by Maria McCann
Some of the men jestingly called him Mistress Lilly to his face, and must certainly have had a name for me too, but took care not to let me hear it. I was not so much under Ferris’s sway that I was grown soft. One quick step up to a man, my eyes staring into his, settled most arguments.
‘You frighten me, Rupert,’ said Ferris one day after watching me see off a man who had tried to steal my snapsack.
‘Have I ever picked a fight?’
‘Not of late. But when I see you like that, I ask myself, will he know when to stop?’
This again put me in mind of Izzy. ‘While you are there, I will always know when,’ I said.
‘You haven’t in the past?’
He waited. I turned away.
‘You should try to be friends with the men.’
I knew what he meant. Those walking near us did not care for me. More than once, coming back from the latrines or from drill I heard the tail end of some speech, perhaps my name, and then men’s eyes would shutter over as I approached and the group would break up. As for their prattle, I cared nothing for it. But on occasion they would come and talk to Ferris, and he, being kind, seemed to relish it, and then I felt them squeezing me out. I had reproached him therewith, and he said that a man needs friends on the battlefield, that one of these had pulled him out from under a corpse at Bristol and that they were his companions still.
From time to time Nathan would join us, but some coolness was grown up between Ferris and him. The boy would hang about, seeming not to know what he should do, and though he spoke to me always with courtesy, I more than once found his glittering eyes fixed on mine as if I had done him some hurt. I could not recall any insult offered to him, and since his talk was wearisome, I was glad when he wandered away.
Not long after the time when Ferris said I should make me some friends, we were marching together and he asked me had I family living. That was a question I dreaded. He had once started on this tack before, but one of those fools broke in on us – the only time I was glad. Afterwards, I had chewed over my story, and now it was needed I had it at my tongue’s end.
‘I know not if my brothers are dead or alive,’ I said. ‘One of them I last saw at our Master’s place in the country. He was wrongly suspected for…something, and I had to go without knowing what became of him.’
Ferris raised his eyebrows at me and I felt I might as well have confessed. ‘And the other?’
‘Wounded, the last time I saw him. Not by me. He had a fever. I lost him in a wood and when I came out of it you found me on the road.’
His eyes rested on me, grave, considering. ‘You left home in a great hurry, it seems.’
‘Aye.’
We walked on a few yards. I knew he was waiting for more, but when he spoke it was to ask, ‘Are they like you, these brothers?’
‘In their persons? Not nearly so tall. But we are all dark-skinned. Zebedee – he’s the youngest – is the properest man you ever saw, gentry not excepted. Everyone that sees him, well, women…’ I paused.
‘A black man is a jewel in a lady’s eye, eh? And the other?’
‘Isaiah is the eldest, the one before me. He is weak of body and looks older than his years. But he does as much work as most.’
Ferris nodded. ‘What I meant was, are they troubled in soul like you?’
‘I would say, they have no cause.’ It was the nearest I could get to a confession.
‘If only you could find out what became of them,’ he mused.
We walked on in silence. I felt his goodwill towards me. Perhaps one day I would be able to tell him everything, even that I was that detested being, a ravisher. I knew Ferris would not admit that her being my wife changed the case. He had already expressed himself more than once on this subject, and said no man might force a woman, no not his wife, for that it took away her bodily dignity. Whenever he talked of it he clenched his fists and jaw, and I at first concluded he must have witnessed many instances among the soldiery; yet when I asked him he said it was a thing, thank God, that he had never seen for himself.
‘We may pass near your Master’s house,’ he suddenly cried. ‘Who knows, they may demand free quarter there.’
I had told Ferris where Beaurepair lay, and he had frighted me most cruelly by letting me know that the army was headed back in that direction.
‘I can never go back.’
‘You have a new name, Prince Rupert, a new round head and a beard coming.’
‘I can’t disguise my height.’
‘You’re not the only tall man in England. I’ll shave your head for you the night before.’
