by Ian Mortimer
‘Then so be it, Mister Pethybridge,’ answers Mister Green.
Mister Pethybridge puts his eye-windows back on, shuffles some pieces of paper on the writing pedestal, and picks up his quill. He dips the nib in the ink and looks at me. ‘Name?’
‘Your name,’ says Mister Birch, kicking me in the shin with the side of his foot.
‘John of Wrayment,’ I say.
‘What is your surname?’
‘I don’t have one.’
Mister Pethybridge looks at me as if I were a spider. ‘What was your father’s name?’
‘Simon,’ I say.
‘John Simonson, then,’ says Mister Pethybridge. ‘Age?’
‘Four hundred and thirty-three years.’
He looks at me over the rim of his eye-windows. ‘I can easily give you ten times as many lashes. When were you born?’
‘The Wednesday after Whitsun in the fifth year of the king’s reign.’
‘Which reign? King George the First? You’re older than twenty-five.’
‘King Edward the Second.’
He shakes his head. ‘If you mean the reign of Queen Anne, then you’re thirty-eight. If you mean King William the Third, then you’re fifty-one. Which one is it?
I shrug.
‘You look nearer thirty-eight. Parish of origin?’
‘Moreton.’
‘You mean Moretonhampstead?’
‘That is what they call it now.’
‘Occupation?’
‘What is that?’
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘Stonemason.’
‘Married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Children?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘Three.’
‘Ages?’
‘They’ll all be dead by now.’
‘So, no children then. Can you read and write?’
I shake my head.
‘Arithmetic?’
I shrug.
He puts the quill down, and holds up the piece of paper, checking it. He sets it down again. ‘In a minute you’ll see the doctor, who will examine you and bleed you. But first, these are the rules. Remember them well. You will rise each morning with the bell at six. Breakfast is three ounces of bread and an ounce of cheese, with half a pint of beer. Dinner is eight ounces of beef, four ounces of bread, a pint of beer and coleworts, peas or beans. Supper: bread, cheese and beer. You will work at spinning worsted until six each day, and attend chapel on Sundays – except in your case, you will have left by Sunday. No singing at any time. No dancing at any time. No running or shouting at any time. No indecent exposure of your body at any time. Any failure to obey an order from a warden will result in whipping and loss of food. Interference with female inmates will result in one hundred lashes and incarceration in the dark house for two weeks, on half-rations, followed by permanent expulsion from the workhouse. Sodomy will result in your being handed over to the city authorities for trial and hanging. Acts of violence against other inmates will result in whipping and an appropriate period in the dark house. Do you have any questions?’
I shake my head.
Mister Pethybridge picks up the paper on which he has been writing and says, ‘Follow me.’ He walks across the hall, opens a door and goes through.
Mister Green unties the rope binding my hands and pushes me forward. ‘Follow the warden.’
I walk across the stone floor to the door and look down a long corridor. Mister Pethybridge emerges again from the right and gestures for me to enter the room. ‘Doctor Hallett will see you straight away.’
The doctor’s room is high-ceilinged and glazed, with a fire burning low in the hearth. There is a thick woven fabric on the floorboards, which reminds me of the one I saw covering a chest in Master Hodge’s house in Moreton two days ago. Painted pictures hang on the walls in black frames, and a small clock stands on the shelf above the fireplace. At a table, writing in a book, sits a man of about sixty. He has a small round head, grey hair turned in curls at the bottom, a white scarf tied around his neck, and a long black overtunic, which is buttoned up over his chest. He does not look up. The movements of his hands are very precise, despite his age. A bench stands against the wall on my right; on my left is a large cabinet full of drawers.
I look out through the window. The whipping post stands in the yard at the back of the building.
Doctor Hallett glances at the piece of paper. ‘John Simonson?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see you are a stonemason. Any history of injury?’
‘I have some scars from past battles. A few more from slipped chisels and careless hammering.’
‘Any severe illnesses?’
‘What?’
‘Have you ever experienced any bouts of a serious illness? Smallpox, for example, or syphilis?’
‘I was plague-stricken once.’
He shakes his head. ‘That was probably malaria. Were you living near water when you suffered this affliction?’
‘It was the plague.’
‘There haven’t been any outbreaks of plague in this country for over seventy years.’
‘None? No plague at all?’ I think of the disease as a dragon preying on the people for so many years, at last being killed by Saint George.
‘Not since the reign of King Charles the Second . . .’
My mind spins again. ‘The second? What happened to King Charles the First?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You said “Charles the Second”. What happened to Charles the First? I want to know what happened to the Royalist cause. They were all set to lose – they only had Exeter and Oxford left to them.’
‘Charles the First was beheaded, as every child in this country knows. But the Commonwealth government fell apart after Cromwell’s death ten years later, and General Monck recalled the prince to reign as Charles the Second in sixteen-sixty. Is that good enough for you?’
I think of Mister and Mistress Parlebone and wonder if they lived to see their monarch’s son crowned. Or maybe they accepted the government of Cromwell and were later found to be disloyal. I have no way of knowing.
He looks back down at his book. ‘You are illiterate. No knowledge of arithmetic.’
