Buch lesen: «As Meat Loves Salt», Seite 4

THREE Battles

We never went to the funeral, for which I was glad. But our talk was of little else, and while we tormented ourselves about Walshe, Cornish and Patience, the date of my espousal to Caro was almost upon us. Lying in bed, I gave myself up to voluptuous imaginings of my wedding night, almost too sweet to bear; but when I slept there came nightmares in which I was seized by Cornish or the officers. Sometimes Christopher Walshe walked before them, pointing me out. Starting out of sleep, I would dry my face on the bolster and consider whether I dared make away with myself, rather than be arrested. Once, when my groaning had woken both myself and Izzy, my brother whispered to me, ‘Do you truly wish to be wed? Better cry off now than repent it after,’ and I answered that the dreams had nought to do with my wedding, it was the boy, sunk deep into my mind. He put his hand on my brow, to cool it, and said he also dreamt of Walshe. Izzy was the only man there that ever touched me softly, as if I were capable of being hurt.

By day, these fears seemed foolishness. None had witnessed the boy’s death, and none was come for me though he was laid in the ground.

Less than a week after the pond-dragging, I looked out of a window to see our mother crossing the courtyard. I at once ran down to her, my head filled with sudden panic, fancying that the men were in her cottage, throwing the pots about in the scullery, ripping up every bed in the house and carrying away my father’s Bible.

When we embraced her cheek lay against the buttons of my coat, and I remembered how as a child I had looked upwards into her face. The tables had been turned for many years now.

‘I hope there is nothing wrong at home,’ I said, pushing open the stiff oak door to the hall. I would never have called the cottage home except to Mother. ‘Or are you come to see Caro?’

Mother ignored Caro’s name. When the two first met, I had seen by numerous signs, which none but sons could read, that she disapproved of my choice. Having nothing however to dispense or withhold, she was forced to bow to it.

‘What should be wrong at home? I am come to thank the Mistress for a present she made me,’ she said. ‘So I might make a good show at your betrothal.’

I flushed. ‘Do we beg money now?’

‘No, son! It came without asking. O my boy – you’re grown so handsome—’ she pulled my head down and kissed all over my face—‘she’s a fortunate lass that gets you.’

Hoping that Caro would not choose this moment to come by, I held Mother off from my kiss-dampened cheeks. ‘The luck is on my side, to have such a one to wife. And such a mother,’ for her eyes told me that to praise Caro was, in my mother’s view, to dispraise herself. ‘Pray wait here a while. I’ll announce you to My Lady.’

‘You’ll take me to Zeb and Izzy after?’

I groaned inwardly. ‘Of course,’ and leaving Mother near the stairs I went up to My Lady’s chamber.

It was Caro who opened to my knock, and on seeing me she at once laughed. I guessed by this that I was the subject of their talk, but said only, ‘Will you tell Her Ladyship that my mother is here to give her thanks in person?’

‘I will come down,’ called a voice inside the room. We stood aside as the Mistress swept past.

‘Going down!’ Caro whispered.

‘Going to be fawned on for a present she made,’ I returned. ‘I had as lief not see it.’

‘Should I not go to your mother, after?’

I hesitated. ‘Let Mother see her darling boys first.’

‘Very well. Come here, Signior Jacob—’ Caro put her face up, and from her kisses I did not pull away until we heard a door open downstairs.

‘You are lucky to get me. So my mother says,’ I murmured as we listened for the sound of the Mistress coming back up.

She pinched my cheek. ‘I’d say the luck’s all the other way. My Lady has promised more—’

‘But it is agreed,’ I said, surprised. Lady Roche had already settled a dowry of thirty pounds on Caro, who said over and over that the Roches were none so bad after all, while I thought the money would be best spent in getting away from them.

Caro explained, ‘Other things. There’s a gown for the day, not so old, neither. Earrings also. And I am to have a chaplet from the gardener, with roses, or gilded wheat and rosemary.’

‘Earrings? You have not had your ears pierced?’ I did not want my wife’s lobes punctured to suit the Mistress. Lifting the edges of her cap, I was reassured to find them still whole.

She laughed. ‘The loan is only for the day. We will tie them on with silk.’

