by Ann Turnbull
Table of Contents
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
William
Susanna
About the Author
To Tim, David and Julie,
whose encouragement and enthusiasm
kept me going
SHROPSHIRE
1662
Susanna
We were having a washday when the bailiffs came. We’d got the linen together, piled in a basket – shirts, shifts, caps, sheets, collars: a fortnight’s load – and I was helping my mother lay it in the tub, spreading it out and placing sticks between the layers so that water could soak through evenly.
The tub was in the hall, and although it was cold outside we’d left the house door open to let out the smell and steam. There was a deal of noise, water splashing and the clang of pails on flagstones, and we’d been at it since dawn. Our sleeves were rolled up, and I knew my face must be as pink as my mother’s, for it was heavy work.
Isaac and Deb were in the yard, at the side of the house. He was chopping firewood and she was feeding the hens. They appeared suddenly in the doorway, their faces sharp with alarm.
“They’re at the top of the lane!” said Isaac. “With a cart!”
Deb had her thumb in her mouth. I went to the door and she ran to me and butted her head against my skirts. I lifted her up. I knew she was frightened. My own heart was racing.
“They won’t hurt thee, chicken,” I said.
Deb spoke around her thumb. “Not a chicken.”
We’d known they were coming, of course. That was why my mother had chosen that day as washday. We won’t hinder the law, but we know how to be awkward. The big buck-tub was in the middle of the hall, leaving room for people to pass, but not for furniture.
I saw a knot of neighbours in the lane, glancing between us and the approaching men. There was an eagerness about them. Not much happens in Long Aston.
Any other family, and they might have offered support: fists shaken at the bailiffs, maybe even a barricade. But not us. Even so, when I’d gone the day before to fetch beer from the inn, the landlord had said, almost in irritation, “Hide some valuables, girl. And put a few chickens in a crate and bring them here. We’ll keep them till they’ve gone.”
It was the first kindness he’d shown us. He felt pity, I realized, now that my father was in prison and my mother had no one to protect her.
But I could only thank him and answer, “It’s not our way.”
He clicked his teeth then, and said, “No. Your way is to make martyrs of yourselves. But folk don’t think any better of you for it.”
Now the bailiffs were at the gate. They dismounted with a clatter of weapons and harness, and strode up to the door. My mother had just tipped a pailful of ley into the tub, and the smell rose up: wood ash, and the urine that we put in to bleach the linen. She faced the bailiffs while I took the younger ones indoors. I set Deb down and told her and Isaac to go up to the loft. But Isaac wouldn’t go, and Deb stayed close by his side.
“Elizabeth Thorn?”
There were three of them, tall in their high-crowned black hats. The leader produced a warrant.
“Elizabeth Thorn, your husband stands convicted of non-payment of church tithes, being one-tenth of all your income, and in default of payment I am empowered to distrain upon your goods…”
My mother stepped back into the hall, and then into the parlour; and we had the small satisfaction of watching them squeeze, one by one, past the buck-tub. But, once inside, they seemed to fill the house with their male presence: loud voices, boots, weapons.
The leader began making an inventory. The others pulled at the bed, tossed pillows and blankets on the floor. They flung out the contents of our oak chest: linen cloths and sheets, spare clothes, my father’s leather jerkin, my mother’s black hat that she wears to market. One of them was sent outside, and soon we heard the hens screeching and squawking. Good girls, I thought: you give him the run-around.
They tramped around our small kitchen, finding little of value. In the parlour the leader noted my father’s loom, which stood against the wall opposite the bed.
He made a decision. “Take the bed and the loom.”
I know my mother had intended to stay quiet. But she is a fiery woman, and when she saw them begin to drag out the bed she shared with my father, she said, “We will pay no tithes to any hireling priest! The Word of God is free. Did Christ demand tithes? Did he—”
“Be quiet, woman, or you will find yourself in worse trouble,” the leader said.
And they took the bed that had been hers since her marriage. When they reached the hall one of them heaved at the buck-tub and pushed it over, sending scalding water flowing across the floor. I leaped aside just in time, but I yelped in fright. Deb began to scream.
With the bed stowed on the cart, they came back for the loom, which had a length of cloth on it.
“The yarn is not ours,” my mother said quickly. “My husband works to order.”
They cut the cloth free and tossed it down on the basket of yarn. Then they started to carry out the loom.
My mother ran after them. “How is my husband to work?” she demanded.
But they ignored her. And we saw that the one who had been in the yard had crated up the chickens and was bringing out Pleasance, our cow.
In the lane a small group of people watched and gossiped as the cart was driven off with a man walking behind it leading the cow. Two girls I knew a little stared at me and whispered behind their hands. I looked away, lifting my chin. I was lonely at Long Aston, and had never found friends among the village girls. No doubt their parents warned them against me. Our family was different. My father didn’t drink with the men at the alehouses; my mother didn’t gossip; in defiance of the law we never went to that steeple-house they called their church, and neither was my father willing to pay tithes to its priest. And for this our neighbours saw us punished and perhaps thought we deserved it.
