by Ann Turnbull
“He is not a Friend, then?”
She laughed, shortly. “No! He is not. But his son…”
“He came to Meeting.”
“Yes. I was surprised to see him there.” She smiled, as if thinking of him kindly. “He wore his hat very low and made off fast afterwards. Well, we won’t pursue him. He’ll come to the truth, if he comes at all, in his own time.”
William
I left the shop and walked across town and out through the postern gate into Castle Hill Fields.
A network of paths encircles the castle and leads down towards the river. It’s a place where I often came to play as a child. Now I paced around, angry with myself. I’d done nothing right; she’d think me a fool; or, worse, she’d think I looked down on her because she was a servant, that my interest in her was not honest.
And what had I said? I’d asked about dance music; and Quakers didn’t dance, or so I’d heard. People joked about them; she must have thought I was mocking her.
And I hadn’t even asked her name.
The day was cold and windy, gleams of sun alternating with flurries of needle-sharp rain. I made for the shelter of the trees and found the ground littered with twigs and branches that the wind had brought down overnight. I picked up a stem of willow; stroked the tight, soft grey catkins.
I had not asked her name, but I knew now the colour of her hair. It was brown; not dark, like mine, but golden-brown, the colour of a hazelnut shell. She wore a linen cap set back on her head so that a few strands of hair fell in loose curls around her face, and her skirt and bodice were brown.
The girl and the Quaker meeting had both been on my mind for days, hopelessly mixed. It had been a shock to enter the meeting, to step into such a deep hush and see so many people gathered, and my instinct had been to sit down quickly and not to look around. But I could not be unaware of who was there: as many women as men, and mostly craftsmen and tradespeople. My near neighbour, from his smell, was a tanner. An elderly dog lay asleep across his feet.
I was aware of the girls too, all in a row, darting glances at me; but I didn’t notice her – not then. I avoided their eyes and looked down at my hands.
As the silence grew I stopped thinking about myself and felt the meeting draw together. I became aware of a power I had never experienced in church; I felt that God was here, among us – no, not among us, within us. Maybe this is what she meant, I thought, that woman in Oxford: the light within is the light of God in each person. And I began to see that if I attended to this light all would become clear to me.
As the silence grew more intense, some of the people started to shake, and the shaking spread through the company. A man stood up, and his voice broke the silence with almost a palpable feeling of relief, as if a dam had burst. He spoke of the Seed, by which I think he meant what I would call the Word. I listened – or half listened, for his words flowed over me so that I grasped their meaning without needing to attend to each one. It was like being bathed in spring water, and I knew that my eyes had been opened and that all my religion until then had been no more than the observance of forms.
Now I wanted to think about that experience, to ponder its meaning; but my excitement about the girl, my success in finding her, speaking to her, made it difficult. I wanted to go again, to experience another meeting, but I wanted also to be sure that I was going truly to wait on God and not because of her.
And here, as the cold rain began to penetrate my coat, I realized the troubles I might be about to bring upon myself. My father despised the Quakers – and feared them too, I suspected, as upstarts and troublemakers. It would be illegal for him, as an alderman and a member of the council, to worship anywhere but the Church of England, and he would expect the same compliance of me.
The girl would not worry him. He would regard her as irrelevant.
I went back to the shop the next day. This time I had the dog, Milly, with me. Anne had a cold, and our stepmother would not let her out of doors. She had sent Meriel to the apothecary for some willow-bark to bring down the fever. When I said I would go out, Anne asked me to take Milly.
“She’s cross from being shut up indoors.”
I didn’t want to take the dog. Milly is not a dog for a man to be seen with; she is small and fluffy, but with a snappy manner and a way of running after other dogs which I knew would draw attention to me in the street.
But I could not refuse.
“She loves to be with you,” said Anne.
And Milly looked up at me eagerly, wagging her tail.
I half hoped the girl would not be there, so that I could try another time without the dog; but she was.
I opened the shop door, and she saw me, and saw Milly, and smiled in delight.
“Is it thine? It’s so pretty!”
She dropped to her knees and stroked Milly, who responded by licking her thoroughly.
I realized that Milly was an asset after all.
“She’s my sister’s pet.”
I kneeled too, and stroked the dog. Our hands were near but did not touch.
She looked up, her face close to mine. Her eyes were dark brown, her skin fair with a few tiny freckles on the bridge of her nose.
“Forgive me,” she said, and jumped to her feet. A blush had spread up her face. “I have thy book: Playford.”
I followed her to a shelf at the front of the shop, and she put the book in my hands.
“It costs a shilling.”
I made a show of looking through the book. I was willing and able to buy it, but when I did so our encounter would be at an end.
“It’s for my sister,” I said. “She is having dancing lessons and is much taken with the music. And I like to play.”
“These look to be merry tunes.”
“They are. And the steps are given, as well as the music.”
“I have never learned to dance,” she said.
“Is it forbidden?”
