Later, hands still tightly clasped, still looking up and not across, he says: ‘I feel less of a man, somehow, for not having fought.’
‘But you had no reason to fight, and the levy missed you.’
‘Aye, but so many good men are dead, and I’m here with you, lovely you, and I cannot help the guilt. My friend William Gascoine, he died at Marston Moor. Oh Hen, he was barely older than Ned. He would have been an English Kepler, had he lived. His work with telescopes, it would have taken your breath away; yet he never published, and now he’s gone. So too Jeremiah Horrocks, who saw the elliptical swing of the moon so clearly.’
‘But which side would you have chosen, Will?’
‘Both look increasingly ridiculous from here.’
‘Well, then. Bad enough to die for something you believe in. You’re wasting your guilt, Will.’
He laughs beside her. ‘Plenty enough to feel guilty for. You’re right, Henrietta.’
‘You’ll find I often am.’
He pulls her hand across his stomach and holds it with both of his. There is something deliciously transgressive about being here at night, beyond the walls. It’s profoundly quiet out here. The darkness is deep and still. Under the blanket is warm, but the air on her cheeks is cold, and the contrast is a humming backdrop to the tension in her whole body. From the ends of her toes to the top of her head she is aware of his presence. She can feel her hip touching his. The casual stroking of her hand with his thrums along her skin, spreading from her hand to her arm and into her belly.
‘You will have to outshine the dead, Will.’
There is an even deeper silence. She can feel him weighing his words. His hands fall still.
‘Well, now, Hen. When we first met, I could barely keep my eyes from the stars, do you remember? And then I saw in them endless possibilities. I saw my name transfixed to a new discovery. I saw my posterity writ there, Hen. I thought there could be no greater prize for a man than for his name to outlive him. I was such a child.’
‘It’s not such a childish wish, Will. We’re all afraid of being forgotten. Claudio says it in the play: “to lie in cold oblivion, and to rot”. No matter how they dissemble, what scholar would not want to find a touch of immortality through his work?’
‘Perhaps, but that should not be the sole motive, should it? Besides, I’m beating around the truth like a coy miss. Here’s the worst of it, Hen. I’m barely a better astronomer than I am a lawyer. Passion is not enough; aptitude counts for something too.’
‘Nonsense,’ she says. ‘You have both – I know it.’
He props himself on his elbow and looks down at her face. They can only see silhouettes and shadows. He draws a finger along the line of her jaw.
‘You are kind. But it’s important to be truthful. Truth must be the first mistress of natural philosophers. I can follow other men’s work, but they will not follow mine. It’s all right, Hen. Don’t worry. It’s like a grieving, this grappling with your own mediocrity. But I’ve faced it and I’ve grieved, and now I’m sanguine enough, I find.’
She stays quiet, distrusting platitudes. He knows more than she does about the limits of his ability. She looks at the myriad stars and thinks of all the countless men and women whose names died with them. Women don’t allow posterity to needle them. We’re too close to the truth of oblivion. How many Ciceros can there be; how many Caesars?
‘And there are some consolations for being mortal,’ he says, his voice dropping to a whisper that is nakedly intimate under the huge, star-pricked sky.
He leans forward and kisses her throat. She can’t breathe. Her eyes are accustomed to the darkness, but she still can’t see him clearly. She can see the outline of him, and he is so familiar to her now, she can fill in the middle with a loving eye.
‘So here’s the rub, Hen, darling Hen. If I’m not to stand with giants, at least I can stand tall among mortals. Enough pandering to others, Henrietta. We tried to be apart, and here we are. Shall we be betrothed, Hen? I am three months short of my seven years, and then I’m my own man completely. Shall we be together, Hen, you and I?’
‘Yes,’ she cries into his shoulder. Yes.
His lips are on hers then, and her hips rise to meet him. She thinks briefly of Anne, the big belly and the blood, the broken promises and the confounded hopes. But she shrugs the thought aside, banishing it. Over his shoulder, the stars buck and sway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
December 1646
THE DAY THEY ARE MARRIED, IT SNOWS. THE CITY IS MUFFLED in white. She walks with Ned towards the church, thinking of her father. How he loved the snow, loved seeing the familiar and commonplace turned magical; how he moaned at its melting, as if each mound of coal-grimed slush piled into the street was a trap laid by God for his foot alone.
