A Crowning Mercy

The boat was turning south round the great bend. To their left was the empty untidiness of Lambeth Marsh, to their right the rich houses of the Strand. The Earl lowered his voice. ‘I must act soon, Sir George, I must.’

‘Of course you must.’ Sir George knew that his son-in-law, an honest man, would be forced to go to the proper authorities within a few days. ‘How long, John?’

The Earl did not reply at once. The boat had gone to the Surrey bank where the current was weaker, but now the watermen were beginning the wide turn that would bring them smoothly downstream to the Privy Stairs at Whitehall. The Earl frowned at his damp coat. ‘I must report this by next Lord’s Day.’

Six days till Sunday. ‘Thank you, John.’ Six days to remove Toby from London, to send him to safety at Lazen Castle. The thought made Sir George smile. His wife, the formidable Lady Margaret Lazender, would welcome her husband’s change of allegiance. She would doubtless wholeheartedly approve of her son’s secret actions for the King.

Sir George paid the stroke oar, then climbed on to the stairs. He walked beside his taller son-in-law along the right of way that led through the royal Palace, under the archway, and into King Street. ‘I’m for home, John.’

‘And I for Westminster.’

‘You’ll come and dine before you leave London?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good, good.’ Sir George looked at the blue sky above the new Banqueting Hall. ‘I hope the weather lasts.’

‘A good harvest, yes.’

They parted, and Sir George walked slowly home. Whitehall had never looked better. He would miss it, though he acknowledged pleasure at the thought of rejoining Lady Margaret in Lazen. His wife, whom Sir George loved, refused to travel to London, saying it was a viperous den of lawyers, thieves and politicians. Sir George hated being away from the city. Perhaps, he admitted to himself with a smile, that was why their marriage had been so good. Lady Margaret loved him from Dorset, while he loved her from London.

He crossed the road to avoid a virulent Puritan member of the Commons who was bound to detain him twenty minutes to tell him the latest gossip about the King’s flirtation with the Roman Catholics. Sir George touched his hat once, in reply to a similar greeting from Sir Grenville Cony who passed in his coach. A powerful man, Sir Grenville, deep in the inner councils of Parliament and paymaster to half the rebel army. Sir George had the uncanny impression that Sir Grenville, in a single smiling glance from his coach, had divined Sir George’s wavering loyalty.

Sir George stopped at Charing Cross, looking over at the Royal Mews, because a stage wagon, come from the west, blocked his path. The wagon had huge, broad wheels to negotiate the muddy, rutted roads, though this summer the going had been dry and easy. The coach roof was piled with luggage and passengers, but Sir George’s eye was caught by a girl who stared with awe and wonder through the leather-curtained window. His breath almost caught in his throat. She was more beautiful than any girl he had seen in years. He caught her eye unintentionally and raised his hand in a polite salute so she would not take offence.

If I were thirty years younger, he thought, and the desire amused him as he crossed towards his house. He envied the girl. Her expression seemed to convey that this was her first sight of London, and he was jealous of all the experiences that lay before her. He must leave the great city.

Mrs Pierce opened the door to him. ‘Master.’ She took his hat and cane. ‘Master Toby’s upstairs.’

‘He is? Good!’ Sir George glanced at the staircase. He must pack his son off to safety in the next six days, send him far away from the vengeance of the Saints. Toby must return to Lazen, and his father would follow. Sir George slowly climbed the stairs.

Campion saw the elderly man salute her with his cane, she almost smiled in return, but then her fear of the unknown, her dread of the great city, overtook her and the moment passed.

She had reached London, and the enormity of her achievement had astonished her even as it scared her.

If a child is punished often and punished cruelly, and if a parent has such an all-embracing concept of sin that even the most innocent acts can lead to punishment, then the child will learn early to be cunning. Campion had learned early and learned well, and it had been cunning that had brought her this far.

