Treason's Daughter (35 page)

Meanwhile Hattie has been warbling about the baby, about her many shining parts. At last she comes to the point. ‘So, then, Hen. Can I have her?'

‘Yes,' says Hen firmly. If that is the decision then at least Hattie should not know of her hurtful doubts. ‘Yes, Hattie.' And she watches, smiling but still racked with uncertainty, as Hattie spins baby Anne round and round in circles, both of them laughing fit to split.

Ned thinks of Will's words all that long autumn. ‘The days of bickering.' He watches the men bicker among themselves, torn over the best way to approach the impending loss of their livelihood and the crippling arrears of pay. He watches the officers struggling to contain the men's anger, sympathy with their cause jarring with disapproval of their mutinous muttering. He reads about Parliament's increasingly vexatious bickering about the future of the army. The Presbyterian MPs want the army disbanded, spooked by the growing religious radicalism in its ranks, fearful of the power effectively controlled by its two great commanders, Fairfax and Cromwell. And all the while the king bickers with just about everyone – including, so the story goes, his wife. She
wants him to accept the bishops' demise as a price worth paying to get his crown back. The king's refusal is at once infuriating and admirable. Ned respects his refusal to compromise on his faith, but despairs of his misplaced religious loyalties.

It is a strange campaigning season. They mop up the royalist strongholds in a succession of small wars. It seems unnatural that men still die in this after-war, when they should by rights be at home recounting their adventures as God's victorious warriors to admiring crowds. Ned stands in front of some ruined, blackened castle, somewhere in a land now defined by its sameness, and looks down at the twisted body of Taffy. His face is shattered and his body crumpled. How strange, then, that this empty husk, this soulless broken thing, should still recognizably be Taffy. That though the eyes are blank, they are still his eyes.

Later, still camped round the blackened castle, Fairfax calls a fast. Ned embraces it. For two days they pray, hunger sharpening their minds, opening their souls up to the Holy Spirit. The army chaplains draw huge crowds. But here, too, some of the soldiers set themselves up as preachers. Ned imagines his father's horror: if a plain soldier can usurp a priest, a buff coat for a cassock, why should he not usurp his betters? Religious freedom and liberty of conscience are but the flip side of social anarchy. And yet Ned is increasingly drawn to the godliness in the independents. He berates the soldier-preachers publicly, yet envies their intense relationship with God. This thought keeps coming to him: if God really is calling us to Him, each of us unbound by a uniform state church, then we must listen and hang the consequences. Why fear the breakdown of man's order on earth, why protect this earthly realm, if in doing so we deny His call?

On the second day of the fast, Ned's thoughts are unfettered. His body is light and slow, but his soul and mind range across the plain, listening to the preachers, searching out the pure voice of God. All the men are imbued with a similar awe. Victory upon victory for this army has shown them the face of God, and He is smiling upon them.

In a clearing behind the orchard, Ned stumbles across a gathered church. He recognizes some of the men from his troop, and he sits behind a tree so as not to disturb them with his officer's sash. The soldiers are not supposed to be preaching to each other. So he hears the words, sitting apart, with his back to the bark. His knees are drawn up under his chin as if he were a boy again. He watches the leaves on the apple trees rustle in the wind, letting the russet colours dance in his mind alongside the words.

‘Who has tasted the graciousness of the Lord? Who can desire less? Press on, brothers, press on. Let not time, nor hunger, nor mortal flesh cool thy affection to Christ. You shall participate in the glory of the resurrection, my brothers.'

The voice is low and deep. Ned's longing soul skips along its cadences. I have tasted His graciousness! I am His instrument!

Suddenly, in Ned's spinning mind, a simple problem unknots itself. Providence. This army has won victory upon victory. The Lord of hosts is with them. Ned knows it will drive him mad to seek too far for God's will, but this much is clear: the world cannot be remade as it was before these wars. God's hand is in everything. The world must be made anew – this is His will. We are His instruments. He will show us the way.

