A Maggot - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  Q. Her hands held in prayer?

  A. No, sir, with her head bowed and her arms fallen by her side. As a punished child, who asks forgiveness.

  Q. Her person showed no wounds nor unnatural marks?

  A. None that I could see, sir, that could see her white back and buttocks as she prayed. None grave, you may be sure.

  Q. Seemed she in pain?

  A. More like one planet-struck, sir, as I say. All her movings were most slow, I might believe she had drunk some potion.

  Q. Seemed she not in fear of pursuit?

  A. No, sir, which after Dick, I thought strange. For she rose, and seemed more returned to her wits, and walked then less dazed to the stone by the pool; and picked up her cloak that had lain next it all the day; and covered her nakedness, I thought gratefully, like one who was sore cold and needed its warmth, tho' 'twas warm enough yet, for all the hour. And there she did kneel by the pool again, sir, and scooped up a little water in her hands and drank some, threw some on her face likewise. That was all, sir. For then she went her barefoot way, as Dick, by that they had come in the morning.

  Q. With what haste?

  A. More quickly, sir, and she threw one look aside at the cavern's mouth, so to say being more woken herself, so was her fear. Yet not running, as in true alarm.

  Q. And you?

  A. I waited a minute, sir, where I was, to see if his Lordship should follow. But he came not, and you may blame me, your worship, a bold hero might have gone to that cavern, and entered within. I am no such, sir, nor pretend to be. I durst not.

  Q. Nor pretend to be, thou bag of boasting wind, nor pretend to be? In short, the Welsh coward thou art ran off after the wench, is it so? Truly thou art worthy thy nation. Didst catch her?

  A. I did, sir, and heard all. Which will not please your worship's ears, but you'd not have me say else than she said herself, I know. So I ask your pardon in advance.

  Q. But will get none, if I catch thee out. There, Jones, thou may'st dine on that, and chew it well. If all this be false, thou art dead. Now begone, my man shall take thee below, and bring thee back.

  * * *

  Ayscough sips his medicinal purl (ale laced with the recently mentioned prophylactic against witches and the Devil, wormwood) and Jones eats where he belongs, below, in a silence that for once in his life he welcomes - and without benefit of alcohol, which he does not. The lawyer's crudely chauvinistic contempt for his witness is offensive, but it is stock, and really has little to do with poor Jones's Welshness. Above a certain line, and despite its ridiculous respect of, and obsequiousness before, title and rank, society was comparatively fluid at this time; with a touch of luck, and some talent, quite humbly born men could rise in the world and become distinguished churchmen, learned fellows at Oxford or Cambridge like Mr Saunderson, the son of an exciseman, successful merchants, lawyers such as Ayscough (youngest son of an obscure and very far from rich North-country vicar), poets (Pope was son of a linen-draper), philosophers, many other things. However, below this line society was seen as static. It had no hope; in the eyes of those above, its fate was fixed from day of birth.

  The thing then dearest to the heart of English society did not help relax the inexorable line in the least. It manifested itself as worship, if not idolatry, of property. A conventional Englishman of the time might have said the national palladium was the Anglican church; but the country's true religion lay only outwardly within the walls of that sluggish institution. It was far more vested in a profound respect for right of property; this united all society but the lowest, and dictated much of its behaviour, its opinions, its thinking. Dissenters might be barred from all elected and official position (which they turned to advantage by frequently becoming masters of trade and commerce); their property was as sacrosanct as any other man's. Despite doctrine, many were increasingly prepared to tolerate the Church of England, given that it protected the right - and kept the infamous enemy of the other wing, the accursed papists and Jacobites, at bay also. What the nation agreed must be preserved at all costs was really far less the theology of the established church than the right to, and security of, ownership. This obtained from the single householder to the great estates of the Whig magnates who, in odd alliance with the City, the prosperous Dissenters and the bench of bishops, largely controlled the country - or far more than its king and his ministers did. Walpole might seem to hold power; he was rather more a generally shrewd gauger of what the national mood required of him.

