As Meat Loves Salt

by Maria McCann

  ‘You were married, were you not?’ I asked her.

  ‘You know it.’

  ‘I have heard that women can accomplish things by wiles.’

  ‘Is this a man’s wile? If so, it is threadbare. Out with it, what is it you want?’

  ‘Susannah. How would you get him home?’

  ‘Did I not ask you that?’

  We finished up our breakfast in silence, then took our forks and rakes into the field, to turn the hay. About an hour later, Ferris came back to us, with a face so cold and pale he seemed still to be walking in the night mist. Susannah prevailed on him to rest a little before he took up work. The rest of the colonists hastened to turn as much as we might before the sun grew too hot.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Things Called By Their Right Names

  It was as well, in the end, that we had the hay to deal with, for in raking, cocking, throwing together and the rest, we brazened out some part of our fortnight. I gave myself up to the work, and when I laid down my head to sleep the haycocks at once arose behind my eyelids.

  But our labours could not blot out Sir George: the women wept for the slightest thing, and there were bickerings each day. Then, at the end of the two weeks, nothing having happened, a surge of joy burst out in our society. Hathersage praised the Lord at length. Our secret friend was evidently well informed, and I hoped he might find some way to warn us when the attack came – for that it would come, I never doubted.

  The crop dried sweet and wholesome in the sun.

  ‘God smiles on us,’ sang out Hathersage. I checked that Ferris was out of earshot before asking him had he ever heard how the Devil sets snares for men, baiting them with good fortune. The light died in his face. He had not dared speak to Ferris about staying on, yet my heart had ever since been violently hardened against him, and we scarce exchanged a civil word. But I encountered with him in dreams. One night I lay between Hathersage and Catherine, and covered them both; they were my prisoners of war, and I was rough with them, as conquerors are. Waking, I was apprehensive lest I should have called out and been heard.

  The next day I considered this dream, knowing full well what had brought it on. Ferris would not go to the wood with me, so that I was starved for him. Though I pleaded and even threatened, still he kept off. Once or twice I woke to hear him groaning in a nightmare, but could give no comfort. I knew that I would find the door of his hut closed against me, and I stayed where I was.

  ‘I sleep ill since the horsemen came,’ was all the explanation I could win from him. But after a week or so, I heard no more cries at night, his eyes were no longer haggard and he seemed more sanguine, even hopeful of a letter from Sir Timothy. Still he denied me. Daily one of our number walked to the inn in search of the letter; daily I besieged my lover, and was repulsed. But I could be cunning. The day after my dream, I lay in wait for Ferris and entered his hut just as Jonathan was coming out, closing the door behind me.

  He raised his eyebrows as if to say, This trick will not serve.

  ‘What ails you?’ said I. ‘Why do you treat me—’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. I am worried.’

  ‘It is ten days,’ I pleaded in a whisper.

  He regarded the floor, evidently ill at ease.

  ‘Have you something wrong – there?’ I went on. ‘Some malady—’

  ‘No, there I’m well enough.’

  I put my arms round him and crushed him into me. ‘Kiss me.’

  He turned his head away. I cupped his face in my hands and put my mouth to his, feeling him passive, obedient, as if getting it over with. It was what I had done to Becs, and now I tasted the full bitterness of it.

  I tugged on his hair, and none too gently. ‘Beware, lest I bite.’

  He made no answer. I paused, humiliated, then realised he was tensed, holding his body off from mine. Seeing my face Ferris immediately made to pull away, but I grasped him by the hips and held him tightly to me. It was as I thought: his blood was up. I wriggled against him.

  ‘Jacob, don’t!’ he hissed into my neck.

  Burning, I let him go. ‘All right, into the wood.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want me.’

  He was silent. I thought, this is not a thing to resolve by talk, or not this kind of talk. I kissed him again, gently prising open his lips to lick within, my hands stroking him under his shirt, keeping him close and not able to escape the taste or feel of me, until at last I felt myself kissed in earnest. When I pulled away from him he strained after my mouth. I tongued his ear, bit it, whispered into it a lover’s name I only used when riding him and so far gone that my flesh was fused into his. He pressed tightly into the hand that I slid down his breeches; I could feel his ribs rise and fall.

