A Crowning Mercy

by Bernard Cornwell

  The two men discussed the service, choosing which psalms would be sung and at what hour of the morning it should take place. Campion let their voices pass her by like the buzzing of the bees who worked the blossoms of Faithful Unto Death’s garden. She was to be married. It seemed like a judgment of doom. She was to be married.

  They stayed an hour and left with many statements of mutual esteem between Brother Hervey and Brother Scammell. They had knelt for a brief prayer, ten minutes only, in which Faithful Unto Death had drawn the Almighty’s attention to the happy pair and asked Him to shower blessings on their richly deserving heads.

  Faithful Unto Death watched them walk away through the village, his guts twisted up inside with envy. Hatred rose in him: for Matthew Slythe who had denied him his daughter and for Samuel Scammell who had gained her. Yet Faithful Unto Death would not give up. He believed in the power of prayer and he returned to his garden and there looked up verses in the book of Deuteronomy: “When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; then thou shalt bring her home to thine house.”

  He prayed for it to come true, his thin face screwed tight in concentration, praying that one day Dorcas Slythe would be his captive. It was thus that his friend Ebenezer Slythe found him a half hour later when he arrived for his daily talk.

  “Brother Hervey?”

  “Ebenezer! Dear Ebenezer!” Faithful Unto Death struggled to his feet. “Wrestling with the Lord!”

  “Amen and amen.” They blinked at each other in the sunlight, then settled down with open scriptures and bitter hearts.

  Campion dreamed of an escape that she knew was impossible. She thought of a red-headed man who had laughed in the stream, who had relaxed beside her on the grass, who had talked to her as though they were old friends. Toby Lazender was in London and she did not know if he would even remember her. She thought of running away, but where was she to run? She had no money, no friends, and if, in her desperation, she thought of writing to Toby Lazender, she knew no one who could be trusted to carry the letter to Lazen Castle.

  Each passing day brought new reminders of her fate. Goodwife Baggerlie approved of the marriage. “He’s a good man, God be praised, and a good provider. A woman can want no more.”

  Another day, listening to Goodwife list the possessions of the house and where they were stored, she heard another part of her future being planned. “There’s good swaddling clothes and a crib. They were yours and Ebenezer’s, and we kept them in case more should be born.” “We,” to Goodwife, always referred to herself and Campion’s mother, two bitter women united in friendship. Goodwife looked critically at Campion. “You’ll have a child before next year’s out, though with your hips I’ll be bound it will be trouble! Where you get them I don’t know. Ebenezer’s thin, but he’s spread in the hips. Your mother, God rest her soul, was a big woman and your father’s not narrow in the loins.” She sniffed. “God’s will be done.”

  Faithful Unto Death Hervey read the banns once, twice and then a third time. The day came close. She would never be Campion, never know love, and she yearned for love.

  “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth.” And by night on her bed Campion tossed in an agony of apprehension. Would Scammell take her as a bull took a heifer? She cringed from her imagination, hearing his grunts, feeling the hanging weight of his great body as he mounted her. She imagined the fleshy lips at the nape of her neck and she cried out helplessly in her bed. Charity stirred in her sleep.

  Campion saw her own death as she gave birth, dropping a sleek, bloody mess as she had seen cows drop. Sometimes she thought it would be simpler to die before the wedding.

  Her father spoke to her only once about her wedding and that three days before the ceremony. He came upon her in the pantry where she was slapping butter into great squares for the table. He seemed surprised to see her and he stared at her.

  She smiled. “Father?”

  “You are working.”

  “Yes, father.”

  He picked up the muslin that covered the butter jar, twisting it in his huge hands. “I have brought you up in the faith. I have done well.”

  She sensed that he needed reassurance. “Yes, father.”

  “He’s a good man. A man of God.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “He will be a tower of strength. Yes. A tower of strength. And you are well provided for.”

  “Thank you, father.” She could see that he was about to leave so, before he could disentangle his hands from the muslin, she asked the question that had intrigued her since Scammell had spoken to her beneath the beech trees. “Father?”

  “Daughter?”

