A Crowning Mercy (4 page)

He seemed eager to please, listening respectfully to Matthew Slythe's growled remarks about the weather and the prospect for harvest. Campion said nothing. Ebenezer, his thin face darkened by the shadow of beard and moustache, a darkness that was there even immediately after he had shaved, asked Brother Scammell his business.

'I make boats. Not I personally, you understand, but the men I employ.'

'Sea-going ships?' Ebenezer asked, with his usual demand for exactness.

'No, no, indeed, no,' Scammell laughed as though a joke had been made. He smiled at Campion. His lips were flecked with the pastry of Goodwife's chicken pie. More pastry clung to his thick black broadcloth coat, while a spot of gravy was smeared on his white collar with its two tassels. 'Watermen's boats.'

Campion said nothing. Ebenezer frowned at her, then leaned forward. 'Watermen's boats?'

Scammell put a hand to his stomach, opened his small eyes wide, and tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a small belch. Indeed and indeed. In London, you see, the Thames is our main street.' He was addressing Campion again. 'The watermen carry cargoes and passengers and we build most of their craft. We also serve the big houses.' He smiled at Matthew Slythe. 'We built a barge for my Lord of Essex.'

Matthew Slythe grunted. He did not seem over-impressed that Samuel Scammell did business with the general of Parliament's armies.

There was a silence, except for the scraping of Scammell's knife on his plate. Campion pushed the stringy chicken to one side, trying to hide it under the dry pie crust. She knew she was being rude and she sought desperately for something to say to their guest. 'Do you have a boat yourself, Mr Scammell?'

'Indeed and indeed!' He seemed to find that funny, too, for he laughed. Some of the pastry scraps fell down his ample stomach. 'Yet I fear I am a bad sailor, Miss Slythe, indeed and indeed, yes. If I must travel upon the water then I pray as our Dear Lord did for the waves to be stilled.' This was evidently a joke also, for the hairs in his capacious nostrils quivered with snuffled laughter.

Campion smiled dutifully. Her brother's feet scraped on the boards of the floor.

Her father looked from Campion to Scammell and there was a small, secret smile on his heavy face. Campion knew that smile and in her mind it was associated with cruelty. Her father was a cruel man, though he believed cruelty to be kindness for he believed a child must be forced into God's grace.

Matthew Slythe, embarrassed by the new silence, turned to his guest. 'I hear the city is much blessed by God, brother.'

'Indeed and indeed.' Scammell nodded dutifully. 'The Lord is working great things in London, Miss Slythe.' Again he turned to her and she listened with pretended interest as he told her what had happened in London since the King had left and the rebellious Parliament had taken over the city's government. The Sabbath, he said, was being properly observed, the playhouses had been closed down, as had the bear gardens and pleasure gardens. A mighty harvest of souls, Scammell declared, was being reaped for the Lord.

'Amen and amen,' said Matthew Slythe.

'Praise His name,' said Ebenezer.

'And wickedness is being uprooted!' Scammell raised his eyebrows to emphasise his words. He told of two Roman Catholic priests discovered, men who had stolen into London from the Continent to minister to the tiny, secret community of Catholics. They had been tortured, then hanged. 'A good crowd of Saints watched!'

'Amen!' said Matthew Slythe.

'Indeed and indeed.' Samuel Scammell nodded his head ponderously. 'And I too was an instrument in uprooting wickedness.'

He waited for some interest. Ebenezer asked the required question and Scammell again addressed the answer to Campion. 'It was the wife of one of my own workmen. A slatternly woman, a washer of clothes, and I had cause to visit the house and what do you think I found?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know.'

'A portrait of William Laud!' Scammell said it dramatically. Ebenezer tutted. William Laud was the imprisoned Archbishop of Canterbury, hated by the Puritans for the beauty with which he decorated churches and his devotion to the high ritual which they said aped Rome. Scammell said the portrait had been lit by two candles. He had asked her if she knew who the picture represented, and she did, and what is more had declared Laud to be a good man!

'What did you do, brother?' Ebenezer asked.

'Her tongue was bored with a red hot iron and she was put in the stocks for a day.'

'Praise the Lord,' Ebenezer said.

Goodwife entered and put a great dish on the table. 'Apple pie, master!'

