A Maggot - John Fowles (29 page)

The legal profession itself, safely ensconced behind
its labyrinth of elaborate special knowledge (alias verbiage), made
fat by the endless delays and opportunities to charge costs inherent
in the system, held an exceptionally powerful place. The smallest
slip in a formal document, from deed to indictment, could in many
courts lead to its being thrown out and disallowed. Exact performance
of ritual procedure has its justifications; one might value such
eighteenth-century punctiliousness higher if the performance had not
also always pleased the lawyers' pockets. Many of Ayscough's time
became effectively property dealers and estate managers, because of
this ability to handle the requisite language and their knowledge of
archaic procedures; to wangle (often by bribery) the ex parte or
otherwise flagrantly biassed judgement. They could both get their
hands on property, and keep the hands of others, who might in all
rational justice have a perfect right, from it.

Ayscough indeed fell into that last category, as the
man of affairs of a ducal master. He was also a barrister, a very
different kettle of fish from the mere attorney, a species then
generally hated and despised by the layman, who quite rightly saw
them as far more concerned with stuffing their green bags full of
money than in getting cases settled. Ayscough's father had been vicar
of Croft, a small village near Darlington in North Yorkshire, whose
squire had been Sir William Chaytor, an improverished baronet obliged
to spend the last twenty years of his life (he died in 1720) within
the boundaries of the famous London debtors' prison, the Fleet. Sir
William's endless family letters and papers were published only last
year, and they are exceptionally vivid on this matter of the law. He
had had to mortgage his entailed Yorkshire estate beyond hope of
redemption. In the Fleet, like so many others, he became an even
worse victim of pettifogging lawyers than of the law itself, a
classic case of the misery they can cause. But he won the final case.
His exasperation with the profession still sears down the centuries.

Such business as this present inquiry was indeed
quite outside Ayscough's normal work, the purchase of property, the
granting of leases and copyholds, foreclosing on defaulters, judging
new petitions for fields and farms; supervising repairing and
insuring, dealing with heriot and farleu, thraves and cripplegaps,
plowbote and wainbote, hedge-scouring and whin-drawing (and a hundred
other obscure casus belli between landlord and tenant); besides the
manipulation of boroughs to ensure the outcome of their parliamentary
elections as his master willed; in short, fulfilling the functions of
at least six separate professions today. He would not have got where
he was, if he had not been an assiduous lawyer in his age's terms, a
reasonably civilized man also; and a shrewd one in Claiborne's terms
... seeing on which side the butter lay. I quoted Defoe just now,
from his famous pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. It
had been written a generation before, soon after William III had
died, and Anne came to the throne. The administration then was Tory,
and reactionary feeling ran high in the Church of England. Defoe
played a practical joke, for (though of Dissenting background
himself) he pretended to write as one of these 'high-fliers' and
proposed a very simple solution: hang all Dissenters or banish them
to America. The joke misfired, because some of the Tories took his
grotesquely draconian solution literally and declared his pamphlet
excellent. Defoe had to pay by being pilloried (amid cheering crowds,
who drank his health) and imprisoned in Newgate; he had badly
miscalculated the sense of humour of his real enemies, the Tory
extremists in church and parliament. One of his victims then had been
young Ayscough, who at the time had had Tory views. To be fair he had
found the hanging too much, but had backed the idea of ridding
England of seditious conventicles and meetings by depositing them all
in the convenient dustbin of America. Circumstance and career had
turned him outward Whig in the years since; but the memory of Defoe's
trick to draw the beetles from the woodwork did not make him smile.
It still rankled.

All ancient and established professions must be
founded on tacit prejudices as strong as their written statutes and
codes; and by those Ayscough is imprisoned as much as any debtor in
the Fleet by law. Jones is and must be made to remain below the line;
his 'sentence', never to change, always to remain static. His
movement from a Welsh nowhere (in which he was born to die) to a
great English city is already an unspoken crime; if not, under the
Poor Law, a definite one. The word mob was not fifty years old in the
language at this date; a shortened slang version of mobile vulgus,
the common rabble. Mobility of movement meant change; and change is
evil.

