The old man sat upon his bed, placed in one of the alcoves lining the old wall. The upper part of the alcove contained a picture of Saint John Schorne, surrounded by candles; Peter Stannard had convinced himself that the saint’s considerable reputation for curing gout might somehow extend to his own case, although Jack found it difficult to comprehend either the notion or the efficacy of a saint who hailed from, of all places, Buckinghamshire, who had never been formally canonised, and who, moreover, was said to have cast the devil into a boot. The thought of the vast black demon which adorned the Doom of Dunwich being crabbed and confined within a single clog stretched Jack’s credulity, but it was Alice who had given voice to his doubts, some months earlier. Even if John Schorne really had brought off such a miracle, she said, surely the Devil must have escaped thereafter, else why was there still so much evil in the world? That being so, Schorne could hardly rank with the most successful or powerful of the saints, and was not worth having a single candle lit in his honour. Peter Stannard, though, begged to differ, as he did on so very many matters.
Even though there was no need for such a garment indoors, the old man still wore the threadbare broadcloth gown in which he had swaggered when it was new, and he was in his pomp. He was reading the copy of Livy that had engrossed him for months. He turned a page, albeit with great difficulty.
‘Thought you’d have come yesterday, boy,’ said Peter Stannard, without looking up.
The old man’s voice was still strong, even if his ancient body, long past its fiftieth year, was not.
‘Too much work on the top timbers of the new ship, Father. Hard, slow work, too, with all the rain this last week. But needs be done.’
Jack pulled up a stool and sat in front of his father.
‘Ah, the new ship. Always the new ship.’ Peter Stannard put down his book and looked at his son. His voice was a strangled rasp, a mere remnant of the strident bark he had once possessed. ‘As it should be. As I’d have it, too, if she was mine in more than name. Nolloth will have her ready by the autumn, or for when the summons comes?’
The same question as always, which John would grace with the same answer as always. Thus far, his father’s temper seemed equable enough, a fair and gentle breeze. But, as at sea, a sudden storm could blow up at any moment.
‘She’ll be ready, Father, whether the summons comes or not. You sent the letters?’
Peter Stannard nodded.
‘I did. And the summons will come, boy. As Saint Peter’s my judge, it’ll come, after the number of letters I’ve dictated to Franklin since you were last here. He says it’s beyond his duty, not his place, and more such nonsense, but a few gleaming groats change his tune. So aye, the letters were sent. To Girdler and Clampe, to bestir themselves if they want another term as bailiffs. Even from this place, I can still make or break them as that, and they know it. To Browne and Coppyn, for there’ll be another Parliament soon, that’s certain according to George Barne, and they’ll be our members, no question of it. Add your new favour from the Lord Admiral, and, God willing, Ryman’s efforts with the Howards when he returns to Kenninghall, and there’ll be no doubt of the issue. We’ll deliver a ship for the king’s campaign in France this summer, as long as your sot of a cousin brings Osprey home in time. Then we’ll have the new ship ready for next year, so that if and when the king calls for it – and it’ll be when, for certain – Dunwich can deliver him a true man-of-war. Sailing agin the French. A proper enemy for you, eh, boy?’
His father raised his right hand, and jabbed it decisively at his son, just as he had done so often when Jack was young. But in those days, his father’s hands had ended in fingers.
Peter Stannard was the last leper of Dunwich.
Jack knew that his father spent many waking hours searching his memory for any clue as to when and how he might have caught his terrible condition, which seemed to have all but gone from England. Although he had no evidence at all to support his supposition, Peter Stannard had ultimately settled upon a passing encounter with a Moorish merchant at Antwerp, twelve or thirteen years earlier, about the time when the king put aside Queen Catherine in favour of the Boleyn woman. It was no more or less plausible than the opinion held by Jack’s sister Agatha, namely that the illness was God’s righteous judgement upon their father for his manifold sins: for the various kinds of abuses he had inflicted upon the two of them, for the murder (if popular rumour was to be believed) of his simpleton brother, and for countless other crimes, any one of which would be sufficient to condemn him to eternal hellfire.
‘As you say, Father,’ said Jack, neutrally. ‘God willing.’