“No. Each person must be guided by the light within. Nothing is forbidden.”
“Nothing?” I knew the Quakers’ reputation, and yet still felt shock at her words, for I had been brought up in a society where authority, not the individual conscience, must be obeyed. A memory came into my mind of an anti-Quaker pamphlet I had seen, with a picture of naked people, men and women together, and a couple embracing in public. “But there are things you won’t do?” I said. “You would not swear an oath in court?”
“We try to live in the truth. So we don’t lie; our word is our bond. We don’t need to swear oaths; they are against Christ’s teaching.”
“And you’d go to prison rather than swear?”
“Yes. Because it is the truth.” She paused. “Thou should speak to our elders. Samuel Minton, or Mary.” She turned towards the print-room door, as if to look for her employer. “Mary would answer thee.”
“Not now. Tell me about you. What’s your name?”
“Susanna Thorn.”
“Susanna.” It felt good to say it. “I am Will Heywood.”
“I know.” She smiled. “Mary recognized thee.”
This caused me a moment’s anxiety. But Mistress Faulkner would hardly report to my father that she had seen me at a Quaker meeting. No Quaker, I felt sure, would pass on information of that sort.
“Tell me about the way you speak,” I said. “Why you say ‘thee’ and ‘thou’. It sounds old-fashioned.”
“It is,” she said. “We say ‘thee’ or ‘thou’ to one person; ‘you’ if there are more than one. People always used to speak that way. Only nowadays the fashion is to say ‘you’ all the time; and men in authority expect it as their due and think ‘thee’ is insulting. But we stick with the old ways.”
“So as to provoke the authorities?”
I thought my challenge would disconcert her; I half expected her to look down, to defer to me in some way. But she faced me squarely. “They may choose to be provoked, but we don’t insult anyone. Respect does not come from forms of address.”
&
nbsp; “And you believe you are the equal of the priest or the magistrate?”
“We are.”
She said it in all innocence. I saw now why men like my father were infuriated by the Quakers.
Milly jumped up at Susanna’s skirt. Susanna stroked the dog and looked at me with a hint of laughter. “I like her. But she is not the dog for thee. Thou should have a hound. A greyhound.”
“And what—” But someone opened the door at the back of the shop and I quickly took out the money for the book. I spoke quietly. “May I see you here again?”
“I cannot hinder thee.”
“But do you wish—”
A young man – an apprentice, I supposed – had come in.
“Yes,” she said. And she looked at me with that straight gaze that had so disarmed me when we first met.
She put the money in a box, and I nodded to the other youth and went out, towards Castle Hill Fields.
When we reached the meadow I took off Milly’s lead and let her run. And I ran too, and jumped a stile. I felt brimful of energy. I flung a stick for the dog, and when she came racing back with it I stroked and ruffled her fur and said, “Good girl. Good dog, Milly.”
Susanna
When would he come again?
I could think about nothing else for the rest of the day; in my imagination I relived our conversation, saw his hands close to mine as we both kneeled to stroke the little dog, heard his voice, his questions, every word he’d said.
I forgot to fetch the loaves from the baker’s, and Mary scolded me. The three of us – Mary, Nat and I – ate leftover pease pudding for our supper instead.
It was the first time I had disappointed Mary, and I was anxious to regain her good opinion. After supper I washed the dishes without being asked, and then fetched my slate and showed her the rows of letters I’d been copying.
“I’ve practised them all now.”
“Then thou must begin joining up the letters,” she said. “Fetch ink and paper. I’ll show thee.”
I hurried to obey, lit an extra candle and laid paper, ink and goose-quill on the table for her. She sat down, sharpened the quill with a small knife, and began to write.
Over her shoulder I read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”
The quill scratched on the paper and the candle cast a pool of light on the familiar sentences that we both knew by heart, and which I loved to hear. “In him was life: and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
I watched how Mary joined the letters, never taking pen from paper until she had completed a word. My father had taught me to write my own name; I memorized the order of the letters till I could see them in my head. But I was clumsy and slow, and until now had expected to have little need in my life for writing.
“Try for thyself. Use the slate,” Mary said.
I struggled to copy the words, and she watched me, checking I made the joins correctly.
“Rub it out. Try again.”
Several times I wrote as much as would fit on my slate. When at last Mary was satisfied that I was making progress she blew out the candle and told me to pack the writing things away.
“Thou can practise again tomorrow,” she said.
I thought of the shop; and Will Heywood.
“May I mind the shop tomorrow? Use the table?”
I feared I was blushing and was glad of the concealing shadows in the candle-lit room.
“Yes,” she said. “When thy other tasks are done. It would be a help to me.”
Next morning I was at the conduit early.
“You’re brisk today,” said Em, as we walked back along the street together. She was puffing as she hurried to keep up with me.
“I need to get back and do my work. Then I can serve in the shop.”
“I’d rather be out.” She gave me a smile that spoke of secrets. Em was being courted by a shoemaker’s apprentice, and they often contrived to meet around town.
