by Ann Turnbull
Contents
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
To Mara Bergman
William
For the hand of Susanna Thorn,
at Mary Faulkner’s printing shop in Broad Street,
Hemsbury, in the County of Shropshire.
The third day of June, 1665.
Sweetheart: I write in haste, and in expectation of being with thee soon after midsummer. I have money enough saved now, and James Martell will shortly give me leave of several weeks so that I may return to Hemsbury and – if thou’rt willing – bring thee back as my wife. Write to me soon, love, and tell me that thou agree. Thou know how much I miss thee. I think of thee every day and long to hold thee in my arms again. Thy parents, thou hast said, are willing for us to marry, and if thou will speak to them and to the elders, we can be married in Eaton Bellamy Meeting as soon as may be arranged. As for my father, I fear there can be no reconciliation. He has never replied to my letters and I am not of a mind to ask his blessing now.
Make all straight with thy parents and the meeting, love, and with Mary; though I know she will not try to hold thee back. For my part, I cannot leave for a few weeks because my employer is still in poor health. We are both only recently out of prison; the business is in disorder and there is much to be done.
I shall use what free time I have to look for rooms for us, but will put money on nothing until thou hast seen it and agreed. Londoners live crowded together; there are many places to rent but not all are fitting. Nat and I lost our room in Pell Court when we were last in prison, so our address has changed again. We are now at Thomas Corder’s, next to the Blue Boar in Creed Lane. The room is not so comfortable as the other, being cramped and ill-lit, but we have few needs and are both saving our wages: I to come to thee and be married, and Nat to set up in business on his own.
Nat will travel with me to Shropshire. He is homesick, I believe, and also wishes to see us married and to see Mary again. We plan to leave on the twenty-sixth of the month, and will travel on horseback with London Friends who are bound for Wales.
The weather here grows hotter by the day. They say there is plague in Holborn and St Giles, but we have none within the city walls. Pray God we shall be spared. Our Friends Robert Osman and Solomon Eccles go about the streets naked, crying repentance, as Dan Kite once did in Hemsbury. There is much talk of the city’s evil and of God’s wrath; but truly I believe there are many good people here.
I look forward to being outside the city soon, in the clean air of the countryside, coming closer to thee every day. Till then, love, may God keep thee safe.
Thy own,
Will Heywood
Susanna
“Mary!”
I burst into the print room with the letter in my hand – then stopped, and felt a blush rising as the men’s faces turned towards me. My own face must have been alight with my news, for Mary guessed at once.
“He is coming, then?”
I nodded, speechless, so happy I feared I would cry.
“Well now, lass.” John Pardoe gave me a fatherly hug. “Will’s a lucky man to have such a loyal sweetheart. And thou’ll be wed?”
“Yes. In a few weeks.” I brushed at a tear, then turned to Mary. “We’ll marry, he says, then go to London.”
Mary regarded me gravely. My employer is not given to shows of emotion, but I saw that she was glad for me. “I shall miss thee,” she said. “But thou hast earned thy happiness – and served out the time of thy agreement.”
“Will says Nat will come too.”
Everyone – but Mary especially – was pleased at this news. Nat had been Mary’s apprentice; she’d come to look on him almost as a son. There was a brief outbreak of talk and reminiscence, but soon Mary called the men back to work, and I left them.
Mary’s printworks includes a bookshop and stationer’s, and that was where I’d been when the post boy came – unpacking a box of new books from Oxford and listing their titles. I returned to this task; but after a while, there being no customers in the shop, I took out the letter and read it again, several times.
Until now I had been content with my lot, saving my wages and waiting to hear this news from Will. But now, when I knew that soon I would see him again, it was as if a river had burst its banks: my feelings overflowed, and I felt a great surge of longing and impatience. I wanted to leave and fly to him at once – to meet him on the road; to be married immediately; to hold and kiss him again.
I brought his remembered face to mind – and not only his face, but the feel of him: his arms around me, his warmth, his voice, his kisses. I had no portrait of him, nothing but those memories. He would have changed, I knew. He was a scholar when I met him, but for the last three years he’d been working for a bookseller in London. Like me, he’d been in prison for his beliefs – for meeting to worship with Friends – and had become stronger in spirit as a result; I knew that much from his letters. We must both have changed. He’d be twenty now, and I was eighteen. We were still young for marriage, but we had proved we could wait for each other.
Did I appear different too, I wondered? What would he think of me? We’d communicated for so long by letter, and had come to know each other’s minds, but in all that time we had met only once, in the autumn of 1663, in Oxford, where there had been a gathering of the Friends of Truth. Will had gone there with his employer, and I had contrived to go too, travelling with Friends from Hemsbury. Will and I had been determined to seize the opportunity to meet, if only for a moment, and in truth it was little more than that, for we were among large groups of people and staying at different inns. We spent no more than an hour together, walking by the river, but it was enough to reaffirm our love for each other, to bind us. That day in Oxford we vowed we would be married in two years’ time, when my term of service with Mary ended.
