Havoc, in Its Third Year: A Novel

by Ronan Bennett

  “Please God, we will have cause to rejoice in next year’s crop,” she said. She fell silent for some moments, then continued, “I have done what I can, John. I have completed all I know how to do. All that remains is to make my winding sheet.”

  Women with life in their wombs walk with death itself. Coroners knew it, midwives and surgeons knew it, maids and neighbors knew it, and so did husbands and wives. She smelt of sleep and tears. Brigge wanted time brought forward so he might be spared the agony of uncertain fate: a child, healthy and whole, plump and laughing, its eyes curious and frank, its mouth fringed with milk. Elizabeth recovered in her spirits, restored to the woman she had been before. A crop carpeting the long slopes stretching out from the house as far as the little beck that marked the boundary of his land, endless ears of corn fat enough to please a pharaoh. Sheep with lambs and long wool and no sign of the rot or the turn. He would gladly give up twelve months on earth to know that this was what lay in store for him and his family.

  There was a scream that only women in labor make. It was from deep inside, searing and animal. The women surrounded Elizabeth and tried to soothe her.

  Brigge put his hand to the swaddling clothes and mantles. Underneath he saw the winding sheet Elizabeth had sewn. He felt Mrs. Lacy’s hand on his elbow.

  HE STOOD BY THE fire in the kitchen, his hands trembling as he stretched them toward the flames. Dorcas brought oatcakes and cheese.

  “I am sorry,” she said. Brigge seemed not to hear her. She waited a moment, then said, “Will you not speak to me, John?”

  He looked up at her as though she were a stranger. “I have no words that are right to say,” he answered at last.

  She put a hand over his and came forward as though to embrace him but stopped when she saw the look on his face. “I wanted nothing more than to be of comfort to you,” she said to explain her intentions.

  “You have been more than a comfort to me,” he said, “which is why you must be less to me now.”

  She bit her lip at his coldness. Sara and Isabel came in and she withdrew her hand. Brigge did not know if the old kitchen maids had seen anything; they seemed hardly to notice Dorcas at all so concerned were they with their master’s condition. They fussed about him and fried him eggs for his bacon and bade him eat. Dorcas waited a moment for an opportunity to be alone with him again, but, finding no invitation in his manner, abandoned hopes of it and slipped quietly out of the room. Brigge found he had appetite to take what was put before him.

  AFTER AN HOUR Brigge sent Sara to have news of his wife, but the maid came back with the same report, that the child was not yet come.

  Though it was late, none of the household would go to their beds, not even the boy James Jagger who had lately come to them and had not yet twelve years. The kitchen maids put him to work fetching coals and wood for the fire while they busied themselves at chores of their own devising. Brigge’s taciturnity stifled their usual prating and they went about with subdued steps. He sat by the fire and pondered the meaning of his dream of the great feast with the lepers and the whores, and the key he denied to receive before him on the table. Some held a dream to be a dream and nothing more, but so strange a vision, he felt, had to contain a meaning. His failure to fathom it troubled Brigge; he had sore need of understanding.

  Dorcas came in to ask for her supper. Adam joined the table, which occasioned some surprise, for of late his habits were rarely sociable. The boy shifted in his seat. Brigge heard him clear his throat.

  “I have something for you,” he announced to Dorcas. She turned to him with a smile, expecting no doubt a ribbon or some other little token. Adam said, “I know it will lift your heart and inspire your spirits.”

  Dorcas kept the smile on her face, but she was alert to the gravity of Adam’s manner and speech. They had been as playful and gentle together as the most loving brother and sister.

  “What?” she asked, frowning merrily.

  Adam produced a book from his pocket. The frown on Dorcas’s face deepened in perplexity. She read aloud. “Mr. Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man.” Brigge looked up sharply. Dorcas seemed hardly to know what to say. “Why, thank you, Adam,” she murmured, her tone doubtful, “how kind.”

  “Where did you get this?” Brigge asked, taking up the book and riffling its pages.

