As Meat Loves Salt

by Maria McCann

He tasted the food. I did likewise and found it to be liver; I closed my eyes the better to savour it after the beans and cheese of the colony. Our diggers’ food had brought about in me a great weariness, one might say disgust. Even rabbit had begun to sicken me; only the constant field labour kept me eating at all. Becs had cooked our repast very tender, with a spiced gravy, and there was more than enough for us both.

  She brought in another bottle of wine and a goblet for Ferris. ‘Have you need of anything else? If not, I’ll be upstairs and take a look at her.’

  ‘She sleeps soundly,’ said Ferris. ‘You could rest.’

  ‘I can rest by her bedside. Stewed dried plums and cheese on the sideboard.’ She left the room.

  My friend gazed into the air as he ate. His hair was growing again. Soon it would tickle me when we embraced. I went to sit next to him, nuzzling his neck and relishing that scent which breathed from him and no one else. I felt him swallow.

  ‘Jacob—’ he took a pull at the canary, put his fingers on my jaw and kissed me; the kiss had wine in it. Looking into his eyes, I drank it off as if it were himself, then showed him the inside of my mouth warmed and reddened.

  ‘No more down here,’ he said, ‘that’s just a taste,’ and laughed, but I saw he was stirred. I pulled him onto my lap, my thighs between his, took him in my arms and crushed him to me until he cried out.

  ‘There’s a taste for you too,’ I said, ‘since you play with fire.’

  We kissed again and he darted his tongue in and out of my mouth. I began sliding his shirt up over his chest.

  Ferris pulled away. ‘Wait. I must sit with her before we retire.’ He rose and fetched the fruit and cheese. ‘What did the physician say to you?’

  ‘Not much.’ I struggled to suppress the ache he had started.

  Fishing for plums with a spoon, Ferris said, ‘He is not open with me.’

  ‘He says he can promise nothing. Yet.’

  ‘We may be here days, then.’

  ‘Methought, weeks. Ask him yourself tomorrow.’

  Ferris groaned and offered me the fruit. ‘These are good, will you—?’

  Shaking my head, I poured myself more wine.

  He added, ‘Becs looks all overwatched. What with the nursing and the house, she has too much to do.’

  ‘We could relieve her as nurses,’ I said, ‘except that she wishes to do it all herself.’

  He nodded. ‘Then we must get another girl in to cook.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He looked at me in surprise. ‘Don’t you see how weary she is?’

  ‘Don’t you see we don’t want a stranger here?’

  Ferris spat a plum stone into his dish and held out his hand for the wine.

  ‘Am I a help in trouble?’ The question was out before I had considered it.

  ‘In the worst, you will be. Should it come.’

  ‘Sir George?’

  ‘That too. But I meant, should Aunt die.’ He paused, picking his words. I waited, and he went on, ‘I couldn’t bear her dying had I no other love.’

  A better man might have recalled to him the Divine Love, but I was none such, and besides, I knew him too well by that time to attempt it. Instead, I took his hand.

  Becs looked as done for as her mistress when we went back upstairs. The purple marks beneath her eyes had smeared deeper and darker into the sockets since she opened the door to us.

  ‘Get you to bed, girl,’ urged Ferris.

  ‘She may need me.’

  ‘Does she have pain in the night?’

  Becs shook her head. ‘Only I hate to think of none being there.’

  ‘Go to bed,’ he repeated. ‘Tomorrow we will each take a watch, if you like. She won’t wake tonight, Doctor Whiteman gave her a draught.’

  The maid rose. I heard the click of her stiff knees.

  ‘There’s a bottle of canary not all drunk,’ he added as she left the room. ‘Take some.’

  But she did not go down to find the canary. We heard her stumble to her own chamber and slam the door.

  ‘She’ll drop onto the bed in her clothes,’ I said.

  ‘I’d not be surprised.’ He was kneading Aunt’s fingers. We both watched her face for any hint of sensibility.

  ‘Nothing.’ Ferris loosed her hand.

  ‘The doctor will know more tomorrow,’ I said.

  He looked at me. ‘You wish to go to bed.’ He eased her arm under the sheet and we closed the door on her and walked along the corridor in silence.

