McCann, Maria - As Meat Loves Salt

by Balefanio

  'I have done my utmost to make peace with Nat,' he said. 'I have begged forgiveness for your knife. But what good is it, when you do nothing but glare on him?'

  'I do not glare,' I cried, and indeed I had no idea of doing so.

  Ferris sighed and said that Nathan was young and green, he must be gently handled, and for all he imagined himself a warrior he was but a sprig.

  'Then he should not be at war,' I replied.

  'I say as much to him myself. He answers that young lads are fighting everywhere—'

  'Starvelings, maybe. But he can read and write, has parents, has he not? Why does he stay?'

  Ferris regarded me an instant, hesitated, then said, 'To the point. He is easily faced down - as well you know - and there is something besides. He has heard some tale about you.'

  'From whom?'

  Vexation narrowed my friend's eyes. 'Planning vengeance already? You don't listen to me, you must go about things a softer way. In your place I would—' he stopped, for Russ and Nathan were approaching us.

  'I have no need of other friends,'I complained. 'I wish to talk with you alone.'

  'And if I am shot tomorrow? These are not bad men. Sit with us, and bear yourself kindly.'

  Unhappy, I sat with them. Doubtless I looked ferocious, and did myself no good with the boy. Nathan no longer pestered with his talk, but pained me a new way, by asking how many men had been killed on the artillery, and how close the shot was come to Ferris. This was a thing I had as lief not know, but I held my tongue.

  'One of my mates had his face blown off,' said Ferris dully. He held up his arm and I flinched to see the reddish-brown slime stiffen­ing on it.

  'What did the surgeons do?' asked Nathan.

  'What could they? The men wouldn't even take him, they said it was wasting a hurdle, and I guess they were in the right of it. That was before noon and he was still alive come sundown.' Ferris spoke through gritted teeth.

  'But he's dead now?' asked Russ.

  'Aye. He died as soon as it got dark.'

  Russ and Ferris exchanged a steady look, which I thought I under­stood and saw that Nathan did not.

  'They give us it hot and strong,' Ferris went on. 'Barrow-loads of stones as well as shot and shell.'

  'The breastworks are very close,' said Russ, adding for my benefit, 'that makes things bloody,' which was just what I most dreaded to hear.

  Ferris said, 'All we can do for now is lob granadoes.' I hated to think of him doing this, for the granadoes, pottery shells full of powder, sometimes went off while still in the soldier's hand. 'But Cromwell does well with the gun platforms. We'll soon get a practi­cable breach.'

  'What's that?' I asked.

  'When the walls start to collapse,' Russ explained. 'Then you get a slope the men can run up.'

  'The cannon royal,' Ferris added, turning to me, 'fires around - six­ty - pounds.' His last words were smeared over by yawns.

  Russ told him, 'You should sleep, lad.'There was something like tenderness in his voice. To me he said, 'It's backbreaking work. You won't see any of your milords as gunners, they'll none of them touch it.'

  'You won't get your face shot off now,' said Nathan to Ferris.

  'That's not the way it goes, Nat.' Ferris smiled wearily. 'Just keep praying for me. What's the password? Sleep.’

  He lay down on his side, found he had placed his injured cheek to the ground, and rearranged himself so that the wound did not touch anything. 'It drags,' he muttered, and drew up his knees for warmth.

  Grunting, the rest of us also settled ourselves in our soggy clothes about what was left of the fire. Nathan took great care to get Ferris between himself and me, as if I might creep to him in the dark and cut

  his throat. He made such a business of it, I was tempted to shift places and stretch out with my head in his lap.

  Russ and Nathan wished me a feigning 'goodnight', which I re­turned; Ferris murmured, 'Sleep well, Rupert,' as if he meant it.

  'Sleep well, Ferris.'

  Waking some time later, I heard his breathing rattle. There was wheezing on every side; we were losing more men to flux and to in­flamed, bubbling chests than to gun or sword. I dozed briefly and was straightway with Zeb, squabbling over some job left undone in the kitchen. Coming out of that dream I lay a while thinking about those I had lost, until I at last drifted off. It was a poor night's rest, full of fears and starts. Towards dawn I grew as miserable in body as in soul, and not only from cold, being unable to sleep soundly for the want of a piss and unwilling to piss because I was half asleep.

