As Meat Loves Salt (69 page)

such a case were pitiable. There was more cunning than I at first knew in mentioning drink by name, for even as I spoke I remembered that my friend could well understand this example. Perhaps, in recollection, he might judge my crime less harshly.

Ferris did not look at me but addressed his remarks to the schoolmaster. 'Whatever makes a man a beast also renders him pitiable. But it behoves us to be wary of these bestial men despite our compassion, for they frequently turn on their friends.'

The schoolmaster said that was very true, and an example might be seen in his sister's neighbour who beat his wife for no fault at all. 'And thus,' he said, 'he grievously injures himself, both in reputation and in the sense that they are, after all, one flesh.'

This piece of pedantry proving more painful to me than any I had endured as a boy, I was glad when his conclusion was lost in a shriek of laughter from the other passengers, who were talking, much more loudly than we, of jests played upon bumpkins newly come to London.

I wanted to take up Ferris upon what he had said. 'But you
are
compassionate to such men, Sir?' I pressed him, my breath struggling in my throat. 'For what our friend here says is true. Though guilty, the suffering caused comes back also on themselves, and so—'

'I think my friends would grant that I am compassionate,' Ferris replied. 'Long-suffering, even. But there are two things to be said here.’ My stomach turned over at his measured tone. 'The first consideration,' he went on, 'is that a man must already have degraded himself in no small degree, to beg compassion where once he freely enjoyed the privileges of love.'

The schoolmaster was listening with interest and nodding. Never, I thought, had 'the privileges of love' seemed so like a lost Paradise, and never had Ferris been so cruel to me.

'And the second,' he continued, his voice hoarser yet still level, 'is that love and compassion have both their limits. I may forgive a friend seventy times seven for the love I bear him, but there are some things which, if a man resent them not, he ceases to be a man.'

'For the love I bear him'. I wondered had he meant to say that. 'Ceases to be a man'— looking up I saw his eyes contracted with pain

despite the controlled voice, and the sight cut me with a terrible pain of my own.

'Let us take a case,' I began desperately. 'Suppose I offer violence to a dear, dear friend. I repent—'

The pedant cut in. 'You, Sir,' he cried, 'I hope you never do offer violence. I should fancy that when
you
resent something there are few men would stand against you!'

I tried to make myself clear. 'My word was
repent,
not—'

But the fool was listening no more than before. He invited Ferris to join him in roasting the stranger.

'I imagine our tall friend here generally carries the day. Crushes all opposition, hey?' He made to feel the muscles in my arm and I knocked his hand off my sleeve. How I did not knife him there and then is still a wonder to me.

Ferris smiled grimly. 'You would indeed do well to avoid his resentment. But suppose our friend — you understand I speak of him only for the sake of an example?'

The other man nodded. Ferris shot a look at me which filled me with dread, and continued, 'As you remarked, Mister - Cullen? - is well equipped to compel obedience. But friendship, love — these are not to be compelled.'

'But what has this to do with evil habits and repentance?' asked the schoolmaster.

'I mean that repeated offences, even when they secure forgiveness, drive out love. And from that I came to say that one may compel obedience but never love.'

'That's every husband's tragedy, eh?' smiled the other. 'Still, obedience is much in a woman.'

A dog's virtue,' said Ferris, turning his head away as if sick of the talk. 'Those who would enforce it should marry with the beasts.'

The schoolmaster hawed, decided that my friend was joking after all, and settled back in his seat with a philosophical sigh as if to say,
Well, what of it.

The darts Ferris had shot into me now poisoned my breast with the most intense fear and shame. I again felt the sheets pulling on my thigh as I ground my weight into him. A woman thus put to it can call

for help. He could not, and as he tried to grapple with me I got a hold on his arm and set about enforcing
obedience
—

'Mister Ferris!' I cried. Some of the other passengers broke off their chatter at the sudden loudness of my speech. 'You are in the right - love is, is—!'

He raised his eyebrows in mockery and I remembered a knee in the small of his back. My throat closed up.

For a moment the sea-grey eyes rested on mine. I stared back, pleading with him, but he dropped his eyelids and shut me out. The coach staggered over the uneven ground and I had to go to the window, heaving and gasping with my own vileness. Back in my seat, my forehead wet with perspiration, I watched his head roll against the wood behind him, studied the shape of his mouth.

The schoolmaster was grown very quiet and had perhaps at last some glimmer of what he had stumbled into. Much I cared, just then. I was already burning alive.

Passengers got out, got in. The people with the baby left us and were replaced by a withered crone who stank of piss. At one stage, having nodded off, I woke suddenly with the feeling that something was wrong. Ferris had moved to the window. There he spent the rest of the journey, staring out of it, dull grey light clinging about his cheeks. Motionless, he put me in mind of a statue I had seen somewhere, but no sculptor would give his statue a face of such sullen intensity. The schoolmaster had long since reached his destination, leaving Ferris and myself strangers again.

A fine spray speckled the seats and floor near the window. He had guessed the weather aright. I saw the yellow hair darken, little drops running off the ends of it. Ferris stayed where he was. Once he had looked up to me with dripping hair, his face bright with candlelight, and brighter with love. When was that?

We slowed as the coach splashed through country roads brimming with ruts and rainwater, and the wheels sank into clay. At the thought of wet huts and clothes to endure along with my shame and pain, I was tempted to jump from the coach and walk back to Lon-

don. I could seek refuge with Harry. But I caught myself in this delusion, that I had been secretly hoping that Ferris would leap from the coach after me. In truth I was more likely to stand in the mud and watch him go out of my life forever, staring back at me from the window with his statue's eyes. I was not made to be loved. The flesh was a different thing; once I had thought none would ever look at me (that was when I lived always with Zeb) but even then— I pulled my thoughts away from Caro. In the army was Ferris, and then the glances of the London people had told me that I was far from ugly. But I was afflicted with an ugliness of soul that no physick could correct. Though Ferris stayed unmoving at the window, he was leaving me, just as surely as if I were got down into the road while the coach rolled away.

