by Sarah Perry
“All right,” she says. “No Karel, though. He’s gone away for a while.”
“Gone, you say. Melmotka got him, I bet. Walking him till his feet bleed, till there’s nothing left of him, showing him the hell we’ve made.” She stands a little straighter, with a motion which is somehow courageous: for the first time it occurs to Helen that every movement of her splayed hips, her swollen feet, must cause her pain. “That’s the trick,” she says. “That’s what she does. Looks at the hell we’ve made and goes on walking through it.” She waves, and shuffles down the corridor, to her own little dark domain of doilies and dolls and candles left to burn down to greasy stumps. There is silence, then the sound of the television and radio played both together.
The whole encounter strikes Helen as so funny and so bizarre that she falls back against the mattress and laughs up at the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. “All right then,” she says. “You win, Albína Horáková. Dinner.”
Sir David Ellerby to his wife Elizabeth
29th September 1637
It being Michaelmas, and all the churches of the Parish made ready for the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, I have made an end to my Business, and having obtained an afternoon’s repose, I here make a true relation of what has befallen thy Husband, in whose honesty and good faith I hope thou mayst still rely, having made an end of my Report.
It so happened that upon passing within the bounds of Lavenham I made fast my horse that it might drink at the trough, and there spied a poor woman lying amid the hay. It seemed some passing person had taken pity on the creature, for she had beneath her head a fragment of a woolpack, with which to keep her from the ground, which was much wet with rain. I was at that time alone, having disposed of the greater portion of my Goods to the satisfaction, I trust, of our creditors, and having disposed also of our servant Ezra, who was desirous of staying for a time in Essex, that he might there attend his family. Upon seeing the woman, therefore, I was at liberty to indulge alike my curiosity and my Christian Duty, to vouchsafe to all God’s children the pity to which we are exhorted in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Seeing no other fellow close at hand with whom I might converse, I bent to attend her, seeing that she was much advanced in years. Her garments were rough, and much mended, and she wore no shoes, her feet being greatly calloused, and somewhat filthy, bearing testament, as I supposed, to many months wandering about the country, at the mercy of the seasons. Her eyes were closed, and I might have supposed her to have already passed into the presence of He to whom we must all give our Final Account, had it not been possible to see the passage of blood in the arteries, which were made the more visible by the frailty of her complexion. I confess it, that I wished thou hadst been present, that thou mayst have guided my tongue, for I fear that in seeking to discover whether I might offer succour, I spoke too plain, for at my voice her eyes were opened. They were very bright and wide, so that within the lined countenance, they had the appearance of a full moon spied through branches. She spoke to me, yet in scarce above a whisper, so that I must needs bend close. She had about her, not the stink of disease, but rather of hyacinth, or of the jasmine flower. I beseeched her to speak again. She said, DID YOU SEE HER? and put her hand upon my own, and grasped it, and said again, DID YOU SEE HER? and it seemed to me, though I have little understanding of the minds of women, that she spoke both in terror, and in love, though I heretofore had not thought these two sensations of one piece. I looked about me, and saw the square deserted, save for my own horse, and for two men making war with words over a woolsack, which one sought to obtain from the other, at one shilling the yard less than market value. I said, No woman is here, whereon the creature closed her eyes, and began to weep, indeed, it seemed to me that within the minute her whole body was wet with tears, which flowed without ceasing from her. I saw then that her right hand, which rested upon my glove, was marked with a scar, in the shape of a cross, the flesh there much raised, and somewhat corded. She said, I am alone then, I am all alone, and I said, Indeed you are not. I asked her if she were hungry or thirsty, mindful that forasmuch as we give comfort to the least of God’s children, we give it also, to his only begotten Son. She made no reply, and I perceived upon her lips that unnatural hue, which signals the approach of death. It is the greatest offence to God and man, that any of his creatures, sinners though they must surely be, should die with naught for comfort but a bale of straw, and naught to drink save rain, and thus I looked about me, and perceived a lamp in the window of an Inn, which selfsame Inn is now my place of residence. Having made no small Sum from the sale of our goods, it seemed fitting to me, that I should share the good fortune with which we have ourselves been lately blessed, and I bethought myself to take this poor creature, and convey her to the Inn, where I might implore the innkeeper, in exchange for due reward, to give her the care which we may all hope to receive in our extremities. I carried her thence, which was no great effort, since she weighed less than does our little Jessamy, and indeed it seemed to me, that there was no greater substance to her, than had she been the bones of a chicken which I had eaten, and wrapped in a napkin. The innkeeper was one of that sort whose good offices may be obtained more with coin than conscience, and, having first exclaimed that he had no room for so miserable a being, was soon entreated, by means of a small Sum, to procure for the woman a Room, being somewhat spare but clean, so that I was able to leave her on a pallet, in the care of a serving girl, whose good nature was evident, since I saw how she tended the poor creature, chafing her feet before the fire, and raising her head, so that she drank a little milk. Being myself wearied, I gave my leave, first advising that a priest be sought, that she might enter into the presence of His glory confident of her Salvation. I slept a while, though I found my rest not easy, for I bethought myself often of the words of the old woman, DID YOU SEE HER?, and in my sleep it seemed to me, that indeed I did see HER, though what SHE might be, I could not guess at, nor why I should tremble, to think that SHE might indeed be present.