“I’m learning to write,” I said. “My mistress is teaching me.”
“Your mistress? Why would she teach you that? Why not something useful?”
It was impossible to explain. I knew she thought me strange, with a mistress who was probably leading me into unwomanly ways. But Will Heywood approved; he had said so.
I waited nearly all day in the shop, and he never came.
I wrote out the beginning of John’s gospel over and over on the slate. I made a promise with myself that I would not look up until I reached the bottom line and then, when I did, he would be there, in the doorway. I tried this several times, but each time it failed me.
For a while I left my writing and wandered among the bookshelves. I read a little from a herbal, and looked at the pictures. Many other books were in Latin, which I could not read. But Will Heywood would be able to read them, I knew. I felt the weight of difference between us. How could he be interested in me? Perhaps I had misunderstood the manners of the merchant class. Perhaps he had meant only to buy the dance music, and the rest was politeness – or worse, no more than flirtation with a maidservant.
I was in low spirits all evening.
But next day, before I had even started writing, he was there.
I jumped up, unable to conceal my joy.
“Are you busy?” He looked around the shop, which was empty of customers.
“No. As thou can see…”
We both laughed. He’d been helping his father yesterday, he said, with an urgent order; and then later, when he came by, I was not in the shop. My fears had been for nothing; they vanished like dew in the morning.
There was no pretence, this time, that he had come to buy anything. The shop was quiet and we talked for a long time before anyone interrupted us. I’d never talked so much to anyone before. He asked me about my parents’ faith, and I found myself telling him that my mother had been brought up a Puritan; that my father had fought for Parliament in the war and afterwards turned against all fighting; that I’d been born on a commune near Bristol where my parents lived for a while before returning to Shropshire.
“A commune?”
“Yes. They held all land and goods in common and were answerable to no master.” That was what I had come to understand afterwards. All it had meant to me at the time was freedom to run wild and get as dirty as the boys and no one minding. “They were seekers,” I explained. “All the time they were looking for a new way of life. A just way.”
“And they found the Quakers?”
“Yes.”
I told him of a memory of being swept along with my parents – Isaac riding on my father’s shoulders – in a great crowd of people going out into the fields to worship because the house and even the street were not big enough to contain us all. His eyes shone at the vision.
“That’s how it should be!” he said.
His father, too, had fought in the Civil War.
“But he fought for the King. He was much grieved by the war, by its outcome. Most were, in these parts.”
“Hast thou always lived hereabouts?”
“The house is the only home I remember. My mother inherited it from an uncle. It has the shop and warehouse below.”
“And thy mother?”
I saw I had touched on a place of pain.
“She died when I was twelve. I miss her. My father is full of outward life: schemes and plans. He seeks money and respectability. My mother thought more of the spirit. She was of a faith as unpopular as yours. A Catholic.”
I was startled. “A recusant?”
I knew that Catholics who refused to attend Anglican services could suffer severe penalties.
“No!” he said at once. “Oh, no. She was always a dutiful wife and went to church with my father. She would not shame him. But I remember there was a drawer where she kept some things: a cross, a rosary. When she was dying my father put the rosary in her hands and sent for a priest to come secretl
y and give her the last rites. He risked that for her at the end.”
I thought of the Catholics with their outward signs, the trappings of superstition: candles, beads, priests. Popery was the very opposite of the inward light. And yet…
“You are like her, I think?”
He nodded. “She thought much on God. She was not learned, not educated – but she had wisdom.”
The shop door opened, and some customers came in. He moved away and browsed among the books until I had finished serving them. After that we talked more, and he didn’t leave until Mary came in from the print room and said she would look after the shop now. Then he bade us both good day.
I looked for him at Meeting next day, but he was not there, and I felt bereft. Then on second-day he came into the shop again.
Mary allowed me to serve in the shop most afternoons the following week. I think she must have noticed how often Will came in, but she said nothing, and I made sure I did not neglect my work.
On fourth-day Will found me writing with a quill.
“You have finished with the slate?”
“Yes!” I felt pleased with myself. “I am allowed scrap paper now.”
I showed him my work, and we leaned together over the table. I liked this. I was conscious of the nearness of his body, of his breath on my cheek.
“It’s not so easy as the chalk,” I admitted. “This quill—”
“You must learn to hold it correctly. Place it so, resting against the second finger…”
He took hold of my right hand. It was the first time he’d touched me, and we were both aware of it.
I became afraid of the feelings we’d stirred up. “I have rough hands,” I said. “A servant’s.”
He kept hold of me. “They are good hands. Hardworking and independent.”
“And thine show years of study.” His were a scholar’s, ink-stained and with a callus near the knuckle of his second finger where the pen rubbed.
He was still holding my hand, but let it go quickly at a sound from the print-room door. It was Nat, who bounced in, saw us, and retreated with a wink. We drew apart, and smiled.
“Nat will tease me,” I said.