  ‘Shall it be here or in the wood?’ I whispered.

  He moaned, ‘The wood.’

  But it was too late for the wood. His surrender was complete.

  After that he did not try to keep me off any more. His brief chastity remained a puzzle, one he would not speak of, but having conquered I was content. However, I made it my special study to please him, to make him feel in every bone the impossibility of doing without me. My cunning was rewarded: Ferris grew more amorous, and I felt myself safe. In the first heat of our reunion we worked side by side, so bound up in one another that every look between us was a promise. God knows what the rest saw or did not see. We ourselves were blinded to what was going on before our eyes, and it was with a shock that I glanced up one afternoon from the furrow and saw, at the end of the field, Hathersage and Catherine, locked in an embrace.

  ‘How will they do?’ Ferris’s question was whispered, his smile lit by amusement; sitting by the fire after the evening meal, we watched the new lovers play with one another’s fingers. ‘Not in the wood, surely.’ He stared at them, fascinated. ‘What say you? A betrothal?’

  ‘You’re jealous,’ I said, feeling myself heart-happy and for once, proof against all jealousy, for we planned a walk in the fields that night.

  ‘I’m not the one who dreamt of lying between them,’ Ferris replied.

  ‘I should never have told you. Now you’ll be teasing—’

  ‘Shush, here’s news.’

  Susannah was approaching. She sat down beside me, her face perplexed.

  ‘Is there to be a betrothal, then?’ I asked, tipping my head in the direction of the turtle-doves.

  ‘Who knows?’ She pulled up bits of dead grass between finger and thumb. ‘If ‘twere hanging on my say-so, there’d be none.’

  Ferris stretched out, handsome in the firelight. Since he was come back to me, he had eaten more, slept better, and it showed. ‘I thought you liked him, Sister?’

  ‘Setting aside the man, this isn’t the time for betrothals, what with the trouble coming to us. And then to make young bones…! Elizabeth Beste took her babes off to safety. She’d a sight more sense than poor Catherine.’

  ‘Elizabeth wasn’t young and new in love,’ I commented. ‘If Catherine asks, will you witness it?’

  ‘O Lord! I pray she won’t ask me just yet. Would you?’

  ‘Not if you don’t wish it,’ I said, delighted at a chance to spite Hathersage.

  ‘They won’t ask Jacob or me,’ Ferris cut in with certainty. ‘It will be you, Susannah, then the Tunstalls.’

  ‘I tried to reason with her,’ Susannah sighed. ‘She said I’d had my chance and she would have hers. I told her my chance lasted just a year, and I was lucky to have no little one clinging round my neck; I asked had she ever thought on that. But it’s ill work preaching to the deaf.’

  ‘They will never leave, now.’ I watched as they got up and walked hand in hand to the wood, pacing in the dusk along the path which bordered it. As Ferris had predicted, they did not go in.

  We had almost stopped hoping for a letter from Sir Timothy Heys. Either he was not in London, and our friend had been misinformed, or he cared nothing for the plight of a few ragged diggers, having more urgent business in to
wn. Perhaps he had made it up with Sir George Byars. That idea infected me with dread. We might have entrusted ourselves to an enemy who amused himself, letting us wait, and yearn, and wait. The air which hung over our fields seemed charged with thunder; it was worse since the haystack was built, a standing provocation to any of his servants or cronies who should ride by. I felt we were living in the palm of Sir George’s hand, where any minute he might choose to crush us.

  About halfway through June I volunteered to take a turn at walking to the inn, in case our salvation was come.

  ‘I will go with you,’ said Susannah. We set off across the field before the early haze was lifted. I noticed she walked heavily, as if half asleep.

  ‘Susannah, go back. You’re tired already.’

  ‘I can’t sleep. Leave me be, I’d as lief walk as hoe.’

  We went on a little. ‘Is it Catherine?’ I asked.

