by Ann Swinfen
‘Aye, I did.’
I was even dreaming his voice now. Alice was confused last night, or I was confused listening to her. I closed my eyes and felt my hand taken in a large warm one.
‘Father?’ I said.
‘Go to sleep.’
The third time I woke, all the village cocks in the glebe land were competing for dominance. No one could sleep through that. Someone was still holding my hand. I rolled over awkwardly, for the floor was hard and I was stiff.
Gideon was sitting beside me, holding my hand and smiling down at me.
I shook my head to drive away the fantasies of the night.
‘I’m still dreaming. Or everyone is dreaming. Gideon went away into exile.’
‘But I came back.’
I tried to sit up but I was too stiff and fell back clumsily. He put his arms around me and lifted me up. Then he kissed me. His lips were warm and real, and I found myself clinging to him, kissing him, but weeping too.
‘Are you so sad to see me?’ He was laughing and brushed away the tears from my cheeks with his thumb.
‘I thought I had lost you for ever.’
‘In the end, I couldn’t do the cowardly thing and hide away in exile. I went to London to plead to get my living back. I was kept dancing on a rope for months, but failed in the end. It was only when I arrived in Peterborough on my way home that I heard the terrible news about what had happened to you and Hannah.’
‘Poor Hannah,’ I said. ‘I loved her.’
‘I know.’ He kissed me again, and I curled up against him, feeling the warmth and strength of his arms around me.
‘What happened then?’
‘I heard there were soldiers billeted everywhere and thought I might bring more trouble to everyone if I showed my face here. I kept out of the way, until I ran into Jack a few days ago in Peterborough market. He told me there were different soldiers billeted here now and he thought the floods were coming. He also said my replacement as rector had run away. I remembered your father telling me how the church used to be the place of safety when the floods were really bad in his childhood. I thought I could help, but I told Jack to say nothing for the moment.’
There was beginning to be movement in the church, people getting up and shaking out blankets. I heard the clank of an iron cooking pot and realised I was ravenously hungry.
‘Have you heard about Tom? About his leg?’
‘Aye, Jack told me. And I was here when you all arrived last night.’
‘I don’t know what will become of us. Father is dead, Mother is losing her mind, and Tom cannot work on the farm. I’m afraid of the future.’
He smiled down at me. ‘That doesn’t sound like you. Fear is not something I link with your name.’
‘I’ve been somewhat too bold, I think. If I had not insisted on going to break down the old sluice gate, Tom would not have followed us and fallen in the Lode, and George would not have drowned.’
‘They tell me you saved his life in the Fen.’
‘And a brave man saved my life in Lincoln.’
‘In this terrible age of the world,’ he said, ‘so many dead, brother fighting against brother, father against son, the English church destroyed by these rampant Puritans, innocent women hanged as witches – in spite of all this there are still private acts of kindness and courage. We have to cling to that and hope for a better future. I cannot believe that it is God’s plan that there is nothing in prospect for us but a blood-stained future.’
‘Mercy?’ It was Alice, carrying Huw and giving me a knowing smile, seeing me sitting there in Gideon’s embrace.
I began to scramble awkwardly to my feet and Gideon put a strong arm around my waist to help me. For the first time I realised I was not wearing my own clothes from the day before. Someone had dressed me in a voluminous night shift, that looked as though it might belong to Jack’s well-rounded mother. My feet had been bandaged and my hair hung loose. I picked up my blanket and wrapped it round my shoulders, for modesty’s sake.
‘Tom wants to speak to you,’ Alice said.
‘Has something happened?’ I was instantly apprehensive. ‘He isn’t dying? Mother, is mother safe?’
Alice patted my arm and Huw looked at me with wondering eyes.
‘Tom is well. He seems none the worse for being half drowned in the Lode. Your mother is just as she has been lately. Some of the village goodwives are sitting with her. They’ve all known each other since they were girls and can talk to her about those days. I think it has eased her mind a little to talk to them.’
‘More than I can do,’ I said sadly. ‘She does not even know who I am.’
She squeezed my arm. ‘Come. Speak to Tom.’
Gideon steadied my stumbling steps as Alice led us out of the side chapel and down the nave to where two benches had been pushed together near the font to make a bed for Tom. His back was propped up against the wall and he was laughing with Jack over something. I felt a brief stab of anger. Did he not know that a good man had died because of his folly in following us to the sluice? But I was so relieved that he had not died as well that I pushed the thought away.
‘Mercy!’ Tom held out both his hands to me and I took them. ‘Thank God you are safe. I think we all nearly died. Then Alice said your mind was wandering in the night.’
‘I struck my head, she told me. And I was exhausted.’
‘And grieved for George.’ A sudden spasm passed over his face and I saw that he was full of shame and guilt for George’s death.
‘Can you sit? Gideon, is there somewhere for Mercy to sit?’
Gideon carried over another bench and set it beside Tom. As he turned away, Tom put out his hand.
‘Please stay, Gideon. I may need your help.’
Gideon sat down beside me.
