A Far Horizon

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  She sat in shock as the wagon bumped along the road. The wagoner kept his steady pace, as if totally unaware of the scene they had passed. The light dimmed to deep indigo and the road receded. Caroline looked up at brilliant stars, flung like pinpoints of light in the patch of sky above the environs of the cart’s wooden walls. These same stars would be illuminating naked corpses and nesting carrion birds, shedding their light without discrimination upon the living and the dead. Shivering violently, she wrapped the greatcoat around her, but it did not decrease the cold dread that gripped her. Like her, the dead men’s wives and daughters would never have a body to weep over. No grave to visit. No place to lay a wreath of flowers. Some would wait beside cold hearths for a homecoming that would never be. Picked bones, gleaming in the starlight, belonged to no man. And they belonged to every man.

  The road narrowed. Hedgerows replaced the open fields. Stars glittered overhead. Still the wagon groaned and bumped its way southeast. Were Arthur’s bones, like his father’s, lying somewhere in a field beneath a starlit sky? She longed to see his easy smile, to joy in the irascible spirit of the boy who had been like a little brother to her. She had not heard from him since before she lost William. Did he know his father was gone? If he had heard, surely, he would have come to Forest Hill. Or was he beyond caring about the living, buried in a mass grave somewhere on a lonely fen? So many questions. So much unresolved.

  What a fool she had been to think she could do anything in such a messed-up, ruined world. She couldn’t stop Arthur from going and she couldn’t stop William. What was she thinking? She should never have left Forest Hill, she thought, replaying it all in her mind.

  ‘I will go to London,’ she had said. ‘William possessed a leasehold there. The woman who owns the property lived in the same house. As his widow, I will claim it, and if I am successful, I will send for you and you can come and stay with me until the war is over and you are fully restored.’ She had offered this solution three days ago to the desperate squire when she’d found him in his study, head in his hands, sobbing.

  ‘It’s all gone, Caroline,’ he had said. ‘Except this. We can’t buy food or fuel or anything with this worthless paper. My forests are plundered. There will be no harvest. The devil summer heat devoured what the soldiers did not. I simply do not know what we will do.’ He flung a pile of the King’s script. The useless notes scattered like dead leaves on the wooden floor.

  ‘But, you have other resources. You have the dower rents from Ann’s Wheaton properties to back you up.’

  His face flushed with shame. He dropped his head. She had to lean in to hear.

  ‘I borrowed against them years ago … Everything is gone, Caroline. You might as well know all. There is nothing left.’ And then he lifted his head and added, ‘I could have made it work, you know, I could have recovered everything. I could have. Except for this bloody war.’

  Caroline had known things were bad. But she had thought they would be able to weather it. Were they truly so desperate? She’d had no idea he was such a bad manager, though she should have. It was all clear now. What else would have made the old Royalist barter his favorite daughter to a Puritan like John Milton?

  The jolting of the wagon increased. Her ankle throbbed with pain. She touched the swollen bump lightly, rotated her ankle gingerly. Just a bruise, she thought, as she shifted her weight to test it. With one hand, she held onto a nearby barrel and stood up. Deciding the ankle would bear weight, she bent over a wooden chest secreted beneath a pile of clean linen and opened it with the key hanging from a leather thong around her neck. All there: the stash of leftover coins from the cellar, her token box with the pretty little gifts William had given her, buried beneath the few clothes and the linens she had brought with her. Of course, it was all there. Why would it not be? The chest had not left her sight since Jack loaded it for her. Why was she so frightened? She had to keep her senses about her. It was not like she was going to an unfamiliar city. She knew every crooked lane in London town. She had a plan. She just needed to stick to it.

  After she had tied her ankle with a kerchief to stop the swelling, she folded a piece of sheeting from a pile of clean linen to use as a pillow and, leaning back against the hard planks of the railing, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. They would not linger long in Reading and it was still a long way to London. She wrapped herself with William’s coat like a blanket and pulled the wide brim of his hat over her face. The scent of decay was fainter, but it lingered in the chill night air. A hot tear slid down her cheek, praying that William, wherever he was, might rest in peace. As the wagon clinked and groaned on the rutted road, Caroline drifted off, thinking of all the mothers and wives and sisters who waited for their unburied dead. She was sleeping restlessly by the time they reached the Reading Garrison. Jack roused her with a warm drink and suggested she ‘make herself comfortable’ before they got back on the road. They would make London by midday.

