by Susan Price
The brief holiday over, I should have begun to rewrite the poem, but I could not find the resolution. I read through some of it. I would read a little, wince at some clumsiness, skip several lines, read a little more, wince and move on again. But, bad as it was, the message was clear. Anyone reading it, even casually, it seemed to me, would see the message as plainly as if I had written it across the page in capitals. Bagthorpe would not miss it; he was too shrewd. He probably wouldn't need to read it; his fingertips would prickle as he held the paper. I saw that I should have to make two copies of the poem, one for Brentwood and one for Bagthorpe.
Making out a fair copy for Brentwood was easier than I had expected; I was even able to improve on the poem in places. The copy I made for Bagthorpe was harder, not only because I had to cut lines to make it seem innocent, and cobble together the passages where I had done so, but because I was bored again, and it took great effort simply to make myself copy out another word. When I finished, at last, I sat looking at the two manuscripts for a long time, knowing that I had to take one to Bagthorpe, but not wanting to go.
I found him sitting at the table of his overheated, red-lit room. He was writing, his head, with its red-lit red hair, bent low over the paper. All round him, on the table, under the table, and scattered over the floor, were discarded sheets of paper and heaps and heaps of oyster, periwinkle, mussel and whelk shells. Many of them had been crushed to powder underfoot, and all of them stank.
Bagthorpe left his seat to welcome me, set a chair for me, and sent out for something warm for me to drink while I waited. While I drank, I sat looking at a piece of bread on the table near me, so stale that its crumbs were as sharp as needles.
Bagthorpe finished his writing, took up the poem, and read. I tried not to wonder what he thought of it. I tried to convince myself that I didn't care for his opinion, but when he dropped my manuscript on to the table, and said, "It will do," I was surprised at the anger I felt.
"If it will do, then I'll send it to him," I said shortly, and leaned forward to pick it up.
"Fine," Bagthorpe said. "If Brentwood doesn't take you for a Catholic sympathizer, you won't be to blame, eh, Kit?"
I looked up sharply. He was smiling, his forefinger laid across his lips. He meant more, I was sure, than he had said. He raised his brows, in pretended surprise at my suspicion, and tapped at his ear. "What's the matter, Kit?'' he asked brightly.
"What do you mean by, 'I won't be to blame'?''
"That you worked hard in your verses to suggest that you sympathize with Catholics; isn't that so?"
"I thought that was what you wanted me to do."
"Oh, it is," he said, and nodded, and smiled at me.
I could not sincerely wish him a good evening, so I nodded, and walked out of his over-warm, stinking room. As I walked back to my lodgings, followed as always, I wondered if Bagthorpe had really meant no more than a mild approval of the way I had treated the poem's Catholic theme - but if he had meant no more than that, I felt sure that he would not have bothered to say it. Had he seen the message in my poem despite my efforts to disguise it? By the time I reached my lodgings, I was sure that he had. I meant to send the warning to Brentwood, whatever happened, but I thought it wiser not to be within Bagthorpe's reach when Brentwood suddenly left for France or Italy. Where I would go, I could not decide. Not Hawksmere, where Bagthorpe might follow me - but did it matter where I went, so long as it was well away from Bagthorpe? I wrote a letter to accompany the poem, saying that I had dedicated it to Brentwood because of my sincere admiration for him, and that I hoped he would see something more than the merely superficial in it. Then I made sure that I had all the money I possessed on me, and buttoned my favourite play-scripts inside my jacket, and left for the Bear, with the poem.
The afternoon performance had not long finished, and Dick was there, as he usually was. I sat beside him, and had to spend a long time in persuading him that he was the right person to deliver the poem. I told him that it had been his idea originally, and that he should take some credit for its being written; that he was far more tactful than I, and much better dressed. I could hardly visit Brentwood, looking as I did, could I?
Dick agreed, added my poem to the ledger and play-script he was taking home with him, and offered to buy me a drink. I accepted, and made the drink last, spinning it out until long after Dick had gone. Finally, I saw the man whose turn it was to follow me that day come into the tavern, tired of waiting outside. He sat on the other side of the room, ordered a drink - and another - and, meanwhile, it was growing dark outside. I was counting on the darkness to help me slip away.
Bagthorpe's man bought three pints, but he settled down to make the last one last. I had been hoping that he would get drunk. I would have to rely on his not expecting me to try to escape from him - I had made no such attempt during the previous weeks - and on luck.
A party of people were sitting near the tavern door. I knew one or two of them very slightly, and got up and stood with them, but so that I could see Bagthorpe's man without appearing to be watching him. He, of course, was not staring fixedly at me all the time, but just keeping an eye on me. I waited until a group of men came by on their way to the door, and passed quite close to me.
