by Maria McCann
Someone, a woman most likely, was calling my name. I stopped in the darkened path. The fools must be out searching for me, under some mistaken notion that I was wandered away in a fever. I went on slowly, not wanting to catch a bramble stalk in the eye. Let them disperse to their huts, not come crowding round me, perhaps to notice the bulge of the box under my shirt.
There were more shouts, angry ones, and it came to me that Ferris might have quarrelled with another colonist. I pressed forward more rapidly now, and as I came through a thickly ivied stretch of path I saw the cooking fire. But it was in the wrong place, and as I tried to understand how this could be, two black shapes ran through it. There followed a shot and a scream. I froze, unable to move or even think except for the one terrible thought which filled earth and sky: our friend had mistaken his dates, or Sir George’s plan was altered. The day of reckoning was upon Ferris, and I was still here, to witness it.
Panting, I struggled forward as fast as I could towards the edge of the wood. Just as I came to where the trees thinned into shrubs, a brilliance out of Sodom and Gomorrah sprang up in the cornfield behind the huts, everything nearer to me showing black against it. I had been right, the corn was too dry, and a breeze took the flames so that soon all the field was alight and crackling, a sea of fire. Getting onto a tree stump, I saw we were completely overrun. They moved waist high in the smoke as if born of it, men armed with swords, muskets, clubs, dragging the colonists out of their shelters. Three of our people stood holding hands together, turning like poor sheep first this way, then that. I saw them prodded with staves, forced to kneel, and heard the coarse shouts of their tormentors. In the midst of the cries, again, someone calling, ‘Jacob’. Ferris was nowhere to be seen.
Men were kicking down the huts. I saw the door of mine pulled open and the contents ransacked before the thing was levelled to the ground. The destroyers then moved towards Ferris’s dwelling. I held my breath, but he was not there. His possessions were tossed out and the men began snatching at this and that – I saw one man bundle up a shirt and stuff it down his breeches – before firing the bedstraw.
The dairy was next attacked, and I heard loud crashes as clubs broke up the marble. The cloth from the planks soared upwards in sparks like a prophet’s cloak, then the planks themselves took fire and the whole thing slowly collapsed inwards. A sudden flare distracted my eye, followed by a spitting sound: the tent was in flames. A woman came running out of it. I could see men leading away our cattle, and shattering the ox-cart wheels with clubs. Bales of burning straw lay about, lighting up a man’s face or hands and adding to the suffocating waves of smoke now belching from the cornfield.
Something thudded through the trees on my right. I whipped around and saw the back of Jeremiah, running. A black figure detached itself from the group who were demolishing huts and came hurtling after him. I ducked as the man approached the wood, and heard his hoarse breathing as he pushed after his quarry. Then he stopped some yards away. There was a click, and a scuffle of leaves as he steadied his feet. When the gun went off someone screamed, but whether it was Jeremiah or somebody near the huts I could not tell.
A woman was shrieking, ‘Christ help us, Christ help us.’ She came stumbling from behind a hut as if drunk, and I saw the child, a black bundle against the fire. A man was in pursuit, and as I watched he caught at the back of her gown, swung her round and ripped the babe from her arms, casting it violently away. There was a terrified scream from the child and I heard Caro shriek, ‘Christopher, Christopher.’ and then, ‘Jacob,’ the knowledge of me wrung from her at last. Her cry was choked off as one of the men swung a club against the small of her back. I watched as my wife sank to the ground and her attacker bent to remove the purse at her belt. The child I could scarce see except as a heap of clothes, which might or might not be moving. O if it were mine—
Know it is not yours but your brother’s bastard.
A man from the small group of colonists, who had all of them knelt helplessly until now, rose and started towards Caro. From his stocky build and the woman clinging to his arm, trying to hold him back, I knew him for Jonathan. He was laid low by a club before he could shake her off, and two of Sir George’s men brought down their sticks as if on vermin as he rolled on the ground. Hepsibah tried to shield him from the blows but was wrenched away. Another man, still on his knees, lifted his hands as if to pray. I guessed this must be Hathersage. He was seized by the hair and a group of men lugged him over the ground and out of my view.
