Havoc, in Its Third Year

by Ronan Bennett

  “The child has come by the arm and shoulder,” Antrobus explained, setting out his brutal instruments of black iron.

  Brigge nodded a mute understanding of the unspoken reckoning. The doctor directed Mrs. Lacy to lift the sheet.

  “Go, John,” the doctor said. The voice carried notes of consideration, unusual in Antrobus. “Rest if you can and leave me to my work. It will not be easy, I shall not try to deceive you, but it is not hopeless.”

  There was no opportunity to kiss Elizabeth or say anything to comfort her, Antrobus and the helper being so busy about her. Brigge went out of the room. The door closed behind him with an ominous finality.

  Dorcas was waiting. Brigge embraced her knowing that it was in full view of the maids who waited at the far end of the passage. “It will be well now,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and holding her before him. “By God’s mercy Elizabeth and the child will be saved.”

  Adam came into the passage. The boy paused on seeing Brigge with his arms around Dorcas. Brigge hailed him warmly and went to embrace him. “You must have ridden hard, both on the way to town and back, to have covered such ground so quickly,” he said.

  “I went as fast as I was able,” Adam said. “I hope we have come in time.”

  The boy glanced at Dorcas, searching her face for some message or clue as to her feelings for him. He said, “Have you had an opportunity to read any of Mr. Tyndale’s book?” His voice was unconfident and slightly tremulous.

  “Not yet,” Dorcas said. “There has been so much to do.”

  “Of course,” Adam said.

  Dorcas excused herself. Adam and Brigge stood together in the passage. They were silent until at last Adam said, “I would like to speak to you, sir, privately if you would grant me that privilege.” Brigge nodded slowly but said nothing. Adam continued, “I know this is a most distressing time for you and I would not ask except that it is a matter of great importance to me.”

  “Of course you must ask,” Brigge said.

  THEY WENT TOGETHER to the parlor.

  “I am your servant,” Adam said, “as is Dorcas.”

  Brigge ran a finger across his eyebrow; his heart felt heavy.

  Adam went on, “I hope, sir, I do not go beyond the bounds of courtesy or regard when I say that I think of you as my father as much as I do my master. You have always treated me as lovingly as a son. I do not know what my life might have been had you not taken me into your home. I hardly know how to give thanks to you and my mistress for the kindness and generous regard you have shown me.” The boy began to wring his hands, his voice was thick. “I want you to know that I will ever be your true and loyal servant, that I shall render to you any service, small or great, that I am able to perform.” Tears had come into his eyes and he seemed at a loss as to how to go on.

  “You want to ask me something, Adam?” Brigge coaxed him. The boy nodded. “Then why do you not ask?”

  Adam began to weep. Brigge went to him and pulled him to his feet. “There is no need of tears, Adam,” he said.

  “I am sorry,” Adam said.

  “Why should you be sorry, child?”

  “Because the thing I seek, if God grants it, will lead to my going from here where I have been kept safe and happy.”

  “What is the thing you seek?”

  Adam hesitated a moment. “I want to ask your permission that I might marry Dorcas,” he said.

  Brigge looked him over. Adam was twenty-four years old. He had not yet filled out as a man. Brigge kissed him and said, “You may ask Dorcas.”

  Adam sought his hands and held them and murmured his thanks. Brigge sent him from the room. He had no sooner gone than there was a commotion in the kitchen. Brigge hurried out, fearing the worst.

  Antrobus stood by the table, the midwife next to him. “You have a son,” the doctor said. The doctor smiled broadly, a man pleased for another man, one he has helped.

  The midwife held out the swaddled child for him to hold and said the words Brigge had never thought he would hear: “Father, see there is your child. God give you much joy with him, or take him speedily to his bliss.”

  Brigge became aware that his arms seemed to be holding only air; he sensed no weight. As he gazed at the swollen eyes and silky wisps of reddish fair hair smeared with traces of blood, it was not easy to know if the thing he held was dead or alive. The head seemed misshaped, long in proportion to its breadth, and bore the violent marks of forceps.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “She sleeps,” Antrobus said. “She is very weak.”

