Havoc, in Its Third Year

by Ronan Bennett

  Elizabeth looked uncertainly about her, over her shoulder to the door.

  “Do not speak of this,” she said, her voice a soft, imploring whisper.

  “There is no need.”

  “I must,” he insisted. “You gave me no cause and yet I betrayed you. I have sinned, Elizabeth, and I am sorry.”

  Elizabeth made no answer; her head was bowed and Brigge realized she had begun to sob. He struggled to sit up so he might comfort her, but she resisted him when he tried to pull her to him. He gazed into her bright eyes. Her skin was fresh and clear. Brigge was amazed by the youthfulness of his wife. He was sorry for his sin, he was truly sorry. He smelled the smells she carried in her hair and hands and clothes, of wood smoke and soil, and cheese and yeast, and sheep and grain, the things of the house and the land around it. Tears came into his eyes.

  “Elizabeth,” he whispered, “I love you more than life itself.”

  She was rocking slowly back and forth. She said, “I must leave this house and not come back.”

  “What do you mean, you must leave this house?” His eyes searched hers. “Elizabeth!”

  “It is more than I can bear to stay.” She leaned forward and kissed his brow. She sat a moment in silence, then got to her feet. “I must go to Elizabeth to tell her you have come into your senses. She has been sitting here with you since you were brought home and only an hour ago, at the urging of all of us in the house, went to rest.”

  Brigge, amazed and confused, pushed himself up, blinking to clear the deception from his eyes.

  Dorcas squeezed his hand and smiled down at him. “Our hearts are never in our own keeping,” she said, “though we must try to make them so. It is time for me to go.”

  Brigge was about to speak when they both became aware of someone at the door. Turning, they saw Adam there. The boy stood fixed to the spot, agape at what he saw. Then he turned and went. Brigge and Dorcas exchanged a look.

  “Did he see?” Dorcas said, high alarm in her voice.

  She hurried from the room. Brigge, exhausted from the effort of his concentration, was out of all consciousness before she reached the door. Ghosts rose up to take him back to the darkness and havoc where they lived, and the perceptions of this world were lost to him.

  In the world where he was taken, he saw again the throng of people at the crossroads. The loathsome stink of Moore’s decay rose up in his nostrils as sharply as if he were transported back beneath the cage where the old woman waited. She had asked him for a key to liberate her from her wait, from her suffering. In one dream he had been offered a key. In a waking dream he had been asked for one. This much was plain truth to him. But of the rest? He imagined Katherine Shay before his eyes, taking him down from his horse. And Starman putting coins into his hands, and whores and lepers offering him a staff. What did these things signify? What was God asking of him?

  AFTER FOUR DAYS Brigge’s fever broke. He lay quietly in the bed. He felt weak but quite calm. Elizabeth was beside him. This time he knew it to be no dream, no delusion. He was in this world and his wife was sitting next to the bed. She peered at him, not saying anything, not knowing if he were well or mad. Then he smiled and the anxiety in her face melted away. Her eyes were dancing with happiness. She embraced him and kissed him.

  He asked for Samuel and saw Elizabeth look to the far side of the bed where Isabel was. The old kitchen maid went out of the room and returned almost at once with the wet nurse, who handed over the swaddled infant. Elizabeth bent down to show Brigge his son. Brigge shifted to see better. The child was fair-skinned and his eyes were blue. His lips were full.

  “Look how he now thrives,” Elizabeth said, putting a finger to Samuel’s cheek.

  At that instant Samuel squealed and his face became red with anger. The women laughed and Elizabeth handed him back to the wet nurse, who put him to her pap. Samuel’s cheeks worked like bellows.

  “I thought he did not suck,” Brigge said.

  The wet nurse laughed. “He will suck me dry, I think.”

  They watched him feed. Elizabeth was crying and laughing.

  Brigge searched for a top and a bottom, for a shape to the days he had lost, but could make no sense of them. “How did I find my way home?” he asked. “I have no memory of how I returned.”

  “You were carried by a friend,” Elizabeth said.

