by Maria McCann
Becs folded up her letter, laid it on the table and turned to the stone jar of ale. I saw her jaw set as she tilted it to get a hold.
‘Let me take that,’ I said. She let it rock upright and went immediately, without thanking me, to get the drinking vessels from the shelf.
‘Are we still friends?’ I asked.
‘You have no need of me,’ Becs replied.
‘Nor you of me, I guess. But may I not help anyway?’
She ignored this and went out of the room with the cups. I followed with the jar.
When I entered the room Mistress Walker’s eyes darted towards me; she wasted no time on the girl. Ferris seemed ill at ease. My arms trembled as I set the ale down on the table.
‘Could you bring up some of those little pies you made?’ Ferris asked Becs. She curtsied demurely and turned to go.
‘Mistress Walker has just been telling me—’ he began, when there was a knock at the door below. Becs ran down stairs. We all waited in an awkward silence, lapped in smiles, until the upper door opened to admit a gentle-looking young man, hatless and dressed in sober black.
‘God give you good day, Masters! I trust this is the right place? My name is Wisdom Hathersage. Good day, Madam.’ I wondered what was become of his hat.
‘I am Christopher Ferris, this is Mistress Walker and this my friend Jacob Cullen,’ my friend rattled off. We all made a leg; I wondered how many times we would go through the same thing. Mistress Walker seemed rather taken with Hathersage, whose features were delicate. He had a brown skin and very dark eyes, almost not English. Put Zeb and himself side by side and you would see a great difference, my brother being altogether superior in beauty and vigour, but describe them both to another party and he would conclude they were much the same.
‘Tell me, Mister Hathersage, was it difficult for you to come here?’ I asked, remembering what he had written.
‘My master is in poor health,’ he answered. ‘If I wish to leave the house for any length of time he needs another man in, and that requires notice.’
‘Could not a maidservant help?’
‘He falls. The maid is not strong enough to lift him.’
‘Ah,’ said Ferris.
‘But you can leave him on the Sabbath?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I am at liberty for church or other godly pursuits, because his sisters come on that day. Between them they manage.’
‘Poor, poor gentleman!’ sighed Eunice Walker. ‘Has he been afflicted since birth?’
‘Why, no, Madam. He was cut in the head during the war, and has never been the same since.’
‘Is he much deformed?’ She shuddered fleshily.
‘No.’ He turned to Ferris. ‘I am not sure, Sir, what you are seeking in those who are to live alongside you.’
Ferris hesitated. ‘We must mostly take one another for better for worse. But there’s no use starting unless all will do heavy work.’
‘I know something of gardening,’ offered Hathersage.
Ferris began, ‘And can you—’ but was interrupted by the arrival of three persons together, the Domremys and Christian Keats, and we had the round of introductions to go through again. I poured ale for everyone.
Catherine and Susannah were fine-looking, the first young and the second not yet old. They were as alike as sisters, the late Mister Domremy having, after the fashion of many men, married a woman resembling those of his own family. They had the clear unpocked skins of milkmaids everywhere, and the hair which dropped forwards out of their white caps (which were laundered very fresh) had a reddish sheen to it. Eunice Walker studied them for half a minute before going to stand close by Keats.
These younger women were excited at the thought of our venture, and it seemed to me that, like Ferris, they were much taken with fantastical notions. The late Mister Domremy had been a great lover of harewitted pamphlets, deeming them wholesome even for women’s light brains. Now Catherine and Susannah held forth freely on their ideas, and perhaps showed more sense than some of the men, for they could undoubtedly do useful work. They spoke in particular of a new receipt they had discovered for a cheese which matured early and made excellent eating, and of the use of simples to cure diseases of the udder. An innocent good humour shone from them – their enthusiasm was not of the sour-faced kind – and I thought that women so sanguine and practical would be able to turn their hands to most things.
