Flood (The Fenland Series Book 1)

by Ann Swinfen

  Hannah made nothing of stripping Gideon to the skin, though I was embarrassed and felt he would not wish me to see him thus, but Hannah was right. To do our best for him we must put such feelings aside and I must behave as if this was some stranger, a soldier wounded on the field of battle.

  The sight of him stripped was shocking, his whole body bloodied and bruised. Why had they attacked him so viciously? I had heard of other clergymen being beaten when their churches were smashed by the iconoclasts sent by the Earl of Manchester, but they were generally given a mild drubbing then turned out of their livings, to beg or go into exile. This beating was something much worse. I wondered whether it had been ordered by Edmund Dillingworth.

  ‘We will set the shoulder last,’ said Hannah, ‘lest the shock of it wake him. It will be best for now if he remains out of his wits.’

  We swabbed the injuries to his back and sides, using water into which Hannah had mixed one of her bottled potions which turned it the pale green of spring leaves. Then we spread them with one of her salves, binding up the worst but leaving others open to the air. She told me to fetch scissors and cut away Gideon’s hair from the great wound in the back of his head. My hands shook so much she took the scissors from me and finished the task herself. We peered closely at the wound, but there did not appear to be any sign of splintered bone.

  ‘His eyes,’ I whispered. ‘What of his eyes?’

  Hannah looked grim, but did not answer. The lids were swollen and caked with blood which had dried to a hard crust. She shook her head. ‘I cannot tell whether it is best to wash away the dried blood or to leave well alone. If we remove the scabs we may do more harm.’

  I sank on to my knees beside the bed and slipped my arm under Gideon’s neck. His eyes were a terrible sight.

  ‘Surely we cannot leave them like this,’ I said.

  ‘Very well. You may bathe them very carefully. I must make up a fresh wash. This other is too strong for eyes. But first we must stitch the wound in his side.’

  We had bathed and salved the wound along with the rest, but it continued to bleed, perhaps not quite as severely as before. I wondered whether he had any blood left.

  ‘Fetch me a needle and some strong thread. Button thread, not your embroidery silks.’

  I did as I was bid and watched, biting my lips and trying to keep down the heaving of my stomach as Hannah sewed great stitches to draw together the gaping sides of the wound. She had done about half when she stopped and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘My sight is not as good as it was, Mercy. You will have to do the rest.’

  I looked at her in horror. I had never done such a thing. How could I drive a needle through a man’s flesh, draw that bloodied skin together as if I were sewing a pair of breeches?

  ‘Here.’ Hannah passed me the needle, thread and scissors. ‘Don’t waste any more time. Don’t be squeamish, child.’

  So I gritted my teeth and made the last six stitches, struggling against nausea and the shaking of my hands. When it was done, we wrapped a fresh bandage around his chest, and Hannah went through into the kitchen to make up the wash for his eyes. I put my arms around him and eased him over onto his back, and as I did so he gave a faint moan, the first sound he had made since the soldiers struck him down.

  ‘Is that Mercy?’ His whisper was so faint I had to lean close to hear.

  ‘Aye, Gideon. You are back at the farm and Hannah and I are caring for you.’

  ‘It is quite dark.’

  ‘Your eyes are stuck together with dried blood. I’m going to wash them for you. We’ve bound your other wounds.’

  He did not answer and I realised he had sunk back into his darkness.

  When Hannah came I began slowly and carefully to wash away the dried blood. As I held Gideon’s shoulders and head close in my arms, the blood and water ran down over my bodice until I was soaked to the skin and my dress stained a brownish red. When at last his eyes were clear I saw that although the lids and surrounding skin were bruised and swollen, the soldiers did not seem to have put out his eyes, as I had feared. There might, however, be permanent injury to his sight.

  After I was done, we swathed his head in bandages, covering both his eyes and the wound on the back of his head. I was determined to stay with him so that if he woke again and feared the darkness before him, I could reassure him. There remained only the setting of his dislocated shoulder.

  ‘Tom,’ Hannah called, ‘do you and Toby come here to assist us.’

  They came cautiously through the door and I realised they had been all this while waiting in the kitchen. How much time had passed, I could not be sure, but from the fading light I realised it must be drawing towards evening.

