A Maggot - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  A. We must soon dismount, or our horses fall. And there it was Dick who led our pillion and the pack-horse, and I walked after, and his Lordship led his own horse behind. The all in silence, save for the beasts' feet upon the stones, and we went beside the stream. And so for a mile or more, I know not. Where Dick of a sudden stopped and tied the two horses to a thorn branch, and took his Lordship's when it came, and tied it to another. And there began to unrope his Lordship's great box, from the seam the pack-horse bore.

  Q. Dick did not stop of his Lordship's command?

  A. Of his own will, like as if he knew best where we went.

  Q. Continue.

  A. His Lordship came beside me, and spoke. And said that my dress was not sufficient for who we met. That he had brought an other more suitable and now I must wear it, for we were close. And I asked, was there no better road? And he answered, no, there was only this. And then, that I should not fear, no harm would come if I did as I was told. The while, the box was upon the ground and opened, and his Lordship himself gave me the clothes from it, that lay upon the top.

  Q. What were these clothes?

  A. Why, a smicket and petticoat, then a fine white holland gown, ruffled with cambric upon its sleeves, where it bore pink ribbands also, in two knots. Fine clocked Nottingham stockings also, and white likewise. And shoes of the same. 'Twas all white and new, or fresh laundered.

  Q. You would say, as a May dress?

  A. As a country maid might wear, of dimity. Tho' finer made, and of finer cloth, as for a lady.

  Q. And stitched also to your figure?

  A. Well enough.

  Q. You had had no knowledge of these, before?

  A. No, none.

  Q. And next?

  A. His Lordship said I must bathe, before I donned my new clothes.

  Q. You must bathe!

  A. That I must be pure of my body, with no taint of my former world upon me. And he did point a little back, to where the stream did deepen a piece, as a pond, albeit not so deep, and small; for most it ran shallow, upon stones.

  Q. What thought you to this?

  A. That it was too cold. To which he said I must, this stream should be my Jordan.

  Q. He said these words: This stream shall be thy Jordan?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Spake he as in jest?

  A. Thee shalt hear in what jest he spake. It seemed jest then, tho' no jest to me.

  Q. You did bathe?

  A. As best I could. For the water came only to my knees, and I must crouch in it, ice-cold as 'twas.

  Q. You were naked?

  A. I was naked.

  Q. Did his Lordship watch you?

  A. His back was turned, that I saw. And after, my back upon him.

  Q. And then?

  A. I dried myself upon the bank; and did put on the new clothes, and warmed myself in the sun. When his Lordship came to me again where I sat and gave to me a knife that Dick had use to carry, and said, It is May Day, and here is may enough. Thou shalt be queen, Fanny, but thou must crown thyself.

  Q. He spoke again in good humour?

  A. Passing good, be it so his mind was elsewhere. For he turned away some paces, and watched where Dick had gone.

  Q. When was he gone? Was it before you had bathed?

  A. As soon as the box was opened, and the horses better tied. Across the stream and up the steep side, where we could see him no more.

  Q. The horses were not left tied as when you came?

  A. No. For as I did go a little apart to bathe, I saw Dick a-tying of them to long tethers, which he put to the thorn-tree stems that were there; and that he had took off their saddles and harness and set them so that they might drink from the stream and take what grass there was.

  Q. As to say, their stay would be long?

  A. Yes.

  Q. And you saw not Jones, when he was caught up and did watch you?

  A. I had no thought of him, nor anyone, only of myself. I made my crown, as I could; then Dick was returned, and signed to his Lordship, who waited.

  Q. A sign like this, was it not so?

  A. No, not so.

  Q. Jones says it was so.

  A. No, 'twas not, and I doubt he could see so well, he was hidden.

  Q. Then how?

  A. With the hands clasped thus, before his breast. Which I had seen before, and knew it meant much like to saying, It is done; or I have done what is commanded. So here it might mean, Who we meet awaits us above. For his Lordship came at once where I sat, and said we must go. As we did, tho' first I must be carried. The ground was most rough and steep at the first, and Dick took me in his arms.

