As Meat Loves Salt

We tortured him into the saddle. I walked on one side of him and Caro, trembling, rode on the other horse, at every minute afraid that her animal might bolt. Strung out like this we had great trouble in passing along the narrower paths, and our progress was slow indeed. I was close to tears, having not the slightest idea where we were headed or how we would do now that Zeb was hurt. We walked seemingly for hours, and many were the groans Caro and I heard before we at last stopped near a stream: Zeb had twice been sick, and had once fainted onto my shoulders. I stood ready to catch him as he dismounted. He gasped – ‘Ah!’ – but was able to walk almost to the water, sinking down just before he reached it. Caro knelt by his side, stroking his cheek and pushing his hair out of his eyes.

‘Don’t put me back on the horse,’ Zeb begged.

‘No, no,’ she murmured.

I said, ‘Tomorrow we will get you a surgeon.’

‘I’m thirsty.’

Caro cupped her hands in the stream and I supported him so that he could drink. Most of the water dropped onto his chest and he shivered. The wood was beginning to grow dark.

I took Caro by the sleeve and led her away. ‘Sit down,’ I urged in a whisper. ‘What think you? Is there more than a rib broken?’

‘What do I know!’ Her voice came cold and dispirited. ‘Why should there be?’

‘He faints. I didn’t faint when mine was broken,’ I reminded her.

‘O, you…!’ She got up and went back to Zeb, soothing him with soft pitying noises as one might a child.

He lay staring at the branches above. I heard him say, ‘Sister, I’ll die.’

‘Pain talking,’ I said, going over to him. ‘You’ll not die. Now act the man.’

‘I’m starting a fever.’ Zeb reached for Caro’s hand and pressed it to his forehead.

‘He’s very hot.’ Caro looked at me helplessly.

‘Broken bones do get hot.’

‘Feel, here,’ Zeb pleaded with Caro. He indicated his chest.

‘Let me.’ I fingered his shirt front. It was soaked with sweat.

‘I can cool him,’ said Caro, loosening the collar. ‘Put my handkerchief in the stream.’

‘No,’ I said, laying my hand on hers as she began easing the shirt up over his chest. ‘Best he sweat it out.’

‘I’m burning,’ moaned Zeb.

‘He shouldn’t be half naked like that. Cover him up.’ I straightened Zeb’s shirt and pulled his coat close over his breast. The wind, growing stronger, stirred the tops of the trees so that they hissed like a poker in ale. ‘Come away and rest,’ I told Caro.

We lay down together a few yards from Zeb, barely able to see one another. I took my coat from her and arranged it over both of us. It was not much of a blanket, for cold air crept in on every side. Faintly from under the stench of horse and vomit came the scent of her pomaded hair.

‘How will you get him a surgeon?’ whispered Caro.

I pulled her on top of me. ‘We have gold.’

‘But—’ She checked herself. I felt her shake as she went on, ‘We could go home with him. Take back the jewels, say you feared a false accusation – you were in drink. What is whipping, what is gaol, even, when Zeb may die?’

‘I can never go back, and nor can you. It means hanging.’

‘What, for a few pamphlets?’ She twined her arms round me. ‘Let me go to the Mistress. Let me beg mercy. Peter burnt all the papers – it is their word against ours—’

‘Take it from me, wife, we are tarred with the same stick.’

‘I can face it out!’

There was no light left in the wood. I knew what I had to do, and it was like sliding down ice in pitch darkness. I had stood on the brink of this slide for so long now I was come to desire it, was dangling the first foot over the edge. Better push off boldly, I thought, than crouch there forever.

‘Caro,’ I breathed into her neck. ‘It isn’t what you think.’

One foot on the ice.

‘Patience fled for fear of me. She’s out for blood, and Cornish too.’

Both feet.

Caro lifted her head. ‘You? You and Patience?’ Her voice was thick, stupid with baffled suspicion. ‘The child! You – you—’

‘No!’ I shouted, so hard that I hurt my throat. ‘Don’t you see it? Caro!’

‘Jacob, don’t—’

‘Caro, it was I killed Christopher Walshe.’

I had pushed off. The polished blackness of the slide dropped away to a place I could not see; I was falling out of life. Caro’s breath heaved and choked. Her body lay against mine rigid as a plank.

‘I heard noises and went down in the night. Cornish and Patience were in the garden by the maze, only I did not know who they were, then. I was listening. The boy jumped me.’

‘Why would he!’

‘I had not time to ask him,’ I retorted.

Caro’s breathing slowed a little. After a while she asked, ‘And Patience? Doing what?’

‘I told you, I did not see.’

‘You did not see,’ she repeated as if she had been there. ‘But you saw it was Patience.’

‘I saw a woman, and next day Patience was gone.’

‘Not true,’ Caro kept saying. ‘No.’

But it was true, and not the worst of the truth neither.

When first the boy leapt out to bar my way he took me unawares. I thought him a man, but then the moon coming out showed me the little fool standing about a yard off, waving his dagger. Though furious at his insolence, I laughed aloud. He was so easy; I had the knife off him and his arm twisted up his back before he could make one good pass with the blade.

‘Be quiet,’ I said, ‘and come along with me, or I’ll slit your throat.’ He came along like a lamb, and I marched him away from his friends, over to the large trees near the pond.