A Maggot

by John Fowles

  Q. The bench was well rid of him. A nation is lost which distinguisheth not law from sin. Crime is of fact, that may be proven or not. Sin is for God alone to judge.

  A. Thee's blind to truth.

  Q. And thou art blind to what all men other have judged and think. Once sin is made crime, gross tyranny doth ensue, such as the Inquisition hath plainly shown among the Papists.

  A. Inquisition sits well in thy mouth, master lawyer. Men think, men think - aye, most men think. And most to this life, and what shall best suit their sinning lives in it. And little to that court above, where all shall be charged. There shall thee find whether sin is judged of a farthing's weight beside thy law, that is given of Antichrist.

  Q. No more. Thou art a most obstinate fellow.

  A. And ever shall be, so long as I am Christian, praise the Lord.

  Q. I will tomorrow have no unrest from thee or thy sectaries, is it understood? No, nor standing there below. I warn thee, cool thy mischievous temper. Else will I summon Mr Fotheringay straight, who knows what I am about, and my enquiry just and proper. Be off.

  * * *

  Historical Chronicle October 1736

  EARLY THE NEXT morning Rebecca is ushered into Ayscough's presence, in the same room as the previous day. It is quite a large one, with a massive and bulbous-legged seventeenth-century table also. This is not a converted bedchamber, but used for an occasional dining-room, club-room, private meeting-place as the inn requires. Rebecca's place is six feet of polished oak from that of her interlocutor. Most surprisingly he stands to greet her, almost as if she were a lady. He does not bow as he would have done to such a person, yet faces her and gives her a small nod of acknowledgement, and gestures her to her seat. Already a bone tumbler of water waits on the table before it; need there, it seems, is foreseen.

  'You are well rested, mistress, you have broke your fast?'

  'Yes.' '

  'You have no complaint of your lodging?'

  'No.'

  'You may sit.'

  She sits, but he remains standing. He turns to John Tudor, who has sat himself to one side at the end of the table, and makes a quick gesture of the hand: what first is to be said is not to be recorded.

  'I must praise you for your conduct yesterday eve, that you gave no countenance to the troublous malice Wardley and your father showed. You gave good example there.'

  'They meant no ill.'

  'There we must disagree. No matter, mistress Rebecca. An august parent may differ in all else from a humble one. But in this, the loss of a son, they are as one, and as deserving of our concern. Is it not so?'

  'I have told all I know.'

  Ayscough looks down into those fixed and now obscurely puzzled eyes, lost by this change of attitude in him. After that last answer he tilts his head and wig slightly in his characteristic way, as if he expects her to say something more. But she does not, and he walks away to the window, and looks out thoughtfully; then turns to face her again.

  'Mistress Rebecca, we lawyers must be thrifty. We must glean our fields more than other men, we must hold the smallest grain of truth precious, the more so when there appears great dearth of it. I would ask more of what your present piety must find it offensive to have made quick again.'

  'Ask. I would not forget I sinned.'

  Ayscough contemplates the waiting, unyielding face in the light of the windows he stands by.

  'Mistress, I will not rehearse the tale you told me yesterday, it is fresh in your mind. I would say this first, before we begin. If, having had this last night to reflect, you should now wish to change your sworn evidence, you shall have no blame. If aught of consequence was left out, if you told not exact truth by reason of fear for your state or any other cause, you shall not suffer. On that I give you my word.'

  'I have told truth in all.'

  'To the best of your belief all passed as you say?'

  'Yes.'

  'His Lordship was transported to Heaven?'

  'Yes.'

  'Mistress Rebecca, I might wish it were so, nay, I wish it so. But I have an advantage of you. You knew his Lordship for scarce more than a month, when he did hide much from you, as you have admitted. I have known him for these many years, mistress. Alas he I knew, and many others likewise knew, was not he you portray.'

  Rebecca makes no answer. It is as if he has not spoken. Ayscough waits, then continues.

  'I will tell you a little of him, in great confidence, mistress. The attention he bestowed upon you would astound his own family or circle, who counted him the churlishest man alive towards your ex. Why, in that he was called Poor John, closer to dead fish than human flesh. Nor in his previous life, mistress, had he shown the

  least respect for established religion, despite his rank. He was no more seen happily on his knees in church than swallows out of their winter mud. I may believe you were eager to leave your former life, most ripe for whatever should assist you in that, very well. It is his Lordship providing that assistance, and you but a common strumpet, mistress, which he had never set eyes on in his life till a month before. That, on my life, I cannot credit.'

  Again he waits for her to reply, again she does not. He walks back to his chair across the table, with her eyes still on his. He might perhaps have hoped for some weakening, some defensiveness in them, but they retain that same strange blend of meekness and fixity as before, almost as if she is deaf to all reason. He goes on.