Cunning and more than a little luck. She had waited one more day, then left the house well before dawn. She was dressed in her sober best and carrying a bundle of food, coins and one spare dress. The seal was about her neck, hidden beneath her bodice, while the pearled gloves and the letter were in her bundle.

She had walked east, towards the dawn, and for a time she had been exhilarated. Two hours later, as the sun flooded the fields and woods, the exhilaration had ended. She was walking into a sheltered valley where the road crossed a stream when a filthy beggar erupted from a ditch. He had possibly meant her no harm, but the bearded face, the grunting sounds, and the single, reaching, clawing hand had terrified her and she had run, easily outstripping him, and thereafter she had walked cautiously and warily, fearing the dangers that this strange world contained.

An hour later, when she was already tired and dispirited, a farmer’s wife who drove a wagon offered her a ride. The wagon was heavy with flax, the stalks rustling as the horses dragged it, and even though the flax was going south-east Campion accepted the ride because the woman’s company was a protection against danger. Campion told the woman that she was being sent to London to work for her uncle, and when the woman asked scornfully why she was travelling alone, Campion invented a story: her mother had suddenly been evicted from her cottage, Campion was the only hope of raising money and her mother had begged her to accept her uncle’s offer of employment. Her mother, Campion said, was sick. She told the story well and the farmer’s wife sympathised, and did not abandon Campion when the wagon reached its destination at Winterborne Zelston.

A carrier was in the village, going to Southampton with a string of mules, and the farmer’s wife arranged for Campion to go with the man and his wife. The carrier, like so many travelling people, was a Puritan and Campion was glad of it. She might find their religion oppressive and cruel, but she knew they would also be honest and trustworthy. The carrier’s wife clucked as she heard Campion’s story. ‘You poor thing, dear. You’d best come to Southampton, then on to London. It’s safer that way nowadays.’

She slept that first night in the public room of an inn, sharing the room with a dozen women, and there were times in the reaches of the night when she wished she was back home in Werlatton. She had launched herself on the stream, and its current was already taking her to strange, frightening places where she did not know how to behave. Yet the thought of Scammell, of his flabby, heavy desire for her, of being forced to mother his children, made her determined to endure.

In the cold dawn she paid for her lodgings with a gold coin, causing raised eyebrows, and she had to trust that she was given the correct coins in change. The women’s privy was an empty pigsty, open to the sky. It was all so strange. The broadsheets pasted on to the wall of the tavern told of Puritan victories against the King, for this was an area loyal to Parliament.

The carrier’s wife, having settled her own bill, took her out into the street where her husband had already strung the mules into their chain. They walked into the dawn again and Campion’s spirits soared to the sky for she had survived one whole day.

The carrier, Walter, was a taciturn man, as stubborn as the mules that made him a living. He walked slowly at the head of his string, his eyes on his Bible that his wife proudly told Campion he had recently learned to read. ‘Not all the words, mind you, but most of them. He reads me nice stories from the scriptures.’

It clouded over that day, great clouds that piled from the south, and in the afternoon it rained. That evening, in a tavern on the edge of the New Forest, Campion dried herself in front of a fire. She drank small beer and stayed close to Walter’s wife, Miriam, who protected her from the men who tried to flirt with the beautiful, shy girl beside the hearth. Miriam tutted. ‘Your mother should have married you off.’

‘I think she wanted me at home.’ She instantly feared that Miriam would ask why, in that case, her mother had sent her to London, but the carrier’s wife was thinking of other things.

‘It’s not a blessing, dear.’

‘What?’

‘To be fair, like you. You can see the disturbance in the men. Still, the Lord didn’t make you proud, and that’s a blessing. But if I were you, dear, I’d marry and marry soon. How old be you?’

‘Eighteen,’ Campion lied.

‘Late, late. Now I was wed to Walter at fifteen, and a better man God could not have shaped in His clay, b’aint that be, Walter?’

Walter, puzzling his way through Deuteronomy, looked up and grunted shyly. He went back to his scriptures and his pot of ale.