  Property also remained, despite the growing commercial prosperity of the century, a much more favoured investment than the early stocks and companies. The South Sea Bubble Of 1721 had severely damaged confidence in that latter method of multiplying money. One might suppose that this general obsession with property would have swept away, through Parliament, the abominably antiquated laws concerning ownership and acquisition of it, as in the nightmarishly complex and dilatory Chancery system (whose law defeated even the greatest contemporary experts). But not a bit of it: here love of property clashed head on with the other great credo of eighteenth century England.

  This was the belief that change leads not to progress, but to anarchy and disaster. Non progredi est regredi runs the adage; early Georgian man omitted the non. That is why most called themselves Whigs at this time, but were Tories in the modern sense, that is, reactionaries. It was why the mob was feared almost universally, by Whig and Tory, conformist and dissenter, above the line. It threatened political upset and change; worst of all, it threatened property. The measure brought in to deal with it through magistrates and militia, the Riot Act of 1715, became almost holy in its status; while English criminal law remained barbaric in its brutality, its characteristically excessive punishments for anyone who infringed the sanctity of property in another way, by minor theft. 'We hang men for trifles and banish them' (to the forerunner of convict Australia, convict America) 'for things not worth naming,' said Defoe in 1703. The criminal law had, however, one fortuitous saving grace. Lacking even a shadow of a police force to back it, its powers of detection of crime, even of arrest, were feeble in the extreme.

  The legal profession itself, safely ensconced behind its labyrinth of elaborate special knowledge (alias verbiage), made fat by the endless delays and opportunities to charge costs inherent in the system, held an exceptionally powerful place. The smallest slip in a formal document, from deed to indictment, could in many courts lead to its being thrown out and disallowed. Exact performance of ritual procedure has its justifications; one might value such eighteenth-century punctiliousness higher if the performance had not also always pleased the lawyers' pockets. Many of Ayscough's time became effectively property dealers and estate managers, because of this ability to handle the requisite language and their knowledge of archaic procedures; to wangle (often by bribery) the ex parte or otherwise flagrantly biassed judgement. They could both get their hands on property, and keep the hands of others, who might in all rational justice have a perfect right, from it.

  Ayscough indeed fell into that last category, as the man of affairs of a ducal master. He was also a barrister, a very different kettle of fish from the mere attorney, a species then generally hated and despised by the layman, who quite rightly saw them as far more concerned with stuffing their green bags full of money than in getting cases settled. Ayscough's father had been vicar of Croft, a small village near Darlington in North Yorkshire, whose squire had been Sir William Chaytor, an improverished baronet obliged to spend the last twenty years of his life (he died in 1720) within the boundaries of the famous London debtors' prison, the Fleet. Sir William's endless family letters and papers were published only last year, and they are exceptionally vivid on this matter of the law. He had had to mortgage his entailed Yorkshire estate beyond hope of redemption. In the Fleet, like so many others, he became an even worse victim of pettifogging lawyers than of the law itself, a classic case of the misery they can cause. But he won the final case. His exasperation with the profession still sears do
wn the centuries.

  Such business as this present inquiry was indeed quite outside Ayscough's normal work, the purchase of property, the granting of leases and copyholds, foreclosing on defaulters, judging new petitions for fields and farms; supervising repairing and insuring, dealing with heriot and farleu, thraves and cripplegaps, plowbote and wainbote, hedge-scouring and whin-drawing (and a hundred other obscure casus belli between landlord and tenant); besides the manipulation of boroughs to ensure the outcome of their parliamentary elections as his master willed; in short, fulfilling the functions of at least six separate professions today. He would not have got where he was, if he had not been an assiduous lawyer in his age's terms, a reasonably civilized man also; and a shrewd one in Claiborne's terms ... seeing on which side the butter lay. I quoted Defoe just now, from his famous pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. It had been written a generation before, soon after William III had died, and Anne came to the throne. The administration then was Tory, and reactionary feeling ran high in the Church of England. Defoe played a practical joke, for (though of Dissenting background himself) he pretended to write as one of these 'high-fliers' and proposed a very simple solution: hang all Dissenters or banish them to America. The joke misfired, because some of the Tories took his grotesquely draconian solution literally and declared his pamphlet excellent. Defoe had to pay by being pilloried (amid cheering crowds, who drank his health) and imprisoned in Newgate; he had badly miscalculated the sense of humour of his real enemies, the Tory extremists in church and parliament. One of his victims then had been young Ayscough, who at the time had had Tory views. To be fair he had found the hanging too much, but had backed the idea of ridding England of seditious conventicles and meetings by depositing them all in the convenient dustbin of America. Circumstance and career had turned him outward Whig in the years since; but the memory of Defoe's trick to draw the beetles from the woodwork did not make him smile. It still rankled.