‘Christ preserve me.’ I felt my guts coiling at the idea of entering the grounds.
Ferris said soothingly, ‘Most likely they’ll quarter us elsewhere.’ I thought of Mister Biggin’s household, which was worse still. He went on, ‘That means sending Fat Tommy over at night to find out.’ Fat Tommy was a living skeleton who could walk as fast as some people could run. ‘He can go as a beggar; you’ll give him a day’s bread and beer.’
‘This is building castles in Spain.’
‘What else should a man do on march? Come, to whom shall we send him?’
‘Zeb’s great friend was Peter. A manservant.’
‘And your sir-name?’
‘Cullen. My brothers, Isaiah and Zebedee.’ It was a knell on my tongue. ‘And—’
‘Yes?’
‘Nothing.’ I could not unpack the stinking wound that was Caro, not yet. ‘I need to know what the master did to Izzy, and whether they caught them—’
‘Them? You said Isaiah was left at home?’
‘Him, I mean. Zeb. Will Tommy remember all this?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Ferris. He fixed me with his eyes. ‘Tommy’s story will be as good as your own.’
There was a little coolness in him after this speech, but we got over it as we got over many awkward moments. He did not like my trying to deceive him, but he could also see that I was in travail with myself. As we drew near my own country I grew almost possessed: I had difficulty breathing, my head ached, and the ration, poor and plain as it was, would not lie quiet in my belly. At last, as the sun was sinking, I recognised a mound known to the folk around Beaurepair as Mulberry Hill. It was on Walshe’s land. We had been approaching for some time before I knew the place, for I had only once before seen it from that side. The recognition hit as hard as seeing the gallows, with the noose knotted up for me and dangling ready.
‘What ails you, Rupe?’ someone called.
I was reeling as if drunk.
‘Devil’s in him,’ came a voice from behind.
‘Got the staggers,’ Ferris said over his shoulder. After a few minutes he whispered to me, ‘Well?’
‘That hill. One lives there who hates me, who’d burn me alive.’
‘Burn you alive? Burn?’ He stared at me.
‘Burn, hang – anything cruel.’
‘Ah,’ Ferris murmured. ‘Courage, he won’t get the chance. Who is this mighty hater?’
‘A man – there’s a woman too.’
‘Do they have names?’
I was silent. We trudged onwards, and I managed to straighten up.
‘I’ll shave your head tonight,’ he said after a while.
‘Thank you.’ I wanted badly that he should understand me, at least a little, and went on, ‘Do you remember saying that some men warm themselves at others’ sins?’
‘No.’
‘Well—’ I had made an ill start, but as usual could not leave it alone. ‘It was you told me about them. And I find there are others, who may be soiled and hurt by another’s sins. I cannot always speak freely of myself to you. I would not infect you.’
‘O, you fear my emulation? You think you’re the first sinner I have met with?’ He laughed. ‘I do recall now our talk of men and sins. You were asking me about Naseby-Fight! Do you not think that might have infected me?’
‘Yes of course, you have seen – things – but my ow
n acts give me bad dreams. I would not give such dreams to you.’
‘I’ve plenty of my own.’
‘You said you were afraid of me sometimes.’
‘Mostly when you talk like this. Confess, have you burnt a village in their beds?’
I rolled my eyes at him.
‘Well, that’s the way you get me thinking. You suffer from pride, Rupert. I wager you think God can’t forgive you.’
‘I did think so. But not now he has sent me such a friend.’
This pacified him somewhat. It was getting dark, and soon we struck camp. He was as good as his word, heating a bowl of water over the fire and shaving my head with surprising deftness, his hand firm on the back of my neck. I watched his face and saw there absolute concentration,the absorption of a craftsman, as he passed the razor over my skin. The blade being coarse, he could not help nicking me in places, and each time he did so he frowned.
‘You would make a good barber,’ I said when he was done, fingering my shorn scalp.
