Bit by bit they were working themselves up, taking a little step further each time, edging towards the point when words ceased and assault began. She saw me, and our eyes met, but there was no entreaty in her; rather she bore it all herself, almost not seeming to notice the foul words hurled at her. Almost as though she wasn’t listening and did not care. She might not want help, but I knew she needed it, and knew no one but myself would lift a finger for her. I worked my way through the crowd, put my arm around her and pulled her out and back towards the main street, so quickly the mob hardly had time to react.
Fortunately it was not far; they did not like the theft of their entertainment and my status as scholar and historian would have served me little had the spot been any more isolated. But there were people drunk, but still civilised, only a few yards away, and I managed to get us close enough to safety before the insults erupted into actual violence. Then I pulled her through the cheerful, good-humoured celebrations until, seeing their prey lost, the mob dissolved and went in search of other sport. I was breathing hard, and the fright and the drink made me slow to recover my wits. I’m afraid that physical danger is not something to which I am used; I emerged more shaken than Sarah.
She did not thank me, but just looked at me, with what seemed like resignation, or perhaps sadness. Then she shrugged and walked away. I followed; she walked faster, and so did I. I thought she was walking home, but at the end of Butcher’s Row she turned and cut across the fields behind the Castle, walking ever faster with myself now maddened by my beating heart, swirling head and confusion.
It was in the place called Paradise Fields, once the most beautiful of orchards and now fallen into a sad and infertile neglect, where she stopped and turned round. As I came up to her, she was laughing but with tears coming down her cheeks. I reached out for her, and she clutched hold of me as though hanging on to the only thing left in the entire world.
And, like Adam, in Paradise I sinned.
Why me? I don’t know. I had nothing to offer her, not money nor marriage, and she knew that. Perhaps I was gentler than others; perhaps I comforted her; perhaps she needed some warmth. I do not deceive myself that it was much more, but nor do I lower myself now to think that it was any less: perhaps no virgin, she was no harlot either. Prestcott lied cruelly there; she was virtue itself and he was no gentleman to say otherwise. Afterwards, when her tears had stopped, she got up, straightened her clothes and walked slowly off. This time I did not follow. The following day, she cleaned my mother’s kitchen as though nothing had happened.
And I? Was that the Lord’s answer to my entreaties? Was I sated and satisfied, the demons exorcised from my soul? No; my fever was stoked up even further, so that I could hardly bear to see her for fear that my trembling and pallor would give me away. I kept to my room, and alternated between sinful thoughts and atonement through prayer. By the time she came up to my room a few days later I must have looked like a ghost, and I heard the familiar steps coming up the stairs with a mixture of terror and joy such as I have never experienced before or since. And so, of course, I was rude to her, and she played the servant with me, each settling into our roles like actors in a play, but all the time willing the other to say something.
Or at least I did; I do not know about her. I told her to tidy up better; she obeyed. I instructed her to lay a fire; she dutifully and without a word did as she was told. I told her to go away and leave me in peace; she picked up her bucket of water, and opened the door.
‘Come back here,’ I said and she did that too. But I had nothing else to say to her. Or, rather, I had so much. So I went to embrace her, and she allowed me; standing upright and still, enduring a punishment.
‘Please, sit down,’ I said, letting her go, and again she obeyed me.
‘You ask me to stay, and to sit down,’ she began when I said nothing. ‘Do you have something to say to me?’
‘I love you,’ I said in a rush. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You do not. How can you?’
‘But two days ago . . . Was that not something? Are you so coarse that it meant nothing to you?’
‘Something, yes. But what would you have me do? Wilt in the despair of love? Become your woman twice a week, instead of cleaning? And you? Are you going to offer me your hand? Of course not. So what is there to be done or said?’
It was her practicality which maddened me; I wanted her to suffer as much as I, to rail against the unkindness of fate that so separated us, yet her robust common sense did not allow that.
‘So what are you? You have had so many men that one more has no effect on you?’
‘Many? Perhaps so, if that is what you want to think. But not as you mean; only ever for affection’s sake, when I was given the choice.’
I hated her for that frankness; had I taken her virtue, and had she been weeping with remorse at her fall in value I would have understood and comforted her; I knew the words for that because I had read them somewhere. But to regard her loss as of so little moment, and to discover that it had not been given to me but to someone else was more than I could endure. Later, although I could never condone something so obviously in contradiction to God’s word, I accepted it, as much as possible, for she was her own law. However much she might obey my orders, she would never be obedient.
‘Anthony,’ she said gently, seeing my distress, ‘you are a good man, I think, and you try to be Christian. But I know what you have been doing. You see me as a fitting recipient of your charity. You want me to be good, and virtuous, at the same time that you want to roll with me in Paradise Fields before you go off and marry a woman with as much of an estate as you can find. Then you will convert me into a harlot who tempted you to sin while you were in drink, if that makes your prayers easier and gives your soul comfort.’
‘You think that of me?’
