As Meat Loves Salt. Maria McCann

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СКАЧАТЬ protect those they loved – but that way lay great pain for me, and I got off it. We turned in for the night and after a while I heard Ferris’s breathing light and rapid. He was perhaps with his Joanna, for he laughed once or twice in his sleep and it was such a joyous laugh as I had never heard from Ferris the soldier. Sleepless, I watched the fire. When the ardour of my prayer had cooled, I found in my breast a sneaking wish that I had stopped his talk. After such an outpouring I could never, never tell him what had passed between myself and my wife, and sooner or later he would ask.

      

      The next day things went on as usual for the other men. Nathan prattled of politics while I suffered an agony of terror as we drew nearer and nearer to our house.

      ‘Courage,’ said Ferris. ‘None would recognise you.’

      ‘I have others to fear for. What if the news be bad?’

      At last the hills parted, as in some evil vision, to discover Beaurepair. A cold hand griped my innards as I looked down upon the buildings. They were most of them well back from the road in low sheltered land, and we were able to survey them first from the side and then from the front as we skirted the walls of the park. We crossed in front of the lodge. Behind the house I could see the gate (now closed) where I had ridden out behind Zeb and Caro, with the field and wood beyond. I wondered if the gate-keeper had lost his place. There was my old chamber window, and a man, perhaps Godfrey, slowly crossing the herb garden.

      Ferris looked on the house, and on me, and on the house again. ‘Did they use you well?’

      ‘Some of them,’ I answered. ‘The Mistress had her good side. But Sir John was a sot, and the son…’ I could not find words strong enough for the son.

      ‘I was never in a house like that,’ he went on, staring at it. ‘So big.’

      ‘Don’t the citizens have big houses in London?’

      ‘Here, Fat Tommy’s behind us.’

      We fell out and loitered. I rubbed my sore feet to colour our idleness and Ferris kept watch for the thin soldier. It was not long before he came up, bouncing a little on his skeleton’s legs.

      ‘Tommy, how would you like more rations?’ said Ferris. ‘Prince Rupert here wants tidings of his friends at that house.’

      I showed him the different windows and doors while Ferris kept off Nathan and the rest of the men straggled past. Tommy was quick to learn. Then we got back into the lines and together went through the story, that he was a beggar. I warned him to keep mum before Godfrey. He was to try for a talk with Isaiah Cullen, or Peter Taylor, and find out what was become of the runaway servants.

      ‘On no account say a man in the army sent you, unless you can talk with Isaiah alone,’ I urged. ‘Alone with him, you may give my likeness.’

      ‘Once we strike camp,’ he said, nodding. ‘If I can get off.’

      We agreed on a day’s ration, beer included, to be paid when he brought back the intelligence. Ferris and I would try to distract attention from his departure.

      ‘Your luck is in,’ said Ferris to me as I pushed forward to my former place.

      ‘What do you mean?’ I panted.

      ‘We won’t stop here, or in the next village either. There’s too much daylight left and they want to get to Winchester, then to Basing-House. Cromwell’s afraid the weather will break and mire his artillery in the mud.’

      ‘You didn’t tell me this before.’

      ‘Nathan told me while you were with Tommy.’

      ‘Oh.’ Nathan again, chattering to Ferris about the New Jerusalem.

      ‘Why do you frown, Rupert?’

      ‘You know, I should go back, and make restitution.’

      ‘I said, why do you frown?’

      

      Restitution. It had a glorious sound. I could offer myself for punishment; it was most likely only a choice of deaths, for my head might be shot off in the field. Though powerless in the matter of Caro and Zeb, I could clear Isaiah’s name. But even as I warmed myself at this vision, something gnawed at me. I pictured myself back at the house and my resolution wavered: I could be brave enough now to deliver myself up, but once there, I knew my heart would fail me. At last I saw that it came to this, that Ferris would march on with Nathan, Russ and his other friends while I faced justice alone. At this thought my courage shrivelled like a withered gourd.

      We put up for the night in one of those scoured villages. The men were ill content after passing more comfortable billets, and there was much grumbling as they pulled down bales of straw and spread themselves to rest. Tommy was bedded in the barn with us, which was surely the hand of God in my affairs. I asked the officer, who came round to see how we did, if this Basing-House was what they said, the lid on top of a secret hoard of treasure stolen by Papist priests.

      ‘It’s a nest of Papists entirely,’ he said. ‘John Paulet, that’s the Marquess, is a declared recusant and he has sworn to hold Basing-House for the King. To death, if need be.’

      ‘And the treasure? Is it really so much?’

      ‘Who can say? They have golden idols in their churches. We’ll find out, my lads.’

      The men returned his grim smile.

      ‘Why are we to besiege a house?’ asked Ferris. ‘When there are whole towns held by the Cavaliers?’

      I saw Tommy step out through the door and close it behind him.

      ‘It gives courage to the enemy. And, what some might consider worse, it blocks the wool trade, and there are solid citizens in London bothered thereby.’ The officer’s voice was steady. I looked at his creased face, the scars on his right temple, and wondered had he been at Naseby.

      ‘Their godless riches can be put into godly hands,’ he added in the same flat voice. This was a heart I could not read; I wondered if Ferris could.

      We lay down in broken straw. In the night there was a storm overhead. I listened to the usual snoring, then the cough and stir of every man around me under the hammer of the rain and sudden boom of thunder. Some groaned, perhaps for the wet roads and the labour of the coming day. Waiting for Tommy, wondering if he would get back in time, I had not slept at all. When the storm went off I dozed a while, and was woken by water running down my neck. I shifted, and a hand touched mine. My messenger was wintry cold and the rain dropped from his hair onto my shaven head so that I jumped.

      He whispered angrily, ‘That’s nothing man, it’s right through to my skin.’

      ‘I’m sorry for it, Tom. What news?’

      He lay down beside me. ‘Rub my hands, for the love of God. They’re ice.’ I did so, and blew on them. Such cold and bony flesh, it was hateful. He could hardly keep his teeth from knocking together. That was like Zeb, feverish.

      ‘Thin folks feel the cold the most,’ he said.

      ‘Keep your mind on the ration,’ I suggested, chafing warmth into his fingers. ‘There, СКАЧАТЬ