by Maria McCann
I shuddered.
‘And then the sough fell on my head.’ He was still laughing at the horror of it, almost with tenderness. ‘I saw your feet – kicking about in the sky.’
‘Hathersage’s.’
‘His! I’d have given something to see the rest of him!’
‘How can you laugh about it, Ferris? Don’t you know you almost drowned?’
‘Who better? The water was up to my armpits, nothing under my feet. A very good sough.’
‘The last sough you dig,’ I said. ‘Open ditches, or none.’
He put his hand on mine and we rested a few minutes in silence. I saw his eyelids begin to droop.
‘You’ll keep him off?’ he murmured. ‘Botts.’
‘You would have him with us,’ I reminded him.
‘Don’t scold me now, Jacob. Be kind.’
‘I’ll sleep here. If he sets foot inside the door, I’ll kill him.’
‘There’s my fierce lad.’ He closed his eyes.
I stayed by his bed the rest of that day, offering drink, holding a pot for him to piss in, placing cold compresses on his shoulders, where he said the worst pain was. All he lacked was rest: though he had given himself a bad wrench, his shoulder blade was not out.
‘You won’t need a bonesetter,’ I said that evening. I was sitting on the floor of his hut, watching the sunset spread itself over the turf walls and light up the pamphlet which I was reading to him: tedious stuff again, this time about manures. In a corner of the hut stood a decoction made by Elizabeth, supposed to loosen muscles and ease pain.
‘Look here.’ He pulled back the cover and I saw bruises like giant blackberries, one staining his flesh from the pit of his neck right down the breastbone.
‘A wonder your chest isn’t stove in,’ I said, appalled.
‘I’m lucky.’ He burrowed under the blankets and slept, snoring. I lay down on the makeshift couch that was even more primitive than my usual bed. There was no ointment to dress bruises with. By and by I would get up and make a fresh compress. By and by.
In the silence of night I was woken by someone in the hut. Then I understood it was Ferris, and stretched out: my hips ached as they had done in the army. He shifted on his bed and I heard the intake of breath; he was awake. I rose and felt for his face. It was greasy with sweat.
He sighed. ‘Talk to me, Jacob. Take the pain off.’ ‘Is it so bad?’
‘I can’t lie comfortable.’
In the dark I found the bucket of water, and pulling back the bedcover, carefully unwound his compresses and soaked them afresh. Lastly I replaced the cold cloth under his shoulder.
‘Will you sleep now?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Yes. I’ll bring you sleep.’ I began to stroke him on the neck and chest, then lower down.
‘Jacob, no. I can’t!’
‘Sshh. Just lie still. I’ll make you sleep.’
I did, and was very gentle; I took nothing for myself, and the only force I used was at the end, when I put my hand over his mouth.
In the morning he was able to rise, with help, walk a few steps and eat. The other colonists came and stood about, offering to help lift him or bring some victuals which might tempt the appetite. Ferris, making a royal progress round his hut, smiled grimly on them all, yelping from time to time as a muscle spasm forced him to halt. At the end I helped him back into bed, gave him some cheat bread and came out to give the others a report on his health, saying the compresses had been most beneficial.
‘All quite bootless,’ rumbled Botts, choked with resentment at being baulked of his victim. ‘He has had a fall and is already half recovered; had I bled him he would be up and working by now.’
We were just outside the hut, Ferris inside; I pictured him chewing on the bit of cheat and listening to the attacks made on us. Our companions looked from Botts to me, and I thought they did not like me least.
‘He’s pulled all the muscles round his shoulders,’ I said, ‘and been battered by the landslip. Here,’ and I waved Botts into the hut; the rest followed. Ferris looked up fearfully, but I stepped between himself and Botts before holding open the front of the patient’s shirt.
‘Lord have mercy, his chest’s black,’ said Hepsibah. The other women clucked their tongues; I saw Hathersage purse his lips in pity.
‘Poor fellow,’ murmured Susannah. Her sister stood rigid, eyes wide, as if learning the blue-black pattern by heart.
‘A man doesn’t die of bruises and pulled muscles,’ pronounced Botts.
