by Maria McCann
‘I think Aunt knows.’
‘Not like this. O God, God.’
So he too could scald with shame, and even forget that he denied God. His garments were still undone, and I pulled the coverlet over his nakedness, then sat on the edge of the bed watching clouds through the window. It would soon be time for the midday meal. Was Aunt already come in? Were the two women even now in the kitchen, Becs savage in disgust, Aunt trembling at her revelations of our foulness? My fault, my fault. How could I have forgotten the door? Every night I had checked, only to betray us at this much more dangerous time.
‘She will go to the officers,’ I whispered. Ferris buried his face in the bed as the room suddenly filled with the roar of furnaces, the delirious sputter of fat in flames, In Hell you are as if alive.
‘No. She would not.’ The words came half stifled from the bolster. He rubbed the back of his neck and I pictured that gentle hand charred down to the bone.
He went on, his voice hoarse, ‘She won’t do that to Aunt.’
‘But suppose she does,’ I urged. ‘We must prepare a defence.’
He turned wearily towards me. ‘There’s none but denial.’
I considered. ‘Spite? She hates me because I didn’t take her.’
‘They will ask, why didn’t you?’ he countered. ‘She came with money, you have none. It’s not as if she were ugly or poxed.’
‘I have a wife not proven dead. You said as much to Aunt.’
Ferris’s eyes were shrunken up with misery. ‘Becs loves her. That’s who she’ll tell, if any.’
Rage rose in me, at myself, at Becs and at all spies: I bit into my knuckle until the skin broke, leaking blood onto the sheet.
‘Jacob.’
‘Aye?’
He pulled himself up in the bed. ‘Let’s to the tavern tonight. No matter what.’
I saw he was contemplating an escape into drink, and remembered how Aunt had confiscated his wine from the printroom.
‘I’m going down,’ he added. ‘She mustn’t find me here.’ He smoothed the shirt down over his hips and tucked it in.
‘You drink too much these days,’ I said.
‘There’s Zebedee to look for.’
I hesitated, torn between my desire to find Zeb, my fear of his speaking with Ferris, and an awareness that of late my friend was grown too fond of bottled comfort.
He reached for my hand. ‘Will you brave it with me?’
We descended the stairs padding on our toes and listening out for angry women’s voices. Our luck improved, for while we were still coming down we caught the sound of Aunt entering by the front door. Ferris almost fell down the stairs, so desperate was he to get to her before she could hold converse with the maid. I scrabbled after him.
She was already in the kitchen, but the two were got no further than salutations before we burst in. Aunt turned round in evident surprise. Her arm was still hooked through the basket she used for marketing. Becs was gutting a large fish.
‘Well, what’s put you in such haste?’ Aunt laughed.
Ferris hesitated.
‘Christopher has all manner of things to show you,’ I said. My everyday voice came out quite as usual. If we were not to arouse suspicion, I must act the man.
‘Seeds, maps, you know,’ Ferris offered timidly.
‘Oh, that.’ Her lack of interest was unmistakable, yet he pressed on,
‘And a book on tent-making. Jacob is to learn to sew.’
‘Learn to sew!’ She giggled like a young girl, seemingly quite caught by the idea. ‘Do you teach him, Becs?’
There was a sharp squeeze about my heart as the girl looked me over, unsmiling.
‘Nay,’ she said. ‘Some things are for women, and men should keep off.’
‘But tent-makers are men,’ said Aunt.
‘I doubt there’s much any woman could teach him,’ said Becs. She ripped out a long necklace of fish guts.
I felt she would not tell, or at least not yet. While Aunt was unpacking the basket I tried to signal Becs my thanks, but it was hard to make her look at me, now that she knew what it was I preferred to herself and twenty pounds down.
‘I’ll get the things out and show you,’ said Ferris and fled upstairs. Aunt took butter into the scullery.
‘God bless you, Becs.’ I leapt forward and seized the girl’s slimy fingers.
‘Hands off!’ she hissed, whipping them away. ‘And get out!’
