A Crowning Mercy. Bernard Cornwell

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      ‘Come here, Dorcas.’

      She crawled to his chair. She hated him at this moment. She submitted because she had no choice.

      The big hands closed on her tight-fitting bonnet. She hated the feel of them. The fingers pressed on her skull.

      ‘Oh God our Father! Almighty God!’ The fingers pressed tighter and tighter. His voice rose in powerful prayer, as Matthew Slythe hectored his God asking Him to forgive his daughter, to cleanse her, to make her whole, to take away her shame, and all the while the hands threatened to crush her skull. He pushed at her head, shaking it, seeking in a paroxysm of power to convince God that Dorcas needed His grace, and when the prayer was over he leaned back, exhausted, and told her to stand up.

      He had a strong face, big-boned and fierce, a face heavy with God’s anger. He looked at Campion with his usual distaste and his voice was deep. ‘You are a disappointment to me, daughter.’

      ‘Yes, father.’ She stood with head bowed, hating him. Neither he nor her mother had ever kissed her, ever hugged her. They had beaten her, prayed over her, but never seemed to love her.

      Matthew Slythe rested his hand on his Bible. He breathed heavily. ‘Woman brought sin into the world, Dorcas, and woman must ever bear that disgrace. A woman’s nakedness is her shame. It is disgusting to God.’

      ‘Yes, father.’

      ‘Look at me!’

      She raised her eyes. His face was twisted with dislike. ‘How could you do it?’

      She thought he would hit her again. She stood still.

      He opened the Bible, his fingers seeking the book of Proverbs. He read to her, his voice grating. ‘“For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread.”’ The page turned. ‘“Her house is the way to hell, Going down to the chambers of death.”’ He looked up at her.

      ‘Yes, father.’

      He seemed to growl. He had beaten her again and again, but he had never crushed her and he knew it. He could see the flicker of challenge in her soul and he knew that he would never destroy it. Yet he would never stop trying. ‘You will learn the seventh and eighth chapters of Proverbs by heart by this time tomorrow night.’

      ‘Yes, father.’ She already knew them.

      ‘And you will pray for forgiveness, for grace, for the Holy Spirit.’

      ‘Yes, father.’

      ‘Leave.’

      Ebenezer still sat in the hall. He looked at her and smiled. ‘Did it hurt?’

      She stopped and looked at him. ‘Yes.’

      He still smiled, one hand holding the pages of his Bible flat. ‘I told him.’

      She nodded. ‘I thought you might have done.’ She had always tried to love Ebenezer, to give him the love she had not been given, to protect a small, weak, crippled boy who was her brother. He had always rejected her.

      Now he sneered. ‘You disgust me, Dorcas. You’re not fit to be in this house.’

      ‘Goodnight, Eb.’ She climbed the stairs slowly, her back hurting and her mind filled with the bleakness and horror of Werlatton Hall.

      Matthew Slythe prayed when she was gone, prayed as he often prayed, with a furious, twisting intensity as if he thought God would not hear a quiet plea.

      Dorcas was a curse to him. She had brought him wealth beyond his dreams, but she was, as he had feared when the wealth was offered, a child of sin.

      She had never, in truth, been bad, but Matthew Slythe did not see that. Her sin was to be strong, to be happy, to show no signs of fear of the awful, vengeful God who was Matthew Slythe’s master. Dorcas had to be crushed. The child of sin must become a child of God and he knew he had failed. He knew that she called herself a Christian, that she prayed, that she believed in God, but Matthew Slythe feared the streak of independence in his daughter. He feared she could be worldly, that she could seek out the pleasures of this world that were damned, pleasures that could be hers if she found his secret.

      There was a jewel hidden, a seal of gold, which he had not looked at in sixteen years. If Dorcas found it, if she learned what it meant, then she might seek the help of the seal and uncover the Covenant. Matthew Slythe groaned. The money of the Covenant belonged to Dorcas but she must never know. It must be tied up by a will, by his wishes, and, above all, by a marriage settlement. His daughter, with her dangerous beauty, must never know she was rich. The money which had come from sin must belong to God, to Matthew Slythe’s God. He drew a sheet of paper towards him, his head throbbing with the echoes of prayer, and wrote a letter to London. He would settle his daughter once and for all. He would crush her.

      Upstairs, in the bedroom she had to share with one of the maids, Campion sat on the wide window-sill and stared into the night.

      Once Werlatton Hall had been beautiful, though she did not remember it thus. Its old, stone walls had been hugged by ivy and shaded by great elms and oaks, but when Matthew Slythe had purchased the estate he had stripped the ivy and cut down the great trees. He had surrounded the Hall with a vast lawn that took two men to scythe smooth in summer, and about the lawn he had planted a yew hedge. The hedge was tall now, enclosing the clean, ordered world of Werlatton and keeping at bay the strange, tangled outside world where laughter was not a sin.

      Campion stared at the darkness beyond the hedge.

      An owl, hunting the great ridge of beeches, sounded hollow across the valley. Bats flitted past the window, wheeling raggedly. A moth flew past Campion, attracted by the candle and causing Charity, the maid, to squeal in alarm, ‘Shut the window, Miss Dorcas.’

      Campion turned. Charity had pulled out the truckle bed from beneath Campion’s. The girl’s pale, frightened face looked up. ‘Did it hurt, miss?’

      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