Shortly thereafter, the night far spent, though the day not yet at hand, I was roused by rapping on my door, which I opened, and there found the innkeeper, and the serving girl, his daughter, bearing a candle. They begged that I attend the woman, who had refused the attendance of a priest, but nonetheless beseeched that I come to her. I confess it, that I was displeased to be thus disrupted in my rest, but as thou knowest well, I am beset by curiosity, and thought that peradventure I might learn the history of this woman, and all that had befallen her. To that end I dressed, and made haste to her room, whereon I discovered the old woman in clean apparel, resting upon the bolster, her eyes illumined yet more brightly, by means of the candles which the innkeeper had caused to be set about. She greeted me right warmly, and besought my name, which she did bless. Her own name, as she did tell me, was Alice Benet, and one hundred years had passed since the day of her birth, 50 miles hence in an Essex village, named Brentwood. She told me, that there was vouchsafed to her but one day yet remaining on this earth, and that she would not depart it, until she had confessed to me her great sin. I asked, what sin is it? and she said, It is that I gave not my body to be consumed, then began to weep, and begged that the innkeeper’s daughter make up the fire, for she was cold, and then depart, so that I might hear her Testament, and she give it, to no ear save mine.
It is this Testament, which I now set down, and which I cannot feel but will be met with thy censure, Elizabeth, or indeed with thine horror. Yet I must set it down, for it is as though I had been condemned, and put in the press, so that the bones break beneath the weight, and I must cause them to be lifted off, lest I perish with her.
Her name, as she told me, was Alice Benet, and she was born in Brentwood, in 1537, the daughter of a butcher, and yet no ordinary butcher, for this man was much educated beyond his stature, and in his religion a Dissenter, who kept John’s Gospel in the common tongue, and moreover taught his sons and daughters alike their letters, that they might read t
his same Gospel, and such tracts and pamphlets as attended their devotions. Alice herself, shewing that wit and understanding which is not (saving always thee, Elizabeth) the preserve of her sex, was able, as she told me, from her earliest years, to match any priest point for point, with scripture appended thereto. In her 18th year, being commended in the parish for her beauty, humility and virtue, a shadow was cast across the land, that shadow of which you and I have so often read, in the works of Mr Foxe, and casting it most darkly upon the Benet family, and upon all of the Protestant religion, in any degree beyond the cursory, for Mary Tudor attained the throne. Now this man her father lacked prudence to conceal his Lollardish tendencies, and continued preaching in the highways and byways, negligent of the safety of his wife, or of his children, and escaped arrest, on more than one occasion, only by reason of his being swift of foot, and conversant with hiding places of the village, which the Queen’s men were not.