  Q. Seemed he not excited, or in good spirit, when he returned from above?

  A. No.

  Q. Very well, enough for this present. We shall not yet mount with thee to the cavern, mistress. My man shall take thee to a room apart to dine. Thou'rt not to speak with thy husband, or none else, is it clear?

  A. So be it. I shall with my soul's husband, that is Christ.

  * * *

  THE TALL, slightly bent-shouldered clerk opened the door, and followed his prisoner out. But then she had to follow him, as he led the way down a short passage to another door. Only when she was inside the room, and turned back to look at him, did he speak.

  'Ale or more water, mistress?'

  'Water.'

  'You will not leave this room.'

  She shook her head, agreeing. He gave her a long stare, as if he doubted her word, then left, closing the door behind him. The room was evidently a small bedchamber, with only one window, before which stood a table and two chairs. She did not move to it, but beside the bed, and stooped, lifting the side of the coverlet and looking on the floor below it; pulled out what she was looking for, and quickly raising her skirts, sat upon it.

  She did not have to remove any other garment for the very simple reason that no Englishwoman, of any class, had ever worn anything beneath her petticoats up to this date, nor was to do so for at least another sixty years. One might write an essay on this incomprehensible and little-known fact about their underclothing, or lack in it. French and Italian women had long remedied the deficiency, and English men also; but not English women. All those graciously elegant and imposing upper-class ladies in their fashionable or court dresses, whose image has been so variously left us by the eighteenth-century painters, are - to put it brutally - knickerless. And what is more, when the breach was finally made - or rather, covered - and the first female drawers, and soon after pantalettes, appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they were considered grossly immodest, an unwarranted provocation upon man; which is no doubt why they so swiftly became de rigueur.

  Rebecca stood relieved, and pushed the earthenware Jordan back beneath the bed, and straightened the coverlet. Next she walked slowly to the window and looked out, down upon the large back courtyard of the inn.

  A private coach was drawn up, its four horses still harnessed, as if it had just arrived, on the far side. Its nearer door bore a painted coat of arms, supported by a wyvern and a leopard; its motto and closer detail, beyond two quarters of red diamonds, impossible to read. There was no sign of its passengers or coachmen; only an ostler's boy, seemingly left to watch the horses. Here and there some hens and a gamecock scratched among the cobbles, and sparrows, and a pair of white doves, which the boy fed from a palmful of grains, idly, as he leant against the coach. Every so often he would put a fatter grain in his own mouth, and chew it. Suddenly Rebecca's head bowed and she closed her eyes, as if she could not bear to watch this innocent scene. Her mouth began to move, though no sound came from it, and it became plain she was speaking to that husband she had just given herself licence to address.

  The movements of her lips stopped. There were footsteps on the wooden floor of the passage outside. Her eyes opened again, and she sat quickly, in one of the chairs, her back to the door. It opened, the clerk stood there, staring a moment at her back. She did not turn; some moments la
ter, as if belatedly realizing that no one had come in, no normal sound followed that of the opening door, she glanced back over her shoulder. It was no longer the sardonic clerk she had expected: another man, elderly, of medium height yet rather stout, a gentleman in grey. He stood neither in nor out of the room, doom in the doorway, and watched her. She rose, but made no other obeisance. He wore a plain black hat, and his right hand gripped a strange thing, a shepherd's crook, its foot on the ground. However, this was no shepherd; where the top of a working crook is of wood or horn, here it was of polished silver, like some staff of office; closer to a bishop's crosier than anything else.

  Nor was his stare at her that of a normal man; much more that of a person sizing an animal, a mare or cow, as if he might at any moment curtly state a price that he considered her worth. There was something both imperious and imperial in that look, indifferent to ordinary humanity, oblivious of it, above all law; and something also that was unaccustomed, almost at a loss to be seen there. Without warning he spoke, not to Rebecca, though his eyes did not leave her face.

  'Make her step forward. She stands in the light.'