Jones is a liar, a man who
lives from hand to mouth, by what wits he has, not least by what
creeping deference he can muster when faced with such real power as
Ayscough holds. Pride he has not, nor can he afford it. Yet in many
ways (and not only in that millions will copy him, later in the
century, in deserting country and province for city) he is the
future, and Ayscough the past; and both are like most of us, still
today, equal victims in the debtors' prison of History, and equally
unable to leave it.

* * *

The further deposition of
David
Jones
die annoque p'dicto
*
* *

Q, Jones, you rest upon oath.

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Come to the wench.

A. Well, your worship, I ran back the way I had come,
see you, yet not so far, for I came down the slope before the trees
began, in great fear I should be noticed if -

Q. Leave thy great fears, they are thy constant
state. She was passed ahead?

A. She was, sir, but soon I came up with her, just
where the path grew abrupt and went down to the stream, where all was
now in shadow. I saw she hobbled, and knew not how to step, poor
thing, with her bare feet upon the sharp clitter. And tho' I did try
to tread softly, upon some noise my own foot made, she heard, then
turned and faced me. Yet not as one who is surprised, more one who
expects such pursuit, for as I came up to her I saw her eyes were
closed and that she wept. She looked white as a clout, sick as a
cushion, like shotten herring, so I were death upon her heels and she
knew she could not escape. Well, sir, I stopped a pace or two off and
said, 'Tis only I, my girl, what ails thee? Whereat she opens her
eyes of a sudden and sees me, then in a second closes them again and
swoons at my feet.

Q. You would say, she expected some other she greatly
feared, yet finding it you, was relieved?

A. Just so, sir. I did what I might to recover her
senses, in lack of salts or a better. When after a little I see her
eyes flutter and she makes a small moan as of one in pain. So I say
her name and that I come to help her. Then she says twice, belike
still in her swoon, The maggot, the maggot.

Q. What maggot!

A. You speak my very words, your worship. What
maggot, says I, what dost speak of? Whether 'twas the sound of my
voice, sir, or what, more brisk she opens her eyes again and sees me
full. How come you here, Farthing, she says. I say, It matters not
how, I have seen things today that pass my understanding. She says,
What things? I say, I have seen all that passed up above. To which
she says nothing. Then I say, What has happened to Mr Bartholomew?
She says, They are gone. I say, How gone, I have watched the cavern's
mouth all day and none has come out save thee thyself and Dick. Again
she says, They are gone. I say, That cannot be. And a third time she
says, They are gone. Then all of a sudden she sits away, for I held
her supported till then, and says, Farthing, we are in danger, we
must go from this place. I say, In what danger. She says, It is
witchcraft. I say, What witchcraft. She says, I cannot tell thee, but
if we are not gone by fall of night their powers will be upon us. And
at that, sir, she stood to her feet and would set off again, more
quickly, as if I had awoke her from her previous state, and she
thought only now of her safety. Yet hobbled at once again, then said,
Help me, Farthing, I prithee carry me below. So it was, sir, I bore
her in my arms down the steep, until we came to where 'twas grass
again, by the stream, and she might walk. You may huff at me now for
obeying her, sir. But I looked around me there in that lonely,
desperate place, and saw no thing else save shadows and wilderness,
and the coming of night. And bethought me of wild Dick besides, that
I knew not where he was.

Q. What of what she first said? This maggot?

A. It shall come, sir, it shall be explained.

Q. The three horses were there below, and the
baggage?

A. They were, sir, and she went straight to where the
seam lay, for I have forgot, the pack-horse stood disburthened when I
first came; and found her bundle and ordinary dress; then made me
look aside, until she had put them on, and her buckled shoes that she
was used to wear, and her cloak again. And tho' I asked questions,
would not answer the while, till she was dressed, when she came to me
with her bundle, and asked, Had I no horse? I told her, Yes, below,
if 'tis not witched away. At which she said, Let us be gone. But I
would not have it, sir, for I took her arm and said I must know first
of his Lordship, and why Dick be run out as he did.