Ned strides alongside her, the cold buffing his face and adding sparkle to his eyes. She holds his hand against a tumble. It would not do to fall in this dress, so painstakingly sewn together by her and Hattie, with some lacklustre hemming from Lucy. Her hands are cold; she worries that her nose must be chapped and red. She bids Ned to stop at the door of the church, overwhelmed suddenly. Inside is Will with his father and his mother, and three of his four siblings. She met them briefly last night. Will’s father was all affable charm, leaving the disapproval to his tight-lipped wife. Will’s three younger sisters were there, ranging from her age down to sixteen, and indistinguishable from each other.
She has been so happy, so content these past few years, shifting for herself. Beholden to no one. Earning her own money to be spent as she pleases. Friends with Hattie, darling Hattie. A butcher’s wife may be friends with a pauper, an anomalous single woman making her own way. A butcher’s wife may not sit so happily gossiping with a lawyer’s wife. Hattie is probably inside the church, baby Anne insisting on standing with that look of triumph on her face and her hands gripping Hattie’s skirt. ‘Mama,’ she says, ‘mama,’ and a light shines in Hattie’s face like steel striking flint.
Hen feels sick. She tries to concentrate on Will’s face, to imagine his smile, and the quivering in her skin when she is near him. Panic rises.
‘Hey, hey, Hen. What’s wrong?’
‘Ned, what am I doing?’
She thinks of the bookshop, the smell of it, and the hours of flitting tedium and joy she has spent in the back room. No longer. Mr Rowan has given her a book of housewifing skills as a present and a thank you; he knows her own mother did not pass her one down. A new boy takes her place next week – properly indentured. Mr Rowan is inside the church too, most likely, with his sour wife.
Oh Christ. What if Will and her become a shrivelled couple? What if the yoke is too much to bear? All old and miserable marriages started young and hopeful.
‘Breathe, Hen. Look. In through your nose, out through your mouth. In, out. In, out. You look set to face a cavalry charge.’
She thinks of the rooms above the butcher’s shop, raddled and damp, but all hers. Will has taken a lease on a new place, nearer the Temple. Near where her father hanged. Oh Father, she thinks. I wish you were with me. She thinks of the scales that Sam uses as a mental trick. On the one side she piles everything she is losing, and throws in her new family for good measure, imagining her mother-in-law’s furious squeaking, and the irritating fluttering of her sisters-in-law. On the other side is Will. All alone – just Will. He is high in the air on the mental scales, which are weighed too heavily against him.
She looks up at Ned and smiles at his concerned face.
‘Ready?’ He asks the question nervously, as if half expecting the answer to be: ‘No, let us run. Run!’
Instead she just nods. He pushes at the door, and it swings open. Ahead of her she sees a jumble of faces, and there, brilliant in his scarlet lawyer’s robes, is Will. And the scales tip back towards the centre.
Afterwards they head to the Mermaid, for food and drink and dancing. Will’s father has found some money, and it is his wedding present to them. If Will
must marry a royalist plotter’s poor daughter, at least he can do it in some style. The wedding party wears bridal ribbons, which flutter colourfully against the fresh-laid snow. One of the new sisters-in-law, Patience, grabs Hen’s hand and smiles into her face, eager to show her joy. Will walks next to her, near bouncing with happiness and confidence. They hold hands tightly, anchoring each other amid the chatter and excitement.
When they enter the Mermaid they see someone has gone to extremes with winter foliage. Leaves and berries are wound round tables and chairs; every nook groans with greenery, like a bridal bower brought inside. Steaming spiced wine is doled out, and the warmth courses through Hen.
The food, too, is hot and plentiful. At the centre of a busy table is a great suckling pig, which Hen knew until last week by the name of Fat Peg, as it rooted about in Hattie’s yard. At the end of the table are the bride cakes, piled one atop the other. Will grabs her by the hand and leads her to them. Suddenly the old customs seem so new, so exciting, when it is her kissing her new husband above the cakes to whistles and laughter.