But it so chanced that Alice Benet was tending to her mother, this woman being taken sick, when the Queen’s men, being alerted to their presence by such in the village as were of the Popish religion, came to the door, and demanded, with violence and much contumely, that they be let in. Alice, in all things meek and obedient, greeted the men, and said to me, that she held in her hand an earthen jug of water, with which to give her mother to drink, and might have brought it down hard on the head of such men as laid hands on her, but forbore to do so, that she might bear more richly the fruits of the Spirit. Being yet stood within the hallway, in sight of her mother’s chambers, one of the Queen’s men questioned her, as to her father’s whereabouts, and as to their religion, not least, as to whether she submitted to the faith, which Her Majesty demanded of her subjects. Alice said that she did not, moreover answered the man’s interrogation, and making plain, in the words of Martin Luther, that she sought salvation by faith alone, and not by the ringing of the coin, in the coffers of the church of Rome. Being much perturbed by her response, the Queen’s man snatched up a candle, and passed it back and forth across her hand, in the shape of the cross, until the skin blistered, and the very tendons cracked, yet she did not cry out, nor submit to their demand that she play the coward, and give up alike her conscience and her soul. Her father being yet from home, and her mother insensible, she was conveyed to the Guildhall, and there kept, in a condition in which I should shudder to keep a pig, there being much dampness, such that her joints ached, as though she were old, and no place to rest her head, and little to eat, and no means by which she might determine the passage of the sun, and mark the day from night. A Priest, tasked with restoring the whole lands of England to that apostate faith from which we had been so lately delivered, catechised her with much threatening. It was demanded of her, that she take the Latin Mass, and that she consent to repent her Protestant faith, and moreover give word of such other companions in the faith as she might name, that they too might be brought under arrest, and under condemnation. It was of all things the most repellent to her, that she should give up the Bible in the common tongue, for it seemed to her the sign and symbol of her own mind, that is, that she might obtain for herself its meaning, without the intervention of a mere man, to whom, she said, she owed neither fealty nor overmuch respect. WAS NOT HER MIND HER OWN? WAS NOT HER SOUL? These things the old woman spake to me, with much tears and pleading. At last, having secured from her no recantation, it was determined that she be put to death, by means of burning in the town, publicly, and in company of four others, who had shewn like courage. The Priest, in making his last visit, did point to her hand, and to the cross burned thereon, and did urge her to consider such pain as she had already endured, and indeed the very smell of the wound, and to consider how much greater pain was to come, with flames consuming her, from bare foot upward, until her whole body was naught but a bundle of sticks, with her head not yet consumed, so that she remained sensible of it, and indeed might look, and witness for herself, how fire doth wreck the flesh. Yet she did neither bend nor break, and said that it was better to endure the flames for hours only, than for a lost eternity.
So much though mayst believe, Elizabeth, for so much thou hast read, in the works of Mr Foxe, but I have more with which to test thy patience, and thy belief in my own integrity. For on the night which was to be her last upon this earth, Alice Benet, confined within her miserable cell, which, as she recalled it, was so small, that she were not able to lie upon the floor, and stretch, and which had within its walls no slit or window, through which light might enter, woke. She perceived within the cell a plume or drift of smoke, which caused her much terror, for it seemed to her, that some spark had entered beneath the door, and set the fire with which she was to be burned, though the appointed hour had not yet come. Yet there was no flame, nor warmth, nor any thing visible, save this plume of smoke, which seemed as it were far distant, as it were on some horizon, and yet could not be, for the cell was small. Believing that the terrors and shocks of those days past had caused her to run mad, she closed her eyes, and commended herself into the care of He to whom all things are possible. As she prayed, the cell filled with a divine smell, as of lilies-of-the-valley, or of the dog roses which grow in the Essex hedges, so that, confident of the Grace of God visited upon her, she opened her eyes. And there beheld, to her great astonishment, that she was not alone, for that which she had supposed to be naught but smoke, was revealed to be a woman, clad in some thin black Stuff, the like of which she had never seen before, since it seemed that the cell was full of wind, which moved the woman’s apparel. Now this same woman was tall, so that perforce she must stoop beneath the cell roof, and she wore no cap or hood, so that her hair was loose, and seemed also as it were to move, as did her apparel. There was that about her, which shifted, and moved, as does a candle flame, her skin withal both light and dark, and her eyes, which were very large, having about them the manner of ink, which has been dropped into water. Her feet were bare, and it seemed that she must needs have waded through a charnel house, for they were bloodied, to the very ankle, and there was upon the stone the prints of them, scarlet, marking where she had stood. Greatly afraid, and bewildered, Alice cried out, and cried out three times, and yet none came, nor did the woman move, nor raise her hand, nor speak, until she had ceased her crying out, and fallen senseless upon the floor. When she woke, it was her ardent hope that it had been naught but a dream, but there was beneath her head something soft, and something soft also