‘We’ll suffocate,’ I whispered.
‘Be still.’
Metal jingled; the man was hitching up his horse. Next we felt the cart rock as he mounted, and the whip cracked.
We were on our way. Under the carpets Ferris’s other hand pressed mine for courage, as I had once pressed Caro’s. Something scuttled across my scalp. When I shifted, trying to get at it, the breeches pulled the scab from my thigh once more. We lay silent, jolting to the clop clop of hooves, listening as best we could to those about us who went on with the morning life of the army. Most of the time the sounds were padded, indistinct, but some things came sharp and clear: the click as a catch was tried, a sword clattering on stones, and most of all, men’s voices raised in complaints or exultation: this man was recounting a jest played on one Joseph, another was being scolded for not minding his weapon. There was a strangeness in it. We were already out of that life, and would no longer speak its language. No more weevil cheese, or pike drill, or lying in fields. No more Rupert Cane. I allowed myself a smile in the dark womb where Ferris and I crouched beneath the carpets, waiting to be reborn.
‘Here’s one still alive, at any rate.’
The hood was back; the carter’s face, upside-down and haloed by blinding sun, grinned at me. To my left Ferris groaned, dusting the motes and straws from his cheeks.
‘Let me out a minute,’ I cried, struggling from under the layers of stuff. Leaping down onto the grass, I at once relieved myself against the wheel. Ferris followed suit, and while standing there asked the man how far we were come from Basing.
‘Two or three miles,’ came the reply.
As one, we turned and looked back down the road. A blackness hung on the air above the horizon.
‘You see that,’ the man said.
Ferris nodded. ‘Still smouldering. That’s slighted it.’
‘Slighted?’ I asked. It seemed a gentle word for what we had seen.
‘Burnt it, broken it utterly. There were not men enough to hold the place.’
Feeling my bowels move, I went behind a bush at the roadside for even after the army I hated to be seen at such private business. I fancied I heard the carter laugh at my finicking ways. We mounted again and this time rode on top of the load.
I patted the carpets. ‘Who will have these, friend?’
‘Any that can afford them, your nobility, citizenry,’ he called back. ‘They look brave on a table.’
‘Did you pick them up cheap?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I buy for another. There’s two or three lots gone already.’
Ferris stretched on top of the load and gazed at the sky. I whispered to him, ‘What did you pay this man?’
‘Nothing. We spoke awhile; he took to me.’
‘You could give him that other shirt you found.’
‘I gave it Nat, last night.’
Something now struck me, and I stared at him. ‘Ferris, where’s your coat?’
He crossed his arms.
‘You gave Nathan that too! And your snapsack – the purse you got at Basing—’
‘Remembrances,’ he muttered.
‘But did he not guess—?’
‘I put the snapsack under his head, to find when he wakes.’
His eyes told me to leave off. I did so.
The land peeled away on either side of us, the hillslopes steaming like the flanks of a beast. From time to time we saw empty carts coming in the opposite direction, the drivers laying on the whip in their eagerness to seize some of Paulet’s jewels and plate.
‘Eaten up already,’ Ferris bawled maliciously after the first to pass us. ‘Picked clean and a fire set in the ruins.’
The driver never looked back but went straight on.
‘O well, let him make the journey,’ my friend said, flinging himself down on the carpets. He was out of humour and I could guess at his contemplation: Nat has missed me by now. How does he take it?
‘Do you know this country?’ I asked, to distract him.
He shook his head. ‘All I know is that this is the wool route.’
‘What shall we do in London?’
‘Live with my aunt, eat, sleep. Go from brutes to men.’
I thought how it would be to wash after all this time.
‘We must get you some new garments,’ Ferris went on, looking at my botched-together coat, and again I recalled the one I had worn for the betrothal, and lost.
‘That means a tailor,’ I said. At Beaurepair we were allowed three suits a year, but these were often hand-me-downs, except those for myself, whom no other man’s clothes would fit.