What I saw next gave my heart such a stab that I feared to drop. I recognised at once the graceful runner leaping the bales as he went, arms and legs flickering black against the inferno that was our corn. There were three men after him, each bigger than himself but not as fast. I held my breath. He might escape into the wood, where – but he did not make for the wood. Instead, he went to Caro, pushing aside the thief who now looked to be ripping open the neck of her gown. Ferris tried to raise her then turned, seeing the child, and made as if he would pick it up. I closed my eyes, but forced myself to open them again. The three men had piled on top of him. Ferris was jerked upright by his hair, and the man who had clubbed my wife, and was near as big as myself, leapt at him. Ferris lashed out and landed a blow, surprising me by his speed. But the other men were behind him, blocking any escape. His opponent had time to gather force and aim a punch that knocked his head back.
I stood hands clenched, at any moment ready to run from the wood and lay about me. Fists went into his ribs and belly, doubling him up. I was clutching a branch, or I might have fallen senseless, so violent was the struggle within. Caro was creeping on hands and knees towards the child.
All is meant. Did I not reveal it in a dream, the fire and the Devils that pulled him down?
I saw the man strike home again and again, and Ferris unable to recover.
He wishes for you now, My friend. There followed a laugh to splinter teeth.
Ferris was staggering, too dazed to keep up his guard. The man turned him around and pushed him towards another of the group. A fist went into his nose or eye; I heard him cry out, and the men cheered. He raised his hands to his face and one of his tormentors kicked out at his spine, crumpling him. There was a pause in which they stood back and watched him struggle to stand upright. It seemed he was bleeding into his eyes, but he was still trying to fight back, and I saw one of them mimic his blinded movements. They began knocking him from one man to the other, letting him find his feet for a few seconds and then starting again.
They know who they deal with, gloated the Voice.
I was weeping, muttering to myself, Enough! Enough, for the love of God! Yet I could not move towards him. The two devils furthest from me drew back to let through a horseman, come to enjoy the sport at close hand. He watched avidly, wriggling in the saddle, and I recognised the man of the perfume and the fingernails, he who had spat on Ferris.
Caro, forgotten in the excitement, reached the child and began crawling away with it.
Surrounded by four men, any one of whom outmatched him, Ferris was falling against them now, almost clinging to their fists. One tripped him and he sank to his hands and knees; another’s boot cut into his mouth. Dropping to the ground, he curled into a ball, and they opened him up, and went for him again. I could not turn my eyes away but saw, and felt, every blow.
The horseman suddenly looked up. Light from the burning straw-showed me his creamy, handsome face and his eyes were level with my own. They were full of a cruel ecstasy and it seemed to me that he saw me, and smiled in recognition, as who might say, Brother. Ferris lay completely still except that he jerked each time a man kicked him. The men paused, perhaps tired, and looked to their master for instruction. My breath came in great gasps. The horseman pointed at Ferris’s outstretched body and two of them bent to pick him up. His head hung backwards as if the neck were broken, and the breast of his shirt was all over blood. Stretched between the two men, he showed pitifully slight. I could not tell if he was
alive or dead as they carried him away, one holding his hands and one his feet.
The Brothers and Sisters were being driven off the land like cattle, with blows and screams. Caro was kicked until she got up from the grass, clutching the child to her, and was haled over to the small group where Jonathan still lay senseless. One of Sir George’s men shouted an order and a thin figure was pushed forward to drag Jonathan by the feet. I thought I recognised Hathersage. Two of the women hastened to help from behind so that Jonathan’s head should not trail in the dust, and thus the little group skirted the fires as they crossed the field.
