A Measure of Light

by Beth Powning

  “Tarn, dost thee see?” she heard one call.

  They worked their way down the switchbacks until the young woman in the lead tripped, flung out her arms, fell. Her companion lost hold of the rope and the wrapped corpse flew forward. Mary saw it sprawl on the young woman, watched her struggle from beneath it, saw her sit, rocking, holding her ankle. Someone took her place and they continued picking their way down the hillside.

  As they neared the tarn, one of them noticed Mary and waved. She raised her hand.

  The people came up to the tree, laid their burdens onto the grass. The woman who had fallen limped forward. She peered at Mary from beneath hair multi-coloured as a hen’s feathers—rust-red, orange, scarlet, ochre.

  “Be thee unwell?” she said. “Be thee lost?”

  The men and women gathered around. Their faces were calm, inquiring. They rubbed their hands, kneaded bruised shoulders.

  Mary looked from face to face.

  Something, different. In the way they regard me.

  “I am not lost. I have walked from Kettlesing.” She heard in her own voice the flattened accent of the colonies.

  “But surely thee be in sore distress.”

  Mary began to shake her head in disavowal. Then she hesitated. Words came, surprising her.

  “I did come to this tarn as a child to gather rushes. When I lived with my aunt and uncle. Recently my aunt hath died. Now I am alone. I am … I feel …”

  They listen, patiently, they care to know. They seek my eyes.

  “I am as a dead woman amongst the living …” She checked herself, glancing at the rain-tapped bundles.

  “We will wait upon the Lord with thee, if thou hast a mind for it. We are Friends,” a young man said. “Our brethren were imprisoned in York Castle for many months. They died there, within a day of one another. The authorities would not give us leave to bury them in their churchyard so we bear them to our meeting place.”

  “Quakers?” she said. Hand flew to mouth. “I am sorry …”

  “Nay, we do not mind the name, though it be spoken by some in misunderstanding.”

  The rain intensified, made runnels down the men’s leather doublets.

  “My aunt’s house is large,” Mary said. “Kettlesing is but a twenty-minutes walk. And one of you is injured. I would have you come and stay the night.”

  A man gestured toward the bodies. “We have, as thee sees …”

  “I have stables,” she said. “Sheds.”

  They looked at one another. Then they hoisted their packs, lifted the rope-bound corpses.

  Mary turned to the red-haired woman. “Please, do you lean on me.”

  They stepped from the sheltering tree into the rain. The young woman gasped as she put weight to her ankle.

  “Ah, ’twill be good to sleep beneath a roof tonight. My name be Dafeny Hardcastle.”

  “Mine is Mary Dyer.”

  By the time they reached Kettlesing, their lanterns illuminated handfuls of rain falling like coins through darkness. They carried the bodies past half-timbered houses, over the humpback bridge. Aunt Urith’s stone house was halfway up the hillside. They took the bodies to an outbuilding, laid them in an empty stall.

  Mary served mutton pottage, made with oatmeal and the garden’s last greens—parsley, thyme and strawberry leaves. They ate at a table in the great hall. Wet clothing steamed on the hearth.

  No one spoke, so fatigued they could say no more than “thank thee” before following Mary upstairs.

  After the others had gone to bed, Dafeny and Mary pulled chairs close to the fire.

  Dafeny removed her cap; her hair fell to her shoulders. Her face was a map of cinnamon freckles, some placed so densely as to be a continent. She was goat-thin, green-eyed. She raised long-fingered hands to the flames.

  “A year ago, ’twas a blizzard, and all the family was a-bed. My husband, Dougald, did go to the barn to check an ailing cow. He did find a man sitting in the hay loft and brought him to the house. ’Twas a young man, round Dougald’s own age, twenty-eight. His hair … long …”

  She passed her hands over her shoulders. She drew a quick breath as with the acceleration of her heart and Mary saw that she relived the excitement of the moment, the door of the tiny cottage opening with a flurry of snow, and a stranger, come from the night.

  “… and he had no beard. Too tall, he were, to stand straight. Dressed all in leather—pack, breeches, doublet. He had a big hat. Wide-brimmed. We did pull forth our chair. Dougald’s mother and our wee ones, they sat up in their beds.”