  Hannah explained what they must do to pull the arm out hard until the shoulder clicked back into place. Reluctantly I slid my arm out from under Gideon’s shoulders and stepped out of the way. It happened quickly, but the jerk and snap as the damaged shoulder was reset turned my stomach and suddenly I could take no more. I ran from the house, across the yard and behind the barn, where I vomited until I was empty.

  Back in the house I sank down for a moment on a stool next to the kitchen fire and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. Toby must have returned to the village. Tom gripped my shoulder.

  ‘You’ve done bravely, Mercy.’

  ‘Do you think he will live?’

  ‘Every chance, I should think, though it was a terrible beating. Why would they do such a thing?’

  I shook my head. ‘They were put up to it by Edmund Dillingworth.’

  ‘I saw he was there. And I wondered why. Then I realised that if he wants to ingratiate himself with Cromwell’s men, known as he is for having fought for the king, becoming an informer might be to his benefit. But how could he know Gideon was going to carry out a baptism?’

  ‘It is my fault.’ I began to weep. ‘Fool that I was, I told him. I thought his sympathies lay our way. But I think he would never have betrayed Gideon, if I had not–’. I broke off.

  ‘If you had not done what?’

  I told Tom of Edmund’s attempt to rape me and how I had kneed him in the groin, then made a fool of him before the kitchen staff. Before we could talk further, my mother and Nehemiah returned at last from the village and we had all to tell over of Gideon’s injuries and how we had treated them.

  ‘But, Mercy!’ said my mother, suddenly alarmed. ‘You must set off at once, or you will not be at the manor before dark. Did you not say that you had but this one day’s leave?’

  ‘I am not going back to the manor,’ I said. ‘I shall never return there.’

  Chapter Eight

  I turned on my heel to go back to Gideon, drawn to his bedside as relentlessly as the ebb tide sucking the waters of the Lode away to the sea. There was nothing more to discuss about the manor or the Dillingworths. I had driven all thought of them from my mind. Yet my mother laid her hand on my arm and fixed troubled eyes on my face.

  ‘But you must go back, Mercy, it is your duty.’

  I shook my head. At first I was surprised that my mother continued to urge me to return to the manor, since it was she who had thought at first that I had come home for good. But when I dragged my mind away from the small room and the silent, battered figure which lay there, I understood.

  The custom of decades, and before my mother the custom of generations, had instilled in her a sense of duty and obedience towards the Dillingworths. I was employed by them. They had agreed to keep me on after my month’s trial. I could not therefore of my own will walk away. Even her own relationship with the family counted for nothing. By marrying a yeoman – my mother’s grandfather – Mary Dillingworth had demeaned herself and set her descendents lower down the social hierarchy than her own family. My mother could not see that the world was changing, that the old order had been disrupted for good. With a king dethroned and imprisoned, gentry families like the Dillingworths no longer stood on such sure ground as they had in the past. They could no longer command obed
ience. My mother would never understand this. Tom and I might read the tracts written by John Lilburne and his friends, but we would never even try to make our mother understand.

  Not that I attempted to reason or argue with her now. I simply said I would not return.

  Tom looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I gave a faint nod. Let him tell her if he would. He led her to our father’s great chair and settled her in it, with a cushion at her back, for we could both see that she was exhausted by the troubles of the day. He knelt down beside her and took both her hands in his.

  ‘Mother, you must understand why Mercy cannot go back. Edmund Dillingworth tried to defile her.’

  Her mouth fell open in shock and she uttered a faint cry.

  ‘Do not worry,’ I said. ‘I managed to escape him. But he will not forgive me. And if I go back, he will attempt it again. Besides . . .’

  I glanced again towards the door of Kitty’s room, where Hannah was clearing away our bloody rags and basins.

  ‘It was Edmund Dillingworth who brought the troop of soldiers to the baptism. They have wreaked havoc on the church and come near to killing Gideon.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her look of distress and bemusement wrenched at me.

  ‘Did you not see him? Sitting upon his horse, watching everything and smiling his delight in all of it?’