‘I would gladly have got you a gown,’ I said. ‘But we are to have an espousal, not a church wedding.’ And I dislike the Mistress making you her poppet, I thought.

‘Yes, but since we are to be espoused de praesenti, where’s the difference?’

‘I mean only that—’

‘O Jacob, you will not be thwart, I hope? There will be a bridebed and all, why not a gown? Besides, her lending it is a sign of high favour!’

‘She may well favour you. No maid else could endure her white lead and belladonna.’

Nonetheless, I found myself smiling back at her. Her gown had been hard earned.

Caro went on, ‘It is all of blue. For constancy. And heeled shoes, with silver thread—’

We kissed again.

‘Shall I not have the ring inscribed?’ Caro wheedled. ‘Eh, Husband?’

‘No,’ I said at once. We had already been over this. I did not want a ring at all, preferring a simple and godly joining of hands before our friends, but I had bent so far to her wishes as to purchase one. I would not, however, have some doggerel such as Our Contract, Was Heaven’s Act cut into it. I had done much that foolish custom requires: gloves had been purchased to give to all our friends, and a fine embroidered pair for Caro herself. In this last instance, Zeb had threatened that if I did not give way, he would shame me by furnishing the bridal gloves in my stead. I had also presented her with wedding knives, those scissors as necessary as the groom himself. All of it was very much against my will, not through meanness on my part, for I grudged the cost of nothing that I thought seemly, but I disliked this courting of good luck through gew-gaws and trifles. What have Christians to do with luck? Nor would I have garters pulled off by her bridesmen, or stockings thrown about in the bridal chamber. The others complained that without such brothelry (which they called merriment) it was hardly a wedding, but no matter for their whims.

My love linked arms with me. ‘What will you wear, Jacob?’

‘My best coat, the one you know with the mother-of-pearl buttons, and a lace collar to my shirt. I have had them ready a month and more.’

‘And favours?’ she coaxed.

‘Aye, favours,’ for I had gained my point over the ring and other trash, and I knew that without these trumpery bits of ribbon her woman’s soul would not be satisfied.

Caro squeezed my hand. ‘We will look like gentry.’

‘I am gentry.’ My own words surprised me. Having been a servant so long, I had near forgotten.

‘But not idle like some we know.’

‘Let us hope,’ I said, ‘that he will be away, or dead drunk in bed.’

My Lady was coming back up the stairs, grunting from a stiffness she had in the legs and hips.

‘Madam, may we go down now?’ I requested. ‘Caro has not yet been seen by my mother.’

‘What! Most certainly you must go. She is in the garden with your brothers, near the lavender bed.’

‘You are all kindness.’

We bowed and curtseyed, then scampered downstairs like children.

Mother was just where the Mistress had said, standing between Zeb and Izzy.

‘I always forget how pale your mother is,’ said Caro as we crossed towards them. ‘Where is her part in you, Black Jacob?’

‘The eyes.’

‘So much?’

‘More than she has in the others. Zeb and Izzy have Father’s complexion entirely. Yet folk say I am the most like him.’

Mother turned the grey eyes which were under discussion sharply upon her future daughter as soon as she perceived our approach. Caro curtseyed with a graceful sweep that not even Mervyn could have faulted, but to no purpose: there would never be liking between these two. My mother bristled like a dog’s back. For Caro’s part, as soon as she came out of her curtsey she drew herself up, Youth against Age.

‘You have met Caro before, dear Mother,’ I tried. ‘Now you meet her as a dutiful daughter.’

Caro smiled.

Mother’s glance raked her up and down as if seeking cracks in her skin, as she said, ‘I will scarce know what to do with a daughter. My babes have all been boys.’

Izzy shot me a sympathetic glance.

‘I had hoped we might put you to bed at home,’ Mother said, turning on me. ‘But you will not want that.’

‘That was our first wish,’ I assured her, Caro’s head bobbing up and down in agreement. ‘But the kindness shown, and such gifts – a servant is not a free man—’

My mother inclined her head so slightly that one might not say she nodded.

‘The Mistress has given me a gown against the day,’ put in Caro. ‘And a pair of—’

‘She has been most kind,’ I hurried to conceal the last loan.

