A Crowning Mercy

by Bernard Cornwell

  Scammell! It had to be Scammell! Campion had told him the whole story and he had made her tell it again and again as he searched for an escape within the legal tangle of will, Covenant and marriage settlement. He wondered, as he pushed through the evening crowds, whether it was another name from the letter, Lopez perhaps, who had seized her, but if he was to rescue her then he had to make his own fateful decision about which of her enemies had taken her and his instinct said Scammell. A maker of boats, she had said, and the barge on which she had gone looked lavish and fitting for a boat-maker.

  He turned off the Strand, banging into a solid merchant who shouted at him, and then he was taking the steps of Exeter Street down toward the line of people who waited for watermen.

  A pikestaff slammed across the narrow street, stopped him, and a breastplated soldier moved in front of him. Two more came up behind him. “In a hurry, lad?”

  “Yes!” God damn! A patrol! One of the many that Parliament put into the streets to search for deserters.

  They had him against the wall now. The other people using the street sidled at the far side, not wishing to be involved in any kind of trouble. The soldier who had stopped him looked Toby up and down. “Who are you, lad?”

  He thought quickly, snatching the name of the son of one of his father’s colleagues. “Richard Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell’s son.”

  “In a hurry, were you?” The soldier frowned, uncertain now.

  “Yes. My father’s business.”

  “Let him go, Ted,” one of the other two said, but the third was frowning.

  “Red ’air.” He sniffed. “Strong build, red ’air. That’s what the captain said we was to look for.” He snatched at the leather helmet-liner, tugging it clear of Toby’s head. “There you are! Red ’air!”

  The first soldier was impressed, but still a little uncertain, “Lazender?”

  Toby forced himself to relax, even to smile. “My name is Richard Cromwell. Take me to your captain. Who is he?”

  The first man shifted uneasily. “Ford, sir. Captain Ford.”

  “Ah! Ford!” Toby laughed. “I know Ford! Let’s go and see him. Come on! You have your duty to do.” He smiled at the first man. “What’s your name?”

  “Wiggs, sir. Edward Wiggs.” Wiggs looked pleased.

  “Let’s get it done then, Wiggs, then I can be about my father’s business.”

  Wiggs was quite prepared to let Toby go there and then, but the other two decided that a walk to Ludgate, their guardhouse, would be a welcome break in the monotony.

  Toby contained himself. It was maddening, but to do the wrong thing was to invite disaster. He must pick his spot, and he watched the corner of Essex House coming closer as he carefully rehearsed his actions in his mind. Wiggs was on his left, saying that a word in the right place would be most welcome, thank you sir, while the other two trailed behind. They were all relaxed, lulled by Toby’s cheerful cooperation, and then they were at the corner, the archway to Fleet Street on their right, and Toby pointed to the roof of the arch and laughed. “Look at the stupid man!”

  They looked, of course, and Toby brought his right knee about into Wigg’s crotch, snatched the falling pike, and then ran. He heard the bellow of pain behind him and then started shouting himself, “Make way! Make way! Stop him!”

  The crowd assumed he was a soldier. They parted before the blade and looked round for the man he was chasing. The illusion was helped by Wigg’s two colleagues who came shouting behind.

  Toby was far fitter than the London apprentices who made up the city’s garrison. He sprinted into the center of the Strand, going away from the city, away from Campion, and then he twisted to his right into one of the fetid alleyways that lay to the north. He dropped his pike so he could go faster through the narrow maze. The shouts faded behind him.

  He slowed at each corner, walking unconcernedly if he saw people ahead, greeting them casually, then running when an alley was clear. He knew now that he had escaped the soldiers, but he was tormented for Campion.

  He paused at the corner of Bull Inn Court. The hue and cry was fifty yards away, lost in the complex of alleys, as he knocked on the blue door.

  “Mister Toby!” Mrs. Swan’s eyes widened.

  “Sh!” He put a finger to his lips, stepped past her, then bent over in the hallway to let his breath come in great gasps. “I’m not here, Mrs. Swan.”

  “Course not, dear. Never seen you.” She shut the door. “Tell me!”

