How Beautiful the Ordinary

by Michael Cart

  I burrowed back into the straw, clear awake as if Gramshaw’d bucketed cold water on me. King’s men, king’s men, here at Bracken’s Inn. White-breeched and black-booted, hardened from the Frannitch wars and spoiling for a fight, spoiling for…anything they could get their hands on, I could attest to that.

  I allowed myself to remember it, how much it hurt, how wonderful it felt, how there had been no shame, I had drunk so exactly the right amount of ale when that narrow-eyed soldier had caught my eye and tilted his head toward the trees. What was he, lieutenant? Captain? He was captain of me, to be sure, he was major-bloody-general, and I was never so happy to be foot soldier or deck swabber or chamber-pot emptier or boot boy or whatever humiliation he might take it in his head to visit on me.

  Anyway, it was Chafton Fair, when anything might happen. They were victorious, weren’t they, in Frannishland? So let us ply them with our meat and ale, and no one has to notice, do they, if they lead some colorless ostler boy into the forest and there get naked with him? Let’s not speak of it; let them have as they will. They’ve been a long time at war with their eyes full of death and dark dealings and cannon smoke.

  He had me up and down and around about. I cannot tell you how glorious it was, or how confusing, my God. I could not tell, did he love me or hate me? For one moment he was savage at me behind with his claws in my hips and such oaths, such talk in my ears as I’d never heard uttered, saying what he was doing and what he would do, and what kind of filth was I. Then the next he was winding his hot nakedness all around mine, and drinking long drafts of kisses out of my mouth and saying Who are you and Where have you come from and No don’t answer. Be a mystery to me, a lovely mystery, my darling.

  And so he remained a mystery to me. My darling. I had not realized until he said it that I had waited, all my awkward miserable life, to be a man’s darling, just such a man as this, as had been out in the world and seen things, and wore the uniform of worldliness, and would kiss and force and hurt me just so. And since then I had noticed one or two men in their bearing or the fixity of their gaze or the doubleness of their words as might well call me their darling did I give them any sign of wanting it, but I had never yet the exact right amount of ale in me again, and besides, I was still recovering, I was still hoping. If I ever got a chance at that soldier again, I did not want to have been soiled or spoiled by someone else, some farm boy, or that weaselly parson.

  King’s men. Out the loft window the stars massed and winked. All down in my gut and loins, everywhere he had touched and used, was lapped by warm blood and excited, remembering. If he came to Bracken’s, what would I do? Would he manage to sneak away, come up here, kiss me again, and bite me? Of course he would not, but just the thought, just the sight of his narrow eyes recognizing me—a whimper escaped me at the thought. I took a few deep, rough breaths, to assure Gramshaw, should he be awake, that I was not.

  Did I sleep then? I hardly know. My mind and blood raced all the night, and as soon as the sky lightened, I got up to watch the house for the master’s rising. When I saw lamplight through the slits of his shutters, I went around the back and into the kitchen’s light and bustle.

  “I need to speak to Mr. Bracken,” I said to Cook, who was rolling pastry, one end of the big table.

  “Well, come in and shut the door,” she says, glaring over at me, “or he won’t hear nothing but howling wind.”

  “I need a word privatelike, and urgent.”

  “Oh, do you now?” She straightened up, tapped her rolling pin in her hand like a beadle his baton. “Family trouble?” she says confidingly, all her glaringness swept aside by inquisitiveness.

  I shook my head. “Just private. And as soon as possible.”

  She made a careless face. “I will tell him, the moment he can be told anything,” she says. “He likes to be left alone i’ the mornings.”

  “I know,” said I. “But he will be grateful to know this as early as possible.”

  She inclined her head, by this acknowledging what I’d said and at the same time dismissing me.

  I was well into mucking out when the maid Callie came running, holding her cap on in the wind, its ribbons flying. “Maister wants to see you!” she squeaked.

  “I’ll be up directly.”

  She nodded and flew away. I propped my shovel and went to wipe my boots on the grass so I would not foul the house.

