by Maria McCann
‘Very wise,’ the man said. ‘There is something for you.’ I gave him the money and he groped under some cloths, brought out a paper addressed to Ferris and put it into my hand.
‘Won’t you read it, Sir?’ he asked as I made to step away from the bar.
‘I am not Mister Ferris,’ I returned, puzzled at the question.
‘I think you should read it, as you are a friend of his.’ He was staring at me. All of my fears and premonitions rose in a wave until the small man at the bar seemed as sinister as the Destroying Angel.
I turned the note about in my hand. It was not Becs’s writing, yet there was something familiar about it. Doctor Whiteman?
‘Go upstairs, Nelly,’ the man said. Nelly disappeared at once.
Then I saw the seal, and trembled. A common device, in red wax. Fingers shaking, I fumbled to get inside the thing, tearing the folded corners.
Sir,
You are to be rid from the common around the Seventh of July. I cannot be exact as to the date, so take the road now, while your legs are still unbroken. Believe me when I say I have witnessed the business before and wish never to see it again.
Your friend
I recognised the character, and the paper and ink. ‘What date is it today?’ I asked.
‘Let us see.’ He consulted an almanac hanging from a nail in the beam. ‘Today we are the first of July. Shall I get you more ale?’
‘No.’ Six days. I stared at the initials JW newly carved into the wood of the bar. Perhaps I would meet with JW sooner than I had reckoned on.
‘It was brought by hand,’ the man said. ‘Let me fetch you something.’
‘No. Thank you – thank you—’ I ran over to the door and out into the sun, blinded all over again. Out of the courtyard and on the road I kept running, from a frightened animal’s need to move. While your legs are still unbroken. My bodily strength was all I had. To be crooked, to walk with a limp—
I slackened suddenly. When Ferris came out with me that morning to the sough, he had not limped.
It is nothing, he bound the foot up in rags, I told myself. But my prickle of unease was grown to a nausea. Again I heard him ask, Are you going now, and saw Susannah’s hands move uncertainly on the cauldron.
Is it off with the old and on with the new?
Now you may watch out for yourself.
She had said enough, had I been able to hear it. I began running in earnest, loping along the road despite the heat and glare. Sweat drenched me, my breath came like an overworked horse’s and the stitch in my side would have frightened me into stopping had I not been filled with a terrible rage which fed off the pain. I could have run barefoot over broken glass.
The flat dry earth made for speed. Soon the haystack came into sight, and the huts, rising and falling as I jerked my head about. Foam gathered at the corners of my lips. I charged at the colony, striking off from the earth, elbowing the air. The last field before the crops was downhill, and tussocky; I plunged over it, bounding unevenly until I came to the cultivated patch. Hepsibah and Catherine stood near the carrots. They turned and saw me, came towards me, and I ran between them, pushing through their shouts and along the furrows, over the last section of grass to the wood. I was staggering now. Down the green track I went, slipping, crashing, the brambles lashing at my hands and face. Then I was full length on the grass with a tremendous slam all the length of my body and an explosion of pain in my mouth.
Trembling from the shock, I raised myself onto hands and knees. At once there was a stab in my right arm. I had bitten the inside of my cheek in the fall, and my chest and belly were stinging from the ground. Heat surged in my face, blowing the skin full of blood. I felt I would never rise again.
It was cool under the trees. Birdsong trickled above me, and the air fanned delectably on my bursting head and neck. Gradually I ceased gasping, and was able to sit back on my heels. The inner part of my forearm had a blackthorn twig buried in it, the spines pressed full length into the flesh. Hissing between my teeth, I drew it out and stared, revolted, at six reddish-black punctures in the skin before rolling my sleeve down over them to take up the blood. At last, my breath under command, I rose, finding a painful scrape on each knee. Then I went forward slowly, quietly, some hundred yards or more, until I could just catch the sound of a woman’s voice. For the last twenty yards I crept with extreme care so as not to frighten my turtle-doves. He was foolish – O, I would never have thought him so foolish! After all his care to decoy me away they were in our secret place, and in no condition to hear me approach. The run had emptied me of strength, else there might have been murder done. As it was, I stood and listened, and after a while I shook with silent laughter. For after all, it was the stuff of jest.