'Ah! Apple pie.' Matthew Slythe smiled at Goodwife.

'Apple pie!' Samuel Scammell linked his hands, smiled, then cracked his knuckles. 'I like apple pie, indeed and indeed!'

'Dorcas?' Her father indicated that she should serve. She gave herself a tiny sliver that brought a sniff of disapproval from Goodwife who was bringing lit candles to the table.

Samuel Scammell made short work of two helpings, gobbling the food as though he had not eaten in a week, and swilling it down with the small beer that was served this night. Matthew Slythe never served strong drink, only water or diluted ale.

The pie was finished without further talk and then, as Campion expected, the conversation was of religion. The Puritans were divided into a multiplicity of sects, disagreeing on fine points of theology and offering men like her father and Brother Scammell a splendid battleground for anger and condemnation. Ebenezer joined in. He had been studying Presbyterianism, the religion of Scotland and much of England's Parliament, and he attacked it splenetically. He leaned into the candlelight and Campion thought there was something fanatical in his thin, shadowed face. He was speaking to Samuel Scammell. 'They would deny our Lord Jesus Christ's saving grace, brother! They would dispute it, but what other conclusion can we draw?'

Scammell nodded. 'Indeed and indeed.'

The sky had gone ink black beyond the windows. Moths flickered at the panes.

Samuel Scammell smiled at Campion. 'Your brother is strong in the Lord, Miss Slythe.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you?' He leaned forward, his small eyes intent on her.

'Yes, sir.' It was an inadequate answer, one that made her father stir in suppressed wrath, but Scammell leaned back happy enough.

'Praise the Lord. Amen and amen.'

The conversation, thankfully, passed from the state of her soul to the latest stories of Catholic atrocities in Ireland. Matthew Slythe warmed to the subject, anger giving his words wings, and Campion let the phrases hammer unheard about her head. She noticed that Samuel Scammell was stealing constant looks at her, smiling once when he caught her eye, and she found it unsettling.

Toby Lazender had said she was beautiful. She wondered what he did in London, how he liked a city 'cleansed' by the Puritans he so disliked. She had asked Charity, three weeks before, if a visitor had been in church and Charity had said yes. A strong young man, she said, with red hair, who had bellowed out the psalms in a loud voice. Campion was sad. She guessed Toby must have thought she did not want to see him again. She saw Samuel Scammell staring at her again and it reminded her of the way other men looked at her, even, though she found it hard to believe, the Reverend Hervey. Scammell seemed to eye her as a bull might a heifer.

The owl that hunted the beech ridge sounded in the night.

Samuel Scammell excused himself from the table and walked down the stone-flagged passage that led to the close-chamber.

Her father waited till his footsteps stopped, then looked at his daughter. 'Well?'

'Father?'

'Do you like Brother Scammell?'

Her father did, so her answer was obvious. 'Yes, father.'

Scammell had not closed the chamber door and she could hear him urinating into the stone trough, a sound just like that of a horse staling in the stable-yard. It seemed to go on for ever.

Ebenezer scowled at the candles. 'He seems sound in his beliefs, father.'

'He is, son, he is.' Matthew Slythe leaned forward, his face gloomy as he stared at the remains of the apple pie. 'He is blessed of God.'

The splashing still sounded. He must have the bladder of an ox, Campion thought. 'Is he here to preach, father?'

'Business.' Her father gripped the table top and seemed to brood. A pulse throbbed at his forehead. The sound of Scammell's pissing stopped, started again, then faded in spurts. Campion felt sick. She had hardly eaten. She wanted to be out of this room, she wanted to be in her bed where she could lie and dream her private dreams of the world beyond the high yew hedge.

Samuel Scammell's footsteps were loud in the passage. Matthew Slythe blinked, then put a welcoming smile on his face. 'Ah! Brother Scammell, you're back.'

'Indeed and indeed.' He waved a pudgy hand towards the passage. 'A well-appointed house, brother.'

'Praise God.'

'Indeed and indeed.' Scammell was standing by his chair, waiting for the mutual praise of God to cease. Campion saw a dark, damp patch on his breeches. She looked at the table instead.

'Sit down, brother! Sit down!' Her father was forcing jollity into his voice, a heavy-handed jollity that was only used with guests. 'Well?'