  They can close out the weather, the rich, can they not? If they want, they can spend all their lives within stone, within quiet, with only the purr of the fire, the rustle of pages of books, the clink of wine decanters. Bracken, I know he gets out and about, but look how he can rest and think and prepare, here in the warmth and upholstery, no? In the tea and the toast and the jug of cream and the dish of conserve.

  “What is it, Tom?” he says. I am not yet man enough for him to call me Coyne. “Better make it quick. The mistress’ll be along in a minute.”

  I told him quick and blunt then. I left out all the love stuff, the kisses and the hair and the bosom, the sight of the man’s manhood in his tight breeches. I gave him the business straight, the plan I had heard.

  He woke as I told him, stopped buttering his toast and hovered there awhile, studying it before putting everything down. Wiped his fingertips on his napkin as he watched me, to disguise their shaking.

  “‘With our fortune’? He said that?” he asked, cold as cold.

  “They were his very words, sir.”

  Missis bustled in then. She stopped humming when she saw me. Her husband being unusual alert, she came and clutched a scrolly chairback. “Bracken, whatever has happened?”

  He held so still, I was afraid he would go off like a bomb in that chair. Except his eyes—like a man looking out the window of a racing carriage, his eyes watched his thoughts rush by.

  He stood, as if he was about to come at me and strangle me. “Sit down, my dear,” he says, and I realized just in time that he meant his wife. “That will be all, I think, for the moment, Tom. Send Gramshaw to me in my study when you return to your work. Otherwise, no word to anyone. I have a plan and I won’t have it spoiled by gossip, you understand?”

  “I do, sir,” I said, and I left the room, closing the door on the silence inside.

  Cook and Callie watched me pass through the kitchen. Out across the yard I hurried, glad to be in the air again, away from that hushed room filling with dangerous feelings. I turned into the stable yard, saw a shovelful of dung drop into a bucket at Cosmos’s door.

  “Gramshaw!” I called. “Maister has an errand for you!”

  News trickled out of the house all day: Bess was confined in her room, the door bolted and a chain and padlock on her window shutters; Gramshaw had ridden off Chafton-ward at a fine clip, on Cosmos himself, with the master’s letter—no one knew for whom; Bracken was white with temper and extremely short with everyone; he had taken no breakfast but only paced up and down in his study with the mistress imploring him something, no one was let to hear what.

  Callie came and Cook came and Trewissick, who had organized the window lock, and bothered me. “What have you begun?” said Callie, bright eyed, but all her flirting could not get it out of me, nor all Cook’s bullying, nor all Trewissick’s pretending already to know and clapping me right manly on the shoulder. I did not let a word out, only worked my work, and Gramshaw’s too, and waited, heart thumping, for something to happen along the Chafton road.

  Gramshaw came back about noon with a sealed note for the master, which he handed in at the kitchen door. Then he came straight for me and delivered me Cosmos’s reins. “Spill it, then, Tom,” he said, shrugging off his jacket. “I have just ridden the arse half out of my pants and I wouldn’t mind knowing why.”

  “I promised Bracken not to say a word.”

  “Even to me? Your stablemate, that has worked beside you all these years? That has just fetched to soldiers—fronted up to king’s men!—in regards of some story you’ve told Bracken? ’Tis the least I deserve, that yo
u tell it me too.”

  King’s men! he had said, as if that were a password, or words of magic—which they almost were, for me, did he but know. They speared me like lightning, and I had to disguise the jolt.

  “I promised. I cannot say. It is serious, I tell you.”

  “They tell me in the kitchen Miss Bess is locked up. Is it some kind of scandal, then, some man of the soldiers has trysted with her?”

  I laughed at the idea, and then I did not know. Would he go the same at a woman, that narrow-eyed man, as he’d gone at me? I did not know. He would do anything he pleased. I could not see into the mind of such a man. I could only hope I was in his mind, at least now and then. I could only hope that he would want me again, want to do again what he had done with me in the forest that day.

  “What, then?” said Gramshaw, slapping my arm with his jacket sleeve. “If that’s so ridiculous?”