There was once a man who heard his wife and her lover together. He heard the secret things the wife whispered to the lover, and said only, ‘Yes, that is she’. But then the lover pleaded to be touched, and the husband clenched his fists; and when the man cried aloud then the husband’s nails cut deep in the palms of his hands.
TWENTY-NINE
Well-Loved Games
On my bed lay a stalk of the ripening corn. I took it up and tore off the head, then bent the straw into halves, and each half into three pieces.
First of July. Breaking the straw into six along the folds I had made, I inserted one of them into the earth at the side of my door.
Take up the head. It is the seventh. It lay in my hand, too dry no matter what Ferris said. I squeezed until the grains fell away, crushed. It is to be a Golgotha. The pieces of straw lay on the ground, condemned, until I should take them up. You are, and always have been, My own. By this may you see it plain, said the Voice. How could any other head of corn come into the wall, here? The others may dance and shine in the field but the choice is made, unalterable, as between the wheat and the tares.
He must know by now. Hepsibah and Susannah had seen me run into the wood. None was come seeking me these five hours though they were supposedly digging new trenches. Send Jacob to London. Ha.
Under a pile of sacking in the corner lay the note, blurred from rubbing against my skin but still legible. It might stay there and the hut be thrown down over it, until the day it dissolved into earth, like Christopher Walshe. I could present it to Ferris and watch him run about, bruising himself with terror. But then – I hesitated. Whatever came of the colony, if they both lived he would take Caro to town, and that meant he would never shelter me again. This sank into me with such iron teeth, and cost me such a gush of heart’s-blood, that I rested my head a moment or two on my knees. So soon, to go behind my back so soon. On that morning when Nathan found himself deserted, he probably woke from a dream of loving-kindness, thinking the pack beneath his head to be Ferris’s arm.
I endeavoured to reason, to blunt the edge of my pain. I was not entirely powerless, for it lay with me whether they would marry. I had only to say a few words and put my hand alongside the child’s. As for my wife, I had music for her ears also. His having so treasured his honey, his Samson that I ate at his table and lacked for nothing. His proficiency with mouth and arse.
There is a nobler and more terrible thing. Say nothing. Let them be taken unawares.
I stared at the scattered grains, and shivered.
When the cauldron was struck to tell us the food was ready, the day was far from over. I guessed the women, weary of sweated labour in the field, had begun their preparations early.
My mood was altered. The heat and blood of my grief were gone off; I was passed over to a colder mode of suffering, and seemed to walk as lightly as my deceiver as I went silently over the grass. Sitting nearer the fire than usual, I smiled at each person whose glance I caught, ready to sing or dance with anyone who would partner me, and slit their throat after.
Susannah was on kitchen duty again, and with her Catherine. The older woman doled out my share somewhat more graciously than last time but made no attempt to speak with me. So this is it, I thought. You see me in extremis and
say nought.
We were back to the bad old days of pottage, flavoured with thyme from the fields. I sat between Jeremiah and Jonathan, both of whom were very Esaus in their relish for it.
‘You were missed this afternoon,’ Jeremiah said to me. ‘We have begun the hutches for the grain. Come winter we’ll raise a bigger store.’
‘Come winter we won’t be here,’ I said. ‘Tell Ferris to save his strength and yours.’
He stared at me. ‘Susannah said you was sick.’
‘I am sick. And we won’t be here come winter.’ I hated his mouth full of pottage, hated the half-chewed paste pressed up against his teeth and the snorting breaths he took as he ate.
‘Do you think Sir George will drive us off, then?’ asked Jonathan.
‘I know it.’ I turned my eyes in his direction, for he ate more daintily than Jeremiah. A stone crunched between my teeth and I eased it onto my tongue so as to spit it out on the grass. He went on, ‘Where is Brother Christopher?’
