Authors: Peter Ransley
Plague Child (34 page)
The Bedlam I went through was part of a greater Bedlam. Both sides claimed victory. Fleeing Parliamentary deserters reaching Oxford said the whole army was retreating and the King on his way to London. In London on 25 October, two days after the battle, someone who called himself ‘A Gentleman of Quality’ – it may have been Crop-Eared Jack – printed a smudged quarto claiming a great Parliamentary victory in which Prince Rupert had been captured.
What neither side expected was a stalemate. Each thought such a bitter conflict would resolve everything, one way or the other. The King did march on London. Rupert sacked Brentford, ten miles west of London, on 13 November. Londoners both panicked and were outraged. Fear of losing their property caused many Royalists to support Parliament. The following day, at Turnham Green, the Royalist army found itself facing an army of Londoners, enlarged to twenty-four thousand with Trained Bands from Hertfordshire, Essex and Surrey. A few shots were fired. The King had faced far superior numbers, but it was more than that which made him retreat to winter in Oxford. The memory of Edgehill hung like a miasma over everyone. Both the King and Essex had spent that frozen night on the battlefield. The King had stared at the sixty corpses which lay where his standard had stood before crouching over a camp fire, unable to sleep for the cries of the wounded. Nobody wished to fight again. But although half-hearted negotiations began, neither side was prepared to give an inch.
It was mid-December when a carter carrying the last of the season’s frost-bitten fruit from an orchard in Chiswick took me into the City.
I went up Holborn and into Cloth Fair, the snow still falling but not settling. The City was silent. The air was strangely clear. The smell of Smithfield was a ghost of its former stench, for there was little meat coming in. I stood at the opening of Half Moon Court, an inexplicable panic seizing me, for I felt I had done something terrible, but knew not what. From the printing shop came a steady rhythmic clank. I knew and loved every sound, the groan of the platen – the press needed oil – the sigh as it met the paper. Before Edgehill I had longed to be here, picturing myself running across that courtyard into Anne’s arms, seizing her and kissing her under the apple tree. Yet I stood there, reluctant to go on, the panic rising in me, staring through the drifting snow at the bare tree, at the window in the jutting gable, from which I had gazed with so many dreams.
There was the sound of raised voices inside and then Sarah came out to empty some slops, calling after her that it was more than her life was worth. She was followed by Anne. Whatever was happening to my mind, my heart was still there. It hopped, skipped, jumped, stopped, then started again at twice the rate when I saw her. Yet . . . why did I not jump towards her? Why did I just stand there gawping? – as Sarah used to put it when I was an apprentice who refused to wear boots. She was as beautiful as I remembered. No, no. More so. She wore an old blue dress, her hair was tangled and she wrapped a shawl of her mother’s tightly round her shoulders as she engaged in the most mundane of exchanges with Sarah, but I loved and swallowed hungrily every word, every movement.
‘Pleeeease, Sarah. One bucket.’
‘Master said no more coal till nightfall.’
Anne wheedlingly stroked her cheek. ‘Feel my hand. It’s freezing.’
‘Don’t you know there’s a blockade at Newcastle?’
‘You’ll be sorry when I freeze to death.’ She went in, slamming the door behind her.
‘Sorry? Good riddance!’ Sarah muttered, dumping the slops and looking towards me.
That was why the air was so clear: few chimneys were smoking. I turned away. I was wearing a battered wide-brimmed hat I had picked up from God knows where and my breeches and jerkin were fit only to throw on the pile of slops. What was left of the sole of one of my boots kept company with the upper only by courtesy of a piece of string.
‘Another bloody tinker, pretending to come back from the war,’ Sarah grumbled as if to herself, but deliberately pitching it loud enough for me to hear.
I could not stay a moment longer. Could not face any of them. Least of all the girl I loved. I needed the safety, the anonymity of the road.
‘Stop! Here, you –’ She came after me, fumbling in the pocket of her apron, where she kept dry crusts for beggars. She held out a crust to me, then dropped both it and the pail. ‘The good Lord be praised! It’s Tom! Tom!’ She hugged me, then she recoiled. ‘Your face. What on earth have you done with yourself? You stink like the slop pile.’ Then she hugged me again, eyes shining. ‘It’s Tom! Tom!’