Keats, the widower, was a very different type of person, and appeared to be suffering from melancholy. Like Hathersage, he was of a brownish complexion, but in his case the skin was a sickly yellow and gave him a liverish look. There were deep sags beneath his eyes, yet to judge by his coal-black curls he was, or should have been, in the prime of manhood. He turned his drooping countenance shyly, but not unkindly, upon the Domremys as if wondering how anyone could be happy in this vale of tears. When he told me that his youngest child was but three months old I understood him better.
‘Your wife departed this life three months ago?’ I asked.
‘Two. She never recovered from her last lying-in. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’
‘Amen,’ said I.
Keats bowed his head. ‘God be praised in all things. He has seen fit to try me in the furnace of affliction.’
I ventured to think Ferris would find him dispiriting company: I had never yet heard my friend thankful for the spiritual benefits of Joanna’s death. But, I reminded myself, this man’s bereavement was very new, and Ferris no longer hot and bleeding.
All this time Mistress Walker was prowling near so as not to miss a word, and she now began speaking to Keats of the great sorrow she had felt when her own dear husband, a veritable Saint, had passed away of the fever. As she spoke she drew nearer to Keats, edging between him and myself, until she at last cut me out altogether. He did not seem sorry, so I left him to her consolations.
More folk arrived: Jonathan and Hepsibah Tunstall, the woman carrying their boy. The child was a roguish little thing, and once set down he rolled about the floor, crowing and unfastening the company’s shoes, which caused much laughter. The parents were both strongly built, clearly used to hard work: they looked much as country servants do, if their food be good. Ferris caught my eye and I could see we were of one mind.
‘Why would you leave your employ?’ I asked of these two, for they had spoken of their master as being a decent man.
‘London is not for us,’ the husband answered. ‘The Master came into a house and business here, but we had rather be in the old place. Without offence, Mister Cullen, the filth oppresses us. We would rather dig and sow.’
I thought how it had oppressed me also, at first; and yet there were most precious pleasures to set against the stinks. I guessed the Tunstalls must be like those plants that, once moved from their first plot, never thrive: no matter how starved the soil, it is what they know.
Ferris asked, ‘Could you not return where you were, and seek a place?’
Surprised, Jonathan returned, ‘That were to throw ourselves on the parish,’ and I thought how poorly my friend, for all his goodness, understood a servant’s life. ‘Besides,’ the man went on, ‘if we are to do farm work, we may as well work for ourselves. Who knows, if things go right, Parliament may grant us the land.’
This answer pleased Ferris, for it was exactly to his own tune. I longed to ask him why he thought Parliament should concern itself with us at all, but could not put the question in company.
There were also Jack and Dorothy Wilkinson, these two somewhat older than the Domremys and the woman pretty far gone in pregnancy. For all that, she was evidently the keener of the two; when I remarked how the husband kept shaking his head and saying, ‘I know not, I know not, best let see,’ etc., I saw how it was that their letter was come from the wife, and felt that they would not join us in the end, or would not stay, for his heart was not in it. But they were pleasant enough, and the meeting might tip him one way or the other. They stood a little apart from the rest, examining t
he room and the company and conversing together in low voices except when addressed by some other person.
Alice Cutts came up and at once showed herself too old and feeble to do the work. Ferris spoke with the utmost gentleness to her, showing her what manner of hardship she must undergo, and made her take a pie and some ale before she departed.
The next to appear were Fleming and Botts, and by ill luck these two not only arrived together but knew and disliked one another. Fleming might be twenty, and affected as much dash as was possible for one neither a Cavalier, nor rich: a stained jacket, most likely some man’s cast-off, with brocade down the front, and a pair of bucket boots. He swept off an elaborately trimmed hat to reveal pale curls which he kept pushing back from his brow with a languid hand. The effect was somewhat spoilt by the smell of horses which clung about him and reminded me of Harry Beste. His letter had said he knew something of smithing, but he looked too frail to beat out metal. I asked him could he shoe a beast. He replied that he should think he could, for he was experienced in most things pertaining to horses.
‘I drive the coach to Durham and back,’ he told me.
