Cromwell's Blessing

by Peter Ransley

  I could see how the church had changed. Mr Tooley had allowed a few images, like a picture of the Trinity, because they comforted older members of the congregation. Now it was stripped so bare and stark even the light seemed afraid to enter. Mr Black said that when Mr Tooley used to preach, stern as he was, you left counting your blessings. Now, with the Presbyterians breathing down his neck, his sermons left you counting your sins.

  ‘But what sin could he possibly find in you?’ I cried.

  ‘Nehemiah.’

  ‘Your apprentice? He is as devout as you are.’

  ‘More so. But he has become a Baptist, and refuses to come here.’

  ‘If he refuses you, he has broken his bond. You could dismiss him.’

  Mr Black’s watery eyes flashed with some of his old fire. ‘He is a good apprentice. And he is devout. I will not dismiss a man for his beliefs.’

  We sat in silence for a while. He stared at the blank wall where the Trinity had been. All his life he had been a staunch member of the congregation and the community. He was as responsible for Nehemiah as a father for his children. But the Presbyterians condemned all sects like Baptists as heresies and unless Mr Black brought Nehemiah back into the fold, he would be refused the sacraments. Friends and business would melt away. Even threatened with hell, he stuck stubbornly to his old beliefs in loyalty and duty.

  ‘How long has Nehemiah’s indenture to run?’

  ‘Nine months.’

  I pretended to calculate, then frowned. ‘You are surely mistaken, master. It ends next week.’ I stared at him, keeping my face straight. ‘Once he’s indentured he can leave. Get another job.’

  He returned my stare with interest. He needed no abacus or record where figures were concerned. ‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting,’ he snapped, ‘but I know when he’s indentured. To the day.’ He picked up his stick and I flinched, an apprentice again, fearing a beating. He limped out of the church and stood among the gravestones as if he was gazing into the pit.

  ‘The Stationery Office has his full record,’ he said.

  ‘Records can be lost. Once he has completed his apprenticeship he is not your responsibility. Is he good enough to be indentured?’

  ‘Better than most journeymen.’

  ‘Well then. When he is indentured I can help him get work elsewhere and you can take on another apprentice.’

  ‘It is most irregular,’ he muttered.

  ‘If everything had been regular, master, we would not have won the war. There were not half enough qualified armourers and blacksmiths to make all the arms we needed.’

  He still looked troubled but said: ‘Well, well, if that is the way the world is now … But I would not know what to say to him.’

  ‘I will do it. We got on well, and he will listen to me.’

  Elated with what I hoped would be a better attempt at diplomacy, I went to see Mr Tooley about Liz’s baptism. He was engaged in a room across the corridor. I waited in a small anteroom. A cupboard, I remembered, contained books I might occupy myself with. It was locked, but I knew where the key was hidden for I used to borrow books to improve my reading. When I opened it, out spilled a number of objects that had once been part of the church.

  There were old, mouldering copies of the Book of Common Prayer which the Presbyterians had banned, brass candlesticks spotted with green mildew, the picture of the Trinity I had missed in the church, cracked and torn, and a rolled-up linen surplice. Everything that had once brought light and colour into the church had been buried here. An ineffable sense of sadness crept over me as I opened a prayer book and the musty smell brought back to me the light and comfort of the old church.

  A nearby door opened and a chill ran through me as I heard the unmistakable voice of the man who had beaten me so often as a child – for the good of my soul, as he put it. I put the prayer book down on a chair and went to the door, beginning to open it so they would know I was there. But they were too intent on their argument to see me.

  George was in the doorway of Mr Tooley’s study, his back to me. He was almost bald, his head gleaming as though polished.

  ‘You must name Nehemiah a heretic in church on Sunday, Mr Tooley.’

  George used to address Mr Tooley with wheedling deference. I was amazed at his hectoring tone. Even more so by Mr Tooley accepting it, although his face was flushed and he struggled to keep his voice even. ‘I will see Mr Black again.’

  ‘He is obdurate. Stiffnecked. As the Proverbs have it, Mr Tooley: “Comes want, comes shame from warnings unheeded.”’

