Dark Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  I had pointed across to the camp fire, now spitting as the last bones of the deer tumbled in scraps from their skewer and scattered into the ashes. The fire sank but the vivid sparks rose up to the tree tops.

  “That’s Agnes Oats. And that’s her half-starved nephew, Thomas Oats. Which one houses the demon.”

  Standing against the background of the fire, it seemed as though Vespasian was as black as the devil, and the scarlet sparks sprang up from his head. “Both,” he told me. “Now it inhabits the woman. When the boy kills her in a few years, the demon leaps from her to him. But I shall take the demon before that, and change history. The boy will remain demon free and the woman may live on.” The moon was rising and had tipped Vespasian’s black hair, spangled in fire-sparks. “But they must wait since the demon nursing on Cromwell’s resolutions is the stronger and affects more of those around him.” He took my hand again, leading me ready to leave. “When you sleep tonight,” Vespasian continued, “think on the woman I saw, who is you long ago, and ready for you to enter. She carries no demon, but she is frightened. You can help her, but more importantly, she can help you. Fill your mind with her as you drift into sleep.”

  I knew I would and wanted to know her name. But sleeping on the ground did not allow waking with energy. I felt older as my bones ached. “Is she young? Younger than me?” I had asked.

  “When I lift you back into my bed,” Vespasian replied very softly, “you will forget how old you are yourself.”

  Now following the slow drag of the injured, and hungry camp followers, I remembered these words, and wondered what I might do if forced to meet myself. I had been safe with Tilda and together we were the same person, never separate unless I returned to my own world. Now I wasn’t sure, but I was intrigued.

  Vespasian, before we travelled back in time, had laughed, telling me he would find us a cottage to share somewhere outside London, where we could once again share our bed, and discuss whatever was happening. And when it was necessary to wait out many months, or perhaps even a year, he could blink away that time, travelling ahead to whenever we were once more needed. But none of that had yet become the truth and now I slept in the chill with damp grass beneath me, and our cottage felt more distant than ever.

  Even halfway to London, the air was smelling of battle and death. I pulled my threadbare cloak tightly over my shoulders and tried to do as Vespasian had asked me, thinking myself into the mind of a woman I had once been, but had not met yet.

  I still hadn’t found her when I finally fell asleep.

  Chapter Nine

  I am Sarah, Lady Sarah Harrington, but the title is unearned and unwanted. It comes from my husband whom I loathe and fear.

  But I am also Molly, wife of Vespasian who is Jasper, once a baron during the reign of King John. But I don’t care about the title either, since it’s considerably out of date and I’d be laughed at if I used it. Besides, Vespasian didn’t use his title during most of his earlier life and laughs at those who believe a title denotes superior blood. He has no birth certificate of course, but has adopted the name of Jasper Fairweather. So I am simply Mrs. Molly Fairweather.

  I creep into Sarah’s mind when I want to, but it is confusing. Her home is grand, even grander than my own, and they keep hundreds of hunting dogs. Lord Harrington has his own separate bedchamber, for which I am extremely grateful, as he is cruel. Almost demonic. Even his polite good mornings frighten me. There is nowhere I might call comfortable here, but Sarah doesn’t care about the house or the dogs, she cares about the frigid cruelty of her husband, and she cares about her country.

  When I am tugged into her mind and heart, I am her. I cannot judge her, or tell her about Molly. When I am her, I’ve never heard of Molly or Vespasian or the future. But Sarah knows a great deal about demons, witches, evil and cruelty, for her husband is cruel and her religion preaches of black magic and accepts that demons and witches are common across the land. Witches are not burned here as they are in other countries, and never have been. They are hanged. But heretics are burned, and that is terrifying.

  My Sarah is considered an insignificant part of the nobility of the era, but I live inside her and know her immense courage and determination.

  Slim but large breasted, taller than her bent little gnome of a husband, she was the youngest daughter in a family without title but related to those grander. The marriage was arranged, and she had no possibility of complaint. At the church steps, she had begun to cry but her veil kept her tears hidden.

