From time to time, she and Elizabeth would lean their heads close and share opinions about the war and politics. Rachel spent most of these conversations listening. From Elizabeth she learned that the Levelers were principally against snobbery. Beyond that, they believed in hard work, self-preservation, no standing army in peacetime, and the right to a fair trial. They believed in extending voting privileges to men who did not own property. They believed in talking things out. Sometimes they forgot that church was for the next life while government was for this and tried to reverse the equation, but they were not alone in this tendency. Everyone wanted to be a prophet—Elizabeth said this loudly, so her husband could hear her—everyone wanted to create the kingdom of God on earth during a time of civil war.
From Elizabeth, Rachel also learned that the Levelers were not the atheists their enemies made them out to be. Most were good congregational Independents and Baptists, with a few philosophical Seekers, such as Walwyn, thrown in. When Rachel wanted to know what that word meant, Elizabeth sniffed and said Seekers were people who found questions more satisfying than answers. “They are not practical,” she said.
Rachel liked to slip away from the meeting room to study the turtles. She used to make her way into the darkened dining area after the kitchen had closed and would stand over the largest of the tanks, peering down at the occupants. Once she scooped a turtle from the top of the pool, where he was swimming. He did just fine at first as she carried him in both hands around the silent tavern. She was giving him a tour; she was showing him things. He did fine, that is, until he poked his head out and glimpsed his tour guide, saw her strange and giant face. He retreated into his shell with an offended look. Rachel returned him to the tank.
Another time, one of the turtles got himself caught trying to squeeze through the rocks at the bottom of his tank. He had flipped sideways to angle through what to his eyes must have appeared as an opening, but his shell had grown; his shell had matured without his noticing. He kicked for a minute, stopped, kicked again, stopped again. Some minutes passed. He was running out of air; nature was taking its course. Watching him, Rachel became unable to breathe. She reached into the tank to dislodge one of the rocks, but her arm was not long enough; the rocks lay at the bottom. The other turtles swam in circles; they did not notice any crisis except the milky white hand intruding into their living quarters. Rachel dragged over a chair, stood on it, and plunged her hand into the tank from this higher position, soaking the bodice of her dress as she reached down to free him. She would dry off later. She pushed the rocks apart, and the turtle swam up. He popped to the surface, his tiny mouth parting, the upper half in the shape of a beak, the lower half soft and petulant. He shut his mouth, eyed her reproachfully, and rejoined his companions, who were still swimming in circles.
She considered rescuing all of the turtles and setting them free at the creek, but this impulse did not seem sensible. The tavern owner was trying to earn a living. Everywhere people were hungry. She supposed it was a case of competing goods. She had heard the Levelers say they were on the side of the poor and hard-working Englishman, and the tavern owner fairly fit that description. Still, she could not eat when the turtles seemed to be watching her. She especially avoided the soup.
One night she wandered into the darkened dining room to press her nose against one of the glass tanks, steaming the view, when a hand came to rest on her shoulder. She knew whose it was before she turned. She had not forgotten that hand. Walwyn was smiling into her eyes. He had left the others in the back room quarreling about property and taxation. They were alone.
Rachel had no idea what to do with him, so she turned back to the turtles, of which she counted five.
“They’re something, aren’t they?” Walwyn said.
She was not sure how to talk to him, so she said whatever came to mind. It was the strangest thing. It was easy. Once she started talking, it became impossible to stop. She tried to stop, to speak less directly, but that cat was out of the bag. “I don’t understand how they can swim and swim like that.” She pointed to the tank. “They go around and around in circles.”
“They do have that tendency.” He was looking at her, not the turtles.
“They never seem to notice. But they have to notice. Don’t you think? Don’t you think they’re going around and around all the time thinking, ‘This is the same thing I just saw’?”
He confessed he didn’t know, had never thought about it.
She glanced at him, aggrieved. He had failed to wonder the same thing she did. “Would you keep swimming around and around if you knew there would never be anything else? They don’t have to do it. Here is a dry spot of ground—here, on these rocks. Why aren’t they resting?”
“I can’t think why,” he admitted.
“I can think of two reasons.”
“Tell me.”
His lopsided smile had returned and was threatening to distract her. She did her best to ignore it. She had a point to make. “One, the turtle doesn’t know he is living in the tank. So each revolution he makes, he thinks he has traveled to a new place. He never notices.”
“And two?”
“Two, he knows. He knows but he still swims.”
“Why would he do that?”
She scrutinized the turtles. Walwyn leaned in and regarded them with her, and together they studied the intricate patterning of each shell. The creatures propelled their ungainly bodies through gray water that had not been cleaned. Each pushed against an invisible current, neck ugly and straining as it thrust itself forward.
“You’ve studied them for some time, I think,” Walwyn observed. “I see you wandering in here. You must be an expert in the lives of turtles.”
She reddened. “The other room was too warm.”
“It’s just as warm in this room.”
“Well, it wasn’t earlier.”
“Well, indeed.”
