As Meat Loves Salt. Maria McCann
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‘What ails you, Rupe?’ someone called.
I was reeling as if drunk.
‘Devil’s in him,’ came a voice from behind.
‘Got the staggers,’ Ferris said over his shoulder. After a few minutes he whispered to me, ‘Well?’
‘That hill. One lives there who hates me, who’d burn me alive.’
‘Burn you alive? Burn?’ He stared at me.
‘Burn, hang – anything cruel.’
‘Ah,’ Ferris murmured. ‘Courage, he won’t get the chance. Who is this mighty hater?’
‘A man – there’s a woman too.’
‘Do they have names?’
I was silent. We trudged onwards, and I managed to straighten up.
‘I’ll shave your head tonight,’ he said after a while.
‘Thank you.’ I wanted badly that he should understand me, at least a little, and went on, ‘Do you remember saying that some men warm themselves at others’ sins?’
‘No.’
‘Well—’ I had made an ill start, but as usual could not leave it alone. ‘It was you told me about them. And I find there are others, who may be soiled and hurt by another’s sins. I cannot always speak freely of myself to you. I would not infect you.’
‘O, you fear my emulation? You think you’re the first sinner I have met with?’ He laughed. ‘I do recall now our talk of men and sins. You were asking me about Naseby-Fight! Do you not think that might have infected me?’
‘Yes of course, you have seen – things – but my own acts give me bad dreams. I would not give such dreams to you.’
‘I’ve plenty of my own.’
‘You said you were afraid of me sometimes.’
‘Mostly when you talk like this. Confess, have you burnt a village in their beds?’
I rolled my eyes at him.
‘Well, that’s the way you get me thinking. You suffer from pride, Rupert. I wager you think God can’t forgive you.’
‘I did think so. But not now he has sent me such a friend.’
This pacified him somewhat. It was getting dark, and soon we struck camp. He was as good as his word, heating a bowl of water over the fire and shaving my head with surprising deftness, his hand firm on the back of my neck. I watched his face and saw there absolute concentration,the absorption of a craftsman, as he passed the razor over my skin. The blade being coarse, he could not help nicking me in places, and each time he did so he frowned.
‘You would make a good barber,’ I said when he was done, fingering my shorn scalp.
The firelight showed me that he was smiling, whether at my gratitude or at my strange new looks I could not tell.
‘This puts me in mind of old times,’ I went on. ‘The servants out on a fine evening and the work mostly done. Sitting with my brothers. We were reading pamphlets,’ and despite everything I warmed at the memory. ‘About God’s commonwealth in England. Zeb and Peter had tobacco and we took it in turns to read aloud. We would go down behind the stables and hide from the steward, and the maidservants would come too, if they could. I affected one of them, Caroline.’ I hoped that in the darkness he would not see how her name made me wince.
‘What were your pamphlets?’ Ferris asked eagerly. ‘Not stuff your master would like?’
‘Not a whit! We had All Men Brothers and Of Kingly Power and Its Putting Down and some others, bits and pieces. I was rapt with them.’
‘Could you all read?’
‘My father fee’d a tutor for us three.’
My friend looked his surprise at me.
‘We were not always servants,’ I said. ‘Another time I’ll tell you how that was. Our Izzy taught Caro her letters when she was a child.’
It came back to me with sweetness and pain, my brother bending over her, pointing out a line in the hornbook. He had been her champion and favourite all through childhood; his reward had been self-denial and sacrifice, which I had at last trampled under my feet. He would never call his precious one ‘sister’, kiss her innocently at Christmas or see her happy with his brother’s babe in her arms. Somewhere, if not dead – no, that was not possible, God would not be so cruel – they must each be wondering what was become of me.
Ferris was speaking.
‘I am sorry?’ I said.
‘In London. I wrote just such pamphlets, printed them too.’
‘What, those same ones!’ I wrenched my thoughts away from Izzy and Caro.
‘No. But very like. I kept company with men of ideas, not useless projects but all that might bring Adam out of bondage. Our chief design was that the commons, that fought the war and bore the free quarter, might not be ridden over by little kings at home, for then where was the use of having fought at all?’
I thought of Sir Bastard and nodded.
‘Now is the time,’ he went on, ‘when we might do just such a thing. These poor people that starve at the door of Dives, that cannot take a turf of the common ground and dig on it while all the game and suchlike is shut up in Milord’s park – now is their day. The country is up in arms, and the work will be brought about!’ He clapped me on the shoulder, laughing, and I remarked that thus animated, the fire shining full in his face, he was comely. I smiled back and we regarded one another an instant.
‘Are you married, Rupert?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ I answered, surprised into truth.
‘I had a wife, Joanna. She helped me with the pamphlets.’
‘You’re a widower?’
‘God rest her soul. She couldn’t write, but she helped bind the pages. I was teaching her to read, from the Bible. I sometimes wish she were here, but what a place for a woman.’
‘Perhaps she is with you in spirit.’
‘Sometimes – as just now – I feel suddenly persuaded all will be well. That may be Joanna acting upon me. We were merry together; we liked each other well.’
‘How long were you married?’
‘Not long. She was but sixteen when she died. She would have been brought to bed about now.’ His voice thickened. ‘One day she was sick and fell to bleeding, the next the child was born dead. She never got out of bed after that, grew weaker every day. The curse upon Eve, the doctor said, agony of childbed. They see so many dead that way.’
I wondered whether Caro had fled the wood with my child within her. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘a man must have issue.’
‘The child was not mine.’
I put my fingers into my mouth for shock and wondered if I had understood aright. He was breathing fast. I looked about to be sure no one else could hear him. The rest of the men were roaring at some jest.
‘It was not mine,’ he repeated. ‘I knew of it, she was in her fourth month when we were contracted.’
‘She had been widowed?’
‘Forced.’
I could scarce believe what I heard. ‘Why didn’t they marry her to the man that did it?’
‘He was already married.’
‘Why didn’t her father act against him?’
Ferris laughed savagely. ‘Why indeed? My manservant – he was courting their maid – dropped