The King James Men

by Samantha Grosser

  ‘What have I done?’ Ben murmured. His lips barely moved and the words were so quiet that Richard could not have sworn he heard them.

  ‘It was God’s will.’

  ‘Why?’ Ben asked, turning. ‘Why would He take Cecily and the child? Why did He not take me?’

  ‘It is the woman’s lot to bring forth children in sorrow …’

  ‘If I had not married her she would still be alive.’

  ‘You cannot blame yourself. God takes many women in childbirth.’

  ‘You are kind Richard and I’m grateful you are my friend, but this time you’re wrong. She’s dead because of me.’

  Tears welled and he tipped his head back, trying to force them down. Failing, he turned his head away, gaze resting blindly on some point far beyond the bars. Richard let his hand slip from Ben’s shoulder and the grieving man did not notice.

  ‘When we married,’ Ben said, without moving his eyes, ‘she told me that God had brought us together for a reason, for some purpose of His own we could not know.’ He turned then and the look in his eyes was so bleak Richard had to look away. ‘What purpose, Richard? What possible purpose?’

  ‘We cannot know His purpose. We just have to trust in Him. Blessed be the man that trusteth in the Lord. Have faith, Ben.’

  ‘Why?’ Ben spat. ‘Why should I have faith? Look at what it has brought me to.’ He lifted his manacled hands and gestured round the cell with a tilt of his chin. ‘Look at what faith has done to my wife. To my child. My son.’

  Richard was silent, nothing he could think of to say in the face of Ben’s crisis. He had never thought to see his friend lose his faith.

  ‘You are not yourself,’ he said at last.

  ‘I am nothing,’ Ben replied, spitting out the words through rigid lips. ‘Worse than nothing.’

  ‘You are God’s child.’

  Ben slid his eyes away. The fire of his anger waned and without it he seemed diminished.

  ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘There is no God.’

  Richard stared. ‘You are not yourself,’ he repeated. Ben’s unbelief frightened him, his own faith threatened by the other man’s fall. For all their differences their faith had connected them, their shared love of God, each one sustaining the other on the path, and through their countless arguments his own belief was strengthened and confirmed.

  ‘Pray with me,’ he said.

  But his words went unheard. Ben’s head was pressed once more against the cold metal bars as he wept. A silence filled the cell, broken only by the small sounds of Ben’s sobs as he fought against his darkness. Richard faltered, uncertain how to reach his friend and embarrassed by the weeping. He was afraid of what he saw, unable to imagine the horror of losing his faith. God was the centre of his being, the rock on which his life was built: without it his life would be as dust. His mind recoiled from the void, terrified, and long moments passed before he found his strength, God’s hand reaching out to him.

  ‘Pray with me,’ he said again. It was all he could think of to save his friend and bring him back within God’s grace: he could not simply let him fall to his damnation. Raising his hand again, he touched gentle fingers to the other man’s shoulder. For a moment it seemed that Ben was unaware of it. Then, awkwardly, because of the shackles, he grasped Richard’s hand in his own and lowered his head against it. His chest still vibrated with half-checked sobs as Richard moved to take him in his arms, his body frail in his embrace. The once-lean strength had shrunk to gauntness in the weeks of his imprisonment and Richard held him uneasily, Ben’s pain too raw to touch.

  He held him for what seemed like an age as Ben wept in silence, face hidden, body trembling against him. He could think of nothing to say, no comfort to offer: all the words of Scripture that came to mind seemed powerless against Ben’s darkness. So instead, he prayed in silence, begging God’s mercy for his friend, his own face wet with tears as he pleaded. He had never thought to witness such pain, and never felt so helpless. The minutes dragged by, Ben’s despair bottomless, fathomless, and for the first time Richard truly understood the meaning of Hell.

  He prayed. Cast him not away from Thy presence, O Lord. Take not the holy spirit away from him. Restore him to the joy of Thy salvation. Have mercy upon him, Lord, have mercy …

  Finally, he was startled by a rattle at the door that broke the moment. Slowly, painfully, Ben unfolded himself from his friend and turned his gaze back towards the foetid river. The rattle grew louder and the door was shoved open, the misshapen boards catching on the stone.

  ‘Time’s up.’ The rough voice rasped against his tautened nerves.

  ‘I have to go now, Ben,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t know when they will let me come again.’ He waited, wondering if his friend had even heard him, but as he began to back away Ben turned again and grasped at Richard’s retreating hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, squeezing his fingers. ‘Pray for me.’

  Richard nodded. ‘God keep you,’ he said. Then he turned and walked away and the door slammed hard behind him.

  Chapter 13

  Summer 1605

  And now brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you vp, and to giue you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.

  (Acts 20:32)

  * * *

  Ellyn’s wedding, and she was confident in a new gown of emerald silk with yellow roses in her hair, apparently enjoying the attention. She had not spoken of her fears to Ben again, accepting her fate and trusting, he hoped, in God. But in the days leading up to the wedding she had been fractious and snappy, and the relief that it was done at last was clear on the faces of his parents when she and Hugh Merton were finally joined as man and wife. There was not one person in the household who had not half expected a drama on the day.