  All ancient and established professions must be founded on tacit prejudices as strong as their written statutes and codes; and by those Ayscough is imprisoned as much as any debtor in the Fleet by law. Jones is and must be made to remain below the line; his 'sentence', never to change, always to remain static. His movement from a Welsh nowhere (in which he was born to die) to a great English city is already an unspoken crime; if not, under the Poor Law, a definite one. The word mob was not fifty years old in the language at this date; a shortened slang version of mobile vulgus, the common rabble. Mobility of movement meant change; and change is evil.

  Jones is a liar, a man who lives from hand to mouth, by what wits he has, not least by what creeping deference he can muster when faced with such real power as Ayscough holds. Pride he has not, nor can he afford it. Yet in many ways (and not only in that millions will copy him, later in the century, in deserting country and province for city) he is the future, and Ayscough the past; and both are like most of us, still today, equal victims in the debtors' prison of History, and equally unable to leave it.

  * * *

  The further deposition of

  David Jones

  die annoque p'dicto

  * * *

  Q, Jones, you rest upon oath.

  A. Yes, sir.

  Q. Come to the wench.

  A. Well, your worship, I ran back the way I had come, see you, yet not so far, for I came down the slope before the trees began, in great fear I should be noticed if -

  Q. Leave thy great fears, they are thy constant state. She was passed ahead?

  A. She was, sir, but soon I came up with her, just where the path grew abrupt and went down to the stream, where all was now in shadow. I saw she hobbled, and knew not how to step, poor thing, with her bare feet upon the sharp clitter. And tho' I did try to tread softly, upon some noise my own foot made, she heard, then turned and faced me. Yet not as one who is surprised, more one who expects such pursuit, for as I came up to her I saw her eyes were closed and that she wept. She looked white as a clout, sick as a cushion, like shotten herring, so I were death upon her heels and she knew she could not escape. Well, sir, I stopped a pace or two off and said, 'Tis only I, my girl, what ails thee? Whereat she opens her eyes of a sudden and sees me, then in a second closes them again and swoons at my feet.

  Q. You would say, she expected some other she greatly feared, yet finding it you, was relieved?

  A. Just so, sir. I did what I might to recover her senses, in lack of salts or a better. When after a little I see her eyes flutter and she makes a small moan as of one in pain. So I say her name and that I come to help her. Then she says twice, belike still in her swoon, The maggot, the maggot.

  Q. What maggot!

  A. You speak my very words, your worship. What maggot, says I, what dost speak of? Whether 'twas the sound of my voice, sir, or what, more brisk she opens her eyes again and sees me full. How come you here, Farthing, she says. I say, It matters not how, I have seen things today that pass my understanding. She says, What things? I say, I have seen all that passed up above. To which she says nothing. Then I say, What has happened to Mr Bartholomew? She says, They are gone. I say, How gone, I have watched the cavern's mouth all day and none has come out save thee thyself and Dick. Again she says, They are gone. I say, That cannot be. And a third time she says, They are gone. Then all of a sudden she sits away, for I held her supported till then, and says, Farthing, we are in danger, we must go from this place. I say, In what danger. She says, It is witchcraft. I say, What witchcraft. She says, I cannot tell thee, but if we are not gone by fall of night their powers will be upon us. And at that, sir, she stood to her feet and would set off again, more quickly, as if I had awoke her from her previous state, and she thought only now of her safety. Yet hobbled at once again, then said, Help me, Farthing, I prithee carry me below. So it was, sir, I bore her in my arms down the steep, until we came to where 'twas grass again, by the stream, and she might walk. You may huff at me now for obeying her, sir. But I looked around me there in that lonely, desperate place, and saw no thing else save shadows and wilderness, and the coming of night. And bethought me of wild Dick besides, that I knew not where he was.