  “From my friends in the town,” Adam replied, “people of good religion who meet together as occasion permits to discuss how they may live better lives and be better men.”

  “Mr. Tyndale is noted a most strict professor of religion,” Brigge said.

  “The true word of God is strict,” Adam said. “It must be so for, as Paul says, it is written for our learning, not for our deceiving.”

  Brigge looked uncomprehendingly at his clerk. “Since when have you been interested in this?” he asked.

  “Do you rebuke me for seeking to live my life in accordance with God’s laws?”

  “I was not aware I had rebuked you for anything, Adam,” Brigge said.

  “I think if you look truly into your heart you will find that was your meaning.”

  Brigge did not respond. He replaced the book on the table.

  Adam turned to Dorcas. “Mr. Tyndale discourses on all manner of things: how God is to be served; how to know hypocrites.” He paused before continuing. “He also writes much of husbands and wives.”

  Silence fell over the table. The kitchen maids sent each other flustered glances. Adam pushed the book toward Dorcas and said shyly, “I have marked the passages on marriage and the duties attendant on that happy state. I hope you find them of interest.”

  Adam stood up, smiled gently at her and left the kitchen. Dorcas lowered her gaze; her face was flushed and hot.

  Brigge saw the boy Jagger asleep on the floor. He took him up in his arms. The boy groaned with the innocent petulance of the disturbed sleeper but did not wake. Brigge went to put the boy to bed. When he came back to the kitchen, he found Dorcas still in her seat. “I had no idea Adam was leaning towards the hotter sort in matters of religion,” he said. “But then, I suppose, it is the fashion of the times.”

  “It is the spirit of the times,” Dorcas corrected him.

  “He means to marry you.”

  “He has said nothing to me on the subject.”

  “Not directly, perhaps,” Brigge said. “Will you read Mr. Tyndale’s book?”

  “I doubt it will be to my liking,” she answered.

  “You think not?” Brigge said facetiously. He leafed through the pages. “Lusts and appetites are damnable,” he read aloud. “To follow lusts is not freedom, but captivity and bondage.” He held out the page to Dorcas so that she might see. “Mr. Tyndale writes very well and to the point, do you not think?” Dorcas turned away. “I think you will find much that is instructive and beneficial within these pages,” he said.

  “Please, John,” she said, “if we cannot forgive ourselves, all we can do is hope to forget. Perhaps that way you will not hate me.”

  They gazed at each other for a moment. “I am sorry,” Brigge said.

  Dorcas got up and left him.

  Brigge heard Elizabeth scream. He strained to listen, hoping, praying to hear a child’s cry. None came. He took the book to the fireside and began to read, marveling at the ferocity of the words, the heat of the language, the condemnations and damnings. What had drawn Adam to such vehemence? What imaginings did they create in his mind, what dreams did they make the boy dream? It was not unusual for youth to be severe, to cry out for discipline and rant against the failings of their elders. Brigge hoped Adam would outgrow these unyielding strictures, that he would remember to forgive; forgive in hopes to be forgiven, that he would learn to be weak. Perhaps the passion he had conceived for Dorcas would teach him. His lusts, the very lusts the book condemned, would teach him, in time they would teach him. One day he will fall as all men fall, and with his face on the ground he will see others in the like condition and he will say: So, this is the trut
h: I am one of these, no more, no less.

  DORCAS CAME TO THEM when she was thirteen, brought by her aunt, who could no longer care for her and who wanted a place for her where she might be brought up in the true faith. The child was slight and pretty, with straw-colored hair and brown eyes. She was open and spirited, bringing noise and life to every room she entered. Elizabeth conceived a pure love for the girl, as a sister, as a daughter. Adam, three years older than Dorcas, delighted in her company. She it was who drew the quiet boy out of himself, who made him laugh at the world and at himself, who teased him and cared for him, and contended with him and railed at him and his habits. Brigge knew the boy loved her, but he supposed it an innocent love, and for this, for not seeing what all others saw only too clearly, Elizabeth mocked him gently.