Jack nodded, and prayed that the old man was right. But it all hinged upon Dunwich being able to supply a ship that summer of the year ’forty-four, to the second great campaign upon which the king had embarked. And with the Blessing too leaky and worn out for immediate service, that meant everything depended upon Jack’s cousin, Simon Bulbrooke, and his ability to bring the Osprey back from a curtailed voyage to Oslo.
‘What’s the talk in Dunwich town, then, boy? When I ask him, Franklin does no more than grunt.’
Jack felt the tightness in his muscles ease a little. The tattle of the streets should be safe ground.
‘Of the war, mainly – the usual variance between those who shout that the king will conquer France in a week, and those who fear the French army wading ashore on Kingsholme on the next flood tide. Otherwise, Goody Cowper says it’s common talk in the market square that Southwold conspires against us again,’ said Jack. ‘It seems Raker’s son is to be made bailiff this year coming, despite his age, solely to spite us—’
Peter Stannard frowned at the mention of Southwold and the Raker family, a frown which heralded a flash of his old temper.
‘Christ’s blood, boy, Southwold has conspired agin Dunwich since the first day of God’s creation! My father told me how they crowed when Harry Seventh gave them a borough charter and our rightful rank as a royal harbour, saying they were now equal to Dunwich and would soon be greater. A turd in their teeth for that, as good old Christopher Eagle would have said. And Martin Raker should have hanged years ago… as for the runt Stephen, also…’
The old man’s voice faltered, and he looked into the flames of the feeble fire in the opposite wall.
Jack moved the stool to be more in front of him, but his father’s eyes were blank. Just then, though, one of the other patients, a consumptive from Peter’s parish called Mulsford, came into the infirmary and made his way toward the chapel, behind the decayed wooden screen that divided the building in two. The former lazar hospital of Saint James had to take all sorts and conditions now, thus putting it in direct competition with the Maison Dieu; many, though, preferred the latter, simply because they would not be in the company of Peter Stannard.
Leprosy, and the Stannards, cast long shadows.
Mulsford nodded to Jack, then went into the chapel. Through the door, Jack could see him kneel at an altar on the far side of the chapel and begin his private devotions, fingering his paternoster as he whispered and coughed out his prayers.
The sound seemed to bring back Peter Stannard from wherever his mind had gone.
‘The children,’ he said, amiably enough. ‘They continue well? Young Tom grows strong?’
‘They do, and he does. Meg sends you her love.’
‘A good girl, is Meg. Proud. Questioning. Make a decent match for her, in the fullness of time. Although I think she’ll lead any husband a merry dance – if you can even find one who won’t be frit shitless by a girl who can read.’
This had been at Peter Stannard’s insistence: if it was good enough for the Princess Elizabeth, he said, it was good enough for Margaret Stannard of Dunwich, too. As much as he could, he helped her with her learning, to the horror and disgust of Jack’s sister, Agatha.
‘And,’ said the old man, ‘good girl as she is, she comes to visit her old grandfather. Dutiful, she is. But I don’t see enow of your Tom, and may Satan
take the black heart of that ungrateful sister of yours—’
The distant but ever-present storm was threatening to break. Jack needed to steer a steady course now.
‘Agatha is—’
‘Ungrateful, I say. Unforgiving. Oh, I sinned agin her mightily. Agin you, too. You know that. Our Lord knows it, and see how God has punished me. I’ve no need to go into John’s church ever again, boy, for the Doom of Dunwich has come upon me, and enveloped me in its wings.’ Peter Stannard’s voice was even more strained. ‘But your sainted sister – I tell you, boy, she can’t see what I am now, only what I was then. She don’t hear the prayers I offer up, imploring God’s forgiveness for my sins agin her. A heart as hard and immovable as the Kingsholme, that one.’
