Thrushes build in the nest robbed last year. The tabby slinks past, prowling for prey. The baby dreams its dreams. The mother dreams hers, one ear open. Sounds of horses clopping down the lane rouse her but the walls are high. Voices murmur from the direction of the house. She buttons herself back into her clothing. If this life could just continue as it is, she’d ask of God nothing more. Thirsty herself, Beatrice dresses Luke in an approximate fashion and carries him back towards the house. His swaddling needs changing; the smell is rather ripe. Amy can do that.
Opening the back door, Beatrice knows immediately: the Anwyls are back.
‘She was in the garden all along! Will went to look and couldn’t find you. Oh, dearest, how are you? And look, here’s my little nephew!’
Whatever sins and crimes Anna has held to Beatrice’s account in the past, she seems to have forgiven in the joy of homecoming. Thank heaven. Anna looks bonny and thriving. And Will too: but Beatrice hardly dare meet his eyes. Later, when Beatrice’s brother-in-law is left alone with herself and Luke in the parlour, it occurs to her that he’d been sent out to greet her and bring her indoors. Did he come up behind them; snatch a glance at the baby at her breast, her shift undone, her hair loose from its net, all down her back in the sun? He’ll have slipped away, abashed. Beatrice flushes deeply. What he saw, if he did, will never be spoken between them. It will be buried with his other knowledge of his wife’s sister.
But then it’s piety to suckle one’s child. So Luke teaches her, the best of preachers, mute and helpless as he is.
Will bends above the crib, studying Luke Ritter in a long unbroken silence.
His hair’s longer and he has sprouted a scrubby apology for a moustache. She has seen Joss looking at it with amused pity. Beatrice remembers the feel of Will’s hair between her fingers. So soft for a man; too soft maybe. Sleeping with her sister, does he register the likenesses and differences between their physiques? How could he help it? Perhaps he has banished those sensual memories from his mind. But Beatrice remembers that she dreamed last night; dreamed that Luke was her brother-in-law’s son, as he would have been, had the enigmatic right words been spoken, at any moment during any one of a thousand days. As the silence lengthens, Beatrice casts her mind back and cannot pinpoint the moment at which she chose for Christian and against Will.
Providence chose for her and doubtless chose wisely. Had Will been hers, Beatrice would have burned with jealousy whenever he looked at a woman or a woman looked at him. However could she have trusted him?
‘A beautiful, gracious child,’ Will says. ‘You are greatly blessed, Mrs Ritter.’
For a moment he speaks and even looks like a pastor. It was what she always desired and thought would never come, that gravity and grace.
*
She never expected to love her husband like this, to take his hand when no one’s looking and stroke with her fingertips the thin skin of his wrist. Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the visit to Wales, Anna would have been able to keep her neutral, friendly distance; to tolerate his capers and caprices; to nourish a genial contempt for him, as someone less intelligent and serious than herself – as many wives do. They go their own way, live their lives within the domestic sphere, outwardly toeing the line with an inferior mate. Lip-service. Standing at the door, she sees Will and Beatrice bending over Luke.
Beatrice is altered: motherhood absorbs her. She glows with her love of the boy and smiles quietly to herself as if nursing a secret. The lioness would kill for her cub. She’d maul the lion himself if necessary or die in the attempt. Anna, entering the room with a rustle of skirts, smiles radiantly and is allowed to hold Luke.
‘Is this all right, love? Am I holding him right? Such a bonny boy. Our little nephew, Will.’
Beatrice comes over and kneels at Anna’s feet. ‘Look, Annie, he’s smiling. He likes you.’
Such a little creature has no likes or dislikes, Anna knows. She recognises Beatrice’s goodwill. The baby’s hand grips her forefinger and drags it to his mouth; sucks hard. Blood floods the fingertip. Luke means to live. A robust lad.
‘I was asking Beatrice who she feels Luke resembles,’ Will says.
‘In the early days his face seemed to change from day to day. At twenty-four hours old he looked so old and sage, I could see Papa. To the life. It was comical but it made me cry.’
‘Oh Beattie, I wish I’d been there with you.’
‘I do too. You’d have seen it. Though Joss of course pooh-poohed it. And then Mama appeared and Grandmama – they came and went – just fleeting resemblances, as if they visited for a moment. How I wish they’d lived to see him. And you, Annie, I can still see you now … his lips, the set of his jaw – can you see her, Will?’