  “What is the Covenant, father?”

  His heavy face was still, staring at her, the question being weighed in the balance of his mind. A pulse throbbed in his temple.

  She would always remember the moment. It was the only occasion when she knew her father to lie. Matthew Slythe, for all his anger, was a man who tried to be honest, tried to be true to his hard God, yet at that moment, she knew, he lied. “It is a dowry, no more. It is for your husband, of course, so it is not your concern.”

  The muslin had torn in his hands.

  Matthew Slythe prayed that night, he prayed for forgiveness, that the sin of lying would be forgiven. He groaned as he thought of the Covenant. It had brought him riches beyond hope, but it had brought him Dorcas as well. He had tried to break her spirit, to make her a worthy servant of his harsh God, but he feared for her if she should ever know the true nature of the Covenant. She could be rich and independent and she might achieve that effortless happiness that Slythe sensed in her and feared as the devil’s mark. The money of the Covenant was not for happiness. It was, in Matthew Slythe’s plans, money to be spent on spreading the fear of God to a sinful world. He prayed that Dorcas would never, ever, discover the truth.

  His daughter prayed, too. She had known, she did not know how, that her father had lied. She prayed that night and the next that she would be spared the horror of marrying Samuel Scammell. She prayed, as she had ever done, for happiness and for the love God promised.

  On the eve of her wedding it seemed that God might be listening.

  It was a fine, sunny day, a day of high summer, and, in the early afternoon, her father died.

  Four

  “Apoplexy,” Dr. Fenderlyn said.

  “Sir?”

  “Apoplexy, Dorcas.” Fenderlyn stood beside his horse at the entrance to Werlatton Hall. “Too much blood, child, that’s all. I could have bled him last week, if I’d known, but he wouldn’t come to me. Power of prayer!” He said the last scornfully as he slowly climbed the mounting block. “Urine, child, urine! Send your physician urine regularly and you might have a chance, you might…” He shrugged, drawing in a hiss of breath that suggested everything was doomed anyway. “You’re not looking well, child. Too much yellow bile in you. I can give you an emetic, it’s better than prayer.”

  “No, thank you, sir.” Campion had been given one of Fenderlyn’s emetics in the past, dark brown and slimy, and she could still remember the desperate breath-stealing vomit that had erupted to the doctor’s grave approval.

  He gathered the reins of his horse, swung his leg across the saddle and settled himself. “You heard the news, Dorcas?”

  “News, sir?”

  “The King’s taken Bristol. I suppose the Royalists will win now.” He grunted approvingly. “Still, I suppose you’ve got other things on your mind. You were to be married tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not now, child, not now.” Fenderlyn said it gloomily, but the words were like an angelic message in her head. The doctor pulled his hat straight. “It’ll be a funeral not a wedding. Fine weather, Dorcas! Bury him soon. I suppose he’ll want to rest beside your mother?�
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  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll make sure Hervey opens up the grave. Heigh ho. Another one gone.” He looked up at the eaves of the Hall where the house martins had their nests. “It comes to us all, child, comes to us all. Apoplexy, the stone, strangury, the gout, epilepsy, leprosy, botches, plague, fistula, cankerworm, dropsy, gut-twisting, rupture, goitre, fever, the pox, tetterworm, the sweat, gripes.” He shook his head, relishing the list. “It’s only the young who think they’ll live forever.” Dr. Fenderlyn was seventy-eight years old and had never had a day’s illness in his life. It had made him a cheerless man, expecting the worst. “What will you do, Dorcas?”

  “Do, sir?”

  “I suppose you’ll marry Mr. Scammell and breed me more patients?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” There was a joy in Campion, a leaping joy because she did not know what the future held. She knew only that the marriage had been postponed and she felt as a condemned prisoner must when the jailer announces a reprieve.

  “I’ll bid you good day, Dorcas.” Fenderlyn touched his whip to the brim of his hat. “Tell that brother of yours to send me some urine. Never thought he’d survive weaning, but here he is. Life’s full of surprises. Be of good cheer!” He said the last miserably.