‘I do. You manage easily enough when you are talking to me about your work. Then your eyes light up and you forget what I am, in your pleasure at talking. Then you treat me honestly, without foolishness or awkwardness. Only one person has ever done this before.’
‘And he was?’
‘My father. And I have just learned that he is dead.’
I felt a wave of compassion for her as I heard her words, and saw the sadness in her eyes; it was something I understood well, as I had lost my own father when I was scarcely ten, and I knew well how painful it is to be brushed by such grief. I felt even more sad when she told me the details, for she was told (cruelly and falsely, it now seems) that her father had been killed when going back to his old habits of disobedience and trouble-making.
The details were unclear, and likely to remain so; the army was never punctilious about giving details to the families in such cases. But it seemed then that Ned Blundy’s agitations had finally become too much: he was arrested, given a military trial, and hanged forthwith, the body cast into an unmarked grave. The courage of his last moments, which Thurloe knew of, and Wallis discovered, was concealed from the family even though they would have taken great solace in it. Even worse, neither Sarah nor her mother were told where he rested, and did not even discover for some months that it had happened.
I sent her home to be with her mother, and told my own that she was not well. She appreciated the kindness, I think, but presented herself again the next morning, and never mentioned the matter again. Her mourning and grief she kept entirely within her and only I, who knew her better than most, caught the occasional glimpse of a distant sadness in her eyes as she worked.
Thus my love for the girl had its birth, and my misery should be talked of no more. I still waited eagerly for her twice a week so that I could talk to her and, for a while, she went with me on occasion to Paradise Fields. No one ever knew of this, and my discretion was not because I was ashamed to consort with her; it was too precious to be the occasion of laughter in a tavern. I know how other people consider me; the ridicule of my fellows, even those I have helped, is a cross I have borne all my life. Cola, in his manuscri
pt, repeats the remarks of Locke and even Lower, both of whom were pleasant to my face and whom I still count almost as friends. Prestcott took my help and laughed behind my back, Wallis did the same. I would not tarnish my affections with the scorn of others, and my regard for that girl would certainly have excited great ridicule.
It was, in any case, only one part of my life; much of my time I continued with my work and, discouraged by my growing doubts about what I was doing, I found myself turning more and more to the collection of facts, no longer daring to say what they meant. My work on the siege languished, and I turned instead to memorials; facts carved in stone and brass, so that I could assemble a list of the most important families of the county back through the ages. It sounds commonplace now, but I was the first even to consider the idea.
And I wandered through all the archives, cataloguing manuscripts that no hand had touched for generations as a way of earning small money and making myself useful. For what are we but our past? If that is lost, we become nothing. Even though I had no immediate intention of making use of the material myself, it was my duty and my pleasure to ensure that others could do so, if they were so minded. All the libraries of Oxford were in a dreadful state, their most precious treasures neglected for decades when men had turned their minds to the passion of faction, and learned to despise the old wisdom because they could not read it afresh. In my small way, I preserved and catalogued, and dipped into the vast ocean of learning that awaited, knowing all the time that the life of one man was insufficient for even the smallest part of the wonders that lay within. It is cruel that we are granted the desire to know, but denied the time to do so properly. We all die frustrated; it is the greatest lesson we have to learn.
It was through work such as this that I met Dr Wallis, as he was keeper of the university archives when I most needed access to them, even though, as professor, he should never have been allowed the post. Although I grant his methodical mind did impose some order on documents which had been sadly neglected for years, none the less I could have done better (doing most of the work, unrecognised) and better deserved the salary of £30 a year.
I had heard rumours, of course, about his occult activities: his abilities as a decipherer of documents were no secret; indeed, he rather boasted of them. But I knew nothing, until I opened his manuscript, of his dark work for the government; had I known the full extent, I think that everything might have become very much simpler. Wallis was defeated (even if he only realised it when he in his turn saw Cola’s narrative) by his own cleverness and his obsession with secrecy. He saw enemies everywhere, and trusted no one. Read his words and see the motives he imputes to all who came into contact with him. Does he say anything good about anyone? He lived in a world where everyone was a fool, a liar, a murderer, a cheat or a traitor. He even sneers at Mr Newton, denigrates Mr Boyle, exploits the weaknesses of Lower.
All men were there to be twisted to serve his ends. Poor man, to think of his fellows thus; poor Church, to have him as minister, poor England, to have him as its defender. He lambasts everyone, but who caused more death and destruction than he? But even Wallis could love, it seems, though when he lost the one person in his life he held dear, his reaction was not to come back to God in prayer and repentance, but to unleash still more cruelty on the world, and find that it served no purpose. I had encountered this Matthew of his on several occasions and always felt sympathy for him. The obsession was clear to anyone, for Wallis could never be in a room with the lad without constantly looking at him, and making comments in his direction. But nothing gave me greater surprise than to read of Wallis’s affection, for he treated the boy abominably and all wondered how the lad endured such cruelty.
