A Crowning Mercy

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Dorcas.” Toby said the name with lugubrious relish. “Dorcas. Dorcas. Dorcas.”

  “Stop it! I hate that name.”

  “I shall call you Dorcas when you upset me.”

  She waved a fly away from her face. “Campion.” She said it experimentally. “I like that name.”

  “I love it.” He grinned. “I’m just glad you hadn’t picked cow parsley on the day I met you. Lady Cow Parsley Lazender doesn’t sound right.”

  “Or deadly nightshade.”

  “Or gooseberry.”

  “Lady Wortleberry Lazender.” She laughed. “I like Campion.”

  Toby plucked the seeds from meadow oat grass. “There was a poet called Campion.”

  “I know.”

  “Only because I told you.” He grinned at her, then levered himself forward on his elbows so he was close to her, his face smiling down at her. “Listen.” He thought for a few seconds.

  Lost is our freedom,

  When we submit to women so:

  Why do we need them,

  When in their best they work our woe?

  She laughed at him. “Did Campion write that?”

  “He did.”

  “It’s not very good, is it?”

  He shrugged, tickling her face with the grass stem. “You’re not supposed to like it. You’re supposed to get angry with me and tell me I’m a woman-hater.”

  “I’m too hot to get angry. Tell me something else he wrote and if I don’t like it then I won’t marry you.”

  He nodded. “Agreed.” He frowned, pretending to think again, then ducked his head, kissed her lightly on the lips, and quoted again, his eyes on hers.

  Heaven is music, and thy beauty’s

  Birth is heavenly.

  It was Campion’s turn to pretend to think. She stared into his green eyes, then nodded. “I’ll marry you.”

  “You liked it?”

  “I liked it.”

  “I thought you would.”

  “Is that why you learned it by heart for today?”

  He laughed. “How do you know?”

  “Because the only poems you know are the ones your father used to sing at Christmas, and because you left a book of Campion’s poetry on the garden table and it got wet in the night.”

  He grinned. “Women shouldn’t be so clever.”

  “We need to be, Toby dear, considering what we marry.”

  “Whom you marry.”

  “What.”

  He kissed her again, long and gently, and as her eyes closed he put his right hand on her stomach. He felt her stiffen beneath his touch, knew she was shrinking from him, and raised his face. “Campion?”

  She kept her eyes shut and said nothing. This was the fear, this was the thing that had been smirched. The water was tainted, the evil within her, the shadow reaching from her past.

  “Campion?”

  She wanted to say something to him, she wanted to give him love if he would only give her time, but they were to be married in a week and she was frightened.

  He lifted his hand from her stomach, moved it gently to her face and pushed her eyelids up. The blue eyes that watched him, if not hostile, were very frightened. He smiled. “The priest won’t touch you again.”

  She stared at him, her face frowning. “You know?”

  He nodded. “I read the Mercurius. It’s not difficult to guess.”

  She thought he had not known, that the stain was hidden within her and she had hidden it from him. She had told Lady Margaret much of what had happened, though not all, and now she sat up, brushing hair from her face. “Did your mother tell you?”

  “No.” Which was not quite true. With her usual directness Lady Margaret had assured Toby that his bride was still a virgin, but she had also told him he must treat her carefully. Now Toby pushed himself up so he was sitting opposite her. “Tell me.”

  She shook her head petulantly. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Her eyes met his almost in challenge, then she shrugged and, in a toneless, flat voice, she told him.

  She knew it could have been far worse, but she still felt the defilement of Hervey’s hands on her breasts, his breathing in her ear as his fingers groped down past her waist. She spoke of the tribunal spectators staring at her while the priest’s hands slid over her body. She could feel them now, kneading and rubbing, and she knew that Faithful Unto Death Hervey had spoiled something she wanted kept clean. The stain would not go from her.

  He said nothing when she finished. She had not looked at him as she talked, but had stared across the stream. Now Toby looked at her profile, wistful and beautiful, and still he waited.

  She turned to him, still defensive. “Vavasour Devorax said something odd to me.”

  “What?” He was being as gentle and delicate as if he were feeling in cold waters for an elusive trout.

  “He said everyone has a terrible secret, something horrible, and he said the secret is always in the bedroom. He meant it too. It all sounds so foul, as if love ends up in a squalid, dirty room with smelly sheets.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  She had not heard him. “Scammell pawed at me and that man you killed tried. Then there was the Reverend Hervey and there was a soldier in the Tower.” She stopped, shaking her head, and she hated the seals again for it was they that had made her vulnerable to all that lust, that had poisoned this summer’s day beside a stream.

  Toby lifted his hand and pushed up an unwilling chin. “Do you think my parents found it squalid?”

  “No, but they’re different.” She knew she sounded childish.

  He smiled at her, shaking his head. “It doesn’t have to be squalid…”

  “How do you know?”

  “Will you listen to me?”

  “Lady Clarissa Worlake?”

  “No!” He laughed. “Now will you listen?”

  “Who?”

  “Campion!” He startled her with sudden sternness. “Listen! How do you think the people in Lazen found their wives, husbands and lovers?”