‘We will get you a tailor directly. But my uncle was near as big as you. Some of his things will do until yours are made.’
I was struck by the decision in his voice. ‘Ferris, are you rich?’
He hesitated. ‘I am not poor. You need not trouble yourself about tailors.’
In that speech I heard how little I really knew of our coming life, and I shivered with hope and fear.
We were three days journeying to London. It might have been quicker but for a thaw that set in, softening the roads and sometimes obliging myself and Ferris to get out and help clear the wheels. I hated doing this, for the heaving and slithering was horribly like that time when I had helped drag the pond.
‘Watch the goods, lads,’ said the carter warningly as we struggled back into the cart after a long hard push that left my legs trembling. We tied my boots and Ferris’s shoes to the horsegear and spread my coat, inside out, upon the merchandise to keep off our muddy hose and breeches, before falling asleep. Our powers of sleep astonished me; I was seemingly making up for every hour lost over the past month, and passed in and out of the day like one in a fever. Ferris, who looked worn to skin and bone, did likewise, and in this way we both of us escaped our wounds awhile.
My snapsack was buried in the carpets, out of reach of prying hands. No pay remained to me at all; we had been promised our arrears in November. However, I still had the ruby necklace and the candlesticks, which I thought would serve for Ferris and myself at the inns. Our deliverer, however, put up at houses that he knew, and when the horse was securely locked away Ferris and I were left sleeping under the hood to guard his merchandise. This suited me well, for I kept the plunder for myself.
The first night was passed at the house of a Mistress Ovie, and Bradmore’s relations with her it were better not to enquire into. To be sure, she kissed him in full view of us, and not coldly neither, as the cart set off. We were greeted by a woman the second night also, but this one was evidently his married sister. The husband, one Walters, came out to see the cargo and gaped to see men stored along with the goods, at which Bradmore laughed heartily.
That night I slept deep and dreamless. While the sky was still grey I woke, and found myself full of a blind joy, the like of which I had not felt since the blessed time, as I privately called that part of my life unsoiled by Walshe and my later doings. Ferris, as usual, slept on; I had already observed how he hated to rise of a morning. I studied his face. Though too thin, it was a good one. With the scarred cheek turned away from me and thus unseen, there was grace in his looks, and strength. His mouth curled upwards as if his dreams were happy, and his eyelids fluttered; I wondered what he saw, and wished he would wake. My wish was granted, for he straightway mumbled something and began an awkward scratching of his neck.
‘O, I am eaten alive,’ came his voice, thick with yawns. His eyes opened on mine. ‘Crawling. Are not you?’
‘Ever since I joined up.’
Ferris now smiled. ‘Today—’ he broke off to claw at his thigh, ‘there will be clean linen. I have not let myself think of it till now, for fear of weakening. Feather beds, coal fires. Conserves.’ He stretched himself out under the canvas hood. ‘But most of all, clean linen.’
‘To each his Paradise,’ I said. ‘Methinks the proverb should not be forgot—’
‘—the wars are sweet to those that know them not,’ he finish
ed. ‘But where is Bradmore?’
‘He is not late, but you are early this once,’ I told him, amused by his impatience.
‘This is London day! Ah, Jacob, when you know my aunt—’
He raised a finger for silence. The horse was heard crossing the cobbles towards us and a minute later Bradmore pulled back the hood, letting in a crisp new air that made us blink.
‘Here, lad, catch hold of this. For you, from my sister.’
I took what he thrust at me. It was a pasty and a piece of cheese, wrapped in a paper.
‘Your sister is a true Christian,’ said Ferris.
‘She is indeed, though it’s I that say it.’ He laid a jug of ale next us. ‘No drinking that on the road, eh, or we shall have spills. She would have fetched you in the house last night, only I told her you were needed out here. “Lord, sister,” I said, “they’re young men, soldiers. The ground’s as good as a feather bed to them.”’
Ferris grinned at me.