  The man raped her on their wedding night. This was not because she refused him, but because he desired the opportunity for brutality, and to prove his power. The force he used would dissuade her from ever refusing him in the future.

  Having met his majesty, Charles I, at several court events, Sarah grew fond of the man, and later fonder of his wife and children. She had no children of her own. Once she had been pregnant, but had never told any other soul except her sister who also feared Lord Harrington and so refused to help.

  Leaping from the top of the great staircase, Sarah induced a miscarriage. She begged the Lord for forgiveness since this was a sin beyond acceptance, but the thought of a child born of the husband she feared and loathed, was too terrible to allow. A boy child would be beaten until he behaved as his father. A girl would be beaten and treated with unloving disdain. The unutterable misery of any child and herself as the mother, terrified and appalled her.

  She knew that dying herself would be an escape she would accept. Surviving seemed a disappointment. The steps were thickly carpeted and perhaps this saved her life, but she broke both legs and dislocated her shoulder, keeping her in bed and away from her husband’s clutches for nigh on two months.

  Two months of painful peace seemed her salvation. Bed, soft pillows, an eiderdown of goose feathers and a candle flickering beside her. The maid set a brick in the fire, then brought it to warm her bed. The doctor came every week, and sat beside her to talk of the growing rebellions, the disruption of parliament and the terrible discomfort of the king.

  When Doctor Small announced that she might leave her bed at last, Sarah was disappointed, but eager to understand what was behind the devastation amongst the court and gentry. Indeed, the civil war had begun.

  Lord Harrington had mistresses enough, but was delighted to reclaim his wife. While he contemplated what he might do to her as she crawled from her own bed into his, he also decided that he would join the revolt against the king. His majesty was no friend.

  Now it seemed I had two men in my life, and both, in vastly different ways, were extremely dangerous. From the many years of sharing my life with Tilda, I was accustomed to the strange imbalance, and now at least I fully understood what was happening. I had not understood the first time, and Tilda had been so young and so timid at the beginning. Sarah Harrington was not so young and nor was she timid, in spite of the terrible fear she felt for her husband and lord. As she didn’t resemble me much, either in looks or in habits, I wondered how much we must change and grow over the many incarnations we experience one by one.

  Vespasian, meanwhile, was befriending Cromwell and at first, I saw nothing of him. I somehow missed him even when I was Sarah and had no idea who Vespasian was.

  Chapter Ten

  He slammed open the door of my bedchamber and snarled at me from the doorway. I was still dressing, both my personal maids at my side as I sat in my dressing room before the lead blotched mirror.

  I heard the slap of his whip against the door jam. I knew that sound so well, as did his poor horses. We had all felt the pain of the lash against our naked backs.

  “Out,” rasped my husband, indicating the door.

  Both maids ran. I turned from the mirror to face him. He wasn’t smiling of course. He never was.

  A short man, shorter than myself, his legs were bent and bandy. His mother, an ancient old crone, had told me that the boy’s birth had left him badly formed, since the midwife had hauled him out by the legs. “A breech
birth,” she had cackled, “And no doubt serves him right. Had I known then what manner of person he’d become, I’d have thrown him out to the sewerage.”

  She was dead now herself, but my vile pig of a husband still lived and offered no sign of caring for me nor for anyone else.

  At first, I had tried to sympathise. The short, bent legs must have turned self-pity to hatred of all those better formed than himself. He would have been teased by other children. Perhaps he thought our Lord God had tortured him without reason. But it is hard to feel sympathetic towards a man who forces you naked onto the bed, rolls you onto your belly and whips your buttocks until they bleed, before continuing what he calls taking his wife in the manner he prefers.

  “Undress,” he now spat in my face. “Get those frivolities off, girl, and show yourself to me.”