  “Will she live?”

  “She may live, she may not.”

  Brigge held the weightless bundle and prayed his thanks to God. The midwife took the infant again. The wet nurse had been fetched, a good milk-giver according to Mrs. Lacy, who knew her. The two old kitchen maids chattered noisily and declared all would be well with God’s gentle grace. The house began to fill with the noises of relief and brittle laughter. Dorcas gave him a smile. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She came to look over Brigge’s shoulder at the infant.

  “Oh, he is so beautiful,” she said, and began to cry.

  IN THE CHAMBER Elizabeth lay motionless and for a moment Brigge saw his wife as she might be as a corpse. He bent down to listen for breath and, discovering it, he took her hand in his. Antrobus came softly in. “Your wife is very enfeebled,” the doctor said. “You should not despair of her, but neither should you entertain false hope. If infection and fever set in, as after violent births they often do, she will hardly have the strength to recover herself. I have left decoctions and medicines and instructions in their use.”

  “Will my son live?”

  “In truth, I am amazed he survived to be born alive. I have spoken to the wet nurse. She is of good character and free of disease and appears to have an abundance of good milk. The last child she suckled was also male, so she is suitable. Let us hope your son takes to her teat.”

  “I can hardly express my gratitude to you,” Brigge said.

  He found the eaglestones still about Elizabeth’s neck and removed them as gently as he could. They were warm from the heat of her body. His mother had given him the stones on his marriage. She had worn them when he was born. He put them to his ear and shook them and heard their rattle. Aetites, stones within stones, bodies within bodies. They had done what had been asked of them. He kissed the hand he held, laid it down and covered it.

  They left the room, now made perfectly dark and safe as the womb so neither sunlight nor moonbeam would imperil her.

  Antrobus closed the door to the parlor. Even in so simple an act his relish for intrigue was plain. His ministering done, he became again the plotter. His movements were furtive, his eyes filled with calculation; a perpetual dishonesty glowed dimly there.

  “Fourness is arrested,” he said.

  “On what cause?” Brigge said, astonished at this information.

  “Challoner and Doliffe will not reveal it. They have committed Four-ness to strait confinement in the jail where he may have neither pen nor paper, nor receive visitors, not even his sons and daughters.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Soon after you left the town. Fourness went to the Swan and dined there with Lister and Wade. When he left them to go home, he was apprehended in the street by Doliffe and the watch.”

  “What do they intend for him?”

  “Why, to hang him.”

  Brigge snorted in disbelief. “They will need proofs first, evidence that he has committed some crime.”

  “They will discover what is necessary, and now they have their commission of oyer and terminer, they have authority to hang whom they please. They will brook no opponent to their ambitions.”

  Brigge considered what he had been told. His wits were so addled by all that had transpired that he could find no logic or reason in the doctor’s relation.

  Antrobus leaned forward and spoke deliberately. “You are in danger, Brigge,” he said. “I am
in danger. We are all in danger.” Brigge shook his head. None of this made sense. “Do you think your friendship with Challoner will protect you from your enemies?” Antrobus asked with a laugh. “No. The Master has been put into a great fright. He sees he is losing the affection of the people and fears that Savile will return and put him out of his power. He believes that by throwing in his lot with Favour and Doliffe he can save himself, and he may succeed. But the price these ranting dogs have exacted from him is that he turn himself into God’s warrior on earth and make the town into a citadel of hypocrisy, which they call righteousness.

  “And now he is in this new combination, the Master must be careful whom he calls friend. It would not do to be intimate with one tainted, say, with popery.” Antrobus paused and smiled knowingly. “The people of these parts are very exercised by religion—they have always been among the hotter sort and Favour maintains their heat with admirable dedication— and it would be to the great scandal of his name should the Master be discovered to harbor papists among his circle.”