  'I speak not of much else, mistress, that I likewise cannot credit. Of your being brought to a chief place of pagan idolatry to meet Our Lord and His Most Sacred Father, in most impious circumstance, and scarcely the less at a Devonshire cavern, and there more improbable still in all else. Of poor husbands and carpenters being made divine, this female figure the Holy Spirit beside; why, that Wardley tells me is not even known among your own prophets, nor your June Eternal neither. Mistress Rebecca, you are no common fool; nor woman that has not seen the world. Would you not, if you heard such a tale as yours from another, doubt either the teller's reason, or your own? Would you not cry, I cannot and will not believe this absurd and blasphemous tale, it must be got up to bubble and deceive, to blind me from some much plainer truth?'

  Still Rebecca will not answer beyond staring at him, though clearly she now must make some response. What happens is in fact what has happened a number of times in this interrogatory. She is extremely slow to answer. It is not the look, or seems not the look, of one searching for words, hesitant and embarrassed; but much more a strange pause, as if she must have Ayscough's words first translated from a foreign language before she can frame a reply. She lacks completely Wardley's aggressive promptness and sharpness of repartee; on occasion it is almost as if she answers not for herself, but waits until some mysterious adviser puts one in her mind.

  'I answer that most doubted or disbelieved when Christ first came. I have told truth plain, I can no more.'

  'You are too modest, mistress. Why, Claiborne said you had as well been actress as what you were. Have you not admitted there was no truth in what you told Jones? You may say it was forced then upon you to lie, but not that you did not lie.'

  'It was not falsehood upon great matters.'

  'To be brought to paradise to meet God Almighty and His Son is no great matter?'

  'So great it may hardly be said in words. I knew not then how to say it in words, I know it not still, to thee. Yet so did it come to pass, and I was given sight of Jesus Christ and His Father; which filled my soul with balm and greatest joy by Their presence, yea, a pleasure more than mortal.'

  'The Almighty a yeoman, the Redeemer a haymaking labourer, is that seemly?'

  'Is God the Holy Father not so because he sits not in glory on a throne, is Jesus Christ not Jesus because He groans not on a cross? Angels not angels because I see them not with wings, that they bear sickles in their hands, not harps or trumpets? I told thee, I was brought up to count all images of godliness false, of Satan. What I did see was shadows of the light alone, s
een of my body; of my soul I saw the light, and first-last object of my love.'

  'You may see with your eyes what you please, since all you see is counted false? Is it not so?'

  'What I see with my eyes is of the body carnal, not certain truth, which is of light alone. I see no less true or false than thee in carnal seeing, or any other man and woman.'

  Ayscough is left, after this exchange, in a dilemma, though he conceals it. A modern person would not have had a shadow of doubt that Rebecca was lying, or at least inventing. Gods, except for an occasional Virgin Mary to illiterate Mediterranean peasants, no longer appear; even in Ayscough's time such visions were strongly associated with Catholic trickery, something good Protestants expected and despised. Yet his England, even his class of it, was still very far from our certainties. Ayscough, for instance, believes in ghosts; he has never seen one himself, yet has heard and read too many accounts, and by no means all from old wives and dotards, not to credit some of them. Ghosts and spirits did not then come from an idle, fancy-nursing imagination, they came from the very real night, still largely unlit, of a lonely England, that still held fewer human beings altogether than a fraction of modern London.

  Ayscough has certainly supported the repeal of the Witchcraft Act (though not for Scotland) in this very year. But this is largely because he now associates the witchcraft cases he has heard of, even attended as a younger man, like the occasional uses of the ducking-stool, with defective law and always disputable evidence. He does not say to himself there has never been witchcraft; rather that its worst aspects have lapsed. That some malign and wicked coven in a remote part of Devonshire still follows ancient practices remains very far from the bounds of possibility. He may feel, he does feel, Rebecca is nine parts hiding truth in her holier vision (against which he has his own knowledge of his master's son to argue, and an ancient dislike of him muted behind respect for rank); but there remains an irreducible one part, of possible truth, he cannot quell. He will never reveal it; yet there it sticks, a nagging thorn in his side.

  'You will not change your evidence? I repeat, you shall not suffer.'

  'Nor from truth shall I suffer. I will not change.'

  'Very well, mistress. I give you this great favour, that were we in a court of law, you should not have. Yet you will not have it. So be it, and upon your head if you prove false. Now we shall begin upon oath.' He sits down and glances to John Tudor at the table-end. 'Write all.'

  * * *

  Q. Let us keep to thy carnal seeing, for all its words may be false. Are you certain you had never, before his Lordship came to you at the bagnio, seen him?

  A. No, I had not.

  Q. Nor heard speak of him?

  A. No.

  Q. Your services were often taken in advance, was it not so?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Was it so with his Lordship?

