by Maria McCann
‘Now keep still,’ I said.
Her thighs under the robe were damp and cool as mushrooms. My hand gouged between them, found the soft place where I would slake myself. I undid my breeches.
‘Jacob, please.’ Her voice quavered; she coughed and snorted and I guessed her nose was bleeding. ‘Zeb hears you.’
Again I saw her hand move under his shirt. ‘Let him.’
‘Please, Jacob, Jacob.’ Caro’s tears and spittle all but choked my name. ‘How will you feel tomorrow?’
‘Married.’
She whimpered, mingling prayers and sobs as I pushed into her. She had still her maidenhead; I drove in hard until the flesh gave way and I was packed tight.
‘You’re killing me!’ Caro shrieked. ‘Killing!’
I pushed harder, for mastery.
‘Zeb!’ she screamed.
‘Keep him away if you love him,’ I snarled. ‘I’m able for him, too.’ Let him hear that. Let him hear all – let—
The spasm was upon me and it was intense unto agony. I heard myself growl. Teeth clenched, I crushed my hips against her, the pleasure surging in me so that for a moment I was nothing but that, I was dying, and even as I let go the gasping of the flesh slowed, slackened and I knew where I was and who lay with me. Heart pounding, I collapsed onto her breast. Caro at once shifted under me so that my body slipped out of hers. She then tried to pull the gown over her thighs, but my weight prevented it.
There was silence apart from our breathing.
From the side of the stream came Zeb’s voice, timid: ‘Caro?’
‘Don’t make me come over,’ I threatened.
‘Caro!’ There was a pause, then he commenced weeping. I made to rise and stop his noise.
Caro at once called, ‘Take courage,’ and the crying grew quieter.
‘What should he want with courage?’ I demanded. ‘Have I hurt him?’
She gave no answer. I knew then that Zeb, listening to our struggle, had feared Caro was killed outright.
In time, pain in my knees obliged me to raise myself. My wife turned on her side and curled up like a child, her back to me. I lay stretched out, staring into the invisible trees. My coat was lost in the dark, and now that the animal heat was gone off the cold of the wood struck to my very bones.
It was already coming to me what I had done, the ruin I had made. Rage and lust had sharpened in me to a madness. I had even wanted Zeb to hear this butchery of a wedding night, and now my cheeks burnt with shame. Whatever it was that Zeb did with his women, it was not this.
‘Caro?’ When I touched her neck she shuddered. ‘Wife, are you cold?’
‘If you will do it again, just do it,’ came her voice, crackling with hatred.
‘You must be cold. Let me put my arms around.’
Caro gave a terrible laugh. ‘Here, take this.’ She prodded at my hand with something hard. I felt for it with my fingers and found myself holding the wedding ring.
‘How can I take what’s yours?’ I fumbled for her own hand and pressed the ring back into it.
‘Very well,’ she said and I felt her body jerk. Something landed in the leaves.
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘The ring gone. Thrown away. Now leave me.’
I listened while she strained with sobs that went on and on like some beast mourning for its young. Tears slid out of my eyes, and my throat was contracted to an ache. It was not what I had meant. Not the boy, not fleeing the house, not this – connection – with Caro. Not what I had meant.
When I laid my hand on her shoulder she only wept the more loudly. There was nothing to do but lie and wait for sleep. Zeb did not call again. I rolled away from her in my turn and lay facing in the opposite direction, listening to the wind-battered trees, thinking of the bridal bower I might have had, and had rent in pieces at that moment when I spitted Christopher Walshe. Caro should by rights be cradled in my arms and I in hers, each drunk on the other, or sleeping innocent as surfeited babes. Instead we lay back to back, the whole of the earth between us.
