I tried very hard to dream off the kiss and those dark tunnel eyes, but instead I dreamed of green-eyed wraiths and a harsh disembodied voice screeching of power and cruelty.
Chapter Fourteen
I’d lived through Sarah’s excitement, her horror and disgust, and then the galloping awakenment of her desire for my Vespasian. As Sarah, I’d wanted him so deeply, agonising for the experience of sweet love making. Having only ever experienced Arthur Harrington’s perverted cruelty, my poor Sarah-self didn’t even really know what lovemaking meant.
But back in myself as Molly again, I didn’t want Vespasian to sleep with another woman, even though she was me. And would he actually be making love to me – or to her – and would he think it was the same thing – or would he admire a different body even when he knew he was talking to the inner me.
Oh bother. Muddled nonsense of course. I swallowed it back and said nothing to my own Jasper Fairweather.
Instead, he said it to me, “Your eyes yearned. I saw you, my dearest, within the woman I touched. It was you I wished to take into my bed, as I knew it was you, my own precious beloved, when I had loved Tilda and then found you in my future. You are Tilda, and Sarah is you. This, even for me, is a delight I cannot entirely scrutinise with both heart and brain. I shall, perhaps, avoid you when you are not you, little one.”
That made me laugh. “When I’m in Sarah, you could make love to me and I would love you back. But then you might make love to Sarah when I am only Molly, and can only guess what you are doing, I think that would hurt. Is that so stupid?”
And he nuzzled my neck. “I love only you, heart-born. And that will continue for the rest of my life, wherever I find you – in the body of another – of a queen – a pirate – or a lost soul needing comfort.”
“I know you kissed me when you kissed Sarah,” I smiled. “Because I was there. And I know Sarah loves you because I love you, and I’m her. But understanding these things is impossible, just like understanding you.”
Instead I strode out to find Agnes Oats once more. I’d not seen her for days, and the camp where we’d met had packed up and moved on. Agnes would no doubt be back home, or sitting by another campfire further south.
Within the warm shadows of our thatched cottage, sitting on the outskirts of the village of Hammersmith, we had skipped time, Vespasian and I, a few harsh months blinked by in seconds as I lay in his arms in our new little cottage. He blinked and time blinked. Months had gone in that blink. But there was leisure when we wished it, to make love. And that was truly me as I lay in his arms and traced his nakedness as he traced mine.
Once awake, we strode out, ready to take our places in this wretched old world again.
From Hammersmith, I walked out towards the distant village of shepherd’s Bush, and was delighted to discover the sheep on the green, and the shepherd’s still active.
“That wretched Charles,” spat the man walking near to me, “made peace with France only because he can’t afford war. He fines his friends to get more coin, and rages against parliament because they won’t agree to his demands. Thinks he’s a god on earth, he does. Thinks he can make Scotland and Wales all one country with us English. But we don’t want ‘em. The man should be strung up for the magpies to pick at his eyes. Well, now the bugger’s a prisoner. I hope they makes him pay.”
I had begun to wonder if the entire population on both sides were occupied by these wretched demons since cruelty was like a bargaining tool, or a crazy dream of justice. Kindness was thought to achieve nothing.
It was a schoolhouse a little further north, and I knew Agnes Oats lived somewhere here. Asking for her had ended with an invitation to the school. The plump teacher Henry Bloom accepted my Puritan views and asked me to see where he taught, and where the pupils would learn true Christianity. I was supposed to be firmly on the side of Cromwell, and couldn’t argue. Besides, what good would it do? This was four hundred years ago. I could hardly change the course of the great English Rebellion nor the bitter reformation that followed it. So I looked at the man sitting next to me at the table. “You uphold Puritan values? Is murder and torture God’s will?”
“The Lord God? Ain’t easy to understand. Murdered his own son, didn’t he! But for the good of the people. Same with this useless king. Kill him off for the good of the people.”
I sighed and stuffed the pork crackling into my mouth. The best part of a rather soggy dinner, since the only other choice was cabbage broth.