His skin seemed to be throwing off heat—she could not tell the precise source.
“I am afraid I will be of no help to you in your contemplations,” he went on, “for I’ve never examined these creatures myself, at least no longer than it takes for the cook to bring them to me in a soup pot.”
Why was his skin so warm? She could not concentrate. Why was he talking so much? “You are some jester,” she murmured.
“I suppose I am . . . ” He trailed off. “Some silly old fellow.”
She was curious about him then. She began to interview him. “Where did you come from?”
He said he came from Moorfields.
“No, not where you live now, but where you lived before.”
“Before what?”
A good question, she thought. She had heard of his large household. She changed the subject. “Did you write all those pamphlets and Agreements of the People that the other Levelers are always talking about?”
“Some of them. But not lately. Lately I have not written much.”
“Why not?”
“I’m tired.”
“Of what? Writing?”
He nodded.
Rachel could not imagine tiring from something that could be done while seated. For a second time that evening she detested him. “How can you be tired of such a thing?” It was too intimate a question, and she apologized.
“Don’t be sorry,” he replied. “I suppose writing the same things over and over again becomes disheartening when nothing changes.”
She considered this. Then she said, “Maybe you know more about the lives of turtles than you think.” To hide her smile, she dipped her head. It was the wrong move, or maybe it was the right one, because he reached over and cupped her face in his hand, raising her chin to meet him, his thumb against the underside of her jaw, pressing up on that soft place surrounded by bone.
“Never do that,” he was telling her. “Never lower your face for anyone.”
“Sir” was all she could say.
“Don’t. Don’t call me that. I am not that. I am not anyone.�
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She stiffened. “If you are not anyone, what does that make me?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he protested. Then he added, before he could reel himself in, “You are very fair.”
Rachel hesitated. She saw she had a fork in the road coming. She didn’t want a fork in the road just yet. In her experience they could be tiresome. Sometimes one got to the fork and the road closed. So she said, simply, “I am fair enough, I expect,” and then—briefly—rested her cheek against his hand. She didn’t leave it there long, but it was enough. Walwyn was discovering her; he was noticing her body. His eyes were dark and a wordless heaviness lingered in them. His palm against her cheek was searing. So this was where the heat was coming from, she thought. She should have known it would be the hand. She could hear the bell clock outside the meeting room chiming.
When a few minutes later John strolled in wanting to know what was going on, what he was missing, neither Rachel nor Walwyn could explain. Walwyn made up something, some cockamamie story, and this set them both smiling. They could not stop looking at each other even after they had returned to the meeting room. Rachel caught his eye across the table and tilted her chin ridiculously high, surveying the world like a propertied woman. She was making fun of him, of his little admonition. She gave it up a few seconds in, but while it lasted her pose allowed him to follow the line of her jaw to where it joined her neck, just below her earlobe. With that sight, every tissue and fiber in Walwyn’s body began to heave and flounder toward her, against a dogged current.
Six
BARTWAIN WAS LEAVING the home of his physician when he spied Walwyn across the street and heard him calling.
Bother, Bartwain thought. He ducked into an alley, but a maid was emptying a slop bucket from an upstairs window and a torrent of dirty water chased him back into the street. “What do you want?” he demanded as Walwyn approached. Wind was blowing the morning rain sideways, and water beaded under both men’s hats.
“I need to speak with you.”
“Let go of my arm. You’re wet and I’m unwell. I have no time to talk to you today.” He did not like to be pulled by the sleeve as the Leveler was doing.
“You must listen to me. I need your help.”
“If you needed my help, you should have asked for it during your deposition. I am no longer in as fine a mood.” Bartwain had not slept well the night before—or the two nights prior to that, if he thought about it. It was a complete coincidence that the three nights he had slept poorly were the same three nights Rachel Lockyer had been in Newgate awaiting trial. He blamed his lack of rest on the mice he had discovered in his kitchen cupboards. The mice were the reason, he assured himself. While searching for a midnight snack, for something to ease his muttering stomach, the investigator had spied four tails scampering for cover behind a sack of flour. Trembling, he had set out cheese and eggs in elaborate traps—he did not own a cat. He stayed up late, holding the lantern, listening for a snap. He gave up and went to bed, where he scarcely slept. At dawn he leaped from his coverlets and descended to the kitchen, where he had counted four piles of droppings but no mice in his handmade traps.
“I’m not asking your help for my sake. I’m asking for Miss Lockyer’s,” Walwyn said.
You look old, Bartwain thought. Old and frantic. “I’m off the case,” he said tersely. “All that’s left for me to do is write a summary and report once the trial is finished. Whatever you need now, I can’t help you.” He shivered and clutched his cloak tighter. He could see the abbey of Westminster from where they were standing. Bartwain’s tiny thatched-roof house lay just beyond. His house was so close he could almost smell his wife’s cranberry biscuits baking over the fire. His toes were hurting. His bed was calling his name—he was that tired.