  A. It was writ in Claiborne's book, friend of Lord B......, under my name.

  Q. How long in advance was it writ?

  A. She told me nothing of it till the morning of when he came.

  Q. This was her usual custom?

  A. Yes.

  Q. And you saw not what was entered, but was first informed by what she read out?

  A. I knew not who he was till after, as I said.

  Q. You went out sometimes upon the town? To routs, ridottos, the theatre, elsewhere?

  A. On occasion, but never alone.

  Q. Then how?

  A. In larking, when we must always be with Claiborne and her bully-boys about us.

  Q. What is larking?

  A. To snare sinners to the bagnio. Those who were lured and asked for assignations were told they might have them at the bagnio only.

  Q. You or your companions never made private assignations?

  A. We suffered if we were found to cheat her.

  Q. You were punished?

  A. We should dine with the bully-boys. 'Twas called so. And then were we treated worse than any punishment by law. She ruled us thus. Better die than dine, we were used to say

  among ourselves.

  Q. You yourself were never so treated?

  A. I have known who were.

  Q. None the less, you were to be seen in public places. Might not his Lordship have first seen you so?

  A. If he did, I saw him not.

  Q. Nor Dick?

  A. No.

  Q. After you had met, did his Lordship never say to suggest he had seen you before? That he had long sought to meet you, or words of that ilk?

  A. No.

  Q. He might have heard of you, notwithstanding? There was gossip of you about the town?

  A. Alas.

  Q. Now this - did you ever, to any whatsoever, confide you were not happy with your lot and would be rid of it?

  A. No.

  Q. Not in the bosom of some fellow whore?

  A. I might trust none. Nor any else.

  Q. Was not his Lordship's assiduity after you had met, when he could take no ordinary pleasure in you, most unaccustomed?

  A. He had pleasure in hope, so it seemed.

  Q. He gave you no sign you was chosen for purpose other than the hope then alleged?

  A. No. Not one.

  Q. He asked you of your past, did he not?

  A. Two or three questions, not more.

  Q. Did he not ask you of your life in the bagnio? Whether you were not tired of it, perchance?

  A. He asked of it, but not whether I was tired, tho' most men do. 'Tis nine parts fear of their own sin.

  Q. How is that?

  A. Is it better a man fears he sins, yet still will sin? Some did like to call whore and still worse at the height of their animal passion; others by the names of those they love, yea, even to those of their wives and God forgive them, their mothers, sisters, daughters. And others be speechless animals like those they use. All that dwell in the flesh are damned, but those last, not most.

  Q. What doctrine is this? They that sin as coarsest brutes are less to be blamed than they who sin with conscience of their culpability?

  A. God is now; or He is not.

  Q. I follow you not, mistress.

  A. He judges men by what they are, not what they would be; and most blames not those who know no better, but those who do.

  Q. God has seen fit to open His mind to you concerning this, is it so?

  A. What harm have we done thee, master Ayscough? We mean thee no harm, why should thee be so resolute to harm us, to scorn when we speak plain? Our beliefs come from God, yea; but we are humble in them, also. We do not say they are revealed to us alone; nay, to all else beside, so be it they worship not the Antichrist. I say this: they who dwell in the flesh are damned, more great or more small it matters little, they are damned.

  Q. To my point. Believe you, before you had left London, his Lordship had made especial enquiry to find if you were apt to his purpose, to wit, you would quit the bagnio if you might?

  A. I had no inkling before the temple.

  Q. Must he none the less not have discovered such? Were you not chosen, mistress, take that how you will?

  A. I was saved, not chosen.

  Q. That is one. You must be chosen to be saved.

  A. I knew not one nor t'other then.

  Q. Very well, let this rest for now. I will follow where you'd lead me with your damning. May man and woman not dwell sometimes in the flesh, if they be lawfully wed? Why answer you not? Come, are they not enjoined to procreate?

  A. They shall not live in June Eternal.

  Q. Did you not say you saw children there?

  A. Of the spirit. They were not carnal flesh, as us. Thee'd scorn we do abhor all sin of the flesh, and would cross it. I tell thee all I saw there in June Eternal were spirits of they

  who did fight while they lived against this evil sin, and are now rewarded. In their reward lies holy proof of what we believe.

  Q. Is this the doctrine of the French Prophets?

  A. And of Christ beside, that married not.<
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  Q. All pleasure of the flesh is sinful?

  A. Most this one, it is the source of all sin else. Unless we cross it, we shall not be saved.

  Q. I ask again, mistress. Is your man one with you in this, or the rather, not one?

  A. I'll answer thee again. 'Tis between Christ and us, 'tis not thy business.

  Q. Why should you not answer, Yes, he agrees, we live in Christ? Is it this, you may not agree? (Non respondet.) Very well, let your silence speak for you. What make you now of his Lordship's part in your story? Why think you he should choose you? Why, of all others he might have saved, if it were his purpose, did he come to you, and none other?

  A. I was in need.

  Q. Are others not in as great a need, and far the less sinners?