The door was pushed open and he stepped down; I heard the
splash
as he landed outside. The driver handed him his pack and he slung it across his shoulders as he marched away, slipping a little on the wet ground. My pack took longer to untie from the roof of the coach. By the time the swearing coachman had dangled it down to me and I had fastened the thing in place, Ferris was some fifty paces off. I followed without much spirit, trying to read his walk for signs of relenting. He held himself as upright as the pack permitted and went at a fierce pace, recalling to me that first day in the colony when I had given him too heavy a load and he had set his jaw and carried it. It came to me that with such resolve he had the makings of an excellent soldier. But then again I thought not, for soldiers must obey.

The first person I saw was Hathersage. He looked up from his hoe as Ferris approached and they waved each to the other, then Hathersage ran towards my cruel friend as if he were the Prodigal Son, shouting the news to the others so that in a short time Ferris was surrounded by an eager group. I saw hands clutched, embraces, kisses pressed on dear Brother Christopher. They waved to me, too, and smiled in my direction, but none would quit him to welcome me, such a difference they made between us. O Brother Wisdom, I said to myself, did you but know what this man, that you fawn on,

did with me in London every night but one! The things he freely yielded who now, if we were in Hell together, would not give me a gentle look!

I came up with them. They still had hold of Ferris, who was answering their questions in his ragged voice. Aunt was in the way to recovery and we had brought back some newfangled tools. His sincere thanks for their prayers, which had doubtless been effective. Had there been any sign of movement from Sir George? Was all well with the crops?

The colonists greeted me with a civil but cursory word or two, before turning back to their darling. Only Susannah sought me, moving away from the huddle and holding out her hand with pleasant frankness. 'Well Brother Jacob, I trust you had good cheer in London? Brother Christopher says you have new knives and axe-heads in your pack.'

'He says true.’ I lowered my voice. 'And something for you, Susannah.'

'For me? A gift?'

I would be glad to get away from Ferris and his disciples.

Inside the dry space of the tent I laid the pack down and began unfastening the strings.

'I can't think what it can be,' she mused. 'Did I ask you for something?'

'Close your eyes and hold out your hands,' I said.

She did so. 'Hurry, Jacob, I'm mad with curiosity!'

'Now don't expect silver and gold, for there's none,' I warned her. 'Sniff, can't you smell anything?'

She snorted. 'Lavender, is it? You brought lavender?'

I laughed at her puzzled face. 'Here.' I put a washball in each outstretched hand.

Ash’s her fingers closed on them her eyes opened and she turned a smile of pure joy on me. 'You are too kind. Too kind.'

An easy errand.' I had covered the rest of the washballs and did not intend to leave them in the tent. 'The only thanks I require is that you be so good as not to mention them to anyone,' I warned, for I had no wish to share with the others.

'Not even Catherine,' she promised, and at once stuffed the things between her breasts.

"Thank you, thank you, Jacob.'

She whirled about to go like a much younger woman, paused, ran back and kissed my hand before dancing out of the tent. I was left smiling despite the pain between myself and Ferris. I could tell by the business-like way she had stored my gift in her bosom, anything but flirtatious, that he was wrong about her being soft on me, but I thought I might count her a friend. The odd thing was that I had never intended to make such a gift, yet her fair greeting when the rest could scarce spare me a word, being all of them wrapped up in Ferris, had called to something in me — a sudden need to share and be thanked. How did men make themselves loved, I wondered. I had passed all my life with men who were loved but I seemed never to have learnt the lesson.

Left alone, I began to unwrap the axe-heads. They were beautifully keen and heavy. I balanced the largest on my palm and tested the edge with my thumb. No wonder, I thought, that lords and ladies chose to die by the axe rather than the noose. I laid out the deadly things on one of the crude tables knocked together by Harry, until there should be time to fit them with stocks.

I was just searching for a good place to store the knives when I heard the words 'such an assault' spoken by someone, perhaps Jonathan, outside the tent. It was followed by the words 'like the beasts' and I knew the second speaker, whose voice cracked with contempt, for Ferris.

There was not time to feel anything save the terrified certainty that he had accused me. Sweat burst out all over my skin and my legs turned to water. Trying to keep upright, I clawed at a pile of baskets near to me, and the two men entered just in time to see myself and the baskets drop together.

Jonathan and Ferris were kneeling either side of me, Jonathan fanning my face with my hat.

'All's well,’she said soothingly. He held up my hand and I saw I was clutching a long-bladed knife, as if I had been in a fight. I wiped my brow, letting the knife drop to the grass.

'You were lucky. Could've fell on it,’ Jonathan explained as if to a child, and indeed I was very like one, a child confused and horribly afraid of being found out in my wickedness. His voice and manner, however, were gentle.

Ferris, on the other side, had placed himself a little further off, letting the other man touch and fan me. He stood up now, and, saying to Jonathan, 'He overdid the drink last night. That'll be the root of it,' went out of the tent.

Jonathan whistled. 'Have you and him fallen out, then?'

'Not for the first time.' I did not want his curiosity or sympathy, and I was trying to find a way round to the question burning my tongue. At last I hit on, 'Where were you? Just outside?'

'Aye. Telling him about Sister Jane.'

I showed my incomprehension.

'Didn't Susannah tell you? I saw the two of you come in here—' his expression grew sly. 'Perhaps you'd other things to talk about.'

'To the point,’ I begged. 'You were talking of Sister Jane?'