  ‘If Brother Christopher would give her just a hint, it’d break the whole thing in pieces,’ she cried out. ‘Why won’t he?’

  ‘What makes you think he knows that?’ I hedged.

  ‘Stop it, Jacob. Everyone knows, except Wisdom. What do I say?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Most likely he knows too.’

  ‘That would be a kind of promise from Brother Christopher,’ I said. ‘What would he do once she loosed Hathersage? Take up with her?’

  ‘Jacob, I don’t—’

  ‘Hathersage isn’t the only man who can make young bones.’

  Susannah turned her face slowly up to mine. ‘Are you saying Brother Christopher would father a child on her?’

  ‘Though I’m his friend that says it, he’s a man like other men.’

  ‘Is he?’

  Uncomfortable, I returned her stare. ‘Did you not know? He was already a father when he was espoused. She died in childbed, a few months after.’

  She seemed nonplussed by this half-lie, and said at last, ‘I only thought he might give her some cause to hope.’

  I flushed when I remembered that he considered his taking of Joanna the best act he ever did in his life. Now I had slandered his care of her.

  When we came to the inn the mail, perhaps owing to some accident, was not yet arrived. Susanna, cast down, wept and sniffled. I made her sit in the cool of the landlord’s parlour and bought us both ale with some of the money Ferris had given me. After the glare of the sun, the dark wainscot made a little night of the room.

  ‘To see the whites of your eyes!’ she said suddenly out of our shared silence. ‘You’re every inch a gypsy.’

  ‘I’ve a brother who passed for one.’

  ‘I guess we both look like tramping people.’

  ‘And stink like them.’ I had been afraid the man would deny us the use of his parlour. Nobody else was in it, which might explain his toleration of such dirty folks as we.

  ‘Do you still wash yourself in the spring, Jacob?’

  I started and coughed.

  ‘If we had another cauldron I would make us all washballs,’ she went on longingly, and I realised with bitter amusement that it was not my flesh that she hankered after. Poverty makes the humblest things precious: I was not an ill-looking man and with my clothes off (to speak without false modesty) fit to stand beside anybody, and here was Susannah lusting after the paltry ball of fat and perfume with which I cleansed my skin. But I had scant time to muse on this for Susannah was back on the subject of her sister-in-law.

  ‘We passed a woman on the road as we came up, alone and a babe in arms. I thought directly, That could be Catherine in a year’s time.’ She bit her lip and hugged herself.

  ‘I hardly think he’ll abandon her,’ I said.

  ‘My meaning was, Sir George might put him in prison. Or worse.’

  ‘Come.’ I downed the remnant of my ale, wanting to be away.

  The sunlight gritted my eyes as we came out and started over the fields. I thought of Ferris, and how he would lift his head from the work he was doing and strain to see us, until we were close enough for him to read the slump of our shoulders. I remembered promising myself, in London, that if he were ever exhausted or ill I should carry him by main force back to Cheapside. That had seemed an easy thing at the time.

  But, I reminded myself, he was now eating more, and (none was better placed to know it) was recently grown stronger. I recalled how he had given up his food to me in the army, so I could get well, and my heart twisted with love.

  ‘Look there.’ Susannah nudged me: there was a horse some way off, coming along the road. It put me in mind of Biggin and his henchmen.

  ‘There’ll be no letter,’ I replied.

  ‘We may as well wait after coming this far.’

  There was reason in that. We turned back to the inn and I checked the contents of the purse Ferris had given me. I still had enough. We came up level with the inn just as the letters were being passed over, and stood to make sure there was nothing for us.

  The host put a letter into my hand.

  ‘Glory be!’ cried Susannah.

  I paid him what he asked and turned over the letter, weighing it, noting the direction, To Mister Christopher Ferris. The two of us stared at the seal: a common device, no motto.

  ‘Sir Timothy Heys?’ I asked Susannah.

  She shrugged. ‘Not like a gentleman’s hand, is it?’

  The thing might be from Aunt. But no, the writing was of a masculine type. Perhaps Botts had written to boast of his powerful friends, and to exult over us.

  ‘I shall open it,’ I decided.

