As Meat Loves Salt (59 page)

In the morning Botts appeared, greasy and half stunned. None spoke to him of his debauch.

While I was not precisely in Catherine's plight, I could scarce style myself happy. For a start, the huts were wretched: it was foul and brutish to sleep under turf and find worms dropping off the underside of it during the night, or spiders descending, and the bedding we had brought from London was soon damp. I spread mine on the roof of the tent every day we had sun, which took out some of the wetness but not the smell of earth. I tried not to think about autumn rains.

Then, our homes were without any real defences. True, they were raised up close to each other (a torment to me, for it meant every little noise on either side could be heard) and each hut had a kind of door knocked together by Harry and Jeremiah, but these were more hurdle than portal. I kept a knife always by my side at night, and told the women to do the same. Catherine and Susannah slept in one big-sized hut for safety, with Hathersage one side of them and Jeremiah

the other. Harry and Elizabeth shared a turf dwelling with their little ones. Jonathan and Hepsibah also had one roof over their two heads. As far as I could tell, Jeremiah, Botts and Hathersage lay in solitary confinement like myself.

I yearned after Ferris for days at a time. The morning we finished the sough, I stood for hours lowering branches and twigs to him as he stood half naked in the rising water, then pulled him out, supple and gleaming, and watched him put his shirt on.

'You are shouting it,' he said coldly, 'remember we are observed,' and walked away. Stung, I would not go after him, but stayed lying on my belly with my head hanging over the edge of the drain. Below me were wet twigs, and beneath these I could just glimpse the bigger pieces which I had supported while he positioned them. I wondered how he had balanced on the lining even as he built it, but of course he was more agile than I. For what seemed a long time I concentrated on the sough and its construction, shamming, even to myself, an interest, and all the while pressing my hips to the ground in frustration.

On occasion we went out at night and lay in the field, not the wood with its hidden foxholes and branches. In the utter blackness of a country night it was too easy to fall and make a deal of noise, which would infallibly rouse our companions. To take a light would have been madness. I would grow urgent first; he would bid me have patience, and this I suffered up to the point where it was as dangerous to leave him as to go to him, when I would glance up from digging a trench or cutting poles to find him staring at me, when after days of
Jacob, hold off I
would find him pleading, silently, at my elbow. That look, I thought, must betray us to any knowing watcher, and I would propose we go round the snares. Checking the places too often, filling the wood with our scent, we most likely lost us many rabbits. Ferris laughed at our strange piebald flesh — I was now very dark down to the waist, he all white but for head and forearms - but I saw nothing to laugh at in our coarsening into peasants. We would come back squeezed empty, sticky and pleasure-drunk, and for the moment it was enough; yet it never sufficed me long. I wanted to lie in a bed, for him to keep a hold on me all night as he used, to

watch him sleep, and wake. Sometimes, furtive like one performing a guilty action, I would carry my washball to the spring and cleanse myself as best I could. The scent of rose and lavender came to me as keen as when I had first washed myself in Cheapside and put off my old rags. Now, however, I put my rags back on again and returned to my labour.

The bad dreams were grown more frequent, and I woke always alone, the Voice intimate and insistent inside my skull. Often, of late, I flew in the air over Hell and looked down on the damned, whose punishment it was to mine rocks with picks and spades. They flowed over the black surface like ants. From time to time a flame would lick up and burn some of them off. The rest kept digging.

The cow came. Her calf was thriving enough, and prettily spotted. Hathersage named it
Fight-the-Good-Fight
(soon shortened by the women to
Fight)
while the mother went by the less stirring name of Betty. The dairymaids were at last happy to go on with their old trade, even though there could be no cheese as yet; they inspected the beasts daily for any sign of sickness or injury, but found none.

Ferris and I were standing near the sough one day when Catherine brought some milk in a pot. I watched her cross the patches of corn and potatoes, holding her offering before her as if it were the best wine. The grass around the sough glittered in the searching light; though dew still clung here and there, the sun was already hot to the skin.

She went directly to Ferris and gave the pot into his hand.

'Why, thank you Catherine,' he replied and put it to his lips. I watched her watch him drink it.

'Is there some for me?' I asked. Catherine did not deign to look at me but Ferris stopped drinking and wiped his mouth.

'Excellent,' he said. She beamed.

'Have some, Jacob.’ Ferris handed it to me. Catherine's smile stiffened.

I put my head back and let it down my throat. That milk was the first thing ever made me glad to be out of London, for there was neither chalk nor water in it, just its natural sweetness, thick with cream. I drained it to the bottom, and said, 'I could drink that again,’ by way of praise.

'You've drunk more than your share as it is,' she said, snatching the pot from me. As she stamped off, Ferris and I exchanged smiles. Too late I looked up to see Hathersage, some distance away, watching us. He turned his head aside.

I had by diligent observation made a discovery of my own, namely that Hathersage was amorous of one of the Domremys, but he was so timid and backward I could not tell which; all he would do was to stay with them when he could, and show great courtesy to each, as if courting the two. When I imparted this intelligence to Ferris, he said, 'Maybe he
is
courting the two, to see which will come out good,' but I judged the man shy rather than sly. At first he had clung to Ferris and myself, but that had stopped very early on, before he fell in with the women, and methought he had understood something.

Now he coughed, straightened his garb and went after Catherine. At a distance, I saw him beg some milk of her. She spoke to him as if in anger. He looked to be soothing her, and she pointed in my direction. A pot of milk was handed to him and he drank it slowly, not throwing his head back as I had done but sipping.

'See there,' I said to Ferris.

He grinned. 'Will he cut me out, think you?'

'Not with everyone.'

'Now,' said Ferris, bending over the sough, 'to business. How much would you say has run off into here?'