‘I know that,’ I said.
‘But if there be too much blood,’ he went on ominously, ‘his recovery may be slowed. Why should I not undertake the care of him?’
The jackanapes wearied me to death; he would not leave well alone.
‘Because you’ve not been called upon. He doesn’t want you,’ I said. ‘Good Lord, man, don’t you wait for your patients to call you in? Or do you go about blistering and bleeding willy-nilly?’
We were beginning to square up to one another. Harry, who was just arrived, caught my eye warningly.
‘Jacob, your promise,’ came an anxious voice from the bed. I turned away from Botts and when he was gone pulled the door shut behind him.
‘You look dejected,’ Ferris said. ‘You should wash your face.’ I realised then I was still in the tear-stained dirt which had so struck Hathersage the day before.
‘My lower back gripes me horribly,’ he added.
‘You’ve given it a pull, that’s all.’
There would be no work done by me that day. I sat cross-legged and talked with him, not letting him sleep so that he would be the drowsier later, when it was dark.
‘You need not watch over me any longer,’ he said suddenly.
‘I like to.’
‘I thought Hathersage would offer, but he keeps back.’
‘Does he guess?’ I whispered.
‘Guess what?’
‘Filthy darling.’
‘What, pure-minded Wisdom?’ He grinned. ‘Jacob, remember when I tended you?’
‘In the army?’
‘I meant the tooth-drawing.’
‘Holding me down for the surgeon! I am kinder to you.’
We giggled together and he tried to shush me. When we were both quiet there was a feeling of peace in the little hut.
‘Ferris, what became of that letter you wrote me?’
‘I have it somewhere,’ he said dreamily, contemplating the turf roof. ‘It seems long ago, does it not? And there’s a thing I always meant to ask you: what became of your vision?’
‘Vision?’
‘You saw something strange in our upstairs room at home. Do you remember? The Elect!’
‘It never returned—’ I broke off. How could it? I was unfit.
‘Are you sorry?’
I hesitated. ‘No.’
‘But you want to go back.’
‘I miss things.’ He must surely know what.
‘To my way of thinking,’ he said, turning to face me, ‘the great design we are putting into practice here compensates for much. Work, but no master. That’s swords into ploughshares, Jacob: a new England. Think how it will be when the cottages go up.’
If ever they do, I thought silently, but said only, ‘Build as many as you like, we’ll still not live together. What I think on is that, that and the winter.’
‘Poor Jacob. And we never got to the snares.’ He began to laugh silently, shoulders shaking despite his pain.
‘I see I should not have comforted you last night,’ I said in a huff.
‘Jacob.’ His voice was coaxing, enticing. ‘Come winter, we’ll go visit my aunt.’
‘Visit—?’
‘For a week.’
‘Say a fortnight!’ I lay next to him and put my face to his. ‘Two weeks; that’s not long. Say two,’ I begged.
‘Ah…’ he spun out the answer, teasing me, ‘that will be a hard thing to bring about…’
We gazed on one
another.
‘Black but comely,’ he whispered. There followed a silence during which we both listened. The wind carried voices from the rye field; there were no footfalls on the grass outside.
Ferris raised his eyebrows questioningly.
‘No,’ I said, already giving way with desire.
‘Put the wedge in the door.’
I leapt to do his bidding.
‘Take care – my shoulders—’
I stretched out beside him. We kissed with the practised tenderness of old lovers, the terror of new ones: it was perilous just to lie there, letting him caress me inside my mouth, hearing his murmurs of pleasure as I grew bolder. Our danger sharpened the kiss to a delicious edge.
He pulled back from my face to whisper, ‘Will you keep silent? Promise?’
I nodded, feeling a hand slide down my belly.
‘Know what this is?’ he whispered. I shook my head, panting. He gripped me hard. ‘A snare. You’re caught.’
I scarce heard him for the delight beating like a wave up my body; he pressed closer and stopped my mouth with his tongue. My flesh held fast in the snare, I thrashed about, more and more wildly, and poured out my life.
