by James Darke
The idea appealed to John Ferris’ spirit of daring, and during the cold months he had roamed the south and east, seeking out the men who would be best for his force. Obtaining horses and laying his plans, scheming and listing and mapping, ready for the spring and the time that the dreaming could become a reality.
And then the accident. . .
John’s parents lived in a largish, comfortable house , on the eastern side of Hertford, towards the village of Stanstead Abbotts. Thomas Ferris was a doctor of medicine, married for twenty-four years to his beloved wife, Ruth. John had been their first-born, though he had followed on three successive miscarriages. Thomas had delivered the child himself, twenty-two years back, and had fought, tight lipped, battling to save Ruth’s life after a difficult breech-birth that had nearly killed both mother and son.
After that there had been no more children, and John had been raised alone. But his childhood had been mainly happy, and the home had been filled with warmth and love. Ruth Ferris was a small, bright-eyed lady, with hair as black as the wing of a raven, still vivacious and attractive despite being in her fortieth year. Doctor Thomas Ferris was tall, close to six feet, and skinny as a fencepost. He had always been a supporter of the Royalist cause, but not to the extent that he could not see and sympathise with some of the wrongs that the followers of Cromwell sought to put to rights. And John’s decision to enlist with Commons rather than King had not split the family, as it had with others in a similar predicament.
John took after his father in height, topping six feet by an inch or more, carrying his fourteen stones easily on his broad shoulders and narrow
hips. From his mother John had inherited the black hair, but his eyes were darker. An odd shade of grey. Slumberous eyes, heavy-lidded, that would suddenly flare into a red anger when he saw wickedness or injustice. He was a fair shot with a pistol and made a good fist with rapier or broadsword. Among his father’s patients was a man who had been a Sergeant in the Army, and an instructor with all types of edged weapons. He had paid his bills with long hours of tuition for the young man. Long hours that were literally to save John’s life on several occasions during the beginning of the Civil War.
The accident had happened on the last day of February.
John had been out riding a new horse that he had commandeered for his own use. A raw-boned bay mare with a jaw of iron and the temperament of a cheated whore. But it was enormously strong and would have jumped the side of a church if he had put her at it. He had already decided that the beast would be too much for most of his new troopers and intended to keep her for himself. He had even gone so far as to christen the mare ‘Morgana’ after the famous enchantress of legend.
The snow had cleared but many of the lanes around Hertford were still running with streams of muddy water, and several brooks had burst their banks with the weight of the thawing. Ferris was cantering slowly along, between high, banked hedges, watching several gulls wheeling and crying far above him. The sky was blue across and the sun lay warm to his shoulders.
He never even saw the fox until it was too late. There was the blur of movement, caught at the corner of his eye Something tawny, orange, streaking through a break in the thorns to his right, close under the hooves of Morgana, who reacted to the shock with predictable violence, rearing up onto her back legs, throwing her head from side to side. Jerking the reins from his gauntleted hands.
‘Mary and Joseph!’ John shouted, fighting for his balance.
But the mare was beyond his or any man’s control, rearing, white-eyed, front legs raking the winter air. As it slid backwards, John tried to dismount, but he wore his long Cavalry boots and the heel caught in the stirrup, sending him spinning off to one side.
Yet he still landed safely, his left shoulder taking most of the force of the impact. The heel snapped off and his leg came free, leaving him winded and gasping in the dirt of the lane. Morgana was still skittish and rearing, once falling on her side, neighing her fear, lips peeled back off her fine teeth.
‘Be still,’ he called to her, struggling to his feet, limping towards the horse. ‘Still, damn you!’
His knee hurt him, and his whole left side was badly jarred, but he knew then how lucky he was not to have been more severely harmed.
John Ferris was not to know at that moment that he was about to suffer a grievous accident that would alter his entire life.
As he came up behind the mare she turned towards him. There was a moment of frozen time when he saw what was to happen and he half raised his left arm against the animal. Thus saving his skull from being riven like a ripe apple beneath a mallet.
Morgana was so terrified that she saw him only as another enemy coming at her. So she did what she thought best. She attacked him, rearing up to an awesome height, lashing out with her iron tipped hooves.
John Ferris heard the blow.
Heard it rather than felt it.
A thick, cracking kind of a sound, not unlike a bunch of dry twigs being broken all at once. The impact kicked him back again in the mud, closing his eyes against the mare’s vicious attack. There was a numbness around the middle of his left arm and as Morgana moved away from him, calming herself now the threat was passed, he managed to sit up, feeling cold earth between the fingers of his right hand.
There seemed to be no feeling at all in the fingers of the left hand and they didn’t move to his command when he tried them. Realising that he had
been sorely hurt, Ferris managed to wriggle his injured arm free of the confines of his broadcloth coat.
Then he saw the crooked arm, the torn flesh, the bloodied stump of jagged bone protruding through the skin. For the first time in his life John Ferris fainted.
CHAPTER FOUR
His father drew lightly on the inside of the steamy window-pane, trying to show John just what damage the riding accident had wrought on his body. A bowl of soup stood neglected on a table near the window, small pieces of turnip and potato and carrot floating in it. And a glass of port wine,
rich and red, stood by the bowl.
