by Maria McCann
‘None.’ He tried to lift himself from his sitting position, fell back. I straightened up and held out my hand to him.
‘Will you help me pack?’ he asked me as he hauled himself upright.
‘We can help,’ offered Catherine. Hepsibah nodded, while Susannah looked enquiringly at me.
‘No, sisters, my thanks but you were better go on with the work.’
He turned away from them. I followed him to his hut, aware of Catherine running towards Hathersage and the others with the letter in her hand.
We paced drearily alongside the field.
‘Here’s a rare chance for you, Jacob,’ he said. ‘Direct my life. Tell me what to do.’
‘I have done so. Go to her.’
He stamped on a clod, shattering it. ‘I begin to wonder if there be a Devil after all.’
‘What’s devilish in this? You said yourself, a malady already known in the family.’
‘Not the malady. Don’t you see? Go or stay, I betray someone.’ He smiled grimly. ‘That’s a real Devil’s riddle, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You talk as if your going to her will bring on Sir George.’
‘Bring him on. Yes, he’s a kind of sickness.’
We were almost at the huts. I said, ‘Well, you bid me direct you, but you’re obstinate as ever. Don’t go, then! Stay! Now I suppose you will go.’
‘I am so weary,’ he answered in a voice charged with tears.
I was ashamed. ‘I will look after them for you.’
‘No, Jacob, no.’
‘You don’t trust my temper?’
‘If she dies I want you with me.’
There was little to pack up and he had not wanted me for that. He kissed and fingered me in the hut. I felt the depth of his trouble in those touches. But anyone might walk in upon us there, so I gently pushed away his hands.
That day’s coach being gone some hours before, we were to make the journey on foot. I thought it might do him good. Our parting from our fellow colonists was as tender as any could desire: we were clasped close and our backs patted for comfort. Arms stretched up to me and for the first time I wished I had been of Ferris’s stature so that people could embrace me heart to heart as they did him. Catherine had been crying, and Hathersage supported her, his arm about her waist.
‘Remember, we have your direction in Cheapside,’ said Susannah to Ferris. ‘If you see nothing of us, and hear nothing, believe we are well. You have cares enough.’
‘The Lord looks after his own,’ said Hathersage. I wondered was it meant for a promise or a threat. The other men clapped their palms to ours and wished us good speed and a safe journey.
‘Your aunt is a godly lady,’ Hepsibah called out to our departing backs. ‘She has nothing to fear.’ I pondered on those words as we fell into step, for it seemed to me that the Snapmans and Ferrises could not have been godly as most understood it, else they could never have made the man walking by my side. Aunt was not as innocent as a good woman should be; I remembered how she had thought to use me to tie Ferris to London.
My life on it, I thought, she understood something, and then, praying in my usual selfish fashion, Let her not be dead before we arrive. My father had taught me from earliest childhood that prayers do not demand things of God, but show our submission to His will. Nevertheless, whenever I heard people praying, they usually said, ‘Thy will,’ or ‘Thy sake,’ then asked God to bring about what they wanted. I prayed no better than others.
I will not say that God was obedient to my wishes, but a carter picked us up before we had been walking half an hour, with the farewells of brothers and sisters still in our ears. Ferris scrambled up and lay on the load of hay, face to the sky. I stretched on one elbow at his side.
‘This is our entry to London all over again,’ I said, growing more cheerful at the remembrance.
He murmured, ‘When we come back, Hathersage and Catherine will be espoused.’
‘Shame on you, you lost two chances there.’ A feeble jest, but I was glad to hear him talk as if the colony would at least survive long enough to witness their union.
‘I never wanted either of them,’ he replied seriously.
‘Jilt,’ I teased, ‘you promise more than you give.’
‘So they will find.’ His face clouded, and I could have bitten off my tongue.
The carter here cut in with a most gloomy recitation of deaths by plague. His brother’s wife had taken the sickness, ‘the buboes under her arms as big as that’. He let go the reins to cut buboes from the air with his hands. ‘And then all their children, not a one left.’
