As Meat Loves Salt (55 page)

'A brave room,' I said.

'It was made over in the new style for dining, just before Mister Chiggs joined up,' said Hathersage. 'Now we hardly use it.'

We seated ourselves around a large oval table.

'Not much company?' asked Ferris.

'Only when his sisters come to town.'

'How many others in the household?'

'The cook, and a maid. Both married,' and he smiled shyly. ‘A very respectable house. O, and a gardener. I rarely see him; he might beg my help once in a while.'

'That's not your work, surely?' I asked, surprised.

'I don't mind. It is a change, out in the air.’ He sighed.

'So, the life is respectable,' Ferris returned. 'But somewhat flat? No wife, little masculine company save the master?' He studied the face opposite with gentle gravity, before going on, 'Would you grow old in this life? If a man is equal to freedom, in the end he must have it.'

Hathersage lowered his fine dark eyes.

Ferris leant towards him imploringly, his voice now very soft as if he feared hoarseness. 'We are far forward already. Cattle, grain, plough, cart, all manner of implements, and we have found a good place not too far from the City — a man might walk there in half a day. Since you came to the house we have a smith and a gardener in our company.'

He waited. Hathersage looked up and met his gaze, and as he did so Ferris tilted his head a little to one side, as if pleading, and so made it hard for the other to look away.

'I have had second thoughts. About the - money,' Hathersage jerked out. 'It took me years to save.'

'Is that all?' cried Ferris. 'Then leave it with some trusted friend. Bring yourself, your garments and bedding. Our first work must be digging, and all the money
that
takes has already been laid out.'

A flush rose in the pale brown cheeks; the fellow's eyes glistened. Which way would he go? His lips quirked upwards, straightened again.

'You'll have like-minded friends about you,' Ferris urged. Hathersage pressed his hands fanwise on the table to cool them.

All the rest have been asked to bring something. You see how I value you,' my friend went on. Hathersage stared at his splayed fingers; I scarce breathed. Ferris laid his hands over Hathersage's. The young man stiffened, but Ferris held him there and gently turned up the other's palms. I saw them open, peeling back from their sweating prints on the polished wood. Ferris's own palms folded over them, their clasped hands much of a size. I thought how it would be to break first Hathersage's fingers, then Ferris's.

'Come to the house,' exhorted Ferris, 'see what we offer to share with you. Come any time, without notice, you'll find yourself welcome.'

Hathersage stared at him, lips parted. 'I shall speak to my Master this evening.'

'God helps those who help themselves,' said Ferris. 'You can always come back to London.'

'I can't leave while there is none here to care for him.'

"That shows a good heart; good hearts make loving friends. So we shall see you soon, agreed?'

'Agreed.'

Ferris was first to pull his hands away.

'An honest fellow,' he said to me as we came away from the house. 'With his second thoughts. No
If it please you, my money was stolen,
but the truth, straight off.'

'Mmm.'

'What, you don't think he's honest?'

I was certain Hathersage was all he should be, and felt the more miserable for it.

'He didn't change his mind because of his moneybags, and not for a plough and cart neither,' I said at last, turning to face my friend.

'We have to like one another if we're to live as brothers,' said Ferris. He skipped nimbly over some wine vomit.

'Paddling with his fingers like that! You courted him.'

'I persuaded him, and for a good cause.' His eyes invited me to laugh. I very nearly did, and stopped abruptly, shaken to find myself so obedient. We trudged back to Cheapside, ill at ease.

Once at home, I withdrew into my chamber to cut out canvas on the floor there, and while bending over the pieces I gradually came to a clearer mind. On consideration, I did not really suspect Ferris of any yearning for Hathersage, but this made me no happier. A virtuous young man, so easily caught. I recalled Zeb's
stripping me naked with his eyes.
Had Nathan, I wondered, been thus taken? Sleeping each night with Ferris twisted round me like ivy, I no longer doubted what I had blundered upon when I found them lying wrapped in one another. Now, I had even sourer cuds to chew on than jealousy of a lovely boy. Right up to our climbing onto the cart, the
sprig
had thought to keep his friend, but one morning he had woken to find Ferris run away with another. That idea had tickled me once. Now, it clawed.

'Do you love me?'

I put the question before I touched him, before even getting into bed, for I wanted something more than those cries of love which are torn from the flesh. He lay eyes closed as if asleep, but on hearing me he sat up, pulling the cover round his shoulders.

'Jacob,' he whispered, 'I'm not amorous of Hathersage! If you're going to be like this, best not have him. I warn you though, if we keep him and you lay violent hand—'

'Keep him by all means. Do you love me?'

'I bring you to live in my house, make you a gift of all my goods, take you into my bed and my body. I let you come between me and the woman who is a mother to me, and I run the risk of the gallows. Can you not interpret all that?'

'Won't you say—'

'What's that ribbon round your neck, Jacob?'

It was the key to his money chest. I was ashamed, but not eased, and undressed with sullen clumsiness. 'You won't say the words,' I accused.

'I love you, I love you! But what does it prove? Words are easily said.'

'So they are.'

'This
says I love you.' Ferris pulled back the covers to show himself. 'And it never lies.'

'That
can love thousands. What counts is the heart.'

'But why should you doubt my heart?' he cried. 'After all I've just said?'

'Only tell me this!' I paced up and down the room. 'Did you love Nathan?'

Ferris appeared to consider. He patted the mattress. 'Come in. A man can talk just as well warm as cold.'

I got into bed and lay without touching him. He propped himself on one elbow, and observed me through cautious grey eyes.

'Did I love Nathan. How, love him?'

