A Crowning Mercy

She had never been close to Ebenezer, though she had tried so hard. When she had played games in the kitchen garden, safe from her parents’ prying eyes, Ebenezer would never join in. He preferred to sit with his open Bible, memorising the chapter ordained by his father for the day, and even then he had watched his sister with a jaundiced, jealous gaze. Yet he was her brother, her only relative, and Campion had thought much about him during the week. Perhaps Ebenezer could be an ally. She patted the grass beside her. ‘Come and sit down. I wanted to talk to you.’

‘I’m busy.’ He frowned on her. Since their father’s death he had adopted an air of burdened dignity, never more evident than when he shared the ministration of household prayers with Samuel Scammell. ‘I’ve come for the key to your room.’

‘What for?’

‘It’s not for you to ask what for!’ His anger showed as petulance. He held out a hand. ‘I demand it, isn’t that enough? Brother Scammell and I wish to have it! If our dear father was alive you would not be skulking behind locked doors!’

She stood up, brushing the grass from her skirt and unhooked the key from the ring at her waist. ‘You can have it, Eb, but you’ll have to tell me why you want it.’ She spoke patiently.

He glared at her, his face shadowed by his wide-brimmed, black hat. ‘We are searching, sister, for the seal.’

She laughed at that. ‘It’s not in my room, Eb.’

‘It isn’t funny, Dorcas! It isn’t funny! It’s for your benefit, remember, not mine! I don’t get ten thousand a year from it!’

She had held the key towards him, but now she withdrew her hand. She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand, Eb, do you? I don’t want ten thousand pounds. I don’t want anything! I just want to be alone. I don’t want to marry Mr Scammell. We can look after the money, Eb. You and I. We don’t need Mr Scammell!’ The words were tumbling out now. ‘I’ve thought about it, Eb, I really have. We can live here and you can take the money and when you marry I’ll go and live in a house in the village, and we can be happy, Eb! Happy!’

His face had not moved as she spoke. He watched her sourly, disliking her as he always had because she could run while he could not; she could swim naked in a stream while he dragged his twisted, shrunken leg behind him. Now he shook his head. ‘You’re trying to tempt me, aren’t you? You’re offering me money, and why? Because you dislike Brother Scammell. The answer is no, sister. No.’ He threw up a hand to stop her interrupting. ‘It sounds so good, just you and me, but I know what you’d do! You’d run away with the money as soon as you were twenty-five. Well, you won’t, sister, because you’re going to marry, and when you’re married you’ll learn that Brother Scammell and I have an agreement. We will share the money, Dorcas, all three of us, because that’s what Brother Scammell wants. It’s what our father would have wanted and have you thought of that? You think that because he’s dead all his hopes are to be destroyed? That all he prayed for should be destroyed?’ Ebenezer shook his head again. ‘One day, Dorcas, we will meet him again and in a better place than this, and I want him to thank me on that day for being a good and faithful son.’

‘Eb?’

‘The key, sister.’ He thrust his hand out again.

‘You’re wrong, Eb.’

‘The key!’

She gave it to him, then watched as he wrenched violently at the horse’s rein, rowelled savagely with his right spur, and galloped towards the house.

She sat again, the stream placid in front of her, and she knew that her dreams were vain. Ebenezer disliked her, she did not know why, and she suspected that he enjoyed her misery. Ebenezer had inherited more than anger from his father, he had taken too the streak of cruelty that had been in Matthew Slythe. She remembered when Ebenezer was ten how she had found him in the orchard, Clark’s Martyrologie open beside him. The page showed Romish priests disembowelling a Protestant martyr, and she had screamed in anger because, tied to an apple tree, was a small kitten on which Ebenezer was copying the torture, tearing at its tiny, soft stomach with a knife. She had dragged him away from the blood-soaked tree, away from the yowling kitten, and Ebenezer had spat at her, clawed at her, and shouted spitefully that this was the tenth kitten he had so killed. She had been forced to kill the kitten herself, cutting the little throat, and she could remember Ebenezer laughing.

Now Ebenezer was in league with Samuel Scammell. Her marriage portion was to be divided between them and she would have no say in the matter.

There was nothing for her in Werlatton. She watched where the stream ran strong and calm past the pool’s entrance, and she thought that she must leave. She should go with the stream, seeing where it led, and even though she knew that it would be impossible to run away, she knew too that it would be impossible to stay.

She stood up, sad in the afternoon sun, and walked slowly back towards the house.