As they came between me and my watcher, I joined them, left the tavern with them, and ran across the street to the theatre. The gatehouse projected a little from the main building, and a mounting-block stood beside it. By jumping on to block, and jumping again, I reached the roof of the gatehouse, which wasn't high. I scrambled up until I was able to hang on by hooking my hand over the point of the roof, and I clung there with the scent of the old, damp straw in my face, keeping very still, and hoping that the thatch didn't give way below me, or tear out of the roof altogether. Fortunately, I didn't have to hang there for long. Within a minute of my clambering on to the roof, the man who had been set to follow me left the tavern himself, looked about for me, and then hurried away up the street. He didn’t bother to look above street-level. I dropped down from the roof into the mud, and took the opposite direction. As I ran I wondered, more urgently than before, where I could go if not home.
I thought, briefly, of my college. It had been my home once - but if I had not walked out of it, I should have been pushed out. And suppose Bagthorpe, with Brentwood gone, did try to find me? The simplest way would be for him to enquire for me as a wanted atheist, and, among all the University's rules, where would there be found room to hide a wanted atheist? Rules crowd out generosity. With their Law, and their rules, and their duty, the tutors would be able to hide their pleasure at seeing me get what I deserved as they handed me over to the authorities.
When I am clear of the town, I thought, that's the time to stop and consider where to go. But I could not stop thinking. Perhaps I could reach a small coastal port, and take a ship from there to France - No, Denmark was better; Denmark was Protestant, not Papist. No, it was stupid even to think of going abroad. Wherever I went, I had to earn my living, and I could not write plays in French or Danish. No, I had to go to another English town where there were theatres - Coventry or Lichfield.
It did occur to me that a writer, newly arrived in a small town, and looking for work at perhaps the only theatre in that town, would attract attention, and would be easily found - but I could spend some months at some other work before returning to writing. There had to be something I could do: dish-washing, the sweeping of yards or the mucking-out of sties. And if, after a few months had gone by, I took another name before beginning to write again, I would surely not be connected with the Christopher Uptake who sold twenty Catholics, but ran away rather than sell one more. The difficulty would be preventing myself from writing for a long enough time. Faced with the idea of not writing anything for two, three months, or longer, I realized how much of my thought writing occupied, day and night.
When not actually writing, I was thinking about writing. It would be as difficult to give up as . . . Well, as sleeping when I am tired,
drinking when I am thirsty.
I reached the river and walked beside it until I found a small boat with its oars carelessly left inside it. I climbed in, cast off, and inexpertly rowed myself across the river.
My sleeves were soaked by the time I reached the other side, and my legs and chest splashed with water. I landed, not at the landing-stage, but on a sloping bank, and moored the boat to a tree, where I hoped its owner would see it when he looked round, later on that morning, to see where it had gone.
I stood at the top of the slope and looked wistfully back towards the town. Even in daylight, even on horseback or in coaches, many people are afraid to travel over this open ground because of the number of thieves and beggars who live there. To travel on foot, alone, and at night, when I was unlikely to meet anyone who would help me, was to take an extreme risk. I tried to persuade myself that it was no more dangerous than to wander about the town at night, as I had often done without worrying; but it is one thing to walk in streets you know well, surrounded by houses full of people; it is a very different thing to walk over strange ground, in darkness, with a cold, gently sighing emptiness on each side, and the likelihood of meeting people so lacking in all humanity that they murdered every one they robbed. And what if I met something worse than a thief? Boneless, for instance, that shapeless thing which glides about at night, engulfing whatever it finds in its way? Or the vengeful ghost of one of those things hung on gibbets? Naturally, I was amused by these superstitious fancies; it was reason, not superstition, which made me decide that it would be better to find somewhere to wait until there was more light, so that I could see where I was putting my feet, and who was coming towards me.
I knew that somewhere away to my left, hidden in the darkness, was the road which left the town by the bridge; and, beside that road, a church, the church of St. Thomas Without. I began, slowly, to make my way through the darkness to where I thought it was. I felt my way carefully with my feet, yet still I stepped into unexpected hollows; still I was whipped across the face by thin, sapling branches; and still unseen stones turned beneath my feet, twisting my ankles and throwing me down, or briar-loops snared my ankles, making my heart leap and thunder as I plunged forward.
It was a short distance; I was grateful it was not longer. I found the church by running into the low wall round its graveyard, and bruising my legs. As I leaned against the stone, I was able to pick out the shape of more intense blackness which was the church itself. I felt my way along the wall until I reached the gate, which was of iron, and burning cold to the touch.
I snatched away my hand and rubbed it on my cloak; then pushed the gate open with my covered arm. The path leading from the gate had high banks on either side of it, where the earth dug for graves had been piled high. The graveyard was, of course, haunted. If you listen in taverns and drinking-houses, you will find that all graveyards. and most streets and houses, are haunted. At St. Thomas's a spirit had been seen at midnight, walking the churchyard paths with its graveclothes flapping round its bones, and a fierce blue flame burning where its head should have been. Bad luck followed anyone who saw it, people said, but I thought that anyone present in the graveyard of St. Thomas Without at midnight, like me, probably already had bad luck.