Campion looked at Miriam. ‘Don’t you have children?’

‘Lord bless you, child, but the children be growed. Them that God let grow. Our Tom now, he be married, and the girls are in service. That’s why I travel with Walter, to keep him company and out of trouble!’ She laughed at her own joke and Campion was surprised to see a warm smile soften Walter’s stern face. The joke was evidently an old one between them, a comforting one, and Campion knew she was with good, kind people and wished that she did not need to deceive them.

They crossed the New Forest the next day, travelling in company with two dozen other people, and Walter pulled out a great pistol that he stuck in his belt and laid a sword across the leading mule’s packs. They were not troubled in the forest though, except by more rain that soaked the path and dripped from the trees long after the showers had stopped. By afternoon the sun shone again and they were coming close to Southampton where Campion must leave Miriam’s company.

Each stage of her journey loomed ahead to worry her. She had reached Southampton safely, and she was further from home now than she had ever dreamed of going, but there was still the largest obstacle to be cleared; the journey to London itself. Miriam asked if she had much money and Campion said yes, about five pounds, and Miriam told her to take the stage wagon. ‘It’s the safest way, child. Is your uncle expecting you?’

‘I think so.’

‘Well, you take the wagon. Who knows, maybe he’ll pay for you?’ She laughed, then took Campion to the huge inn where the wagons left, and kissed her farewell. ‘You’re a good girl, I can tell. The Lord protect you, child. We’ll pray for you.’

And perhaps the prayers worked, for at Southampton Campion met Mrs Swan, and although Mildred Swan was not the likeliest person to be God’s instrument, she was undoubtedly effective. Within minutes of seeing Campion, lost and frightened, she had taken the girl under her wing. They shared a bed and Campion listened to the interminable story of Mildred Swan’s life.

She had been visiting her sister who was married to a clergyman in Southampton and was now returning to her own home in London. The story, interrupted by sleep, was picked up the next morning as they waited in the cobbled yard. ‘I’m a widow, dear, so I knows about sorrows and troubles.’ She had a huge, untidy bundle on the ground, next to a basket filled with pies and fruit. As she turned to check on their safety she saw an ostler loitering near her belongings. ‘Get your thieving eyes off them! I’m a Christian woman travelling defenceless! Don’t you think you can thieve from me!’ The ostler, astonished, made a hasty retreat. Mrs Swan, who liked to arrange the world about her, smiled happily at Campion. ‘You must tell me about your mother, dear.’

Mildred Swan was a plump, middle-aged woman, wearing a dress of faded blue, with a gaudy, flowered scarf about her shoulders and a bright red bonnet crammed on unruly, fair hair. She did not wait for Campion to answer, instead she wanted to know whether Campion planned to travel on top or inside the coach. Campion said she did not know.

‘You’d better travel with me, dear. Inside. Then we can protect each other against the men.’ The last words were spoken loudly enough for a tall, gloomy-looking minister to hear. Mrs Swan watched him to make sure the words had registered, then looked back to Campion. ‘So?’

Campion had changed her story a little. She had kept a sick, failing mother, but now she claimed to be travelling to London to see a lawyer about an inheritance. It was close enough to the truth, for Campion had conceived the idea that Grenville Cony must be the lawyer who had arranged the Covenant.

By the time Campion had explained about the inheritance they were inside the wagon, perched on a cushioned bench, and Mrs Swan had jostled the other passengers unmercifully to make herself ample space. The minister, a Bible now in his hands, sat opposite Campion by the window.

Mrs Swan was fascinated by Campion’s sick mother. ‘She’s got thin blood, has she, dear?’

‘Yes.’

‘Buttercups, dear, buttercups. Buttercups work for thin blood, dear. My mother had thin blood. She died, of course, but it wasn’t just the thin blood. Oh no.’ She said the last words darkly as though they enshrined a terrible secret. ‘What else does she have, dear?’