First published by Zero Books, 2017
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Text copyright: Brian Willems 2016
ISBN: 978 1 78535 547 9
978 1 78535 548 6 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016944520
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CONTENTS
Part One
Part Two
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
To Jasna
Part One
CAPTAIN COOKE LED HENRY DOWN a spiral stone staircase underneath the performance hall. The bottom of the staircase opened into an octagonal room with two doors, one green and one blue. “Pick one,” the Captain said, tightening his grip on Henry’s arm.
“I don’t understand,” said Henry.
“What’s not to understand?” answered the Captain, “It’s easy. An easy task, let’s call it. Just give us your favourite colour. Green or blue?”
Henry winced at the Captain’s grip. “Then green. I guess green’s my favourite colour.”
In place of an answer the Captain looked down at Henry, waiting for him to move toward the green door. But Henry just stared back. “Now listen here, choirboy,” the Captain said, “You’ve made your choice, so now take action. Just open the damn green door, and the faster you go through, the better it’ll be for you.”
Henry’s eyes grew big and the rest of his face went dark, as if building up to a scream. The Captain set a shushing index finger against Henry’s mouth and, with effort at restraining his anger, calmly whispered, “Get on with it, Henry. Or I’ll shove you through the blue door, and you wouldn’t want that, now would you?” Henry shook his head, taking the Captain’s lingering finger back and forth with him. Then the Captain pulled his hand back slowly and Henry walked to the green door and stood in front of it. “Be a good boy,” said the Captain, grinning.
Henry put his right hand, gloved in red Spanish silk, flat against a door made of planks roughly painted green. The Captain kicked him in the small of the back with his boot. Henry fell down on his knees. Then he slowly removed both gloves and tucked them together into the front of his belt, stood up, opened the green door, and went in.
“HERE, I’VE BROUGHT YOU THIS,” said Martino. He was Henry’s first visitor, best friend, and a number of years older. He handed Henry a clean and fragrant white shirt. Martino found Henry in rather good spirits despite being incarcerated in a windowless pitch-black room not much bigger than a body stretched outright. Henry was on his feet, leaning against the far wall. Martino was required to leave the door open while visiting, and the faint light from outside uncovered Henry’s soiled britches. Henry had at some point taken off his shirt and bundled it carelessly on the floor in a corner. He had been there for a week.
“Thank you,” said Henry, but he refused to take the fresh shirt. “Show it to me,” he said.
Martino unfolded the shirt and caught a piece of ginger root as it fell out.
“Oh, God,” said Henry, his eyes adjusting to the light, “that’s just splendid.” The scent of the ginger began to overtake the depression of the cell.
“Just a second,” said Martino, and he searched the cell walls with his hand for a crook in which to stick the root. “My Auntie packed this. It’s ginger, to freshen the clothes. Plus it helps the stomach. My stomach, anyway. I have stomach aches,” he said. “Just like you. It’ll help.” Martino wedged the ginger into the top of a half-pried door hinge.
“There,” Martino said, “now turn over there.” Henry turned away as Martino unfurled the clean shirt, blew air into the sleeves, and slid it over Henry’s shoulders. “Button it yourself, though,” said Martino, but Henry did not move. “In the front,” Martino suggested. Then Henry slowly turned back around and buttoned the shirt, getting all the buttons matched right the first time because he had a musician’s fingers, and a musician’s fingers can do a lot, even in the dark. Then, as Henry started to experience having a clean shirt on again, and as Martino heard the jail keeper loudly making his way down the stairs to let Martino and Henry know that their time was up, Henry thought he could smell a mix of apples in the cloth, commingling with the ginger. It made Henry retch all over his chest. He took the shirt off before he was finished throwing up. However, he would not give it back to Martino, no matter how many times his friend asked before being led out of the cell by the keeper.
TWO WEEKS LATER the Captain brought Henry back up the staircase, through the kitchen, and out into the courtyard. Henry knew he was about to be introduced to what the choirboys privately called “the services.” This was the year 1673, when out of 120 sentences for criminal behaviour handed out by the Royal Court, 113 entailed the death penalty. The death penalty could be carried out in a variety of manners: hanged until dead, strangled and broken, broken until dead, drawn by four horses, head cut off, head broken, strangled then burnt, broken alive, dying on the wheel.
The Captain was a man of many talents. He not only fulfilled his role as master of the Chapel Royal choir, but, due to his vast battlefield experience in the Civil War, was concurrently employed as the manager of “the services.” In other words, the Captain was also assistant penal administrator to the crown, which means he had to clean up the messes the punishments of the crown tended to create. The Captain was in charge of tidying the gallows, racks, tools and other equipment of justice. It was in this capacity that he combined choir and shackle. When a boy misbehaved he first served an indeterminate amount of time in either the green or the blue room, which were both the same, door colours aside. There one would “focus attention on things past, things present, and things to come,” as the Captain would say. Then the miscreant would be thrust neck-high into the muck of jurisprudence. This would wipe the offender’s mind clean of any thought of landing back in the position of criminal again. The length of time a choirboy spent in either the green or the blue room would vary, since capital punishment kept no timetable. Some lockdowns lasted mere hours, while others lasted weeks. Each boy was instructed to keep silent about the affair, an order which not a single boy obeyed.