  Antrobus waited to see what Brigge would say. When the coroner said nothing, he continued, “You do not believe me? You think I exaggerate?”

  “I cannot say, I do not know.”

  “Brigge, as we speak, they are preparing to indict you.”

  Brigge stared at him in disbelief. There was no facetiousness about the doctor now.

  “It is true,” Antrobus said quietly. “I am sorry.”

  “Of what am I accused?”

  “I have not been able to discover the nature of the accusation,” Antrobus said, “but I assure you it is true.”

  “Why?” Brigge said.

  “Doliffe has been whispering in the Master’s ear that you harbor ambitions to overthrow him and elevate yourself to Master.”

  “I have no such ambition!” Brigge scoffed.

  “Every man who has power fears to lose it. The Master is very in love with power and he is afraid. He is afraid of the man who will displace him. He is afraid of you.”

  Brigge laughed scornfully. “He has no reason to be afraid of me.”

  “Your only chance is to strike first.”

  “Strike?” Brigge said, his incredulity growing. “Strike whom? How? To what end?”

  “If you do not, they will destroy you.”

  “No blow I struck would do any harm. I have not the weight. I have no standing, no faction. My fortune is narrow, my estate unsettled, almost ruined, and I am, as you say, a notorious suspected papist.”

  “Yet you have the reputation of an honest man. You are honorable and capable, conscientious in your dealings with every man. There are those who would follow you if you gave them cause.”

  “Who would follow me?”

  “I, for one. Lister, Wade. Fourness—if he lives. There are others, friends at court who would speak on our behalf. Listen to me. All justice is dead, all pity and mercy, and faith and honor, the very things we came together to promote. You are a just man, Brigge. Will you, for the sake of quietness, do so much violence to your conscience that you will let these fanatics rule?”

  “I will have no further part of this conversation,” Brigge said. “This is an absurd, extravagant fancy.”

  “Then you are a fool.”

  Brigge, his manner curt, excused himself and left the doctor to his own conspiracy.

  LATER IN THE MORNING Brigge saw Antrobus off at the stable.

  “It is said that to confide in a man is to make yourself into his slave,” Antrobus said. “I have, by speaking so freely, given you an advantage over me.”

  Brigge owed no loyalty to the plotter and schemer before him; he had no debt to that man. But he owed everything to the doctor who had answered his call. “I am aware of no such advantage,” he said.

  The rain and sleet, which had eased in the early part of the morning, began to fall heavily again. Brigge waited until Antrobus was on the path leading into the mountain before he went inside to the kitchen, where he found the wet nurse with his son. The women looked up on his entry and fell silent. He sensed they were keeping hard news from him.

  “How does the child fare?” he asked, looking from one to the other.

  The kitchen maids answered that the child would not suck. They were quick to assure him this was not unusual, especially after so arduous a delivery. They said that as a baby Brigge himself had been very slow to feed, yet look at him now. His son was not suckling. But he would. He would soon suck.

  Brigge found Dorcas sitting with Elizabeth. The girl was in her own thoughts. Brigge asked twice if anything was wrong, but she denied it. She showed him the potions and pastilles the doctor had left behind and repeated what he had told her as to their use. She asked to be excused.

  “Tell me what is wrong,” Brigge said gently.

  “Adam says you gave him permission to speak with me.”

  “I could hardly deny him.”

  They said nothing for some time.

  At length, Brigge asked, “Have you given him your answer?”

  “No,” she replied. “I said I would consider his offer.”

  “He is”—Brigge sought the words—“a fine young man.”

  She glanced at him sharply, then turned and left him with his wife.

