A Crowning Mercy. Bernard Cornwell
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of fear of the awful, vengeful God who was Matthew Slythe’s master. Dorcas had to be crushed. The child of sin must become a child of God and he knew he had failed. He knew that she called herself a Christian, that she prayed, that she believed in God, but Matthew Slythe feared the streak of independence in his daughter. He feared she could be worldly, that she could seek out the pleasures of this world that were damned, pleasures that could be hers if she found his secret.
There was a jewel hidden, a seal of gold, which he had not looked at in sixteen years. If Dorcas found it, if she learned what it meant, then she might seek the help of the seal and uncover the Covenant. Matthew Slythe groaned. The money of the Covenant belonged to Dorcas but she must never know. It must be tied up by a will, by his wishes, and, above all, by a marriage settlement. His daughter, with her dangerous beauty, must never know she was rich. The money which had come from sin must belong to God, to Matthew Slythe’s God. He drew a sheet of paper towards him, his head throbbing with the echoes of prayer, and wrote a letter to London. He would settle his daughter once and for all. He would crush her.
Upstairs, in the bedroom she had to share with one of the maids, Campion sat on the wide window-sill and stared into the night.
Once Werlatton Hall had been beautiful, though she did not remember it thus. Its old, stone walls had been hugged by ivy and shaded by great elms and oaks, but when Matthew Slythe had purchased the estate he had stripped the ivy and cut down the great trees. He had surrounded the Hall with a vast lawn that took two men to scythe smooth in summer, and about the lawn he had planted a yew hedge. The hedge was tall now, enclosing the clean, ordered world of Werlatton and keeping at bay the strange, tangled outside world where laughter was not a sin.
Campion stared at the darkness beyond the hedge.
An owl, hunting the great ridge of beeches, sounded hollow across the valley. Bats flitted past the window, wheeling raggedly. A moth flew past Campion, attracted by the candle and causing Charity, the maid, to squeal in alarm, ‘Shut the window, Miss Dorcas.’
Campion turned. Charity had pulled out the truckle bed from beneath Campion’s. The girl’s pale, frightened face looked up. ‘Did it hurt, miss?’
‘Always does, Charity.’
‘Why did you do it, miss?’
‘I don’t know.’
Campion turned back to the rich, sweet darkness. She prayed every night that God would make her good, yet she could never please her father. She had known it was a sin to swim in the stream, but she did not understand why. Nowhere in the Bible did it say ‘Thou shalt not swim’, though she knew that the nakedness was an offence. Yet the temptation would come again and again. Except that now she would never be allowed to the stream again.
She thought of Toby. Her father, before he beat her, had ordered her to be confined to the house for the next month. She would not be in church on Sunday. She thought of stealing away, going to the road that led north to Lazen, but knew she could not do it. She was always watched when she was forbidden to leave the house, her father guarding her with one of his trusted servants.
Love. It was a word that haunted her. God was love, though her father taught of a God of anger, punishment, wrath, vengeance and power. Yet Campion had found love in the Bible. ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine’. ‘His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me’; ‘And his banner over me was love’; ‘By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth’. Her father said the Song of Solomon was merely an expression of God’s love for his church, but she did not believe him.
She looked into the dark over the Werlatton valley and she thought of her father. She feared him when she should love him, yet the fear had never struck at the very centre of her. She had a secret, a secret that she clung to day and night. It was like a dream that never left her, and in the dream it was as if she was a disembodied soul merely watching herself in Werlatton. She smiled. She now found she was thinking of the disembodied soul as Campion, watching Dorcas be obedient, or trying to be obedient, and she had the sense that somehow she did not belong here. She could not explain it, any more than Toby Lazender had been able to explain how the cold fingers knew the pressure of a fish in the water, yet the sense of her difference had been the sense that enabled her to resist the savage fatherhood of Matthew Slythe. She fed her soul on love, believing that kindness must exist somewhere beyond the tall, dark hedge of yew. One day, she knew, she would travel into the tangled world that her father feared.
‘Miss?’ Charity was shrinking away from the fluttering moth.
‘I know, Charity. You don’t like moths.’ Campion smiled. Her back hurt as she bent over, but she cradled the large moth in her hands, feeling its wings flutter on her palms, and then she threw it to the freedom of the dark where the owl and the bats hunted.
She closed the window and knelt beside her bed. She prayed dutifully for her father, for Ebenezer, for Goodwife, for the servants, and then she prayed, a smile on her face, for Toby. The dreams had been given fuel. There was no sense in it and little hope, but she was in love.
Three weeks later, when the corn was the colour of Campion’s hair and the summer promised a harvest richer than England had known for years, a guest came to Werlatton Hall.
Guests were few. A travelling preacher, his tongue burdened with hatred for the King and preaching death to the bishops, might be offered hospitality, but Matthew Slythe was not a gregarious man.
The guest, Dorcas was told, was called Samuel Scammell. Brother Samuel Scammell, a Puritan from London, and Charity was excited at the visit. She came to Dorcas in the bedroom as the sun was dying over the valley. ‘Goodwife says you’re to wear Sunday best, miss. And the rugs are down in the hall!’
Campion smiled at Charity’s excitement. ‘The rugs?’
‘Yes, miss, and master’s ordered three pullets killed! Three! Tobias brought them in. Goodwife’s making pie.’ Charity helped Campion dress, then adjusted the white linen collar over her shoulders. ‘You do look well, miss.’
‘Do I?’
‘It was your mother’s collar. It mended ever so nice.’ Charity twitched at the edge of it. ‘It looks so much bigger on you!’
Martha Slythe had been fat and tall, her voice competing with Goodwife Baggerlie’s for mastery over the dirt of Werlatton Hall. Campion lifted the edge of the collar. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to wear something pretty just once? Do you remember that woman in church two years ago? The one the Reverend Hervey told off for dressing like a harlot?’ She laughed. The woman had worn a lace collar, pretty and soft.
Charity frowned. ‘Miss! That’s a wicked lust!’
Campion sighed inwardly. ‘I’m sorry, Charity. I spoke without thinking.’
‘God will forgive you, miss.’
‘I’ll pray for that,’ Campion lied. She had long learned that the best way to avoid God’s wrath was to pay Him frequent lip service. If Charity had told Goodwife about Campion’s wish to wear lace, and Goodwife had told her master, then Matthew Slythe would punish Campion. Thus, Campion thought, to avoid punishment she had been taught to lie. Punishment is the best teacher of deceit. ‘I’m ready.’
Matthew Slythe, his two children and the guest ate their supper at the far end of the great hall. The shutters of the tall windows were left open. Dusk was bringing gloom to the wide lawn and hedge.
Samuel Scammell, Campion guessed, was in his mid-thirties and there was a fleshiness to him that betokened a full diet. His face was not unlike her father’s. It had the same bigness, the same heaviness, but where her father’s face was strong, Scammell’s seemed somehow soft as though the bones were malleable. He had full, wet lips that he licked often. His nostrils were like two huge, dark caves that sprouted black hair. He was ugly, an ugliness not helped by his cropped, dark hair.
He seemed eager to please, listening respectfully to Matthew Slythe’s growled remarks about the weather and the prospect for harvest. Campion said