Bradmore had by now backed the horse between the shafts. His sister came out for a last embrace and kiss before we pulled away to the sound of her little ones crying, ‘Farewell, Uncle Harry.’ As soon as we were out of their sights, I pissed from the back of the cart, kneeling on the folded-down hood; I had wanted to do this ever since the idea was come to me the day before.
‘Pray do not bring your army ways into my aunt’s house. Strive to be mannerly,’ said Ferris, but he was laughing.
My friend spent the rest of the day in a growing excitement. I envied him, for I could not but compare this innocent happiness with my own guilt and fear that time the New Model came within sight of Mulberry Hill. The land grew flatter as we approached the city; we stopped awhile at a place called Staines, where there was a deal of water, and there we got out to shit and also drank off some of the ale and ate the pasty. After that, Ferris was rapt much of the time, for he began to know the names of the places we passed through. His constant cry to me was, Jacob, this is such-and-such. I was at first puzzled, for as we were not in London, I could not see what any of them might be to him, until at last he made me understand that his mother had been born in these parts and that his aunt had often talked thereof.
‘She will be glad to know I have seen it,’ said he. I turned my head away to hide a smile, for to my mind, there was something very like a boy in this talk.
Towards the end of the afternoon, I did observe something worth noting: the sun, now low and lying behind us, lit up with its red a mighty wall strengthened with towers, which lay some distance off against a blue-black sky.
‘What estate is that?’ I asked him.
‘Is what?’
‘The wall. Whose is it?’
He cried, ‘A wall?’ and I learnt again the excellence of my own sight, for Ferris was unable to distinguish even the towers. His eyes glistened as he said to me, ‘That is the city defences.’ A look of pride came into his face and he watched me, to see was I as impressed as I ought to be, when he added, ‘You know someone who helped make them.’
I was very much minded to humour him, and so cried out, ‘Brave Ferris,’ upon which he tried to appear as if it were nothing.
‘So when was this?’ I asked.
‘It started three years back, after Turnham Green. It was thought the King would move on the city. First came ditches, and chains against cavalry. We were digging directly, men, women and children – all in a terror – and the fool never came!’
‘And was the wall put up then?’
He shook his head. ‘It took a year more. First the forts, and then the lines of communication between. It goes all round the city.’
I gasped. ‘All round? Every part?’
‘Every part. We will go through, and you can see how it is.’
I had remarked in the army how some of the London men would speak of saints, by which they meant the Precisian, or Puritan, citizens, and it struck me how much might be brought about by a people assured of God’s favour.
It took us some time to come up to the wall, and this afforded opportunity for as much amazement on my part as he could ever have wished. As we drew nearer, and Ferris saw better, he clutched at my elbow, pointing out a great fort.
‘That one is at Hide-Park Corner, Jacob.’
Bradmore here putting in that we would enter near Hide-Park, I thought Ferris would burst from anticipation. We went over a wooden bridge and my friend told me we were crossing the defence ditch. I leant out to see this famous thing, which might be some five yards wide, and one-and-a-half deep, and thought how women pioneers helped dig it. Shortly after, we passed through a gate in the wall.
I could now see the inner part, London itself, and my heart leapt at it. We moved steadily forward, the houses thickening and crowding around the waggon as we went, and Ferris pointed out all the spires against the darkening sky.
‘This is Fleet Bridge,’ he told me, some time after the houses, together with a certain foulness in the air, had closed all about us.
I saw some pale thing struggle on the black waters of the Fleet.
He went on, ‘This place is Ludgate – and there—’
‘Paul’s Cathedral,’ I put in to show my knowledge, which came out of a picture at Beaurepair. To tell the truth, my spirits were oppressed by the vast bulk of this sacred edifice, which reared up to shut off the end of the street. It was hedged about with a scum of other buildings and with petty shacks that had seemingly grown against its sides. Though our picture had shown it standing proud to the eyes of every man in the city, here only a part of it could be seen. I was much struck by the fact that, owing to the narrow ways and penthouses leaning over us, nothing could be seen of the city except what lay nearest to hand; we were forever passing through a tunnel, one where the air was unwholesome.