‘Why ask me?’
‘We thought you were in the wood with him. You were not, then?’
‘I have been in my hut.’ It struck me that Ferris might be run from me while I was planning to run from him. But no, his stubbornness permitted no escape. I had him in a corner, and could inflict what injuries I pleased.
He was there. I saw him step over some tools lying by the fireside and look about to see who had left them. Caro was not with him. He glanced in my direction and went over to the cauldron to pull out the pot from inside it, helping himself before Susannah could rise from the grass, then sat down cross-legged to eat. I knew he had seen my eyes upon him. Let him wait, and wonder what form my vengeance would take. Since our fight in Cheapside I had understood that he had a particular fear of being held and hurt. The Voice had promised embraces hot and unbreakable. It knew.
Catherine came up to ask would I help Susannah, Hathersage and herself with the drainage ditch near the dairy; the ground, she said, was hard and they had found large rocks just under the surface. I answered that I would think about it. She was offended and went so far as to tell me I was eaten up with pride.
‘I see you have been talking over my sins with Susannah,’ I said. ‘Did she tell you all of them?’
‘I speak for myself, but I’ll wager she thinks as I do,’ squeaked Catherine.
I laughed at such assurance. ‘And what do you think?’
‘We should all help one another.’
‘Help you empty Ferris’s pocket! And I’m called proud because I won’t do your work. What’s Hathersage for?’
She muttered low, as if the words were themselves a betrayal, ‘It needs someone stronger.’
I was weary of the Domremys and their preaching fool of a man. ‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘If Hathersage himself will come and ask me, using just those words, I will do it.’
‘O Jacob, how can—’
‘What!’ I said, ‘Surely he’s not proud?’
Catherine rose without further speech and walked away.
Ferris ate with relish. He was perhaps recalling her praises and finding hope again for the future, when he should be thinking over the coming encounter with myself. Men are so stupid, so slow to learn that in the end this little fleshly hope means nothing.
He put away his bowl and took some beer from the common jug. I watched him walk over to me, a cup of beer in each hand.
‘Here,’ he said, and handing me one of the cups he lay down on the grass beside me. Taken aback, I found my face returning his smile. Clearly he did not know himself detected.
Susannah had not warned him, or had not known he was in the wood. Catherine, I was certain, would not have guessed what he did there, for though more jealous than her sister-in-law she was much slower witted.
‘You had a hot walk of it today,’ Ferris went on. He took a pull on the beer. ‘Won’t you have some, Jacob? You should, it’s good for once.’
I drank to gain time and found he was right.
‘What’s that?’ he asked. I frowned, not understanding, and he touched my chin. ‘A bruise, or dirt? You look as though someone hit you.’
‘A fall.’ I held out my forearm and showed him the punctures in it, now reddish-blue and angry.
‘Ah—!’ He drew in his breath so that a man would have sworn the sympathy was honest, then stroked the pads of his fingers over the wounds. Hatred near choked me.
‘We must get you some ointment,’ he said when he had finished pawing.
‘It is nothing,’ I murmured, ‘they are closing over already. And what of your blisters?’
‘My blisters are – better. Yes, better.’
‘So you will want to go to the inn tomorrow.’ Now I have you. And what of your dear aunt? You have not yet asked.
His eyes skidded away from mine. ‘I have still some pain.’
‘Except when you’re lying down?’ I suggested. At this he could not help looking back at me, but I was ready with a face full of concern. ‘They don’t give you pain now?’
Ferris shook his head.
‘I have something to tell you,’ I said.
‘Some message from the inn?’
‘It needs privacy.’
Ferris hesitated.
‘Shall we go to our secret place?’ I asked.
He stammered something. I had again drawn blood, and was beginning to enjoy this game of pricking him. We got up and walked over to the trees, Ferris now going with a limp. The sight of it made me itch. I thought, I could put an end to him, and none the wiser. Make him beg for mercy. I considered what I would do after that, and saw in my mind’s eye the basin beneath the spring.