'I know you fucked him,' I shouted.

Ferris flinched and put his hand on my arm. 'Keep your voice down.'

'Did you
love
him?' I moved my arm away. 'From the heart, the place that counts.' I was bleeding within; until that moment, I had not known how much I still hoped he would deny the thing.

He rolled onto his back and glared at the ceiling. I recognised the withdrawal, the refusal to be held in my stare. When he turned to me again it was with the warning look he had given me in the army, when he felt I kept off his friends.

'Do I order you to tell me how you lived before?' he demanded. 'Do I put you on the rack to know who you love more, me or your wife?'

'Why will you not tell—'

'Have you told
me
all
your
past doings? The truth, now.'

My heart thumped. What had Zeb said to him in the tavern?

He went on, 'It was never a secret that I liked Nat. Now forget him, he's past.'

'Loved him.'

'Aye, then, loved him!'

'But you left him behind.'

He looked at me with sudden understanding. 'Have you really forgotten? I had to choose between him and you.'

'We were friends only.'

He sighed at my stupidity. 'If you say so. We already belonged to each other.' He lay back on the pillow and put his hand on my chest, stroking me. 'Very well, I loved Nat. But I
belong
to you.'

At these last words my blood came up very hot. I pulled him tight into me and took possession of what was mine.

The next day we finally got the canvas tent up in the courtyard. It stood only slightly crooked. Ferris explained it was for storing our grain and other gear; for our own protection from the elements we

were to make little dwellings something like a charcoal-burner's hut. I wondered at him, so wise and so foolish, to have lived with me all these months and not know that the worst storms break
inside
a man.

In the evening we had a visit from the Tunstalls, come to inform us they had received permission to take away drag-rakes, spades, and other tools. Being orderly people, they had written down on a paper all their treasure and now handed the list to Ferris. He embraced both of them, which (I laughed to see) made them jump, but when they came into the sitting room and saw the wine jug they understood. We were celebrating the tent, that is, we were drinking off our fears. Aunt rose to greet them from the corner where she sat looking over a soiled coat of Ferris's, brushing at the mud spots.

'Pray let it alone, Aunt,' my friend begged. 'We will be all over mud, there's no help for it. Be seated, friends.'

They needed no more encouragement. I saw the eagerness with which they eyed the wine jug and thought that most likely they got little wine at home, for it seemed the appetite of novelty rather than intemperance. Ferris fetched glasses from the sideboard, purchased new the week before as a farewell gift to Aunt, though he had not called it that.

'Where is the little one tonight?' I asked.

'My sister has him. She has no babe of her own,' said Hepsibah. Like her husband, she drank slowly, setting the glass down as if to feel the effect of each mouthful before going on. 'We thought to leave him with her until we have a place fit.'

Ferris wanted to know when they could leave. Jonathan said there would be no difficulty. The young man being gone to the wars and the girl recently married, there were fewer servitors wanted. Their Master and Mistress would certainly be glad that here were two who would go willingly, leaving places for the rest. Again I noted how healthy and solid they were, and how alike, as if brother and sister. On my saying so they laughed.

'We are cousins,' explained Hepsibah.

They were brown people, brown of eye, skin and hair, made like sparrows to blend with the soil. There was none of the swarthy glitter of Zeb or myself, but a much quieter style of physiognomy. They

might have been carved from wood, like a doll the Mistress at Beau-repair showed Caro once: it was her own in childhood, and afterwards saved for the daughter she never had.

'You don't speak like Londoners,' said Ferris.

'Indeed we're not: we came from the West with the family when they sold up and moved here.'

'Why would they do that?' he asked.

"The times,' said Jonathan. "They are Parliament people, and most of the neighbours Royalists. Then there was free quarter for this army, free quarter for that, and the last lot of soldiers used us so barbarously, the Master was afraid for his wife and daughter.'

'They have connections here,' added Hepsibah. 'As good sell, as leave it to be stripped bare.'

'Why bring drag-rakes to London?' I asked. 'To farm the streets?'

They laughed politely.

'Pay no mind to Jacob's airs,' my friend advised. 'He arrived here a few months back knowing as much of the city as a cow.'

'Mister Ferris,' I informed the visitors in awed tones, 'has seen cows in pictures.'

'Most of the tools were packed up by mistake,' said the wife, turning the conversation. 'They were left out of the lots to be sold. Yet now, how clear, the hand of God! Praise the Lord.'

'Praise the Lord,' Ferris responded promptly. He went round again with the wine jug.

'I have got your coat clear, Christopher,' came his aunt's voice.

'God bless you, my dear! Though I wish you would rest.'

‘
^’
Twere a shame to let it be spoilt. You are handsome in it.'

'Nay, Aunt, my vanity!' He bent and kissed her, taking the coat on his arm. 'Here, I'll lay it in the chest.'

When he went out Hepsibah turned to me. 'So, Mister Cullen, you are come from the country to be with your relatives here?'

'Not so, I am a friend of Ferris. We met in the New Model. Before that I served in a big house, like you.'

They looked at me with fresh interest. 'Were they a great family?' asked Jonathan.

'Of noble birth, but the men were clowns, sots.'

'And the Mistress? Was the Mistress still alive?'

'Yes. A sad life,' I said piously.

'So you fought and never returned home,' said Hepsibah. Aunt watched me curiously. I wished Ferris would hurry back from laying away his coat.

'I did not wish to continue as a serving-man, and Ferris would have me come back with him to London.'

Are you married?' asked Jonathan.

'I— I lost my wife.'

'Poor man!' exclaimed Hepsibah.