The firelight showed me that he was smiling, whether at my gratitude or at my strange new looks I could not tell.
‘This puts me in mind of old times,’ I went on. ‘The servants out on a fine evening and the work mostly done. Sitting with my brothers. We were reading pamphlets,’ and despite everything I warmed at the memory. ‘About God’s commonwealth in England. Zeb and Peter had tobacco and we took it in turns to read aloud. We would go down behind the stables and hide from the steward, and the maidservants would come too, if they could. I affected one of them, Caroline.’ I hoped that in the darkness he would not see how her name made me wince.
‘What were your pamphlets?’ Ferris asked eagerly. ‘Not stuff your master would like?’
‘Not a whit! We had All Men Brothers and Of Kingly Power and Its Putting Down and some others, bits and pieces. I was rapt with them.’
‘Could you all read?’
‘My father fee’d a tutor for us three.’
My friend looked his surprise at me.
‘We were not always servants,’ I said. ‘Another time I’ll tell you how that was. Our Izzy taught Caro her letters when she was a child.’
It came back to me with sweetness and pain, my brother bending over her, pointing out a line in the hornbook. He had been her champion and favourite all through childhood; his reward had been self-denial and sacrifice, which I had at last trampled under my feet. He would never call his precious one ‘sister’, kiss her innocently at Christmas or see her happy with his brother’s babe in her arms. Somewhere, if not dead – no, that was not possible, God would not be so cruel – they must each be wondering what was become of me.
Ferris was speaking.
‘I am sorry?’ I said.
‘In London. I wrote just such pamphlets, printed them too.’
‘What, those same ones!’ I wrenched my thoughts away from Izzy and Caro.
‘No. But very like. I kept company with men of ideas, not useless projects but all that might bring Adam out of bondage. Our chief design was that the commons, that fought the war and bore the free quarter, might not be ridden over by little kings at home, for then where was the use of having fought at all?’
I thought of Sir Bastard and nodded.
‘Now is the time,’ he went on, ‘when we might do just such a thing. These poor people that starve at the door of Dives, that cannot take a turf of the common ground and dig on it while all the game and suchlike is shut up in Milord’s park – now is their day. The country is up in arms, and the work will be brought about!’ He clapped me on the shoulder, laughing, and I remarked that thus animated, the fire shining full in his face, he was comely. I smiled back and we regarded one another an instant.
‘Are you married, Rupert?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ I answered, surprised into truth.
‘I had a wife, Joanna. She helped me with the pamphlets.’
‘You’re a widower?’
‘God rest her soul. She couldn’t write, but she helped bind the pages. I was teaching her to read, from the Bible. I sometimes wish she were here, but what a place for a woman.’
‘Perhaps she is with you in spirit.’
‘Sometimes – as just now – I feel suddenly persuaded all will be well. That may be Joanna acting upon me. We were merry together; we liked each other well.’
‘How long were you married?’
‘Not long. She was but sixteen when she died. She would have been brought to bed about now.’ His voice thickened. ‘One day she was sick and fell to bleeding, the next the child was born dead. She never got out of bed after that, grew weaker every day. The curse upon Eve, the doctor said, agony of childbed. They see so many dead that way.’
I wondered whether Caro had fled the wood with my child within her. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘a man must have issue.’
‘The child was not mine.’
I put my fingers into my mouth for shock and wondered if I had understood aright. He was breathing fast. I looked about to be sure no one else could hear him. The rest of the men were roaring at some jest.
‘It was not mine,’ he repeated. ‘I knew of it, she was in her fourth month when we were contracted.’
‘She had been widowed?’
‘Forced.’
I could scarce believe what I heard. ‘Why didn’t they marry her to the man that did it?’
‘He was already married.’
‘Why didn’t her father act against him?’
Ferris laughed savagely. ‘Why indeed? My manservant – he was courting their maid – dropped a few hints in my ears. The mother was long past beauty and troubled by a sickness of the womb. The father was a man of strong lusts – once word got out, ‘twas no matter for her dowry. None would bite.’