  I hated undressing for him, but I always obeyed. I wasn’t fully dressed yet so untying my ribbons wasn’t too hard. Once I stood only in my petticoat, my knees trembling beneath, He ripped the thin linen off me, one clawed hand between my breasts, and without delay threw me back onto the bed. I collapsed there like a sack of tipsy but brainless flesh and bones, which is how he treated me. He slapped my legs and belly as he forced onto and into me, his rings scraping against me as he pummelled.

  “Getting skinny,” he muttered. “I want you plump. Eat more. I like a pudding arse like the suet crust on my dinner. Get eating, girl. Pudding up, or I’ll shove the spoon down your throat myself.”

  I wasn’t going to answer. Besides, I was gasping for breath. My thigh was bleeding and a growing headache pounded as hard as he did.

  Nearly two months in bed had left me partially ignorant of the political situation around me. His majesty, convinced that he must act as he saw fit, needed the funds which parliament was refusing him. Charles had always been a man of confused ideals, convinced that as the Lord God’s divine choice as sovereign of the country he had been born to, he must act as seemed right to him, and therefore Parliament’s decisions were utterly irrelevant. They should simply agree with him and act as he demanded. Less arrogant than this made him seem, our wretched king felt duty bound to serve the god which had put him on the throne. As a boy, second in line to the crown, Charles had been a shy child, ashamed of his weaknesses and lack of height. He saw himself as a failure and a failure to his grand family.

  And then the ridiculous occurred, for his elder brother Henry, the future king, died and left Charles to inherit. Astonished and depressed, Charles accepted what seemed a tragic mistake, until he realised that since the Lord God could not possibly make mistakes, there must be a reason for Charles to be king. And the only reason Charles could imagine, was how this would be a lesson to him, to make him grow strong, to become decisive, and to rule as a champion to God’s church. He must no longer see himself as weak. He must see himself as invincible, and uphold everything the Bible preached. God had presented him with the ultimate duty, and his duty to the Lord was to fulfil the role hung so heavily around his neck.

  And so Charles I was, perhaps the first crowned monarch who had never wanted the title, and yet became the rigid and unveiling tyrant so many of his people hated.

  Poor little Charles.

  Wretched little Arthur. Both feeling the stigma of stunted height and deep inner vulnerability. But whereas this led Arthur to the putrid behaviour I was forced to experience, Charles took on his duty and attempted to do his best. A fanatical and over-zealous duty, but one he thought did homage to the God he adored.

  I also knew my duty and realised that I had to fight for him. I did not know Cromwell nor any other leading politician, but I knew the Puritan church and its ideals, and hated them. My husband, although the least moral creature I had ever known, rose to fight for parliament. I also hated that same infernal husband, which made everything simple.

  I asked him, “Why, my lord, since you are a member of the aristocracy, not the government, and you’ve never attended the puritan churches in your life?”

  He actually had the grace to answer me and explain, although he hit me first. He knocked me into the fireplace, punching his closed fist at my mouth.

  My bottom lip split and bled while my skirts scorched in the ashes. “You dare question me, wench?” he demanded, glaring.

  I managed to scramble up before catching fire. “Never, my lord,” I mumbled since I invariably gave the coward’s answer. “But because I respect all your decisions, and so know this must be the right one, I hoped to understand why.”

  “What female would understand my reasoning?” the idiot said, but sat back, fanned out his lace cuffs, and began to explain. “The king does not support me, and I’ve no desire to support him. Besides, he wants the country’s money to make war. A waste of coin, if you ask me. Blood is expensive, and we all want to keep our inheritance to ourselves. Cromwell, being a fool, will never win the argument, but he should teach the king a lesson, and keep him quiet for a year or more.”

  “It seems odd,” I ventured, “that you want to fight on what you say you know is the losing side.”

  He paused, frowning. “Not that, not indeed. It shall be the winning side but without consequences,” he eventually decided. “Cromwell will remain in parliament, then be voted out. But the king will have learned a lesson and shut his foolish mouth in future.”