Q. You spake so, saying his Lordship?

A. No, sir, your pardon. Mr Bartholomew, as we had
called him. Then she said, He is gone to the Devil, Farthing. He has
brought me into a great sin by force, against my will. Then, I rue
the day I ever set eyes on him and his man. Now, sir, I had thought
me of a stratagem to explain my presence and that might oblige her to
tell more. So I said, Not so fast, Louise, I must tell thee I am here
secretly upon the orders of Mr Bartholomew's father, to watch his son
and report what he does; and the father is a great person in this
land and Mr Bartholomew likewise a much greater than he's pretended.
She did give me a little stare askant then, and looked down, so as
she knew not what to answer, but in such a manner that said also,
This is no novels, I know it well. And then I say, For this reason
thou must tell me what he's done, or look you, it shall be the worse
for thee. She says, Then thou'dst best tell His Grace his son meddles
in things that common people are hung for. Thus to the word, sir,
except she said full out His Grace's name. I said, So thou know'st I
do not lie. To which she answered, And much else besides, more shame
to thy master, and the less said of it the better. I said, Brave
words, but it is I who has to speak them to his face, and thou must
tell me more that I can prove them. She looks troubled, then says, So
I will, but we must be gone first. I say, What of this young lady,
thy old mistress? Again she looks down, then says, There was never a
such. To which I say, Come, throw again, I am not thy fool, I did see
her plain as day when first you came this morning. To which she
answers, She was not her; then, Would she had been. So now it is
Jones who must throw again and I say, If there be no young lady, then
there be no lady's maid. To that she speaks no word, and does shake
her head sadly, so to say she does not deny. Upon that I say, I
thought I had seen thee before when we first met, tho' I have kept it
to myself. Art thou not one of Mother Claiborne's lambs? She turns
from me and says, Oh dear God, or some such. I say I must know. Then
she says, Yes, I have greatly sinned and see where my folly has
brought me, I wish I had never left my parents' hearth. I say, What
are we upon if it is not an elopement? She says, We are upon
wickedness, madness, and I beg thee, Farthing, take no more advantage
of me now and let us be gone. I will tell thee all I know, but let us
be gone first. Very well, say I, save I must know when his Lordship
comes. Not this night, she says, nor till the world's end, for all I
care. I say, Speak plain. She says, He stays above, he will not come.
Then of a sudden, Thou must set the horses free, they'll stay close.
Well, your worship, I said, No, I could not. Now she casts her eyes
on me, as one who would make herself believed against all appearance,
and says, I have not been kind to thee, Farthing, I know I have
seemed to spurn thee and thy friendship, but I had my reasons, I
meant thee nothing if not good, no harm, and thou must trust me now,
I beg thee. I have enough on my conscience, she says, without these
poor beasts. Still I said no, sir, and would ask more. Whereon she
goes herself and begins to untie the tether of the pack-horse, until
I come to her and say, Very well, it is done upon thy head, not mine.
To which she says, So be it. And I did set the other two beasts free,
and laid their harness with the seam.

Q. You took nothing?

A. No, sir. I swear. And all with great misgiving,
for it grew dark, I feared Dick was about and watched us, and knew
not what else to do. And a thing else, sir, it near slipped my mind,
when she had put on her clothes, beside the seam, there where she had
undid her bundle, was left strewn from it a fine pink gown and
petticoat, else beside. And as I come close I see a small pot spilled
upon the grass, and others likewise, and a Spanish comb, it seemed
forgot, and so I tell her. She says, Leave them, I want them not. And
I say, picking it up, What, a fine comb like this. And she says,
Leave it, leave it, it is

vanity. Well, sir, what's disowned may be owned, as
the saying is; so I turned my back and slipped the comb in my shirt,
and would have it still 'cept I must sell it in Swansea and took five
shillings and sixpence for it. She would have none of it, I count
that no theft.