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Can you count?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you add up? Subtract?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is one thousand less one hundred and fifty-three?’
‘Eight hundred and forty-seven.’
Doctor Hallett raises an eyebrow. ‘And seven times seven?’
‘Forty-nine.’
‘Fifteen times fifteen?’
‘Two hundred and twenty-five.’
He sits back and looks at me. ‘Thirty-five times thirty-five?’
I see Doctor Hallett making a note on the side of the book in front of him. ‘One thousand two hundred and twenty-five,’ I say while he is still writing.
He looks up at me and says nothing. He crosses something out and then writes something else down. ‘Where did you go to school?’
‘I never went to school, Mister Hallett.’
‘Doctor Hallett,’ he corrects me.
‘I am sorry, Doctor Hallett. I was never schooled.’
‘And yet you can multiply faster than I can.’
He gets out of his chair and comes and stands in front of me. He looks me up and down. ‘Hold out your hands,’ he orders.
I do so.
‘The ring: is it yours?’
‘It belonged to my late brother, and before him, to our father.’
He examines my arms, my neck, my hair and inside my mouth. ‘Will you please lower your breeches,’ he says.
I do as I am told. The doctor looks at my private parts. ‘No sores? Itchiness?’
‘No, Doctor Hallett.’
‘Good.’ He returns to his table and takes a glass flask. He hands it to me. ‘Could you urinat
e in this for me, please?’
‘What?’
‘Piss into it. If clear, it will assure Mister Pethybridge and Mister Kinner that you are not carrying a disease, which may in turn save your life.’
He passes me the flask, and looks out of the window. I have great difficulty producing anything: I have not drunk enough recently. Eventually a small trickle comes out. ‘That is all I can do.’
He takes the flask from me and holds it up to the light. ‘Brackish but otherwise clear.’ He sets the flask on the table. ‘You are lousy and flea-bitten and have a number of historic wounds but that’s all. No smallpox scars. You’ll be washed in the morning. Your hair will be cut then, and so will your nails. I strongly recommend you hide that ring – do not let the wardens see it. Are you otherwise well in yourself now?’
‘I am,’ I reply, turning the garnet of William’s ring inwards.
‘Turds solid and free from blood and blackness?’
‘As far as I remember.’
‘Good. In that case, I will just draw a modicum of blood now.’
He goes over to the cabinet and gets out a silver basin and a knife. He gestures for me to sit on the bench. Having rolled up my sleeve, he gently turns my arm, trying to catch some light from the north-facing window. There is the cut from my self-adminstered bloodletting.
‘How recent is that one?’ he asks.
‘Four days ago,’ I reply.
He says nothing but makes a small incision on the inside of my lower arm, just beside the last cut. Holding the basin ready, he releases the blood but lets it run gradually.
‘Take the basin, please.’
I do so.
‘You are aware, they intend to flay the skin off your back,’ he says, returning to the cabinet.
‘The mayor has ordered twenty lashes.’
‘Such is the hypocrisy of this place.’ He pulls a bandage out of a drawer.
I am surprised. ‘Do you find it so?’
‘Look at this building: it was designed to shield the observer from the horrors that lie within. It shows the outside world that everything is in order while containing a living Hell in which people are locked up and beaten, whipped and sometimes killed. I have been called to attend to boys who have had their limbs broken in here and young girls whose bodies have been irreparably damaged through lustful violence. Many of those whom we call idiots have no option but to come here, where they are at least fed and tolerated. You will see many lost souls staring into space within these walls. In here too are men and women who have more insidious diseases of the mind: who behave normally for the most part but cannot deal with some aspect of life, so they fight, or commit unspeakable acts, or foul themselves regularly. It is appalling that they are allowed to bring up their children in here: what sort of impression does that leave on the little ones? Yes, of course it is a place of hypocrisy.’
‘But why does the king allow it? Why do you not petition His Highness and tell him what injustices are perpetrated in his name?’
‘Let me put it like this, Simonson,’ he begins – but then he pauses. He reaches up and pulls off all his silver hair, and runs his fingers over the few wisps of real grey hair around the sides and back. His head is actually a dome of blotched skin. He inspects the silver curls of the wig, and brushes off some dust before replacing it. ‘As you can see, by nature we are revolting and ugly – or at least most of us are. Think of the old hag with her rouge and whitener; think of me with my wig. We put a brave face on things. Is that a crime? Do you think it offensive to cover up our ugliness? No. A lie is not always a bad thing. So it is with society. There are unattractive corners in our population, which must be corrected or covered up in some way. It is hypocrisy, I grant you, but it is hypocrisy with a brave face. One that makes life easier to bear for the majority.’
He staunches the flow of my blood with a dressing and bids me press on it. Then he starts to bind my arm with the bandage.
‘Doctor Hallett, are we still at war with France?’
‘Of course. We have been now for about three years. Why do you ask?’
‘Three years? Not four hundred?’
‘I know it can feel like centuries but in truth we tend to fight the French intermittently, not all the time.’