Scotland had rebelled when pushed into following the ideals of the church Charles believed was the only one. With pomp and circumstance claiming a major part of the High Anglican philosophy, the people accused Charles of returning to Catholicism. And Charles wanted this practised in Scotland, England and Wales. Scotland rebelled. Fighting against rebellions cost money. The parliament refused to grant it. Charles had promptly dissolved parliament.
But none of that mattered anymore, for Charles I, King of England, had been taken, imprisoned, and accused of treachery.
His son Charles had escaped. Stories concerning that abounded, and Henry Bloom, Agnes, the other teachers and I sat side by side on the wooden bench before the dining table eating left-over pork and cabbage broth and discussing what we thought comprised the rightful path for the future. We also discussed these exaggerated possibilities of how Prince Charles, heir to the throne, had escaped the country and Cromwell’s committed soldiers.
“On a witches’ broomstick I’d guess,” frowned Henry.
“They say he hid in a tree,” I suggested, being the only story I’d personally heard.
“I heard he sat astride a swan, and flew to France,” said another teacher earnestly.
“Stuck ‘is pitchfork up Cromwell’s arse,” sniggered Agnes.
“He was helped by that ungrateful royalist Rochester,” Henry Bloom continued. “They’ll make the fellow a baron or an earl, wait and see,”
I knew that the now exiled Prince Charles, the rightful heir, would return in just a few years and be welcomed as king and crowned. But I supposedly followed the parliamentary cause, and said nothing.
“Our so-called monarch? He’ll be on trial by the end of the week and by the weekend, he’ll swing on the gallows.”
I sighed. “Master Bloom, surely he’ll be beheaded. Not hanged.”
Henry Bloom snorted into his soup. “If they says he’s no king, then why give the man a king’s death. If tis a common man, then use the execution of a common villain.”
But I was here only to befriend Agnes Oats all over again. This school, having lost most of its funds once the war was declared over and the parliamentary forces the victors, now had only eight faithful pupils and no sons of wealthy aristocrats would choose to learn where the headmaster was a Puritan following only the doctrines of Oliver Cromwell.
With her nephew studying there, his dues first halved and the rest paid from her wages, Agnes joined the staff as matron, and had cooked both the roast pork and the cabbage broth, and was now shouting from the kitchens.
“I’ll not nurse these brats and feed them three times a day, and wash the bloody platters too. You get that other wench in here.”
I dutifully plodded into the kitchen, filled the bucket at the well, didn’t bother to heat the water, sat on the low stool in front of the bucket, and began to wash the dishes. Smiling up at Agnes was the only advantage. “Nice that we’ve met already. Maybe it’s months since we met, but it’s good to rediscover old friends.”
“Was we friends?”
How encouraging. “I believed so. I brought food for your nephew. I shared my shelter with you when the winds blew up.”
The Little Ice Age, we called it afterwards. The warmth of the medieval had blistered into the Tudor freeze, then the frost filled years of the Restoration. But those were amongst the thousand things I couldn’t speak of.
Instead I became the lowest ranking servant at the school, and there were so few of us since the place was virtually penniless, be
ing the lowest meant little. I was fed and given a bed – having once been in the older boy’s dormitory, carried into the little attic which became the servants’ quarters, gave security. Smelly, web hung, scuttling cockroaches and squashed under the rafters, this at least offered sleep, even comfort, but I received no wages. Probably Agnes taking the bed next to mine was the least of my delights.
Apart from Agnes, Henry Bloom and myself, there were two others working at the failing school, both teachers, one of Latin being Simon Braithwaite, and the other pretending to teach mathematics. That was Master William Prestwich, who thought himself a man of brilliance, wit, and handsome attractions. I didn’t think him anything of the sort but he could be hard to get rid of.
The second night I was there, he climbed into bed with me. I was suddenly grateful to Agnes. She yelled herself red in the face. “You get away from that trollop,” she roared. “I ain’t gonna pass my night listening to you two grunting and bumping.”