  The years dropped away. He could have been talking to me when I was an apprentice. My nails bit into my palms and my cheeks were burning.

  ‘What irks a man more than vinegar on his tooth? A lingering messenger,’ Mr Tooley responded. ‘As the Proverbs have it.’

  I gave a silent cheer. As George turned to go, I saw I had left the cupboard door wide open. Mr Tooley’s old surplice lay unrolled on the floor. Hastily, I crammed things back into the cupboard, shut the door and hid the key. During this, George fired his parting shot. It was couched more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘The warning is not just for the sheep, Mr Tooley, but for the shepherd.’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’

  Mr Tooley was livid with anger. George, seeing his point had struck home, twisted the knife. ‘Oh, it is not me, a humble sinner, talking. I am but the poor messenger of the council of elders, which by the 1646 ordinance …’

  Ordinance! As well as proverbs, George was stuffed with ordinances, which listed the scandalous offences of renouncers of the true Protestant faith. Mr Tooley took a step towards George. His fist was clenched and a pulse in his forehead was beating. George did not move away. He cocked his head with a look of sorrow on his face, almost as if he was inviting a blow.

  Afraid Mr Tooley would strike him – and afraid, for some reason, that this was exactly what George wanted – I stepped out into the corridor.

  The effect on the two men could not have been more different. Mr Tooley plainly saw me as he had always seen me.

  ‘The prodigal son,’ he said, with a wry smile, holding out his hand.

  George bowed. ‘My lord, congratulations on your good fortune. I beg to hope that your lordship realises that, in a small measure, it is due to me not sparing the rod, however much that grieved me.’

  There was more of this, but I took the unction as I used to take the blows. I had promised God I would not lose my temper. There were to be no more Scogmans. Diplomacy, not confrontation. I told them there was now no need to name Nehemiah a heretic in church.

  ‘He has recanted?’ George said.

  ‘He will be leaving Mr Black.’

  ‘He’s been dismissed?’

  I bowed almost as deeply as he did. ‘I believe people should worship according to their conscience, but the law is the law. Nehemiah will be replaced by another apprentice who will attend church in a proper manner.’

  I winced as he clasped his hands and lifted his eyes. ‘God be praised! I shrank from putting Mr Black through so much distress, as I did when I applied the rod to you, but it was for the good of both your souls.’

  He put out his hand. It felt as cold and slippery as the skin of a toad. I arranged the baptism with Mr Tooley in two weeks’ time. When I left I still had the clammy feeling of George’s grip. Matthew, the cunning man who had brought me up, would say I had been touched. It was a stupid superstition, but all the same I wiped my hand on the grass.

  My spirits rose again when I rode into Half Moon Court. The apple tree was a sad, withered stump, but from the shop came the familiar thump and sigh of the printing press. Sarah, the servant, came out to greet me. She walked with a limp now, but her banter had not changed since she used to rub pig’s fat into my aching bruises.

  ‘What has tha’ done to master, Tom?’

  ‘Done?’ I cried in alarm.

  ‘He’s had a face like a wet Monday for weeks. Now he’s skipped
off like a two-year-old with mistress to buy her a new hat for the baptism.’

  ‘I only talked to him about his problems,’ I said modestly.

  ‘I wish you could talk to my rheumatism. My knee’s giving me gyp.’

  ‘Which knee?’ I said, stretching out my hand.

  ‘Getaway! I know you. Think you can cure the world one minute, and need curing yourself the next.’

  She hugged me just as she did when I was a child, then walked back into the house quite normally, before stopping to stare at me. ‘Why, Tom! Tha’s cured my knee!’

  I stared at her, my heart beating faster. Perhaps it was something to do with my prayers that morning.

  Sarah laughed, then winced at the effort she had made to walk normally. She flexed her knee and rubbed it ruefully, before limping back into the house. ‘Oh, Tom, dear Tom. If tha believes that, tha’ll believe anything.’