Ned imagines his body as a whistle, with God's breath coursing through him. The imagery makes him smile, and the smile takes
wing on the preacher's words, sharpening to become joy. I am filled with joy! Ned's happiness is vast. It straddles oceans; it soars skywards. He understands with an extraordinary clarity that his body and his soul are not one, but two. Both belong to Christ. And His love will dispel the loneliness.

Hen is not alone. She has breached the City walls with Will. Now the nights are drawing in, he is fulfilling a promise to her. They lie in a field in Dalston, two blankets beneath them, three on top of them. They hold hands under the blanket, and Will guides her through the skies.

‘Sirius, of course. And Cerberus – there. Do you see the constellation of the Centaur?' Hen follows his finger, and listens to his voice as it wraps round the names. It's a form of poetry, this naming, and she loses herself in it even if she sometimes fails to follow him. The stars are a jumble to her, and she cannot always discern the shapes that lend the constellations their names. The source stories are sharp and clear to her – Chiron striding across ancient Attica; Andromeda, the chained sacrifice. But she can't see them. No matter, because Will can.

Later, hands still tightly clasped, still looking up and not across, he says: ‘I feel less of a man, somehow, for not having fought.'

‘But you had no reason to fight, and the levy missed you.'

‘Aye, but so many good men are dead, and I'm here with you, lovely you, and I cannot help the guilt. My friend William Gascoine, he died at Marston Moor. Oh Hen, he was barely older
than Ned. He would have been an English Kepler, had he lived. His work with telescopes, it would have taken your breath away; yet he never published, and now he's gone. So too Jeremiah Horrocks, who saw the elliptical swing of the moon so clearly.'

‘But which side would you have chosen, Will?'

‘Both look increasingly ridiculous from here.'

‘Well, then. Bad enough to die for something you believe in. You're wasting your guilt, Will.'

He laughs beside her. ‘Plenty enough to feel guilty for. You're right, Henrietta.'

‘You'll find I often am.'

He pulls her hand across his stomach and holds it with both of his. There is something deliciously transgressive about being here at night, beyond the walls. It's profoundly quiet out here. The darkness is deep and still. Under the blanket is warm, but the air on her cheeks is cold, and the contrast is a humming backdrop to the tension in her whole body. From the ends of her toes to the top of her head she is aware of his presence. She can feel her hip touching his. The casual stroking of her hand with his thrums along her skin, spreading from her hand to her arm and into her belly.

‘You will have to outshine the dead, Will.'

There is an even deeper silence. She can feel him weighing his words. His hands fall still.

‘Well, now, Hen. When we first met, I could barely keep my eyes from the stars, do you remember? And then I saw in them endless possibilities. I saw my name transfixed to a new discovery. I saw my posterity writ there, Hen. I thought there could be no greater prize for a man than for his name to outlive him. I was such a child.'

‘It's not such a childish wish, Will. We're all afraid of being forgotten. Claudio says it in the play: “to lie in cold oblivion, and to rot”. No matter how they dissemble, what scholar would not want to find a touch of immortality through his work?'

‘Perhaps, but that should not be the sole motive, should it? Besides, I'm beating around the truth like a coy miss. Here's the worst of it, Hen. I'm barely a better astronomer than I am a lawyer. Passion is not enough; aptitude counts for something too.'

‘Nonsense,' she says. ‘You have both – I know it.'

He props himself on his elbow and looks down at her face. They can only see silhouettes and shadows. He draws a finger along the line of her jaw.

‘You are kind. But it's important to be truthful. Truth must be the first mistress of natural philosophers. I can follow other men's work, but they will not follow mine. It's all right, Hen. Don't worry. It's like a grieving, this grappling with your own mediocrity. But I've faced it and I've grieved, and now I'm sanguine enough, I find.'

She stays quiet, distrusting platitudes. He knows more than she does about the limits of his ability. She looks at the myriad stars and thinks of all the countless men and women whose names died with them. Women don't allow posterity to needle them. We're too close to the truth of oblivion. How many Ciceros can there be; how many Caesars?