  The clerk appeared outside, and beckoned urgently to her from behind the man in the doorway; two swift movements of a bent finger. She came forward. The foot of the silver-ended crook was quickly raised, to keep her at a distance. So she stood, some six feet away. His face was heavy, deprived of any signs of humour, good or bad, and without generosity; or even, much more oddly, of any normal curiosity. One detected beneath it a hint of morose doubt that was also a melancholy. Even that was very largely obscured by the aura of absolute right, in both the ordinary and the ancient monarchical sense; an impassivity both habitual and imprisoning. He did not, now she was close, even look at her as a beast; but uniquely into her eyes, as if trying to read some almost metaphysical meaning through them. Rebecca faced him and gazed back, one hand upon the other in front of her belly; neither respectfully nor insolently; openly, yet neutrally, waiting.

  Slowly the man's hand slipped down his crook and he held it out, without threat, almost tentatively, until the curved silver end lay against the close sidepiece of her white cap. Twisting the crook a little, he pulled to draw her towards him. This was done so cautiously, in other circumstances one might have said timidly, that she did not flinch when the silver end of the crook touched her, nor when it began to coax her forwards. She obeyed, until the pressure at her neck ceased, and their faces were barely eighteen inches apart. Yet they seemed no closer; not just divided by age and gender, but by belonging to two eternally alien species.

  And now, as abruptly as he appeared, the man ends this wordless interview. The crook is jerked impatiently clear, and set firmly to ground again as he turns away, as if disappointed. Rebecca has time to see that he walks with a heavy limp. The crook-staff is no mere eccentric adornment, it is a necessity; and has just time also to see the clerk step back with a deep bow, and Mr Ayscough also, with a lesser one, then turn to follow his master. The clerk comes forward and stands in the doorway, with a faintly quizzical look at her. Most unexpectedly his right eye flickers, in the ghost of a wink. He disappears for a moment or two then returns bearing a wooden tray, on which is a cold chicken; a rummer and a small jug of water; a leather tankard, black with age; a bowl of green pickles, eldershoot and gherkins; a salt-pot, two apples, and a loaf of bread. These he sets upon the table, and produces from his pocket a knife and two two-pronged forks. Now he takes off his coat and throws it on the bed. Rebecca has not moved, and stares at the ground. The clerk sits in his shirt sleeves, and briskly seizes the chicken, knife in hand.

  'You must eat, woman.'

  Rebecca moves and sits opposite him, at the window; when he would pass her the breast he has detached, she shakes her head.

  'I would send it outside, to my husband and father.'

  'No. Feed your bastard. If not yourself. Come.' Now he cuts a slice of the loaf, and puts the breast upon it, and places it before her. 'Come. You are safe from the gallows till then.' And again his right eye flickers, almost as if it is a tic, outside his control. 'Your man and your father dine not so well. Yet they may dine if they would. I have had bread and cheese sent. What do they say? They say they will not eat the devil's food. There it lies, on the street before them. Charity made sin.'

  'No. 'tis not. I thank thee.'

  'As I thee, mistress For the absolution.'

  She bows her head a few seconds, as she had when she prayed alone; and grace said, begins to eat. And so does he, a leg, and a great slice of bread, folded round a forkful of the pickles; alternate bite by bite. It is a kind of wolfing, without delicacy. An acknowledgement of reality: that life is always near starvation, and plenty . such as this not to be trifled with. She pours water into the rummer; and later, spears a gherkin from the pickle, and another; and finally a third. The second breast she refuses when it is silently offered; but takes her apple. She watches him opposite, and when he seems finally done, the chicken in ruins, the ale supped, speaks.

  'What is thy name?'

  'Royal, mistress. John Tudor.'

  'And where did thee learn to write so swift?'

  'The short hand? By practice. 'Tis child's play, once learnt. And where I cannot read when I copy in the long hand, why, I make it up. So I may hang a man, or pardon him, and none the wiser.' And once again she sees that tic in his right eye.

  'I may read. I cannot write, save my name.'

  'Then you are saved writing.'

  'I would learn, e'en so.' He does not answer, but the ice thus broken, she continues. 'Are thee married?'

  'Aye. And rid.'

  'How rid?'

  'I married one worse than you, for her mouth. Who never spoke save she disputed or denied. She matched Joe Miller's jest. Should I forbid her another crooked word, why, she'd cry ram's horn to my face. Until one day I beat her as she had well deserved,

  and she would not brook it, and ran off. And did me a great mercy.'