  Nehemiah was as good as any journeyman, I could see that. He was too absorbed in what had once been my daily task, to see me watching from the door. He was taller than me, and would have been handsome but for spots that erupted round his mouth and neck. It was a hard task for one man to feed the paper in the press and bring down the platen, but he did it with ease.

  I wondered why he did not put the sheets out to dry, as he should have done. Instead, he interleaved them with more absorbent paper before putting them carefully in an old knapsack. I gave a cry of surprise when I saw it was my old army knapsack. Nehemiah whirled round, dropping a printed sheet, and grabbed hold of me. I thought I was strong and fit but he twisted my arms into a lock and bent me double. His strong smell of sweat and ink was overpowering. I yelled out who I was. Only then did he release me with a confused apology.

  ‘I – I did not recognise you. I thought you were a spy, sir,’ he muttered.

  I laughed. The Half Moon printed the most boring of government ordinances. ‘A spy. What has Mr Black got to hide?’

  I bent to pick up the sheet he had dropped but he snatched it up and put it in the knapsack. I shrugged. While his master was out he was doing some printing of his own. I thought him none the worse for that. Most apprentices of any enterprise did so. When I was going to be a great poet I had secretly printed my poems to Anne on that very press.

  I gazed fondly at the battered knapsack, which I thought had been thrown away.

  ‘You do not want it, sir?’

  I shook my head, and he thanked me so profusely for it my heart went out to him, for I remembered when, in my crazy wanderings, it once contained everything I had in the world.

  ‘How would you like to be a journeyman, Nehemiah?’

  ‘Very much, sir. I have dreamed of it long enough.’

  ‘Well then, you shall be. In a few days’ time.’

  I smiled at his look of astonishment.

  ‘But my indentures are not over for –’

  ‘Nine months.’

  ‘And twenty days,’ he said, looking at the base of the press, where for the past year he had carved and crossed through each passing day before his release.

  I told him he was as skilled as he ever would be and the paperwork was a mere formality. I would arrange it. As a journeyman, his religion would then be a matter for his own conscience. I began to go into practical details, but he interrupted me. He had a stammer, which he had gradually mastered, but it returned now.

  ‘Has my m-master agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is …’ His face reddened, intensifying the pale blue of his eyes. ‘D-dishonest.’

  I told him the rules were dishonest for apprentices – medieval rules, designed to give Guild Masters free labour for as long as possible.

  ‘What about George?’

  ‘There’ll be no trouble there. I’ve told him you were leaving.’

  ‘With-without telling me?’

  He began to make me feel uncomfortable, particularly as I thought he was right. I had been high-handed. ‘I’m sorry, but the opportunity arose. And I was worried about Mr Black being thrown out of church.’

  ‘That would be a good thing,’ he said fervently.

  ‘A good thing?’

  ‘He could join the Baptists and see Heaven in this life.’

  The idea was absurd. But he elaborated on it with a burning intensity until I stopped him. ‘Nehemiah, Mr Black is old and he’s been in St Mark’s all his life. I’m sorry, but you have to leave. Or go to your master’s church.’

  ‘Obeying G-George? Like you did?’

  He knew the story of how I had struck George and might have killed him if Mr Black had not intervened. Then I had run off. I sighed. Helping him was not as easy as I blithely imagined, particularly when he brought up how I had acted like him – or even more violently – in the past. I walked outside to untether my horse. He followed me, saying he h-hoped he did not sound un-g-grateful – I detected a note of sarcasm in his stammer – but e-even with his journeyman papers he had no position to go to.

  I mounted my horse. ‘I will take care of that.’ I told him of a printer who, at my recommendation, would pay him twenty-eight pound a year.

  He gazed up at me, open-mouthed. ‘All f-found?’

  There was no sarcasm in his stammer now. Money. Everything came down to money. I was a fool not to mention that at first. ‘All found.’

  ‘Twenty-eight pound!’ he muttered to himself. ‘All found!’ He caught the saddle of my horse. ‘He is one of Lord Stonehouse’s printers. I would be beholden to Lord Stonehouse.’

  ‘We are all beholden to someone, Nehemiah.’