‘Not all in one go,’ put in Botts, whose flat voice grated.
‘No.’ Fleming was evidently peeved at admitting it. ‘I take some of the stages.’
‘How many days from London to Durham?’ asked Ferris, curious.
‘Four days, more. No time is guaranteed.’
‘That’s a fearful long journey,’ put in Keats.
‘Near four hundred miles.’
If Fleming could work in metal he was valuable. But I could not see this man trenching, or sleeping in a ditch with his fine feathered hat over his face. What a fool I had been to lose us Harry.
Fleming and Botts could have been exhibited as examples of natural antipathy. All the time that Botts was standing near me I could catch that peculiar sweetish whiff which exhales from red-haired people. He was red altogether: red hair, jowls adorned with spreading scarlet grog-blossoms and inflamed blue eyes, the whites of which appeared to be bleeding. He had the build of a barrel. His unfortunate clothes strained to hold in the flesh pouring from the neck and sleeves of his jacket, swelling into a great bulbous head and hands meaty as pig’s trotters.
‘You assisted in surgery on the battlefield?’ asked Ferris, rigid in face and body. I judged him to be gripped by as violent a disgust as my own.
‘Aye. Seen a few sights there—!’ He downed the ale in one gulp and held out the vessel to me. I filled it, wondering did he take me for a servant: Ferris had introduced me as his friend not five minutes before.
‘Man with the whole of his face shot off, nothing left but shreds. In the end we found a hole in it – the throat’
I shivered at his in the end, wondering how long those clumsy paws had prodded and probed.
Botts went on, ‘All I could do was pour wine down. We marched the next day.’ He shook his head, as if to say it was a bad business, yet his face gleamed. ‘I’ve seen men cut in pieces, and some half burnt to death – there’s this smell—’
‘I beg of you, no more,’ said Ferris, whose upper lip was sweating.
‘Ah well, that’s it with you civilians,’ said Botts contemptuously.
‘Civilians? I was at Naseby and Basing-House.’
‘Then you’ll know I speak nothing but the plain truth. You’ll have seen it.’
‘It is because I’ve seen it—’ my friend turned away, understanding that here was a man devoid of imagination, and consequently incapable of mercy. Botts seemed not at all offended, and made his way over to the Domremys, who backed off a little as he approached.
‘I wouldn’t let him lay hand on a dog,’ Ferris whispered to me. ‘Who’s missing? Apart from Jane Seabright.’
‘The one with the thumb?’
‘With no thumb. Nathaniel Buckler.’
He called the guests to order and requested everyone to sit round the table. There was much scraping of chairs. I observed that Mistress Walker had attached herself to Keats, and that none wished to sit by Botts. Hathersage interposed himself between that gentleman and the dairymaids, for which I liked him the better, for I was sure he relished Botts no more than I did myself. Hepsibah Tunstall was on my right, and Ferris on my left. On Ferris’s left was Jack Wilkinson, staring anxiously at my friend as if afraid he might be Beelzebub in disguise. His wife’s eyes roamed about the table, noting the disposition of the company and the alliances which had formed in this short space of time.
Ferris stood. ‘Well, friends,’ he began, ‘not all of us are here present, but it seems best to proceed. Please to take one of these pamphlets,’ he laid his hand on a pile of our best efforts, ‘and read to see if we are at least in some sort of agreement. Will that suit?’
Keats put up his hand. ‘It behoves us to start so great an undertaking with a prayer.’
Hathersage and the Domremys nodded.
‘You do right to remind me’ said Ferris smoothly. ‘Be so kind as to lead us, Mister Keats.’
The tailor stumbled through a lengthy plea for mercy, which I was sure must irritate Ferris, and just as we seemed got to the end he announced time for each of us here to search his heart and put out any worldly or unclean thought. The result of this pious wish, for me, was that the prayer time was filled with unclean thoughts, and again I wondered how we could possibly live with these people, doing as we did.
At last we were done praying. I handed each guest a pamphlet, and, since some of the company were unlettered, Ferris read The Rules of the Community aloud.