  Box beds, with curtains. Mary had seen them long ago in hill cottages, on visits of mercy with Aunt Urith. And the beams, so low that cobwebs caught in one’s hair.

  “He did sit and tell us his name. ‘George Fox,’ he said.” She paused, her lips parted, gazing at the flames. “ ‘My name is George Fox.’ Ah, we did not know! Who ’twas ’neath our roof. I took him my good turf cake and he ate like a starved person, smiling the while. ‘I am walking over moors and dales spreading the word of the Lord,’ he did say.”

  Dafeny pulled her cloak close around her neck. “I am walking over the moors and dales spreading the word of the Lord,” she repeated, hushed, as if to secretly inhabit the young man’s mind. Mary did not take her eyes from the young woman, nor blinked.

  “Dougald did ask what was the word.”

  “Canst remember?” Mary said.

  “Aye.” The young woman straightened. “Now that I travel to spread his words, I do know them by heart. But ’twas the first time I had heard them.”

  “Tell me.”

  Dafeny laid her long fingers upon her temples, closed her eyes. “ ‘I have been opened to the Lord. I desire to pierce the husks in which people are wrapped and bring them into the light of day. I am sent to direct thee to the Spirit that gave forth the Scriptures, by which thee may be led into truth. Truth is in the heart, in thine own hearts. The manifestation of the Spirit of God is given to every one of us to profit withal.’ ”

  A rapt stillness entered the room.

  “ ‘All the world’s religions are in vain. Those ministers who have been taught in Cambridge and Oxford preach form without power. Their dogma, prayers and singing be …’ ” Dafeny corrected herself. “ ‘… are unneeded by those who stand directly in the rays of God’s unspeakable love for the world.’ ” She paused. Then, nodded. In a rush—“ ‘We need no images and crosses, no sprinklings, no holy days, no sacraments.’ ”

  She drew breath, opened her eyes.

  “And then he did jump to his feet, and I went to the children, who were …” She made an excited flurry with her hand, rushed ahead. “ ‘I declare against them all,’ he did say. ‘I declare against the steeple houses. We need pay no tithes to maintain church or minister. God is at home in house, meadow, barn or fireside.’ And I did think, ‘Our house?’ ”

  Mary imagined it. Smell of cows and peat-reek. Stone floor with worn rugs, bulging plaster walls and manure-crusted boots by the door.

  “Like an angel,” Dafeny whispered. “Come from the dark. He said he had been cast into prison and dragged before the magistrates, only because he did use ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ to all, whether they be squire or magistrate. Because he would not doff his hat before any man. Nor take oaths, as being an artifice to ensure truth. And he said: ‘I carry no arms.’ ”

  Mary made no move to replenish the fire, nor to stir the metheglin that steamed over the flames. Her hands lay open, palms upward. She felt a fine tingling around the edges of her lips.

  “How?” she said, after a long silence. “How would he worship?”

  “Anywhere,” Dafeny said. “Beneath tree or cliff. In parlour or stable. Men and women sit together in silence and if the Lord doth move within them, they stand and speak. Together, he would have us listen and wait for God, who lives in every second, in every hour, in each house and in every heart. He doth call us Children of the Light, or Friends.”

  “Did he sleep in your house?”


  “Nay,” Dafeny smiled. “Dougald’s mum came from her bed. She did take her stick and make her way across the floor to George Fox. She laid a hand on his cheek. ‘My son,’ she said, ‘I will sleep the rest of my days in peace if thee rests in my bed.’ ”

  Mary half-smiled, guessing the conclusion.

  “ ‘Thank thee. But I go back to my good nest in the hay.’ He opened the door and he pointed a finger and said: ‘Stir up that which is pure in one another …’ ”

  “Did you see him again?”