  “I’m aware that you don’t like his majesty, my lord.” No one could miss it. Charles thought my husband a bad-tempered idiot, as of course he was. They had argued once, and Charles had called the guard to see Lord Harrington out. I wish they’d locked him up. But my putrid lord and master was an earl, a rich one, and escaped punishment. But he had never been invited to court since. Now he wanted some sort of revenge even though he had no idea whatsoever what Cromwell was fighting about. Nor would the vile man ever lift a sword or a musket, he’d simply shout from a safe distance.

  So Lord Arthur, Earl of Harrington, joined the side of the commoners and puritans although he was neither commoner nor in any manner puritan.

  Entirely unknown to him, I meanwhile joined the side of the royalists. Unable to arm myself, choose one of the destriars from our stables, clamp on my helmet and my sword, or take up my musket and ride to battle, I offered my services in a very different way. First speaking to her highness, the royal consort, Queen Henrietta, we discussed the limited possibilities. From there, she took me to his majesty and although he remained rigid, unimaginative, and concerned over the rightful place of a lady in society, we finally each managed concessions, and I became a spy for the king.

  “Cromwell has a whole network of spies,” I informed his majesty.

  “How unlikely,” King Charles shook his royal brow.

  There was no point arguing since I knew I was right and he would never accept a woman arguing with him anymore than my husband would. Men were the masters of course.

  No musket after all. But as half the time they blew off the gunman’s hand anyway, exploded in his face, or simply took so long to reload that someone else would hack him to death in the meantime, I didn’t care. However, combining my lack of experience with the king’s lack of most other things, it was some time before I could manage serious work.

  Arthur, on the other hand, did nothing whatsoever, but proclaimed his belief in the puritan side. I refrained from ever informing him what he should, or should not, be doing. Every detail of his behaviour was of course in absolute contradiction to the Puritan beliefs.

  His absurd conversion to the Puritan cause helped me enormously. Knowing him to be a supporter of Cromwell, the people assumed that my own loyalties were to the same side. A good number of the aristocracy turned against the king’s intolerance, so we did not seem suspicious. And I, good little Puritan, wore modest clothes and went to visit the members of parliament at Cromwell’s side. Some were ardent, some puzzled, many were religious but a majority simply disliked the arrogance of a king seeing himself as God-sent, impossible ever to see himself as wrong, or even consider a compromise with the co
mfort of his people. Besides, the queen was an immovable Catholic, and that was a problem indeed. So I sat at tables both huge and tiny, eating both feasts and pitiful scraps, speaking with those who battled our monarch. Some of these men knew a good deal concerning Cromwell’s future intentions, and were prepared to discuss them even with a woman.

  Then, with as much secrecy as I could manage, I went to the king’s senior officers and told my stories. Whether this had any relevance or brought even the slightest benefit to his majesty, I have no idea. Less, I think, than it should have. I was often disbelieved. Many of the king’s chief officers were as immovably intolerant as he was.

  When I met the man Jasper, I was unprepared. A tall man, he was striding Cromwell’s camp, a musket stuck through his belt and the wind through his hair. No wig, and his clothes were plain, although they did not follow the puritan fashion, nor was he especially handsome. Yet something about his face sang to me. His arrogance, perhaps. Did I have a fascination for the arrogance of many men, considering both my husband and my king? This was a far taller man than either of those, but his arrogance spilled from those cold black eyes, and his mouth neither lifted nor relaxed. Actually, I bumped into him, which was no mistake. I managed to lose my balance at the correct moment, and attempted to tumble into his arms. Unfortunately, he saw the stagger in time, and avoided the damsel in distress. Seeing me, however, he bowed as I staggered upright, and apologised for being in the way. Civil, but absurd.

  I had thought that if I might gain from talking to someone on the enemy side, then it might as well be someone interesting. This man’s eyes were like the cruel hooks where butcher’s hang their meat. And I was hooked. When he walked onwards without a single glance in my direction, I was both disappointed and cross.