The house seemed about to fall into the courtyard there was so much opening of doors and shouting. The printing machine stopped in mid-cycle. A window flew open and Mrs Black leaned out.
‘Oh, my goodness! And I aren’t dressed yet to receive him. Jane!’
Anne ran out, shawl flying from her shoulders. ‘Tom . . . Tom . . . you’ve come back . . . you’ve –’ She stopped and clapped a hand over her mouth, choking off a scream. ‘I thought you were Eaton for a moment.’
‘Eaton’s dead.’
‘Thank God.’
‘God rest his soul,’ I said, with the first burst of passion that had risen up in me for a long time.
‘What’s wrong, Tom?’ she whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’
I still wanted to run, and yet I longed to hold her. How could that be? ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’
She pulled me to her and kissed me and then we were overwhelmed, Mr Black seizing me by the hand and drawing me inside, shouting at Sarah to put coal on the fire – did she not realise how cold it was? His voice still slurred a little, but was almost back to its old, deep pitch. He thought it was a great victory. Was it true that the King was suing for peace? He had something on the press now that depended on it. I fought for something to say as he sat me down on his chair by the fire, which Sarah was hastily raking out and building up.
‘The press needs oil, sir,’ I said.
He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘D’you hear that? Once a printer, always a printer. Nehemiah!’ he shouted, and an apprentice, as small and sullen and ink-blacked as I used to be, stared in from the shop. ‘Stick to your calling and you may grow up to be like Tom.’
I could see from the expression on Nehemiah’s face the last thing he wanted to be was a bedraggled creature like me.
‘Go on! You heard him! Oil the press!’ Mr Black bellowed, just as he used to shout at me. ‘Anne! Stop staring at his scar – it’s a badge of honour! Get wine!’
Mrs Black made her entrance, sweeping up to me with every intention to embrace me as I stood up but, stopped by my smell, growing in pungency from the heat of the fire, extended first her hand, then her fingertips. ‘The charts said you would be here before Christmas. I kept telling Anne, but she would believe you were dead. She was weeping her heart out.’
‘I was not, Mother,’ said Anne furiously.
‘I told her to do something useful, but all she would do was try to write to you.’ Anne turned away, her eyes shining, as her mother wagged a chiding finger at me. ‘Shame on you, Tom! And you a poet!’ She would never use the word pamphleteer. ‘Not one letter!’
Mr Black was already well into his second glass of wine, and wagged a finger in his turn at his wife. ‘Come, come, Mrs Black. You don’t carry your quill and ink with your musket into the field, do you, Tom, eh?’
He spoke man to man, as if he had experience, or at least a conception of ‘the field’, and I saw with a sense of dread that he would expect me to write something like the pamphlet
An Exact Account of the Most Dangerous and Bloody Fighte near Kineton
I had seen but been unable to bring myself to read. I was struggling again to find something to say when I saw Jane in the background. With a lurch of guilt I remembered that, somewhere in my knapsack, was the letter I had promised to give to Mrs Morland.
She greeted my shyly and asked if I had seen her mother. I blurted out abruptly: ‘Your mother’s dead.’ My clumsiness silenced everyone and she asked if I had seen her. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes, I did.’ Each word felt like a piece of lead dropping from my mouth. ‘I gave her your letter,’ I lied. ‘She forgave you and gave you her blessing.’
She closed her eyes and clasped her hands in a silent prayer, then opened her eyes and gave me the most wonderful smile. ‘God bless you, Tom.’
I burst into tears.
There was a moment’s awful silence, then everyone crowded around me talking at once, but I could hear nothing. Their faces were a blur through the tears which, feeling intense shame, I struggled to stop but could not. I tried to get away from them, stumbled over my knapsack and found myself looking into the shop, Nehemiah gawping at me. He was oiling the press and, distracted from his task, the oil dribbled over his boots. They were laced in true apprentice fashion, that is to say, scarce laced at all. For some reason this re doubled my tears.
‘What have you done, Tom?’ said Mr Black, with all his old sternness.