  John Milton felt the bright nip of autumn as he walked down Aldersgate to Cheapside. He was on his way to collect the quarterly revenues from his father’s old business partner, who lived above the scrivener’s shop in the house that had been John’s boyhood home. Like the rest of London, the marketplace of London was much changed. Many vendors were still shuttered at midday. The Street of the Goldsmiths gleamed dully in the morning light, their empty shop windows offering no enticements. Most of the gold had been melted down to buy arms. Nobody thought of jewelry and plate, except the caches they had hidden, hoarding their diminished treasure as they did their foodstuffs.

  As he turned down Bread Street, the once familiar aroma of freshly baked goods was noticeably absent. Despite last night’s frost, few chimneys smoked and those but scantily. Londoners were warned to be miserly with the dwindling stockpile of coal. With the royal forces owning Newcastle, the hearths of London would go begging this winter. Patience Trapford had likewise been instructed to conserve. He and the students didn’t require a hot breakfast every day. Some days they could make do with bread and cheese and dried fruit, and a lump or two of coal would do for the schoolroom. On sunny days like this, Trapford could open wide the shutters to let the sunlight warm the front rooms. But hard times were coming. The fighting around Reading was too intense – its garrisons constantly under siege by one side or the other – and the fighting in the Midlands was escalating.

  He looked down his father’s old street for a welcome sign from a pie shop. There had always been pie shops in Bread Street. He’d told Trapford he’d bring home a meat pie. She was a good servant. He would hate to lose her now, especially when he was taking in more students. But the street did not look promising. The Mermaid Inn’s sign was still swinging in the breeze. It had always been a local favorite known – among other, some less worthy things – for decent pies.

  He was standing beside the bar, giving his order to be picked up about an hour hence, and it was not going well. ‘No beef you say … what about lamb …? Not that either, and no chicken; well, it will have to be the fish pie, but please see that it is fresh’ – when he heard a hearty voice behind him.

  ‘John Milton. How good it is to see you. What brings you to the Mermaid? Not exactly the place I would expect to encounter an old friend of the Puritan bent,’ he said with a half-smile. This was followed by an enthusiastic slap on John’s shoulder.

  John tried not to cringe beneath the familiarity. He liked Henry Lawes. Really liked him. And not just for his affable disposition, and certainly not for his loyalty to Charles Stuart. Lawes, despite his flaws in judgment, was an exceptional composer of very fine music. He had written the music for all the better-known poets and set many of the Psalms to beautiful polyphonic melodies. His use of counterpoint was totally original.

  John smiled at him as he answered. ‘If the Mermaid was good enough for Will Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, it will probably do my soul no harm. There might be some breath of inspiration still lingering in the air.’ He inhaled deeply, as if to suck in the rarefi
ed air he referenced. ‘Though I am likewise surprised to see you here. I would have thought you would be in Oxford with the rest of the court. I haven’t seen you since we worked together on Comus. I was truly grateful for that collaboration. Your music was … genius; perfectly accented each line of my verse.’

  Lawes smiled at the compliment, acknowledging it with a slight shrug. ‘I too enjoyed that collaboration. What are you working on now? That great epic you told me about?’

  ‘Alas, for the time being, I have put poetry aside to offer my prose in the cause of liberty.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. I have read some of your work. I am afraid I don’t agree with the “root and branch” movement. I possess a total lack of understanding of the virulent diatribes against the King. And frankly, John, I am surprised that you too do not mourn the damage done to music, art and poetry by this radical Puritan faction.’