  “What friend?”

  “A good friend, most kind and loving and loyal. At first when we saw him come down from the mountain with your horse, we thought him a robber or thief, for he is in truth very sordid and monstrous to look at,” Elizabeth said. “We ran up—Dorcas, Adam, Isabel, Sara, even little James—ready to fall on him and beat him, demanding to know what he had done with the one whose horse it was. But on our approach we saw the horse carried a cargo and the cargo, when we inspected it, was you.”

  “What is the name of this friend?” Brigge asked, though he already knew.

  AFTER HE HAD taken some food and drink and refreshed himself, Brigge went out to the barn, where Starman had kept himself since carrying the coroner to the Winters. The filthy pustules which covered his forehead and cheeks had spread to his nostrils and mouth so that the lips and gums were encrusted with scabs and open sores. His hair was dull and bald in patches like a mangy dog’s. Elizabeth had given him an old fustian doublet of Brigge’s, and a pair of blue breeches, old shoes, and a shift made of canvas and the cap he now doffed. He stood with his head humbly bowed before the coroner.

  “I understand it was you who found me and brought me home,” Brigge said.

  “Yes, your honor.”

  Brigge took out his purse and held out a coin for the vagrant to take. “Take it,” Brigge said when Starman made no move to accept what he was offered.

  “I would rather earn it, your honor,” Starman said.

  “You have more than earned it,” Brigge said.

  “I did nothing more than any man who came across one in danger of his life would do,” he said. “I merit no reward for any deed I did then, but if your honor was pleased to give me employment, then I would accept what he thought fair.”

  “What employment do you seek?” Brigge asked.

  “Your honor said he had need of a shepherd.”

  “You said you would bring a boy to tend to my sheep.”

  “Would your honor be pleased to have me care for your flock?”

  “You?” Brigge said, glancing at Starman’s ruined leg. “You are hardly able to walk.”

  “I am able to get about well enough, your honor. Not as quickly as other men, I grant you, but I never fail to arrive at the place I set out for. I am also experienced in sheep.”

  Brigge surveyed the long, thin, wracked body, the pocked face and the hairless ridges above the eyes. “Did you by chance give me some things to keep?” Brigge asked.

  “Some things, sir?”

  “One who was with you gave me a staff to walk with.”

  “I do not think so,” Starman said cautiously.

  “You did not put into this hand a coin?” Brigge said. “A silver penny in this hand and a gold crown in the other?” It was a nonsensical conceit, Brigge knew, but his vision had been so vivid he was impelled to question Starman.

  “Would that I had these things to give, your honor,” Starman said. The coroner looked the strange man over; even now, though much wasted in body, he gave an impression of some strength and fortitude, and he perceived Starman’s mind and parts to be sharp. He had great need of a looker and shepherd.

  “You say you are capable of the work?” Brigge asked.

  “Before I was struck down with my present infirmities, I was known for my great strength and endurance. These qualities, though reduced, I still possess. I would be your honor’s most faithful servant.”

  “There is a cabin in the mountain behind the house which you may have use of,” Brigge said. “For your wages, you shall have sixpence a day together with some bacon and salted mutton besides your shelter.”

 
; Starman accepted the terms, thanking the coroner neither effusively nor with false pride but directly, and the two men took each other by the hand to seal their bargain, Brigge hesitating before consenting to the diseased man’s touch. He thought of St. Francis, whose recoil from the lepers so shamed the saint he went back to kiss their feet and ever after was loved for his selfless care of the sick. But Brigge was not Francis, and the age of saints and miracles was past.

  As he came back into the house, Brigge found Dorcas waiting for him.

  “I have spoken with Adam,” she said, looking about in case they were overheard.

  A feeling of disquiet entered Brigge’s heart as the recollection of Adam at the door of his room when he was in his fever came back to him.

  “He was suspicious of what he saw,” Dorcas said, “but I told him he was deceived if he thought he had witnessed any impropriety.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “I hope I have convinced him.”

  Neither spoke for some moments. “He has asked me to speak to you,” Brigge said at last.