Mother pounced. ‘A pair of what?’

‘Earrings,’ faltered Caro.

‘Earrings for a serving maid.’ My mother stared into the sky, her mouth sulky and closed like that of an old fish.

I was stung. ‘Say rather for ‘my wife.’

‘Your mother thinks I intrude myself among my betters. Give you good day, Madam.’ Caro turned and walked away.

‘Are you now content?’ I burst out. ‘I mean to espouse her, and you had best—’

‘Mother, will you come and see my garden?’ Izzy almost shouted. ‘The Mistress has given me a plot for myself, and I take cuttings of the rare plants.’

‘Indeed, Isaiah, that will be very pleasant.’ And off she went with Izzy, leaving me and my betrothal to come about as we would.

Zeb grinned. ‘Caro is too pretty for her, and you too amorous. That sets her on edge.’

‘Amorous? I did but speak!’

‘It shines out of you.’ He gave a sly laugh. ‘For all she says, methinks she would scarce welcome the bridebed at home. And then, she once hoped we would marry better.’

‘Then you must look for trouble, when the time comes.’ If Mother behaved thus with Caro, she would surely take a whip to Patience.

‘I have ample trouble at present.’ Zeb’s eyes grew miserable.

‘Be easy,’ I said. ‘Patience cannot be at Champains. She will be found in time.’

He glanced at me in surprise. ‘I have been thinking. Perhaps you are right, and I drove her away—’

I shook my head. There followed a rare moment of peace between us.

‘Ah, well,’ Zeb said at last, ‘Mother will come round. Directly you and Caro quarrel, you’ll be her own sweet boy.’

‘We won’t quarrel,’ I replied. Zebedee clapped me on the shoulder and we began strolling back to the house.

‘Have you seen the ceiling?’ Caro pushed open the door of the unused chamber that was to be our married quarters.

I looked up. I had seen it often, without much interest. Now the other servants had cleaned both it and the walls, revealing the fantastic images that crowded there: a shameless hotch-potch of the pagan and Papistical, a whirl of naked and semi-naked forms intended to give the eye the impression of an ascent into the air above the house.

‘Sir John’s taste exactly,’ I pronounced.

‘O no,’ Caro corrected me. ‘Older than that. Godfrey says Sir John’s father hired a foreigner for the painting.’

‘And how do you like it?’

‘Not at all,’ she said at once.

I gazed on the bloated babes carrying lyres and blowing trumpets, the swags of painted stuff and grapes piled up here and there. In the centre, a bare breasted woman conversed like the strumpet she was with two men, one on either side of her. All three were seated on thrones shaped like shells and coloured gold.

Caro pointed. ‘That’s a goddess, the Mistress says.’

‘You are prettier than she.’

My love wrinkled her nose. ‘She is coarse. In need of stays.’

I said, ‘Izzy told me these were painted so that the children conceived here might be beautiful.’

Caro burst out laughing. ‘What, Mervyn—?’

Laughter seized on me also. ‘Why, yes. Look there—’ and I pointed out a chubby infant swilling wine from an upturned horn.

‘Mervyn must have been made in the great chamber.’ Caro wiped her eyes. ‘The ceiling there isn’t fit for a maid to look on.’

‘You will get used to this one,’ I said slyly, and saw her blush.

The espousal was fixed for the next day. My Lady was to send her coach for our ungracious mother, and since our fellows at Beaurepair were also our guests, servants were come in from a neighbour’s house to help Mounseer with the food. Poor Mounseer, he was the only one of us not to have a holiday. But he had consolation in the form of Madeleine, a young Frenchwoman employed to dress hair. Her thankless task was to spin gold from the thin and greying locks of her own mistress, and now she had been borrowed and was to try her skill with ours. I had heard Daskin present himself to her the day before, and since then there was no good English spoken when these two were together, nothing but parly-voo, the two of them talking so fast you might think the words had been banking up in them and were bursting out like the autumn floods. Thus my spouse was freed of brushes, false hair and unguents for one day – a mighty sacrifice on the Mistress’s part. I owned it freely, it was extraordinary how she liked Caro. She was a woman who should have had a daughter.