  I shook my head. “I swore to the master,” I said, and led Cosmos up the yard toward the trough.

  Out the forest they marched at sunset and onto the moor, just glitter of tilted muskets in the dusk, then the pattern of marching legs below, then the sound of their boots, twenty-four boots, maybe, unisoned into two big ones, heavy along the road. Twelve armed men sent just to catch the one!

  I stood in the loft, where I would not be bothered by anyone or begged, and all a-tremble I examined each face as the ranks passed below. There was little enough light, but I knew I would need only a glimpse, only a suggestion, I had spent so long at that man’s face.

  He was not among them. He was not among them, my—my darling. I wilted against the loft wall, my forehead painful against the splintery boards.

  I wanted to stay hidden up there, but Gramshaw came to fetch me to the kitchen, and I thought perhaps if I ate I would feel less crushed and unbalanced, less caught in a nightmare.

  “You are not going to tell us what this is all about?” Cook slapped my stew down so that it swayed in the bowl.

  “I am not allowed,” I said. “Mr. Bracken expressly forbade it.”

  They left me alone; worse, they turned their backs on me, some putting together the story themselves as it came through from the front of the house on the lips of maid or man. The soldiers had filled the front room and were drinking the master’s ale in good quantities, and all for free, unless money had changed hands when the captain consulted with Bracken in his study. They were quiet, steady drinkers. “You’d hardly know they were here,” Callie said, cocking her head at the kitchen door.

  “Well, they is, and they wants bread and sausage, is the word.” Cook thrust a board of just such at her, to take out.

  After that silent and sinister meal they went all through the house in their boots, and soon the chambermaid Daisy Spanner arrived down among us, near speechless with excitement. She said—she could hardly get the words out—she said that they had dragged Miss Bess’s bed close to her window, and bound the miss herself to standing against the foot-frame of it, and bound one of the muskets to point up under her chin, and opened the shutters and the window, and put two musketeers to kneel either side.

  “And where is all the others?” said Gramshaw.

  “At each and every western window,” says Daisy, squirming as if she might wet herself with the thrill of it all. “Who are they awaiting?”

  Many looks of dislike came my way at that. “Only one of us knows,” said Cook very precisely, “and he is not saying.”

  “And the mistress!” Daisy remembered. “She was weeping over Miss Bess, in her own bedchamber, but now there is soldiers in it, and she’ve gone to a back bedroom, and locked herself in until it is over and the man in irons, whoever he is!”

  “Yes, whoever he is,” Cook says weightily over her shoulder toward me.

  I spooned up the last of my stew and consoled myself by thinking of him, that fine creature. If I could not have my soldier back, I would settle for such a man as the highwayman, sheathed in velvet and leather and doeskin, trimmed with lace and spurs, a spray of dark feathers in that slant-brimmed hat of his. Or unsheathed, untrimmed, kissing or abusing me in the forest, sighing soft or growling filth into my ear.

  Well, she should not have him, at least. Miserably I pushed my bowl away and sat composing myself to leave. She will be lucky to have him so much as touch a tip of her hair again.

  She’s had more than that before, though, my self sneered to me. Where have they been meeting? I wonder. How much of him has she tasted thus far? Is it only kisses—how could he want those, her kisses so soft, her lips so smooth and yielding—or is there more? Are they married in secret? Does she carry his child?

  The whole inn and around were subdued that night, all custom turned away. Time crept past, increment by smallest increment. It was like being stretched on the rack, waiting for some bone to crack, some tight-pulled skin to burst. The wind had died and the moon sailed serene in a clear sky, making a cold, slow moonlight on the moor below, where the road curved around and then hoisted itself over the hill and ran at us, empty, empty. I could hardly believe what I had wrought, this silence, this ill will, this house bristling with armaments, the weeping mistress, the whispering servants.

  I lay in my loft bed, listening. Hour on hour I was tensed there, mistaking my heartbeats for hoof strikes. And then when all the rigidity had exhausted me, right on the midnight as he had said, I heard it unmistakably, a little tlot-tlot! like a toy horse, a horse sound made by a child’s mouth as he gallops a stick around a field or a wooden toy across a table.