  “In a minute.” He straightened up, smiling at her. “I think I need your help.”

  “I think you do too, dear. Where’s Campion?”

  In trouble, Toby thought, in desperate trouble. And he had to rescue her.

  Thames Street was the longest in the city, running three-quarters of a mile from the Customs House beside the Tower to the decaying walls of Baynard’s Castle at Ludgate. Scammell’s yard was almost in the center of the street, built where a tangle of wharves and buildings jostled to the river bank.

  Throughout the journey to the yard Goodwife was triumphant. She hit at Campion, pinched and scratched her, her voice slicing at the girl like a saw-blade. Goodwife brought up every misdeed of twenty years, every small sin, every disappointment to her parents, and every ounce of grief was squeezed from this catalogue of evil. It was counterpointed by verses of scripture from Scammell. Cony’s boatmen watched, their faces impassive, while Grimmett smirked in the stern of the boat.

  Goodwife tugged at the pale blue cloak. “What’s this? What’s this? You were brought up in the ways of the Lord, and you dress like this?”

  Samuel Scammell knew his cue. His voice was mournful. “A woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtile of heart. She is loud and stubborn; Her feet abide not in her house.”

  “Amen,” Goodwife leaped on to the end of the verse. “A disgrace you are! A disgrace to your parents, to me, to Mr. Scammell, to your Lord and Savior, and what will Sir Grenville think of us? Tell me that! What will he think of us?” This last, despairing question was asked at a shriek that invited worried looks from passing boats.

  They arrived at last, the boat pulling into a narrow slip between two piers, and Campion was pushed up steps into a yard piled with timber, stinking of tar and crammed with half-finished small boats. Scammell left Grimmett and Goodwife to guard her while he cleared the area of his workmen. They were curious, his foreman especially so, but Scammell chivvied them away. Cony’s barge backed into the river, turned, and disappeared upstream.

  On one side of the yard were tall sheds, filled with timber, and on the other Scammell’s big, gloomy house. Campion was pushed inside, then into a small room that led from the hall. She was locked in, alone, and the sound of the key reminded her of the times when her father would punish her, locking her first in her room while he worked himself into a state to perform God’s vengeance on a child.

  The shutters of the room were locked closed, yet after a while her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she guessed she was in Scammell’s old study. The shelves were empty now, but there was a table which still held some religious pamphlets. She tore one of them into shreds, but knew the futility of the gesture. It was not a pamphlet she wanted to tear up but this whole house. She wanted to scream, to cry, to pound her fists on the door in frustration, yet she would not give her enemies the satisfaction of seeing her utterly defeated.

  Yet defeated she was. She knew it and, standing in the room, tense and frightened, she knew she was plunging into a great oppression of spirit. She fought back tears, hatred giving her strength, and she listened to the voices in the hall. Grimmett was explaining something, she could not hear what, and Scammell’s voice was raised first in surprise, then expostulation, and finally agreement. The front door sounded and then there were only the voices of Scammell and Goodwife.

  She hated hearing voices far away in a house. It reminded her of childhood, of listening to the anger of her parents, that harbinger of cruel punishment. She used to pray on those nights, pray desp
erately with her fingers clenched tight for one single, small sign of Jesus’s love. Yet the only answer would be the wind about Werlatton, the darkness pressing on the great lawn, and the mutter of voices far off.

  Time passed. She was panting now, though she did not know it, as if her body needed great drafts of air to calm it. And calm she did, slowly. Night was falling outside. She tried to open the shutters but her fingers were powerless against the locked metal bars.

  She prayed. She prayed for deliverance. She knew God was there and she knew Jesus was love and, despite the evidence of her childhood, she insisted on believing that there might be goodness and love in God. She prayed, not to the Puritan God of punishment, but to a God of love. Her prayers, even as she uttered them, seemed hopeless.

  The key turned. It was impossible for that sound not to awaken the terrors of childhood as the door opened and a candle appeared, just as it would when her father came late at night to beat her, his face heavy with God’s burden as he despatched the maid, Charity. This time, though, it was Samuel Scammell who appeared.