‘And there are some consolations for being mortal,' he says, his voice dropping to a whisper that is nakedly intimate under the huge, star-pricked sky.

He leans forward and kisses her throat. She can't breathe. Her eyes are accustomed to the darkness, but she still can't see him
clearly. She can see the outline of him, and he is so familiar to her now, she can fill in the middle with a loving eye.

‘So here's the rub, Hen, darling Hen. If I'm not to stand with giants, at least I can stand tall among mortals. Enough pandering to others, Henrietta. We tried to be apart, and here we are. Shall we be betrothed, Hen? I am three months short of my seven years, and then I'm my own man completely. Shall we be together, Hen, you and I?'

‘Yes,' she cries into his shoulder. Yes.

His lips are on hers then, and her hips rise to meet him. She thinks briefly of Anne, the big belly and the blood, the broken promises and the confounded hopes. But she shrugs the thought aside, banishing it. Over his shoulder, the stars buck and sway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

December 1646

T
HE DAY THEY ARE MARRIED, IT SNOWS. THE CITY IS MUFFLED
in white. She walks with Ned towards the church, thinking of her father. How he loved the snow, loved seeing the familiar and commonplace turned magical; how he moaned at its melting, as if each mound of coal-grimed slush piled into the street was a trap laid by God for his foot alone.

Ned strides alongside her, the cold buffing his face and adding sparkle to his eyes. She holds his hand against a tumble. It would not do to fall in this dress, so painstakingly sewn together by her and Hattie, with some lacklustre hemming from Lucy. Her hands are cold; she worries that her nose must be chapped and red. She bids Ned to stop at the door of the church, overwhelmed suddenly. Inside is Will with his father and his mother, and three of his four siblings. She met them briefly last night. Will's father was all affable charm, leaving the disapproval to his tight-lipped wife. Will's three younger sisters were there, ranging from her age down to sixteen, and indistinguishable from each other.

She has been so happy, so content these past few years, shifting for herself. Beholden to no one. Earning her own money to be spent as she pleases. Friends with Hattie, darling Hattie. A butcher's wife may be friends with a pauper, an anomalous single woman making her own way. A butcher's wife may not sit so happily gossiping with a lawyer's wife. Hattie is probably inside the church, baby Anne insisting on standing with that look of triumph on her face and her hands gripping Hattie's skirt. ‘Mama,' she says, ‘mama,' and a light shines in Hattie's face like steel striking flint.

Hen feels sick. She tries to concentrate on Will's face, to imagine his smile, and the quivering in her skin when she is near him. Panic rises.

‘Hey, hey, Hen. What's wrong?'

‘Ned, what am I doing?'

She thinks of the bookshop, the smell of it, and the hours of flitting tedium and joy she has spent in the back room. No longer. Mr Rowan has given her a book of housewifing skills as a present and a thank you; he knows her own mother did not pass her one down. A new boy takes her place next week – properly indentured. Mr Rowan is inside the church too, most likely, with his sour wife.

Oh Christ. What if Will and her become a shrivelled couple? What if the yoke is too much to bear? All old and miserable marriages started young and hopeful.

‘Breathe, Hen. Look. In through your nose, out through your mouth. In, out. In, out. You look set to face a cavalry charge.'

She thinks of the rooms above the butcher's shop, raddled and damp, but all hers. Will has taken a lease on a new place, nearer the Temple. Near where her father hanged. Oh Father, she thinks. I wish you were with me. She thinks of the scales that Sam uses as a mental
trick. On the one side she piles everything she is losing, and throws in her new family for good measure, imagining her mother-in-law's furious squeaking, and the irritating fluttering of her sisters-in-law. On the other side is Will. All alone – just Will. He is high in the air on the mental scales, which are weighed too heavily against him.

She looks up at Ned and smiles at his concerned face.

