I watched his feet go out of the room. He closed the door softly, as if walking away from one already dead.
When next I woke I was in bed, with no remembrance of how I got there. They fetched a surgeon to me, not my old friend Mister Chaperain, but a fellow with sickly fish-white flesh and no chin; he pronounced my limbs and skull uncracked, and having also attended Rowly, told me that person was gone to stay near Bunhill Fields with his sister.
‘So I’ve not killed him,’ I said, somewhat sullenly for a man supposedly lashed by guilt.
‘That I wouldn’t swear to, as yet,’ he corrected. I could tell that he did not like me. ‘There was a deal of bruising. It rarely does a man good to knock his brains round the inside of his skull.’
‘So why have I not been summonsed?’
‘That I can’t say, Sir.’ But I think it a pity, his eyes added.
I knew it was fear which held back the little snot-nosed tailor from bearing witness against me. But what did he matter? Ferris was keeping away. Aunt and Becs came in with soups and ointments. Their long faces showed plainly that they had been spared nothing of my exploits. One of Aunt’s friends sat with me and read me some improving matter from the collection of sermons, about hasty wrath. He was a thin white-haired man, and looked to be the kind whose temptation is all in cowardice, rather than the other way; I lay staring up at the ceiling until he was done. Becs dressed the cuts and bruises on my chest, while I wondered how she liked her work. Her former playfulness seemed melted away.
‘Is – is he ill?’ I asked her the second day I woke up in bed, having passed the first in constant expectation of a visit.
‘All cut with glass,’ she returned shortly.
I considered this. ‘Does he keep his chamber?’
She made no answer.
‘Becs, I must beg his pardon.’
‘Lift yourself.’ She beat up the bolster behind my neck, her small fists thudding into the feathers.
Like the army again, Ferris had said; but to me this was worse. Once the first pain eased, there was less to distract me, and this was the first time I learnt that one pain can numb another; the reason, it might be, why lunatics tear themselves. I feared to offend him more, so set myself to wait patiently and read the rest of the sermons; very bloodless stuff they were too, and made me melancholy as a sheep.
At last, about four days after the fight, unable to hold off longer, I asked Becs for the wherewithal to write. When she had brought the things and gone, I settled myself as well as I could with my aching ribs and began on a letter to Ferris. Several times I proffered my apologies, and as often crossed them through, for they seemed either sly or presumptuous; at last, abandoning them altogether, my labour produced the following:
Ferris – He was insulting and slandering your Joanna in the foullest manner, exulting in her misfortune, making your love unto her the complaisance of a wittol, and your marriage bed a brothel. I gave him fair warning, but was mocked at. Now tell me what I ought to have done? Were my own wife so traduced I would defend her. I did all for love, and in defence of love, and am beaten black and blue for it, and would do it again if I saw a hair of your head threatened.
I folded it up and called Becs back. She looked curiously at the note as I bade her take it to Ferris.
‘Read it if you like,’ I said, wanting to hurt her.
‘What do you take me for?’
She descended, probably to the printing room, since I guessed he would be with his press. I waited, fingering a yellow-brown contusion on my forearm to see how much pain was left in it. The door at the bottom of the stairs opened: I strained to hear. Becs. I slumped disappointed onto the bolster.
His reply was on a sheet of paper from the press, and had a dirty thumbprint on it.
The hairs of my head are more than threatened: they are bloodied. Violent love eats up what it does love, and is mere appetite.
I scribbled on the bottom of this before sending it back:
I would sooner cut my own flesh than do you a hurt. You should not have tried to get between us! But only come to see me, and another time I will stand and let him beat me to a mummy.
Becs’s sharp eyes took in what I had written and she gave me a pitying look. I was at once ashamed of my unkindness. I had wished to punish her for being cold, for up until then, her face had remained unfeeling even while she was dressing the war wounds received at the Battle of Cheapside. As she turned to go down for the second time, I said to her, ‘You’re a jewel,’ and had the pleasure of seeing her smile.