‘And your brother? Did he live?’ asked Ferris, struggling to show interest.
‘Aye, can you believe it? And lodges with our sister at Whitefriars. We think to have him with us next month. But he’s down – sadly down.’ The man seemed surprised at his brother’s so easily giving way.
‘Something new for you,’ Ferris remarked to me. ‘Summer’s the plaguey time in London. The sun brings it on.’
‘Why is that?’
‘How should I know? Perhaps corruption in meat, perhaps sweating.’
‘Anyway, there’s no plague in your house,’ I said, trying to cheer him. He did not reply.
Becs opened the door to us, and there was an awkward moment as we all paused, taking stock. I was struck by the deathly white of her skin, set off by purple beneath the eyes, while she in her turn stepped back from our filth and raggedness. I almost smiled at the difference in her demeanour from the last time I saw her.
‘Is she—?’ Ferris cried.
‘God be with you, Master, she is well,’ Becs answered more after her usual fashion. She bobbed to us and we stepped into the house. Ferris ran up the stairs.
‘The physician is with her!’ the girl called warningly. Then, turning to me, ‘I’ll heat some water and look out some clothes for the two of you.’
‘My thanks.’
‘He’d have been better to wash before going up to her, you’re both dirty enough to bring on another fit.’
‘I endeavour—’ I stopped abruptly. I was not bound to explain to her that I tried to keep myself clean. Instead I said, ‘And was I so disgusting when I left? When someone gave me a sore mouth.’
‘Your mouth’s quite safe as long as you are so dirty. When you are washed—’ she paused.
‘Well, what then?’
She met my eyes, all innocence. ‘I’ll turn down the sheets of his bed.’
I retreated after Ferris.
By well I suppose Becs must have meant that the patient still breathed, for Aunt was not well. I found Ferris with his head laid near her pillow, his tangled hair on the bedcover, much to the distaste of the grave and reverend fellow in attendance. Ferris’s eyes were wet. He was clasping one of her hands and her fingers showed like wax against his brown and coarsened ones. Aunt’s eyes were also moist but her face was otherwise frozen and I had no idea whether she had observed me. The doctor, who in his spectacles and furred gown resembled nothing so much as an owl, turned as I entered, brow furrowed with perplexity, and then paused, confounded at seeing a second scarecrow. Methinks he must have taken my footsteps for Becs mounting the stairs. I bowed and he returned the politeness, but seemed to find nothing to say to me.
‘Here’s Jacob, Aunt,’ said Ferris.
Aunt still did not look in my direction.
‘She’s squeezing my hand,’ he went on. ‘She sees and hears me.’
A silence followed. The doctor and I stood awkwardly each in a corner of the room. At last he jerked his head to indicate we should speak outside. I padded out after him.
‘What can your skill do for her?’ I asked as soon as we got outside.
He replied as physicians always do, that the case was a difficult one, very difficult, and that such fits were highly unpredictable in their outcomes; in short, that should she recover it was all to his glory, but none of his fault if she did not.
‘Will her nephew’s coming help
her at all?’
‘It will undoubtedly give her heart,’ he replied, ‘but she must not be allowed to overexcite herself. She is of a sanguine complexion and I have already bled her and given the maid instructions for a cooling diet. In my opinion the superflux of blood has mounted to her head and caused some obstruction there.’
‘Do you find her better for the bleeding?’ I asked.
‘She is no worse. I have not seen your companion Mister Ferris since he was a child. Is he also, as appears, of a passionate disposition?’
‘In some respects. He is much taken with projects and schemes.’
The doctor frowned. ‘You might make it your business to see that he does not act adversely upon her. This lying upon her bed—’
‘You won’t stop him doing that,’ I said at once.
He frowned again and began to pucker up his lips.
‘Though the nephew be impetuous, you will find him most tenderly disposed towards her,’ I soothed. ‘He freely acknowledges that he owes her all the duty of a son.’
