such constant assaults, all (no doubt) made unseen, and unknown to any of his fellows. For private torment is still more delicious to the tormentor, and more intense for the sufferer, who cannot describe his Calvary to others without seeming weak and foolish, and thus coming to suffer still more cruelty, only this time self-inflicted. I make myself seem ridiculous by recounting this, I know. But I have to retell and can only hope I will be understood. All men have been shamed and tormented in some degree, and so all know the way in which it unbalances the judgement and fuddles the head, so that the sufferer feels like a beaten animal on a leash, desiring escape, but not knowing how to slip the rope that keeps him in place.

  For my trial was not yet over; Grove saw all too well what easy quarry I was, and how simple it was to impose himself upon me, for I had none of those skills which enable others to shrug off attacks, or mount defences against those who wish them ill.

  ‘I cannot imagine’, he said, ‘that Dr Wallis will continue to welcome the presence of a man such as yourself in the archives in which you take such pleasure. It is often the case that men do more damage through their lusts than others can ever accomplish. Think of the condemnation your mother and whole family will be forced to endure when it becomes known that she was running a whorehouse for her son, and paying his slut out of her own money.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked in desperation. ‘Why do you torment me?’

  ‘I? Torment you? Why do you say this? In what way do I torment you? I am merely stating the facts, surely? “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). The words of St Peter himself. Is it right for sin to go unpunished, and fornication undiscovered?’

  He stopped talking, and his face darkened all of a sudden, as the air of humour vanished and was replaced by the blackest anger, like the sky in those moments before the heavens are torn by thunder. ‘I know you, Mr Wood; I know it was you who sent that girl to me as my servant, so your friend Mr Ken might calumnise me. I know it was you who spread stories around the town to blacken my name, and so deprive me of my rights. Mr Prestcott told me all this, as honest a man as you are deceitful. And then you come here to ask me for money, like some grubby little beggar with his ink-stained hand out? No, sir. You deserve, and will receive, nothing but my hatred. You expect to conspire against me and receive no retribution from my hand? You pick a bad enemy, Mr Wood, and you will soon discover that you have made the worst mistake of your life. I thank you for coming, for I now know how to respond; I have seen the guilt on your face for myself. And, believe me, I will pay you back in full. Now get out, and leave me in peace. I hope you will excuse me for not seeing you to the door. My bowels will wait no longer.’

  And with a monstrous fart, he levered himself up, and walked into the next room, where I heard him pull down his breeches and settle with a loud sigh on to his chamber pot. I could do nothing, and had failed most miserably to defend myself from his attacks on me. I had sat there, reddened in the face like an infant, and made no attempt to reply in any but the most feeble of fashions. And yet I was man enough to burn with rage at his words and contempt. But instead of reacting like a man, I behaved like a child; bereft of any noble reply made to his face, I instead played a foolish prank on him behind his back, then sneaked out like some school jester, fooling myself that I had at least done something in my own defence.

  For I took the packet of powder on the table, and poured it entire into the bottle of brandy which stood next his chair.

  ‘Drink that,’ I thought as I left his room. ‘And may your entrails torment you.’

  Then I left him, hoping he would be up all night with the most violent stomach aches. I swear to God and by all I hold true that I meant him no other harm. I wished him to suffer, and to be racked with agony, it is true, and hoped fervently that I had not put too little of the powder in, or that it would not prove too weak to serve. But I did not wish him dead, nor had I any intention of killing him. I did not know what the powder was and, in any case, had never heard of arsenic before. Even among educated people, I doubt there would be more than one in every two dozen who knew what it was. We are not all physicians or experimentalists. Even Mr Stahl had never mentioned the substance when I took lessons in chemical technique with him.

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  IT WAS LONG since dark when I left, and the night was cold with a north wind and the suggestion of rain in the air. A miserable night for any man to be out, and yet I could not bring myself to go home and had no craving for the company of my fellows. There was only one thing on my mind and I could not possibly talk of it; in such circumstances all other conversation would have seemed petty and pointless. Nor could I summon the calm necessary for music. There is, usually, something immeasurably restful about the unfolding of a piece and the perfectly sweet inevitability of a well-conceived conclusion. But any piece of music formed in that way repelled me that night, the turmoil of my mind was so far distant from any harmony.