  He shut the door behind him, placed the candle on the table, and smiled at the girl who stood by the window. “Shall we pray, Dorcas?”

  She said nothing.

  He beckoned her to come round the table and gestured at the floor. “I thought if we knelt together and took our troubles to Him, it might help.”

  The calmness of her voice surprised her. “He tumbled the walls of Jericho. Do you have a trumpet?”

  He flinched from the scorn in her voice. “You don’t understand, Dorcas. You’re not well.” He kneaded the air with his hands, desperate for her understanding. “Your father’s death, it must be hard. Dr. Fenderlyn said you should be physicked. You must rest, my dear, in Dorset.” He shook his head stupidly, then dropped into the language of Zion which saved him from thinking too deeply. “Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will help, Dorcas. Put your cares on Him, and your trust in Him.” His voice grew stronger as he fell into the cadences of worship. “Though we be troubled, Dorcas, though we be afflicted, yet He is there! I know it! I’ve proved it in my life, through His saving grace, through the blood of the Lamb, Dorcas!”

  “Be quiet!” She screamed it at him. “Be quiet!”

  Goodwife had advised him to beat Campion. She had said it would solve all his problems and he wondered if she was right. He blinked. He knew he was not a strong man, otherwise he might have resisted Grimmett’s insistence that they be married this night. Scammell had protested that a marriage performed at night was illegal, but Grimmett had laughed. “Leave that to Sir Grenville, sir. He knows what’s legal.”

  This then was Samuel Scammell’s wedding night, the night when he would take on Matthew Slythe’s sacred charge to lead Dorcas in the path of salvation. Scammell’s religion had brought him to this night, to this bride, and though his flesh cried out for her, he was appalled at her strength of will. Perhaps Goodwife was right. Perhaps he should beat her into submission. He tried one more time.

  “Are you truly saved, Dorcas?”

  She despised him. She stood straight and tall by the barred shutters. “I believe in Jesus Christ.”

  His response was automatic. “Praise Him. Praise Him.”

  “I’m not your kind of Christian, though.”

  He looked puzzled. One finger scratched at a cavernous nostril. “There is only one kind, Dorcas.”

  “And what kind is that?”

  He was pleased that, at last, she was talking to him. Maybe he would not have to unloop the thick belt that held up his breeches. He smiled, his thick lips gleaming in the light of the single candle. “A Christian is someone who has taken Jesus as their Lord, who obeys His commandments.”

  “Which were to love one another, and to do unto them as you would have them do to you.” She laughed at him. “Is that what you’re doing? Forcing yourself on me is to obey one of His commandments?”

  He shook his head impatiently. “No, no, no. If a man is chosen of God, Dorcas, if a man is strong in the Lord, then he has a duty, yes, a duty to guide others. No one said that being a Christian is easy, Dorcas, yet we have to be shepherds to the flock. We have to guide them.”

  There was an infinity of scorn on her face. “And I am one of ‘them’? I have to be guided?”

  He nodded, eager for her to understand. “Women are weak, Dorcas, they are more flesh than spirit. Yet a woman’s way is easier, because it lies in obedience. If you would submit yourself to obedience then you would not be troubled. I come to you, Dorcas, only in the spirit of God, in a desire to lead you in a goodly path. You should submit prayerfully, Dorcas, knowing that this is His will.”

  She leaned forward on the table and he flinched from the anger in her face. Her words lashed at him. “Submit! Obedience! That’s all you know. Punishment, hate, that’s your religion. If Christ were to come back today do you know what you’d do? You’d be running for the hammer and nails and shouting for someone to build a cross.” She straightened up. “You’re not marrying me out of Christian duty, Samuel Scammell. You’re marrying me because it will make you rich, and because you want this!” She drew the hems of her cloak apart, showing her soberly clothed body. She spat on his religious tracts. “That’s for your greed, and that’s for your lust.”

