McCann, Maria - As Meat Loves Salt

by Balefanio

  The search for such a hiding place brought me through some of the vilest parts of the town. Like London it has its warrens, places where I would never have ventured with him, though perhaps Zeb might not be entirely at a loss there. In one alley where the sky was no more than a crack above the houses, I was set upon by two whores who stood propping the sides of an ale-house door. There was an older woman who might be the mother as I believe these bawds are called, and a purple-faced girl of about sixteen, very drunk, whose thin blonde hair was plastered to her head with scurf. They tried to bar my way and when I pushed them aside, the girl ran ahead, raised her skirts and pissed full in my view. It is said some men's appetites are whetted thereby, but there could scarce have been a more monstrous sight than her veined flesh and swollen, matted privates. I knocked her into the muck where she belonged.

  'Arse-merchant, he-whore,' shouted the other and with that the two of them started scooping up filth from the street and throwing it at me. I made a rush at them, and they fled. Being drunk, their aim was none of the steadiest, so that my cloak was only a little soiled.

  After going up and down the streets, I found me a place in CattesHead Passage, a vermin-ridden rookery. In the tavern there they made offer of a miserable room, the walled-off end of a passageway, with an empty grate and the bed so narrow that not even my host could fit another wretch in it, so I had only the fleas and lice to share with. To get to the quay was no more than stepping to the alley end and cross­ing the road.

  Having bolted the door that first day I lay perhaps an hour with­out movement, trying if I was any better for being out of London. That

  was a vain hope, for I still breathed and felt. Again I saw Ferris bend over my wife and child, saw him pushed from one torturer to another in their sport; again the horseman smiled to me as to as fellow and a brother. There was a savage pain my breast like to tearing or scalding, so great I would not have been surprised to look down and see myself butchered like a Jesuit on the scaffold.

  Think not on him, urged the Voice.

  I forced my mind towards money. I had of course Ferris's box with me, and had not yet fully examined what it held. There was gold lying near the top, and this had been little depleted by the price of my room and the clothes I had purchased in London. The woman who dealt in used apparel had told me I was in uncommon luck, for a man of my own stature had died two days before. I asked what was his complaint, not wanting to die of it likewise, and she said the heart.

  Having bought a purse of the same woman, I poured out the gold onto the stinking bed, ready to be pocketed up. There was also silver that I had missed but now found jammed between the box sides and a lining of paper. All the coin taken together would pay my passage to New England. I had thought there would be more, but then remem­bered how freely he had paid out for the dairy. There was also a gold ring. In my first confusion I took it for Caro's the one Zeb had boasted of wearing in his ear, but this was a ring I had never seen before, made for a delicate hand. Turning it about I found inscribed on the inside, CF &JC, 1645. So he, like me, had been betrothed with a ring. I pushed it onto my little finger.

  The paper which lay at the bottom might be of some worth. Scrab­bling to dislodge it, I felt the skin of my knuckle suddenly slit open and remembered that something had cut me as I held the box in the wood. I lifted out the sheet by another corner and found beneath it the fragment of scarlet glass I had given him after Basing-House. Hold­ing it up to the light, I again saw the word scratched by John Paulet, that obstinate and defeated man: loyaute. There was a place where Fer­ris and I had failed utterly. I recalled his smile as he said, 'What shall I do with you?' and I threw the glass into the grate.

  The folded document was a letter, spotted with my blood where the shard of glass had pricked me. As I unfolded it a twist of hair

  fell out, thick and black. I had never made him such a gift, and I wondered when this trophy had been captured. It might have been the very first day, when the boys cut my hair as I lay on the road. How I must have called to him. Months and months he lived alongside me, enduring it. And Nathan? I wondered. Had my hair replaced his?

  I took up the letter. On seeing the first line I knew it directly, but could not hold back from reading the whole thing, not once but many times, for it was the only love letter I had received in my life. Have you the heart to standby, he had written, and see it done?

  The letter had been left behind, that first time, and Ferris had treasured it for the sake of what followed. Again I tightened my arms about him. Delight. He ran his hands over me, opening his mouth to my kiss.

  Such a letter has no place where you are going, came the Voice. Leave clutching at these rags.

  Keeping the thing folded so as not to read it again, I tore it in strips and then in scraps, but then hesitated, not liking to leave even scraps of it behind in the room.

  Drown it.