  Ebenezer had found his father dead, slumped over his study table, and on Matthew Slythe’s face was a snarl that had been there so often in life. His fist was clenched as if, at the last moment, he had tried to hold on to life and not go to the heaven he had looked forward to for so long. He had lived fifty-four years, a good length for most men, and death had come very suddenly.

  Campion knew she should not feel released, yet she did, and it was an effort to stand beside the grave, looking down at the decaying wood of her mother’s coffin, without showing the pleasure of the moment. She joined in the 23rd psalm, then listened as Faithful Unto Death Hervey rejoiced that Brother Matthew Slythe had been called home, had been translated into glory, had crossed the river Jordan to join the company of Saints and even now was part of the eternal choir that hymned God’s majesty in the celestial skies. Campion tried to imagine her father’s dark browed, ponderous scowl in the ranks of the angels.

  After the service, as earth was shovelled on to her father’s coffin, Faithful Unto Death Hervey took her to one side. His fingers gripped her arm tightly. “A sad day, Miss Slythe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet you will meet in heaven.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hervey glanced back at the mourners, out of earshot. His straw-colored hair fell lank on his thin, pointed face. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “And what, pray, will you do now?”

  “Now?” She tried to pull her arm away, but Faithful Unto Death kept firm hold of it. His eyes, pale as his hair, flicked left and right.

  “Grief is a hard burden, Miss Slythe.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And not one that should be borne alone.” His fingers tightened on her upper arm, hurting her. He smiled. “I am the shepherd of this flock, Miss Slythe, and I stand ready to help you in any way I can. You do understand that?”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “My dear Miss Slythe!” His hand leaped from her arm then hovered close to her shoulder. “Perhaps together we can pray for the balm of Gilead?”

  “I know you will pray for us, Mr. Hervey.”

  It was not the answer Faithful Unto Death wanted. He was imagining emotional scenes in the Hall, Campion perhaps prostrate on her bed with grief while he administered comfort, and he began to blink rapidly as his imagination stirred thick with the image.

  Samuel Scammell walked over to them, breaking Hervey’s thoughts, and thanked the minister for the service. “You’ll come to the Hall tomorrow, brother? Mr. Blood has the will, indeed yes.” He licked his lips and smiled at Hervey. “I think our dear departed brother may have remembered your good works.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  The household waited for Scammell and Campion beside the farm cart that had brought Slythe’s body to the churchyard. Ebenezer was already mounted beside the cart, drooping in the saddle, his twisted left leg supported by a specially large stirrup. He held Scammell’s horse. “Brother Scammell?” He held the reins out, then looked at his sister. “You’ll go in the cart with the servants.” His voice was harsh.

  “I shall walk, Ebenezer.”

  “It is not seemly.”

  “I shall walk, Ebenezer! I want to be alone!”

  “Leave her, leave her!” Scammell soothed Ebenezer, nodded to Tobias Horsnell, who had the reins of the carthorse, and Campion watched them go.

  It took all of her control not to run across the ridge down the hayfields and the stream, and there to strip naked and swim in the pool for the sheer, clean joy of it. She dawdled instead, relishing the freedom of being alone, and she climbed part way up through the beeches and felt the wings of her soul stretching free at last. She hugged one of the trees as though it was animate, clinging to it in joy, feeling the seething happiness because a great weight was gone from her. She put her cheek against the bark. “Thank you, thank you.”

  That night she slept alone, ordering Charity from her room, insisting on it. She locked the door and almost danced for the joy of it. She was alone! She undressed with the curtains and windows open and saw the touch of the moon on the ripening wheat. She leaned on the sill, stared into the night, and thought her joy would flood the land. She was not married! Kneeling beside the high bed, hands clasped, she thanked God for her reprieve. She vowed to Him that she would be good, but that she would be free.

  Then Isaac Blood came from Dorchester.