The next time the door opened downstairs, I knew it was Ferris, and tried to calm myself as he neared the chamber. When he did appear, his expression was not encouraging.
‘Tell me, Jacob,’ he began, having seated himself on the edge of the bed, ‘were you sincere in what you wrote in your note? The last one.’
‘Try it – bring him back and tell him to set about me.’
‘And now tell me how that would help us.’
‘I only meant that I was sorry,’ I said, feeling tricked.
He frowned. ‘Well, if you ever feel such anger at another of our company, you must do what you wrote to me, stand and let him beat you to a mummy. You make great protestations: you’ll do this, and this. Next time stand off before you hurt the other man, not after.’
‘I did it for you.’
‘For me? Did I not beg you to stop?’
I was silent, and not only because it was impossible to deny the truth of this. Again I heard Caro’s shocked gasp as I told her I had slain the boy for her sake, followed by her scrabble to get away from me in the dark.
‘Well, did I?’ Ferris asked crossly.
I nodded my head.
He went on, ‘Should he die, what will become of you?’
‘I was only—’
‘You make no attempt to hold yourself in.’ Ferris turned his face away from me. ‘Look here.’
I winced to see the bloody hair at the back of his head. ‘He stirred me up – he called your wife such names—’
‘You told me not even to spit at Cooper!’
‘I hit him for love of you—’
‘For love of mastery! By God,’ he spat, ‘Nat was lucky!’
Luckier than you know, I thought, rocking myself in agitation.
Ferris cried, ‘And don’t tell me violence is an affliction to you! I saw your face!’ He paused, calming himself, before saying more quietly, ‘It would go better with you, Jacob, had God seen fit to make you small.’
We sat in silence a few minutes and I saw his wrath going down, now that he was in the room with me and had spoken his mind. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘And made me tall and strong.’
I sighed. ‘I know. You would be patient and set me a good example.’
His mouth began to curl up. ‘On a quarrel like this? I would beat you senseless.’
We were reconciled, of course we were; things were now too far gone between us to be broken for a Roger Rowly. But it was not the same. I had never before hurt Ferris; he now felt the possibility of my doing it again, and as his aunt knew what had happened as well as anybody, I was no longer her darling boy.
For Aunt however, looked at another way, the news was not all bad. Ferris had spoken truth when he said that I had scared off others besides the tailor. The next day, when I came down, I found him writing letters in an attempt to pull together the remaining colonists. His aunt was out and perhaps he thought it a good time to resurrect the project, for I was sure she would have made the most of our set-back as a sign of God’s will. He had just signed a most diplomatic missive to the Bestes.
‘Surely Harry’s not afraid of me after knocking me down,’ I said, attempting a laugh.
Ferris answered, ‘He has a wife and children.’
At the thought of Elizabeth I felt a twist within. Up until this time she had thought me sober and discreet, a man to repose trust in. I hoped never to see her again.
‘Will we find another smith?’ I asked
.
‘I’m trying for one.’ Ferris showed me a new pamphlet which he had run off while I was abed: it appealed for men and women to join our colony and especially for any who could farm or work with cloth or metal. ‘We’ll see what God sends. After all,’ he threw me a sardonic glance, ‘He sent me you.’
Becs entered with a bowl of warm water and a poultice for his head, to draw out the remaining splinters of glass embedded in the skin. I made to leave, but Ferris said, ‘Stay and see this.’
So I sat, wretched, and watched the water grow red; saw him wince as she dabbed at the back of his head with her poultice.
‘I can’t get at it,’ she said crossly. ‘Why don’t you let me cut your hair!’
‘Cut it then.’
Becs jumped; I guessed she had asked before, and been refused. She hurried off for the scissors before he could change his mind. The two of us sat in silence until she came pounding back upstairs.
‘Now,’ she said, arranging herself with comb and scissors behind his chair, ‘are you sure you want this?’
‘Want it? I want my head to heal, that’s all.’