Upstairs I found Ferris pacing up and down, maps and seeds forlorn on the table.
‘She won’t tell,’ I said.
‘No?’
We set out the bags as he had done that morning.
‘Does Aunt want to see these?’ I asked.
‘What else can we talk about! I feel I’m going mad.’
I was unhappy, for after lying apart the night before we had left my bed before I wanted to.
‘Ferris!’
‘What?’
‘You will let me in tonight, won’t you?’
He stared at me in silence.
‘You said I was not to give you up for a sermon, Ferris.’
The door opened downstairs. He shrugged helplessly.
‘I’m coming in to you no matter what,’ I whispered.
‘Then bolt the whoreson door!’ he hissed back.
Aunt gave ear briefly to the many virtues of the several seeds, and looked over the maps with keener interest. She wished him to dig not too far from one of the coaching inns, so that she might see him in London again or even travel to the colony.
‘We must be far enough from enclosed land,’ said Ferris. ‘We are not asking for a fight, though I wager they’ll be hot to give us one.’
They both liked the look of a place called Page Common, where there was a stream and a wood nearby. It was just two miles from an inn whence there was a coach to London. I came and examined it for those fateful names that warn of long toil and little profit, but instead I found places marked Fatfield and Bull Bridge.
‘This could be the one,’ said Ferris to me, his face drawn.
‘As soon this as any,’ I returned. ‘You look spent. Come out with me this afternoon.’
‘Did we not agree to go tonight?’
‘The streets are safer by day.’
‘Come with you? Where?’ asked Aunt. ‘Christopher, clear these bags now, the meal will be up soon.’
I piled the maps and seed pouches into his arms and he took them off upstairs.
‘Where are you going?’ she repeated, fixing me with her eyes.
‘To a tavern where Christopher thinks my brother may have been last night.’
‘O Jacob! What good news!’ She squeezed my hands.
‘It may not be the man,’ I warned. ‘And we are scarce friends.’
‘A brother’s always a brother! I pray it be him.’
Aunt had seemingly forgotten Cain and Abel. Her eyes filmed over with visions, which doubtless stretched to Zeb keeping me, and thus Ferris, in London.
Becs brought up the fish some twenty minutes later, and stood as far from me as possible. Disgust quivered from her like noise from a struck gong. Ferris came down and Aunt prayed aloud not only that we might be thankful for all that was placed before us, but that, God willing, Jacob’s brother might be restored to him.
‘Amen,’ chimed in Ferris.
I are in a species of trance. Too much had happened too quickly, and I could not properly take it in. More than once Aunt had to call my name several times before I could understand I was being spoken to. At last we rose and Ferris went directly for his cloak and mine.
‘We may be late, you were best not keep food hot for us,’ he warned Aunt as he handed the garment to me.
She nodded. ‘Late, but sober.’
‘Just late.’
The glory of the morning was vanished utterly away. We fell in with a crew of returned soldiers whistling to a jackdaw in a woman’s window and teaching it to curse: one of them called out, ‘Stay, my son!’ to
Ferris as we passed and they shook hands.
‘I know Tom from before the wars,’ my friend explained. I looked up and saw the woman come to the window, lift the cage inside and pull the shutter to, while the men called out, ‘Sweetheart! Come down to me!’ and even, ‘I saw him in camp, my angel, and he lies with all the whores.’ Ferris coughed and I could see he was glad when they moved off from the house.
‘How’s it with you, Tom lad?’ my friend asked his acquaintance, a comical individual, whose face drooped like a hound’s and who rolled, rather than walked, along. Plainly, all of our companions had already drunk deep.
‘My wedding’s off. Some fool tells her I’m dead – I get back and find her married!’
‘Didn’t you write?’ asked Ferris.
‘Can’t, can I? And my brother’s dug up the fruit trees. Was man ever cursed with such a family! What’s worth living for, eh, Christopher?’
I said, ‘Get yourself a wife with an orchard.’
‘Never mind a wife, my hearts,’ said his companion, a fat man of about thirty. ‘A maidservant, that’s the thing. Get yourself a little honeypot on the premises.’