  “I don’t know.” She was miserable because of the shadow on her, childish because she was ignorant, frightened because this was the smear on the flawless sky.

  “We used to talk of May Day, remember? And Harvest? How the young people and the not so young used to go off at night into the woods. That wasn’t horrible! If it was, why would people look forward to it?” He smiled. “It could be uncomfortable if it rained, but it wasn’t squalid. At least a third of our marriages started that way and the church never minded. It’s called love, people celebrate it. It doesn’t get spoiled.”

  “I never had a May Day.” She was looking at the grass, but now she looked at him accusingly. “You did.”

  “Of course I did! What was I supposed to do? Sit at home reading my Bible and deciding which of my neighbors was a sinner?”

  His indignation forced a reluctant smile from her. She shook her head, still troubled. “I’m sorry, Toby, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t marry me. I’m just a Puritan and I don’t know anything.”

  He laughed and touched her cheek. “I’m glad you’re a Puritan.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one caught you on May night or in the harvest rick.”

  She smiled, still miserable. “You caught a few, didn’t you? And you caught me swimming.” She shook her head. “If I’d known you’d seen me…”

  “You’d have died?”

  “I would have been embarrassed.”

  “Poor Campion.” He smiled. “When did you last swim?”

  “Last year.” She shrugged. “The day I met you.” She had thought so often, in the Tower, of those moments she had stolen in the stream, of the sun on her body and the water so clean about her.

  Toby knelt up. “I’m going for a swim.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged, saying nothing. Because, she thought, he would undress h
ere, and she was terrified. Faithful Unto Death Hervey had put this fear in her, a fear of her own body, of other bodies, and she was terrified of the moment that came closer, the wedding night, and yet she knew, instinctively, that Toby had brought her here to exorcise that horror.

  He grinned. “You’re hot.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “You’re hot, I’m hot, and I’m going for a swim.”

  He stood up, moved a few paces to one side, and undressed. She did not look at him. She stared across the stream to where a field of barley shimmered in the heat, the grain dotted with poppies. She was being foolish, she knew, yet she could not control herself.

  Toby ran into the water, a white shape at the edge of her vision, then threw himself into the stream’s center. He bellowed with delight, sending up a glittering fountain of water, and then he was standing up to his chest in the stream’s center and brushing water from his eyes. “It’s wonderful. Come in.”

  “It’s too cold.”

  “You’re hot.”

  She saw the dark bruise on his shoulder, the misshapen joint. “Have you got your glove on?”

  “Come and find out.” He grinned at her, then pushed himself downstream, swimming away until he was hidden from her by a great stand of nettles. His voice came back strong to her. “You can come in now. I can’t see you.”

  “You said that last year!”

  He laughed, then was silent.

  She was hot. Her dress seemed sticky, her skin prickly. The air quivered over the barley, the sun was bright on poppies and cornflowers.

  She wanted to swim. She remembered the pure pleasure of it, the release of a soul in darkness, and she wanted to feel the stream about her body as if the clean, cool water might wash away the defilement of Faithful Unto Death Hervey’s hands. She waited for Toby to say something more, wishing him to ask her again, but he was silent. She shouted instead. “I’m staying here!”

  “Good! Whatever you want, my love!”

  She waited, frowning. He said nothing more, nor did he reappear from behind the nettle stand. She waited. “Where are you?”

  “Here!”

  She stood, walked to the nettles, and saw him twenty yards downstream. He grinned at her. “You see? I couldn’t see you.”

  “Go further!” She waved to where the stream disappeared behind a bend thick with buckthorn and willow.

  “Why should I? You’re not coming in.”

  “I might if you go past the willow.”

  He made a dutiful face, turned, and swam a few strokes. “Far enough?”

  “Twice as far! Go on!”

  He laughed and swam on, past the willow tree and into the shade of the buckthorns. She stood to see if he would come back, but he did not, so she walked back to where his clothes were thrown down and she looked, from the golden seal, casually discarded, to the sun-bright water. She wanted to go in, she wanted so much to go in. She was hot, she had dreamed so often of this, yet she knew why she really wanted to go into the water. The shadow must be destroyed.

  She walked back to the nettles. She could not see Toby in the shadow of the tree. She called out, “Someone will see!”

  There was no reply.

  She walked back to his clothes, seeing the leather coat dropped on the sword, and then she looked all about her. The countryside was empty, not a person in sight, and she persuaded herself that she could swim quickly in the stream, be in and out of the water before Toby had time to come back from the trees.

  One of the two horses lifted its head and stared at her, making her feel foolish. She stared again at the horizon, at the edge of a wood a half mile away, then up and down the stream. She was hot and nervous.

  She had been frightened when she swam before, but that had been a fear of Matthew Slythe and his leather belt, and this time the fear was quite different as she took off shoes and stockings, undid her stomacher, unlaced her dress, and then paused. She crouched, as she used to, looking about her. Her heart beat as it used to beat, its sound loud in her ears, and then, decisively, she pulled the dress over her head and dropped it beside Toby’s clothes. She fumbled at the laces of the petticoat, feeling the heat of the sun on her bare back, and then she stood, the petticoat fell, and she was naked. She ran for the water’s cover.