upon her arm, moving, as it were a hand stroking her. She heard also the sound, which as she said to me, was as a woman speaking without words, which is to say the crooning of a mother to a child, and this crooning, though much soft, pierced her through with a hot terror, so that she lay unmoving, and insensible. Then spake the woman thus: My child, my Alice, my beloved, whom I have longed for, from whom my eyes have never wandered, at last I am come, as you had known I must! The Almighty vouchsafing to Alice such courage as was desirous, she stood, having been cradled in the woman’s lap, and said, I do not know you. Madam, give me your name. The woman said, Surely it is I, Melmoth, who has watched, yea, even from the hour of your birth, who knows you, as none has ever known you, and is come now, that you may be delivered from such torment as has been made your sentence! Alice said, Nay, I do not know you, nor have I ever heard your name, nor do I seek deliverance, for God has promised it, that she who honors Him, will He honor! Then said the woman, Ah, but you do know me, and have always known me, for it was I who watched, when you did what you ought not to do, and I who knew, when you thought what you ought not to have thought, and it is I alone who loves you, in all that is most secret and most sinful in your soul! Alice said, Nay, again, for does not our Father in Heaven, in whose image we are made, know us, and yet love us? Then the woman, whom we must, as I suppose, call Melmoth, laughed, with a terrible laughter, such as is the laugh of those who have run mad, and are cast out into streets, where they might indulge their madness, as the dogs indulge their lusts. Then Melmoth stood also, so it did seem she filled the cell, a
nd that indeed her hair, and her clothes, and the very smell of her (being, as Alice told me, like lilies set all about a dying man) reached into the furthest corners, as does a shadow. Then said Melmoth, I have seen with my eyes what is the cost of the love of God, and it is a dear price, such as will leave you a debtor, and your debt paid, not in coin, but in the mud and bones from which you are made! Then this same Melmoth reached for Alice, and embraced her, with the embrace of a lover, and with such a smell of lilies, that it seemed to her a stink, as of a pestilence, so that she fell into a swoon, and could not resist, nor keep her head from resting against that breast, upon which the black stuff of her apparel moved. And in her swoon there passed before her eyes as it were a parade, of the most grotesque torments, such as in her innocence and grace, she had never seen or imagined, and indeed, she marked that moment, as the very end of her youth, as if that veil with which we are all born, which keeps us from gazing upon all that man has wrought against man, was rent asunder. She saw two men, bound at the waist with chains, and supported thereby against a wooden pillar, and at their feet faggots of greenwood. And the one consoled the other, as the torch was applied to the flames, and bade him have courage, for if their breakfast was sour, their supper that night would be sweet, and soon he died. But the other, in great terror, did not burn, nor was he consumed, for the wood was green, and scorched him, so that in his great and lengthy pain, he did beg those standing by, to heap the fire upon him, that he might burn more fiercely, and thus meet his end. Again he entreated, and called upon God for His pity, and cried out, More wood! Of your mercy, sirs, more wood! And fully one half-hour passed, and yet he endured, until at length a man, not fearing for his safety, took a billhook, and banked up the wood about him, so that the flames burned more hotly, and the man died. And again, she saw another man, much advanced in years, bound to a stake, it being dawn, and skylarks all about, and a great crowd gathered, as it were at a country fair, in much excitement, for there are those among us, who have an appetite for cruelty, as does a thirsty man for water. And this man burned fiercely, with his eyes fixed heavenward, and silently, and the while beat against his breast with his right hand, indeed until the hand was consumed, and he beat on with his arm only, such as remained of it, until the fat dropped out the end. And again, she saw a woman, in years scarce older than herself, and this woman wore about her neck a bundle, and wept and pleaded that her mother be told none of what was to pass. And again the wood was green, that the flames would be scant, and her torment all the greater, and indeed she burned slow, so that she seemed to dance about upon the faggots, and to writhe indecently against the chains, which sight caused much entertainment amongst those who watched, and in the men who spake against her in their lusts. At last, calling upon her Saviour, she bent herself to the flames, so that the bundle about her neck was lit. And this bundle, having been fastened about her by a kinswoman, was filled with gunpowder, which caught, and thus ended that portion of her life which is not eternal. These things Alice Benet saw and heard, as though indeed she had stood at the pyre, and born witness to the flames, so that it caused as she said a rupture within her, within which were all the terror of the world, brought close at hand. Then said Melmoth, You see what lies in store? Is it not fit recompense for your pride and folly? Yet I will not have you suffer thus! I would give you my companionship, and deliver you from thence, that you may walk with me all your days, and that you may see what I have seen, and hear what I have heard, and yet be not dismayed! Then said Melmoth, seeing that Alice in her horror understood not what was at hand: Do not think me an agent of the devil, for I am not such. I am naught but a poor woman—lonely, as you are lonely! Condemned, as you are condemned! Then might we not together share our condemnation? Behold the door, whose iron bolts could not keep me from you: will you not depart thence with me, that we might wander together all the days of your life, and seek solace in each other?