‘Then I cut.’ She put the comb to his temple, but Ferris turned and gently took the implements from her. ‘No, Becs. Let Jacob do it.’
‘I can’t cut hair,’ I stammered. ‘I’ve never, never.’
‘But this is a job you’ve earned,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking you to cut your own flesh, am I?’ I started at the words from my note, and understood: I was to know the whole of what I had done to him, right to the shearing of his hair.
‘If you botch it, Becs will tidy me up,’ he added.
‘Very well.’ I put the comb into his hair and pulled it through to the end. He ducked, and I pushed his head upright again. ‘Keep still.’
‘You pull too hard,’ he said fretfully. Becs snatched the comb from me and showed me how to tease out the knots, starting at the bottom and working up to the top. I copied her and was doing well until I touched the comb on a hidden cut and saw redness seeping through the roots. Sickness rose in me like the spreading blood. I snatched up the front hair and combed out the ends of it into strands, working my way up as the girl had shown me. Some of the hairs stood quivering away from his head or stuck to my sleeve.
‘Strange how it does that,’ said Becs. ‘You always get a few fliers after it’s combed,’ and she smoothed them down again. Strands of dark gold lay on his neck and shoulders.
‘I don’t want to,’ I repeated.
‘It must be cut so my head can be poulticed,’ Ferris said, relentless.
I started at the back, holding up handfuls of the shiny slippery stuff and hacking at it, unable to keep it still against the blades. Becs watched critically, coming over from time to time to adjust the angle of the scissors. The hair crunched and squeaked as I struggled to keep level. Two big handfuls were severed, and laid on top of the pamphlet on the table, and then I could see the back of his neck and the vulnerable dip at the base of the skull. The sight pained me, and to avoid looking at it I came round to the front of him, chopping at the side locks which had once trailed on my face.
‘It’s done,’ I said. It was a mutilation. My thumb trembled from the unaccustomed wrenching of the scissors.
‘Not for a poultice,’ said Becs. She took them from me without consulting Ferris, and snipped away until he looked like a dandelion. The hair was jagged and stood on end; she blew on it and laughed.
‘There. I’d best put the poultice on, I know where the sore bits are.’
‘Throw the hair on the fire,’ ordered Ferris.
I kept back not a single strand, but gathered it all up and let it drop together like a tangle of gold thread onto the greying coals in the grate. It flared in an ecstasy of sparks, shrivelled to black, sent up a stink and went to join my letter to my mother. Becs was slapping some greenish mess on the back of my friend’s head.
‘How soon will it bring the glass out?’ I asked meekly.
‘O, a few days for what’s left.’ She wrapped a warm cloth around him in the style of a turban before carrying away her poultice.
We sat subdued, reading and sometimes talking of this and that, and so wore away the morning until the meal was served. Aunt joined us for it, feigning to admire Ferris in his Moorish headgear. It was clear she thought it a great pity the hair had been cut.
When we were risen from table, and she was gone to see Mistress Osgood and her two little boys, Ferris asked me to go up to my room and consult the map he had bought. He spoke as if short of breath, and looked so strangely at me that I asked him if he was well.
‘Quite well,’ he answered, pale and sweating. ‘I would know where to find Abbot’s Gardens. Andrews tells me there is a man there called Samuels, who can raise potatoes.’
Afraid he might be starting a fever, I went up to my chamber but before looking in the map I lay down to rest my back and chest, which still ached from Rowly’s kicks, and I at once fell asleep. When I awoke and came down later, he was sitting by the fire, unfamiliar in his turban, and I thought he looked at me even more strangely than before.
‘Is something amiss?’ I asked.
‘Did you look in the map for me?’
‘Abbot’s Gardens isn’t there.’ I brought out the lie without thinking, because I had little desire to eat potatoes, and no desire at all to climb the stairs again.
My answer fell like a blow on Ferris. I saw his chest rise and fall as if he were running.