‘I don’t know, sir.’ I did not, and that made me weep all the more, until I thought I would never stop. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’
‘He needs rest,’ Jane said. ‘He can have my bed. His old bed.’ She coloured as Anne gave her a jealous look.
‘He can have my bed,’ she said.
‘Anne!’ cried Mrs Black, scandalised.
‘I can sleep in your room,’ she said.
Before they could argue, she led me upstairs like a child.
For I do not know how many days I fell asleep in her room, but awoke at Edgehill with the acrid smell of gunpowder in my nose or, sometimes, the curious, clean fresh smell of blood. Or I would sit up with a start, with the order to ‘Palm your pike – charge your pike!’ ringing in my ears and find I had gone through the movements in my sleep. Or I would hear Luke’s relaxed, almost lazy voice: ‘Try your match . . . guard your pan . . . present . . . fire.’ They brought the doctor, who tried to bleed me, but I could not stand the sight of blood. They brought the minister, Mr Tooley, who tried to cast out my devils, quoting Luke to me where Jesus cast out a legion of devils into swine. But I argued, apparently – I do not remember this – that I did not understand why the poor swine had to suffer, throwing themselves from a cliff, and I preferred to keep my devils.
They all shook their heads at me except Anne, who after the minister had left said she saw no devils and refused to let anyone else into the room, bringing me food and drink, meeting with tight lips her mother berating her for behaving like a servant.
Gradually the devils, or visions or whatever they were, faded. One day I woke up and snatches of that battlefield had, as usual, come into my dreams, but that morning it was different. There had come back into my mind as much as I was ever likely to remember of what had happened after I had run from Luke on to the battle-field after my father. Mr Black had told me that Edward Stonehouse had been killed, blindly finding himself in the wrong part of the battlefield. Richard Stonehouse had been posted in one of the pamphlets as missing. His body had not been found. I felt I had to see Lord Stonehouse as soon as possible. I got out of bed and almost fell, clutching on to a chair. Anne came running in and told me to get back into bed. I shook my head, but sat down heavily in the chair.
‘Are you back?’ she whispered.
I nodded.
‘Are you Tom?’
I nodded.
‘Can you speak?’
I smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘It does funny things to your scar. Smile again.’ I laughed. She flung her arms round me and kissed me. ‘I love you!’
‘I love you.’
‘As much as the Countess?’
‘What
is
this Countess stuff?’
I felt automatically for her letter, which I had carried beneath my shirt, and she produced it. ‘I helped you undress. With Sarah . . . You don’t remember?’ She blushed. ‘Only the top part. My mother was horrified.’
I read again
I Hope Youe doe Think of Mee as I of Youe and not of Your Countess –
and was mortified when she told me what led up to that sentence. When Eaton and I returned from Poplar to stay at the Seven Stars, before going on to Highpoint, I had gone to Bedford Square in search of Kate, at the same time as the Countess had sent me a letter asking me to meet Mr Pym. The letter sat in some state over the fire in Half Moon Court, its elegant hand and impressive seal sending daggers of jealousy into Anne’s heart. That it was a love letter, she had no doubt. Every time she saw it she felt an urge to throw it in the fire, but dare not. At last she could stand it no longer and went to Bedford Square.
I covered my face with my hands and got up, unable to listen or speak for a moment. It was so childish, so unwomanly, so undignified. It was more than that, although I did not see it then. I had taken a step into that world, perhaps more than a step, and it was my private world, for which she was quite unsuited and had no place. I was deeply in love with her, but deeply embarrassed at the thought of her turning up in Bedford Square. If ever the time came to resolve this problem, which now seemed more unlikely than ever, it was my part to do so, not hers. She waited as if she was aware of this, hands clasped, head bowed, until I sat down.
‘A foul animal of a footman told me to go round the back,’ she said.
‘I know him,’ I said faintly.
‘Then she came out.’
I covered my face with my hands again, visualising Lucy Hay sending poor Anne packing, seeing her wandering away from Bedford Square humiliated, as I had done so many times in the past. But it was worse, much worse than that.
‘She took me up to her with-with—’
‘Withdrawing chamber.’
‘And gave me a drink of cho-cho—’
‘Chocolate.’