  It had not changed. It felt so clean, so cold, so good, and it reached every part of her, flooding her. She had forgotten the sheer joy of it. She ducked her head, then swam with clumsy strokes into the stream’s center, feeling the current tug at her, and her feet brushed long weeds as she turned with the water. It was good, so good, and the water was strong on her, lifting her and cleaning her. She swam nearer to the bank where she could kneel in the current, covered to her neck, and let the water flow around her.

  “Isn’t it good?” Toby was smiling at her just forty yards away. He ducked his head, came up again, and swam closer. He stopped thirty yards away and she wondered whether she should run now for the bank, for her clothes, but then he stood up in the stream, the water to his waist, and grinned. “Come and see an eight-fingered man catch a trout.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll come to you, then.”

  “Stay there, Toby!”

  He began wading, his progress slow against the current. “When we’re married we must do this every summer. If we get Lazen back we could put a wall round some of the moat. Would you like that?”

  She nodded, too frightened to speak.

  He grinned, pretending not to see her crouching lower in the water. “Of course it would be better in the Lazen stream. I suppose I could threaten the villagers with death if they came to watch us, but it seems a little extreme.” He was close now, just ten yards away. “People will think we’re very strange if we swim.”

  “Stay there, Toby!” Faithful Unto Death Hervey was sliding his hands over her, Scammell was leering at her, the whole tribe of men was laughing at her nakedness. “Don’t come near me!” She was kneeling low, her arms crossed in front of her breasts.

  Toby stopped. He was six or seven yards from her, smiling. “Campion?” He spoke with infinite gentleness, and then suddenly his voice changed.

  He screamed, his face screwing up in agony, and his right hand flew to his bruised left shoulder, his misshapen shoulder, and the scream became a moan of pain that stopped as he fell sideways. The current snatched at him. His head thrashed from side to side in torment.

  “Toby!”

  The stream was carrying him, his teeth clenched uselessly against the sob of pure pain. He scrabbled for a foothold.

  Campion forgot her fear, forgot her nakedness. She rose in the water, pushed toward him, reached for him. “Toby!”

  His head thrashed. A gloved hand came out of the stream and she snatched for it, missed, but then she caught his right arm and his weight swung him away from her. She cried out as the arm slipped from her and she threw herself forward, desperate now, trying to haul his body upright, and suddenly she was aware that he was holding her, that his feet were firm on the stream’s gravel, that his right hand was in the small of her back, pressing her close. Green eyes looked down at her.

  “Toby!”

  “Shh.”

  “You cheated.” She did not know whether to laugh, but suddenly she was shivering for her body was against his and she felt his right hand stroking, stroking, and his touch was as gentle as if she was a silver fish hiding in dark reeds. “Toby?”

  His gloved left hand lifted her face and she kissed him, her eyes closed because she did not know where to look, and she put her arms about his bare waist, then hid her face on his shoulder. The fear was still there, but he seemed to be protecting her from it, and she could feel an excitement too. She clung to him, knowing that this was what she had dreamed of in Werlatton in those hopeless nights when love was a vain hope beyond her reach. “Toby?”

  “Shh.” He carried her from the water, lay her on the grass and she dared not speak nor open her eyes. She waited for the pain, even wanting it, a
nd her hands stroked the muscles on his back as he loved her, riding over her pain, and when it was done he took her to the water again, washed her, and only then did she look at him. She was shy.

  He smiled. “Was it so horrible?”

  She shook her head. She crouched low in the water. “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “Being stupid.”

  “You weren’t.”

  She looked at him. “You cheated.”

  “I know.”

  She laughed, then asked the embarrassing question that was important to her. “Was it good for you?”

  “I’m supposed to ask you that.”

  “No, I mean it. Was it?”

  He smiled at her. “Never better.”

  “Better than all those May Days?”

  “Better than I ever dreamed possible.”

  She laughed, blushing with embarrassment. “You’re sure?”

  “There’s only one way you’ll find out.”

  “How?”

  “See if I want to do it again.”

  She splashed him with water, looked down the stream, then back to him. “Do you?”

  They made love again, and this time she looked at him, and she held him close, knowing the shadow had been taken away. Later, after another swim in the cool, clean water, they lay on the grass and let the sun dry them. Campion, naked to the flawless sky, had her head on the saddle, while Toby, propped on one elbow beside her, traced a finger down her pale, slim body. “You’re very beautiful.”

  “Your mother says my breasts will get bigger if we make love.”

  He laughed. “We’ll have to measure them. You know how fathers measure their children growing with notches on a doorpost? We’ll do the same with you. I can show guests.”

  She laughed, turning to look at him, and loving the feeling of his fingers on her belly. She reached out with her right hand and plucked one of the dark red hairs from his chest. “He loves me. Does that hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  She pulled another, still damp. “He loves me not.”

  “Stop it, I’m a tired man.”

  “I can’t stop now.” She tugged a third. “He loves me.”