  He had a white face, lined with age, and gray hair that hung to his collar. He was Matthew Slythe’s lawyer and, because he had known Slythe well and knew what to expect at Werlatton Hall, he had brought his own bottle of malmsey wine which he eked into a small glass and sipped often. The servants faced him, sitting on the benches where they gathered for prayers, while Samuel Scammell and Faithful Unto Death flanked Campion and Ebenezer on the family bench. Isaac Blood fussed at the lectern, arranging the will over the family Bible, then fetched a small table on which his wine could stand.

  Goodwife Baggerlie, in memory of her good, loyal and God-fearing service, was to receive a hundred pounds. She dabbed her red-rimmed eyes with her apron. “God bless him! God bless him!”

  Faithful Unto Death had been surprised at the legacy. It was an enormous amount. His eyes watched Goodwife and he assumed that Slythe would be more generous with a man of God than with a house-servant. He smiled to himself, and waited as Isaac Blood sipped malmsey and wiped his lips.

  “To our Brother Faithful Unto Death Hervey,” Isaac Blood began reading again, and Scammell leaned forward on the bench and smiled at the vicar. Hervey kept his eyes on the lawyer. “I know,” went on Blood, “that he will not wish distraction from his humble toiling in God’s vineyard, so we will not burden him beyond his desires.”

  Hervey frowned. Blood sipped his wine. “Five pounds.”

  Five pounds! Five! Hervey stiffened on the bench, aware that all the servants were watching him, and he felt the agony of insignificance, of virtue unrewarded, of hatred for Matthew Slythe. Five pounds! It turned out to be the same sum that went to Tobias Horsnell and some of the other servants. Five pounds!

  Blood was unaware of the seething indignation to his left. “To my beloved children, Samuel and Dorcas Scammell, go those properties described in the marriage settlement.”

  Scammell grunted in satisfaction and nudged Campion beside him on the bench. The truth was slow to dawn on her. The marriage settlement? It was part of her father’s will, so that his death had solved nothing. She began to feel the despair of the last few weeks return. Even from the grave Matthew Slythe would control her.

  Werlatton Hall, its farms, fields, and all the tenancies attached, went, as expected, to Ebenezer. Her brother did not move as he listened to the wealth shower on him, except to smile
at Scammell when the will dictated that Brother Samuel Scammell would administer the wide estate until Ebenezer was of age. If Ebenezer should die without issue, then the Werlatton properties passed intact to Samuel Scammell.

  There was little more to the will, except a homily on righteousness that Isaac Blood read tonelessly. It was Matthew Slythe’s last sermon in this hall. Campion did not listen. One thing only was clear to her; that she was a chattel, disposed of in her father’s will, bequeathed to Samuel Scammell.

  The sermon over, Isaac Blood folded the stiff papers and looked at the servants. “It was Matthew Slythe’s wish that you all continue in service here. I assume that is your wish too?” He asked the question of Scammell, who smiled, nodded, and made a vague gesture of welcome toward the benches.

  “Good, good.” Blood sipped his malmsey. “And now I would ask the immediate family to stay here alone.” He indicated Scammell, Ebenezer and Dorcas who waited on their bench as the servants filed obediently from the room. Faithful Unto Death, unhappy to be lumped with the household servants, hovered expectantly, but Isaac Blood chivvied him politely from the room. The lawyer closed the door and turned back to the family. “Your father’s will had one more instruction. If you will be so good as to wait.” He went back to the lectern and laboriously unfolded the papers again. “Ah! Here it is.”

  He cleared his throat, sipped some wine and held the paper up to his bloodless face. “I was instructed to read this to you in private, and I shall now do so. ‘My duty to the Covenant is discharged by appointing Samuel Scammell, my son-in-law, to be the holder of the seal in my possession. Should he die before my daughter has reached the age of twenty-five, then the guardianship of the seal will pass to my son, Ebenezer, who will, I know, obey the terms of the Covenant.’” Isaac Blood glanced sternly at Campion, then looked back at the paper. “‘Should my daughter, Dorcas, die before her twenty-fifth year and leave no issue, then whoever is the holder of the seal will direct that the monies of the Covenant be used for the spreading of the Gospel to the unenlightened.’ There, I’ve read it now.” Blood looked at Scammell. “You understand, Mr. Scammell?”