‘We will go to Paul’s churchyard for books – see there—’ and he pointed out the house of some famous man. Never, not even when he talked once of the great work to be brought about in England, had I seen him so animated.
‘I thought you disliked London,’ I ventured. ‘At least, I am sure you once called it a Sodom of cheating. Did you not?’
‘And so it is, yet that’s not all – O, Jacob, look—’ and he was off again, until Bradmore at last set us down in Cheapside.
Thus we entered in to the City of Saints, or to Sodom, what you will.
PART III
TWELVE
At Liberty
I was now to see the house where Ferris had lived, the shop (since boarded up) where he had traded in his linen stuffs, and all the things which had made up his life before I knew him. It was also the place, and this I did not forget, where he joined his life with that of Joanna Cooper, and took her into his home and his bed, and watched her die.
I knew this dead wife was with us as soon as he got out of the cart, for he broke off in the middle of a laugh. We trudged along, sore and stiff in the chill darkness, until Ferris stopped, saying simply, ‘This is our house,’ but he turned straightway to the one opposite, and I saw another face, boiling with some inner hatred, bubble up through his own. My friend stood silent, fixed, as I hopped from foot to foot in the cold.
‘Don’t offer yourself as a spectacle.’ I plucked at his shirtsleeve to get him away. He gasped and I realised he had been holding his breath.
‘Aye.’ That was all he said. He permitted me to lead him to his aunt’s door.
She came to answer the knock herself, tall and thin and upright, leaning forward in the dark to see who we might be. She held a taper, and I saw her mouth twist as the rays fell on his torn cheek; then, wasting no words but gathering him to her breast like a mother, she half dragged, half carried him inside.
I followed them up the stairs and saw my friend pushed into a chair. His aunt bent forward and fingered the scar, moaning; when he flinched she snatched her hand back as if burnt. As for Ferris, he seemed struck dumb; but I saw that he was trying not to weep.
The aunt at last noticed me, pressed my hands and bade me
make myself at home. I was unwilling to sit, being all bloody and stinking, but she would have me do it nonetheless. The warmth of the fire was so grateful that I shed a few tears of my own, even without an aunt to bring them on.
‘Blue with cold, not so much as a coat, where’s your coat?’ she wailed, chafing his arms.
‘I lost it,’ said Ferris.
The maid was shouted for and ordered to boil water, bring victuals, lay fires, open some wine, make the beds and prepare simples for mending the skin, all at once; she shrugged and said she would do what she could with one body, and would first bring something for washing hands, and after, food and drink. She seemed not to know Ferris, nor he her.
Warm water arrived, and a cloth. The aunt said nothing when, wiping our hands and faces, we turned the linen from white to black. Soon after, the girl brought up food: some mutton, pickles, wine, and for bread a fine white manchet. I saw her look at me sideways in going out.
We swallowed down the meat as fast as our knives could cut it. Ferris said, ‘Aunt, you have brought me back to life. Jacob too, see how he eats.’
The aunt scolded him for teasing a guest. I tried to chew more daintily and take smaller draughts of wine, but my belly cried out so loud that politeness was deafened. Besides, I had remarked that Ferris ate as greedily as I.
‘We are a brutish, filthy pair,’ he said.
She replied, ‘I kept all your clothes, Christopher.’
I started to hear his given name.
‘They’ll be too small for your friend, but Joseph’s coats may do for him. We must get you washed and something clean on your backs.’
‘Before we make the whole place lousy,’ said Ferris. He spoke through a mouthful of mutton, and smiled on her with wet shining eyes.
‘Rebecca is heating the water,’ said the aunt. ‘I’ll have it put in your chamber, and a fire lit, and one for – I beg pardon, sir.’
‘Jacob Cullen,’ I told her, glad to lay Rupert in his grave.