‘We are made, you know.’ Caro squeezed my arm. ‘She’d let none but me have this chamber.’

‘True,’ I answered her. ‘But when Sir John dies, and he does his best to bring it about, it will be Sir Bastard in the saddle. He’s itching to debauch the maids.’

She sniffed. ‘Do you not think I might refuse?’

‘Would you had heard the talk in March, my love, when he brought his cronies and I waited on their late-night drunks. How the amorous propensities are heated by struggle, and not struggle in play neither.’

‘Ah.’ Her face sobered. ‘He’s one you have to watch, certes.’

‘What, has he touched—’

‘No, Jacob! He does no more than look. While his father lives, we should stick here. I am laying by money.’

‘Are you sorry to change your first bridesmaid?’ I asked. We had been forced in courtesy to ask Patience to carry out the first bridesmaid’s duties, decking our chamber and the rest with flowers against the day, since neither of us had a sister or cousin who could decently claim precedence.

‘Only if she be really lost,’ Caro said. ‘But there will be two bridesmaids. Peter’s sister Mary will take Anne’s place and Anne will stand in for Patience.’ She smiled at me as if to say, Fear not, all will be done.

I eyed the heathens in their painted Heaven. Soon they would look down on our embracings, and I promised them good sport. Though I had never had a woman I understood perfectly what to do, and had an edge on me keen as a new blade: she would not find me shy or cold. We would sleep wrapped in one another, and wake to—

I caught Caro’s eyes on me and flushed.

‘The place will be sweet with all the flowers they can find,’ she said. ‘There were more in July, but—’

The door swung open, making me jump. It was Zeb. I expected a grin and the inevitable jest about inspecting the bed but his face was rapt as if from some vision.

‘Jacob, I heard—’ he corrected himself, ‘and Caro – I heard something they kept from us—’

‘Is Patience found?’ cried Caro.

‘No, Sister. Listen. Sir Bastard was in the West, was he not?’

‘What’s that to us?’ I demanded. ‘What care we where he is, so be’s not here?’

‘Jacob, Parliament has gained Bristol.’

I whistled.

‘That’s why he’s been so curst of late,’ Zeb went on excitedly. ‘He’s come home with his tail between his legs.’

‘When was it?’ Caro asked.

‘The tenth of September. That’s the fourth in a row: Naseby, Lang-port, Bridgwater and now Bristol.’

‘They are going to win,’ I said. My brother and wife-to-be stared back at me, unspeaking.

‘I heard him telling the Mistress about it,’ said Zeb at last. His eyes shone. ‘They are all frighted now. There were stores lost from the whole of the West at Bridgwater, and Fairfax got between the King’s army and Bristol.’

‘And took Bristol itself! O brave Fairfax!’ I could have capered with glee. ‘To put down their precious Rupert.’

This prince was the King’s own nephew, and had sworn to hold that city for His Majesty. There were many who considered him a kind of evil spirit, for he was monstrous tall and fearless in battle. What was more, he had been seen to converse with a familiar in the shape of a white dog, and though this dog had been killed at Marston Moor, yet the man continued cunning beyond mortal power. Once, I had overheard some guests say at table that had the King but been advised by Rupert, the upstarts and the common sort would have been crushed utterly. Now Fairfax had crushed him.

‘We are going to see new times,’ murmured Zeb. ‘But fields of dead, first.’ He turned to go out, pausing at the door to add, ‘They slit women’s faces at Naseby.’

‘Lord protect us from the Cavaliers!’ Caro gasped.

‘It wasn’t the Cavaliers did it, Sister.’ Zeb cocked an eyebrow and was gone.

I pictured a face slit across. The blade would rip up lips and cheeks, catch in the gristle of a septum on its way to the eyes. Caro was saying something but I could hear nothing of it for the pounding in the back of my head. Suddenly my father spoke there and in my breast all at once, saying, I have pursued mine enemies, and destroyed them; and turned not again until I had consumed them.

Amen, I answered him in my heart. It was needless speaking aloud, for I had found over the years that he made himself known only to me, and though the Voice might shake the flesh on my bones, yet none but myself could hear it.