‘Ready?' He asks the question nervously, as if half expecting the answer to be: ‘No, let us run. Run!'

Instead she just nods. He pushes at the door, and it swings open. Ahead of her she sees a jumble of faces, and there, brilliant in his scarlet lawyer's robes, is Will. And the scales tip back towards the centre.

Afterwards they head to the Mermaid, for food and drink and dancing. Will's father has found some money, and it is his wedding present to them. If Will must marry a royalist plotter's poor daughter, at least he can do it in some style. The wedding party wears bridal ribbons, which flutter colourfully against the fresh-laid snow. One of the new sisters-in-law, Patience, grabs Hen's hand and smiles into her face, eager to show her joy. Will walks next to her, near bouncing with happiness and confidence. They hold hands tightly, anchoring each other amid the chatter and excitement.

When they enter the Mermaid they see someone has gone to extremes with winter foliage. Leaves and berries are wound round tables and chairs; every nook groans with greenery, like a bridal bower brought inside. Steaming spiced wine is doled out, and the warmth courses through Hen.

The food, too, is hot and plentiful. At the centre of a busy table is a great suckling pig, which Hen knew until last week by the name of Fat Peg, as it rooted about in Hattie's yard. At the end of the table are the bride cakes, piled one atop the other. Will grabs her by the hand and leads her to them. Suddenly the old customs seem so new, so exciting, when it is her kissing her new husband above the cakes to whistles and laughter.

After the food there is dancing. Amid the scraping back of chairs and pushing away of tables, Will takes her onto the floor for the first dance. The beat of the drummer makes her want to skip, and she grins furiously at him as they caper across the floor.

‘Mrs Johnson,' he whispers each time they come close. Each time she laughs as if her husband is the wittiest man who ever lived. And he laughs at her laughing, until the entire crowd are smiling and joining in the capering in a swell of good humour.

Even the godly caper and dance with the best of them. Hen overhears Ned talking to her new mother-in-law.

‘There is a difference, of course, between festivity and excess. And the Lord loves a wedding. Did he himself not feast at Cana?'

Dear Ned. He has set himself to win Will's mother over, to prove that Will's choice is not so entirely devoid of sense.

The afternoon becomes a blur for her; a series of snatched conversations. She whirls away from Will, and fights her way back to him, again and again.

Her new father-in-law pumps her hand with ferocious enthusiasm. ‘I was never against you,' he whispers. ‘Ah, but be kind, Henrietta, to my poor Sarah. When you have a son, you will understand.'

The music turns and she finds herself with John Cooke,
Will's mentor at the Bar. His face is genial, warmed from its usual earnestness. Next to him, his wife Frances bobs and sways to the music. Both are notoriously godly, and Hen notes with amusement how they react to this licence to enjoy themselves: creeping towards the unaccustomed levity, and then pulling back, before creeping forwards again.

‘We were only married ourselves four months ago, Mrs Johnson,' says Mr Cooke. She likes the way he turns to his wife as he says it. She is already predisposed to like him; she read his notorious pamphlet ‘The Vindication of the Professors and Professions of the Law' before she knew his relationship to Will, and thoroughly approved of its argument that the law is out of reach of the common man. Justice, he argued, should not be solely available to the deep of pocket.

‘The Lord's blessing on you,' says Frances. ‘You will need it, married to a lawyer. Your husband will live in the inn during term-time, I suppose, the better to ferret in his law books. You and I can keep company, perhaps, in the long evenings.'

‘Yes, I would like that,' says Hen. Ned is passing and she drags him over, introducing him to the Cookes. ‘Mr Cooke is General Fairfax's lawyer, Ned,' she says, and watches as the two men fall immediately into a discussion of the general's shining parts.

‘The war would have dragged on without him, I assure you,' says Ned, punching his palm with his fist for emphasis. Hen watches Lucy coming over to lay claim – Mrs Cooke is not unattractive – and she leaves them to it, circling away with the freedom a bride expects on her wedding day. Back to Will.