‘Help with what?’ I said.
Tom considered for a moment, putting his thoughts together.
‘What I did last night was stupid. More than stupid. Wicked. I should never have followed you, putting you all in danger. I cannot forgive myself for what happened to George.’
I bowed my head, but did not answer. The memory of last night flashed before my eyes and I clenched my fists.
‘Since . . . since I lost my leg, I’ve tried to pretend to myself that it does not matter, that I could continue my life as if nothing had changed. I persuaded myself that with time I could do everything I used to do, work the farm, carry on Father’s legacy.’
‘Tom–’
‘Hear me out, Mercy. As I said, I was stupid. I was deceiving myself. Of course I cannot work the farm. I can barely help with the milking, and then only with Nehemiah covering up my failings.’
‘Tom–’
‘Please, Mercy.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I have been thinking again of what I intended after I left Cambridge. I want to go back to Grey’s Inn, to train to be a lawyer. A lawyer can still practice if he has a wooden leg, and in London I can buy a leg of the very finest quality!’ He smiled bravely.
I did not know what to think at first. This was not what I had been expecting, if I had thought at all.
‘But . . . I thought you said that London was corrupt, the courts and government controlled by a small faction who are bent on ousting all the honest men?’
‘All the more reason for the honest men to fight back. If I can no longer fight in the Fens, I will fight in the courts. If not a rioter, then a lawyer for the rioters.’
‘Always known for troublemakers,’ I murmured.
‘Well, you may carry on making trouble, Mercy.’
‘But what will become of the rest of us?’
‘I am going to make the farm over to you. I know that you are as capable of running it as ever I have been. Why, in this world turned upside down, even great ladies have taken to running their estates, and they have not your skills.’
I laughed. ‘You flatter me.’
‘No.’ He reached out again and took my hand. ‘Shall we do it, Mercy? Each of us carry on the fi
ght in our own way?’
I glanced sideways at Gideon. Tom saw me and turned to him.
‘What do you say, Gideon?’
‘I say that Mercy is a strong woman who will do whatever she sets her mind to. And only she can decide. But whatever she decides, I will be beside her, if she will let me.’
All around us the church was filled with the murmur of voices. Children, recovered from the fears of the night before, were playing knucklebones in the aisle. Outside, winter was closing down. Soon all of these fenlands would lie under a sheet of ice.
I looked from one to the other of them and smiled.
‘We will carry on the fight,’ I said. ‘Troublemakers. Every one.’
More by This Author
The Anniversary
The Travellers
A Running Tide
The Testament of Mariam
Betrayal
This Rough Ocean
The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez
The Enterprise of England
The Portuguese Affair
Bartholomew Fair
Suffer the Little Children
Praise for Ann Swinfen’s Novels
‘an absorbing and intricate tapestry of family history and private memories … warm, generous, healing and hopeful’
Victoria Glendinning
‘I very much admired the pace of the story. The changes of place and time and the echoes and repetitions – things lost and found, and meetings and partings’
Penelope Fitzgerald
‘I enjoyed this serious, scrupulous novel … a novel of character … [and] a suspense story in which present and past mysteries are gradually explained’
Jessica Mann, Sunday Telegraph
'The author … has written a powerful new tale of passion and heartbreak ... What a marvellous storyteller Ann Swinfen is – she has a wonderful ear for dialogue and she brings her characters vividly to life.'
Publishing News
‘Her writing …[paints] an amazingly detailed and vibrant picture of flesh and blood human beings, not only the symbols many of them have become…but real and believable and understandable.’
Helen Brown, Courier and Advertiser
‘She writes with passion and the book, her fourth, is shot through with brilliant description and scholarship...[it] is a timely reminder of the harsh realities, and the daily humiliations, of the Roman occupation of First Century Israel. You can almost smell the dust and blood.’
Peter Rhodes, Express and Star
The Author
Ann Swinfen’s first three novels, The Anniversary, The Travellers, and A Running Tide, all with a contemporary setting but also an historical resonance, were published by Random House, with translations into Dutch and German. The Testament of Mariam marked something of a departure. Set in the first century, it recounts, from an unusual perspective, one of the most famous and yet ambiguous stories in human history. At the same time it explores life under a foreign occupying force, in lands still torn by conflict to this day. Her second historical novel, Flood, first in the Fenland Series, based on true events, takes place in East Anglia during the seventeenth century, where the local people fight desperately to save their land from greedy and unscrupulous speculators. The second novel in the Fenland series, Betrayal, is set partly in East Anglia and partly in London. This Rough Ocean is a novel based on the real-life experiences of the Swinfen family during the 1640s, at the time of the English Civil War.
Currently she is also working on a late sixteenth century series, featuring a young Marrano physician who is recruited as a code-breaker and spy in Walsingham’s secret service. The first book in the series is The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez, the second is The Enterprise of England, the third is The Portuguese Affair, the fourth is Bartholomew Fair and the fifth is Suffer the Little Children. A sixth novel in the series is due in 2015.
http://www.annswinfen.com