TWENTY-FIVE
Things Broken
The creeping buttercups, so tall and thick as to hide the cow when she lay down in them, delighted Ferris; the horse-chestnuts in the wood pushed up their tender finials, hiding the rookery for another year. Each tree was a city of birds, and I pictured myself a rook, rising free of bog and stone to fly direct at the sun and look down on poor diggers. Alone in an entire sky, the way as long or short as wishing. Men are very snails in comparison. It was like thinking on the sea, I soon felt myself overwhelmed. Why me? Could another have lived all this out in my place? I was stitched down by desire, and I could not leave without tearing myself. It might be that the white-pink blossoms of the chestnuts were hateful to the birds, that they too were stitched, through eyes, heart, wings.
The colony was settling into a community. A fashion was sprung up of calling one another Brother or Sister; it seemed to me foolish but innocent and I joined in when I could remember.
We met for prayer, now, every morning. My Atheist modestly declined to lead, so Hathersage was granted this honour by the other colonists and evidently deemed it a kind of glory. Botts went through with the forms of prayer decently enough, though he seemed to me as unbelieving a man at bottom as Ferris, and not one tenth as good. Elizabeth came to prayer dragging her boy with her; she was much occupied with this eldest child, who was growing wild running about in the fields, and with keeping the little ones cool. Jonathan or Hepsibah helped her at times by holding one of them: they sadly missed their own babe, and began to talk now of reclaiming him from his aunt’s care. Harry and the Domremys prayed quietly, sincerely, without parade.
As for me, my prayer was always the same: Forgive me. Many nights I dreamt of Hell-fire, and more than once my screams had woken the others and brought them to my hut. Ferris always made sure he was among the last to arrive, claiming his back made rising painful; he would then stay talking long after the rest had left – never long enough, save one precious time when, hearing snores all about us, he lay down and offered kinder comfort.
We were now got further with the work than I had thought possible. Two acres were planted with the several sorts of corn and without much loss of seed, thanks to Ferris’s newfangled reading. We had vegetables in hand, too, and much of our time was spent weeding the rows. Vetch was got into the rye, which crop being hard to rake out, all we could do was bend over the furrows, backs aching, in order to snap off the curling fronds at the root. Ferris had a wooden nipper for pulling up weeds but to my mind it did no more than a quick-handed man could do with a glove, and after some time he abandoned it to the women. Directly we had saved the rye, grasshoppers crept into the corn, and spoilt it. We drove them off with wormwood, but not before we had lost part of our crop. There were also some of those unlucky potatoes which had come so close to undoing Ferris and me. I had now double cause to dislike them, and left their cultivation to others whenever I could.
In other ways we had cause to be thankful. The cattle had ample feeding, and were plump; Catherine and Susannah took milk from the cow each morning. Elizabeth had found a number of fruitful trees in the forest, including cherry and walnut, and her husband continued to chop and stack timber against the winter, when we would need a goodly pile ready made.
One day Ferris walked over to Dunston Byars, the neighbouring village, to see if the people there would be willing to buy our milk or barter anything of theirs. He had not been sanguine, for the place was nothing but a straggle of rotting cottages, their inhabitants stupefied by poverty.
The weather was cool. I was hoeing, glad for once to don my shirt, stink as it might. From time to time I glanced up from the weeds, hoping to see the familiar figure crossing the pasture. Instead, I observed Botts weaving over the rows at the far end of the field, and kicking down the young plants.
‘The sot! He’s had as much as he can carry,’ I said to Jonathan, who was working near me.
He looked up with a bunch of grass in his right hand, and crying, ‘Merciful Lord! He’ll have them all ruined!’ he ran towards Botts, still holding the grass but taking care to step between the rows.
I set off after him. As we got nearer it was clear that the surgeon did his work wantonly, and not simply through any accidental swaying or clumsiness brought on by drink. He glared up at me and I wished, not for the first time, that I had never promised Ferris I would keep peace. Jonathan he seemed not to notice, even when the latter cried out to him across the field, ‘Brother, mind what you do! Brother! Tis your own food!’
We had now reached the imbecile and I caught him by the arm, marching him off the ploughed land onto the fallow. He was heavier than I had imagined, but too unsteady to resist me. Again I smelt that curious sweat of his, and the lighter scent of brandy-wine on top of it.