“Help me with the tub, Su,” my mother said.
Together we hauled it upright, gathered up the hot, waterlogged linen, dirty now from the floor, and relaid it in the tub. My mother mopped the floor. Isaac took Deb out to the yard, and I walked into the parlour and saw the empty spaces where the bed and the loom had been, the blankets and pillows and other things scattered around. I began to tidy up.
When we’d set the house aright it looked emptier than ever. Then Isaac came running in and released two hens into the room.
“They missed these!”
Deb squealed and chased them. And somehow we all caught her excitement and laughed like daft things over the escape of those two hens.
“Well,” my mother said, “we have hens; there is straw in the loft to sleep on; and they have left me my spinning wheel.”
But they’d taken our cow. That was a great loss. I put on my pattens and went outside to check the byre and outhouses. The byre door was open. Inside, I smelled the warm reek of manure and the scent of hay. It was as if Pleasance was still there, and I half expected to hear her b
umping against the woodwork of her stall, eager to be milked.
My eyes pricked with tears, and I felt a surge of resentment towards my parents for their stubborn faith, which had brought us to this. And then at once I felt guilty, for it was my faith too; I was the eldest child and must help my family – and as I thought about this I saw that at the same time I might be able to change my own life for the better.
I said nothing until the evening. We prayed together and ate supper, and Deb went to her bed in the loft. Isaac took up the Bible, as my father would do of an evening, and read aloud from Luke’s gospel. When Isaac, too, had gone to bed, my mother and I sat together by rushlight and the embers of the fire, my mother spinning while I knitted a stocking. Our shadows moved on the walls and the wheel made a gentle clicking background to my thoughts.
“Mam,” I said, “we can’t live by spinning. I’m turned fifteen. I must leave home and find work.”
I made it sound like a duty, but the truth is I was eager to go: to a town, a place where folk were not so superstitious, so set in their ways; a place where I wouldn’t always be an outsider, but would meet others with beliefs like ours; other girls – and perhaps boys.
I saw from her face that she realized the sense of it.
“But who would take thee, hereabouts?”
I knew she was remembering the time last year when I’d worked for a few months helping the dairymaid on a neighbour’s farm. Two of the cows had fallen sick and the maid had pointed the finger at me; said she’d seen me making signs over them. All lies, and fool’s talk too, for my father says there is no such thing as witchcraft, only the darkness of folks’ minds. But they looked askance at me, and I was afraid; it was lucky for me the cows recovered.
“Thou must go to Friends of Truth,” my mother decided. “Perhaps Alice Randall needs a dairymaid…”
Alice is a widow with a farm out at Crowbank, miles from anywhere.
“Not a farm,” I said. “I want to go to town. To Hemsbury.”
“The town?” Her face showed anxiety. My mother has travelled, but she is a countrywoman at heart. She thinks towns are full of ungodliness.
“It’s not far,” I said, “and there are Friends there. Many more than around here. Shopkeepers and suchlike, who might need servants. And some who might have daughters my age.”
She looked at me then as if she had at last understood.
“Yes,” she said. “Thou need’st young company. And if we could find thee a place with godly folk…”
“We could ask after Meeting,” I said.
I had thought it all out.
And so, on first-day, as the bell was clanging to call folk to the steeple-house, we set off as usual to walk the seven miles across country to the meeting at Eaton Bellamy.
It’s rough walking there, along lanes deep in mud, over stiles and ditches, but we’re used to it – even little Deb; she trudged along, holding her doll, Sibley, who keeps her amused during the long meetings. We passed few travellers till we reached the outskirts of Eaton Bellamy. There we saw some folk on horseback riding towards us: a merchant, I guessed – a middle-aged man with several pack-horses and servants behind – and with him a young man who sat tall in the saddle and wore a fine black hat with a grey plume in it.
We had to cross the road in front of them to reach a stile on the other side. We were almost across when Deb cried out that she had dropped Sibley’s hood. She darted back, stumbled over a rut and fell, letting out one of her piercing wails. The merchant’s horse shied. He swore and struggled to control it, and the party halted.
I ran to help Deb, but the young man had already dismounted and reached her just ahead of me. He lifted her to her feet. Deb looked up, saw a stranger’s face, and the wail stopped in her throat. She stared, wide-eyed, then flew to my arms.
The young man looked at me, and smiled. I liked his smile, and the way he had cared about Deb; for he was clearly a well-to-do youth and many such would have cursed us and ridden on.
“She is not hurt,” he said.
“No,” I replied, as Deb peeped at him, and my mother came up beside us. “No, I thank thee.”
He nodded. And then he was away, had re-mounted his horse, and they rode on. I looked back at them once as we crossed the field, and my mother saw me.
“A pleasing lad,” she said.