‘Jacob?’ He peered up into my face. ‘It grows late. This is far enough.’
‘I can find the way back in the dark,’ I said.
He sat down within sight of the others and though he smiled, the joy was gone out of it. I saw he would go no further with me.
‘Come, your message.’
‘Not that precisely,’ I said, seating myself next to him. ‘But a confession. You being my truest friend.’ That was another dig with the knife. ‘You know I left home about a year ago.’
Ferris was silent.
I went on, ‘I was contracted to a young woman, a servant. But I had to flee the house.’
He nodded.
‘For murder.’
Ferris stared at me.
I said, ‘A woman saw what I did, but she got away.’
‘Got away?’
I waited and let my meaning sink in. ‘Aye. She was a whore, with child by Zeb. He was best rid of her.’
Ferris winced despite himself. I smiled inwardly to think that had he understood me in full he would have got up and run. I continued, ‘But my tale is all disordered, I must first tell you about the killing of the boy.’
‘You told me,’ he broke in at once. ‘Self-defence.’
‘Is that what I said?’
‘Indeed you did.’ His voice, breathless and thin, told me how his body had stiffened.
‘I drowned him.’ Here I paused, to enjoy the sound of Ferris panting. ‘Kept a grip on him, held him down until he breathed water. He was small,’ and here I paused again, before adding, ‘like you.’
‘You were – you said, a man – O God.’
‘Would you like to know why?’ I offered pleasantly.
Something like a sob came from him; I took it for ‘yes’ and brought my face very close to his. ‘He thought to make me his fool.’
Ferris’s eyes were grown dark against his bloodless cheeks. He made suddenly as if to rise but I was ready for that, and I caught hold of his arm.
‘So we had to leave, for that and for some pamphlets we had. It was the day of my espousal. That was how you found me, in my wedding clothes.’
‘Prince Rupert.’ He bowed his head, then jerked it upright. ‘Why tell me this now?’
‘I want no secrets between us.’ I smiled at him and though he could barely see me in the thickening dar
kness, the smile spilled over into my voice. ‘There are none, are there?’
‘None.’
He could not keep a quiver out of that word. The struggle in him excited me. I thought of dragging him into the wood and there forcing him to the ground, but I put it to one side for the time being.
‘It’s something that you talk to me again.’ I patted his arm. ‘And you let me go to the inn. But you were kind from the day we met.’
‘I gave you water and got you a pike, that was my kindness. Now let me go.’ So unnerved was he that he sounded like Nathan. I loosed my grip and Ferris was on his feet at once. Not even Sir George, I thought, could have frighted him better.
‘Another time I’ll tell you about my wife,’ I called after him as he walked away.
He could have told me about Caro. He had chosen to keep the thing dark, and continue his double game. Very well, let him look to his cards, for the hand I had been dealt at the inn would sweep away card-table and all.
‘Ferris!’ I shouted, and dimly saw his moving figure pause in the dusk. ‘Let me go for your letter tomorrow.’
‘Yes, yes!’ He quickened his pace.
Until I knew my own mind, he must be kept from talking with the landlord.
Morning, and the second stalk lay alongside the first, poking crudely out from the sod as if part of some lunatic scheme for sowing corn within doors. After a dream in which I slit the boy’s throat and found that I had killed Ferris, I had woken in the dark and walked out between the huts for the air inside mine seemed full of my fear. Stopping by his, I heard a snore. At least he was not in the fields with her, but that brought him no nearer to me. The sky was clear, the stars brittle. Where is God? I thought. Everywhere we see evil and misfortune.
As a child I once asked God to give me a sign, promising that if I received it I would tell everyone. The sign I never received, and when I told the minister he said that I should be beaten for demanding such a thing, as if I were some juggling Papist. Did I not have the whole of revealed religion set before me in the Bible? If that would not suffice me, surely I would not respect a sign. Now I turned my face up to the Heavens. Do You see me at his door? What will become of us?