At the word maidservant Ferris at once turned scarlet.
‘Hey-hey! Look at this one, lads, blushing like a bride! What, your maid’s kind, is she?’
‘No indeed,’ said my poor friend.
‘I can see it in your eyes, you dog—’
‘He’s got his feet under the table—’
‘Is she dark or fair?’
‘We have a maid—’ began Ferris.
The men cheered.
‘—but she affects Jacob, not myself.’ His cheeks were cooling, and I saw he had mastered the rush of shame.
‘Jacob, eh! And is she worth the whistle, Jacob?’
They now turned their fire on me and I amused myself in stirring them up. I had a bedfellow to tickle any man’s taste: graceful, with yellow hair, the firmest, whitest paps a man might glimpse through a chamber door – at these words I saw Ferris jump, but I ignored the pleading look he turned on me and went on to boast of her waist, so slender and supple that she wore no stays.
‘Easy to strip?’ leered Tom.
‘As a man,’ I replied. ‘And everything down below—’ Ferris’s eyes threatened murder – ‘firm, gentlemen. Tight and – best of all – eager.’
‘You make pretty free with her,’ Ferris said as the rest of them howled, as is men’s way, urging me on: Damn scruples! And yet I would swear that all the time they took me for a liar, even as they praised my boldness and assured me that a woman likes a man to be master.
‘No wonder she likes you, then,’ said Ferris out of the corner of his mouth.
‘But Christopher,’ asked the one called Tom, ‘surely I heard you’re married now?’
‘She died in childbed. The babe too.’
The fellows were silenced.
As we approached the tavern, Ferris said to me, ‘We will end by all going in together. You can keep to the back.’
‘You forget I’m tallest.’
‘Can’t be helped. Or shall I go in with them and you wait outside?’
This seemed a better plan. We dropped behind and let the rest put some distance between themselves and us.
‘Ferris, you’ll pardon what I said?’
‘Of the maid?’ He laughed, and turned on me such a look as must have infallibly discovered us had any man been watching.
The little crowd tramped into the tavern. I paced outside the windows, peering in at each place where a pane had splintered from the leads. On the left I made out the shoulders of our company, and further right some tables with a few drinkers, none of them Zeb, and one sluttish woman.
I heard my friend say something about seeking a man, and my eyes followed him across the room and round a corner out of sight. I tried to read a name some sot had scratched on the glass with a diamond: it looked like Fubsy. Then Ferris reappeared and beckoned me in.
‘What kept you?’ asked the fat man as I rejoined our group.
‘A neighbour passing by,’ I said vaguely.
Ferris pulled up two stools and laid hold of my arm. ‘Jacob, a word.’
The other man turned to where some cards were being dealt.
Ferris went on, ‘He’s not here. But there’s one in the back who was with him last night.’
Behind me the men were shouting their bids. By rights the landlord should lose his licence, permitting the use of cards; perhaps he had the officers in his purse. I pushed open the oak door leading to the back room. The air was foul with tobacco. There seemed none there to serve. I called for ale, and sat with my back to the window so as to see the company better, feigning meanwhile to be engrossed in a ballad which someone had left on the table to my right. I saw a grizzled man before me, not unlike Walshe but much thinner, his hat limp and shining with old grease. He had a weary, frowzy look, but shouted uproariously at something his companions were saying. With him were a lad, whose lardy cheeks were not flattered by his prentice’s crop, and a horse-faced woman, her hair uncovered and hanging matted down her back. She had pulled her skirt up, so as not to trail it in the tobacco spittle which streaked the floor, and seemed not to care that her calves were on view. To my surprise she got up and went to the hatch; coming back directly, she served me with my ale.
‘You are the tavern-keeper, Mistress?’ I enquired.
‘Aye, Sir,’ and she hawked and spat.
‘That is your husband, then, and your son?’
She stared at me as if suspecting some trap, then snorted. For my part, I paid for the ale with the exact sum for I felt she was the kind of hostess who might forget a reckoning.