  Dorcas was with Elizabeth when she suffered her fourth miscarriage, her conception coming forth as the women were drawing water from the beck. Hearing her cry out, Brigge came running from the close where he had put his horse and found Elizabeth sitting on the bank, her back straight, her legs splayed out, blood on the grass, the tipped leather bucket beside her. She cried with a grief that Brigge could hardly bear.

  “Take it away,” she cried, “take it away.”

  While Dorcas helped Elizabeth to the house, Brigge wrapped the fetus in his handkerchief, averting his gaze so he did not have to look on it. As coroner, he had seen such things before, and much worse besides, but he could not look on his own lost child. In his hand it felt warm and hard and wet. There was such doleful heaviness in his heart he thought he might faint. He turned his eyes to the blue sky above and let the breeze refresh him. He went to the barn and took a spade and made a little grave by some trees a little way off from the house.

  It was Brigge’s role in their union to find reason for hope and delight, Elizabeth being much given to discouragement. She had suffered the earlier losses with a brave heart, but now she felt her failure to be unforgivable. Brigge could bring her no solace. She turned away from him, from his arms and kisses. One evening when he was scouring his ditches, Dorcas brought him beer and bread and sat beside him while he ate. He was grateful for her lively company. Brigge was not surprised that he should be stirred by the nearness of Dorcas to him. Men and women were thus. Men and women had always been so. Brigge kissed her and, out of sight of the house, they lay together.

  Brigge was sorry for his sin. He was sorry and he was not sorry.

  Ten

  IT WAS NOT BRIGGE ’ S HABIT TO SUFFER A FIRE TO BE KEPT IN at night, even in dead of winter, for fear of accident, and the maids had let it go out. He woke, cold and stiff. Pitiful cries and shrieking came from Elizabeth and he hurried to her room. The midwife, determined to prevent his entry, called the other women to assist her, and they kept their weight against the door even as he pushed and damned them with oaths and curses. Only when Mrs. Lacy came out to plead with him, saying the commotion was upsetting Elizabeth and was keeping them from assisting her, did he give up his struggle.

  The kitchen maids attempted to calm him as they had when he was a child, but Brigge’s agitation was such that their well intentioned words were like goads to him. He stormed about and swore at the world. Elizabeth’s screams continued. Brigge left off his angry pacing and looked at the two old women huddled silently together, shivering with fear of their master’s mood and their mistress’s torment.

  Then he decided. He had been loath to have Antrobus come to the Winters, for he misliked and mistrusted the doctor. He found Adam in his room. The boy was on his knees in prayer.

  “Forgive this interruption,” Brigge said. “I want you to go to Mr. Antrobus and ask the doctor to return with you here at once to attend to my wife. Will you go, Adam?”

  “Of course I shall go.”

  “Then go now. Go as fast as you can. Tell Antrobus there is not a moment to be lost.”

  They hurried together to the stables and made ready Brigge’s mare, it being the stronger and quicker of the horses. Brigge watched Adam make his way down the path between the fields, cross the beck and ride on at speed toward the mountain. He did not know if Antrobus would arrive in time or if he would be able to do anything to help, or do anything at all. But the doctor was now his only hope.

  BRIGGE RETURNED TO the parlor and to Elizabeth’s screams. From time to time Mrs. Lacy came to him and Brigge questioned her. Was there no sign yet of the child? What did the midwife say? What obstruction was there? What complication? He waited with growing desperation for Adam to return with Antrobus. He doubted he would see them tonight. The hard season made the journey to and from town difficult to undertake in a single day. If Adam and the doctor attempted to return to the Winters today, darkness would certainly catch them on the mountain to the great peril of their lives. He should have sent for Antrobus immediately on his return. Why had he not?