Henry watched a man being half-led, half-dragged out into the courtyard. Since Henry had to hold position near the gallows, the prisoner was led right toward him. Henry started to sweat from the proximity, realizing that he was also going to have a role to play in the active portion of this person’s life.
The criminal was brought up to Henry by two men, one on either side. He was presented, as if for inspection.
“Well?” asked the first man. Henry did not know what to say.
The first man looked at the second, who said, “Typical. Another pansy boy properly prepared for his duty, I see.” Then they dropped the man down at Henry’s feet and walked back the way they came.
Henry looked around the courtyard, anywhere but at the man on
the ground, lying too close to his feet. Eventually he spied the Captain leaning on his balcony, grinning down at his choirboy’s discomfort. The Captain then looked at the criminal before turning back to Henry. The only instruction he communicated was to gesture to Henry to get on with it. “Oh, Jesus,” Henry said. Then he closed his eyes and bent down to pick up the criminal. He was helped by complete compliance from the man at his feet. At the sudden easement of his task Henry opened his eyes and led the man up to the gallows. The crowd which had been forming started to laugh, although Henry did not notice it because as he reached the gallows he found himself eye-to-eye with the condemned man, who began to speak rather eloquently for being so near the end.
“He thinks I’m a spy, the fool. Easier for me to be framed as betrayer of the crown than for him to admit that his wife is the whore all London knows her to be.” Henry did not know what to do. The crowd started to move in closer. The criminal said, loud enough for one or two of the spectators to hear, “It was during dinner. The Lady of the house always enjoyed a smoke after-wards. As I was among their servants, it was my job to light the Lady’s cheroot, which burst into flame. They do that. Something they add to the tobacco, they say. Even though I knew this I still started and ducked behind the Lady’s chair. That was enough to be convicted. It was seen as a sign of intimacy with the woman. But there was more. Then I was accused of tying a traitorous message to a kestrel. They said I was sending plans of the planned British attack on a number of French coastal towns, and I was sentenced with the utmost haste. If only they knew the truth. About her.” The criminal looked around at the crowd who had gathered closer to hear. “Although the fact that I find myself here is surely a sign that they do.” He carried himself as if he were used to an audience, perhaps holding table with the servants. Then he looked up as if in supplication, but his eyes landed on the Captain. “Him! Dear Captain, Captain Cooke. What a wife. A Lady,” the volume of his voice increasing, “We know what a lady is!“
But by the time he had finished his accusation Captain Cooke had already formulated his response. He stood up and moved to the edge of the balcony. He took in the gathering of spectators with a serious gaze and then said: “The gallows are too good for this swine. This traitor to the crown must not be hanged, but broken!”
Henry only vaguely knew what being broken entailed. After the guards brushed him aside and took the criminal down from the gallows he found out. It means that as many bones are broken as possible without killing, so that, after a while, when the victim can no longer really feel any more pain added on top of what he or she has already experienced, there remains only the snap of the bones to bring about an auditory awareness of the damage being done.
The criminal’s lump of broken flesh was eventually spread across the raised platform of the gallows. The spectators had all gone home, or at least away. Perhaps they did not want to be reminded of the cheering and bonding in which they partook during the festival, for it was a festival, since there had been food, drink, music and dancing. Henry’s work comprised of clearing away splinters of wood, ends of rope, snapped bones, and much-too-identifiable body parts. With the Captain’s steady look burning down from his courtyard perch, Henry, for the first but not the last time in his life, started to haul what was left of a carcass onto the bed of a wood cart unattached to a horse. To attach such a cart to a horse would defile the animal for any other purpose. With people being more plentiful and hence more disposable than horses, Henry was tasked to pull the cart instead.
MASEY TRIED TO WIGGLE her back up the headboard. Meredith screamed. She hadn’t seen her mother move more than a twitch of her facial features for over a week. Meredith hurried around behind the bed and gently pulled up the pillow by the two lace corners on its longer side, vicariously pulling up her mother as well. The pillowcase had been made by Meredith’s grandmother. Now, the left corner peeping over the headboard, it cast a shadow, sent by a spirit lamp on a nightstand, across the bed, down onto the floor, and halfway up the wall to the window overlooking the front of the house. Masey could see no more than blue sky out the window. The elm that had grown on the northeast corner of the house, sending its branches across the bedroom window for mid-day shade, a shade Meredith’s father called “God’s gift to two p.m.,” had been brutally trimmed three months prior in the hope of stopping Dutch-elm disease. Therefore, from the perspective of the bed, there was only sky to be seen. But Masey was not looking out of the window at the moment. She was looking at her daughter.