  “He was gone in the morning. Awhile after, when the snow was gone, Dougald went down into the village and he did hear that George Fox had opened many people and that a meeting had been settled. ’Twould be held at a neighbouring farm on every First Day, as Friends name the Sabbath. So we did ride over the moor to attend. ’Twas only a cold room and we did sit in silence and ’twas as if had come a presence. ‘The Lord doth appear to us daily,’ the farmer’s wife did tell us, when we sat on our ponies, after. ‘’Tis to our astonishment, amazement and great admiration. We are but people of small parts and little abilities but we will take this honour and carry it to all corners of the earth.’ Her own husband had promised George Fox that come spring, he would take to the roads and publish the truth.”

  “How do you yourself come to be travelling?” Mary asked.

  “Ah, we both wished to follow, but when lambing began, the old cow died and the walls of the laithe house needed repairing, and we knew that if one of us went, it must be me. I waited to plant my garden. Dougald’s mother said she would care for it. ‘Could be my travels will bring me round this way anyhow, sometime durin’ the summer,’ I said to her.”

  Mary pictured the exchange. Hill folk were silent people, for they saw few others besides themselves. The quiver of a mouth’s corner was happiness, thanks or gratitude; an eye’s darkening might be either anger or a decision taken. She imagined the children, silent, worried, as hers had been on the morning of her departure. Perhaps: a little boy and girl, in the lee of the garden wall, scratching at dirt with slate shards. Dafeny—hands at waist, sober glances at the old woman and then at the children, hair playing over her freckled face.

  “Thee be sad,” Dafeny said, glancing at Mary.

  “I left my own children,” Mary answered. They held each other’s eyes.

  “ ‘The Lord will see to the children,’ Dougald’s mother did say to me, ‘since he doth send for thee.’ I went to the house and packed.” She laughed. “Only a chicken, come to the door to watch me. My heart …”

  No words for it, Mary saw. How someone could take your heart and make it lift and then thud down again, as if askew. So George Fox had disarranged Dafeny.

  Dafeny sat back. Tired, now, as her tale came to an end.

  “And your children?” Mary asked. “Do they understand? Do they miss you?”

  “My two be safe with my husband and with their granny.” She yawned and stretched, arms over head, feet to the fire. “I did tell them that they needn’t be feared, for the Spirit of God lives in their own hearts. I did hold them tight and said I did love them and that I had no choice in my leaving.”

  They sat listening to the rain. There was no other sound, save the crackle of the fire and the purring bubble of metheglin, smelling of honey and ginger.

  “In Boston, you can hear the howling of wolves,” Mary said. She spoke slowly, spaces between each phrase, like drips from thawing ice. “There is another world, there, the world of the wild, so strange and frightful that it takes hold of our own people and makes them cruel. The ministers say they have brought the New Jerusalem and that they will raise up God’s kingdom. Those who disobey their rules are as if knocking holes in a wall. There is much talk of sin.” Her voice hardened. “They told us that some are born sinful. Some will have no redemption. I am such a one.”

  “Why?”

  Mary skimmed the metheglin. The spoon, forgotten in her hand, dripped onto the hearthstone. “I had a child,” she said. “I never saw it, ’twas born two months early. It was dead at birth. They did not wake me to see it, the two midwives. They took it away and buried it.”

  “Why?” Dafeny repeated. Her voice was truly innocent, her green eyes fixed on Mary.

  “’Twas rumoured that it was a monster. The ministers and magistrates heard of it and dug it up. It was a thing, they said, part beast, part fish, part fowl.”

  Dafeny stilled, alert as a cat.

  “At first I did not believe it but my friend who had seen it said ’twas in part true. Then I felt it, as if ’twere still in my womb. A scratching, a horror. I prayed for release and found that God had left me. I was dark, within. Damned. Punished for my sin.”

  “Sin. Dost know why George Fox was jailed in Derby and thrown into the dungeon?”

  Mary shook her head.

  “The magistrate asked him if he dared avow he had no sin. And George Fox, he did say, ‘Sin? I have no sin.’ George Fox doth say that every man or woman hath received from the Lord a measure of light. He tells that if we hearken to that light we shall come into the state Adam was before he fell. Then we do be innocent. Pure.”

  Mary sat back and folded her hands. She considered the flames for a long time.

  “I wonder,” she said. “I went to the tarn to … I wonder.”

  Dafeny ran her fingers over a scar on her cheek. Her clothing smelled of pig manure. Her lips were so chapped that she could not smile.

