As Meat Loves Salt. Maria McCann

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СКАЧАТЬ time I’ll tell you how that was. Our Izzy taught Caro her letters when she was a child.’

      It came back to me with sweetness and pain, my brother bending over her, pointing out a line in the hornbook. He had been her champion and favourite all through childhood; his reward had been self-denial and sacrifice, which I had at last trampled under my feet. He would never call his precious one ‘sister’, kiss her innocently at Christmas or see her happy with his brother’s babe in her arms. Somewhere, if not dead – no, that was not possible, God would not be so cruel – they must each be wondering what was become of me.

      Ferris was speaking.

      ‘I am sorry?’ I said.

      ‘In London. I wrote just such pamphlets, printed them too.’

      ‘What, those same ones!’ I wrenched my thoughts away from Izzy and Caro.

      ‘No. But very like. I kept company with men of ideas, not useless projects but all that might bring Adam out of bondage. Our chief design was that the commons, that fought the war and bore the free quarter, might not be ridden over by little kings at home, for then where was the use of having fought at all?’

      I thought of Sir Bastard and nodded.

      ‘Now is the time,’ he went on, ‘when we might do just such a thing. These poor people that starve at the door of Dives, that cannot take a turf of the common ground and dig on it while all the game and suchlike is shut up in Milord’s park – now is their day. The country is up in arms, and the work will be brought about!’ He clapped me on the shoulder, laughing, and I remarked that thus animated, the fire shining full in his face, he was comely. I smiled back and we regarded one another an instant.

      ‘Are you married, Rupert?’ he asked.

      ‘I am,’ I answered, surprised into truth.

      ‘I had a wife, Joanna. She helped me with the pamphlets.’

      ‘You’re a widower?’

      ‘God rest her soul. She couldn’t write, but she helped bind the pages. I was teaching her to read, from the Bible. I sometimes wish she were here, but what a place for a woman.’

      ‘Perhaps she is with you in spirit.’

      ‘Sometimes – as just now – I feel suddenly persuaded all will be well. That may be Joanna acting upon me. We were merry together; we liked each other well.’

      ‘How long were you married?’

      ‘Not long. She was but sixteen when she died. She would have been brought to bed about now.’ His voice thickened. ‘One day she was sick and fell to bleeding, the next the child was born dead. She never got out of bed after that, grew weaker every day. The curse upon Eve, the doctor said, agony of childbed. They see so many dead that way.’

      I wondered whether Caro had fled the wood with my child within her. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘a man must have issue.’

      ‘The child was not mine.’

      I put my fingers into my mouth for shock and wondered if I had understood aright. He was breathing fast. I looked about to be sure no one else could hear him. The rest of the men were roaring at some jest.

      ‘It was not mine,’ he repeated. ‘I knew of it, she was in her fourth month when we were contracted.’

      ‘She had been widowed?’

      ‘Forced.’

      I could scarce believe what I heard. ‘Why didn’t they marry her to the man that did it?’

      ‘He was already married.’

      ‘Why didn’t her father act against him?’

      Ferris laughed savagely. ‘Why indeed? My manservant – he was courting their maid – dropped a few hints in my ears. The mother was long past beauty and troubled by a sickness of the womb. The father was a man of strong lusts – once word got out, ‘twas no matter for her dowry. None would bite.’

      ‘None but you?’ Was it possible that he had been so pressed for money as that?

      Ferris answered, ‘I should have said, no worthy man would bite: there was one who offered, one who despised her. In the end I took her without the dowry.’

      ‘Why, when the other would certainly have had it?’

      ‘Her father disliked my butting in, and would else have concluded the thing. So I made love to his purse; it was either that, or deliver up Joanna to the other man.’

      ‘Was there liking between her and you?’

      ‘O yes.’ His voice was grown soft. ‘I had already thought of asking for her, before all this came about.’

      ‘But you could not be expected to give a name—’

      Ferris ignored me. ‘They had her locked up. Every day I saw her staring at me from the window opposite. Once she looked at me with such misery that I opened the casement to talk to her, but she ran into the back of the room.’

      ‘Afraid of you.’

      He nodded. ‘That cut my heart. I began to consider, whether husband rightly meant owner, or protector and friend. I had a thousand uses for the dowry, and refusing it meant the old man profited by his wickedness. But it was the only way.’

      ‘You must have brought contempt on yourself as a wittol,’ I whispered.

      ‘A wittol’s wife is his property, only a property he rents out,’ he hissed back. ‘This eternal curse of property! We own our brethren – our wives too are chattels—’

      ‘You would practise community of wives?’ I asked, shocked to think Ferris might be the author of that very pamphlet over which I had quarrelled with Walshe.

      ‘You miss my meaning entirely! This selling the girl off was – was a second rape, and no remedy for the first. Why are good people so slow to see this? Many of my friends, calling themselves Christians, urged me to stand aside and do nothing.’ He was agitated. I patted his arm and he went on, ‘It would have come right. On our wedding night she put her arms round my neck and wept. I wept also, and told her that I would never reproach her with the child. I loved her, and what the godless and the heartless said was nothing to me.’

      He had turned his face aside; I heard him snuffling and struggling for breath.

      ‘And then,’ he forced out, ‘she died, and her father was safe. He never came to see her on her deathbed, or me afterwards. I buried her and the baby – it was a girl – sold up, left the money with my aunt, and joined the army.’

      On his cheek were tears, which I wanted to dry but dared not touch. I held his hand, feeble and hopeless. I was quite unable to speak. How might a man like me comfort one like him? He had said simply that he showed mercy where he could, but excepting mere brute strength, he was beyond me in every way.

      We sat together in silence as the fire burnt down and I thanked God inwardly for showing me what a Christian might be who, like the apostle Paul, considered Charity СКАЧАТЬ