She entered through the side passage that led past her father’s study. The lawn was pungent with the smell of newly-scythed grass, the sunlight so bright that she was temporarily blinded when she walked into the darkness of the passage. She did not see the man who stood in the door of her father’s room.

‘The bowels of Christ. Who are you?’

Her shoulder was gripped, she was pushed against the wall, and the man grinned at her. ‘Sweet God! A little Puritan maid. Well, well.’ He tilted her chin up with his finger. ‘A ripe little piece of fruit.’

‘Sir!’ It was Samuel Scammell’s voice. He hurried out of the study. ‘Sir! That is Miss Slythe. We are to marry!’

The man let her go. He was big, as big as her father had been, and his face was scarred and ugly. It was a broad face, hard as leather, with a broken nose. At his side was a sword, in his belt a pistol, and he looked from Campion to Scammell. ‘She’s yours?’

‘Indeed, sir!’ Scammell sounded nervous. The man frightened him.

‘Only the best, eh? She’s the answer to a Puritan’s prayer, and no mistake. I hope you know how damned lucky you are. Does she have it?’

‘No!’ Scammell shook his head. ‘Indeed, no!’

The man stared at Campion. ‘We’ll talk later, miss. Don’t run away.’

She ran. She was terrified of him, of the smell of him and the violence that he radiated. She went to the stable-yard that was warm in the sunlight and sat on the mounting block and let the kittens come to her. They rolled about her hand, fur warm and sharp clawed and she blinked back tears. She must run away! She must go far from this place, but there was nowhere to go. She must run.

There were footsteps in the archway to the yard. She looked left, and there was the man. He must have followed her. He came swiftly towards her, his sword clanging against the water trough, and before she could move he had seized her shoulder and pushed her once more against the wall. His breath stank. His leather soldier’s jerkin was greasy. He smiled, showing rotten, stained teeth. ‘Now, miss, I’ve come all the way from London so you’re going to be nice to me, aren’t you?’

‘Sir?’ She was terrified.

‘Where is it?’

‘Where’s what, sir?’ She was struggling, but was helpless against his huge strength.

‘God’s bowels, woman! Don’t play with me!’ he shouted, hurting her shoulder with his hand. Then he smiled again. ‘Pretty little Puritan, aren’t we? Wasted on that bladder of a man.’ He stayed smiling as his right knee jerked upwards, forcing her legs apart, and he pushed it up between her thighs, reaching down with his free hand for the hem of her skirt.

‘That’s enough, mister!’ The voice came from her right. Tobias Horsnell, the stable-man, stood easily in a doorway, the musketoon that was used to kill sick beasts held in his hand. ‘I doubt this be good, mister. Let her go.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m the one who should be asking that.’ Horsnell seemed unconcerned by the man’s crude and violent air. He twitched the gun. ‘You take your hands off her. Now what be this about?’

The man had stepped back, releasing her. He brushed his hands as if she had been filthy. ‘She has something I want.’

Horsnell looked at Campion. He was a thin man, his wiry forearms burned black by the sun. He was taciturn in household prayers, though he was one of the few servants who had learned to read and Campion had watched him laboriously mouth the words of the Bible. ‘Is that true, Miss Dorcas?’

‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t even know what it is!’

‘What is it, mister?’

‘A seal.’ The man seemed to be gauging whether he would have time to pull the pistol from his belt, but Tobias Horsnell kept his musketoon steady and his voice neutral. ‘Do you have the seal, Miss Dorcas?’

‘No.’

‘There, mister. That be your answer. I think you should go.’ The musketoon added force to his polite suggestion and Horsnell kept the weapon levelled till the stranger had left the yard. Only then did he drop the muzzle and give her a slow smile.’ ‘Twasn’t loaded, but the Lord looks after us. I hope you told the truth, Miss Dorcas.’

‘I did.’

‘Good, God be praised. He was an ungodly man, Miss Dorcas, and there be plenty like him outside these walls.’

She frowned at the words. She had spoken little with Tobias Horsnell, for he was a man who stayed away from the house except for prayers, yet he seemed to have divined her intention of running away. Why else would he have stressed the dangers outside Werlatton’s estate?

She smoothed the collar of her dress. ‘Thank you.’

‘You thank your Lord and Saviour, miss. In times of trouble He’ll be at hand.’ He had stooped to pick up and fondle one of the kittens. ‘I could tell you tales of His mercy, Miss Dorcas.’

‘And tales of His punishment, Mr Horsnell?’