‘So – what I want – isn’t in the map—?’ He seemed unable to understand me. ‘Do you mean, that is – are you saying – no?’
‘Is it so important?’ I demanded.
He rose to his feet, agitated. ‘Jacob, did you really look? Tell true – you haven’t looked, have you?’
The interrogation vexed me. ‘I looked,’ I said slowly and distinctly. ‘The answer to your question is no.’
He flinched; I saw one hand go over his heart before he noticed what he was doing, and let it drop. Then he seized the poker, driving it into the coals in the grate until he had fractured most of them and thoroughly spoilt the fire.
‘You set your heart too much on things,’ I soothed, wishing to God I had not lied.
He turned from the shattered coals, flushed and rigid, and said bitterly, ‘Don’t finish what you start then. It won’t save you on Judgement Day.’
‘I start and not finish!’ I cried. ‘Not finish what?’
He stared at me as Christ might have stared at Iscariot just after the kiss. All this for Abbot’s Gardens and a few seed potatoes.
‘You are not well,’ I said. ‘Not yourself. What ails you?’
‘I would I knew!’ he shouted. He got up and ran out, leaving me, baffled, to repair the fire.
Such strange days; such a sadness in the house. None came in pursuit of me, we were spared the disgrace of the officers taking me out in chains; for all I knew, Rowly was mended as well as ever and most likely a lot wiser. Aunt spoke kindly to me again and showed willing to forget, Becs likewise.
But after this talk of ours, Ferris grew increasingly melancholy, seemingly in mourning for his colony: he scarce ate, took no pleasure as formerly in his pamphlets, barely spoke to me, and refused even the offer of chess.
I took the pamphlets out to the bookseller at Paul’s for him and we received several letters from interested parties, but after a week Ferris had yet to answer a single one. His hair still poulticed and turbanned, he lurked in the house like a wild thing caged. Each day, Becs examined the back of his head, lifting away the glass as it worked its way out, and each day he complained pettishly of her clumsiness. There was also something amiss, something I could not fathom, between him and Aunt. Whenever she and I spoke together, Ferris turned his face away, and I noted that she did not court his attention as she might have done before.
At mealtimes especially, when the conversation flagged under the heavy weight of his sulks, I wondered how much longer I could go on living there, but alwa
ys came back to the same thing, namely that I had nowhere else.
The day came at last when the turban was cast aside, and Becs washed the poultice out with soapwort. I went up and touched his cropped head; he turned away slightly, but said nothing. How strange new-washed hair is. His was soft as feathers, prettily yellow; it had lost its intense smell. He sat by the fireside to finish drying it and Becs laid a piece of linen over his shoulders. I sat down in the other chair. There were old bloodstains on the linen cloth, and I thought it was the one they had used for my toothpulling.
‘Would you like a fricace for your hair?’ the maid asked me. She had moved rapidly from cold through civil back to saucy. ‘I’ve a rosemary rinse would put a shine on it.’
‘Nay, I’m not a lass,’ I answered.
‘It’s good for the brains,’ she went on. ‘Here—’ and leaning over behind me she put her cold fingers on the nape of my neck, making me jump. She giggled and I laughed with her. She was too forward, and I knew it, but I was starved of merriment.
Twisting round to speak to her, I found my face almost in her bosom. She was a full-bodied girl with rounded shoulders and arms, and the sight of her leaning over me gave me the first real pang I had felt for a woman since Caro. Confused, I stopped laughing, and looking up saw that, although it had all passed in an instant, she had missed nothing. I glanced across at Ferris: he was staring into the fire. Becs gave my back hair a long, soft tug and went out, leaving me confounded.
Towards the end of January Ferris at last roused himself to read his letters and make a memorandum of the correspondence. To prevent as much strife as possible, he explained to me, we would both examine them equally and if I took a strong dislike to any person then he or she should not be part of our commonwealth. I was sensible of just how much he was giving way to me in this, and said so. In return, I solemnly promised not to beat anybody, howsoever provoked.