  Jolted by some noise, I opened my eyes and saw Ferris already up, his shoulders heaving from a hard cough. After a moment he hawked and there was a hiss as he spat into the embers. None of the other men moved. His face melancholy, Ferris contemplated the sleeping Nathan. I thought he might be about to look at me, so feigned sleep. When I opened my eyes again he had put on his helmet and was pulling some bread from his snapsack. I watched as he bit it, and heard him sigh; it was evidently too hard.

  'I have some,' I whispered.

  Ferris started and smiled. I rose and took from my sack the half loaf I had saved for him; he did not pretend to refuse, but pressed my hand as he took it, saying, 'Many thanks.'Then he walked off in the direction of the battery, eating the bread as he went. I watched him circle the mud pools as he moved over the grey field.

  The rest of us felt the dew on our hair and clothes, swore or prayed according to inclination, and readied ourselves for another day of wait­ing. I relieved myself at last by pissing into the mud next to the others, and was abused for it, and wondered was I indeed that same man who had washed down his body in scented water.

  That was the day, all our weapons being in place, that Cromwell sent to John Paulet, the Marquess of Winchester and Master of Basing-House, to know would he surrender in common sense and decency, or put his own people and ours to the danger of a storm. For, he wrote plainly, as acknowledged Papists, the Marquess and his people could expect the utmost severity if they went on to the bitter end, and their only hope of mercy, according to the law of arms, lay in surrender. But whether through stubborn pride, or fear that we were less honourable than we pretended, the Marquess could not be brought to sue for terms. The time was now come to show them some play. The order was given and our great guns commenced firing.

  My fears for Ferris rarely left me, and having little else to do I had taken to standing in the field, watching each ball and shell crash into the outer walls and cringing whenever the enemy landed some­thing near our battery. After a while I was joined by one Price, a tall man and well made, but sickly-looking and with the cough which was spreading through the camp. He it was who told me most about Basing-House and its occupants.

  'Romanists, all of them,' said he. 'The Marquess pushed out his one Protestant commander. That was Colonel Rawdon, and a fool's trick it was to get rid of him. Paulet threw away five hundred men at a stroke.'

  'He must have great faith in his idols,' I remarked.

  'In the walls, as well as the Pope. One way and another, the place has been under siege for years.'

  'And always stuck it out?' I tried to picture how much food must lie within.

  'Aye. We nearly got in with the London Trained Bands,' Price broke off to cough up some phlegm, 'but it ended in disgrace.'

  'How? Our men were cowards?'

  'I'd not say cowards. They were over the wall — the hardest part! — and they got into the barn.' He pointed at a massy building within. 'It was full of food and drink. Would you believe the whoresons stayed there, gorging, and the roof in flames over their heads?'

  'Did they burn to death?'

  'The defenders turned shot and cannon on them. The rest were beaten back.'

  Remembering the cheese I had stolen while tramping the road, I could well understand how the chains of duty and common prudence had snapped all at once. Such plenty, spread before men both hungry and cold, would be irresistible.

  'Have
the people inside never gone short?' I asked.

  'We nearly had them once - they were starved down to oat por­ridge. A couple of them tried to get out over the wall. Paulet hanged them, else more would have followed. Desperate, they were.' He sighed. 'And then the place was relieved. No, the only way is to batter down the houses.'

  And that's what Cromwell's sworn to do?'

  'He and Dalbier before him.'

  I asked why, if Dalbier were set on it, he had not done the thing before we came.

  'It takes time,'said Price. 'The man's no fool with his mathematics.'

  'That's not to say he is a soldier,' I returned.

  Price looked strangely at me. 'Do you think war is all swordwork? He's an engineer, that's what artillery needs.'

  I assured him that I gave full credit to the artillery.

  Cromwell's great guns shot off, then Dalbier's, then Cromwell's again, sometimes the two together, while we waited and sank deeper into the filth of the field. Those of us who were not concerned with the bombardment kept back from the breastworks and passed our time as best we could.