  “How can you talk to me of this?” she said.

  “Adam would make a good, kind and loving husband.”

  “No!” Dorcas cried. “No.” She put her hands to her ears and shook her head and ran off.

  Later, Brigge and Starman sat together to watch a heavy ewe separate herself from the flock. Agitated in the way of ewes when their time is come, she licked her lips and scraped and trod the ground and turned in restless circles. The birth came forth very quick, the creature slipping out. The mother stood up, breaking the membrane, and began to lick and talk to its lamb, it sneezing with the first air it took into its lungs. The first lamb of the season had been born safely. The other sheep came to look.

  HAD IT NOT BEEN for Dorcas, Brigge would have gone to bed in a state of great contentment. The convulsions in the town, the arrest of Fourness, the conspiracies of Doliffe and Antrobus—all these seemed remote to him. He had come safely home. Elizabeth was restored and well again, and little Samuel was growing stronger by the day. Brigge’s horrid premonitions, his fears of the symmetry set up by the death of Katherine Shay’s child had been proved wrong. The Lord had protected him. Dorcas, too, would recover her good humor and gaiety. In time she would forget her infatuation for him. She would marry Adam and have children. He licked Elizabeth’s nipple. Milk came forth, light and sweet, and she covered her breasts with her hands and laughed as he moved over her.

  Brigge remembered the great revel at Bull Green. That was when he first saw her, among the great crowd of young men and women. There were maymarions who went in women’s clothes, and the rest were in white waistcoats and sheets, carrying white banners with crosses, holding garlands and flowers and branches. Pipers and fiddlers played, and drummers too. There was noise and sweat and laughter, with faces flushed with heat and chase and promises of the dark. All the world was giddy and some were drunk and mad and bumped and pummeled one another until they were parted by their friends. Brigge, eyes not seeing clearly, head laughing, stomach uncertain, feet tripping, stumbling, gave himself up to the swirls and convulsions. He bumped into someone he could not see and put his hand out to steady himself and felt softness and she laughed to her friends and said this is a bold one. Brigge would have moved on, but she stopped him and fumbled at the front of his breeches and said to the one standing next to her that she would measure him before she would lie with him, for it was not every man that could please her. Had Brigge been bolder, as bold as he wanted to be, he would have gone after her when she went on her way with her friends, leaving him with lewd eye tricks and backward glances and smiles. Instead he was left in an amazement of sex. He was trembling, fearful, under the strangest fascination. He did not know how to stand and around him was a stream of glistening faces. It was then he saw her. There were white flowers in her hair and sweat on her brow. The color in her cheeks was high. Her face was not beautiful, but full of life.

  She was in the company of her friends, dancing with them, laughing and calling out. She had seen what had happened and, smiling, she took Brigge by the arm and said that he should not make anything of it since it was just a woman reveling on May Day night. Beside them a man had his hands under a woman’s clothes so high they could see her thighs. Later in the night Brigge pressed her against a tree and kissed her. By then he was drink-boldened and brave, and he had also by then sensed he had an advantage over her because she already seemed almost to be in love with him. He was not wrong. This was Elizabeth, who loved him from the first, whose nature was loyal and full of laughing lust.

  All was well. All would be well.

  Sixteen

  ON LADY DAY MORNING THE HOUSEHOLD ROSE TO A STRANGE quiet. After weeks of storms the wind had given way to calm and the bitter rain had ceased. The skies were hard and blue. At first none dared believe the peaceableness of weather would endure even until noon, but they went to bed that night in stillness and woke again to the same condition. The air became so mild Brigge went about outside in his shirt.

  The women seized their opportunity. There was much to do. They bustled, going about as though on skates, their hurrying and colliding almost dizzying Brigge. They stripped the beds and gathered clothes in great bundles for the wash, pounding them mercilessly with their wooden bats. They swept the house and washed the floors and put aside the tubs of fat for the candlemaker when he would come. James Jagger they sent to the hens to collect the feathers they would cure for bolsters and pillows. Elizabeth and Dorcas worked among their churns and tubs and molding boards and made butter and cheese and baked bread. There was a great lightness of spirit in the house so that even Adam, still waiting to have Dorcas answer him, was distracted from his miseries.