It was the tenth day of March.
The weather had taken a turn again for the chill. Many parts of northern England and the hills of Wales were shrouded once more in deep snow, and
several nights f bitter frosts had laid thick ice over the pool of carp in Doctor Thomas Ferris’ shady rear garden.
‘This large bone, John, is the upper part of your left arm, properly called the humerus,’
‘I find it is sadly lacking in any humour at present, Father,’ he replied, trying a small jest. His father did not smile, or even acknowledge that he had spoken at all.
‘These two smaller ones are called the radius and the ulna.’ Tapping each one with the tip of his forefinger, slightly smearing his sketch. ‘Radius and ulna. Here in the anterolateral view.’
‘But what of my recovery, Father?’ asked John, trying to conceal his impatience.
He had lain in his bed, scarcely moving except when he needed to attend to his bodily functions, for every one of the ten days since the accident with Morgana. A passing carter had found him several hours after the fall and the blow. John had been barely conscious, not knowing where he was. The
bay mare had been quietly grazing at the hedgerow only a few yards from her fallen master.
That day was only in his memory as scattered fragments, like broken crystal. There was the carter helping him into the wain. Jarring the smashed elbow. Long darkness. Ruth Ferris’s concerned face, a single pearl of a tear on her cheek. Brief words.
‘You have your wish, Mother.’
‘How?’
‘You wished I would not fight against the King.’
‘Aye, son.’
‘Now I fear me I shall never fight any man. Not ever again.’
The sleeping and waking, starting in a sweat, despite the cold of the weather. The blankets kicked off as he fought the pain. He had known from the unguarded expression on his father’s face, as soon as he saw the drea
dful injury, that it was worse than he’d thought.
The pain came and went. Sometimes welling at him like a flood tide, and sometimes merely there in the background. Like a persistent mouse nibbling
behind the arras. The doctor did what he could for his son, but it was a fearful break.
‘In most such blows, only a part of one bone will be cracked. Merely cracked, John. But with you, there are severe breaks to all three bones. Here, here, and two more here,’ stabbing again with his finger at the pane of the leaded window.
The first task had been to return the sharp, splintered bones to their rightful places, within the ravaged flesh of the elbow joint. The Ferris’ elderly servant, Joshua Lightlantern, had told John about it during the tedious days in the bedroom.
‘Dreadful, it were, Master John. I cannot yet set my tongue to callin’ you “Captain” John, though I know that be your title.’
‘Captain, no longer, Joshua. I will not carry arms again.’
‘Blood flowed all across the table, and me holdin’ a lamp so your dear father could do his work. He were weepin’ as he cut and stitched, he were.
Moanin’ and carryin’ on. Sayin’ that you might lose the arm and then what would you do?’
It was a question that had bothered John Ferris mightily during that first week. His father came to the side of his bed a dozen times each day, checking the wound. Gently opening the bandages and smelling at it, trying to detect the odour of corruption and decay that would have meant the amputation of the entire limb. But John was healthy enough and the cold weather aided his healing. Within eight days Doctor Thomas was able to reassure his patient that his arm would be saved.
‘Then I can soldier again?’
The answer took some time.
‘I said that you would not lose that arm, John. I did not say it would ever again be. . . be as it had once been.’
‘Am Ito be crippled?’
His father shook his head at that, ‘No. Cripple is too strong a word for it. There will always be a clumsiness. The damage was grave. Bones and the
pads that lie between them. All torn beyond my poor skill.’
‘I will be able to ride?’
His father laughed. ‘You and that animal. Had it not been for your dear Mother’s pleas I would have taken a poleaxe to the brute myself for what it
had done to my only son. Yes, yes, you shall ride again. You shall do everything you did ‘ere the accident. But some things will be less easy and you will do them with less skill.’
‘Will I play the viola?’
‘I think not, but. . .‘
‘Aye, I could not play it before so the loss is but little.’
That time his father did see the jest and joined his merriment.
Word came before the end of the month that Captain John Ferris was to be relieved of his command and was to be invalided out of the New Model Army, before he had even properly joined it. And that the grateful country had agreed him a pension of one shilling and four pence a week.
Ruth carne and sat with him on the day the messenger brought the letter. She was doing some sewing, working on the corner of a lace kerchief, carefully embroidering tiny blue flowers.
‘Forget-me-nots, John,’ she smiled. The afternoon light threw long shadows across his room, reflecting off the framed tract on the further wall.
‘Father told you of my pension?’ She nodded. ‘Perhaps I shall buy myself a loaf of bread a day with it and sit by some quiet well.’
She patted him on the wrist. ‘Be not so cast down. Your father and I love you mightily and we would not see you so brought low.’
‘I know and I vow not to become tedious with my own miseries.’
She smiled at him once more. ‘Your father has asked me to give you some tidings. Tidings that will cheer you, I think.’
‘Tell me. There is a grievous shortage of such news.’
‘Your Uncle Humphrey Ferris has passed on. We heard a week back, but we felt you should not be bothered until you were stronger.’