‘None but you?’ Was it possible that he had been so pressed for money as that?
Ferris answered, ‘I should have said, no worthy man would bite: there was one who offered, one who despised her. In the end I took her without the dowry.’
‘Why, when the other would certainly have had it?’
‘Her father disliked my butting in, and would else have concluded the thing. So I made love to his purse; it was either that, or deliver up Joanna to the other man.’
‘Was there liking between her and you?’
‘O yes.’ His voice was grown soft. ‘I had already thought of asking for her, before all this came about.’
‘But you could not be expected to give a name—’
Ferris ignored me. ‘They had her locked up. Every day I saw her staring at me from the window opposite. Once she looked at me with such misery that I opened the casement to talk to her, but she ran into the back of the room.’
‘Afraid of you.’
He nodded. ‘That cut my heart. I began to consider, whether husband rightly meant owner, or protector and friend. I had a thousand uses for the dowry, and refusing it meant the old man profited by his wickedness. But it was the only way.’
‘You must have brought contempt on yourself as a wittol,’ I whispered.
‘A wittol’s wife is his property, only a property he rents out,’ he hissed back. ‘This eternal curse of property! We own our brethren – our wives too are chattels—’
‘You would practise community of wives?’ I asked, shocked to think Ferris might be the author of that very pamphlet over which I had quarrelled with Walshe.
‘You miss my meaning entirely! This selling the girl off was – was a second rape, and no remedy for the first. Why are good people so slow to see this? Many of my friends, calling themselves Christians, urged me to stand aside and do nothing.’ He was agitated. I patted his arm and he went on, ‘It would have come right. On our wedding night she put her arms round my neck and wept. I wept also, and told her that I would never reproach her with the child. I loved her, and what the godless and the heartless said was nothing to me.’
He had turned his face aside; I heard him snuffling and struggling for breath.
‘And the
n,’ he forced out, ‘she died, and her father was safe. He never came to see her on her deathbed, or me afterwards. I buried her and the baby – it was a girl – sold up, left the money with my aunt, and joined the army.’
On his cheek were tears, which I wanted to dry but dared not touch. I held his hand, feeble and hopeless. I was quite unable to speak. How might a man like me comfort one like him? He had said simply that he showed mercy where he could, but excepting mere brute strength, he was beyond me in every way.
We sat together in silence as the fire burnt down and I thanked God inwardly for showing me what a Christian might be who, like the apostle Paul, considered Charity as the chiefest virtue. I vowed that if I ever had the chance I would atone to my wife and brothers, and I thought how both Izzy and Ferris, neither of them fighting men, had yet endured much to protect those they loved – but that way lay great pain for me, and I got off it. We turned in for the night and after a while I heard Ferris’s breathing light and rapid. He was perhaps with his Joanna, for he laughed once or twice in his sleep and it was such a joyous laugh as I had never heard from Ferris the soldier. Sleepless, I watched the fire. When the ardour of my prayer had cooled, I found in my breast a sneaking wish that I had stopped his talk. After such an outpouring I could never, never tell him what had passed between myself and my wife, and sooner or later he would ask.
The next day things went on as usual for the other men. Nathan prattled of politics while I suffered an agony of terror as we drew nearer and nearer to our house.
‘Courage,’ said Ferris. ‘None would recognise you.’
‘I have others to fear for. What if the news be bad?’
At last the hills parted, as in some evil vision, to discover Beaurepair. A cold hand griped my innards as I looked down upon the buildings. They were most of them well back from the road in low sheltered land, and we were able to survey them first from the side and then from the front as we skirted the walls of the park. We crossed in front of the lodge. Behind the house I could see the gate (now closed) where I had ridden out behind Zeb and Caro, with the field and wood beyond. I wondered if the gate-keeper had lost his place. There was my old chamber window, and a man, perhaps Godfrey, slowly crossing the herb garden.