  ‘No!’ he cried, with such violence my horse reared. ‘We are not! We are beholden to ourselves!’ He gave me that look of intensity again, then abruptly bowed his head. ‘I-I am sorry. I know I have been churlish, but I have not slept since this business began. I was a fool to think Mr Black would become a Baptist.’ He gave me a wry wincing grin and I warmed to him, for he brought back to me all the torments I went through at his age. ‘I must consult my brethren. And pray.’

  ‘And sleep,’ I smiled, telling him to give his answer to Mr Black in the morning.

  Who would have thought peace was such hard work? It was easier to face cavalry across open fields than try to bring conflicting minds together. But I felt a surge of optimism as I rode past Smithfield on the route I used to take as a printer’s runner. I may have made a great hash of the Challoner business, but I was learning.

  Next morning a letter came from Mr Black. Nehemiah had gone. He had scrupulously broken up the last forme, distributed the type and cleaned the press. In the night he had woken Sarah, apologising for taking a piece of bread, which he promised to repay. He put the bread in the old knapsack, with his Bible and a pamphlet whose title she knew, for he had read it to her interminably. It was called England’s Lamentable Slaverie. There was no printer’s mark. It was from a group naming themselves the Levellers. It declared the Commons as the supreme authority over which the King and the Lords had no veto. Also found in Nehemiah’s room was a copy of a petition to Parliament circulating round the army. It asked simply to be paid, to guarantee indemnity for acts committed during the war, and no compulsion to serve in Ireland.

  Nehemiah went off at first light, breaking his bond as I had done, years before.

  4

  It preyed on my mind. What Nehemiah had done was completely stupid. He could have been a journeyman, earning far more than most people of his age, free to practise his religion – what more did he want? And why did it trouble me so much?

  ‘I would be beholden to Lord Stonehouse.’

  That was the problem, of course. He reminded me I was beholden to Lord Stonehouse. Nehemiah was like a piece of grit in bread that sets off a bad tooth. However much I told myself it was nonsense – he could be a liberated slave and see how far that got him – the ache persisted.

  Anne knew, as she always did, there was something on my mind, but I refused to talk about it. She would laugh at me, just as she had when I was like Nehemiah. S
o I whispered it to little Liz and she put everything into proportion. I was beholden to Lord Stonehouse because I was beholden to Liz, to my whole family, to peace.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ I whispered.

  She gurgled and put out her hand, exploring my face. I laughed with delight, held her up, kissed her and rocked her to sleep. I crept away, stopping with a start when I saw Anne watching me.

  ‘You never kiss me like that now.’

  I bowed. ‘Your doctor has warned me against passion, madam.’

  It was true. Liz had been a difficult birth. Anne had lost a lot of blood, and had been bled even more by Dr Latchford, Lord Stonehouse’s doctor. That was one of the things I hated most about being a Stonehouse. I felt like a stallion, not a lover, only allowed to cover the mare in season.

  ‘Dr Latchford,’ I said, giving her the doctor’s dry, confidential cough, ‘says it is too soon to have another child.’

  ‘Dr Latchford, fiddle!’ She picked up the mockery in my manner and drew close to me. ‘You’re back,’ she whispered.

  Perhaps it was Nehemiah, that ache in the tooth, which made me say ‘Tom Neave’s himself again.’

  ‘Oh, Tom Neave! Tom Neave! I hate Tom Neave! He is nasty and uncouth and has big feet.’

  I choked with laughter. This was exactly the sort of game we used to play as children after I had arrived without boots and she had mocked my monkey feet. ‘How can it be? Tom Neave or Thomas Stonehouse, my feet are exactly the same size, madam!’

  ‘They are not! Look at you!’

  In a sense she was right. I was not really conscious of it until that moment, but since seeing Nehemiah I had taken to wearing my old army boots, cracked and swollen at the toes, but much more comfortable than Thomas Stonehouse’s elegant bucket boots. I slopped about in a jerkin with half the buttons missing and affected indifference to changing my linen.

  I loved her in that kind of mood, half genuine anger, half part of our game, teased her all the more and tried to kiss her.