‘How beautiful you are, Mr Johnson.'

‘Stay, a man cannot be beautiful.'

‘And yet you are.'

‘Wife.'

‘Husband.'

She is pulled away again, this time by Hattie, and forced to be pleasant to the vicar's unpleasant wife.

Mr Rowan joins them and, when the vicar's wife is distracted by something to disapprove of, he whispers to her: ‘You are so beautiful, my dear. A very Viola. Your father…' He retreats into an embarrassed cough, flapping his hands.

Hen kisses his faded cheek, and then circles back to Will, passing Ned.

‘The essence!' she hears him say. ‘The word of God must be preached simply to the common man, as must the word of law!' The Cookes are nodding furiously.

She reaches Will at last, who is being teased by his sisters.

‘They are merciless, Hen. They say you are too pretty for me, and altogether too good for such a flummox as I.'

‘Your sisters are wise and excellent judges of character, I say.'

The youngest, Patience, who seems to have been named more in hope than foresight, bounces up to her and throws excited arms about her shoulders.

‘Sister!' she says, and Hen kisses her warmly.

She meets Ned again on her wanderings and says, unthinking: ‘Oh, how I wish Sam was here!'

She watches, saddened, as his face loses its merriness.

‘Sam,' he murmurs, in a voice made maudlin by wine that he is unaccustomed to drinking. ‘Oh Hen,' he says, looking at her intently. ‘I used to think, perhaps, that all the blood between us was as nothing compared to the blood we share. But now… Now
I am not so sure. He is so wrong, Hen. His cause is so misguided, so evil. To seek to deny us the chance of making God's kingdom on earth. How can we be easy with each other?'

‘You must,' she says, almost stamping her foot.

‘But how?' The misery in his face saves him from her fury.

‘Poor Neddy,' she says, and takes his arm. ‘Poor Ned!'

He mock punches her arm, and they laugh together.

But Ned's words cast a pall on the day for her. She has, like him, been assuming they will just slot back into brotherhood when all the troubles are over. Now she must face the coming discord, and pray with fervour that she is never asked to choose.

The day wends to a close. At last comes the time. Will's few remaining unwed friends pull off her loosened garters and attach them to their hats, making the whole party laugh. The women surround the bride, clucking like protective hens, leading her up the stairs to the bedroom. The inn's best bed has been decorated by the same hand as the taproom to resemble a country maid's bridal bower. Greenery twists round the canopy, and ribbons are tied round each of the four posts.

The women undress her together, all ribald jests and nudges. Dressed in her nightgown, she climbs into her bed. She meets the eyes of Will's mother, who smiles a small, tight smile at her. They can hear the men next door undressing Will, and then they burst through into the room with a clatter.

‘Too limp, them ribbons,' shouts one voice as the whole party staggers in. Will is pushed forward until he is half sprawled on
the bed, and he looks up at her with an apologetic grin.

‘Give him the sack, put some stiffeners in him,' shouts another.

Hen and Will climb into the bed. Beatrice, his sister and Hen's bridesmaid, and his groomsman, a young lawyer named Steven Aubrey, sit at the foot of the bed facing away from them. Steven holds Will's stockings and Beatrice Hen's, and the crowd counts them down. ‘One, two, three!' They throw the stockings over their heads, and Beatrice's throw is true. The stocking lands on Hen's nose.

‘I shall be married!' shouts Beatrice, and her mother manages to look cross and relieved all at once.

A cup is passed forward over the heads of the guests, and they share the sack posset.

‘Sack to make him lusty, sugar to make him kind,' intones Hattie from just behind her.

It is strong and sharp and sweet. Hen giggles, twisting with a tipsy embarrassment. Will just looks excited, and absurdly happy.

‘Drink it quickly and they'll leave us alone,' he says, making the company laugh.

‘I'd sip it then, love, if I were you,' Hattie calls out, and some of the women nod appreciatively.

Hen looks sideways at Will, and then drains the posset in one emphatic rush.