'Yes, indeed yes.' Scammell hitched up his breeches, scooped his coat aside and scraped his chair forward. 'Indeed.'

'And?'

Campion looked up, alerted by the inconsequential words. She frowned.

Scammell was smiling at her, his nostrils cavernous. He wiped his hands together, then dried them on his coat. '"Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life."'

'Amen,' Matthew Slythe said.

'Praise the Lord,' Ebenezer said.

'Indeed and indeed,' Samuel Scammell said.

Campion said nothing. A coldness was on her, a fear at the very centre of her.

Her father looked at her and quoted from the same chapter of Proverbs. '"Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."'

'Amen,' said Brother Scammell.

'And amen,' said Ebenezer.

'Well?' asked Matthew Slythe.

Samuel Scammell licked his lips, smiled, and patted his stomach. 'I am honoured by your offer, Brother Slythe, and have laid it prayerfully before the Lord. It is my fervent belief that I must accept.'

'Amen.'

Scammell looked at Campion. 'We are to be united as husband and wife, Miss Slythe. A happy day, indeed and indeed.'

'Amen,' said Ebenezer.

Scammell looked at Ebenezer. 'We are to be brothers, Ebenezer, in family as in God.'

'Praise Him.'

She had known, she had known, but she had not dared accept the knowledge. Her fear burned, tears pricked at her, but she would not cry in front of them. Her father was smiling at her, not in love, but as an enemy might smile when he sees his foe humiliated. 'Brother Hervey will read the banns beginning this Lord's Day.'

She nodded, incapable of fighting him. She was to be married in one month. She would be Dorcas for ever. Dorcas Slythe would become Dorcas Scammell, and she could never be Campion.

'Amen and amen,' said Samuel Scammell, 'a happy day!'

3

'You must be happy.' Goodwife's words before breakfast sounded to Campion like an order.

'I'm so happy for you,' Charity had said glumly, wishing herself to be married.

'Praise be, Dorcas,' Myrtle said and Myrtle was perhaps the only happy person in Werlatton Hall, for the dairy maid was half-witted.

'You're much blessed in your intended,' said Ebenezer, his dark eyes unreadable.

She knew she had no right to be unhappy. She had always known that she was a chattel, to be disposed of as her father wished. That was the way of fathers and daughters, and she could not expect anything different. Yet even in her darkest moods she would not have dreamed of Brother Samuel Scammell.

After morning prayers, when she turned to the door to go to the dairy, her father checked her. 'Daughter.'

'Father.'

'You are betrothed now.'

'Yes, father.'

He stood, big and powerful beside the lectern, Scammell a few paces behind. Light from a stair window slanted on to Matthew Slythe's dark and ponderous face. 'You will no longer work in the dairy. You must prepare yourself for marriage.'

'Yes, father.'

'You will acquaint yourself with the household accounts.' He frowned. 'You have the freedom now to walk to the village in Brother Scammell's company.'

She kept her head low. 'Yes, father.'

'You will walk there this morning with him. I have a letter you must give to Brother Hervey.'

They walked between hedgerows heavy with cow parsley and ragwort, away from Werlatton Hall and down the slope to where lady's smock and meadowsweet grew. Beyond the stream, where a bank climbed towards the beech trees, Campion could see the blaze of pink-red where the campions grew. The sight almost made her cry. She was now to be Dorcas for ever, the mother of Samuel Scammell's children. She wondered if she could ever love children who had his fleshy lips, his lumpen face, his gaping nostrils.

Stepping stones crossed the stream beside the ford and Scammell held a hand towards her. 'May I help you?'

'I can manage, Mr Scammell.'

'Samuel, my dear. You should call me Samuel.'

The water ran fast over the gravel between the stepping stones, flowing north, and she glanced upstream and saw the dark, quick shape of a fish. This was the stream in which she swam. She almost wished that she had drowned yesterday, that her body had floated above the long weeds, a white and naked corpse drifting towards Lazen Castle.

The road turned south to negotiate the end of the high ridge. It was another hot day with white clouds far to the west and Campion's long skirts stirred dust from the track.

Scammell walked heavily, leaning forward into each step. 'I want you to know, my dear, that you have made me a very happy man.'