A Crowning Mercy (3 page)

Matthew Slythe was shaking now, his fury subsiding. He put the belt about his waist and buckled it. He had cut his hand on the buckle but he did not notice. He looked at Goodwife. 'Bring her down when she's tidy.'

'Yes, sir.'

This was not the first beating she had been given; she had lost count of the times that her father had harnessed God's wrath to his right arm. She sobbed, the pain blurring everything, and then Goodwife Baggerlie slapped her face. 'Get up!'

Elizabeth Baggerlie, who had been honoured by Matthew Slythe with the name Goodwife after the death of his wife, was a short, fat-waisted woman with a shrewish, raw-boned face and small red eyes. She ruled Werlatton Hall's servants and she devoted her life to the extermination of the Hall's dust and dirt as her master devoted his to the extermination of Werlatton's sin. The servants were driven about Werlatton Hall by Goodwife's shrill, scouring voice, and Matthew Slythe had given her also the governance of his daughter.

Now Goodwife thrust Campion's bonnet at her. 'You should be ashamed of yourself, girl! Ashamed. There's a devil in you, that's what there is! If your dear mother had known, if she'd known! Hurry!'

Campion pulled the bonnet on with nerveless fingers. Her breath came in great, sobbing gasps.

'Hurry, girl!'

The household was awesomely quiet. The servants all knew that the beating was taking place, they could hear the belt, the screams, the terrifying anger of their master. They hid their feelings. The beating could happen to any of them.

'Stand up!'

Campion was shaking. The pain was as it always was. She knew she would not be able to sleep on her back for at least three or four nights. She moved like a dumb thing, knowing what was to happen, submitting to the inescapable force of her father.

'Downstairs, girl!'

Ebenezer, one year younger than his sister, sat reading his Bible in the great hall. The floor shone. The furniture shone. His eyes, dark as sin, dark as his Puritan clothes, looked unfeelingly at his sister. His left leg, twisted and shrunk at birth, stuck out awkwardly. He had told his father of what he had seen and then listened with quiet satisfaction to the searing cracks of the belt. Ebenezer was never beaten. He sought and gained his father's approval by quiet obedience and hours of Bible reading and prayer.

Campion still cried as she came down the stairs. Her beautiful face was smeared with tears, her eyes red, her mouth twisted.

Ebenezer, his black hair cut short in the fashion that had given rise to the nickname 'Roundheads', watched her. Goodwife nodded to him, and he acknowledged the recognition with a slow, stately inclination of the head. At nineteen he was old beyond his years, bitter with his father's bitterness, envious of his sister's wholeness.

Campion was taken to her father's study. Outside the door, as ever, Goodwife pushed down on her shoulder. 'Down!' Then Goodwife knocked on the door.

'Come in!'

The ritual was always the same. After the punishment, forgiveness, and after the pain, prayer. She crawled in on hands and knees as her father demanded of her and Goodwife shut her in with Matthew Slythe.

'Come here, Dorcas.'

She crawled to his chair, She hated him at this moment. She submitted because she had no choice.

The big hands closed on her tight-fitting bonnet. She hated the feel of them. The fingers pressed on her skull.

'Oh God our Father! Almighty God!' The fingers pressed tighter and tighter. His voice rose in powerful prayer, as Matthew Slythe hectored his God asking Him to forgive his daughter, to cleanse her, to make her whole, to take away her shame, and all the while the hands threatened to crush her skull. He pushed at her head, shaking it, seeking in a paroxysm of power to convince God that Dorcas needed His grace, and when the prayer was over he leaned back, exhausted, and told her to stand up.

He had a strong face, big-boned and fierce, a face heavy with God's anger. He looked at Campion with his usual distaste and his voice was deep. 'You are a disappointment to me, daughter.'

'Yes, father.' She stood with head bowed, hating him. Neither he nor her mother had ever kissed her, ever hugged her. They had beaten her, prayed over her, but never seemed to love her.

Matthew Slythe rested his hand on his Bible. He breathed heavily. 'Woman brought sin into the world, Dorcas, and woman must ever bear that disgrace. A woman's nakedness is her shame. It is disgusting to God.'

'Yes, father.'

'Look at me!'

She raised her eyes. His face was twisted with dislike.

'How could you do it?'

She thought he would hit her again. She stood still.