  ‘No, Jacob. Let him, it has his name on it.’ She touched my hand and the touch was kind. I laid the paper next my breast, and we turned back towards the colony without further talk, wincing at the brilliant light full in our faces. Susannah kept up with me despite her shorter legs, and seemed to have thrown off her lack of sleep. We trudged across fields and clambered over the stiles, frightening birds as we went, and at every step I felt the letter weigh on me as if it were stone.

  The haystack came into sight, and shortly after we could distinguish figures in the fields. I saw Ferris look up from the rows of carrots, just as I had pictured him; he was doubtless wondering if this could be the day of succour at last, the lamb snatched from the jaws of the wolf. It hurt me to see him, after months of planning and toil, waiting on a rich man’s humour. By his side, Hepsibah in her cap, hoeing the ground. Against the surging of the windy wood, the colonists showed tiny and defenceless.

  Ferris waved to us, gestured that we should come over. I saw Catherine leave her work group and cross the vegetable patch towards him; Hathersage stayed where he was. I ran across the last field, Susannah trotting by my side, encumbered by her skirts.

  “There’s a letter,’ I shouted as I approached.

  Ferris’s eyes were as huge, their expression as intense, as when I first eased him backwards onto his bed in Cheapside. ‘Is it from him?’

  ‘We’ve not unsealed it.’ I pulled the letter out, a little damp, and he snatched it from me and tore it open without considering the direction. His eyes leapt along the lines. I saw his lips tighten.

  ‘Give it here –’ I came alongside of him and pulled his wrist over to me. Ferris opened his hand and allowed the paper to drop. Susannah and I grabbed for it together. I took the thing up and read as follows:

  London, at Mistress Coleman’s, opposite the Sign of the Bull.

  Brother Christopher,

  My sincerest wishes that this finds you in good health and all of our brothers and sisters well, and loving one with the other. We are got safely back and think often on you all.

  I will be brief in my salutations and compliments, having unluckily some sad news for you. We called upon your aunt in Cheapside, not to badger her for monies but to let her know that you are well. She knows nothing of Sir Geo. and his menaces, or at least not from us. Nor has Botts been near her, for all we can tell.

  But to the matter. While we were there she suffered a species of fit, which has left her unable to move her m
outh and very much weakened in the legs and chest. She is attended by an excellent physician. Doctor Whiteman, who said you would recall him. Once persuaded there was no immediate danger we came away and wrote while the surgeon was still with her. The maid shows herself an able and devoted nurse.

  However, despite the tenderest care your aunt is much distressed and weeps whenever your name is spoken, which emboldens me to say that you would do well to return at once. It grieves me to be the sender of such ill news, knowing as I do how you are already set about by trials. We go to the house every day to do what we can, and if you require any aid, you will I trust call first on your own

  Henry Beste

  Ferris was gazing into the dust.

  ‘This Whiteman, is he so good?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye.’ He did not move or look at me.

  ‘Who’s Whiteman?’ cried Catherine. ‘Brother Christopher, what’s the matter?’

  ‘His aunt is ill,’ I replied. ‘It is Harry who writes to us,’ and I passed her over the letter.

  Hepsibah and Susannah pressed to her side.

  ‘I can’t read, what does it say?’ urged Hepsibah. Catherine began reading the letter aloud. Ferris sat down just where he was standing, in the row of carrots.

  ‘Take heart, man,’ I urged. ‘You see she is in no danger.’

  ‘Thus my mother died.’ He rocked himself back and forth, arms clenched to the sides of his ribs and his hands in right fists. Sinews stood out in his neck.

  I squatted next to him. ‘You must go to her.’

  For answer he looked about him, at the women with their pitying faces, the others further off in the fields, the huts.

  ‘Yes, go to her,’ Catherine put in impetuously.

  ‘And if Sir George and his hired men should come while I’m away?’ Ferris drew back his lips and clenched his teeth until he looked to be snarling.

  ‘Your presence would not save us,’ said Susannah. ‘But wait, has she none other? No child of her own, no other nephew?’