I admit that the servant suffered less than the children, whose inadequacies were publicly and frequently acknowledged so vilely that once I saw the eldest break down in tears under the barrage, but none the less even Matthew had to put up with constant carping and malice; only with a man like Wallis could this be a way of expressing love. I had nothing but disgust for him on one occasion, when I saw his face twisted and purpled with rage at the lad and told Sarah of it, but she chided me gently.
‘Do not think badly of him,’ she said, ‘he wishes to approach love, but does not know how. He can only adore an idea, and has to castigate the reality when it cannot compare. He wants perfection, but is so blinded in spirit he can sense it only through his mathematics and has no place in his heart for people.’
‘But it is so cruel,’ I said.
‘Yes. But it is also love. Can you not see that?’ she replied. ‘And it is surely his only route to salvation. Do not condemn the one spark in him that was given by God. It is not for you to judge.’
Then, however, I cared little for any of this: I wanted access to the archives and Wallis, quite literally, had the key to them. So, as the king returned and tried to re-establish himself on the throne, as plots and counter-plots swirled over the country like a snow blizzard, I left my room in Merton Street and went to the library, where I unbundled and catalogued and read and annotated until not even candlelight permitted me to work any longer. I worked in the icy cold of winter, when it grew dark in mid-afternoon, and in the boiling heat of summer, when the sun beat down on the lead roof just above my head and I grew half-crazed from thirst. No weather or circumstance deflected me from my task and I grew oblivious to all that was going on around me. I allowed myself to pause for an hour or so to eat, often in company with Lower or others like him, and in the evening would allow myself the greatest joy and solace of my life, which has always been music. Music rejoices the heart, it can so mollify the mind and soothe tempestuous affections, says Jason Pratensis, and Lemnius says it soothes also the arteries and the animal spirits, so that (here I cite Mr Burton) when Orpheus played, the very trees tore up their roots that they might approach to hear better. Agrippa adds that the elephants of Africa are greatly pleased with it, and will dance to a tune. However sad and weary, an hour of the viol with good company nearly always brought me satisfaction and peace, and I would play, alone or with others, every evening an hour before prayer; it is the finest way I know of ensuring good sleep.
There were five of us who used to meet together twice a week and sometimes more frequently to play, and a most delicious harmony it was. We rarely talked and scarcely even knew each other, but would meet and pass two hours or more in the most perfect friendship. I was neither the best nor the worst of the players and by dint of practising hard frequently appeared the superior. We used to meet where we could, and in 1662 settled in a room which we took above a newly opened coffee house next to the Queen’s College, further down the High Street and on the opposite side from Mr Boyle’s rooms.
It was here that I first met Thomas Ken, whose companionship led me into the acquaintance of Jack Prestcott. As Prestcott says, Ken is now a bishop, and a very grand man indeed, so full of circumstance that his meagre origins would astonish all who did not know him at that time. The thin, pinched cleric anxious for advancement, the ascetic concerned only to commune with Christ, has transformed himself into a portly ecclesiastical grandee, living in his palace with forty servants, dispensing his charity and a loyal devotee of whatever régime happens to hold his income in its grasp. It is a form of principle, I suppose, this willingness to transform the conscience for the common peace, but I do not admire it greatly, despite the comfort it has brought him. I remember with much greater affection the earnest young Fellow of New College, whose only leisure was to scrape away at the viols in my company. He was an execrable musician, with little aptitude and no ear, but his enthusiasm was boundless and our group was short of a viol, so we had little choice. I was truly shocked to learn that he had malevolently invented a tale about Sarah which took her one step closer to the gallows; so many people seemed to desire her death that even then I sensed a malignant fate taking pleasure in her destruction, turning people into her enemies for no reason that I could discern.
It was through my intervention
that Sarah began to work for Dr Grove, as Thomas (quite innocently) asked the assembled musicians one evening whether we knew of any servant wanting employment. Grove, recently returned to his Fellowship, needed such a person and Ken was keen to help. He hoped to win the affection and patronage of the man, and initially tried hard to be obliging. Unfortunately, Grove could not countenance people like Ken in his college, and rebuffed all attempts at friendship; Ken’s courtesies were wasted, and an enmity grew which did not need a dispute over a parish to become acrimonious.
I said that I knew just the person and asked Sarah the next time I saw her. One day a week, to tidy his rooms, carry up his water and coal, empty his pots and see to his laundry. Sixpence a day.
‘I’d be glad of the work,’ she said. ‘Who is this man? I won’t work for anyone who thinks he can beat me. You know that, I think.’
‘I don’t know him at all, so I cannot vouch for his character. He was ejected long ago and is only just returned.’
‘A Laudian, then? Am I to work for a stalwart Royalist?’
‘I would find you an Anabaptist Fellow if there were any, but people like this Grove are the only ones liable to make an offer these days. Take it or not, as you please. But go and see him: he might not be as bad as you fear. After all, I am a stalwart Royalist myself and you manage to contain your disgust, more or less, when you are around me.’