  The anger was thick and hot in him, an anger fed by the memories of his own mother’s treatment of him. Goodwife had been right! She should be beaten! He was humiliated in his own house and he would not suffer it. The anger gave him courage, his hands fumbled to pull his belt free, and the words shouted from him, “You’re a blasphemer, woman! A sinner! But you will be saved. You will!” The belt swung free and to Campion it was as if her father’s mantle, together with his money, had dropped on to Scammell’s shoulders. He cracked the belt in his right hand, bubbling incoherently in his wrath, and then stretched back to lash at her across the table.

  She had gripped the table’s edge and now, with a strength she did not know she possessed, she heaved up and kept heaving so that the candle and tracts slid toward him, the light flickering, until the table crashed over into sudden darkness and the edge struck with all its weight on to Scammell’s foot.

  He bellowed like a clumsily gelded calf, and the bellowing turned to self-pitying yelps. There was a rapping at the door.

  “Master! Master!” It was Goodwife.

  “Dear God! My foot’s broken!”

  Campion stayed still.

  “Master! Master!” Goodwife shouted.

  “I’m coming!” Scammell blundered in the darkness, whimpering as he tripped again, and then fumbled at the door.

  It opened to show him crouching, his face, twisted in pain, turned up to the candle Goodwife carried. “My foot’s broken!”

  “Never mind that, sir.” Goodwife looked over the room at Campion and on her face was triumph. “The priest’s here, master. Book and all.”

  Scammell half straightened, turned to look at Campion then back to Goodwife. “The priest?”

  “Yes, master. For your wedding.” She looked at Campion, smiling with vindictive pleasure. “For Dorcas’s wedding. A happy night!”

  There were voices in the hall. Campion shook her head. “No!”

  “Yes.” Goodwife came into the room, putting the candle on a shelf. “Off you go, master, prepare yourself. I’ll stay with Dorcas. There’ll be no trouble.”

  Campion’s day had begun in the sunlight of love with Toby, planning a future of love, yet now she was in utter darkness, and tonight she would be a bride. Scammell’s bride.

  Twice Toby tried to leave Bull Inn Court and twice he saw picquets of soldiers guarding one of the narrow lanes. They had pounded through the area, their shouts echoing off the high walls, and had searched some houses, thrusting their long pikes under beds or into the dark corners of cellars and attics.

  Night came. He was in torment because he had to escape, yet he was trapped. Mrs. Swan would do what he had asked of her, but she could not smuggle him past the soldiers,
so he waited. He prayed hopelessly, helplessly, and tortured himself by imagining Campion’s fate.

  It was past ten o’clock before the soldiers left and even then Toby had to move with infinite caution, seeking out each shadow before he crossed a street or moved down an alley. He went to the river, feeling naked under the flickering torch that illuminated the Temple Stairs, yet he knew this was the fastest way to find Scammell’s house.

  Few watermen worked at night; there was enough business to keep some afloat till midnight, but not many. Toby knew he must be patient, yet it was hard. He watched, frustrated, as bow lanterns appeared feeble to his right, grew brighter, then shot past toward the city. The boats carried the late traffic from Whitehall, yet none of their passengers seemed to want to alight at the Temple Stairs. Finally an empty boat appeared and Toby stepped into the stern. “Do you know Scammell’s yard?”

  “’Cos I know Scammell’s yard. Where do you think the boats come from?” The oarsman spoke truculently, still leaning on his oar.

  “I wish to go there.” Toby tried to contain his patience.

  “At night, sir? At night!” The man laughed at him, then turned round to his fellow waterman. “Hear that, Jake? Genn’l’man wants to go to Scammell’s yard at night!”

  The bow man grinned in the light of the torch. The first man looked back at Toby. “Can’t do it, lad, can I? It’s dangerous down there at night. Damned great pilings in the river, rotten they are, they’ll have the bottom out of this sooner than you can pay me. No, sir, not at night. I’ll land you at the stairs, that’s different. What do you want? Paul’s or the Bridge?”

  Neither would do. Toby had reasoned, hiding in Mrs. Swan’s parlor, that Scammell’s yard would be closed up at night, the easiest ingress being from the river. He leaned forward, smiling. “I wish to lighten your darkness.” Toby took out a gold coin that he had borrowed from Campion’s hoard. “I wish to be landed at Scammell’s yard.”