  It was perhaps less to do with his opinion of Antrobus than his fear of intercession. Brigge preferred to let things be. We meddle at our peril, in everything. What were the governors if not pragmatical, meddlesome, stirring persons? Doctors meddled in men’s bodies, the governors meddled in men’s lives. They meddled in men’s breeches, in women’s skirts. Margery Farrer had been whipped by their meddling, and would be whipped again; the Scotchman and his consort had their ears mutilated and their backs flayed. The governors had punished hundreds in the like manner because they had their breeches down and their skirts up when they should not, because they drank in tippling houses where there was no license, because they swore and cursed when others were listening, because they preferred to sleep or smoke or fondle their lovers when they should be at divine service or about their work. The governors regulated and ordered because the lives they saw all about them were dissolute, wanton, profligate, failing. They wanted to reform and cure, as doctors did. What success could they expect? What success could they show? The spirits of men and women were capricious and chaotic. Was the meddling of doctors less futile? They diagnosed freely—dropsies, distempers, agues, fluxes, jolly rants and falling sicknesses and fits of the Mother, apoplexies, rheums, palsies, shaking-palsies, dead-palsies and a thousand other names they gave to diseases and afflictions. They prescribed their pastilles, vomits and decoctions. They bled, they sweated and they voided. They poked stools and held urine in bottles up to the light. Beware of doctors, Cato said. They bring death by medicine. Left to itself, the body was its own best doctor. The noble Petrarch’s body had cured itself when the physicians attending him had declared all was lost. I die by the help of too many physicians, Alexander the Great lamented at his end. We meddle at our peril. In all things.

  He pushed aside the food the maids offered him. He could not settle, he could not be still. His head ached and his eyes were dry and heavy. In the afternoon, overcome with fears and apprehensions, he went to the storeroom above his wife’s chamber and lay down amid the bacons and grain sacks on a palette bed there. Though he felt enervated of all force, he knew he would not sleep. He prayed to the Blessed Virgin to see his wife and child safe, and he prayed to St. Michael to let him sleep and so preserve him from madness. Perhaps when he woke, it would be all over.

  He murmured a lulling lament:

  A falcon has borne my mate away.

  He bore her up, he bore her down,

  He bore her into an orchard brown.

  In that orchard there was a hall,

  That was hanged with purple and pall.

  And in that hall there was a bed:

  It was hanged with gold so red.

  And in that bed there lay a knight,

  His wounds bleeding day and night.

  By that bed there knelt a may,

  And she wept both night and day.

  And by that bed there stood a stone,

  “Corpus Christi” written thereon.

  He whispered it three times. He began the first line a fourth time, then closed his eyes.

  HE DREAMED AGAIN of the key. It lay before him on the table. The harlots and the lepe
rs left their meal and gathered at his side. Katherine Shay was foremost among them, her paps out of her dress and her hair loose about her shoulders. She pressed in on him, as did the rest, the men and the women alike, saying, Take the key, take it. Yielding to their encouragement, he reached for it slowly and, lifting it up, he asked of Shay what was he to do with it. She would say nothing, but pushed him forward with her hands toward the city walls and to the gate that was closed, where the rich citizens were marshaled like soldiers to oppose him, very warlike and fierce, armed with pikes, axes, swords and muskets. The coroner hesitated to go but none would take a step forward without he went first. He said, “Where do we go?”

  He woke with a start. Dorcas stood above him. “I am come to fetch you, John,” she said. “Elizabeth has called for you.” Brigge swung his legs to the floor. His head was clouded with sleep. “She is very weak. I fear if she closes her eyes she will never open them again. She wants only to see you and hear your voice.”

  Brigge hurried along the passage to the stairs. The wind was driving so hard that he did not hear the horsemen approaching. The little boy James Jagger came running out, shouting that Adam and the doctor were here.

  ANTROBUS CLEARED the chamber but for the midwife and Mrs. Lacy. He was brisk and accepted no demurrer. He gave Elizabeth a swift examination and allowed Brigge a brief moment with his wife. The pain had all but overwhelmed her senses, but her eyes flickered on seeing him.