‘She’s
old
.’
‘She is a very beautiful woman,’ I said coldly.
‘She wears beautiful paint. She gave me some. Look –’
I stared speechless as Anne, with great excitement, dabbed her cheek from a pot, producing a smear of red. Apparently the misunderstanding over the Countess’s letter was soon dealt with. Anne never said as much, but I could not stand the thought that they must have been talking about me. I could not believe how intimate they had become in such a short space of time; so intimate, I found myself listening open-mouthed to things about Lucy Hay I never knew. Before I was born (Anne emphasised that) Lucy Hay was seriously ill and lost her first and only child, who was still-born. Then her husband died. It was such a terrible tragedy, Anne said, having apparently gone from hating Lucy Hay to adoring her in the space of a cup of chocolate. ‘But it made her as a woman.’
‘Did it? How so?’
Anne was literally wringing her hands, twisting her small fingers together, looking faintly ridiculous with a smear of cochineal on one cheek, like a half-made-up player on Bankside.
‘Have you heard of Sir Thomas More?’
‘Of course.’
‘He said if female soil be more productive of weeds than fruit it should be cult-cult—’
‘Cultivated?’
‘Thank you. It should be culti-vated with learning.’
A little writing was one thing, but I did not much care for the sound of this, nor when she referred to a short period in the last century when women like Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey had become as familiar with the classics as men. But it was what she said next that really shocked me.
‘Lucy,’ she said, ‘advised me to have no more than four children.’
I told her that was unnatural nonsense. The typical remark of a woman who could not perform her natural function. She replied that it gave women a better chance to help men, since women had cooler heads than men, who sometimes needed their judgement.
‘Judgement? Oh, Anne, I love you, not your judgement. What judgement do you have? I don’t know what she’s playing at, but she’s an intriguer, a meddler! You mustn’t listen to her, do you hear me?’
She bit her lip rebelliously. ‘Are you jealous I went to see her?’
‘Jealous? What an odd thing to say. No. Of course I’m not jealous.’
She dropped her head and plucked at her dress in silence for a few moments, then sighed, and gave me a resigned, supplicating look. I normally gained fresh life and energy from the love and nonsense we talked together, as a bee sucks nectar from a flower, but I found this conversation confusing and exhausting. I went to the window. It was beginning to snow again. Sarah was feeding the robin, which she always claimed was the same one every year.
‘She also said you were one of the most intelligent and capable men she had ever met.’
I whirled round, staring suspiciously at her, but her face was eager and earnest, with not a trace of a smile. I could not help reflecting that eagerness. ‘Did she? Did she really?’
‘Yes, and you are, you know you are, Monkey!’ She dived across the room and flung herself at my feet, eyes sparkling. I seized her to kiss her, but she wriggled away from me. ‘Wait! Wait! Stay there! Don’t move! Don’t look!’
She rushed to a scrap of mirror and there was an intriguing rustling and fumbling and peering into the mirror with her back towards me.
‘Cheat! You’re looking!’
I turned away, covering my face with my hands. This was a form of silliness I much preferred. In the endearing way in which women pick up a fashion one moment and discard it the next, she seemed already to have forgotten about learning Latin and Greek. There was an intense little silence in which I could hear her breathing and murmuring to herself. Then a rustle of skirts.
‘You may look,’ she said, commandingly.
She had turned herself into a woman of the court, her lips reddened, her cheeks flushed pink, her eyebrows blackened, emphasising the astonishing, imperious grey of her eyes. But it was not that that made me react as I did. She had unbuttoned the top of her dress, folding down the collar. On her breast was the pendant. It seemed to fill the whole room with a virulent light, the falcon’s venomous eyes staring at me from its enamelled nest.
I leapt across the room at her. ‘Take it off! Take that thing off!’ I wrenched at the pendant. She screamed as the chain bit into her neck. The clasp broke and I threw the thing across the room. The bird seemed to flutter and hiss at me. ‘You have been into my pack!’ I shouted. ‘Never do that again! Never touch that thing again!’
Her mother appeared at the door and Anne flung herself into her arms, sobbing. ‘I thought he was going to kill me! I thought he was going to kill me!’