But I was already out of bed, petticoats flying and my face almost as red as Agnes’s. “There’ll be nothing of the sort,” I said loudly. “William Prestwich, how dare you. Now get out before I call Henry Bloom.”
“You want us both together?” the idiot sniggered. “A rollicking threesome, I’d reckon.”
“He’d sit on you and squash you flat.”
Then Agnes hit him over the head with the oil lamp. William lay flat on his face, nose bleeding profusely. He scrambled up, one hand to his nose, and limped away swearing under his breath. Agnes followed him, swinging the heavy metal oil lamp. And that was when I really managed to call her friend. I even hugged her. She liked that although I didn’t.
And now it was Sunday rules and Sunday regulations, and those who did not go to the church every Sunday would be severely fined. Having a cold, sore toes or a backache was not an acceptable excuse Agnes and I went to church together that Sunday, young Thomas between us. The church had been altered, although once a bright place of painted walls and a marble pulpit, it was plain now and lacked any ornament. The pulpit had been crushed and removed. A small wooden table stood there instead.
I had followed the law of modesty and was dressed in black and white, my head covered and as little of my body showing as was possible. Since I wasn’t as poor as I pretended to be, I managed a reasonable costume. In spite of this, the preacher standing at his small wooden table, pointed a long white finger.
“That woman,” he said, both voice and finger quivering, “is not suitably clothed.”
I would have loved to argue, but that was hardly the best moment. We were told there would be no singing, no festivities, no feasts nor celebrations, no dancing, and, of course, no frills nor decorations, no satins nor velvets, no gold or silver and nothing whatsoever in the way of lipstick, face paint or hair curling.
I longed to ask what sort of god the preacher believed in, who was so mean-hearted, who had created us with love, but now withheld that love unless we gave up all avenues to happiness and entertainment. Why would a great and loving God care so bitterly about such trivial details? But of course, I sat meekly and gazed at my lap.
The morning had, however, inspired Agnes, and it seemed she had slightly changed. “What’s that word?” she said as we trotted back to school and took off our cloaks. “Inspiration. That be the one. And that’s what I got. Inspired.” She smirked. “Now I knows my God and reckon if I loves him, he’ll be loving me.”
I nodded, since her opinion mattered not one jot, But I murmured, “Henry Bloom will approve of that.”
“We must do as our Lord God wishes,” she said, sounding smugly prim.
I left her to it. There were other matters to consider, especially since the wretched William, firmly believing that he was god’s gift to women, was playing up again. Having waited one night until I was deeply asleep, he managed to climb into my bed without waking me. Agnes didn’t wake either, or at least, not until I yelled. William already had one hand inside my petticoats and grabbing at my thighs. I kicked as hard as I could, bare foot, and he toppled from the bed. I told him loudly that if he ever did this again, I would report him to Henry Bloom, the local preacher, the myriad of printed brochures, the local sheriff and Oliver Cromwell himself if I could find him. I nearly added the police and the daily newspaper but luckily stopped myself since neither of these things yet existed.
When young Tom told me that the vile teacher had also stuffed his hand inside the boy’s britches more than once, I was disgusted, hit the man over the head with the frying pan and told Agnes, expecting her to be furious. She didn’t appear to care and I later discovered why. But a week later, William climbed into bed beside Agnes and that created chaos. Both hands were squeezing her breasts when she woke with a jolt, and while she was screaming blue murder, she punched William so viciously in the face that his nose didn’t just bleed this time, it broke.
Frightened or simply ashamed, I didn’t know or care. But the following day William left the school, and we were all excessively glad to see him gone.
“Creepy idiot,” Agnes spat and that was true.
William had not simply been a handsome playboy, he had the ardent desire to be a rapist of anyone and everyone including men, women and children of both sexes. At first seemingly just an arrogant idiot, I soon started finding him both repulsive and criminal. It was after he’d left that I heard he had at some time buggered every single one of the children, had forced them to blow him off, and had insisted on watching them piss and then making them hold onto him while he pissed – a perverse idea that made me quite sick.