‘Yes, I do believe I can. How Anna cried when your letter came, Beatrice! She sobbed so much I thought I’d better join in. But I can see you yourself, Beatrice, quite clearly – about the eyes. Can’t you see it, Annie?’
‘And his dear Papa, of course,’ Anna reminds everyone.
‘His Papa is so proud. He has mighty plans for Luke. It’s a shame he has to be away so often and miss the little daily changes. But of course I write and keep him informed of every detail. Mr Elias came in and read to me from Genesis. And the Spirit of God moved upon the waters. I thought, Yes, I’ve been there, I’ve seen that, God has shown that to me. But then this terror came over me – and I thought, My lamb is mortal. I’ve made someone live who’s born to die. Which I have. He is. What have I done?’
Anna sees in her sister the child she once was, standing in her smock at the edge of the wilderness, holding up her wrist with a bee sting and a discovery: they give us honey and they wound us too.
‘Not for many, many years, dear heart, I hope,’ says Will. ‘And even if our Father thought it best to take him before his time, dear Luke is a Christian child; you would sustain it, you’d only be waiting. He’d be safe with the Father. You would expect to see your darling’s face again, in Jerusalem.’
‘Yes, yes of course, Will. Thank you for reminding me. It’s so silly of me. I hope to see him born again in conversion and be baptised. Christian has all but put his name down for Regent’s Park College to train for the ministry – to which I say, Festina lente, hasten slowly. One of the few bits of Latin I know.’
Anna settles Beatrice’s mortal boy back in his mother’s arms. Luke roots with his mouth, hungry now, whimpering and peremptory. Rejecting the little finger his mother offers him to suck, he breaks into urgent shrieks. A hale, strong lad, nothing like poor Magdalena.
Glances of tenderness pass between Beatrice and Will. His sister-in-law has called out to him from her heart; her brother-in-law has ministered to her. She is eased and comforted. Good then, that the Anwyls are back. Anna feels some justification for coming between her husband and his calling in Wales, if there was a calling. For every choice there’s a charge. A down-payment, followed by further drafts in the future, should a woman elect to follow her own will. Anna understands that Will and Beatrice have at last reached the point at which they could have married. Paradoxically – for they have had to lock themselves in cages first. And surely this love is something she ought to – and can – respect. It’s family love, the sort of affection that can be accepted without danger to other loyalties. Especially if, as Anna trusts and vows, there’s to be peace between herself and Beatrice.
Chapter 17
Sabbath dawn; clement weather. Way up in the pear tree, the rambler roses at Sarum House are lemon-yellow. The corn fields are ripening; if the good weather holds, a fine harvest is due. Beatrice walks with her husband down Florian Street to the church, her arm in his, their son having been left in the care of his aunt. She dislikes leaving Luke but there are times when you’re obliged to do so; she represses the thought that all time not spent with her son is time lost.
The saturated earth is already drying, releasing scented steam from the lavender hedge at Florian Street. The Kyffin congregation has risen at first light
to rendezvous before the usurpers gather for Morning Service. A crowd stands outside the doors of Florian Street Church, where a blacksmith is making light work of chiselling out Mr Prynne’s locks.
The Kyffinites are soon in at the side door; they unbolt and throw open the main doors. In pour womenfolk with baskets of flowers. Beatrice helps to adorn the interior of the church. Scandal has leaked beyond the local press to the national newspapers, exposing a factionalism that gives satisfaction to nobody but the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bradlaugh the atheist. A spirit of violent bigotry reigns at Florian Street, where Mr Prynne is overreaching himself. Since Mr Kyffin’s martyrdom, he has caused his adversaries to be excommunicated. Setting himself up as the church’s acting minister, the shoemaker preaches hellfire for the unbaptised and the apostacised. Cross him in trifles and you’re damned. Prynne’s faction has itself splintered and there have been secessions. Meanwhile he has appointed a new set of deacons, folk he can control, like the young match-manufacturer, Mr Carter, and Mr Short, the retired tanner.
The body of the church is packed, not only with the remnant of the Florian Street congregation but with dissenters from several sects looking for Revival. Beatrice watches her husband mount the dais after the deafening first hymn.