Jack had no response. He had lost count of the number of times he had heard the same litany from his father, and strangely similar sentiments from the lips of his sister. It was very true that Agatha could only see what Peter Stannard had once been. Jack believed that his father was genuinely repentant, and posed no threat to Meg. In this, Alice, who always saw the best in everyone, had seconded him, saying that her father-in-law would dare not do anything to offend her, the namesake of the saint upon whose intercession he depended. (Her confidence on this point had led to many terrible arguments between the sisters-in-law.) The message had been reinforced by successive priests of Saint John’s, who reminded Jack in the confessional of Matthew Six and Nineteen, Luke Seventeen, the Lord’s Prayer itself, and all the other texts urging good Christians to forgive those who sinned against them. Besides, the Stannard business still depended greatly upon Peter Stannard’s name, reputation and contacts; Jack could afford no breach between himself and his father. All of this was why Jack continued to resist his sister’s dire warnings that their father’s true nature would burst through again one day, and that Jack’s children would suffer for it.
The threatened storm passed even before it began. The old man began to stare into the flames once more, and Jack thought he had tired him enough. Mulsford coughed again, and this time his father made no response. Jack stood, but Peter Stannard suddenly turned and looked up at him, his eyes seeming as sharp as they were when he first took his son to sea.
‘That idea you had of sending one of our ships to the Greek islands when the war ends, boy. Candia, Chios, the rest of them. Explain it to me again.’
Jack blinked. He was accustomed to his father’s strange and rapid changes of subject: Thomas Ryman was of the opinion that the decay and immobility of Peter Stannard’s body had somehow made his mind even more active, but also more impatient, forever flitting from one thought to another, like a songbird hopping from branch to branch.
‘There’s a good trade to be had there, Father. Will Halliday’s Master Gonson sends his own ships out there. He’s not an impetuous man.’
Peter Stannard emitted a sound that might have been a neutral grunt.
‘Distant trades, present risks, boy,’ said Jack’s father, ‘and I’ll wager this Master Gonson has more capital to his credit than we do. Told you that enow times. We make safe money, good money, from the North Sea trades—’
‘Yes, safe money, good money. But not enough to restore Dunwich to what it was, Father.’ Jack felt his heart sink; this was an old quarrel between them, the arguments long rehearsed and almost as long exhausted. ‘You told me many times that when my grandfather led the way into the Iceland fishery, it was thought a great risk. You said there were plenty in this town, the Cuddons above all, who mocked and sneered. But he proved them all wrong, Father, didn’t he? The town was rising again thanks to the fishery, and would be still, were it not for the monasteries going down.’
Peter Stannard jabbed the stump of his right hand at his son.
‘What? What, boy? You dare use my own father agin me, boy?’ The shout had an echo of the old force, the old rage. ‘Aye, Iceland nearly saved the town, but it was a certainty – a near part of the world, and Dunwich men have always known how to fish. It was no risk at all, but the Cuddons and the like were too stupid to see it. But these places that men talk of now… Greece and the Levant, these Americas… folly, all of them. Too far, too strange, no trade worth having in any case.’ Jack thought of the gold and silver the Spanish were mining in the Americas, but remembered his father’s furious reaction when he had last contradicted him with that point. ‘No, I’ll tell you what’ll happen, boy. The king’ll make his peace with the Pope, just like King John and others did before him. The monasteries will come back, mark my words on that, and the Iceland fishery will revive with them. Once there’s a proper peace with King Francis, all the French trades will revive, and Flanders too. They’ll want High Suffolk’s wool again, just as they’ve always done.’
Jack had heard it all before, just as had heard all his counter-arguments shouted down before: that the king enjoyed holding power over the Church without the interference of the Pope, that he had made far too much money out of the monasteries ever to contemplate restoring them, that the fashions of Europe no longer depended upon English wool. Peter Stannard had no time for such uncomfortable truths, just as he closed his ears to evidence of the wealth of the Americas. Had he been less weary, Jack might have been prepared to argue one or all of those cases yet again, but as it was, he felt none of it was worth the candle.
‘We should talk more of this matter of distant trades when the war is over, Father.’
The stump jabbed at Jack once more.
‘Aye, I see what you’re doing, boy. Humour the old leper, put him off – mayhap he’ll be dead before the war comes to an end.’ Peter Stannard’s voice was rising. Mulsford shot an angry glare in his direction. ‘But I know what I’m talking about, boy. Your brother did, too.’
You’re not your brother, boy.
Jack had learned patience, and, unlike his sister, he had learned forgiveness of their father, up to a point. But in all these years, the one thing he had not learned was to dismiss the ghost of his dead brother, whenever his father chose to summon it forth as a weapon against him.