  Q. What of what she first said? This maggot?

  A. It shall come, sir, it shall be explained.

  Q. The three horses were there below, and the baggage?

  A. They were, sir, and she went straight to where the seam lay, for I have forgot, the pack-horse stood disburthened when I first came; and found her bundle and ordinary dress; then made me look aside, until she had put them on, and her buckled shoes that she was used to wear, and her cloak again. And tho' I asked questions, would not answer the while, till she was dressed, when she came to me with her bundle, and asked, Had I no horse? I told her, Yes, below, if 'tis not witched away. At which she said, Let us be gone. But I would not have it, sir, for I took her arm and said I must know first of his Lordship, and why Dick be run out as he did.

  Q. You spake so, saying his Lordship?

  A. No, sir, your pardon. Mr Bartholomew, as we had called him. Then she said, He is gone to the Devil, Farthing. He has brought me into a great sin by force, against my will. Then, I rue the day I ever set eyes on him and his man. Now, sir, I had thought me of a stratagem to explain my presence and that might oblige her to tell more. So I said, Not so fast, Louise, I must tell thee I am here secretly upon the orders of Mr Bartholomew's father, to watch his son and report what he does; and the father is a great person in this land and Mr Bartholomew likewise a much greater than he's pretended. She did give me a little stare askant then, and looked down, so as she knew not what to answer, but in such a manner that said also, This is no novels, I know it well. And then I say, For this reason thou must tell me what he's done, or look you, it shall be the worse for thee. She says, Then thou'dst best tell His Grace his son meddles in things that common people are hung for. Thus to the word, sir, except she said full out His Grace's name. I said, So thou know'st I do not lie. To which she answered, And much else besides, more s
hame to thy master, and the less said of it the better. I said, Brave words, but it is I who has to speak them to his face, and thou must tell me more that I can prove them. She looks troubled, then says, So I will, but we must be gone first. I say, What of this young lady, thy old mistress? Again she looks down, then says, There was never a such. To which I say, Come, throw again, I am not thy fool, I did see her plain as day when first you came this morning. To which she answers, She was not her; then, Would she had been. So now it is Jones who must throw again and I say, If there be no young lady, then there be no lady's maid. To that she speaks no word, and does shake her head sadly, so to say she does not deny. Upon that I say, I thought I had seen thee before when we first met, tho' I have kept it to myself. Art thou not one of Mother Claiborne's lambs? She turns from me and says, Oh dear God, or some such. I say I must know. Then she says, Yes, I have greatly sinned and see where my folly has brought me, I wish I had never left my parents' hearth. I say, What are we upon if it is not an elopement? She says, We are upon wickedness, madness, and I beg thee, Farthing, take no more advantage of me now and let us be gone. I will tell thee all I know, but let us be gone first. Very well, say I, save I must know when his Lordship comes. Not this night, she says, nor till the world's end, for all I care. I say, Speak plain. She says, He stays above, he will not come. Then of a sudden, Thou must set the horses free, they'll stay close. Well, your worship, I said, No, I could not. Now she casts her eyes on me, as one who would make herself believed against all appearance, and says, I have not been kind to thee, Farthing, I know I have seemed to spurn thee and thy friendship, but I had my reasons, I meant thee nothing if not good, no harm, and thou must trust me now, I beg thee. I have enough on my conscience, she says, without these poor beasts. Still I said no, sir, and would ask more. Whereon she goes herself and begins to untie the tether of the pack-horse, until I come to her and say, Very well, it is done upon thy head, not mine. To which she says, So be it. And I did set the other two beasts free, and laid their harness with the seam.