A Crowning Mercy

‘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 nothing. Ebenezer, his thin face darkened by the shadow of beard and moustache, a darkness that was there even immediately after he had shaved, asked Brother Scammell his business.

‘I make boats. Not I personally, you understand, but the men I employ.’

‘Sea-going ships?’ Ebenezer asked, with his usual demand for exactness.

‘No, no, indeed, no.’ Scammell laughed as though a joke had been made. He smiled at Campion. His lips were flecked with the pastry of Goodwife’s chicken pie. More pastry clung to his thick black broadcloth coat, while a spot of gravy was smeared on his white collar with its two tassels. ‘Watermen’s boats.’

Campion said nothing. Ebenezer frowned at her, then leaned forward. ‘Watermen’s boats?’

Scammell put a hand to his stomach, opened his small eyes wide, and tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a small belch. ‘Indeed and indeed. In London, you see, the Thames is our main street.’ He was addressing Campion again. ‘The watermen carry cargoes and passengers and we build most of their craft. We also serve the big houses.’ He smiled at Matthew Slythe. ‘We built a barge for my Lord of Essex.’

Matthew Slythe grunted. He did not seem over-impressed that Samuel Scammell did business with the general of Parliament’s armies.

There was a silence, except for the scraping of Scammell’s knife on his plate. Campion pushed the stringy chicken to one side, trying to hide it under the dry pie crust. She knew she was being rude and she sought desperately for something to say to their guest. ‘Do you have a boat yourself, Mr Scammell?’

‘Indeed and indeed!’ He seemed to find that funny, too, for he laughed. Some of the pastry scraps fell down his ample stomach. ‘Yet I fear I am a bad sailor, Miss Slythe, indeed and indeed, yes. If I must travel upon the water then I pray as our Dear Lord did for the waves to be stilled.’ This was evidently a joke also, for the hairs in his capacious nostrils quivered with snuffled laughter.

Campion smiled dutifully. Her brother’s feet scraped on the boards of the floor.

Her father looked from Campion to Scammell and there was a small, secret smile on his heavy face. Campion knew that smile and in her mind it was associated with cruelty. Her father was a cruel man, though he believed cruelty to be kindness for he believed a child must be forced into God’s grace.

Matthew Slythe, embarrassed by the new silence, turned to his guest. ‘I hear the city is much blessed by God, brother.’

‘Indeed and indeed.’ Scammell nodded dutifully. ‘The Lord is working great things in London, Miss Slythe.’ Again he turned to her and she listened with pretended interest as he told her what had happened in London since the King had left and the rebellious Parliament had taken over the city’s government. The Sabbath, he said, was being properly observed, the playhouses had been closed down, as had the bear gardens and pleasure gardens. A mighty harvest of souls, Scammell declared, was being reaped for the Lord.

‘Amen and amen,’ said Matthew Slythe.

‘Praise His name,’ said Ebenezer.

‘And wickedness is being uprooted!’ Scammell raised his eyebrows to emphasise his words. He told of two Roman Catholic priests discovered, men who had stolen into London from the Continent to minister to the tiny, secret community of Catholics. They had been tortured, then hanged. ‘A good crowd of Saints watched!’

‘Amen!’ said Matthew Slythe.

‘Indeed and indeed.’ Samuel Scammell nodded his head ponderously. ‘And I too was an instrument in uprooting wickedness.’

He waited for some interest. Ebenezer asked the required question and Scammell again addressed the answer to Campion. ‘It was the wife of one of my own workmen. A slatternly woman, a washer of clothes, and I had cause to visit the house and what do you think I found?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘A portrait of William Laud!’ Scammell said it dramatically. Ebenezer tutted. William Laud was the imprisoned Archbishop of Canterbury, hated by the Puritans for the beauty with which he decorated churches and his devotion to the high ritual which they said aped Rome. Scammell said the portrait had been lit by two candles. He had asked her if she knew who the picture represented, and she did, and what is more had declared Laud to be a good man!

‘What did you do, brother?’ Ebenezer asked.

‘Her tongue was bored with a red hot iron and she was put in the stocks for a day.’

‘Praise the Lord,’ Ebenezer said.

Goodwife entered and put a great dish on the table. ‘Apple pie, master!’

‘Ah! Apple pie.’ Matthew Slythe smiled at Goodwife.