He opened the Bible, his fingers seeking the book of Proverbs. He read to her, his voice grating. "For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread."' The page turned. '"Her house is the way to hell, Going down to the chambers of death."' He looked up at her.

'Yes, father.'

He seemed to growl. He had beaten her again and again, but he had never crushed her and he knew it. He could see the flicker of challenge in her soul and he knew that he would never destroy it. Yet he would never stop trying. 'You will learn the seventh and eighth chapters of Proverbs by heart by this time tomorrow night.'

'Yes, father.' She already knew them.

'And you will pray for forgiveness, for grace, for the Holy Spirit.'

'Yes, father.'

'Leave.'

Ebenezer still sat in the hall. He looked at her and smiled. 'Did it hurt?'

She stopped and looked at him. 'Yes.'

He still smiled, one hand holding the pages of his Bible flat. 'I told him.'

She nodded. 'I thought you might have done.' She had always tried to love Ebenezer, to give him the love she had not been given, to protect a small, weak, crippled boy who was her brother. He had always rejected her.

Now he sneered. 'You disgust me, Dorcas. You're not fit to be in this house.'

'Good night, Eb.' She climbed the stairs slowly, her back hurting and her mind filled with the bleakness and horror of Werlatton Hall.

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

Matthew Slythe prayed when she was gone, prayed as he often prayed, with a furious, twisting intensity as if he thought God would not hear a quiet plea.

Dorcas was a curse to him. She had brought him wealth beyond his dreams, but she was, as he had feared when the wealth was offered, a child of sin.

She had never, in truth, been bad, but Matthew Slythe did not see that. Her sin was to be strong, to be happy, to show no signs of fear of the awful, vengeful God who was Matthew Slythe's master. Dorcas had to be crushed. The child of sin must become a child of God and he knew he had failed. He knew that she called herself a Christian, that she prayed, that she believed in God, but Matthew Slythe feared the streak of independence in his daughter. He feared she could be worldly, that she could seek out the pleasures of this world that were damned, pleasures that could be hers if she found his secret.

There was a jewel hidden, a seal of gold, which he had not looked at in sixteen years. If Dorcas found it, if she learned what it meant, then she might seek the help of the seal and uncover the Covenant. Matthew Slythe groaned. The money of the Covenant belonged to Dorcas but she must never know. It must be tied up by a will, by his wishes, and, above all, by a marriage settlement. His daughter, with her dangerous beauty, must never know she was rich. The money which had come from sin must belong to God, to Matthew Slythe's God. He drew a sheet of paper towards him, his head throbbing with the echoes of prayer, and wrote a letter to London. He would settle his daughter once and for all. He would crush her.

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

Upstairs, in the bedroom she had to share with one of the maids, Campion sat on the wide window-sill and stared into the night.

Once Werlatton Hall had been beautiful, though she did not remember it thus. Its old, stone walls had been hugged by ivy and shaded by great elms and oaks, but when Matthew Slythe had purchased the estate he had stripped the ivy and cut down the great trees. He had surrounded the Hall with a vast lawn that took two men to scythe smooth in summer, and about the lawn he had planted a yew hedge. The hedge was tall now, enclosing the clean, ordered world of Werlatton and keeping at bay the strange, tangled outside world where laughter was not a sin.

Campion stared at the darkness beyond the hedge.

An owl, hunting the great ridge of beeches, sounded hollow across the valley. Bats flitted past the window, wheeling raggedly. A moth flew past Campion, attracted by the candle and causing Charity, the maid, to squeal in alarm, 'Shut the window, Miss Dorcas.'

Campion turned. Charity had pulled out the truckle bed from beneath Campion's. The girl's pale, frightened face looked up. 'Did it hurt, miss?'

'Always does, Charity.'

'Why did you do it, miss?'

'I don't know.'

Campion turned back to the rich, sweet darkness. She prayed every night that God would make her good, yet she could never please her father. She had known it was a sin to swim in the stream, but she did not understand why. Nowhere in the Bible did it say 'Thou shalt not swim', though she knew that the nakedness was an offence. Yet the temptation would come again and again. Except that now she would never be allowed to the stream again.

She thought of Toby. Her father, before he beat her, had ordered her to be confined to the house for the next month. She would not be in church on Sunday. She thought of stealing away, going to the road that led north to Lazen, but knew she could not do it. She was always watched when she was forbidden to leave the house, her father guarding her with one of his trusted servants.