At last I slipped into a dream of shifting trees and paths. Something moved, and I woke in a terror, heart clanging; but all was still. I slept again, and Father came to me, saying that my life was in God’s hand, and I saw the hand with a little flame of fire in it, and was afraid. When next I woke, it was dawn, mist sieving through the trees and a pearly grey just sweetening the sky. There was a great coldness all round my belly, and feeling down there I found myself still unbuttoned. I sat up. The grass next to me was pressed flat, but Caro, Zeb and the horses were gone.
PART II
SIX
Prince Rupert
Some days later I emerged from the wood on the northern side, having torn every garment and twisted my shoes almost off my feet, but that weighed little against the inner torment that rent me. I would almost have been glad to be taken by Biggin and be done with it, yet the miserable cowardice of the flesh made me still listen for the sound of men and shrink down in the bushes if I heard any. On coming out of the trees and seeing the highway fair and open before me, I felt a deliverance of body if not of soul. The morning was soft and my road lay between fair green hills, so evenly balanced that I seemed walking in a picture.
Behold, said the Voice, earthly beauty. It is nothing but seeming, for to the uninstructed eye the world appears fruitful and sweet, yet in it is nothing but a pile of skulls, showing where others were lost as they went before.
‘I am lost,’ I answered, ‘and can never be found again.’
Not one of us merits salvation. We are too feeble and corrupt to attain to it or form the most childish conception thereof. Yet God shows His mercy in saving some, and His justice in condemning others. Father told this to Izzy and me, and spoke to us of the Elect: he tried to explain these things to Zeb also, more than once, but the boy was too young and foolish, and began to cry. The Elect are chosen from before the beginning of time, and are known by their inner light and godly conversation. Within me all was darkness, and neither my conversation nor my conduct godly. I must look, then, to have Hell as my portion. God cuts out our path, makes a groove in the clay with His finger, and we poor blind ants slide down into it.
I was not long out from the trees when I fell prey to savage thirst. Like a fool, I had not thought to drink deep from the stream before quitting it, I was come across no other water in the wood, and now I sweated much in the sun. Men are wont to think of our England as a soft green land, nourished at the breast of many rivers; yet I can prove by bitter experience that it is possible to walk for miles along the King’s highway and find no more than a puddle. On coming to the first village I dared not stop, lest word of our flight had reached there, and methought the wedding garments were like to become the mark by which all might know me and put me to death. There was a well, however, by the church, and winding up the bucket I put my head in it like a horse. Pulling out I saw a woman draw back from a high window as if she thought I would leap up to her.
Just after the last house in the village I found a sign which told me I could turn left onto the Devizes road. I had some crazed idea of walking to Bristol, now that the city was fallen. Any kind of work requiring strength was mine for the asking; in such a large place I might surely earn my bread in safety.
It came to me that if Caro and Zeb were not gone home they might also fix on Bristol as being a place where they could offload the rings and necklaces. Should I find her there, I would throw myself on my knees and beg pardon. I trudged along rehearsing a vow that all the rest of her life I should never lift a hand save in her defence. At other times I blamed her for leaving me so utterly destitute of the means to live: her loud honesty, I reflected bitterly, had not stopped her taking all the gold. Then I recalled their plight, a beautiful young woman in a low-cut gown, the only man who might protect her broken and feverish. Some kite would have the jewels away from them as easily as I had possessed myself of Walshe’s knife, and perhaps do evil on them as I had upon him.
But if they scaped – and here the Devil put it in my mind that they lay together at an inn. The bed was soft; she dressed his wounds and passed her hands over the rest of him. Again I saw the shirt slide up over his chest; she gazed, and gazed – she fastened the gold chains round his neck – at that I shook my head like a baited bull, to clear it, and felt her put the betrothal ring in my hand. I had searched for it on discovering their flight, but it was lost in the leaves. The memory of her flinging it away was a knife to me. I prayed that I might learn of their safety, might be delivered from my misery, might be revenged – I knew not what to pray for, and all for nothing anyway. God is not moved from His great designs by the prayers of the righteous, how much less does He care for the whinings of the damned!