“Yes.” I felt a blush spread up my face, betraying me.
She laughed then, but kindly, and touched my cheek with a calloused hand. “He’s not for thee, Susanna.”
William
She’s a Quaker, I thought.
The girl had not said “Thank you, sir” as I might have expected, but simply “I thank thee”. And she had not lowered her eyes as young girls are trained to do; as my sister would do in the presence of a man. She had looked up at me with a straight clear gaze that had no false modesty in it.
I liked that look. And I liked her face, rosy from the cold wind, framed by a dark hood and hat that prevented me from knowing the colour of her hair.
I glanced back at her. She was crossing the field: a slight figure, not very tall, grey woollen stockings flicking beneath the hem of her dark skirt as she walked.
I saw now where they were going. There were some farm buildings, and a large barn with people standing around outside it. And I noticed several other groups of people walking towards the barn from different directions across the fields.
“Quakers!” said the merchant. I turned to him and saw a spasm of contempt cross his face. “They breed like maggots in these villages.”
The merchant was not an acquaintance of mine. We were simply fellow travellers, having both left an inn outside Brentbridge that morning with our servants to take the road to Hemsbury. I was going home after three years’ study with a tutor in Oxford. I was glad of the merchant’s company for safety’s sake, but that was all. Now, however, I was obliged to listen as he began talking of a Quaker he knew through his business.
“Dismal, canting fellow. Won’t drink your health. Won’t attend the company’s yearly feast because he says the food should be given to the poor. There’s no good fellowship to be had with folk of that sort.”
He glanced over his shoulder and added, “Pretty wench, though, back there.” He winked at me, and I disliked him the more.
As we rode on past fields full of new green growth, I thought of the Quakers holding their meeting in the barn. They would sit, I supposed, on benches or bales of hay. I knew they would have no minister. They would sit in silence together until one of them felt moved to speak. And anyone might speak: man or woman, rich or poor. I found it shocking to think of a woman like that girl’s mother getting up and playing parson. And yet I was drawn to the silence, the simplicity. It was something I had been thinking about, from time to time, ever since an encounter in Oxford two years ago.
It was a market day in summer, a Saturday, and I was out with some other boys. I was fifteen, and had attached myself to the fringes of a group of boisterous older youths. We had been drinking, and now we mingled with the university students, who were swaggering about town and talking loudly.
I heard a disturbance, and saw that two women had climbed up onto barrels in the marketplace and were preaching to the crowd. They were ordinary-looking women, dressed in sturdy workaday clothes, but not ragged or poor. One was in her twenties, the other older. I couldn’t hear properly what they said, nor was I much interested; I heard them speak of God, and the light, and then they must have said something that enraged the university men, who began to shout abuse.
Someone threw a handful of horse dung, which struck the older woman in the face, causing the crowd to howl with delight. I felt a prickle of excitement. Mud and rotten vegetables began to fly, and then the mob seized both women. They punched and beat them, and we joined in, shouting, laughing and cheering on the attackers. I was excited, and a little drunk, but not so much that I didn’t feel a sense of shame at my behaviour. I’d seen fights often enough, but these women were un
armed and unprotected and would not fight, except with words. I knew I should have no part in this, but I was caught by the power of the mob.
At last the constables appeared. By this time the students had dragged the younger woman to a midden and thrown her into it. The constables drove the youths back and arrested the women.
They came pushing a path through the crowd, close to where I was standing. The young woman was bedraggled, covered in stinking mess, her face cut and her hair falling down. Her arms were forced behind her back, and the constables pushed her along so that she stumbled repeatedly over the cobbles. The market women looked at her with contempt. “Loud-mouthed jade,” I heard one of them say. “Her husband should beat her – keep her under control.”
I felt the wrong that was being done to the young woman, and yet at the same time I was afraid of her and of whatever inner strength upheld her. Was she mad? Certainly she looked it in her dishevelled state, as she turned to glare into the jeering crowd.
And then her eyes fixed on me. For an instant, before the constable pushed her onwards, the piercing, bloodshot eyes stared straight into mine. I quailed. I thought she would curse or spit at me. But she did neither. “Take heed,” she said, “of the light within.”
Then she was jerked away.
Later I heard that the women were Quakers; that next day they harangued the professors at the university and were arrested again and publicly flogged and sent out of town. I saw nothing of this, but the woman’s words stayed with me: “Take heed of the light within.”
Why had she spoken? Why to me? Did she see something in me that I had not recognized in myself?
These thoughts returned to me now as the countryside around us grew increasingly familiar and I began to think of home. On either side the fields rose high, nibbled smooth by sheep and broken by outcrops of rock. It was a different landscape to Oxfordshire: harsh and wild, with a big sky. My spirits rose as I recognized the shapes of familiar hills and saw, in the distance, the walls of Hemsbury.
Ned, my father’s servant, was riding just behind me. I looked back, and smiled. “Soon be home.”