Love. It was a word that haunted her. God was love, though her father taught of a God of anger, punishment, wrath, vengeance and power. Yet Campion had found love in the Bible. 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine'. 'His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me'; 'And his banner over me was love'; 'By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth'. Her father said the Song of Solomon was merely an expression of God's love for his church, but she did not believe him.

She looked into the dark over the Werlatton valley and she thought of her father. She feared him when she should love him, yet the fear had never struck at the very centre of her. She had a secret, a secret that she clung to day and night. It was like a dream that never left her, and in the dream it was as if she was a disembodied soul merely watching herself in Werlatton. She smiled. She now found she was thinking of the disembodied soul as Campion, watching Dorcas be obedient, or trying to be obedient, and she had the sense that somehow she did not belong here. She could not explain it, any more than Toby Lazender had been able to explain how the cold fingers knew the pressure of a fish in the water, yet the sense of her difference had been the sense that enabled her to resist the savage fatherhood of Matthew Slythe. She fed her soul on love, believing that kindness must exist somewhere beyond the tall, dark hedge of yew. One day, she knew, she would travel into the tangled world that her father feared.

'Miss?' Charity was shrinking away from the fluttering moth.

'I know, Charity. You don't like moths.' Campion smiled. Her back hurt as she bent over, but she cradled the large moth in her hands, feeling its wings flutter on her palms, and then she threw it to the freedom of the dark where the owl and the bats hunted.

She closed the window and knelt beside her bed. She prayed dutifully for her father, for Ebenezer, for Goodwife, for the servants, and then she prayed, a smile on her face, for Toby. The dreams had been given fuel. There was no sense in it and little hope, but she was in love.

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

Three weeks later, when the corn was the colour of Campion's hair and the summer promised a harvest richer than England had known for years, a guest came to Werlatton Hall.

Guests were few. A travelling preacher, his tongue burdened with hatred for the King and preaching death to the bishops, might be offered hospitality, but Matthew Slythe was not a gregarious man.

The guest, Dorcas was told, was called Samuel Scammell. Brother Samuel Scammell, a Puritan from London, and Charity was excited at the visit. She came to Dorcas in the bedroom as the sun was dying over the valley. 'Goodwife says you're to wear Sunday best, miss. And the rugs are down in the hall!'

Campion smiled at Charity's excitement. 'The rugs?'

'Yes, miss, and master's ordered three pullets killed! Three! Tobias brought them in. Goodwife's making pie.' Charity helped Campion dress, then adjusted the white linen collar over her shoulders. 'You do look well, miss.'

'Do I?'

'It was your mother's collar. It mended ever so nice.' Charity twitched at the edge of it. 'It looks so much bigger on you!'

Martha Slythe had been fat and tall, her voice competing with Goodwife Baggerlie's for mastery over the dirt of Werlatton Hall. Campion lifted the edge of the collar. 'Wouldn't it be nice to wear something pretty just once? Do you remember that woman in church two years ago? The one the Reverend Hervey told off for dressing like a harlot?' She laughed. The woman had worn a lace collar, pretty and soft.

Charity frowned. 'Miss! That's a wicked lust!'

Campion sighed inwardly. 'I'm sorry, Charity. I spoke without thinking.'

'God will forgive you, miss.'

'I'll pray for that,' Campion lied. She had long learned that the best way to avoid God's wrath was to pay Him frequent lip service. If Charity had told Goodwife about Campion's wish to wear lace, and Goodwife had told her master, then Matthew Slythe would punish Campion. Thus, Campion thought, to avoid punishment she had been taught to lie. Punishment is the best teacher of deceit. 'I'm ready.'

Matthew Slythe, his two children and the guest ate their supper at the far end of the great hall. The shutters of the tall windows were left open. Dusk was bringing gloom to the wide lawn and hedge.

Samuel Scammell, Campion guessed, was in his mid-thirties and there was a fleshiness to him that betokened a full diet. His face was not unlike her father's. It had the same bigness, the same heaviness, but where her father's face was strong, Scammell's seemed somehow soft as though the bones were malleable. He had full, wet lips that he licked often. His nostrils were like two huge, dark caves that sprouted black hair. He was ugly, an ugliness not helped by his cropped, dark hair.