It was the other stories about St. Thomas's which worried me and made me reluctant to start down that path, because they were more likely to be true. The graves there were forever being disturbed to make room for new corpses, especially at times of plague; and sometimes there wasn't room, or time, to rebury the exhumed bones, and people had been known to trip over human thigh-bones and ribcages hidden in long grass; while some small children had once found a human skull near the gate, and had played football with it.*
I had laughed at this when I first heard the story, and I pointed out how blatantly it played on illogical fears, for what was so terrible about playing football with any skull, whether human or otherwise? I had volunteered my own skull for the purpose, providing the players waited until I was dead. But when I remembered the story, at midnight, at the churchyard gate, I didn’t want to laugh. I couldn't give myself a sound, logical reason for being so sickened at the thought of kicking a skull with my foot, or of breaking the bones of a ribcage by treading through it, but I was sickened; and it took me a long time to mock myself into courage enough to walk along that path.
I reached the church, at last, thankfully; and ran up the two shallow steps into the large, dark porch. Once inside, the heavy door shut, I might be able to persuade myself into enough Christianity to feel safe. I found the cold ring of the door's handle, turned it, and discovered that the door was locked. I leaned on it and cursed Christians for being so pious about their God's house being open to all, and then locking it. I was trying to resign myself to spending the night, awake, in the corner of the porch, when it occurred to me that there might be another door at the back of the church, and that it might be open.
The path continued round the church, still sunken below the level of the graveyard, and still in deep shadow. As I neared the first corner, I heard water falling from some broken water-pipe or guttering. Cautiously, I took a step around the corner – and a shower of cold water fell suddenly, soakingly, about my head and shoulders.
I jumped back, and took a sidelong step to avoid the water, ducking my head at the same time, and wiping my face with my sleeve. In this way, blind, I walked squarely into something solid, which threw me back on my heels. I spread my arms wide for balance, thinking that I had walked into a buttress, and saw something darker than the darkness move in front of me, and felt, and heard, something that breathed press up close behind me.
For the next several minutes sheer panic guided me. I ceased to think. Despite the steep, almost shoulder-high bank which bounded the path, I somehow reached the top in two strides, and went running across the graveyard, sidestepping and jumping branches, briars, mounds, and bushes; never tripping, always turning aside in time, always succeeding in keeping my balance, as if my feet were being guided to the safe, level patches of ground; or as if the ground were being instantly re-formed to fit my strides. It was a dizzying and exciting experience, but my mind was clear and empty, made as featureless as a sea- pebble by panic.
I heard someone coming after me, crashing and wallowing in the long, wet grass, gasping like a sick horse. I turned away from these noises but more panting sounds, and a black shape against a depth of dark sky, showed me the other man, and I veered again. The only clear idea in my head was to run and run until I outran everything about me; and this I did with such concentration that I ran over the edge of the graveyard.
I tipped in the air and rushed down towards the ground, while the bank and the church and the sky rushed upwards, and then swung down again with awful speed.
Then I saw the edge of the graveyard's bank above me, and the wall of the church, and the sky between them; and I remembered where I was and what had happened.
The fall freed my mind from panic. I sat up and listened to the men trampling down the graveyard grass as they searched for me. I heard nothing to suggest that they knew where I was. I got to my hands and knees and crawled rapidly along the path, hoping to reach the corner and scuttle out of the churchyard before they saw where I had gone.
Then I heard, above me, one of the men walking slowly along the edge of the bank, breaking stems and twigs with his feet, breathing hard. Looking up, I saw him, a black shape above the edge. He jumped down on to the path, landing with a crash of heels on stone a few yards from me. For an instant I was so astonished that I could not even gasp; then I moved quickly, scrambling, towards the corner and the path leading to the gate.
I should have lain still. He mightn't then have seen me, but from my first start he knew where I was, and shouted for his companion. Behind me, as I ran, I heard the other man answer, and as I reached the corner, he jumped down in front of me.
I could not turn back because of the man behind me, and so I lunged forward, swinging my arms as hard and fast as I
could. I hit him in the face, and he shouted - so did the man behind. The sounds echoed down the tunnel made by path, bank, and church-eaves.
I had hoped to drive the man from my way by the sudden force of my attack, and run on past him; but he fell, and I fell on top of him. A frantic and unpleasant scrambling followed down there in the darkness. I winded him - his breath rushed out past my ear - but our heads cracked together and a thin, intense pain passed behind my eyes. I rolled away from him into the church wall, and also into a pool of achingly cold water.
The other man reached us, and he stooped out of the sky and hauled me to my feet in stages, frequently letting me fall back against the church wall as he kicked his companion and shouted at him to get up. The man clambered slowly to his feet, using my legs to help him, and muttering to himself. As soon as he was standing, he hit me on the ribs above my heart.