But the physician was already exercising his intellect upon other matters. ‘You have perhaps been travelling in – distant parts?’ His eyes went over the full length of me. I must have stunk most unpleasantly in his nostrils, though to his credit he concealed it and went on, ‘You have had a long journey, it seems?’
I smiled to myself picturing the fine play he had written us: myself and Ferris come from farthest India, robbed and left for dead once or twice. ‘Not so very far. But we have been living and working as farmers. Virgin land, one of these schemes which so occupy Mister Ferris.’
He inclined his head and spread his hands as if he understood it all.
‘How soon will she mend?’
‘It will be slow. I must see her again, and more than once, before I can give an idea.’
So there was to be no end to Ferris’s dilemma as yet. ‘You have told the nephew this?’
‘He has given me little opportunity.’
Evidently he hoped to disburden himself of his evil news onto me. If it came easier to Ferris that way, I was willing enough.
‘Jacob,’ said Becs. I jumped, not having heard her come upstairs. She went on, ‘There is hot water and everything needful in your chamber. If you wish for anything else, call me.’
‘Thank you,’ I returned and bowing to the doctor, said, ‘pray excuse me. A cleanly visitor must surely be more fitted to a sickroom.’
He returned my bow and went back into the chamber to coax Ferris away from his aunt.
The sheets of my own bed were turned down, no matter who Becs thought might lie between them, and the window had been opened. I closed the shutters, bolted the door – a precaution I would never forget, now – and for a second time stripped off filthy rags in that room. Last came the key he had given me, the ribbon stiff and grimed but the metal still bright.
It was as good as the first wash there, perhaps better. I took some time about it, scrubbing and rinsing every inch of me from the scalp downwards. My hair, free of dust and combed out while wet, showed blue-black again, and the tiny scars on my chest stood out pale against the darkening caused by the sun. I remembered the doctor’s question about travelling in distant parts and laughed as it came to me that he had not taken me, at first, for English. What, then, I wondered, would he say to Zeb, whose eyes were jet.
Sitting on the bed, wrapped in the cloth she had left me to dry myself, I let my feet dangle in the bowl of cooling water a while before drying them off. A large shirt was laid across the bedcover, and over a chairback a pair of breeches, some stockings and a coat, with a pair of latchet shoes on the floor beneath: at first I thought they were more of Joseph Snapman’s estate, but then saw they were my own, packed up as being too good to ruin in the colony. The linen shirt, sliding over my skin, made me gasp as if from some amorous touch. I tucked the key inside it. The bedcover, being turned back, revealed a snowy embroidered bolster. Gladly would I have consigned every colonist to the bottom pit of Hell to keep this bed, and Ferris in it. I ran my hand between the sheets, picturing us, until my flesh began to stiffen. Then I put on my breeches and stockings and shoes to go up to Aunt’s chamber.
The physician was departed, leaving Ferris sitting upright, his eyes dry. He turned to me as soon as I came into the room, glanced down my body and gave a pale smile. ‘Jacob cleansed of his sins.’
‘Only the outer man. How is she?’
‘As you see.’ Aunt looked no different except that she had closed her eyes. Her tears, like his, had dried. ‘I think she sleeps,’ said Ferris.
‘Becs will bring you some hot water for a wash,’ I suggested.
He smiled again, acknowledging my wish for his comfort. ‘I should like some wine.’
‘You shall have it.’ I made my way downstairs and pushed into the kitchen to find Becs heating water for a second grand cleansing. She turned from the cauldron and stared at me; I felt my drying hair spring up around my face, and remembered what Ferris had said about the army boys cutting it for jealousy.
‘Let me have some canary for him.’
‘Here.’ She unfastened the key from a bunch round her waist. ‘But lock up and bring it back after.’
‘Don’t you trust me?’
Becs rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you remember anything?’
‘I will keep him from sottishness,’ I promised.
‘He’s in for a sad time.’ She poured steaming water into a bowl and scented it with lavender.
‘You’re a good girl.’ I meant it. ‘Let me carry that for you.’