I thought of the marriage of my friends Judith Minton and Daniel Kite, which had taken place soon after Will left for London. They had made their promises to each other at a meeting in the parlour of William Jevons’s house, with Friends crowded in, some on benches, younger ones on the floor – all risking arrest, for any gathering of Quakers, as folk call us, is unlawful. My own marriage had seemed a far-away hope then, but now I imagined being with Will legitimately, with no one to hinder us; living with him as his wife, in our own home.
Mary came into the shop, startling me, and I turned guiltily to the box of books.
She smiled. “Thou must go home for first-day, Susanna. Stay a day or two with thy parents, and ask their blessing.”
“I will.”
But today I wanted to see Judith.
I soon found an excuse to go out.
One of the books that had arrived that morning was for our Friend John Callicott, who lives in Cordwainer Row, off the High Street. I could have sent the boy, Antony, with it, but instead I told Mary I’d deliver it myself.
The way there took me past the Heywood family home, on the corner of High Street and Butcher’s Row. As
always when I passed it, I glanced in through the entrance to the courtyard, where sometimes carts were drawn up and bales of wool loaded or delivered. Last week I’d seen Henry Heywood, Will’s father. My breath had quickened, and I’d hurried past. But his back was towards me; he didn’t see me, and probably would not have known me if he had. I was nothing to him: merely that “little whore” who’d set out to entrap his son. He could not know of our plans to marry, since he had cut Will off and would accept no letters from him.
Today the courtyard was empty. I passed the long warehouse on the ground floor and hurried on up the High Street.
My delivery done, I went to find Judith. As I’d guessed, she was not at her own home, but with her mother, in the family’s glove shop in the High Street. Abigail, her sister, was serving in the shop. She sent me through to the workroom at the back, where Judith and her mother, Elinor, sat stitching gloves and talking – Judith rocking, with one foot, the Minton family cradle in which she had placed her son.
“Susanna!”
They stood up, surprised and pleased to see me in work time. Elinor called to their servant, Hester, to fetch small beer.
“No, I can’t stay,” I said. But I bent down to admire the baby. This was Judith’s second child. Her first, a girl, had died soon after birth, causing her great grief. Young Benjamin looked well. He was two months old, and tightly swaddled, but his eyes – bright blue like his father’s – followed my movements; and I thought I saw a trace of a smile.
“Oh, he does smile!” Judith assured me.
I smiled too. “I am happy for thee,” I said. “And for myself.” I told them my news.
Judith put down her work and embraced me, and Elinor said, “God bless thee, Susanna!” and hurried out to tell Hester and Abigail, leaving us to talk.
“I’m afraid Will might see me differently after those London girls,” I admitted to Judith. “A country lass. I fear things may have changed between us. I don’t know him now.”
“But you write to each other. Thou know his heart.”
“Yes.” We wrote constantly, often by return. I had come to live for the post. But it was not enough. I needed to touch him, to hold him, to be sure. And I wondered if he had similar fears; if he regretted our promises.
“It will all be as before when you see each other,” Judith reassured me. And she added, “Dan and I will still be here for your wedding.”
I knew that Dan and Judith planned to sail to America, to Massachusetts, later in the summer.
“We have booked our passage,” said Judith. “We leave for Bristol in August, and sail on the eighteenth.”
There was an expression akin to defiance on her face.
I looked at the child, then at her.
“He is so tiny – so precious to thee,” I said. I wanted to ask how she could think of sailing to America, to undertake such a dangerous journey to an unknown new life, now that she had a child. But that was between her and Daniel.
“It will be easier now than later,” said Judith. “The babe is not weaned, so I shall not have to fear the shipboard food; and he cannot yet crawl and get into danger.”
“And dost thou want to go?”
“My husband wants to go. And I knew he did when I agreed to marry him. I don’t doubt I could persuade him to stay here, but I won’t. It would diminish him.”
“Thy mother will miss thee – and the babe.”
“Ha! My mother says I have made my bed and must lie in it. She warned me that I would never have an easy life with Daniel. And yet she understands him, I think, and believes that God has called him to this. It’s his own mother who is distraught at losing her grandchild. She berates Dan every time she sees him.” Her voice quivered, and she bit her thumbnail. “We shall be so far apart, Su; thou in London and I in America.”
“But we’ll write.” I had taught both Judith and Abigail to write a little, passing on the skills I’d learned from Mary.
“Yes,” agreed Judith. “We will. And tell all. All our hopes and prayers. And our babies.”
Babies. It gave me a jolt to think that I too would soon have babies if I married Will. I had often daydreamed of having children in the future, but now it drew near: real, enticing, and yet to be feared.