After the food there is dancing. Amid the scraping back of chairs and pushing away of tables, Will takes her onto the floor for the first dance. The beat of the drummer makes her want to skip, and she grins furiously at him as they caper across the floor.
‘Mrs Johnson,’ he whispers each time they come close. Each time she laughs as if her husband is the wittiest man who ever lived. And he laughs at her laughing, until the entire crowd are smiling and joining in the capering in a swell of good humour.
Even the godly caper and dance with the best of them. Hen overhears Ned talking to her new mother-in-law.
‘There is a difference, of course, between festivity and excess. And the Lord loves a wedding. Did he himself not feast at Cana?’
Dear Ned. He has set himself to win Will’s mother over, to prove that Will’s choice is not so entirely devoid of sense.
The afternoon becomes a blur for her; a series of snatched conversations. She whirls away from Will, and fights her way back to him, again and again.
Her new father-in-law pumps her hand with ferocious enthusiasm. ‘I was never against you,’ he whispers. ‘Ah, but be kind, Henrietta, to my poor Sarah. When you have a son, you will understand.’
The music turns and she finds herself with John Cooke, Will’s mentor at the Bar. His face is genial, warmed from its usual earnestness. Next to him, his wife Frances bobs and sways to the music. Both are notoriously godly, and Hen notes with amusement how they react to this licence to enjoy themselves: creeping towards the unaccustomed levity, and then pulling back, before creeping forwards again.
‘We were only married ourselves four months ago, Mrs Johnson,’ says Mr Cooke. She likes the way he turns to his wife as he says it. She is already predisposed to like him; she read his notorious pamphlet ‘The Vindication of the Professors and Professions of the Law’ before she knew his relationship to Will, and thoroughly approved of its argument that the law is out of reach of the common man. Justice, he argued, should not be solely available to the deep of pocket.
‘The Lord’s blessing on you,’ says Frances. ‘You will need it, married to a lawyer. Your husband will live in the inn during term-time, I suppose, the better to ferret in his law books. You and I can keep company, perhaps, in the long evenings.’
‘Yes, I would like that,’ says Hen. Ned is passing and she drags him over, introducing him to the Cookes. ‘Mr Cooke is General Fairfax’s lawyer, Ned,’ she says, and watches as the two men fall immediately into a discussion of the general’s shining parts.
‘The war would have dragged on without him, I assure you,’ says Ned, punching his palm with his fist for emphasis. Hen watches Lucy coming over to lay claim – Mrs Cooke is not unattractive – and she leaves them to it, circling away with the freedom a bride expects on her wedding day. Back to Will.
‘How beautiful you are, Mr Johnson.’
‘Stay, a man cannot be beautiful.’
‘And yet you are.’
‘Wife.’
‘Husband.’
She is pulled away again, this time by Hattie, and forced to be pleasant to the vicar’s unpleasant wife.
Mr Rowan joins them and, when the vicar’s wife is distracted by something to disapprove of, he whispers to her: ‘You are so beautiful, my dear. A very Viola. Your father…’ He retreats into an embarrassed cough, flapping his hands.
Hen kisses his faded cheek, and then circles back to Will, passing Ned.
‘The essence!’ she hears him say. ‘The word of God must be preached simply to the common man, as must the word of law!’ The Cookes are nodding furiously.
She reaches Will at last, who is being teased by his sisters.
‘They are merciless, Hen. They say you are too pretty for me, and altogether too good for such a flummox as I.’
‘Your sisters are wise and excellent judges of character, I say.’
The youngest, Patience, who seems to have been named more in hope than foresight, bounces up to her and throws excited arms about her shoulders.
‘Sister!’ she says, and Hen kisses her warmly.
She meets Ned again on her wanderings and says, unthinking: ‘Oh, how I wish Sam was here!’
She watches, saddened, as his face loses its merriness.