  I walked forward once that day in search of Ferris and saw him load his weapon, body tensed with effort. He straightened up with a hand to the small of his back and seemed so far from any thought of me that I lost courage and returned again to my place. All this time the sky blackened, emptied onto us like a well-bucket, and like a well-bucket refilled itself for another drenching.

  Back from spying on Ferris, I went to stand beside Price, the two of us holding our pikes and watching cannonballs sink into the walls of Basing, when suddenly he began to sway.

  'How is't with you?' I stretched out my hand to him, but he sud­denly bent, groaning, and spewed a vile, stinking fluid. He dropped the pike but fortunately it fell between, and not on, two men standing in front of us.

  Price straightened up. 'Beg pardon, comrades.' Reaching for the pike as one of them handed it him, he straight let it fall a second time, and himself on top of it.

  The man who had given back the pike crouched over him. 'Sol­dier?'

  Price did not stir. The man looked helplessly at me. I pulled our fallen comrade up onto his knees and found him wet with blood streaked shit.

  'You'd best take him to the surgeon's tent,' said the other. I raised Price to his feet but found myself taking his whole weight, for he was as if dead.

  'He's big,' I said, but none offered to help me so I heaved him over my shoulder and brought my uncleanly burden through the ranks as best I could, laying him on the rutted grass outside the tent entrance. There were no hurdles. The surgeon's mate, a little, sweaty fellow I had not seen at Winchester, came up and asked what the injury might be; I explained it was rather a case of flux than shot. He told me that practically every man in the tent had some sickness of the kind.

  'Had we tents for the healthy, we'd not need them for the sick,' I complained. The man looked at me, as if to say he wished for tents as much as I did, and could do as little to procure them.

  'Don't bring any more,' he said, 'unless it's wounds.'

  'What if it's vomiting and flux?'

  'Lay them on their sides.'

  'They'll get trodden on,' I protested.

  'Then don't tread on them.' He laughed. I was at first enraged, but then saw that he was half crazy having neither space nor physic for so many sick and the assault proper still to come.

  Price, at least, I had got out of the action. As I left I saw another man stagger in, spewing down the front of his buff-coat, and won­dered if he would be ordered back to the ranks. I returned to my place,

  sinking in the field up to my knees and more than once groping on all-fours to wrench my boots out of the sucking mud. As I went I looked again at the battery for Ferris, but could see none like him. From where I stood it was hard to tell one man from another, and the great guns were all in a fume. I wiped my hands on my red jacket. It was caked in filth and I recalled my wedding coat, Peter fastening the mother-of-pearl buttons and calling me a prince. Suddenly hungry to look on the coat again, I rummaged for it in my snapsack. It was gone. Most likely it had been stolen at Winchester and the buttons cut off. So it was that I lost my last remembrance of a happier time, of which there was now not a thread left.

  When I got back there was another standing in line with me, holding Price's abandoned pike. At first I did not know Philip through his mask of mud and smuts.

  'I thought you were muskets?' I asked, taking up my own weapon. I did not want his company.

  'Blew up. Last night.'

  'But you're not hurt.'

  'Hugh had it at the time. He's lost a hand.'

  I marvelled at the ill chance of this world, that saved Philip and maimed Hugh. To the lucky man I said, 'But you can't just come to us!'

  This he ignored. There was a bursting sound as the cannon went off again, and Philip shouted, 'Like Winchester.'

  'How so?'

  'Made a hole wide enough for thirty to enter abreast. In a day, that was.'

  'Then I'd say this is different.'

  'We'll get in, never fear.' He smiled at me. 'They'll hang, draw and quarter the priests.'

  I did not care to answer. Rain came down heavily; Philip turned up his cheeks to the sky and let the downpour rinse away the mud. He had a sweet young face full of kindness, God help any prisoner or defenceless woman who trusted in it. Ferris, in contrast, must look a devil by now, his wound red and smarting from the smoke. I remem­bered the story about his drowning in blood at Bristol.

  'There's your mate,' said Philip, pointing.

  My heart leapt: I strained to follow his finger, but saw only Nath­an.

  'Well, well!' Philip raised an eyebrow. 'He's coming your way.'