I went home to Long Aston on seventh-day. The roads were rough underfoot, but dry and passable after the long spell of fine weather we’d had. A farmer offered me a ride on his cart, and I was glad of it, for the weather was too warm for walking. In the fields the lambs were almost full-grown, and the hedgerows dense and green and full of pale pink dog roses. I wanted to remember it all, for I guessed I’d see no such sights in London.
The farmer set me down a mile and a half from home, and I walked there through the meadows, and picked daisies and made a chain; then crossed the stream by the stepping stones that led into the wood, and so up to our yard the back way.
Deb was there, spreading washing to dry on the bushes. She was growing up fast, and looked taller, I thought, every time I came home. When she saw me she shouted in delight and ran to meet me.
“I thought thou weren’t coming till next week!”
“Mary let me come. I have news.”
“Oh, Su! What? What news? Is it about Will? Is he coming? Tell me!”
“Wait!” I said, laughing, and tossed the daisy chain over her head. I had never felt happier. I shall bring him here, I thought. He had never visited my parents’ home, though they had met him, once, at Mary’s shop, before he left for London. I’d show him the stream, and the path up to Overton, and the Disbury Maze where they say the fairies dance at new moon, and that grassy place at the edge of the wood where I’d once guiltily imagined lying with him, long ago…
I heard the clacking of my father’s loom, and then my mother appeared and gave a cry of joy – “Husband! Susanna is here!” – and the loom stopped.
My father came out, and I was caught up in their embraces and questions.
My mother exclaimed, “Thou’rt early! I told Isaac he should come home next week and thou’d be here.”
And my father, with his grave smile, chided her. “Be thankful to see the girl now.”
“Su has news!” said Deb. Her face was eager. She has wide-set blue eyes, like our mother, and the same square chin, while Isaac and I are brown-eyed and take after our father.
I gave them my news. My parents were glad for me – though not surprised, since they had known we planned to marry as soon as I was free and Will settled in work, and with prospects. I had told them before that James Martell liked him well and intended in a year or two to bring him into the business.
“Then that would be the time to marry,” my father had said. “You are both still too young as yet.”
But my mother had prevailed. “They have waited three years,” she said, “and stayed true. Think how lightly we lived, husband, when we were young! Let them have their time together.”
Now, my father said only that we must both think of the responsibilities of marriage, and seek God’s help in the silence. “And tomorrow, Susanna, as Will is not here, thou must speak to the meeting alone and tell them of thy wish to be married.”
“I will.”
I feared to have the meeting’s attention all on me, but there was no likelihood that they would not approve, since my parents were willing.
My mother sent Deb to fetch a jug of small beer from the inn. There was a pottage simmering over the fire, and she ladled us out a bowlful each, and served it with bread and herbs.
Later, she took me aside, opened the big oak chest in which we had always kept our clothes and bedding, and brought out something wrapped in worn sheeting. She shook it out.
It was a woman’s shift, with a high neckline and long sleeves, such as I would wear under my skirt and bodice, or in bed. The linen was fine and soft, bleached to a pale oat colour, and it was neatly and plainly stitched; without lace, for Friends do not wear such decoration, but with a narrow border of feather stitch, in the same oat colo
ur, marking the hems.
I had never owned such a fine shift. I turned to my mother in gratitude. “Thou made it?”
“And thy father wove the linen and bleached it. It is a gift for thy marriage.”
I stroked the cloth, thinking of the hours of work, often by rushlight. “I thank thee, Mam.”
My mother held her work against me, to check the length; and I thought: I’ll be wearing this shift on my wedding night. My face grew warm, and I was aware of Deb watching me.
Next day we walked to Meeting. Eaton Bellamy Meeting is held in Lewis Streetley’s great barn, and we settled on benches and straw bales in the lofty space with its smells of hay and leather, and chickens scratching around the doorway. This barn was the place where I loved best to meet and had always felt closest to God. As the silence fell, I imagined standing here with Will, making our promises each to be a loving and faithful partner to the other until death should separate us. Then I tried to draw my thoughts inward as I felt the meeting become gathered.
Out of the silence, several Friends spoke of the love and power of God. Towards the end, as people began to shift in their seats, I took courage and spoke in a low, nervous voice of my desire and Will’s to be married. They listened without speaking, but afterwards many came and said they would be glad to witness our marriage, and I knew I had the love of the meeting.
As we walked home, my mother said, “You may stay at the inn at Long Aston, thou and Will, since you’ll have no home of your own to go to. Thy father will pay. And the Streetleys will host the wedding breakfast.”
She tried to speak cheerfully, but she looked pensive, and I knew she was thinking that soon after the wedding, Will and I would go to London – and none of us knew how long it would be before we might meet again.
But I could not share her gloom. Will’s letter had taken nearly a week to reach me. In only two weeks’ time he would leave London; and with hired horses they would travel fast. Soon we would be together.
“We will come back, Mam,” I said. “I promise thee. And I’ll write often, and tell thee all that happens in the city.”
She touched my face gently. “Pray God Will takes good care of thee there.”