‘Sam,’ he murmurs, in a voice made maudlin by wine that he is unaccustomed to drinking. ‘Oh Hen,’ he says, looking at her intently. ‘I used to think, perhaps, that all the blood between us was as nothing compared to the blood we share. But now… Now I am not so sure. He is so wrong, Hen. His cause is so misguided, so evil. To seek to deny us the chance of making God’s kingdom on earth. How can we be easy with each other?’
‘You must,’ she says, almost stamping her foot.
‘But how?’ The misery in his face saves him from her fury.
‘Poor Neddy,’ she says, and takes his arm. ‘Poor Ned!’
He mock punches her arm, and they laugh together.
But Ned’s words cast a pall on the day for her. She has, like him, been assuming they will just slot back into brotherhood when all the troubles are over. Now she must face the coming discord, and pray with fervour that she is never asked to choose.
The day wends to a close. At last comes the time. Will’s few remaining unwed friends pull off her loosened garters and attach them to their hats, making the whole party laugh. The women surround the bride, clucking like protective hens, leading her up the stairs to the bedroom. The inn’s best bed has been decorated by the same hand as the taproom to resemble a country maid’s bridal bower. Greenery twists round the canopy, and ribbons are tied round each of the four posts.
The women undress her together, all ribald jests and nudges. Dressed in her nightgown, she climbs into her bed. She meets the eyes of Will’s mother, who smiles a small, tight smile at her. They can hear the men next door undressing Will, and then they burst through into the room with a clatter.
‘Too limp, them ribbons,’ shouts one voice as the whole party staggers in. Will is pushed forward until he is half sprawled on the bed, and he looks up at her with an apologetic grin.
‘Give him the sack, put some stiffeners in him,’ shouts another.
Hen and Will climb into the bed. Beatrice, his sister and Hen’s bridesmaid, and his groomsman, a young lawyer named Steven Aubrey, sit at the foot of the bed facing away from them. Steven holds Will’s stockings and Beatrice Hen’s, and the crowd counts them down. ‘One, two, three!’ They throw the stockings over their heads, and Beatrice’s throw is true. The stocking lands on Hen’s nose.
‘I shall be married!’ shouts Beatrice, and her mother manages to look cross and relieved all at once.
A cup is passed forward over the heads of the guests, and they share the sack posset.
‘Sack to make him lusty, sugar to make him kind,’ intones Hattie from just behind her.
It is strong and sharp and sweet. Hen giggles, twisting with a tipsy embarrassment. Will just look
s excited, and absurdly happy.
‘Drink it quickly and they’ll leave us alone,’ he says, making the company laugh.
‘I’d sip it then, love, if I were you,’ Hattie calls out, and some of the women nod appreciatively.
Hen looks sideways at Will, and then drains the posset in one emphatic rush.
CHAPTER THIRTY
January 1647
THE GIRL STIRS BESIDE HIM. GOD’S WOUNDS, HE CAN’T remember her name. Florence, or Marie, or some popish moniker or other. The light creeping through the heavy curtains is enough to read by, and Sam reaches again for Hen’s letter. Goodness knows how it found him here.
Married, no less. And to that fellow Will. A bit bookish, but sound. Dear Hen. I hope she is happy with him, he thinks. If that sod plays her false…
Florence or Marie stirs again, throwing the coverlet back in her sleep. Her white back is bare. He can’t quite remember her face and it’s now hidden under the riot of unpinned curls. Still, he thinks with a twinge, a decent arse.
He suddenly feels a bit cheap. Bored and shallow and dissatisfied. He loathes this courtly living. All these former soldiers cooped up together in a chateau that looks extraordinary but they can only afford to heat in certain areas. They lounge about, cold and bored, vying for favour from a prince with no kingdom and a queen wed to an imprisoned king.
He throws the cover back over the girl. It’s fucking freezing in here, he thinks. He may be on decent terms with the prince, but the French bugger doling out the rooms knows everyone’s pedigree down to a freckle, and the merchant’s son is at the end of a wing, in a small room with two exposed walls and windows that leak icy wind. He shivers and moves nearer to Florence or Marie.
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