Botts tottered and pushed at me. ‘Whoreson thief! Thieving blackamoor bastard!’
‘What ails you, man?’ cried Jonathan angrily. ‘How is he a thief?’
‘He knows,’ growled Botts, jabbing one stubby finger in my face. ‘Where have you put it?’ he screamed to me. ‘Who’s hiding it for you? Saint Christopher Cutpurse?’
I was dumbfounded, too astonished even to feel anger.
‘Got what, man?’ urged Jonathan.
‘Ask him,’ and again he pointed at me.
‘I tell you what,’ I said to the stinking beast. ‘We’ll leave you here till you sober up. Either hold your peace or go elsewhere. And keep off the crop!’ I shouted, ‘or it’ll be the worse for you.’
‘I might fall and break a few,’ he said slyly. ‘Or I might go to your hut, Blackamoor, and find where it is.’
‘You’ll keep out of any hut but your own.’
‘Afraid, eh? I’m going there now.’
Clearly he was one of those who love to torment, who from their earliest childhood need only be told, ‘Bounce is a good dog, pray do not kick him,’ to fall a-kicking. I began to think this was an exceptional case, it would be such a pleasure to feel my fists thud into his sodden bulk, when I saw, over his shoulder, Ferris coming across the field, returned from Dunston Byars.
Smiling, my friend strode across to our little group. He was carrying something, a chicken upside-down: it brushed the grass in rhythm with his walk. All three of us stopped and watched him approach, walking with a slight swagger in the freshness of the day. I heard Botts mutter, ‘Weasel, weasel.’
‘Hey, you!’ he bawled out. ‘Brrrother Christopher! What say you to a thief in our midst?’
‘Thief?’ asked Ferris, seemingly not at all surprised to see him so far gone in drink. The chicken, which I now saw to be two, both alive, jerked in his hand as he came up to us, and Ferris shook the birds incompetently in an attempt to quiet them.
‘Are their wings clipped?’ I asked.
He peered at
them. ‘Aye. At least, she said so.’
I cast an eye over their feathers: ‘she’ had not lied. ‘Set them down,’ I suggested.
Ferris placed his chickens on the grass and unshackled their scaly legs. The fowls wheezed, expanded and stalked onto the ploughed earth.
‘Now,’ I said to fix my friend’s attention, ‘Brother Ben thinks I have taken something of his.’
‘What is it you say, Brother?’ Ferris turned amused eyes on Botts.
‘He’s taken my brandy-wine. I was weary, had a pull to ease it and settled down just to clear my head – saw that sneaking fellow coming up the field – then I wake and all’s gone. It was him. he’s had it. You want to send him home.’
‘That was a very wrong thing, Jacob,’ said Ferris.
‘Seems to me he’s had ample,’ I said. ‘’Twere a good thing if he were weaned. But,’ I held up my hand in rebuttal, ‘someone else took it, not me.’
‘Nor me neither,’ asserted Jonathan.
‘You hear that, Brother Ben?’ asked Ferris.
‘That’s right, side with them when you weren’t even there,’ spat Botts. ‘But you two,’ he glowered round at Ferris and myself, ‘always stick together, you’d swear black’s white. An honest man’s got no chance. But answer me this: if it was not him, who was it?’
‘I myself,’ said Ferris. ‘You were dead drunk and I took the bottle from you.’
Botts stood a moment puzzling it out. He put me in mind of a bull trying to think, so that I had to hold in my laughter. At last he said, ‘Mayhap it was a drop too many. But you’ll do the Christian thing and give it back.’
‘No. It’s all gone, Brother. No use asking for it.’
‘You’ve never drunk it.’ Botts was incredulous. ‘There was half a bottle left. It’d overset a pinch of a thing like you.’
‘I’ve turned it to profit,’ said Ferris. He stood quietly and gave Botts a steady look. ‘There it goes,’ and he gestured at the two birds scratching along one of the furrows. Jonathan jammed his knuckles into his mouth, near choked with baffled laughter.