  When we reached my room I paused, hand on the latch. ‘Will you come in?’

  He shook his head, stepped to his own door. ‘In here. I want it like the first time.’

  ‘Why?’

  He repeated, ‘I want it like the first time.’

  His room was not yet dark. He pulled the shutters across on one side to shield us from spying eyes.

  ‘Now.’ His hand was on the bolt. ‘Remember?’

  I remembered. I caught hold of him and kissed him as I had that night, with the hunger of months; we stumbled across the room and fell onto the bed. He called me My delight, my honey, my Samson and such talk being extremely rare with him, I knew by it that he was sweating for me.

  ‘Take me in your mouth.’

  I did so. He cried out and was gone almost at once, as if that time were really the first.

  When he was quiet I said, ‘There was another night after that.’ Kissing, slipping against one another, we eased together, until I lost the knowledge of myself and became nothing but flesh.

  ‘And if she were the same?’ Ferris asked.

  We sat at breakfast. He was eating eggs and white manchet, just as he had through the months before we left for the Common, spooning the yolk onto his bread and pressing salt into the yolk in precisely the same way. It amused me to see him as exact as ever. This was now the fourth day since our arrival and we were still trying to find our right course. The doctor had presented himself half an hour earlier and had again pronounced Aunt not better and not worse.

  ‘If she were the same in two days we could write to Susannah,’ I suggested. ‘We could do it now.’

  ‘Why Susannah?’

  ‘She has excellent good sense. But for her I’d not have stayed for Beste’s letter.’

  He swilled down the bread with some beer. ‘And because she is soft on you?’

  ‘Wrong, there.’ I recalled Susannah shaking her head at me as I shouted and threatened. ‘She has measured my folly. But if you think me partial, write to Hathersage.’

  He ignored this dart, saying simply, ‘I’d sooner go back.’

  ‘Had they been dispersed,’ I reasoned, ‘wouldn’t they come here?’

  ‘They might be unable.’

  We could get no further forward. If Aunt got well, got worse, stayed the same, round and round we went. I tried to impress upon him that his being at the Common could do nothing to stave off an attack, but he answered that this would not excuse him in his own conscience, if the moment came and he were elsewhere.

  ‘Masters!’ Becs came running in. ‘Masters, she can move her face. Come see!’

  We followed her upstairs. I will never forget Aunt’s mouth as first I saw it, the one side frozen while the other made grotesque moues and snarls. But her eyes presented a more hopeful aspect, for they appeared to fix on us as we approached the bed. Ferris craned his body awkwardly over it, seized her hand, and watched her face as if about to pounce.

  ‘She’s trying to say “Christopher”.’ His voice was thick. Becs stood to one side, hands joined and head bowed. After a short while Aunt seemed to lose strength and lay more loosely against the pillow, but her eyes still rested on us.

  ‘The doctor must come again,’ Becs cried.

  I stood silent, ill at ease, as she hurried past me. Ferris kissed the patient’s cheek. A drop fell from his face onto hers, though by his frequent swallowing I guessed he was trying to act the man. At last he stood upright with a great sigh and pressed his fists to
the small of his back.

  ‘Now be happy,’ I said, hearing with dismay my thin feigned voice. Ferris appeared not to notice it.

  ‘I’ll stay with her, Jacob, until the physician comes. Suppose she should speak again, and no one there!’

  ‘Then I’ll watch with you.’

  Ferris glanced at his aunt. Her eyes were now closed. I stepped forward and enfolded him in my arms. There was nothing carnal in that embrace. Putting my hand to the back of his head, I found with my fingertips hard little creases under his hair: the scars left by broken glass.

  The doctor was sweating in his furred gown and I guessed that Becs, that nimble girl, had dragged him along on foot under the summer sun. Muttering to himself, he thumbed up Aunt’s eyelids and scraped her tongue. Next he laid a heavily veined hand under her breast to feel the heart.

  ‘Irregular,’ he said and at this she moved a little. Finding her coming to consciousness he said he must now cast her water and Becs was given a glass flask and told to catch the patient’s urine.

  ‘If you would be so kind as to leave the chamber, gentlemen,’ he suggested to Ferris and myself.