‘The vintner, from Maidenhead?’
She nodded. ‘The brother of your father, John. A fine man though too partial to his own products. It was that which carried him off. Near a gallon of claret and a surfeit of fried eels.’
‘I had not seen him in many a year, Mother. A stout man with a full belly and a wall-eye.’
‘Yes. To cut a lengthy tale down, he was willed your father his estate.’
‘Much?’
Ruth Ferris bit her lip and looked down. A habit of hers when she was pleased but wished to conceal the fact. John saw it and forgot the pain of his shattered left elbow for a few moments.
‘Near two thousand guineas, John.’
‘A fortune!’
‘And we wish you to have one half of it, son.’
His mouth opened and he readied himself to refuse the offer when Ruth lifted her right hand, palm open. ‘One word, John Ferris, to say you will
rebuff, us, and I swear I shall strike you such a buffet across the ears that your head will ring like a welkin. Now, I mean it, John.’
‘But a thousand guineas. . .‘
‘We have all we need here in Hertford. It will be good to have a small nest-egg if times should grow more hard as the land plunges towards darkness. But you need it more than we do, John. Now you can no longer be a soldier.’
‘A thousand guineas. I could buy a farm, out towards Ware. Or Hunsdon. And have wealth enow to stock it with good cattle. Oh, Mother. . .! How can I. . .?‘
‘It is enough for us to see you happy, John. That is our care and our happiness. And we shall, mayhap, see a little more of you now that you are
not to be off fighting hither and thither.’
‘Indeed, I cannot thank you as I would wish.’ Unaccountably his eyes filled with tears. Happiness that his future was solved at a single stroke. A relation he barely knew, bloated and drunk, dying. And now he was rich. John Ferris laughed and laughed, laying back against the snowy pillows,
feeling purged of the stink of the battles and the deaths. A farmer he would be.
And a good son to his parents.
And...
‘I am well enough to see Mary, Mother. Can Joshua take word to her that. . .?‘
His mother shook her head. ‘Lackaday, Johnny. Would such a virtuous maid come to your beckoning and calling? No message will bring her.’
His face fell at the news. ‘But if Joshua was to go and ask her to...‘
Ruth picked up her sewing and stood, head on one side. ‘I cannot chaff you, and you still white and drawn with that poor limb. She is here, John.
Waiting only my call to climb the stairs and see you.’
He found it hard to believe that life could offer such a change. Only minutes before he had been sunk into the slough of despondency, unable to see around the next bend in the pathway of life. Seeing only bleakness and pain and penury.
Now all that was changed.
Riches and his beloved Mary.
‘Oh, sweet day,’ he sighed.
Mary Villers was nineteen years of age. The youngest child of a strict Puritan family that lived in a neat cottage in the village of Widford, only a few miles away from Hertford. Her father, Jabez, was a stone-mason. Her mother had died a couple of years back of a bloody flux, brought on by
drinking fouled water during a drought in the summer. Mary was a pretty girl, with long flaxen hair that she wore tied back in a severe coil to comply with her father’s wishes. She was the tenth child born to Jabez and Martha Villers, seven of whom still lived. An unusually high proportion at a time of staggering infant mortality.
Like many of the more rigid Puritans, Jabez had given his sons names with a high moral tone. The oldest boy was Praise-God Villers. Then came Reformation and Diligence, twin brothers. The other surviving son was called Seek Wisdom And Deny Sin Villers.
There had been little love lost between the Villers and Ferris families, and John and Mary never had the chan
ce to see anything of each other. But the death of Martha had changed all of that.
John’s father had refused to help, knowing that the Puritans were hostile towards him and his family for their Royalist leanings. This was before
John had enlisted with the Parliamentary forces. But Mary had called on him, falling to her knees and begging for his aid to try and save her mother and two of the boys who were also dying from the illness.
The call came too late for Martha Villers, but Diligence and Praise-God were both spared. Jabez Villers was a hard man, but he was also a fair one,
and he came and shook the hand of Thomas Ferris.
With that reconciliation had come the chance for friendship between Mary and John. The chance that they had both so eagerly embraced. During the
months friendship had slipped unnoticed to affection, and then into love, though it must be admitted that lust had also played a large part in their relationship. John had been virtually a virgin, having only swived a handful of times with local trulls from Hertford. Mary Villers was an enthusiastic player of the game of sexual encounters and she had taken him as a boy and brought him panting into full manhood.
Jabez knew nothing of this. Had he learned of their frequent couplings, with no benefit of clergy, he would have taken his stone-mason’s great
hammer and crushed the head of the tall youth.
Their love for each other grew and grew. If the truth be told, in the early days of their relationship there were times when Mary’s passion for making the beast with two backs between the blankets almost frightened him. She would, on occasion, rut like a bitch in heat. Her eyes would roll back white in their sockets and her mouth would open like a poacher’s spring trap, teeth gleaming. Oft-times she would moan and cry out so loudly that it became their practice to use a gag of soft cloth to quiet her, lest any of her relatives should hear her.