  Mary leaned forward, tugged at a burr on Dafeny’s sleeve. The barbs released reluctantly, with tiny rippings.

  “Why?” Mary said. “What maketh you to go abroad in rain and snow, to suffer such violence, to be so scorned? I was sorely abused by those who were my teachers. Now I do not know if I would ever again be disposed to follow any teacher.” She half-turned to the great hall, firelight playing upon the carved dishboard with its wooden trenchers and copper pans. She lifted her hand to include the house beyond. “I have no joy in this place of my childhood. I care not for the smell of mutton, or anticipation of the assuaging of my hunger. I wait not for the arrival of friends, nor for the dawn of spring and the bursting of green leaves. My heart is dry and black as a bat’s wing.”

  Dafeny watched the fire and listened without evidencing judgment. Then she turned toward Mary, elbows on knees, hands parallel as if she held a box and all that she wished to say were contained within.

  “I go because I do believe that once all have known the inner light, then men and women, servants and kings, priests and drovers will be as equals, and such will put an end to strife, cruelty and suffering. George Fox’s father was a weaver; as a youth, George were put out to a cattle-dealer who was a shoemaker by trade. The Lord’s word hath been revealed to us humble people of the north. We have no choice but to go forth and tell it.”

  Her face lit with a sudden thought.

  “He is in this region. May be that thee will see him for thyself.”

  “I see you are tender,” Mary said. “I see that you and the others do love one another.”

  “We are as a family,” Dafeny said. “As much family as our own blood kith and kin.”

  She yawned, closed her eyes, dragged them open with difficulty. Mary smiled and took up a candle.

  “Come.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Travelling - 1652–1653

  THAT NIGHT, MARY COULD NOT SLEEP, aware of the Friends in the adjacent bedchambers.

  Do you miss your children? she had wished to ask Dafeny, rather than if the children missed their mother. But she had not dared, for fear the question would be turned.

  She tried to pick apart the memory of each child’s birth. The first, she remembered best. Little William, luminous as a new rose, peaceful in his cradle within London’s racket. The next child, Samuel, Boston-born, adored by Sinnie while Mary herself was haunted by dread of his loss and weekly reminders of God’s jealous purview. Then. Pains in the garden. Screams. Anne’s voice.

  Move ahead to Aquidneck.

>   Babies, babies. Like following waves, one subsuming the next, all clouded by unending grief. Clouts, fevers, squalling, the day’s other duties, her own darkness of mind so heavy that she sought her bed and pulled the coverlet over her head.

  In memory, she could not set each child out upon a table like a row of apples.

  I should not have fled. For if I had stayed, I would have come to love them.

  She pulled knees to chest, clasped cold hands between her knees. She recalled how, earlier this evening, Dafeny had deepened her voice to imitate a man’s.

  Sin? I have no sin.

  Who was this George Fox, who could say such things?

  Every man or woman hath received from the Lord a measure of light. He says that if we follow the light we shall come into the state Adam was before he fell. We shall be innocent. Pure.

  She opened her eyes in the darkness. She saw herself parting from Ann Burden in a London inn. She saw herself boarding a stagecoach, arriving in Yorkshire. There was Aunt Urith, arms wide in the doorway, wrinkles riding slack skin. Months passed. Pessaries, ointments, tinctures. In the cooling autumn, she knelt at Urith’s bedside, watching the long departure; collapsed, at the last breath, and flung her arms round the porcelain-still body.

  Then, the empty house. No simplers’ feet hurried down the narrow halls nor caused the stair treads to creak. No cooks and maids worked red-armed in the great hall, nor groans came from the surgery, nor clatter in the stables. From Uncle Colyn’s study, she had stared through the rain into the courtyard, where once women had laboured over the copper washing vats, their reed-paddled flails rising and falling, their arms mottled with steam and cold. Her fingers had caused the room’s only sound, lifting books from shelves, settling them back. Herodotus, Livy, Procopius. Froissart. Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World. Camden’s Britannia. Purchas His Pilgrims. Antichrist the Pope of Rome.

  And she had begun to hear the whisperings.

  You, too, should have been buried with the baby.