As Meat Loves Salt

I took the next hanging and spread it over the line next to Zeb’s. ‘They suspect one of us, then.’

He shot me an impatient look. ‘Would they tell me if they did?’

‘You said “Not of killing” him. But that’s the way they’re thinking. They’ll fasten on somebody, if not you, then—’

‘Listen, both of you.’ Zeb hit his tapestry again, sending a cloud of motes into the air. ‘Biggin had one of his tenants waiting in the corridor outside. When he brought him in, he called the man Tom Cornish.’

I cried, ‘Not the intelligencer?’

‘The same.’

Izzy and I spoke together: ‘What manner of man is he?’ and ‘What is he like?’

‘Grey-haired, with purplish cheeks. But if he were young, I’d say he was amazingly like Christopher Walshe.’

I stiffened and felt Izzy do the same.

‘Cornish began crying right in front of me.’ Zeb waited for this to

‘The lad is – was – a nephew of his?’ faltered Izzy.

‘Closer.’

I gasped.

Izzy’s hand flew to his mouth. He stammered, ‘But – but why was he called Walshe?’

‘A bastard, I guess, brought up under the mother’s name until Cornish put him out to service.’

‘God have mercy on us,’ Izzy whispered.

Zeb went on, ‘He worked for Biggin but it seems to me that Cornish had uses for him too. The servants whipped for their reading, remember? Spiders and spies, do draw in the flies.’

Now I saw it, the wretched little Judas bringing us the bait with which his father would scoop us into the net. There he had sat, with Zeb’s arm round him, sharing the pipe of tobacco which Zeb and Peter could ill afford. I brought down the carpet-beater with such force that the tapestry leapt like a fish on the line, and I kept on cutting into it, dust settling on my face, which was already beaded with fresh sweat.

‘So we are all suspected for that part,’ I said. ‘Nay, Cornish knows.’

‘And thinks one of us put a stop to the game,’ said Izzy, his cheeks pale. I felt a pang at having exposed such a gentle, upright soul to suspicion. He was innocence itself, but what was that to a spy?

‘We must burn every pamphlet in the house,’ I declared. ‘And look behind the stables, in case we left anything there.’

‘But what was he doing here at night?’ mused Zeb. ‘I cannot come at it.’

‘I am going behind the stables this minute,’ said Izzy. ‘And after to Caro and Peter, to bid them burn anything in the chambers. Have you papers or pamphlets, either of you?’

‘Under the bed,’ I answered. ‘An Answer to the Great Tyrant. Bid Peter look near the bedhead, along the wall.’

Izzy ran off. Zeb and I continued flogging the hangings. I looked down at his lady and her unicorn. She was as tawdry a female as I have seen; only a beast disordered in its wits would yield to her its magic power. My tapestry showed the same woman strolling in a knot garden, one unlikely-looking flower held to her nose. A young man watched her from a tree. I had always thought him a lover, but now I saw he could as easily be a spy set on by her husband. I brought the beater down upon his stupid face until my arm ached.

‘There is worse,’ Zeb said.

This was a novelty. As a rule he avoided reposing any confidences in me, preferring to talk to Izzy. Observing him, I thought he looked sickly. Perhaps the thing could not wait, but had to come out, like the secret of King Midas’s ears.

There was a woman waiting in the corridor where Cornish was.’ Zeb’s voice shook. ‘I saw her through the open door as he came in. She was very like Patience.’

I concealed my shock. ‘Why would she go there?’ Zeb shrugged. ‘I never denied the child was mine, how could I? She had a promise of marriage, and she loved me, why, she could scarce—’ He recollected himself. ‘That is, I thought she loved me. Suppose she was there to give evidence against us? I am afraid she was.’ He rubbed at his brow with the back of his hand.

‘What evidence? Peter and Caro have burnt the papers by now. But this woman’s not Patience. You will see.’

‘I am afraid,’ he said again. ‘Nothing is as I thought.’