  Ben had set aside his misgivings to be at the wedding, begging advice from Brewster, and from God. He had agonised about it for weeks, in prayer and reflection, his love for his sister doing battle with his beliefs. Christ had commanded that His followers love Him above their families, that they put their fathers and mothers, their sisters and brothers aside to follow Him. So how could he attend a marriage in a church that was filled with the wicked and profane, built on Romish superstition, to parrot prayers and rituals that had no base in Scripture? It was not a church as Christ commanded – a faithful people gathered by the Word unto Him. He knew what Henry Barrow would have told him – just to set foot inside could endanger his immortal soul. At the very least he would have risked his place in Barrow’s church, where there was no room for men whose faith was weak. And if Barrow had been willing to hang for that belief, how could Ben justify going?

  Ironically, it was Richard who suggested the solution, Richard who understood his distress.

  ‘Stand at the door,’ he had said. ‘Watch but don’t enter. See your sister married but don’t participate.’

  ‘My father …’

  ‘Your father will be so relieved that Ellyn is doing her duty that he will not give a fig where you stand.’

  He allowed himself a rueful smile as he thought of it, waiting now at the churchyard gate for his sister to emerge. Richard had been right, of course; his father had barely noticed him, the older man’s attention wholly taken by his daughter. It had been a compromise, and though he would still spend hours begging for forgiveness, confessing the sin of his earthly love for his sister, he was not utterly dejected.

  The struggle brought back bittersweet memories of another wedding and a similar agony of conflict, and no compromise that could solve it. Cecily had insisted the marriage take place in the church or it would not take place at all. She would accept all the rest, she had told him, she would partner him willingly in all the hardships of their future, but their marriage must be sanctified by a priest of the English Church. A proper wedding, she had called it, that no man could ever question.

  He had begged, he recalled, on his knees before her, the only time he ever knelt, bu
t she had not wavered. Now, when he thought of her, it was that expression he remembered, the stern, still features, a hardness to hide the sadness within. And even though he knew that afterwards she smiled with him often, softening and tender, he had no memory of how she looked when she was happy: he could only picture the pain. He had relented of course, and married her in the church as she wanted, his need for her too great to resist, his desire unquenchable. It had been a test, he knew now, a test that he had failed. Choosing desire before his faith, the love of a woman over love of God: his sinfulness had led them both astray. Now she and the babe lay just behind the church in a grave he could not bring himself to visit, and he spent each day living with the knowledge of his sin and his unworthiness. It was a heavy cross to bear.

  Ellyn’s marriage celebrations at Thieving Lane lasted late into the evening, music and dancing and feasting, the numbers only starting to dwindle as the end of the long summer twilight lingered in the sky. Night fell slowly, the darkness creeping up unnoticed as the last guests began to find their way into the street, their laughter and chatter still noisy through the open windows as they said their farewells to one another. When the house was quiet at last, Thomas Kemp called his son to him in his study and they sat either side of the great oak desk that occupied the centre of the floor, the hub of everything that Thomas Kemp had built. Around the walls were books and ledgers and the great wooden chests where the Company’s documents were stored away, a record of the many years of business. Across the surface of the desk between them papers were arranged in neat piles. Ben cast an appraising merchant’s eye across them, the habit of his years in the Company, but nothing caught his interest. As a child, this room had symbolised manhood to Ben, a grown-up world of business and trade. Whenever he thought of his father he saw him at this desk, face stern with concentration, candles blazing late into the night, the room barren of any decoration or comfort.

  After the warmth of the hall, the night air in the study was cool in spite of the season. A tree of candles placed on the desk threw light across his father’s face, but around him the room was dim, the corners of the room lost in darkness. Laughter from the departing guests rippled through the house, and beyond the windows a man’s shout went up from the street. Ben thought of his sister with her new husband now, a few streets away in their new home, and hoped that Merton was using her gently, while his father shuffled the papers on his desk, rearranging their order, tutting with apparent dissatisfaction. One of the servants brought wine and poured it into the best Venetian glasses, kept safe in the study away from the careless hands of the wedding guests. Then he hovered, hoping to stay and learn more of his master’s business. But the older Kemp dismissed him with a wave of his hand and the boy left them, closing the door with care behind him so it would not slam.

  The two men raised their glasses. ‘To Ellyn,’ Kemp said.

  ‘To Ellyn.’

  They drank. Ben observed his father, waiting, sensing some kind of bad news was coming. He guessed it would be another plea for him to go east, or to Holland, some business his father would claim he needed his son to do. He steeled himself, a tension falling, the lifelong pitting of wills. His father took a deep breath, his ample chest rising under its cover of black velvet. He had grown stout the last few years, the perfect figure of a rich city merchant. But his face was lined, and the hair across his pate was thinning now and grey. Ben thought, We are all of us growing older.

  His father took another quick breath, drained his glass and placed it carefully on the desk before him. Ben watched him. Whatever it was his father had to say, he seemed reluctant to say it. The older man’s fingers remained on the stem of the glass, twirling it gently to and fro, watching the shimmering reflection of the candlelight for a while before he let it go and looked up to regard his son with the same expression he might use against a dealer he suspected of trying to fleece him. Finally he spoke.