“I have something to tell you, Mere,” said Masey, her eyes bulging out at the brevity and completeness, the accuracy and directness, of her own easily pronounced statement. Her upper lip curled and her head tilted slightly back in a sign of self-congratulation. “I have something to tell you, Mere,” she repeated, as if trying on a second shoe to see if the pair fit. “It’s not me that’s a hostage here, dear, it’s you.”
“Oh Mother!” Meredith said, and gave her mother a hug and cried and patted her head before remembering she wasn’t to do that, it was too formal. So she straightened the covers as if now, lucid, her Mother would criticize Meredith’s upkeep, which she wasn’t.
“You are a hostage and a keeper of all my faults, and it is up to you to correct this,” Masey said.
“Please take it easy mother. Father will be home soon. So please don’t get too excited. Just take it slow.”
“You just listen now, dear. Let me explain what I mean. I don’t know how long this will last. This… being here. Please listen and don’t think I’m crazy or it’s the incision you think I don’t know about, or any such thing. It is me as much as it ever was me walking in the garden or taking you to Lynes’ for ices. You are a hostage of my mistakes, and I want you to correct them. To correct me, and soon. It will take the greatest attention on your part, every step of every day, at least for a while. You will have to keep all of my faults in mind, and not overdevelop a sense of how good I was or think that I was a perfect mother just because I died early or such rot. That kind of perfection kept in the heart of a young girl will only lead her to unhappiness, and quite clearly that is unacceptable. For you deserve a good life. You will have it hard enough as it is, with your father, so you must do what I say. A few days after my death,” she patted the bed and Meredith sat down, taking her mother’s hand, “a few days after my death, make a list. A list of all my faults, everything I did wrong, how I scolded you when I shouldn’t have. Like at the pool last month, for instance. Put down all the ways I wronged you: my lack of attention, how little time we spent together, the gross injustices I have perpetrated because I didn’t make enough of an effort. It might sound strange to you now but it is very important. Here, I’ll get you started.” She let go of Meredith’s hand. “Think of how I grounded you for a week for playing with Bobby Brighton. You were just playing, weren’t you? I had no reason to react the way I did, but I did, and you should resent me for it. It’s your right. That’s item number one for your list. And you should add to it whenever you think of something new. When you think of something good about me, that’s fine too. I hope you do. And often. But don’t write it down. You’ll need no encouragement in that area, being such a young girl. Make this list and keep it with you, in your purse or handbag, making sure you have a masterlist somewhere at home, in case your forget your purse or it is stolen. Especially if you go into town. Take that list and read it every day. That’s really it. Nothing more should be required. Read the list daily and add to it occasionally. At least for a while. A year or two. It’s the recipe for a good life. I know it sounds odd, but it’s true, believe me. I once had a mother too.” Meredith straightened the pillowcase behind her mother’s head because she heard her father coming in.
“Oh father!” said Meredith, indicating her mother’s state by clapping softly over her head. John stopped at the edge of the bed.
“John,” said Masey. “Now the both of you, please ask what you will. Anything. And I will tell you what I can. Then you should get
a good sleep tonight, for I feel you’ll have more than your hands full with arrangements in the morning.” And Masey, answering their questions briefly and directly, talked to them of what it was like to have an active mind unable to make itself apparent to the outside world, of burial plots and finances, of brothers and sisters and prayers. Then she sank back down into the mattress of the bed, bending the shadow cast by her pillowcase down even further.
THE FIRST TIME THAT Captain Cooke’s wife Evelyn made contact with Henry was after a concert of pieces from Frederick Wolff, picked mainly to utilize the 24 violins Charles II had installed in the Royal Chapel under the influence of the French court, although he also added a section of cornets which had been dropped by the French two decades previous. During the concert, Henry found his stomach starting to spin. He thought he picked up the faint smell of apples. He looked up at Martino standing next to him, with a plea for help in his eyes. Martino shrugged his shoulders and slightly increased his vocal output, attempting to cover up for Henry. It was after this painful performance that Henry, putting away some of the choir’s costumes backstage, nearly bumped into Evelyn.
“Pardon me, Mademoiselle Cooke,” Henry said.
“No need, Henry my friend, no need,” Evelyn said. “Having some trouble with your garment?” And in fact he was having trouble folding it right, for his musician hands had begun to tremble. Evelyn took the gown and started to fold it herself. “It must be a bit strange for a boy like you be taking care of the linen. I cannot imagine you did such a thing at home.”
“No, Mademoiselle,” he said, “I did not.”
“That is what I thought. But do correct me if I am mistaken Henry. Not that I think that I am, for if I thought that I were I would not venture to say so. But nevertheless, if you find me in error, please have no hesitation to correct me.”
Henry, Henry Page 1