  'Where went she?'

  'I know not nor care not, mistress. Where women always go - to Hell or another man. She was not so fair as you. I was well rid.' Again his eye flickers. 'Thee, I might have asked after.'

  'She never came back?'

  'No.' He shrugged, as if he regretted having spoken. "Tis old water, well past the mill-wheel. Sixteen years gone.'

  'And have thee always worked for the one master?' 'Near enough.'

  'Thee knew Dick, then?'

  'Nobody knew him, mistress. He was not to be known. Tho' he knew thee, it seems. More's the wonder.'

  She looks down. 'He was man enough.'

  'Was he so?' She looks hesitantly up at him, aware that his question is sarcastic, yet plainly not understanding why. He stares away out of the window for a moment, then back at her. 'Didst never hear of such, when thou wert what thou wast?'

  'Of such?'

  'Come now, mistress. You were not always saint. You have said as much today, and most credible, that you know your men. Did you not take one whiff?' "

  '1 grasp thee not.'

  'What is most unnatural, and a great crime. Where servant may become master, and master, servant.'

  She stares at the clerk a long moment; he gives a small nod, to kill her doubt, and then again there comes that minute spasm of his eyelid.

  'No.'

  'Saw you no sign of it?'

  'No.'

  'Nor mayhap thought it might be so?'

  'Nor that, even.'

  'Very well, God save your innocence. And do not you speak of it, unless you be asked. And never outside these walls, mistress, if you value your life.' There comes from down below the sound of hooves on the cobbles, the heavy grating of iron-shod wheels, a coachman's cry. The clerk stands and looks down to watch. Only when the vehicle has drawn out, and without turning to where she still sits, does he speak again; almost as if to himself. 'He'll hear aught but that.'

  Then he goes and picks his coat from the bed where it lies and puts it back on.
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  'I leave you now, mistress. Do your necessities, I fetch you again to Mr Ayscough shortly.' She bows her head in a little sign of acquiescence. 'Speak truth. Fear not. 'Tis but his manner.'

  'I have spoke truth, and shall. Nothing else.'

  'There are two truths, mistress. One that a person believes 1s truth; and one that is truth incontestible. We will credit you the first, but the second is what we seek.'

  'I must tell what I believe.'

  He walks to the door, yet there he stops and looks back at her. 'Thee, I should have asked after.'

  She receives one last tic of his right eyelid; and then he is gone.

  * * *

  Rebecca Lee further deposeth,

  die et anno praedicto

  * * *

  Q. Mistress, let us recommence. You rest upon oath, do not forget it. First I would ask you this. Know you what the vice of Sodom betokens?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Saw you ever, at any time since first you met his Lordship, any sign that he and his man were its victims? That they were guilty of practising it?

  A. No. I am most certain, no.

  Q. Was there no hint, when his Lordship first spoke of his failing to you, that such was the true cause of his insufficiency?

  A. No.

  Q. Nor later?

  A. No.

  Q. Did you never think, he may say what he likes, or not say, this must be the true cause? Those I have known said to be such have a different manner. 'Tis well known, where I was sinner. There are names for them, petty-masters or pretty-boys. They are more beauish than proper men should be. More foppish, and coxcombs, most often, more full of malice and scandal than aught else. 'Tis said, by resentment of what they are, and so must they damn all else, being damned themselves.

  Q. His Lordship seemed not like this?

  A. No, not one piece.

  Q. When Dick did use you before his eyes, he did not command it be enacted in manner unnatural? Not in word nor nothing else. He was silent as stone.

  Q. Now, Mistress Lee, I respect your judgement here. You are certain?

  A. Certain he bore no common sign of it, nor report of it neither. Nothing was said of him to this wise at Mistress Claiborne's, tho' we had use to discuss all who came there, and most wicked freely; what their faults were, and every scandal we had heard of them. Lord B..... himself question me, who has the most evil tongue in London, the most happy to hear ill of a friend. Even he made no hint of such vice. Only of his Lordship's coldness, his liking his books and studies more than flesh like mine; and whether I has surmounted this taste in him.