  ‘Now that your sister is provided for, I have made my will.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Yes. Indeed.’ He paused and in the space Ben understood what was coming. He was going to be disinherited. Merton was going to take his place. He lowered his glass to the desk so that in his agitation he wouldn’t snap the stem and give his father one more thing to hold against him.

  He said, ‘And I am not going to inherit.’

  ‘You will be well provided for. Well provided.’

  ‘But …?’

  Thomas Kemp sighed and made a temple with his fingers before his lips. ‘Here’s how it stands, Benjamin. You have no desire to take over the business. Agreed?’

  But I am still your son, Ben thought, and it is my birthright. I learned the trade as you asked of me. Three years’ apprenticeship in Amsterdam, eight years more in the Company to please you, seven of them in the East in an unchristian place a long way from home. The injustice of it rankled bitterly, but he swallowed back the words and said nothing, forcing his breathing to slow.

  ‘You have not the interest to keep the trade going. What do you care for the price of silk? The shipping trade? You’ve said as much yourself. It bores you and I count myself partly to blame for that. I should have involved you from a younger age instead of sending you off to Cambridge to have your head stuffed full of radical nonsense,’ his father went on. ‘But what’s done is done. You became the man you are and I can do nothing to change it, however much I might wish it. The reality is, Benjamin, that you would destroy everything I’ve built for this family. You have no wife, no child—’

  ‘I lost my wife and child.’ Cecily, and the baby that never lived to see the light of day.

  ‘A man needs a wife, a family. It is as God willed. Ten years have passed and you’ve shown no inclination to marry again.’

  ‘Because …’

  ‘Because why?’

  Because of my faith, he wanted to say. Because he would not put another woman and child in danger for his faith. He said, ‘I can’t explain it.’

  His father observed him for a moment, shrewd merchant’s eyes assessing. Then, ‘Well, perhaps it’s better I don’t know after all.’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘I have given you many chances. Holland, Aleppo …’

  ‘Only to keep me away from these shores.’

  ‘It was to keep you in the Company. And to keep you safe. What man doesn’t want these things for his son? To keep him safe and build on what has gone before? Going to the East served its purpose. I would that you had stayed there longer.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I would have you go back but you’ve refused. What am I to do? Do you think I want to give it all to another man’s son?’

  ‘And the house?’

  ‘You wish to live in London now?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a silence. Two pairs of footsteps thudded along the landing outside the door. They could hear them bounding down the stairs, then raucous laughter cutting through the quiet of the room.

  ‘So the terms of the will are what, exactly?’ Let’s just get to the details, he thought. We already know all the rest.

  His father sighed. Perhaps he had hoped for more understanding from his son, for less hostility. He said, ‘Merton gets more or less everything.’

  ‘Even the house?’

  ‘Your mother will keep it for her lifetime. Then yes, it will go to Merton.’

  Kemp made a little waving gesture with his hand. ‘Of course there are sundry items for the household, bits and pieces here and there. And there will be a sum of money for you – enough, I think, to keep you well. You are, after all, a man of modest wants and you have no family to keep.’

  ‘I am aware of it.’

  ‘Then there is no more to say on the matter.’

  Actually, there was plenty more to say, he thought, but it would go unsaid because what would be the point? Instead, he would take his hurt and his resentment back to Scrooby, and the bitterness that his father had made another man his son instead of him. All his life h
e had borne the knowledge of his father’s disappointment, the unspoken wish that Ben had been a different kind of man. They had never seen eye to eye on anything – even as a boy he had sensed the older man’s frustration with him. But however hard he tried, he could never be the boy his father wanted, his best efforts always falling short. And he had never been able to fathom what it was he was doing wrong. Not until he found his faith, at least, and his father’s dissatisfaction with him found its focus. Even so, he had never thought to be disinherited.

  He swallowed, forcing down the hurt so his father would not see it. Then he stood up and flicked his eyes around a room that would never now be his but another man’s, a man who at this very moment was probably consummating his claim. He should have taken Ellyn with him when she asked it, instead of working on his father’s side towards his own disinheritance.

  At the door he turned back. ‘Goodnight to you, sir.’

  His father softened, fingertips resting lightly on the desk. ‘I am sorry, Benjamin. I am truly sorry it has come to this. But what else could I do?’

  ‘You want my approval?’

  Kemp dropped his eyes to the desk and began to shuffle his papers once again. ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘No, of course not.’

  When he looked up again, his son had already gone.

  In the morning Ben went to his sister’s. He found the house easily: a few streets away from Thieving Lane, it was a rambling old building set close to the river, and the front room housed a spice shop behind narrow windows that glimmered in the morning sun. A rusty sign squeaked above the door. He knocked and waited, and from beyond the end of the street he could hear the shouts of the watermen and the splash and thud of oars. In the air hung the faint taint of the sea. Ellyn should like it this close to the water, he thought, she would be able to hear the tide at night.