'We should check the snares this morning,' I said.

'You think of nothing but snares, Jacob.'

'Because we've left them too long.'

'I want to try this first. Snares
later.’

That was the fourth time in two days I had pleaded and been refused. By 'try' he meant descend into the sough, to see how it was draining the land. For a fortnight he had talked of little save this underground pond of his creation.

'It's not safe,’ I said. 'Water sucks you down.'

'Tie the rope round me then.'

He had one ready. Unsure how it should be done, I waited until he had stripped to the waist and then looped the rope under his arms. Hathersage was strolling back to us across the field, smiling sleepily to himself. Catherine was evidently his first choice, and, I thought, he might strike home: a woman who could fancy Christopher Ferris might well look kindly on Wisdom Hathersage, each being delicately made, gentle towards the female sort and with a head stuffed full of maggots. We waited while he came up to us, and when he was about ten feet off, he called to me, 'Shall I help hold the rope?'

I shook my head and, standing a few paces from the edge, steadied myself for the strain.

Hathersage watched as Ferris lowered himself into the sough feet first, until his buttocks perched on the edge.

Ferris grinned at me. 'Let it out.'

I saw the sough embrace him, easing over his hips and up his chest. His arms shook. With a gasp he let go of the earth on either side and first his head, then his hands, dropped out of sight. There was a crash, and the rope shot through my fingers, burning them. I clawed at it, cursing, but it slithered across the dry grass and then suddenly stopped, limp in my grasp.

We ran forward and bent over the hole.

'Brother?' called Hathersage.

Ferris shouted something. I could hear a thrashing in the water, and a crackling, snapping sound: the branches.

I got down and lay on my belly peering into the dark. 'Ferris, are you hurt?'

Hathersage towered over me; I saw a crease in his breeches picked out against the brilliant sky.

Somewhere, not in the sough and not in the field, I heard a laugh and the word
Drowned.

'Ferris,’I cried, more loudly this time.

There was a scream. Then I heard 'Jacob', and other words, indistinguishable but childish with fear.

'I'll pull you up!' I bellowed into the hollow beneath me. 'Hold on!' I stood and braced myself, but then I heard three words clear:

'No! Don't pull!’ The voice rose to a scream at the end: he sounded like an injured wrestler begging an opponent for mercy.

I would have to go down to him, and someone pull us up both.

'Fetch Harry,' I shouted to Hathersage. He stared at me.

'Shape yourself! Move!' I yelled. He turned and stumbled away towards the wood. There was a dull crumpling sound. The grass gave way under Hathersage and he was thrown forwards, clutching at a thorn bush. As he scrabbled to safety, clods and stones rattled down into the sough and loaded the branches; I heard them drop through into the pit,
gloop gloop,
and knew the water was deep.

'Ferris—!'I bawled.

'Get away from the edge,' cried Hathersage, who was pulling himself upright.

'Are you still here? Fetch Harry before I break your neck—' I collapsed onto my knees. If I went down the hole I might crush him. And bring spades!' I shouted to Hathersage's back, then turned my attention to the sough. Earth and stone; water beneath. Perhaps over his head by now.

'Ferris, speak!'

Silence.

'Tell me where you are!'

There was a sound like sobbing. I craned forward trying to place it: all I could tell was that it was somewhere near the bottom. I began to descend, clinging to the side which had collapsed, trembling at every pebble that rolled away into the hole. Once halfway, I began grabbing up bits of rock and turf, anything I could get hold of, flinging it all upwards through the mouth of the shaft.

'Careful there below!’ came a voice over my head.

'Get Harry down here!’ I screamed back.

I could hear the sobs more clearly now: he was alive, and not crushed beneath me. A shadow fell on the rubble. Harry.

'Is it safe for me to come?' he called.

'Stay away from
there,'
and I pointed out where I thought Ferris lay. The smith came scuffing down and handed me a spade.

The two of us began to dig as a team. From time to time I would heave up a rock or branch and Harry would raise it out of the pit; he

later told me that Hathersage bruised and cut himself as he strained to clear the stuff at the top, but at the time I never lifted my eyes from what lay below. We dragged away whatever lay nearest. My hands were torn by the crisscross of branches; parting them, I saw that the water beneath was fouled, dulled from glass to a brownish stone.

There was a scratching noise, and I looked round to see a clod of earth unfold itself, put forth fingers and arch like a spider.

'Harry!' I whispered.

My helper pressed the earth-spider between his palms, comforting it. I was unable to touch the fingers from my side, and dared not cross to them; I thought I would faint. Harry began scooping out the earth round the imprisoned hand with a sharp stone. A forearm was revealed, caked in dust which was turning red where Harry's stone had pierced the skin. Tightly packed twigs lay across the upper part of the arm. These Harry snatched up and flung aside.

'You can come closer,' grunted the smith, 'I see where he is now. Keep this side.'

I picked my way over and saw branches under where the twigs had been, and lower still, a sheen of pale hair. We bent to heave up the boughs, but could get no purchase and I sweated with fear lest we slip and drop them on him. Stooping, I saw a thin face tilted up at us, eyes closed. He was powdered with earth - light coloured. Dry earth. Not drowned. Not drowned.

Father of Lies.

'One of us will have to go under and push up,' said Harry.

'I will.' I brushed aside small branches until I could see what to do: I would have to slip into the water beside one of the large boughs. My shirt caught on the branches; I tore it off, swearing, and threw it into the darkness. Bark scored my skin as I lowered myself, arms aching, until I could go no further. I took a deep breath and let go: the water came up to my chest and was so cold that I cried out, but my feet touched bottom.

'Can you get a grip?' Harry called.