  We waited outside, hearing grunts as they tried to raise her in the bed, and then the doctor to Becs. ‘That will do, now hold it so.’ There followed, ‘Come, madam, just a little,’ and ‘Shall I press on her belly, sir?’ at which last I wanted to laugh but, looking at Ferris, dared not.

  Becs came out of the chamber and ran downstairs, going directly back into the sickroom with two jugs. We listened as she sloshed water from one to the other in the hope of stimulating the invalid to piss, and this time even Ferris did smile. At last there was an ‘Ah!’ from the maid and we caught the thin tinkle of liquid against the wall of the flask. Becs came out triumphant, bearing the jugs before her.

  Ferris peeped round the chamber door. ‘We can go in,’ he announced.

  Doctor Whiteman was sniffing the contents of the flask with a judicious expression. He held the thing to the light, and I gasped to see the deep orange tint of the urine.

  ‘Is that blood in it?’ asked Ferris.

  The physician shook his head. I wondered how he could know.

  ‘Is she truly better?’ Ferris persisted.

  ‘Have patience.’ The man’s look showed his irritation at our ignorance. He added, ‘This is not a thing to be done as one might plant a turnip,’ and I felt the gibe at my friend though Ferris himself was seemingly deaf to it. The doctor took a paper, and from it tapped some powder down the neck of the vessel; there followed a faint hiss. He continued slopping the urine about against the glass, holding it up to the window.

  ‘Well?’ asked Ferris.

  ‘She will make a slow, very slow, recovery.’

  I saw my friend’s entire body quicken with joy, like a lamb put to the teat. He overpaid the physician, and gave him the direction for writing to us at the inn at Page Common.

  ‘But you’ll be here tomorrow, Ferris?’ I cried.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He told the doctor to call in that evening and accompanied him downstairs. Left to myself, I swore silently and then cursed my wicked selfishness.

  Ferris rattled back up the stairs and flung his arms round me. ‘Jacob, it cannot be long.’ Not trusting my voice, I smiled and let myself be hugged.

  We sat together in the sickroom, one each side of the bed. His eyes were dry now and they frighted me with that shine which I so dreaded. A curious weariness dragged on me and I found I wished very much to sleep despite its being so early in the day. Beginning to nod in the chair, I heard him ask was I ailing, did I wish to go back to bed, but I was already borne away on the dark and unable to reply. Towards noon (as I later discovered) the heaviness ebbed from me and I took a deep breath, feeling the air puff out my chest. I opened my eyes. Aunt was stirring; her nephew clasped her hand loosely and she was tapping her fingers on his.

  ‘You see?’

  I said that she had indeed made progress, but that we should not be hasty, but wait until the extent of her recovery left no room for doubt.

  ‘The doctor has no doubt already. And are not doctors the most cautious of men?’

  ‘But men still, and fallible.’

  ‘Ah, Jacob, I know.’ He looked kindly at me. ‘I know. But the longer we stay, the harder to leave.’

  ‘When, then?’

  ‘I thought, the day after tomorrow.’

  I cried out in protest. He bade me be quiet over the invalid’s bed and we wrangled, that is to say, he reasoned and I pleaded, in whispers. He was, as so often, gently adamant, and I passed the rest of the afternoon in misery.

  Come the evening I had better fortune. The Bestes chose this time to call and Ferris was mighty glad to see them again. After the first salutations they mounted with us to the sickchamber, but Aunt was asleep. Set against her twisted white countenance they seemed emblems of health, Harry’s handsome lazy face bright with sun and blood and Elizabeth pearl-like, already losing the coarseness which had dimmed her lustre at the Common.

  ‘Where are the children?’ asked Ferris as we descended again.

  ‘With Elizabeth’s sister.’

  There was venison roasting down in the kitchen, perfuming the stairwell, and Becs brought us tarts and wine. It took me back to the days when the colony was but a maggot in my friend’s head, when guests came to drink and talk nonsense but went home again like sane folk.

  Ferris told them of Doctor Whiteman’s opinion and they drank to Aunt’s health, but were scandalised to hear of his plan for our departure.

  ‘You cannot go yet,’ Elizabeth told my friend. ‘Though your aunt improves, yet she is still in a condition where she must wish her family near her, and you are all that family.’