The Devizes road was straight enough, but I made slow progress as my feet pained me sadly by now. After an hour of walking I took off my shoes and found a fat blister on the back of each toe, and my right heel split like a plum. Yet it was better than going barefoot and even limping along I could surely manage fourteen miles before dark. As I went along my conscience wrangled within me, and my sense, also turbulent, worked me to such a pitch that I passed along the road without seeing it, thus saying to myself:
She is my wife. Espoused de praesenti, and the – act – in the wood does consummate.
Aye, but spiritually it is clean different. Tears do not argue consent—
I AM HER HUSBAND.
Zeb will lie with her. She will be as Patience – she put her hands on him that way in the wood, they have made their game of me I perceive—
CHRIST let me think no more of this.
My thirst returned upon me most cruelly.
Once, when I was a growing boy, the three of us were allowed back to Mother’s cottage for a saint’s day, and while in the village I stole some walnuts from a neighbour’s tree. This neighbour was a bandy, red-haired old man, whom I think now had a liking to my mother but at the time I saw it not. I took the nuts for their green shiny coats and was scratching at these the better to smell them when he called out, ‘Jacob,’ and the name leapt in my breast. I was already a big lad and very strong from the field work. When he came up to me he was no taller than myself, but I was sore afraid of him. He took the nuts from me and cast them on the ground along with the little knife I was carrying.
‘Now get down,’ said he. I had been raised to bear punishment meekly, and I knelt thinking he would beat me.
‘No, lie down. On your back.’ And I did indeed lie down, hoping he would not kick me. Instead of which he placed a foot on either side of my body and then hunkered down until he was sitting astride me. He took up the walnuts and the knife.
‘See this boy?’ He peeled one of the things before my face. ‘Here, eat it.’ And he pushed the unripe nut into my mouth and pressed my teeth into it. The burning made me scream and some of the nut got down my throat. In my agony I threw him off and ran home, spitting and wailing.
‘Green fruit, boy!’ he shouted after me.
My tongue was black weeks after.
I cannot say why this suddenly came to memory except the thirst, now growing outrageous. Still I went on up the Devizes road, having no idea how far I might be from Beaurepair. Soon I made up my mind for it that I would beg at the next door for water if Cornish himself lodged there, but it was another hour at least before I came upon a group of straggly dwellings, not even an alehouse, and the whole place strangely quiet. An elderly man stood in one of the cottage gardens and stared at me as I staggered up to him.
‘Save you, Friend,’ I wheezed, ‘and where might I find some water?’
He looked me over and did not answer.
‘I faint from the road.’
The man spoke almost without moving his lips. ‘You’ll be a quartermaster.’
‘What?’
He gestured at my dirty wedding gear. ‘With the King’s forces.’
‘All I seek is water, for myself. Give it me and you’ll see me no more.’
He dawdled still. I observed that his body was bent over on one side by injury and the hands had twisted black nails: the hardness of long oppression.
‘I wear another’s clothing for all my own was stolen,’ I cried. ‘Don’t you hear my voice crack with the thirst? Be a Christian, Friend.’
The Christian moved away from the wall and pointed silently over his shoulder. I saw, and ran to, a well. The water tasted like sucking an iron spoon but I drank enough to split my sides, far beyond the prompting of need, for I had learnt what it was to thirst on the road.
‘Now get you gone,’ he said. ‘Those are your garments right enough; you’re big like all the rich. Tell them we’ve nothing to eat but the scurf off our heads.’
He must be crazed with want, I thought, to fancy that a quartermaster would come with neither horse nor weapon. I started along the street and looked about me for saner company, and a house where I might beg a little bread. But my surly friend was right: wherever I looked I saw folk draw back from the windows. There were no cows, nor no grain neither, in the fields, the fruit trees in the gardens were all picked bare or even lopped and not a single hen picked a living from the clay and stones of the road. I walked on, and on, and on.