  She shook her head. ‘I did not see him.’

  ‘We think he did it for two reasons,’ Tom said. ‘He knew Mercy would be there, and that it was her friend’s baby who was to be baptised. It was a form of revenge on Mercy. And by showing zeal for Puritan reforms, he buys himself favour with the authorities, to balance against his service on behalf of the king.’

  My mother stared at him in confusion. ‘I do not understand.’

  Tom rose to his feet and patted her shoulder. ‘Do not worry yourself about it, Mother. Mercy will not return to the manor and the Dillingworths will not expect it after what has happened here. Mercy, can you make us some supper? I for one have not eaten since early this morning, and I am sure Mother will feel the better for some hot food.’

  I cast another anxious glance towards the open door of the room where Gideon lay. I wanted to be there, beside him, but Tom was right. We all needed sustenance at the end of this terrible day. My own stomach, I now realised, ached for food.

  ‘Kitty,’ I said, ‘make up the fire and put on a pot of water to boil. I can contrive a pottage.’

  I fetched onions and carrots from the store and met Nehemiah crossing the yard.

  ‘I have milked the cows,’ he said, ‘and set the milk for your cheese-making.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. In all the confusion I had not realised how late it was, long past milking time. ‘What is that you’re carrying?’

  ‘Rafe sent back our ham. The Coxes cut short the feast for the christening, seeing what happened. You had gone by then, but he knew we would be glad of the ham.’

  ‘Oh, aye!’ Now that I was back at home, the farm would need to feed one more.

  In the kitchen I carved one thin slice from the ham and chopped it small. Kitty had already added a handful of last year’s dried peas and the same of barley to the water, and when they had boiled for a time I stirred in the ham and the sliced onions and carrots, as well as marjoram and some mustard seed.

  It was so late by the time we sat down to sup that Tom lit a rushlight so that we might see our bowls and cut the bread. I said nothing about the lack of candles. We were paupers now. I noticed that Tom and Kitty had made a store of rushlights from rush-heads gathered from the Fen and dipped in tallow. The light they gave was dim and the smell dreadful, compared with our usual wax candles, but we must make do with little and like it.

  When we had supped I carried a bowl to Gideon in the hope that he might have woken, but he lay as still as a marble knight on a tomb, his breathing so shallow I had to lean close to detect it. With his head swathed in bandages he looked like some Saracen chieftain from the days of the Crusades. Until that moment I had been so caught up in caring for his wounds, I had not given myself time to think, but now I had to confront the truth. Despite all our care, despite the agony of my longing, he could still die. I remembered him telling me once that more soldiers die of their wounds afterwards than die at the height of a battle. I bowed my head down and hid my face in the bedclothes.

  Through the confusion of my thoughts I heard the others preparing to go up to bed.

  ‘I will sit a while with Gideon,’ I called, ‘in case he wakes and needs anything.’

  Tom brought in a fresh rushlight in its holder. ‘You cannot sit in darkness.’

  ‘Do not put it too near. Jesu, the stench is frightful!’ I did my best to sound cheerful.

  He laughed. ‘You will get used to it. No fine beeswax candles here now, like the manor house.’

  ‘I am well rid of it,’ I said softly.

  I saw his shadow nod on the wall.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I do not think you would be safe there from Edmund. The bastard! That he should try to rape my sister!’

  ‘He spoke me very pretty for a time. Called me cousin. The other servants were unkind, so for one of the family to acknowledge our kinship . . . I thought he was honourable. I thought I could trust him.’

  ‘So you let it slip. About the baptism.’

  ‘No. I told him freely, never thinking he was a danger. A King’s man. Surely he would support the traditions and sanctities of the English church?’

  ‘He is a brute, a lecher and a traitor.’ Tom’s voice shook with fury. It frightened me a little, coming out of the dark.

  ‘Tom, you must not think of taking any revenge!’

  ‘I would dearly like to.’

  ‘We have enough troubles as it is, with Father in prison, our stock impounded, the drainers continuing their work unchecked. Promise me that you will not attempt anything against Edmund.’