  “God save him!” Up I leaped and was at the window.

  Gramshaw rustled out the straw and joined me. “Is that your man?”

  He was a rag of the forest, detaching onto the road; he was a bit of blown cloth, black under the moon. “Oh God, oh God!” I moaned. He was galloping fast, but he seemed to crawl along the distant curve of road. He disappeared behind the hill and it was as if he had never been, as if my ears and eyes had deceived me and we were all still waiting on the rack.

  But then he rode up, over the hill’s brow, and now I could tell the flying coat from the black body low against the mare’s neck. I fancied I could see the feathers on his hat, the glitter of the brooch there, the black stroke of the sheathed rapier against the horse’s dark hide.

  “Oh, you are a dead man,” Gramshaw crooned to him at the glass beside me.

  A musket shot burst the ducks off the pond. A spray of other birds squawked from their roosts out the trees.

  “Shite!” said Gramshaw. We bent to the window again. The horseman galloped the other way now, and frantically. “What’d they shoot now for? Look, he’ve got away. Of course. What were they thinking?” Horse and rider shrank along the road. “He must’ve turned that mare on a single hoof, don’t you think? Did you see him? Lucky not to unseat himself.”

  “What were they thinking? Didn’t they want to lure him right up? Why, he never had a chance even to see Miss Bess and what they done to her.”

  “Mebbe they got impatient. Mebbe one went off by accident.”

  As we waited for him to show beyond the hill again, uproar began from the house. First the captain shouted enragement. Then he stopped abruptly, and the mistress screamed, wildly and on and on, and then fell to screaming weeping. I had never heard a sound so close to madness. Then Bracken. Then the captain shouted orders, and doors banged. Gramshaw and I stood either side of our window, listening down through the stable. He stared at me; he didn’t know what was happening and nor did I; he didn’t know if he ought to be my friend or my foe.

  There were clattering thuds below on the stable door. “Rifle butts,” hissed Gramshaw, and his eyes grew even wider. “What are they shouting?”

  “‘Tom Coyne, Tom Coyne!’ is what they are shouting,” I said very faintly.

  He blanched for me, bit his lip. “You better go down, then,” he said. “It would not do to try running.”

  Somehow I got down the loft ladder without breaking my neck, and I ran along.


  Crash, crash, went the door ahead of me. “Tom Coyne! Tom Coyne! Wake up! Come out!” How many soldiers were they? Some of the horses hoisted themselves from sleeping to standing in their stalls.

  “I am coming, I am coming!” I cried. Did the soldiers hear me? I only had a stable-boy voice, not one for shouting charges and commands. “Hush, Cosmos,” for he had whinnied out at me, and he was the most likely to rear and break himself trying to kick his way out.

  I rattled the bolt so they would stop their crashing. I opened the door. There were two of them.

  “Captain wants you.” They spoke and took hold of me, both at the same time.

  “I will come! I will walk! There’s no need to drag me.” But they dragged me; clearly they were in the mood for dragging. I kicked-walked ridiculous across the cobbled yard, staggered into the kitchen past the nightgowned and shawled cook and maids with their hands to their faces. Mrs. Bracken’s awful weeping was still going; there was no door closed between me and wherever she was in the house, and as they dragged me—it was a kind of painful flying that I did, all shinbones on stair-edges—as they dragged me up, the weeping echoed around my head the way bells echo in a church tower, like to send a man mad, it’s said.

  Mrs. Bracken was not in the room they brought me to. Bracken, when he saw me, cried, distraught, “Oh Tom, help them if you can!” and pushed out past me and my men. “That blackguard! That blackguard!” he went, along the hall outside, breaking to tears.

  They set me on my feet. It was Miss Bess’s chamber. She hung in her bonds at the foot of the bed. Her head was shot open at the top, and the ball had carried matter to the ceiling, had finely sprayed blood all around the room. The bed curtains, the white breeches of the soldiers standing pale and at attention by one wall, the captain’s face that was shouting at me—all were speckled, were tinily beaded, with the dark of it.