  In that moment I felt I could humble myself as Ferris had asked, and waved to the boy, but he failed to notice me. Nathan was un-helmeted, his delicate features tensed as if he were distracted by some fear. His wet hair showed almost black against his neck and forehead.

  'Pretty little piece, isn't he?' asked Philip. 'You know what they say about him?'

  At last the lad saw me. His eyes narrowed, then he turned his head to one side and moved away from us.

  'Mind this,' I ordered Philip, and put my pike into his free hand. He gave an oily wink.

  'Nathan! Nathan!'I shouldered my way through the ranks towards his red coat, which was a recent issue and still bright enough to stand out. When I finally laid hand on his shoulder he twisted away, his face pouting and pulling like that of a young child.

  'Be easy, man, I want only—'

  'He's on the guns, Rupert.'

  'I know. He's not the one I want.'

  'I haven't seen him,' he went on without listening, 'since you sat with us last night.'

  'Hear me, Nathan! I am come to talk to you, to say I am sorry for— for the hasty words I spoke. Be so good as to forgive them.'

  Cough as I might, my voice would not act the lie for me, but clanged hard and flat. I could abase myself when alone with Ferris, yet in the company of the boy himself, his twisting and whining stirred me up again. Softening my tone as much as I could, I added, 'Ferris said he would bear you my apology.'

  'Aye,' he muttered. 'Many thanks, I must be gone—'

  'Nathan!' I placed a hand on my heart. 'Did not Ferris tell you?'

  'I swear, I've not seen him.'Nathan pulled away from me. 'Let me go now, don't hurt me.'

  'I am suing for pardon, why should I hurt you?'

  The words which I had meant for gentle came spiked with exasperation at his stupidity. I took him by the shoulders to compel atten­tion.

  'Please, Jacob! Let me go!'

  'By Christ, Nathan—' I stopped.

  A wail escaped him. Too late, he clapped both hands to his mouth.

  Rage beat up from my belly. Gritting my teeth to hold it in, I put the question as if to a child: 'Who said my name was Jacob?'

  The goose had not the wit to run but stood shaking, hands dropped now and limp as gloves
.

  'It was Fat Tommy.' I shook him. 'Wasn't it?'

  A couple of men near us stepped closer; I turned to them. 'Private quarrel, friends; you see I do no more than put a question.'

  'He's a murderer! He's going to kill me!'shrieked the little fool.

  I loosed his shoulders, spreading my hands to show myself un­armed, and laughed to the onlookers. 'He's a boy, gentlemen, though you might not think it seeing him thus afflicted with the mother.' I appealed to them whether they had seen me do the lad any harm, whether he showed a bloody lip or a bruise anywhere. They looked at Ferris's sprig, at his trembling mouth and his tears just starting, and laughed along with me.

  'Pray witness our talk, gentlemen. Now, Nathan,' I took hold of him once more, as the cat takes back the mouse, 'look at me.' I knew he would not be able to do so; he tried, but winced away.

  'Look at me,' and I tightened my grip on his arms until it was sure to give pain. When he raised his face to mine I slackened the hold - not too much - and softly, went on, 'It was Fat Tommy. You see I know already.'

  Nathan sniffed back phlegm and tears. 'What will you do to him?'

  'Nothing. What else did he tell you?'

  He again looked away, down to the ground, black lashes standing out against the bluish skin beneath his eyes. I ached to strangle him.

  'Has he frighted you with some tale about me?'

  Nathan shook his head. When next he forced himself to meet my, gaze I saw the ghost of Chris Walshe, pleading and terrified. There was no doubt in my mind that he knew, and it must follow that Ferris knew also.

  I let go of his arms. 'Tommy is a wicked liar,' I said for the benefit of the men still listening. 'In proof of which, go your way in peace.'

  He ran off, and I stayed a minute gaining command of myself. I could hear Tommy's gloating voice lingering on Walshe’s wounds and on the last agony of Mervyn Roche, Nathan adding his squeaks the while: He pulled a knife on me! He'll have us all poisoned! until between them they had killed every last kindness in Ferris. I had much to repay these two. I would wait my chance during the assault, when my friend would be none the wiser.

  The rain had slackened. I tramped and elbowed my way back to Philip who, being unequal to the two pikes, had stuck them upright into the mud.