  Brigge sat with Elizabeth and the hours passed. He did not let go of her hand. It was large and strong and calloused. He remembered one freezing winter night when the water poured off the mountain in a sudden deluge and pushed over a wall where the sheep were folded and would have carried them away and drowned them. Brigge and the men toiled in the darkness, lashed by the winds, colliding and tumbling in the mud, desperate to save the flock. Elizabeth labored with the rest, straining to lift stones the men could hardly carry, hauling them and rolling them back into place. She dashed about from corner to corner, wherever a breach threatened, soaked through, muddy and frozen, until the wall was remade. The flock was saved; Brigge did not lose a single animal in the flood. When at last they got to bed that night, Elizabeth put her hand to Brigge’s naked belly and stroked him. He felt its harshness, its scour, as it took hold to coax him. There was no delicacy in her touch or movement and Brigge did not become aroused. He thought he heard her crying and his shame grew inside him.

  Brigge was sleeping when he became sensible of being watched. Bringing himself to, he saw that Elizabeth’s eyes were open. He did not know how long she had been awake.

  Her voice was weak. “How does our son?”

  “He is well,” he whispered in Elizabeth’s ear. She smiled and the muscles in her face relaxed. “I would like to call him Samuel, my father’s name.”

  Elizabeth moved her head to show she consented, then closed her eyes.

  Eleven

  AT FIRST THEY MARVELED AT THE FURIES. BUT AS THE BITTER rain lashed in torrents and the wind threatened to lift the roof, their amazement soon turned to trepidation. Even within the Winters’ stone walls, as thick as a man’s arm is long, they had to shout to make themselves heard. They were cold, for all that they wrapped themselves up and huddled by the fire. Nothing was ever full dry, not the kindling or coals, not their clothes nor their bedclothes. The bread was moldy.

  The wet nurse was vexed and tearful. Brigge watched her lift a swollen pap to Samuel’s mouth and squeeze some milk to his lips.

  “He will not suck, sir,” she said in despair.

  “Do not lose heart,” Brigge said. “He will suck.”

  They brought Samuel to his mother. Elizabeth, propped up in her bed, took him in her arms and whispered soothingly. The infant was angry and distressed, and nothing Elizabeth could do would settle him. After some short space of time they removed him from her, for she was still much enfeebled from her labor.

  During a lull in the storms Brigge rode out to inspect his flooded fields and sodden flock. Spring planting was not far off, lambing was near, but he would sow nothing and have no flock at all if the rain did not ease and the sun did not soon shine to help him farm.

  On his
return he found Dorcas waiting for him by the backside of the house. “The constable’s man has come again to fetch you to town,” she said.

  Brigge’s heart skipped a beat. “Did he say on what business?” he asked.

  Dorcas shook her head. Brigge thought of Fourness detained in the jail and Antrobus’s warning. Was it possible the Master was plotting his destruction? He could hardly believe it. But these were strange days and strange things were happening. He nodded and made to go past Dorcas, but she put a hand out to detain him.

  “John,” she said quietly. “Have you nothing to say to me?”

  “On what matter?” Brigge asked.

  “I think you know the matter very well.”

  “Dorcas,” Brigge said, making his voice kind and soft, “I have by my actions forfeited all entitlement to say anything to you touching this matter. You are free to say yes to Adam, and you are free to say no.”

  Dorcas turned away, hurts in her eyes. “It feels to me that you are, in a way, letting me go,” she said.

  “I do not have that power over you,” he said. He looked at Dorcas. Pity welled up inside him, but he did not know how he could be kind to her.

  He entered the kitchen to meet the constable’s man, quite believing he might be apprehended and brought to the Master in chains. Instead, Scaife informed him that some prisoners in the jail had died and the coroner’s presence was required so that the bodies might be viewed by him as the law demanded.

  “Is Katherine Shay among the dead?” Brigge asked. Scaife claimed not to know. Brigge also asked whether the serving girl Susana Horton had been brought from Burnsall. Again Scaife said he did not know.

  “You are the constable’s man, are you not, the one Mr. Doliffe would send on such an errand?” Scaife shrugged impudently like a scornful apprentice. “Has Mr. Doliffe asked you to go to Burnsall to carry Susana to the town?”

  Scaife, having so slow a mind he was ever fearful that what men said to him were tricks to get him to admit to that which would be to his disadvantage, blinked before the coroner in a high confusion while weighing the risks of his answer.