As Meat Loves Salt (38 page)

'Jacob is one of the Elect,' announced Ferris as Becs brought in some boiled bacon and pease pottage. 'So be sure and serve him properly.'

Becs sniffed.

'From now on he will lead us in saying Grace,' Ferris added.

'You would not talk thus if your aunt were here,' I said. I most definitely disliked this teasing, which seemed to hint that I had lied to him.

'Becs understands,’ said Ferris. 'She knows what Elect means.'

The girl stared at him.

"The Chosen,' he went on.

The poor thing clattered the dishes in laying them before us. When she went out I said, 'Why so unkind, Ferris? What harm does she do?'

'O, she knows I mean nothing by it,' said he.

'She knows no such thing. She will think I complain of her to you.'

Ferris hummed a tune.

I put down the cup of cider I was tilting against the tabletop. 'Come man, she wants a husband and I'm thrown in her way. She does no wrong.'

'And suppose she had money and were offered you, would you have her?'

'She has no money — has she?'

Ferris shook his head. We chewed on the bacon, which was tough.

'I wish spring would come,' he said suddenly. 'It seems years since I tasted green salad.'

'You won't be eating it here.'

We both fell silent. For my part, I was overcome at the thought that the place would then be well known to me, which now I was unable to see.

'You'll print off the Lord's Prayer this afternoon,’ Ferris said. 'Shall we go talk to my aunt first?'

She was lying propped up when we pushed open the door after tapping. I could see the flush on her cheeks from the other side of the room. Ferris put some cordial to her mouth but she pushed the vessel away, so he set it by the bedside.

'I'm not dying, so you needn't come in looking as if you're going to lay me out.' She blew her nose and I heard the catarrh rattle in her head. 'How is the girl doing? Have you dined?'

'Bacon and pease. Be at rest, she is doing well.'

'I'm hot and cold, Christopher. No comfort at all!'

'Will you have some of the bacon?'

Aunt pushed herself up in the bed and dropped back again. 'I can't taste anything, every bit of me aches. Hold me up, Jacob, so Christopher can turn the bolster.'

Her back was slightly humped, the bones pressing on my palms through the thin stuff of her shift. I held her in an awkward embrace while Ferris beat the thing and turned it over. Dust and feathers made her sneeze as I laid her down and pulled the coverlet over her shoulders.

'Good strong arms you've got,' she coughed out, voice cracked with phlegm. 'A prop to a woman.' I must have shown my surprise for she laughed and added, 'Don't take fright, Jacob, you're safe with me.'

I smiled and kissed her hand.

'He's setting the Lord's Prayer,' Ferris told her. 'When it's done I'll bring it you.'

But she was already drifting off. Her nephew put his hand to her forehead.

'She's hot,’ he said on the stairs. 'But I doubt it's more than a cold. Let's check your typesetting.'

He found only two errors, and I had composed as far as
Thine is the Kingdom.
When the whole thing was properly justified and my name added in a smaller point at the bottom (which I thought was like the ending of a young girl's sampler), he took me over to the press.

'This is a Dutch one,’ he said. 'The frame is wood and as presses go it's not heavy.'

'Was your uncle licensed to print, then?'

'No. He got the press as part-payment for a debt, took it as a commodity, you might say; then he got the itch to use it, and paid a licensed man to run off lists of his goods, and so learnt.'

'But he did not use it himself? That would be against the law.'

'They were but lists. I did the same when I traded in linens.'

And you, you—'

'—have no licence. Don't look so sick.’ He placed his hand on part of the machine. 'Here. This is the bed — it rolls in and out so we can get at the type and ink it. Put your form onto the bed — like this.'

I watched him fix the form, with all my labours in it, to the flat bottom part of the machine.

'See that? Now, we ink the form with these inkballs.' He put them in my, hands. 'Run them over the type.'

"They stink,' I said, passing them back and forth. Their smooth leather surface gave off an odour like rotting kidneys.

Ferris laughed. 'I piss on them. To keep them sound.'

'Make me not your story!'

'Ask anyone in the trade.' He grinned. 'Your privilege to piss on them tonight.'

The form was inked and he arranged a little frame about the lettering. 'This is what you call your frisket. It stops ink getting where you don't want it. Now, paper. There's some behind you.'

I reached for the top sheet of a pile.

'And don't paw the rest of it,’he cried.

'Yes, Your Lordship.' I held out the sheet to him.

'Don't give it me, put it there. That thick thing is the tympanum — it evens the pressure—'

'I won't remember all these names.' I laid the clean white sheet atop the tympanum, as he called it, and Ferris showed me how to work the hinges so that the paper was bedded between two layers. Then the bed was rolled underneath the enormous screw at the other end of the press.

'Now, pull the lever to bring your platen down.' He showed me the way I should bend my arm. I took a firm grip and dragged the metal bar all the way.

'When you let go, the thing will move back of itself, because there's a counterweight,' he warned me. 'Right, let go now.'

I watched the lever return to its original position. The platen rose. 'Is that it?'

He nodded. 'Do you remember how the paper comes out?'

I was excited as a child with a gift, undoing all I had seen him do until at last the paper came off the form. He came to look it over with me.

The Lord's Prayer stood out clearly, properly pointed, and my name underneath like a real printer's. I capered in the smoky air.

'Let it dry,' he warned. 'Lay it here until the ink is set.'

A thought struck me. 'Did you go back for the paper?'

'Roger Rowly brought it.'

'Ah.'

And why,
Ah?
This is good quality merchandise ... now, load another sheet while I watch.'