When all that noise had died away I stood motionless, I cannot say how long, gazing on the ruined corn. There was no sound but the spit and crackle of fire. When I took my first step to leave the wood, my knees folded under me and I fell down. It was some minutes before I could raise myself and make for the road. Looking neither to my right nor my left, I crossed the camp, staggering as if I too had been beaten.
THIRTY-ONE
Treasures
London was a charnel-house. The fairest streets brought no pleasure, for at every step I was mocked by a ghost. He crossed the road before me, turned down an alleyway or stepped into one tavern door as I came out by another.
I wandered about the familiar places, always fetching up outside a certain house in Cheapside where I dared not knock. I thought of Aunt lying stricken, impatient for a last look at her darling, her lamb, and I told myself he had most likely survived, and was even now turning the corner. Once, I walked behind him the full length of a lane before he turned and showed himself an impostor. As I went back the other way a group of gentlemen passed by, and in their laughter was mingled that of the Voice.
The city was grown cruel; I was glad to slip its jaws and go, go as far as might be. That meant a ship, and should the ship come to grief, I would end all my grief as I began it, in a drowning.
I purchased a place in the Southampton coach. There remained to me one last day in London, and I spent it lying in wait at the road’s end in Cheapside, just in case. While there was daylight it was more than I could do to come away. When it grew dark I at last returned to my lodging, and the next day rose before dawn to begin the first part of the journey.
The coach smelt of mould and corruption; the other passengers were no more to me than the dead, and if one happened to address me I turned away. Soon I was troubled no more. We came out of London through one of the gates in the defensive walls.
You know someone who helped make them.
I never knew you, I answered. Looking back from the window of the coach, I saw forlorn streets, and houses crouched despairing under a meagre rain.
On arrival at Southampton I sought a lodging near the quay, and above all one where I might have a room to myself. Every kind of company grated on me, but most intolerable was the merry sort.
The search for such a hiding place brought me through some of the vilest parts of the town. Like London it has its warrens, places where I would never have ventured with him, though perhaps Zeb might not be entirely at a loss there. In one alley where the sky was no more than a crack above the houses, I was set upon by two whores who stood propping the sides of an ale-house door. There was an older woman who might be the mother as I believe these bawds are called, and a purple-faced girl of about sixteen, very drunk, whose thin blonde hair was plastered to her head with scurf. They tried to bar my way and when I pushed them aside, the girl ran ahead, raised her skirts and pissed full in my view. It is said some men’s appetites are whetted thereby, but there could scarce have been a more monstrous sight than her veined flesh and swollen, matted privates. I knocked her into the muck where she belonged.
‘Arse-merchant, he-whore,’ shouted the other and with that the two of them started scooping up filth from the street and throwing it at me. I made a rush at them, and they fled. Being drunk, their aim was none of the steadiest, so that my cloak was only a little soiled.
After going up and down the streets, I found me a place in Cattes-Head Passage, a vermin-ridden rookery. In the tavern there they made offer of a miserable room, the walled-off end of a passageway, with an empty grate and the bed so narrow that not even my host could fit another wretch in it, so I had only the fleas and lice to share with. To get to the quay was no more than stepping to the alley end and crossing the road.
Having bolted the door that first day I lay perhaps an hour without movement, trying if I was any better for being out of London. That was a vain hope, for I still breathed and felt. Again I saw Ferris bend over my wife and child, saw him pushed from one torturer to another in their sport; again the horseman smiled to me as to a fellow and a brother. There was a savage pain in my breast like to tearing or scalding, so great I would not have been surprised to look down and see myself butchered like a Jesuit on the scaffold.
Think not on him, urged the Voice.
I forced my mind towards money. I had of course Ferris’s box with me, and had not yet fully examined what it held. There was gold lying near the top, and this had been little depleted by the price of my room and the clothes I had purchased in London. The woman who dealt in used apparel had told me I was in uncommon luck, for a man of my own stature had died two days before. I asked what was his complaint, not wanting to the of it likewise, and she said the heart.