‘Aye, Nolly’s my son.’ She swept up the coins from the table top. ‘My husband’s dead.’
‘Forgive my forwardness, it was an idle question.’
She grinned, showing dark brown teeth, and went so far as to say she hoped I liked the ale and might drink there again. I took a sip of the drink and was pleasantly surprised. Having served me, the woman did not move off but seated herself nearby, and it came to me that she liked my looks.
‘Mistress,’ I began, smirking. ‘You do good trade here. Is it the cheer or the pleasure of your company—’
Before I could push on with the rest of my flattery a man came in and called for a pipe. The woman rose again with a loud uncivil sigh, and as she served him I felt my courage dissolve. I finished up the ale and left.
In the other room I found Ferris sitting with the rest, being dealt in for a game of cards. I bowed to the assembled company and told him we must be going.
‘I’ll cut out then lads,’ he said.
A man protested, ‘We’ve just begun, my arse has scarce warmed the bench!’
Smiling, Ferris shook his head.
‘Just one hand – Jacob shall play too.’
‘Some other time,’ I said. ‘I’ve urgent business.’
‘Aye, Blackamoor there wants back to his maid,’ one said in my hearing.
Ferris came out with me to the street outside, where I at once smelt the tobacco on my coat.
‘What did you hear in there?’ he asked. We walked in the direction of the river, for by unspoken agreement we had no wish to return to the house.
‘Nothing.’
‘No?’
‘They talked of other matters,’ I said, seeing in his face that he suspected some bungle. ‘Did you wish to go on with the cards?’
Ferris shook his head. ‘Let us try some more places. I’ve enough in my purse to sit all night.’
And fall senseless, I thought. I said I needed to consider, so we went down by the quay and admired the ships that were come in.
I told Ferris that I loved to look at the sea.
‘This isn’t it,’ he replied. ‘The Thames merely.’ Suddenly he stopped and whirled round to face me, eyes bright with mockery. ‘Jacob’s never seen the sea!’
He could not stop laughing.
‘As good as. Well,
is it any different?’ I demanded.
‘You can’t look across to the other side of the sea, you lumpkin—!’
I knew that, from maps. He need not have mocked me, for it was no fault of mine I was country born, and I had in fact thought a deal about the sea, in particular that time when I hankered after Massachusetts. Sometimes, when I pictured how big it was, curling round the earth, I got a splitting sensation in my head that forced me to stop. It was easier to look at the people who made their bread from it, though these were almost as strange to me as the sea itself. The sailors were so wild, so outlandish, to my eyes they were scarce Englishmen at all. I said as much to Ferris, who was come to the end of his laugh. He said they had a way of living entirely their own, so in a way they were inhabitants not of England, but of their ships only.
‘As a boy I had a great idea of being a mariner,’ he said. ‘What did you dream of?’
‘Nothing. For my father to come back.’
‘He left you?’
‘Died. Later I thought of going to Massachusetts. But if ever I cross to America it’ll be in comfort, with money.’
We watched a man twist together what looked like a snare of ropes.
‘You would make a good mariner,’ he said. ‘You have to be strong, and it helps to be tawny.’
‘How, pray? To pass for an Ethiope?’
‘The fair ones get flayed by the sun. I talked once with a red-headed man sailed on the Bluebell; he said his back came off in pieces.’
We walked on in silence. A sweet smell, like to a fruited cake, drove out the usual stench of the quays.
‘Tobacco. I could drink a pipe of it now,’ said Ferris. Pale and frowning, he eyed some men loading a crane.
A tenderness rose in me. ‘Are you afraid to go home?’
He hesitated. ‘Somewhat.’
‘Then we’ll stay out until you’re ready.’
We walked on awhile and then doubled back on our steps. The warmth within me grew.
‘Ferris?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You said this morning you loved me as meat loves salt.’
I think he knew what I was leading to, for he glanced at me and kept silent
‘Ferris, you will let me come to you?’
‘Even if I am miserable?’ he answered.