Christian’s opening message is brief and crisp. He preaches full and free grace to all who confess their sins to Christ, repent and ask for mercy.
No one’s excluded from Heaven – except the excluders.
And yet even the excluders’ stony hearts must melt when they see the sacred fire of Awakening crossing continents, from America to Wales, from Wales to Wiltshire, and thence to London, Prague, St Petersburg, Peking.
The service is well into the second hymn when the Prynnites begin to appear. A mighty wall of sound stuns the latecomers as they stumble into a packed church. Absorbed into the body of the congregation, they seem to surrender the will to protest. There’s no sign of Mr Prynne himself.
‘Isaiah Minety of West Grimstead has agreed to speak to us about his experience of Revival on his recent visit to Wales.’
The lad has shot up into gangling young manhood. His voice, in the process of breaking, executes bagpipe skirls when least expected, lapses he accepts with remarkable equanimity. Although Isaiah’s sleeves are too short for his bony arms and acne flames on his face, he has grown in confidence, following in the steps of Mr Spurgeon and learning the lessons of that great man’s meteoric rise, without the Calvinist theology that goes with it. Or any theology, as far as Beatrice can tell.
Isaiah takes as his text verses from the second Book of Kings, Chapter 2. Elijah, like Mr Kyffin, is taken up to God in a whirlwind. The prophet’s mantle falls upon Elisha. Who shall be our Elisha? Who’ll be Mr Kyffin’s successor? He tells the story of how a rabble of youths mock Elisha in the street. Oh good, they think, here comes a funny-looking old geezer: Go on up, thou bald-head; go on up, thou bald-head! Elisha turns round and curses them in the name of the Lord.
‘What happens then? A she-bear rampages out of the forest. She kills and eats forty-two boys.’
And Isaiah roars from the pulpit, an incensed bear with an appetite. Nobody titters, though it wouldn’t take much to set them off and what a good thing Anna is absent. A baby cries.
‘A scene of carnage – God’s terrible judgment!’ Isaiah leans forward, his gaze roaming the congregation. What next? More roaring and gnashing? Beatrice has heard of a Welsh preacher shredding a Bible in the pulpit and scattering the leaves, to indicate the pre-eminence of the Spirit over the letter. The pulpit is in danger of becoming a circus, a freak show.
But, with a precise sense of dramatic timing, turning from God’s wrath to His Gospel mercy, Isaiah reaches out his arms to the congregation with an expression of yearning. In Pastor Pentecost’s time sermons were classically composed, weighted with pithy matter, memorably expressed. And yet Beatrice finds herself fascinated. She too cranes forward to hear the prodigy’s next revelation.
‘But our Elisha, our saintly and tender Mr Kyffin, did not curse anybody. No bear came dashing out of the Chute Forest to munch you up alive, did it? The man you mocked died loving and forgiving all. He received his death-wound here where I’m standing. Like someone else we know. Who died for me and you on the Cross.’
Silence rings in the body of the church. The majority of the congregation of Florian Street knows already who its next minister is to be.
When the pale shoemaker appears and demands to speak, Isaiah courteously permits him to do so. But he does not descend from the pulpit.
Hat in hand, Mr Prynne raises his eyes to heaven and cries in a loud voice, ‘Oh God, when we hear the shrieks of the damned ascending from the everlasting flames of the bottomless pit, give us grace to shout, Halleluiah! Halleluiah!’
There is no response.
*
The boy of West Grimstead has been tutored in Wales by Anna in the use of a napkin; the handling of cutlery; how to pick up peas without shooting them off the table. Now she signals a twofold message: do not saw your beef so urgently and keep your elbows to yourself. She indicates the presence of gravy on his chin. Red-faced, Isaiah demonstrates the use of the napkin, quite correctly.
‘I saw an acquaintance of yours in Salisbury, Anna,’ confides Mrs Elias, as they are placing steamed pudding and custard on the table.
‘Oh yes, Loveday, who was that?’
‘Mrs Sala, as she calls herself.’
‘Why do you say calls herself?’
‘You have not heard?’
‘I do not listen to gossip, I never do; it’s my rule.’