  The Voice was grown impatient. I crushed together the pieces in my hand and stepped out onto the quayside before setting them free. They fluttered on the air, some settling on the bosom of the water and other morsels sinking almost at once. Here and there a word blown back on land survived entire, waiting to be trodden into the mud.

  The wind along the quay lifts my hair, drops it in my eyes and plays with the hem of my new wool cloak. Though cold, it is welcome, as it takes off the smell of rotten meat that hangs about the place. Dead cows, it might be: I watch as a crane dangles great boxes, the prisons of horses and cattle, over the eck of a transport. There are more than a hundred cows penned up, lowing their misery to any that will hear. Whenever the wind veers, the stink of carrion and the cleaner scent of animal dung are wiped away by something like spiced cake, which

  Ferris once told me was tobacco. I remember his saying that as a boy he wished to be a mariner, and I said— I said—

  Think not on him.

  All manner of people are here, standing, sitting, crouching on their heels, and from time to time a squall of conversation breaks out, only to die down almost at once, for we are all weary. Somewhere behind me is a man whom I faced down last night over nothing, that is to say, over who should first pass through a door. It seems I am grown so think-skinned I can scarce endure to be crossed; or it may be, I am looking for the one will put a knife in me at last.

  Though the sun fumes in a mist over the sea, the man on my right tells me the haze will speedily burn off and the day be hot. This neighbour, sunburnt and thickset, is one Knowell, going to join his brother in New England. Mistress Knowell has the complexion of a woman brought up on whey, with a creased, patient face and very red eyelids. The Voice whispered me, when I first began talking with them, that the husband deals severely with her and that she merits it by her whining. She keeps up a constant chatter about seasickness and her determination not to yield to it, but whenever she falls silent she is visited by tears, which she blames on the wind drawing water from her eyes.

  The line moves slowly as the boats weave back and forth, loading passengers and their goods to row them out to the Fortitude. The wind again dampens Mistress Knowell's cheeks with tears.

  'Lord, Mercy, why must you?' cries the husband. To me he adds, 'We have a plot of land all cleared and made ready, Sir. My brother and his wife are gone before.'

  'You are indeed fortunate,' I reply.

  'Indeed! yet my wife does nought but grizzle.' He turns away from us, looking outwards to the ship. Mercy Knowell, who has not the look of a spoilt or wilful woman, dabs her face on her sleeve. 'Husband,' she says.

  He inclines towards his weeping spouse and I edge forward for she is low-voiced and I wish to hear her over the fluttering of my hat set up by the salt wind.

  'I am most grateful for James's work.' Her eyes glaze afresh with unfallen tears. 'But it is here that William and Anne are buried.'

  He sighs resignedly, takes her hand. Tears pill over her eyelids.

  I say, 'You must not weep for the past, Madam, but cultivate hope for the future.'

&nbs
p; She turns a watery smile upon me. 'Excellent advice, Sir, and I wonder that you yourself do not profit thereby.'

  'Profit? In what wise—'

  Mercy Knowell wipes the back of her finger along my cheek and then shows it me. The finger gleams with wet.

  'Nothing,’ I say,’ an affliction of the eyes.'

  It has now been three days that I weep and do not know it.

  The boat rocks as I lower myself onto her boards. Packed in with the Knowells, with my enemy from the night before and two families, the anxious parents bidding their children sit still, I am cradled in a wooden shell. The mariners heave, bringing us little by little to our shop. How formless, I think is the sea, swelling, folding upon itself, and folds dissolving as soon as seen. I look back at England, a heap of dead Filth gilded by the early sun.

  To my left there is a family where the youngest brother, fearful of the water, whimpers and snuffles like any girl. Someone says, 'Cour­age,' and I see Ferris take his wife by the hand and walk the length of Cheapside with her while the neighbours talk of shame.

  Think not on him.

  I see him in the army, defending Nathan against the Bad Angel he already loves more, and in London, composing the type for his uncle's press, his face bright with visions of a better time.

  He betrayed you. Think not on him.

  He sits alone, writing the letter which I scattered on the sea, and hoping I will not turn from him in disgust. He stands defenceless, in dispute with the green horseman, and I say nothing, but later kiss his neck where the man has spat on it. He raises his fists beneath the blows, while I look on.

  Why did You bid me drown the letter? I have lost something that he touched, and the destruction of it has gained You nothing, for now I no longer read the words, I hear them, as if he implored me face to face.

  Speak to me, Jacob, do not play the tyrant. Speak to me.