  Samuel was at the center of everything. As they hurried by where he was—in his cradle, in the wet nurse’s lap, by the door of the kitchen from where he could see the cows and hens—they stopped to admire and coo at him. He had begun to smile and to hunch his shoulders to protect himself against the tickles passing hands gave him. He fed well, the wet nurse was content, and Elizabeth and Brigge marveled with pride at all he did.

  Hired men came to grave the ground. Brigge cut the earth in a right line, the others pulled the soil over with their hacks. The ground had been much softened by the recent heavy rain, making the work easier and quicker to perform. They declared the omens to be good, that they had worked smaller fields with soil much poorer and seen them produce thirty bushels of oats and barley apiece, that with lime and marl this ground would have richness enough for years to come and Brigge’s new son would farm it for as long as he had inclination.

  At the end of the day Brigge and Elizabeth together walked the furrows, examining the work, checking the depth and care of the cut.“The men have labored well,” Elizabeth said, satisfied with the graving. The sky was darkening and a breeze had picked up. “I have sent word to Father Edward,” she went on, “so that he might come to baptize Samuel.”

  A priest coming to the house would carry hazard with him, but Brigge knew Elizabeth would not be deterred. He nodded and said Father Edward must come. She looked to her husband. “You are quiet, John,” she said, taking his hand. “Does something trouble you?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I shall renounce my position as a governor of the town,” he said. Elizabeth gave him an anxious look. “It is the safest course,” he said, then at once regretted his choice of words.

  “Safe, how?” she asked, alarm in her voice. “Are you in some danger?”

  “No,” he answered firmly. “But things have become heated. There are ambitious men in the government of the town and they are already at each other’s throats. Unless good sense prevails, they will shortly tear themselves to pieces. I have no desire to be part of this.”

  “Have you told Nathaniel of your decision?”

  “I have sent him a letter with Lacy, who went into the town yesterday,” he said. “I also intend to write to the high sheriff to r
enounce my coronership.”

  “Why?” Elizabeth asked. “There can be no danger in being coroner?”

  “None,” Brigge answered. He put his arm around her.

  “What about the Irishwoman?” Elizabeth asked. Brigge had told her of his suspicions and unease in this matter.

  “She is almost certainly guilty of what she is accused,” he replied. “And if she is not, others will find her innocency better than I.”

  “Are you sure, John, that this is what you want?”

  “I want nothing more than I have here,” he said.

  All that mattered was what he possessed. He desired nothing more, not riches, not honor. Man, woman, child, home. If he could not build a wall to keep his family safe from the intrigues of the world, then he might by retiring from the world be forgotten by men, overlooked when the time came for them to reckon accounts.

  MR. LACY, HAVING been to the town about his affairs and on his way home again, came to the Winters. Lacy assumed familiarity with Brigge by reason of his own family’s notorious recusancy, but the coroner had little liking for his neighbor, their religion notwithstanding, thinking him a vain, boastful man.

  “I delivered your packet to Challoner,” Lacy said.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Nothing. He seemed rather distressed at what he read,” Lacy answered, taking a letter from his coat and handing it to Brigge. “This packet is from Dr. Antrobus.”

  Brigge did not open the letter at once. Elizabeth came in with hot spiced cakes and beer for their visitor, whom she greeted hospitably, she being more sociable than her husband.

  “The condition of the town grows more unhappy by the day,” Lacy told them as he ate. “Grain is short and dear, and the temper of the poor is much inflamed by the reductions in their doles and the hard punishments they now endure for things they say before would have brought nothing more than a rebuke.” Lacy swallowed his pot of beer and crammed his mouth with more cakes. “Mr. Fourness remains in prison,” he went on. “They say he will be brought to the bar when the special assize comes on. Doliffe boasts openly he will see the old man hanged and promises the like fate will befall a score of prisoners now in the jail.”