  Ferris looked uncomfortable, and I saw that three might accomplish what one could not. We hammered away at him, and by the time we sat down to the venison, had beaten him out to the length of a week. Elizabeth, with her woman’s cunning, put in some of the most telling blows by citing mistakes that she had known physicians make. When Ferris at last yielded I could have kissed Harry and Elizabeth both.

  The talk turned to their own doings, and they claimed to be now in a fair way to set up their old style of life. The anvil was come safely home, though the mule had needed very frequent persuading with the whip, and Harry had found a yard to let where the fire would be safe. Elizabeth’s sister was come to live with them and help with the little ones, and Elizabeth had only quarrelled with Margaret (the sister) once, and that on a washday.

  ‘Harry will soon be in a position to take a journeyman again,’ said Elizabeth as Becs stacked the empty dishes.

  ‘Would you ever take a prentice?’ I asked.

  ‘Mayhap, one day.’

  ‘I could do prentice work,’ I said.

  ‘But Jacob, you are too old,’ put in Ferris.

  I found him officious, and went on, ‘So I have no wife and do what I am bidden, where is the difference? Show me the boy who can do as much work as I can.’

  ‘There are laws about these matters,’ said Harry. ‘Touching on age, and suchlike. But had I no journeyman – are we talking in earnest, now?’ He grinned at me as he spiked a morsel of roast skin on the tip of his knife.

  ‘Surely you’d want a man who had served his time?’ Ferris asked.

  ‘To help a friend, now – I could call him my servant. No need to ask could you handle a hammer, eh Jacob?’

  There was a pause. Ferris looked sulkily down his nose.

  ‘Wat might wish for his place back,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Should you not ask him first?’

  Harry considered. ‘He’ll have got in elsewhere by now.’

  ‘If the thing goes awry, perhaps I will come talk to you,’ I said slowly. ‘And Ferris, you would come back here, I guess?’

  Ferris ignored my question and said to Elizabeth, ‘First it was printing. He would learn every trade if he could.’

  ‘That shows industry,’ said she with a friendly look to me.

&nb
sp; Ferris smiled stiffly.

  Elizabeth, sensing some unease, began talking of Harry’s brother Robert, who had worked as a manservant in a country house where he speedily discovered that the master was mad.

  ‘The man’s freaks were most curious,’ she explained. ‘He persecuted the servants – accused them of poisoning his bedclothes, and sometimes of trying to cut the faces out of the portraits in the great hall. Robert was walking in the garden, with the steward, Mister Cattermole, being instructed—’ here we had to wait as Elizabeth choked with laughter and Harry, with his hand clapped over his mouth, was in no better plight, ‘being instructed as to what he should do when the master was found naked in the corridors. “By kind words, oft repeated,” said the steward, “we can generally persuade him to bed, provided it is not a night when the bed is envenomed.” Robert would have asked what happened on those nights when the master broke cover from behind a bush, crying, “Out, Nebuchadnezzar!” and shot at Mister Cattermole—’

  Ferris and I gasped.

  ‘Robert and Cattermole ran screaming into an arbour. By which you will guess,’ said Elizabeth, ‘that the ball had missed. The old man was disarmed by the gardener’s boy (who showed more valiant than the rest of them put together) and led back to the house very penitent and confused. But that was enough, and Robert is come home to live with his parents.’

  ‘And Mister Cattermole,’ said I, shouting a little over the laughter, ‘is he also departed?’

  ‘Not he,’ answered Harry. ‘The man picks up a deal of money in the course of his work – you understand – and that makes it worth his while.’

  Elizabeth wiped her eyes. ‘And welcome to it,’ she said. ‘But alas, poor gentleman, to be mad – no laughing matter—’

  We agreed with her, and then all burst forth in loud roars.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Ferris as the merriment died down. ‘I believe that was the front door. Becs will have let him in.’ He went out and we heard him descend the stairs.

  ‘The doctor,’ I explained. Footsteps were heard again, continuing past our floor to the one above. As soon as the sound of the chamber door came to us Elizabeth bent forward over the table. ‘Jacob, should he not stay here?’