We mounted the stairs together, I bearing the hot water and Becs following with washballs and cloths. In Ferris’s chamber she dug into the chest and laid out linen and clothing as she had done for me.
‘Time to wash,’ I told Ferris when I went up to the sickroom. ‘You can have the wine later.’
‘I’ll take some now.’
I saw that Becs’s warning had been wise, but said only, ‘Come on, then.’
He kissed Aunt’s cheek and went off calmly enough while I descended to the wine cellar and found him a bottle of canary, which I carried up with two goblets on a tray.
When I joined him in his chamber Ferris was just taking off his shirt. He stopped when he caught my eye on him, knowing that the sight of him raising the shirt over his head always whetted me, and then pulled it off quickly. I should have liked to stay and wait on him, wash him, hold the wine to his mouth. Instead I poured out a large goblet for myself and withdrew, bidding him scrub himself well.
Aunt still did not move when I entered. Her face was not hers without the sudden dart of knowing eyes, and her mouth, pulled to one side, put me in mind of a flatfish. I bent down to the pillow and felt her breath on my cheek, then took Ferris’s seat by the side of the bed. If she dies, I was thinking, he gets everything. I wondered would that make him more or less willing to come back to the city, and tried not to wish that her recovery would take weeks, for I knew that while I would be every night in Paradise, lying between his legs, fear for his colonists would have Ferris in Hell.
Save for a flask of reddish liquid by the bed, the room looked much as it had the day she offered me my fortune, and that other day when I learnt to stitch. There was, however, an unfamiliar odour. After a time I knew it for the smell of sick flesh, lain too long abed. Someone had been burning rosemary to cleanse the air, and behind all this lingered the usual lady’s chamber smell of orris.
I took her hand and thought she pressed my fingers a little. Putting my lips to her ear, I whispered, ‘Aunt. I am here. Jacob.’
Yes, there had been a faint touch. I went on, ‘I will look after him.’
I was unsure whether she had touched me that time. I folded her hand in both of mine. After a while my back began to ache so I straightened up – it was not for me to lie on the bed as Ferris did – and took some of the canary. It glowed on my tongue like warm rubies and I felt the beginning of hunger.
Aunt shifted very sli
ghtly on the pillow. I was at once on my feet, but she settled again in the same posture. In her unmoving features I recognised her nephew’s long nose and full lips.
It came to me that Ferris would look thus on his deathbed, and that what I saw was his dying. I made myself think of comforts, of my friend splashing himself downstairs, of the kisses I would lay on his neck that night. Then, going from cold to somewhat too warm, I had to leave these thoughts also, but by now the journey, the clean linen, the watching and the wine had begun to act upon me, fading the room from my eyes. I woke with a start; the goblet had just started to tip its contents onto my breeches. Aunt was exactly as before. I downed the remaining wine and dozed off again.
Ferris was shaking me. I looked up into yellow hair, and his narrow face above mine.
‘Water,’ I murmured.
‘What!’
I struggled to make sense of it. ‘Like—’ I felt myself blush. ‘You found me.’
He said, ‘You’re still in your dream.’ And then I breathed the scent of him and it was not the mouldy stink of army clothes, or the animal reek of linen sweated stiff, but warm clean flesh. I put up my hand to feel his breast through the shirt; he backed away and I realised we were in the sickroom.
Ferris took the empty goblet from my other hand. ‘We are to go and eat,’ he told me. ‘Orders from Becs.’
‘And Aunt—?’
‘She’s lying peaceful.’
Still drowsy, I shambled downstairs after him. I could smell the food from the top of the stairs, and though it was something I had tasted before there was a difference in it. Coming into the room I found that it was meat prepared after the foreign way called fricassee. Becs brought in the bread and having placed it on the table, held out her hand to me. I gazed stupidly at her.
‘The key,’ she prompted.
I groped in my clothing and then remembered. ‘In the cellar door.’
Becs sighed.
‘What was that?’ asked Ferris when she was gone.
‘I left the key when I took out the canary.’
‘Well, there’s none but us after all.’