Having bought a purse of the same woman, I poured out the gold onto the stinking bed, ready to be pocketed up. There was also silver that I had missed but now found jammed between the box sides and a lining of paper. All the coin taken together would pay my passage to New England. I had thought there would be more, but then remembered how freely he had paid out for the dairy. There was also a gold ring. In my first confusion I took it for Caro’s, the one Zeb had boasted of wearing in his ear, but this was a ring I had never seen before, made for a delicate hand. Turning it about I found inscribed on the inside, ‘CF & JC, 1645’. So he, like me, had been betrothed with a ring. I pushed it onto my little finger.
The paper which lay at the bottom might be of some worth. Scrabbling to dislodge it, I felt the skin of my knuckle suddenly slit open and remembered that something had cut me as I held the box in the wood. I lifted out the sheet by another corner and found beneath it the fragment of scarlet glass I had given him after Basing-House. Holding it up to the light, I again saw the word scratched by John Paulet, that obstinate and defeated man: loyaute. There was a place where Ferris and I had failed utterly. I recalled his smile as he said, ‘What shall I do with you?’ and I threw the glass into the grate.
The folded document was a letter, spotted with my blood where the shard of glass had pricked me. As I unfolded it a twist of hair fell out, thick and black. I had never made him such a gift, and I wondered when this trophy had been captured. It might have been the very first day, when the boys cut my hair as I lay on the road. How I must have called to him. Months and months he lived alongside me, enduring it. And Nathan? I wondered. Had my hair replaced his?
I took up the letter. On seeing the first line I knew it directly, but could not hold back from reading the whole thing, not once but many times, for it was the only love letter I had received in my life. Have you the heart to stand by, he had written, and see it done?
The letter had been left behind, that first time, and Ferris had treasured it for the sake of what followed. Again I tightened my arms about him. Delight. He ran his hands over me, opened his mouth to my kiss.
Such a letter has no place where you are going, came the Voice. Leave clutching at these rags.
Keeping the thing folded so as not to read it again, I tore it in strips and then in scraps, but then hesitated, not liking to leave even scraps of it behind in the room.
Drown it.
The Voice was grown impatient. I crushed together the pieces in my hand and stepped out onto the quayside before setting them free. They fluttered on the air, some settling on the bosom of the water and other morsels sinking almost at once. Here and there a word blown back on land survived
entire, waiting to be trodden into the mud.
The wind along the quay lifts my hair, drops it in my eyes and plays with the hem of my new wool cloak. Though cold, it is welcome, as it takes off the smell of rotten meat that hangs about the place. Dead cows, it might be: I watch as a crane dangles great boxes, the prisons of horses and cattle, over the deck of a transport. There are more than a hundred cows penned up, lowing their misery to any that will hear. Whenever the wind veers, the stink of carrion and the cleaner scent of animal dung are wiped away by a something like spiced cake, which Ferris once told me was tobacco. I remember his saying that as a boy he wished to be a mariner, and I said – I said—
Think not on him.
All manner of people are here, standing, sitting, crouching on their heels, and from time to time a squall of conversation breaks out, only to the down almost at once, for we are all weary. Somewhere behind me is a man whom I faced down last night over nothing, that is to say, over who should first pass through a door. It seems I am grown so thin-skinned I can scarce endure to be crossed; or it may be, I am looking for the one will put a knife in me at last.
Though the sun fumes in a mist over the sea, the man on my right tells me the haze will speedily burn off and the day be hot. This neighbour, sunburnt and thickset, is one Knowell, going to join his brother in New England. Mistress Knowell has the complexion of a woman brought up on whey, with a creased, patient face and very red eyelids. The Voice whispered me, when I first began talking with them, that the husband deals severely with her and that she merits it by her whining. She keeps up a constant chatter about seasickness and her determination not to yield to it, but whenever she falls silent she is visited by tears, which she blames on the wind drawing water from her eyes.