‘Yes, Loveday,’ Beatrice interrupts. ‘We know all about that. No need to discuss it any further.’ She continues to pour water from the jug into glasses, shoulders high and tense.
Mrs Elias says no more, though she makes it clear that there’s a great deal she could reveal if she chose. She ladles pudding into the young preacher’s bowl: he must be hungry after his great work at Florian Street. Have more, do.
Jack and Tom glare at Isaiah’s heaped plate, since his plenty means their dearth, and then begin to snipe.
‘Why do you talk so funny anyway?’
Isaiah looks alarmed. During his younger days, preaching at the market cross, he just said whatever came into his head. But the advance of his ministry brings social anxieties – and no Mr Kyffin at hand to counsel him. Becoming aware that his speech is considered uncouth, somehow or other he has managed to add the ghost of a Welsh accent to his Wiltshire burr.
‘Well now, Jack, I do not speak funny, far as I knows.’
‘Knows! Ee knows, does ee? Ee do know, Tom, don’t ee?’
‘Ee talks as if ee got a pebble in ees mouth.’
‘Or a pinecone,’ Tom suggests.
‘Or a hedgehog.’
‘Or a whole duck. Wack wack wack!’
‘That’s quite enough of that.’ Anna sees Beatrice come down on the Elias boys in quite her old peremptory spirit. The bowls are swept away. ‘Besides,’ Beatrice goes on, ‘Isaiah is about to become a minister of the church now, like your Papa.’
‘Yes, Mr Minety might curse us,’ says Tom.
‘Ooh, I’m so frightened! Mr Minety! Mr Minety! Don’t throw an anathema at me!’ Jack slides down his chair until only his head shows above the tablecloth. ‘The baker’s boy, the baker’s boy,’ he murmurs through his teeth.
Isaiah has evidently kept the best portion of his pudding, with a dollop of jam, till last. It cheers him to see it there in the middle of his plate, with custard to go with it. He nudges the last morsel onto his spoon with his thumb, bends his head, sucks it in and swallows, setting down the spoon exactly as Anna has taught him.
‘Disgusting boys, those Eliases. So ill-bred!’ observes Rose Peck when the children have been taken home. Through the open window Loveday can be heard whining at them and threatening them with a telling-off by their father. ‘Oh yes, I’m sure Mr Elias will correct them,’ Rose goes on. ‘He’ll play the
flute at them. Their hides need tanning. But it’s too late now. Spoiled. Tell us all about your honeymoon, Mrs Anwyl.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well, what apparel did you wear for your wedding journey? Start with the shoes.’
‘Stout boots for mud and rain, Rose.’
‘Oh dear, really? I’ve heard that Wales is excessively wet. But it is said to have some picturesque views. I shall be spending my honeymoon in Paris, shan’t you, Lily?’
‘Are you getting married, dear?’ asks Anna.
‘Well, some day, of course. I have nobody in mind au moment.’
And besides, Rose’s eyes seem to say, you’ve removed the only man worth playing for: it’s too tragic. I know Mr Anwyl would have married me if you and your sister had not been so forward. He used to take my hand when you weren’t looking. He tickled my neck with a feather. He taught me amo amas amat behind the outbuildings after the tea meeting.
But the Pentecosts knew all about his fun and games. We were never in the dark, thinks Anna. Nothing can happen in Chauntsey that escapes the network of spies. What we didn’t see for ourselves we were sure to hear about, doubtless with embroideries. Will’s dallying and flirting and what Mr Montagu called ‘concupiscence’, apparently incorrigible, was the reason Beatrice couldn’t allow herself to marry him. And why she wished him on me, Anna thinks. Her mind carries back over the patched items she has received over time from her elder sister: this used thing will do for Anna.
The human hand-me-down, just arrived from Fighelbourn, slips into his seat and grins across at his wife. And I’m beginning to love him, Anna thinks. So much. I never expected to and thought myself safe. But surely I am safe? He doesn’t go off into corners with girls any longer. At least as far as Anna knows.
‘Prynhawn da, Will.’
He likes it that she greets him in Welsh, the language of Paradise and of Heaven, according to him. ‘Ti’n iawn, cariad?’
Rose and Lily turn up their snub noses. You’re welcome to his gibberish, their looks say. And besides your husband’s hair is growing thin; he has no true distinction: we can do better.
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