So without the vile behaviour of Master Prestwich, school life continued and gradually Henry Bloom, having made the announcement during one church service, attracted the sons of the local Puritan middle classes, and the failing school succeeded once more.
I offered to teach basic reading, writing and even some extremely childish science. Rather surprised at being offered the services of a female who actually knew something worth teaching, Henry Bloom accepted and although two boys were taken off the school premises for this improper practise, I was able to continue, and in some quarters where the boy’s parents approved. They would have approved even more had they known that William Prestwich’s absence had saved their sons. The science became a quandary since I had to discover what was already known at that time, and so avoid teaching the modern bits and pieces I knew but which remained still unknown in the 1640s. However, teaching reading and writing was actually quite enjoyable, and I used modern methods, although lacking the computers of course, and had all those children reading in weeks. The parents I spoke to were astounded and either thought their son to be a genius, or decided that it was me. I just smiled.
The patient Simon Braithwaite took on mathematics alongside teaching Latin, and Henry Bloom added the Puritan scriptures to his efforts. Amazingly, I was out of the kitchen and was soon treated with vague respect. Agnes, sniffing at me when told to do the washing, remained as a servant, and two other maids were employed as we became more profitable.
Surprisingly comfortable now, I continued my work for some time, even collecting a small salary. But I was not improving my friendship with Agnes.
The bitter weather continued, and our high roofed rooms were chilly and doomed by draughts. When the puddles outside turned to ice, I could hear the threatening crack as of something malicious below the surface. It was worse whenever anyone walked over, and then sometimes the crack was less subtle, and the foolish stumbler splashed and swore as his boots filled with freezing water. But the little muffled cracks of threat were heard from under the ice, even when no one was near.
It made me think of demons.
Chapter Fifteen
I could neither enter Vespasian’s mind as I did Sarah’s (Oh, how I wish I could) nor might I be present during pre-trial discussions, but Vespasian later related what he found both amusing, and absurd.
He had spoken at length with Cromwell. As now a close member of Cromwell’s associat
es, friends, supporters and political advisors, Vespasian, particularly in company, spoke as he wished.
“I had no expectation nor any specific desire to alter history,” he told me, “but at that specific time I do not know how close our relationship needed to be. And a complacent supporter who might only say ‘yes’ to Cromwell’s beliefs, was not what the fool wished for. Yet his temper can be an irritation.”
And it seems that most of the people, even those who gladly supported him, were deeply concerned by the prospect of murdering an anointed king. One, nominated as the official judge, suddenly disappeared. Others refused to sign the accusation. Some walked out.
Fists clenched and eyes inflamed, Cromwell had roared about justice. “If this Charles had even the slightest shadow of a brain or the instincts of a rightful king, he would have followed his son abroad.”
“Then you’d have called him a coward,” Vespasian had interrupted.
‘You will sign,” Cromwell’s voice raised even more and his lips narrowed. One fist clutched at his hair, and Vespasian saw the demon’s eyes alight within the furious face. “It is the Lord God who empowers me, and only I know His will and judgement. This Charles called king must die. Or there will be uprisings in his name, rebellions, foreign invasions and calls for his return to power. I will not have such nonsense. My word would become challenged and even eroded. I will not have it, I tell you. This man must die.”
“But, my Lord Cromwell,” another said, “you speak of the crowned king of England, a monarch appointed by the Lord God himself.”
“A charade,” Cromwell had roared. “A falsity. Only I know the mind of our Lord and will impose it on the God-forsaken fools, demons and witches of this land.”
The death warrant was finally signed by some, and Cromwell’s signature came first. Many others carefully disappeared from the chamber when the time came, others simply refused. Cromwell preached justice, honesty and simple obedience to the scriptures, but ignored the holy anointing of the royal heir before the pulpit in God’s name. Others were disturbed by the accusation of treason.
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