We had suffered nothing of this at home: by some stroke of luck or stupidity they had never asked us for free quarter. I had heard of it, how the soldiers ate everything they could and stole or broke up the rest, nay, debauched the women too if the commander turned a blind eye. The King’s forces were the most dreaded for that their officers had precious little control over their men, but no army was welcome. Now I was seeing it for myself. At every house where I tried to beg I had the same answer in words angry or civil, and many seemed persuaded I was a spy, sent to ascertain what remained to be devoured. In the end I took to stealing by night, mostly the odd apple in a garden or griping crabs from the hedges. Breaking into the dairy at one place I found a cheese, and wept with joy. In this fashion I passed perhaps a week, and was lucky not to be put in the stocks.
But at last there were no more houses, and the torment began in earnest. The Devil lashed me onwards with ugly pictures of Caro and Zeb; he rode me hard, driving in the spurs. I had pain all along my breastbone and I thought of the words broken heart. My pace had slowed; I knew that beggars could walk for days without food, but I could not do as they did, being used to good feeding. What victuals I had picked up no longer sustained me. My path began to zigzag, and from time to time a knee buckled or the heel of my shoe turned aside. I was like one that has had a beating, my body tender, swerving, weakening as I went, and my throat parched. There was none on the road, and I sat for a moment to ease my blisters. When I made to get up I could not, and sprawled on the grass. It was sweet to dissolve into blackness and the earth. When daylight came back, I was talking to someone who asked me, Is Isaiah in gaol? I answered, Patience and Cornish might name him. They are most hardened against Zeb and me. If they take him it will be with Caro and they must hang him in gold. On my asking how Patience could leave Zeb for Cornish, he answered me singing, that Zebedee was cruel to her and this makes maids devils, maids devils, maids devils.
Aye, I said. And devils themselves grow crueller by the continual action of pain upon them. I opened my eyes and there was nobody with me.
The sun grew stronger on my face. Noon. My head ached as from strong drink and I wished only to remain lying and speak to none. A woman passed me with a little child, walking by on the other side. Afterwards I tried to rise, but getting upon my feet my body pitched forwards and I was again stretched in the dust. I rolled onto my back. The walnut was in my throat, burning the flesh black, but I could lose it by falling asleep. The old man stood over me, dropping something onto my face. I said to him, They are in bed at the inn together, but he is dead of the fever; I made to sit upright but my head was nailed to the ground. He forced another nut between my teeth, a hard one. It let something cold into my mouth.
‘Keep your feet on him,’ a man said. I could feel n
o feet on my body; was someone standing on me? There was a smell of smoke and I heard our horses run into the wood.
The sky was wet. I lay on my back and saw men move at the sides of my head before darkness closed over me again.
‘His eyes opened,’ said a gentle voice near me, and then, ‘drink.’ The hard thing was once more put between my lips and I turned my head away.
‘Leave him, Ferris.’
‘We cannot leave him like this.’ Warm fingers wiped my mouth and chin. I looked up to see a young man gazing perplexed into the distance, his profile lean and pensive, but full-lipped and long-nosed. He knelt at my side as if watching for someone, his hand still absently stroking my lips so that I breathed its scent of sweat and gunmetal.
I coughed against his palm, and he turned on me a pair of eyes as grey as my own. Pale hair hung thick on his collar; I saw he had shaved some days before. As I met his eyes they darkened, the pupils opening out like drops of black ink fallen into the grey, then he looked away, and his fingers slid from my face.
‘Let me drink,’ I creaked out.
‘Get on your side.’ He tugged at my arm, gritting his teeth as he tried to roll me over. ‘Up. Up on your elbow.’ When he had pulled me into position, I reached out my hand for the water, and caught a wry look from him.
‘You could have saved me a job. Here, and don’t spill, this is precious.’
There was mould on the sleeve of his jacket. I took the flask, swallowed about half, and handed it back.