“You don’t understand. I—”
“I do understand, and so do you. She is no longer my jurisdiction. You will have to find someone else to take pity on you.” Bartwain’s morning visit to his physician had supplied no good news. The doctor could do nothing to ease his gouty foot. Worse, he had been unable to ease Bartwain’s stomach, which was continuing to announce its displeasure with some of his more recent indulgences—stewed boysenberries, boiled crab, and an undercooked custard. Then there was the black, steady rain now pouring over the brim of his hat, silting the folds of his neck as he watched Walwyn shivering in his cloak; he suspected sleet would arrive later. Probably it would start just as the investigator was heading out again, and he would slip and fall and be trampled by a throng. Bartwain disliked both crowds and weather, and especially their convergence.
“Please!” Walwyn shouted. A gust of wind robbed him of sound; Bartwain had to strain to hear him. “I must speak with you frankly. You see, I am responsible. I cannot leave her.”
“You are responsible, yes. But she is not your only duty. Even if I wanted to intervene, which I do not, I have no power. I told you. My involvement ended three days ago. The law says I am to step back and write my final report. If you wanted to speak with me, you should have done so during your interview. Excuse me, please—my wife is waiting.”
“You don’t—”
“I understand well enough, Mr. Walwyn,” Bartwain interrupted, his patience fraying. “For all the blithering denials you issued during your deposition, it is quite clear what your relationship has been with that woman. Your time for helping her is over. If you wanted to help her, you should not have allowed her to fall into this situation; you should have known better. You should not have compromised her virtue.”
“For God’s sake, do you think a woman’s virtue lives or dies by what a man—”
“I do not care to discuss philosophy in the rain with a Leveler.”
“It’s not philosophy. It’s a woman’s life. It’s a woman’s life you are tampering with!”
“Forgive me, but last time I checked I was not the one doing the tampering.” Bartwain hated the wind; he hated the rain; he hated this man making him stand in the rain; he hated the day, period. “Do you know how fortunate you are, Mr. Walwyn? You are exceptionally fortunate. God must be watching over you.”
Walwyn eyed him warily.
“If that child had lived, you could have been dragged to the whipping post alongside its mother. And if all this were happening several months in the future, I predict you would not even be so fortunate as to receive a whipping. In a few months’ time, our self-proclaimed saints in the House of Commons are going to make good on one of their threats—they’re going to make adultery an offense punishable by death. You’re aware of that likelihood, aren’t you, now that the Puritans have seized the reins of government?” The investigator cleared his throat; he missed the days of King Charles. “So don’t forget to say your evening prayers, Mr. Walwyn, because if all this were happening at some other time, you would not be getting off the hook so quickly. They could drag you to the scaffold too, if they wanted.” One advantage to reaching the age of sixty-one, the investigator had learned, was the insight—or hindsight—that life consisted of a limited number of stories. These stories circled around and around and repeated themselves. There was nothing new, nothing at all new under the sun; even the sun was bored. “You should have known better,” he repeated.
Walwyn proceeded to offer Bartwain sixty-five pounds, payable immediately, if the investigator would take the legal action of formally withdrawing his murder indictment. It was a large enough sum that Bartwain actually had to think about it. He could tell his wife he had received his long-postponed promotion. No, she would never believe that. Rain spattered his chin. He brushed it away impatiently. “Mr. Walwyn,” he said, blinking and blinking to keep his vision clear. The more he blinked, the faster the rain fell on him. “I might be just an old shoe in this courthouse, but this is one shoe who doesn’t track mud where he walks. You cannot bribe me.”
“It’s not a bribe. An innocent woman is going to be put on trial. You know it and I know it. Whatever happened to her that night was unintentional.”
“Happened to her? It is impossible to assign intentionality, or the lack thereof, to an act that happened to someone, sir, in case your logic is weakening out there in the countryside. Or were you referring to the child as opposed to its mother?”
“Don’t play your word games with me. Rachel is innocent.”
“Innocent people are put on trial all the time. That’s why there is such a thing as a jury.”
“You know as well as I do that any jury is going to convict her. You know as well as I what kind of system of justice we suffer.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Bartwain said slyly. “It’s not as bad as all that, is it? Things can turn out all right. They do for some people. They did for you.” He studied the Leveler. “It’s odd, isn’t it? You’re getting out of prison just as she is going in. You’re changing places.”
“The Tower is nothing like Newgate. John Lilburne spent nine months in the Tower and he was fatter when he left than when he entered. Whereas Rachel—do you know what they call that place? Hell on earth.”
Bartwain nodded; he had visited Newgate once. He did not care to go back. “Why don’t you call on some of your Leveling friends to petition on her behalf? Surely they can write something, get a movement going. They used to wield a powerful influence.”
“They are refusing to get involved.”
“Ah. Well, that’s too bad. But you see, Mr. Walwyn, I do not feel quite so upset as you about these things. My sympathies lie with the child.”
“And you think mine do not?” The Leveler’s face was blotchy, almost curdled.
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