‘Adam died, Father!’ Jack yelled, an outburst that caused Mulsford finally to abandon his prayers and leave the building. ‘He lies in John’s churchyard, next to our mother. And his shade in Purgatory doesn’t hold power of attorney over your affairs.’
The storm had broken; but Jack’s was the gale and the tumultuous sea hammering against the cliffs, not his father’s, whose response was cold but quiet.
‘As you remind me, every chance you get, boy. Aye, you’ve got power of attorney, all right, though the saints know what state our balance sheets are in. But I’m still head of this family, and that gives me rights which no lawyer’s screed can take away.’
Jack expected his father to respond to rage with rage, as he invariably did. The mildness of the response nonplussed him. Peter Stannard even smiled, and Jack was utterly bewildered.
‘You’ve been widowed eleven weeks, boy,’ said Jack’s father. ‘More than enow time for any man to grieve. For any man to be alone. And Jennet Barne is a fine woman.’ Peter Stannard pushed himself further back on his bed. ‘Stop gawping, boy, you look as you did when you were Tom’s age. Yes, though, I wrote to George Barne in London, and about more than your taking another ship off to the war. A sound man, George, even though, God knows, he has ideas of his own for embarking on some of these strange new trades – Muscovy, and the like. Bound to fail and cost him a fortune, I’d say. But he has a host of connections in London, and he’s sure to rise there. London’s the font of all power now, boy. The font of all money, at any rate, which is the same thing these days.’
Jack Stannard stared at the ground, an abashed schoolboy once again. He knew his father had rehearsed this; that whatever else they might have spoken of this day, Peter Stannard would have ensured that he brought the conversation round to say precisely this, and would have compelled himself to keep his temper, no matter what other disagreements they might have. Moreover, Jack knew that when it came to the question
of remarriage, his father was right. Somehow, though, Jack had begun to think that he would meet another as he had met his Alice. Neighbours. Young. Playmates. Friends. Until friendship became something more, and flesh encountered flesh. Fortunately, the Easeys were folk of good substance, and to his son’s astonishment and relief, Peter Stannard had seen nothing amiss in the match of his only surviving son and their daughter, even at such a young age.
Agatha, as was her wont, had been scathingly direct about their father’s granting of consent: ‘New young flesh for him,’ she said. At first, it seemed to be so. But then, within a year or two, Peter Stannard learned the true name of his sickness, and began to look very differently on his good-daughter. Saint Alice was the patron of the blind, but she, who was a leper herself, was also the patron of the paralysed. The old man convinced himself that an earthly Alice coming into his life was a providence, that her intercession on his behalf might cure him. And the higher Peter Stannard placed Alice upon a pedestal, the less he raged at his son. So the love match prospered, and Jack had been thankful for it.
But now, it was different. His father’s sickness was no longer just a whisper on the stairs, he no longer the young heir but the effective head of the Dunwich Stannards. And as responsibility came in by that door, the chance for careless love left by another.
‘Jennet Barne is a fine woman indeed, Father,’ said Jack, as calmly and slowly as he could. ‘So reputation has it, at any rate – I’ve met her, what, twice only, since she came back from London? A fine woman, all concur. But she is not Alice, and it is yet too soon.’
The heavy, disfigured lids of Peter Stannard’s eyes blinked twice.
‘True, boy. No other woman could be your Alice, bless her soul, who said so many prayers for mine. Likewise, no other woman could be my Anne, your mother. So mourn Alice still, recite De Profundis for her every dinnertime if it’s still permitted, as I do for your mother, pay for more masses to speed her soul from Purgatory, and then, son, find another who is utterly unlike her. One like Jennet Barne.’ The old man was tiring, and was struggling to get out these, the words he had to speak. ‘And it isn’t too soon, for if you don’t take her, the Barnes will make another match for her, that’s for sure. This could be Dunwich’s chance, boy. It has to be. It must be. Marry her. That’ll get us a foothold in London – God knows what fortune could spring from that. Then keep in with Lord Lisle. And in the campaigns to come, if God wills it, distinguish yourself before Lord Hertford, too. After all, he’s the young prince’s uncle, the king is very old, and who else will rule England when Great Harry is gone?’
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