1 Every man to be considered as equal to every other man, women not excepted: none is to be considered the servant or inferior of another unless by some wrong or shameful action he do forfeit his freedom, and even in that case he must first be given warning and only deprived of freedom after repeated warnings and for a limited time, unless the act that he has committed be so grave (such as rapine or murder) as to render him a danger unto others.
2 All property to be held in common, including Harvest, which is to be kept in common storehouses.
3 Women to be free to choose their husbands, as men to choose their wives. None, man or woman, to be forced into an unwished marriage, and in place of dowries the common storehouse.
Ferris was still looking after his Joanna.
4 Children being the jewels of a community, all must keep them safe.
5 No force to be used in our commonwealth. Nor should violence be offered to oppressors, for to strike back is to sink to their level, and at worst will but furnish them with a pretence that they must needs defend themselves; under which they will do us greater injury.
‘And if they be sent by the landlord,’ added Ferris, ‘why, we know which way that battle will go. Best not engage.’ He laid down the paper. ‘This is rough, and not as well expressed as it might be. More follows, but shall we talk over this first part now?’
They bade him read it again. All the men looked happy at the first rule, glad to be the equals of their one-time betters, until they understood that they were also to lose their inferiors, and more especially the women.
‘The Bible says woman is subject unto man,’ said Jeremiah.
‘Their bodies are frail because their minds are likewise,’ said Botts. ‘Women lack full reason and have only a shallow imitative cunning.’
‘My aunt is as clever as anyone here,’ Ferris said. ‘Has an ox more wit than a man, only because it is bigger and heavier?’
Jeremiah frowned. ‘Given freedom, they may run wild.’
‘Begging your pardons, I’ve as much liberty now as I’d have digging the land,’ put in Susannah Domremy. ‘Catherine and I earn our own bread and are as chaste as married women – nay, chaster than many.’
Fleming sniggered.
‘This will be a life of hardship, not dissipation,’ Ferris said. ‘There will scarce be time for running wild. What is more, if our sisters wish to embrace that life, and we oppose them, it may be that we oppose a
working of the spirit. Shall we give direction to the Lord God where He must pour His Grace?’
This, for the time being, settled the matter. I admired Ferris’s adroitness.
‘Shall we have tobacco?’ asked Fleming.
‘I had not thought to forbid anything,’ Ferris answered. ‘But there will be little opportunity to obtain it. Our time shall be spent working, not sitting about.’
‘What about strong drink?’ asked Tunstall.
Keats glanced at him nervously. ‘Do you fear intemperance and disorder?’
‘Where wine, Hollands and suchlike are permitted there will be drinking to excess,’ Tunstall said. ‘I had rather we did not allow them.’
‘Wine is a useful medicine,’ put in Susannah Domremy.
‘Is there anyone here,’ asked Ferris, ‘who holds wine an absolute necessity of life?’
No hands were raised.
‘Then we are unlikely to quarrel,’ he concluded. ‘We can settle on wine, or no wine, later.’
I smiled, thinking that the person most likely to feel pinched for lack of wine was Ferris himself.
My friend now produced a clean sheet of paper and asked the company to say when they could come away and begin digging, and what they could bring into the community. Hathersage promised ten pounds and some seeds from his master’s kitchen garden, the Domremys a milch-cow, in calf, and some four or five large cheeses. The Tunstalls thought they could persuade their master, who was kind, to give them some turving and drainage spades, hoes and flails packed up by accident and still kept at home but never used since the family came to live in London. Fleming suggested a small anvil and hammers, Botts his surgical instruments (I shuddered) and materia medica. In addition, everyone was to bring clothing and bedding for themselves and any extra that they could spare. Eunice Walker said she was unsure what she could contribute, and would think about it. I was convinced we would not see her again. Keats promised to bring all the stuffs he could fetch away, and particularly the heavier ones such as wool for cloaks and canvas for tents. The Wilkinsons were silent, considering.