A Crowning Mercy. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ Matthew Slythe said.

      ‘Praise the Lord,’ Ebenezer said.

      ‘Indeed and indeed,’ Samuel Scammell said.

      Campion said nothing. A coldness was on her, a fear at the very centre of her.

      Her father looked at her and quoted from the same chapter of Proverbs. ‘“Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.”’

      ‘Amen,’ said Brother Scammell.

      ‘And amen,’ said Ebenezer.

      ‘Well?’ asked Matthew Slythe.

      Samuel Scammell licked his lips, smiled, and patted his stomach. ‘I am honoured by your offer, Brother Slythe, and have laid it prayerfully before the Lord. It is my fervent belief that I must accept.’

      ‘Amen.’

      Scammell looked at Campion. ‘We are to be united as husband and wife, Miss Slythe. A happy day, indeed and indeed.’

      ‘Amen,’ said Ebenezer.

      Scammell looked at Ebenezer. ‘We are to be brothers, Ebenezer, in family as in God.’

      ‘Praise Him.’

      She had known, she had known, but she had not dared accept the knowledge. Her fear burned, tears pricked at her, but she would not cry in front of them. Her father was smiling at her, not in love, but as an enemy might smile when he sees his foe humiliated. ‘Brother Hervey will read the banns beginning this Lord’s Day.’

      She nodded, incapable of fighting him. She was to be married in one month. She would be Dorcas for ever. Dorcas Slythe would become Dorcas Scammell, and she could never be Campion.

      ‘Amen and amen,’ said Samuel Scammell, ‘a happy day!’

3

      ‘You must be happy.’ Goodwife’s words before breakfast sounded to Campion like an order.

      ‘I’m so happy for you,’ Charity had said glumly, wishing herself to be married.

      ‘Praise be, Dorcas,’ Myrtle said and Myrtle was perhaps the only happy person in Werlatton Hall, for the dairy maid was half-witted.

      ‘You’re much blessed in your intended,’ said Ebenezer, his dark eyes unreadable.

      She knew she had no right to be unhappy. She had always known that she was a chattel, to be disposed of as her father wished. That was the way of fathers and daughters, and she could not expect anything different. Yet even in her darkest moods she would not have dreamed of Brother Samuel Scammell.

      After morning prayers, when she turned to the door to go to the dairy, her father checked her. ‘Daughter.’

      ‘Father.’

      ‘You are betrothed now.’

      ‘Yes, father.’

      He stood, big and powerful beside the lectern, Scammell a few paces behind. Light from a stair window slanted on to Matthew Slythe’s dark and ponderous face. ‘You will no longer work in the dairy. You must prepare yourself for marriage.’

      ‘Yes, father.’

      ‘You will acquaint yourself with the household accounts.’ He frowned. ‘You have the freedom now to walk to the village in Brother Scammell’s company.’

      She kept her head low. ‘Yes, father.’

      ‘You will walk there this morning with him. I have a letter you must give to Brother Hervey.’

      They walked between hedgerows heavy with cow parsley and ragwort, away from Werlatton Hall and down the slope to where lady’s smock and meadowsweet grew. Beyond the stream, where a bank climbed towards the beech trees, Campion could see the blaze of pink-red where the campions grew. The sight almost made her cry. She was now to be Dorcas for ever, the mother of Samuel Scammell’s children. She wondered if she could ever love children who had his fleshy lips, his lumpen face, his gaping nostrils.

      Stepping stones crossed the stream beside the ford and Scammell held a hand towards her. ‘May I help you?’

      ‘I can manage, Mr Scammell.’

      ‘Samuel, my dear. You should call me Samuel.’

      The water ran fast over the gravel between the stepping stones, flowing north, and she glanced upstream and saw the dark, quick shape of a fish. This was the stream in which she swam. She almost wished that she had drowned yesterday, that her body had floated above the long weeds, a white and naked corpse drifting towards Lazen Castle.

      The road turned south to negotiate the end of the high ridge. It was another hot day with white clouds far to the west and Campion’s long skirts stirred dust from the track.

      Scammell walked heavily, leaning forward into each step. ‘I want you to know, my dear, that you have made me a very happy man.’

      ‘So you said at prayers, Mr Scammell.’

      ‘A very happy man. It is my intention that we shall be happy.’

      She said nothing in reply. The wheatfield on her left was thick with poppies and she stared at them, blind to what she saw. She had always known this would happen, that her father would marry her to whomsoever he pleased, and she was surprised that he had waited so long. He had said that he would wait until she showed signs of Christ’s redemptive grace working in her, but she did not think that was the only reason. Ebenezer was Matthew Slythe’s heir, but Ebenezer’s survival had never been certain. He had always been weak, sickly and crippled, and Campion had always known that the man her father would choose as her husband might well become the heir to Werlatton. She supposed that Matthew Slythe had taken his time in searching out the right godly merchant.

      Scammell cleared his throat. ‘It is a beautiful day, my dear. Indeed and indeed.’

      ‘Yes.’

      She had always known this would happen, that marriage and childbirth were the events to follow her childhood, so why, she wondered, was she so saddened and horrified by the prospect? It was not as if any alternative had ever been offered to her, except in her own flimsy dreams, so why this sudden desolation at a fate she had been expecting for so long? She glanced at Scammell, provoking a nervous smile, and she could not believe that she was to marry him. She thrust the thought away. Her sense of difference was the basis of her daydreams and it was a sense that had betrayed her. She was neither special nor different, just a daughter to be disposed of in marriage.

      Where the road turned north at the tip of the ridge there was a shadowed space beneath the great beeches, a place of old leaves, for beech leaves are slow to decay, crossed by a fallen trunk. Scammell turned into the shade. ‘May we pause, my dear?’

      She stopped at the edge of the road.

      Scammell wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, then brushed at the smooth, barkless wood of the fallen trunk СКАЧАТЬ