  John pursed his lips in concentration, trying to decide how best to answer without offending his friend. ‘I’ll admit such suppression is a march too far for some of my colleagues. But I think it only temporary. The people will not long stomach such. If the people’s true voice be heard.’ He paused, sucking in a lungful of stale, smoke-laden air. ‘But in the same vein I must insist that music, art, and poetry cannot abide for any length of time where true liberty does not, Henry. Charles Stuart, like his father before him, cannot comprehend the need for oversight from a freely elected Parliament. He is proving himself to be more tyrant than king.’

  John Milton paused, consciously dropping the rising pitch of his voice to a more conversational tone. ‘English Common Law should rule the people, not the royal prerogative of kings. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of self-governance: liberty is the only nursery where the arts and artists can thrive, dear friend. The Star Chamber must not be allowed to decide what is art and what is not. Human liberty is God-given. The King’s claim to divine right to rule is not.’

  Mild consternation played on the composer’s face. ‘But, John, the arts thrived at the court of this same King you now rail against. Such music we made, such poetry – you and I, William Davenant and John Suckling were part of that. England has not seen the like since Queen Elizabeth’s day.’

  ‘There is one very important difference. This flowering you celebrate sprouted under the direction of a French, Catholic Queen. What the royal court did not commission or delight in was not performed. The song of a caged nightingale is very limited in its range – especially when that cage has a golden chain attached by the other end to Rome.’

  ‘So that’s the crux of it, then? The Queen and her religion. Should she also not be free to worship as she pleases?’ Lawes gave a sardonic smile; some of the good humor had gone out of his friend and colleague. But Milton was in too deep to turn back now.

  ‘Free, Henry? Yes, she should be free to murmur her prayers at whatever altar she chooses – if she is powerless to impose her corrupted belief on others and her golden crucifix is not paid for by the treasury. But she is not powerless. She is a Queen in thrall to a greater power, and I am not talking about our Lord. The religion of Rome is more about power than about God. Have you forgotten, Henry, the burnings under our last Catholic Queen Mary? She too promised tolerance in the beginning. Hundreds of burnings followed. Whole families tortured. Good church men, who dared speak against the yoke of Rome, were broken on the rack.’ Milton could feel his temper rising. He inhaled again, this time seeking not inspiration but control. ‘Come, friend. Let’s not argue. Let’s speak of other things. I am surprised you are still in London. How is your brother, William? Is he still composing?’

  Henry looked relieved at the shift of subject. ‘William has joined the fray. If he is composing songs, it’s battle hymns for the royal army. He is more warrior than I.’

  ‘And you? What sweet melodies does the muse whisper in your ear these days?’

  ‘I am composing some music for the Psalms to be included in the liturgy.’ He shrugged and gave a mournful shake of his head. ‘At least I was. But with the archbishop in the Tower – and the court in virtual exile – I lack patronage. When the wolf shows up at the door, the muse retreats. Yet I remain hopeful and scratch out a melody now and then. And I still have the dear company of a few fellows. Though not by their choice. Richard Loveless has been confined to London for a couple of years, unable to pass beyond the five-mile limit. His verse “To Althea from Prison” is so beautiful in lyric and sentiment it would bring tears to your eyes. Mildmay Fane is also confined.’

  ‘I had heard that Fane was in the Tower. I hated to hear it. For all his misguided loyalty, he is a good man.’

  ‘He appealed to the House of Lords and they released him, thank God, but, like Lovelace, they restricted him to stay within the Lines of Communication. He pressed suit to join his family at one of his country estates, but was denied and his estates sequestered.’

  ‘Sequestered! What of his wife and children? How will they survive?’

  He shrugged. ‘As a burden to relatives, I suppose. But what of you, John? You married a year or so ago, I heard.’ Then he smiled – a little slyly, Milton thought – and asked as though he was joking, ‘You are not the J.M. of the Divorce Tracts, are you?’

  Milton drew himself taller by half an inch, inhaling more stale air. ‘Indeed, sir. I am the same.’

  The wide-eyed look on Henry’s face showed genuine surprise. ‘Oh. I am so sorry. I did not mean to pry. But I must ask how your Puritan fellows have received your disavowal of the sacrament of marriage?’