  I found myself instead wishing to see Sarah, and the desire grew on me despite all my attempts to quash it. But I did not want her company or consolation or yet her conversation; rather I found a resentment deep within me that sprang from unknown depths, as my mind became convinced that she, and she alone, was the source of the troubles which had been visited upon me. I revisited, once more, all those old suspicions and jealousies which I thought had been suppressed for ever. Instead they burst up once again, like tinder in a dry summer forest that catches a spark, and turns into a conflagration at the gentlest of breezes. My fevered mind imagined that my apology had been farcical, my regret misplaced. All my suspicions (so I told myself) were true, for the girl was cursed, and anyone who befriended her would pay heavily for his affections. All this I told myself as I walked, wrapped up in my heavy winter cloak, my feet already damp from the mud only just beginning to freeze over in New College Lane. Even more did I assure myself of my ill fortune as I crossed the High Street into Merton Street, and then turned away from the door of my house, unwilling to see my mother, and disguise the hurt I might well cause her if Grove made good on his promises to turn my family into a laughing stock.

  So I walked on, out into St Aldate’s, thinking I might go into the countryside and walk along the river, for the sound of running water is another sure way of calming the soul, as is well attested by innumerable authorities. But I did not walk by the river that night, for I had barely passed Christ Church when I noticed a slight figure on the far side of the road, wrapped up in a shawl that was too thin to be of much use, with a bundle under her arm, walking purposefully along at a rapid pace. I knew instantly from the appearance and the bearing that it was Sarah, going off (so I thought in my delirium) to some secret assignation.

  The opportunity finally to satisfy all my suspicions was there and I took it almost without thinking. I knew, of course, that she was in the habit of leaving Oxford either in the evening or for an entire day and night if she was free, and I had believed once that it was to go to find business for herself in those small towns where she would not be recognised; the penalties for whoredom were such that it was foolish for any woman to ply such a trade in her own town. I knew, also, that this was merest nonsense, but the more I told myself that she was a woman of rare goodness, the more the demons within laughed, so that I thought I would go as mad as Prestcott through the contradictions which fought to possess my imagination. And so I decided to carry out my own exorcism and discover the truth, since she would not tell me herself and her refusal only stoked my curiosity.

  In recounting this, I will give another example of how, proceeding from faulty assumptions, a false conclusion can be drawn from the assembly of indisputable fact. Dr Wallis states that his th
eory of a deadly alliance between Cola and the discontented radicals was confirmed by the behaviour of the Blundy girl, who spent much time travelling from Burford in the west to Abingdon in the south, carrying messages to sectaries whom, he was sure, would in due course rise up as one when the murder of Clarendon had thrown the country into turmoil. When he questioned her, Sarah denied doing any such thing, but in such a way that he (so surely could he penetrate deceit) was convinced she was lying to cover her illegal actions.

  She was lying; this is true. And she was trying to cover illegal actions; this is also true. In this respect Dr Wallis’s understanding of the situation was perfectly accurate. For the girl was terrified that he would discover what she was doing, and knew full well that the punishment would be severe, not only for her but for others as well. She was not one of those who sought out martyrdom through pride, but rather was prepared to accept it in humility if it could not be honourably avoided: this, indeed, was her fate. In all other respects, however, Dr Wallis was wrong.

  My decision made all unthinking, I swiftly retraced my steps to my cousin’s tavern and begged the use of a horse. Fortunately I knew that part of the world well, and it was a simple matter to take tracks, out to Sandleigh and then back into Abingdon, which enabled me to arrive long before she did. I wore a dark cloak, and a hat pulled down over my forehead, and (as everyone always tells me) I am an inconspicuous person, not one to be noticed in a crowd. It was easy to place myself on the Oxford road and wait for her to pass, which she did a half-hour later. It was also simple to follow her and see what she did, as she took no pains to conceal her movements, or hide her destination, and had no suspicion of being followed. The town has a small quay on the river, used for landing goods for market, and it was to this place that she headed and knocked boldly on the door of a small warehouse that normally stored farmers’ produce the night before market. I was undecided about what I should do next and, as I stood there, I noticed first one, then more people also come up to the door and be given admittance. Unlike Sarah, these people were furtive in their movements, and were bundled up so that their faces could not be seen.