  He sighed. ‘You have my word. For the present, at any rate. And the drainers are not quite unimpeded.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He gave the ghost of a laugh. ‘No outright attacks any more. But tools go missing in the night. The bolts holding a sluice gate drop out and vanish into the mud. A remote section of a dyke collapses for no reason. Oh, we have learned to be subtle, never fear.’

  I smiled into the darkness. ‘I am glad to hear it.’

  ‘Now I am going to bed,’ he said. ‘Shall I relieve you during the night?’

  ‘No, do not trouble.’

  I was jealous of my right to stay by Gideon’s side and see to his needs.

  Tom bade me goodnight and I heard him feel his way up the stairs, not bothering to light a taper.

  Indeed, there was little I could do for Gideon. He continued to lie without movement, so that twice in the first hour or so I thought he had stopped breathing. I took his wrist in my hand to feel his pulse. It was faint as the beat of a moth’s wing, but it was there.

  After a time I kept his hand clasped between both of mine and resting in my lap where I sat on a stool pulled close to his bed. His hand felt clammy and cold, despite the warmth of the summer night. The rushlight smoked and flickered, and began to burn out, so I laid his hand gently back on his chest and got up to fetch another. My back was aching from sitting so long on the low backless stool. I stretched to ease it, then decided to heat a stone to warm the bed. I did not like the chill feel of his flesh.

  We kept a few large flat stones which were used in the depths of winter to warm our beds, when ice formed on the inside of the windows in the rooms away from the fire. I heated one now, resting on a trivet at the side of the kitchen fire which I had fed to keep it burning strongly, for the heat from the kitchen reached partly into the bedroom. I had noticed that my family was now using nothing but peat, dug free from the peat moor, instead of more precious firewood. A wonderful boon for us commoners, peat. But it was said that, after draining, the peat moors would shrink and dry up, the peat turning to dust, so that we would no lo
nger have this source of fuel. The draining of our Fens would not only rob us of much of our food – fish and eels and waterfowl – but of fuel to cook it and keep us warm in winter. The rushes and osiers would die away, so there would be no thatch or rushlights or hurdles or baskets or eel-traps. And if the common lands were enclosed and taken from us, where would we graze our beasts and plant our crops? I shivered at the terrifying thought of the bleak future which we seemed doomed to suffer.

  When the stone was well heated through, I wrapped it in a cloth and slipped it under the blankets close to Gideon’s feet. Like his hands they were icy, despite the covering of blankets. I lit a fresh rushlight and clipped it into the holder, wrinkling my nose at the rancid smell. I could not believe I would ever grow accustomed to it. The smoke, too, was choking and could not do my patient any good, but I needed some light in order to keep a watch on him.

  With a faint groan I resumed my seat on the low stool, and smiled at my own weakness. ‘You are become as creaking as an old dame,’ I scolded myself aloud, then stopped, embarrassed by the sound of my own voice. I wrapped my skirts around my legs, for they too were growing cold. My skirts felt unpleasantly stiff and I realised that they were caked with Gideon’s blood, which had hardened as it dried. I had worn my best skirt and bodice for the baptism. The stains would never come out. My mind shied away from the thought that these stains might be all I had left of him in years to come.

  For greater comfort I untied the strings of my cap and laid it down on the bed, then unwound my head cloth and shook out my hair. As it tumbled around my shoulders I felt more at ease. I inched the stool into the corner made by the upper part of the bed and the wall, so that I could lean back, then I took Gideon’s hand in mine again. Perhaps I imagined it, but his hand felt a little warmer, as though the blood had begun to stir again. But how much blood he had lost! As the minutes slipped by, his hand moulded itself to mine, flesh to flesh, so that I felt my own strength flowing towards him. My eyes closed, I tried to will him to life.

  To sit up at night with a sick or injured person is to enter a strange half world, where the normal senses are distorted. In that dim, smoky light I could see little except the rough shape of Gideon under the blankets, but, as if to compensate, my hearing became sharper as I strained unconsciously to hear every breath he drew. Sometimes the breathing seemed to stop, or my hearing failed, and then panic would rise in my throat while I tried to still the sound of my own breathing, the beat of my own heart, leaning close to his face in the darkness until I caught again that faint whisper of breath.