  For friendship’s sake, Milton ignored the disapproval shown by this word choice, choosing not to reiterate his argument or to point out that there were only two rituals in the liturgy worthy of the term sacrament. ‘My Puritan fellows have been largely silent. I shall probably see their righteous disdain in print before long.’

  The innkeeper interrupted to present his bill for the pie. ‘Excuse me, sirs, but Mr Milton, I have given your order to the cook. Could you please pay now? Times being what they are, we must ask for payment ahead should some unfortunate circumstance prevent your returning.’

  ‘Of course,’ Milton said, digging into his purse and frowning as he counted out the coins. ‘I will return in no more than two hours. That should give sufficient time. It will be very inconvenient to have to wait.’ And then he added another coin, ‘Please give my friend here a pint of your best.’

  The innkeeper nodded in understanding and Milton turned back to his companion, saying, ‘Henry, I am afraid I really must take my leave. I have a very important errand that should not be delayed, or I would stay to share a drink with you. But whatever the outcome of this war, let us remain friends. If I may presume upon our previous association, when that poem stirring in my soul is finally birthed, I have great hope it will be an epic achievement in every sense. Should I want to set any or all of it to music, well, there is none other than you who could do it justice.’

  ‘I shall look forward to it. A grand epic, you say? Why, man, I will admit to envy of so elevated an expectation. May it come quickly before time and circumstance undo us all.’

  As he walked the rest of the way down Bread Street, Milton congratulated himself. At least, unlike some of his peers, he was still his own man and required no court patronage. It was good for an artist to have a vocation to fall back on in hard times – much less capricious than fortune’s patronage – and if he sometimes found his pupils burdensome, at least they gave him a base of income. And though he was without wife and progeny to offer the domestic bliss he had naively imagined, at least – unlike Mildmay Fane – he didn’t have to worry about how to feed and house them. Mary Powell had relieved him of that responsibility by abandoning him.

  Still at the Reading coaching inn, Caroline Pendleton had made herself comfortable after her long journey in the wagon from Forest Hill, as comfortable as she could with the ache in her swollen ankle. Her empty stomach ached too, but she couldn’t afford to pay the puffed-up price the inn would b
e charging for a bowl of hot porridge, so she chewed on a hunk of stale bread and a withered apple scavenged from the bottom of her bag. She was grateful for the warmth of the fire. It was a hearty fire of good English oak instead of smoky coal. And it was free.

  The public rooms outside the garrison were noisy with the cursing of Royalist soldiers, boasting of their recent encounter; how they had bested the Roundheads at Newbury and sent them scurrying back to London. Not all of them, she thought, remembering the carrion birds. She swallowed hard against the lump of bread lodged in her throat.

  ‘Seems as I heard ye got as good as ye gave,’ the publican said, slapping foaming tankards on the bar. ‘Reading Garrison changes hands as often as a whore changes beds. But ye are welcome, just like the Parliament men whose heels ye tread, if ye have the price of a pint. That’ll be sixpence each.’

  They looked like an unruly lot. Though the publican had warned them his was a respectable coaching inn and he would brook no rowdiness or lewd talk, Caroline was grateful for the invisibility that William’s broad-brimmed hat afforded. Jack, who was talking earnestly with the stable master, threw a concerned glance in her direction. Across the room a door opened. A gust stirred the heaping ash in the firebox. Caroline looked up to see a woman enter, carrying one child of about two years in her arms, a little girl – from her careful curls and little pink cloak. Another girl, wearing a pink cloak to match, an older sister, most like, held firmly to the woman’s hand.

  Caroline nodded and moved down the bench to make room for the woman and her children.

  The older child stared at Caroline with a quizzical look. ‘Why is that woman dressed in a man’s big dirty cloak?’

  The woman was fashionably dressed enough to be quality, but not so extravagantly as to call attention to herself. She scolded the girl, ‘Don’t be rude, child. Women’s cloaks are sometimes not practical for travel. Just look at that smudge that your … little sister has on her jacket.’ She glanced apologetically in Caroline’s direction and said, ‘It is a very practical choice.’