‘So it seems.’ The news struck me like a chill wind. Was it possible that my beguiling brother had been beguiled? Yet it seemed more likely he was mistaken; what woman would desert Zebedee for a greybeard with purple cheeks? As for myself, I had killed not a simpleton but a practised, treacherous wolf cub. We were well rid of him. I turned to Izzy’s hanging and drove the dust from it in clouds.

Cornish did not show himself, with or without Patience, the following day. Nor did Mister Biggin. A farmworker we had never seen before drove the cart, bearing a plain deal coffin, round to the laundry door. Caro had washed the boy’s shirt and done what she could with his other garments. Izzy folded them neatly next to the deal box and I lowered the lad in my arms until he was lying snug within it.

‘It’s him for sure?’ asked the cart driver.

For answer, I drew back the linen shielding the corpse’s face. The boy’s freckles showed greenish against the dull white skin.

The man took off his hat. ‘That’s him. God ha’ mercy.’

I pulled the shroud across again, seeing in my mind the wound with its clean folds lying one against the other. The man led the horse about, mounted to the front of the cart and cracked his whip. Our false friend jogged away over the cobbles, lapped in borrowed linen and in a silence all his own.

THREE Battles (#ulink_5f301e32-d09d-5ff2-9475-40fc6e5aa67e)

We never went to the funeral, for which I was glad. But our talk was of little else, and while we tormented ourselves about Walshe, Cornish and Patience, the date of my espousal to Caro was almost upon us. Lying in bed, I gave myself up to voluptuous imaginings of my wedding night, almost too sweet to bear; but when I slept there came nightmares in which I was seized by Cornish or the officers. Sometimes Christopher Walshe walked before them, pointing me out. Starting out of sleep, I would dry my face on the bolster and consider whether I dared make away with myself, rather than be arrested. Once, when my groaning had woken both myself and Izzy, my brother whispered to me, ‘Do you truly wish to be wed? Better cry off now than repent it after,’ and I answered that the dreams had nought to do with my wedding, it was the boy, sunk deep into my mind. He put his hand on my brow, to cool it, and said he also dreamt of Walshe. Izzy was the only man there that ever touched me softly, as if I were capable of being hurt.

By day, these fears seemed foolishness. None had witnessed the boy’s death, and none was come for me though he was laid in the ground.

Less than a week after the pond-dragging, I looked out of a window to see our mother crossing the courtyard. I at once ran down to her, my head filled with sudden panic, fancying that the men were in her cottage, throwing the pots about in the scullery, ripping up every bed in the house and carrying away my father’s Bible.

When we embraced her cheek lay against the buttons of my coat, and I remembered how as a child I had looked upwards into her face. The tables had been turned for many years now.

‘I hope there is nothing wrong at home,’ I said, pushing open the stiff oak door to the hall. I would never have called the cottage home except to Mother. ‘Or are you come to see Caro?’

Mother ignored Caro’s name. When the two first met, I had seen by numerous signs, which none but sons could read, that she disapproved of my choice. Having nothing however to dispense or withhold, she was forced to bow to it.

‘What should be wrong at home? I am come to thank the Mistress for a present she made me,’ she said. ‘So I might make a good show at your betrothal.’

I flushed. ‘Do we beg money now?’

‘No, son! It came without asking. O my boy – you’re grown so handsome—’ she pulled my head down and kissed all over my face—‘she’s a fortunate lass that gets you.’

Hoping that Caro would not choose this moment to come by, I held Mother off from my kiss-dampened cheeks. ‘The luck is on my side, to have such a one to wife. And such a mother,’ for her eyes told me that to praise Caro was, in my mother’s view, to dispraise herself. ‘Pray wait here a while. I’ll announce you to My Lady.’

‘You’ll take me to Zeb and Izzy after?’

I groaned inwardly. ‘Of course,’ and leaving Mother near the stairs I went up to My Lady’s chamber.