‘We’ve been fighting every ninety-nine years. Against the French in thirteen forty-eight, fourteen forty-seven and fifteen forty-six, against our fellow Englishmen in sixteen forty-five, and now against the French again in seventeen forty-four.’
‘And we’ll no doubt still be fighting in eighteen forty-three too. Only this year we started fighting the French in North America, to check their colonial ambitions on that continent.’
‘Where is this place, North America?’
‘Its east coast is three and a half thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean. And it stretches for three thousand miles beyond that. Sit on the bench, if you please.’
‘And then what is there beyond North America?’
‘Six thousand miles of the Pacific Ocean.’
‘And then?’
‘Eight thousand miles of the Asian continent, until you come to Constantinople.’
‘So the world is round?’
‘A sphere. Floating around the Sun in the vacuum of space.’
I shake my head. ‘No, it is the other way round. The Sun floats around the Earth. You can see it passing across the sky, from the east to the west.’
‘You’re not a Catholic, are you?’
‘Some say I am.’
‘I would keep quiet about that too, if I were you. They intend to flog you as it is; if they find out you are a Catholic, they’ll enjoy it all the more. However, for your information, the papal teaching on the matter is wrong. There is no doubt that the Sun is at the centre of our solar system. What you see when the Sun appears to go around the Earth is actually due to the rotation of the Earth.’
He picks up the piece of paper and runs his eye down it. ‘Unless you have any other burning questions, I believe that is all.’
He picks up a walking stick and follows me out of the room and back into the hall. The beadles who brought me here have gone but two other men are waiting there with Mister Pethybridge. ‘This Simonson is a clever man, Pethybridge,’ he announces, tapping me with his stick. ‘I hope you will not be too hard on him.’
‘Noted, Doctor Hallett,’ says Mister Pethybridge, unlocking the heavy front door for the doctor. ‘I’ll see to his care, don’t worry.’
Mister Pethybridge closes the door and locks it again. He speaks without looking at me. ‘You’ll have to keep your own clothes until morning, when you’ll be bathed. In the meantime, you will go to the spinning hall where you’ll work until six. Your whipping will take place after that, when Mister Kinner arrives.’
I look from Mister Pethybridge’s face to those of the men with him. One is a particularly unpleasant-looking fellow of about thirty. His companion is a thin man about ten years older, with blue eyes and unkempt, straw-coloured hair.
‘Simonson, you will go with Mister Rogers here. He’ll take you to the spinning hall.’
Mister Rogers is the blue-eyed thin man. He leads me down along a corridor on the far wing of the building to the end where there is a long hall, with large windows on one side. It is furnished with three lines of solidly built tables running most of the length of the room, on top of which there are many machines with large wooden wheels. These make a constant ‘clackety-clack’ rattle as men and women attend them, spinning yarn. At the end is a workshop where people sit on low benches making baskets. Two men are going from table to table, lighting smoking tallow candles on iron candlesticks, as the daylight is fading. Here and there are benches on which old women talk in pairs. Children hang around their skirts, bothering them with questions, or chasing each other.
Mister Rogers leads me to a table where there is an idle machine. He tells me that the women on either side will assist me if I need help. Then he leaves.
I sit and look to m
y left. The woman there is in her thirties, plain, with long unkempt brown hair, wearing a faded blue tunic with a dirty white apron over the front. She has bags under her eyes and a deep ridge in her forehead which resembles a permanent frown.
‘What is your name?’ I ask her.
She looks at me briefly and then returns to her work. ‘Hettie,’ she says.
I stare at the machine in front of me. ‘I do not know how this works.’
‘Watch Rose and me. You’ll soon pick it up.’
I turn to my right – and my heart stops.
It is Catherine.
I stare at her. She is young again, about fourteen. She moves in the same way that my wife did. Her face looks the same, her shoulders too. Her grey skirt is dirty, and she wipes her hands on its hem without looking at it – again, just like Catherine used to do. Her hair has been cut by an inexpert hand and is only partially covered by her thin white head covering. But there is the same beauty to her that I recall from my own time.
‘Catherine?’
She does not acknowledge that I have spoken to her. When she briefly glances at me, some moments later, it is due to an awareness that I am looking at her. Her dark eyes have the same beauty. But there is not a flicker of recognition.
I turn to my machine but I cannot use it. My hands are shaking.
I take a deep breath and look back at her. She is feeding her combed wool into a hole, which is twisted by the action of a small wheel on to a long metal spindle. She carefully works it, ensuring the wool remains at an even tension – neither allowing it to get too thin, so it breaks, nor letting it get too fat, so it makes an uneven bulge in the yarn. When she comes to the end of the wool on her distaff, she stops the wheel and goes to a basket against the wall behind us, and fetches some more; this she winds on to the end of the spun yarn.
‘Would you help me?’ I ask her, tentatively.
‘Rose doesn’t speak,’ says Hettie, who is busy removing a spindle full of yarn from the machine.
When Rose’s wheel starts moving again by itself, I look for the cause. Under the table is an artful mechanism: by moving her feet on two platforms she can drive two levers that in turn make the wheel rotate, seemingly of its own accord, leaving her hands free to even out the wool.