After a few false starts I was able to set up the machine and print off correctly. Ferris, ink blotching his unscarred cheek, made me say the name of each part of the press as I handled it. Though he watched like a cat all the time I was performing my tasks, in the end he could not fault me. Five copies of the Lord's Prayer lay drying on the stand.

'That's plenty for one day.' He rubbed his eyes and gave himself another smear on the other side.

'Ferris?'

Aye?'

'Does your scar still hurt?'

'It itches sometimes. Now, your prentice's privilege. Take the ink-balls into the back courtyard and wash the ink off.'

He was serious. I went out and pissed on the things, turning them about and shaking them. Coming back I held them out for his inspection. He looked up from the type which he was poking at with a little brush, and nodded approval. 'Next time you complain of the stink, remember whose it is.'

We wiped our hands on rags, laid by the heavy aprons and went upstairs to wash off the remaining ink a more civilised way.

For once, sitting by the fire with him, I consented to share some wine.

'You have to do a lot more to be a printer,' Ferris explained to me. 'There's the printing of several pages on one sheet, all in order.'

'What, one - two - three?'

'No, but so they come out in order after being folded. And all properly justified and nicely finished off— no blanks, no widows or orphans.'

'Widows and—?'

'Bits left over, stuck alone on the last line. Looks ugly.'

I asked if he could do all that himself and he said he could manage some part of it, but nothing like the skill of a real craftsman. 'Go and look in the bookcase,' he urged. "The big collection of sermons on the top shelf

I did as I was bidden. There were frontispieces and borders and different typefaces: a lovely piece of work. He said not every master was as skilled, and some let their prentices do too much too soon and thus spoilt the volumes. It was hard to listen to this and think of those slovenly prentices. Why was I not born in London, I found myself thinking, and raised in a trade where a man can set up for himself? Put to it early enough, I would have made a good printer. But there is no profit in crying out against the will of God. How fast do we forget our resolutions! That very morning I had been touched by Grace, yet like treacherous Simon Peter, I was already denying what had been revealed. I reminded myself that all was well.

'More wine?' Ferris held out the bottle.

I shook my head and for good measure pressed my hand over my goblet.

'I shall go up to Aunt soon,’ said he. But he stayed, staring into the fire.

'Go now, if you're going to drink,' I urged him. He looked annoyed, but I went on, 'You take my meaning.'

'Yes, yes! She dislikes it.' He got irritably to his feet. 'Not the only one, is she? Will you come up?'

'Later, when you're tired.'

'When I'm drunk, you mean.'

I looked exasperation at him.

When he was gone up I must have dozed off. I was picking fluff off someone's coat and fitting it into a form no bigger than a miniature when a dull
thunk
woke me - Becs banging the dish against the door panels - and I smelt the fishy stink of eels. I sluthered up in my chair and blinked my way over to the table.

The things were lying in a mess of onions and parsley. They were not ill cooked but I have never liked them, no matter how prepared.

And be it noted here, that few people will allow a man his natural dislikes, but instead folk are always crying up some new receipt supposed
infallibly to give delight:
Sure, you've never had them done in the Vene
tian manner.
I could see from Becs's face that it was her fixed intent to impress upon me her skill in eel cookery. Ferris sat opposite me and observed my difficulty with amusement. I feared he would laugh, but he kept his countenance quite civil as long as Becs could see it.

'Please to give me some of that wine,' I begged, thinking to wash the things down.

'Finished,' he returned sweetly. 'Shall we have some more brought?'

'Not for me. Becs, some ale please.’ As she closed the door behind her, Ferris and I pulled faces at one another.

"They'll get cold,' he said. I poked at the smallest eel with the serving fork and it flaked apart. He took the fork from me and dumped two of them on my dish, then spooned the greenish sauce on top. Having done the same for himself, he began eating with relish. I took small gobbets and crushed them on my back teeth, carefully sparing my tongue. It was slow going: I could only manage one to his two.

Becs brought me the ale. 'I'm taking supper to the Mistress now,' she announced, depriving me of my hoped-for escape. 'Do you want anything?'

Her eyes fingered reproachfully on my plate. Ferris beamed at her and crammed great lumps of the slimy flesh into his mouth, closing his eyes in a mock ecstasy.

'Unkind,' I hissed when she was finally gone.

'I'm not Elect like some. Here,' he relented, 'try the wine,' and he fetched the bottle from its hiding place behind the chair where I had been sleeping. It did take off the worst of the taste. But I was careful not to indulge myself, swallowing just enough to enable me to clear the platter. I was glad when the girl returned. She presented us with a hot apple pie, and smiled as she gathered up my empty dish.

'He knows now what he's been missing,' said Ferris, turning an angelic face up to her. I fumed silently as she lumbered off with her pile of plates.

'You want her to serve them again!' I exploded when we were left alone.

'I like eels. And she would most certainly give them you any way.' He laughed. 'Don't you know what eels do to men?'

'Make them sick,' I said. I had a most pestilent queasiness coming on. Once back in my chair by the fire I dared not budge, and while waiting for the odious feeling to pass I again fell asleep.

The fire was low. I could not tell what o'clock it might be, but there was nobody in the room with me. My left hip stabbed as I got up and went slowly downstairs. The kitchen was all in darkness, and Becs long gone to bed.

Bed. From the kitchen to the top of the house seemed a weary long way for my heave limbs. This was worse than Beaurepair, where at least the great hall was on the same level as the offices and kitchen. I fumbled my way up the first set of stairs, lit a candle from the dying fire and started on the second lot feeling sorry for myself and hoping Becs had put something in the bed to warm it. Just as I reached halfway up the second flight the bells at Paul's chimed eleven. I had thought it later.