Women of Courage (181 page)

He kissed a tear from her cheek. “You deserve to be nowhere else. This is where you belong.”

“Yes, but ... remember what has happened. Why I came.”

“Because of your father?”

“Yes. You will save him, won’t you, Rob?”

He sighed. “I’ll try. I promised. Remember?”

“Yes.”

“But I wish, Ann, that I was sure you loved me as much as you show you love him. I could almost be jealous of Adam Carter ...”

“But, Rob, he is my
father!”

“Yes, I know, Ann.” He held her shoulder gently, as though afraid she would leave him. “And I have said I will try to save him.”

“And you can do it?”

“I think so. Jeffreys sentenced them all to be hanged, but he can’t really have it done. There are too many. A pardon is beyond me, though. I can’t manage that - only the King could do it.”

“But you can save his life?”

“I think so, yes. Certainly I shall have a hand in drawing up the list for transportation.” He hesitated, his palm stroking the side of her face. “But ... that’s a hard punishment, too, Ann.”

“But not so bad as ... that other.” She shuddered, feeling suddenly how naked and vulnerable her body - everyone’s body - was. “Where will he be sent?”

“The Caribbean colonies, I suppose. They say the journey is bad, but life there may be no worse than here - if one survives the diseases.”

“But for how long would it be, Rob?”

“Ten years is normal. Then he can buy his passage back if he can afford it.”

Ann had guessed at it, but it was somehow worse to hear it from him. “Ten years! My father may be dead in ten years!”

“He might be dead in two days.”

“Yes, I know that, Rob. I’m sorry.” She kissed the hand that was stroking her cheek, and then turned and got out of the bed suddenly, feeling the air cool on her skin.

“What are you doing?”

“I must go, Rob. I must go to see him.” She picked up her clothes distractedly and started dressing. She suddenly felt ashamed to be here, naked in a strange room. Not because she had saved her father’s life with her body, but because she had made a gift of it, and the pleasure she had had was her own.

“But when shall I see you again?”

“I don’t know.” She pulled her dress hurriedly over her head. “I must stay here until it is decided about my father, and then take the news to my family. Can you help me with these lacings?”

“My pleasure.” He kissed her neck as he did so, and she longed to stay.

“Where will you go?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Jeffreys is going west, but the less I see of him the better. I may have to go to London for a while, with a report of the trials. But at least I can come with you now.”

He got out of bed too and began to pull on his breeches, while she wandered quietly over to the window with her back to him, looking down into the courtyard. Strange how you could couple naked with a man in bed and then be embarrassed about seeing him dress. Why should she feel so guilty? She did love him, and she had meant what she said. But now she wanted to be away from here, to visit her father again while she could, and see all this from a distance.

He finished dressing, and came over and slipped his arms around her waist. For a moment she leant luxuriously back against him, feeling the smooth leather of his swordbelt over his shoulder. Then she turned resolutely to face him.

“Rob, you are kind. But it would be better if you did not come with me. My father would not understand.”

He sighed. “Perhaps not. And Judge Jeffreys would understand only too well if you were seen with me. But ... this is not the end, Ann, is it?”

“Not unless you want it to be.”

They faced each other quietly by the window. Each felt how strange it was to be clothed again, as though they were the same as when they had come in, and the last hour had not taken place.

He frowned and shook his head.

“No. You know I don’t want that.”

“Then it is not the end.”

He smiled, and kissed her, and then escorted her downstairs past the watching eyes in the bar. She left him in the courtyard, and walked out into the street alone.

49

“I
KNOW it, and your father knows it too! Don’t deceive yourself about that!”

Ann and Tom were walking steadily along the high straight road out of Dorchester, with the huge maze of Maiden Castle on their left. The wind sent little rags of cloud scudding towards them from the sea, flapping Ann’s skirt around her legs and streaming her auburn hair sideways across her face as she walked. She lifted her face to it gladly, welcoming the freshness of the wind after the squalor and fear of the town.

They had spent half the morning bustling between prison and courthouse to find someone to tell them whether her father had been sent to Weymouth or Topsham to embark, and had left just as the first of the executions had begun. A grim file of men had marched past them out of the prison to the square where the scaffolds and fires had been built on Sunday, and she and Tom had had to push their way out through the fascinated crowd that had come to watch Jack Ketch, the executioner from London, begin his dreadful work.

Ann had thought for an awful moment that Tom wanted to stay, to help the poor souls by prayer, as she had heard some other godly folk suggest; but he had said nothing. As they left the town she was congratulating herself on not having had to ask Robert’s help to find out that her father was being sent to Topsham, and on making it all seem to Tom like the result of her own simple enquiries. Glad of her success, she leant on his arm companionably.

It was then that Tom told her he knew how she had saved her father.

Shocked, she drew away from him. She knew he could not be sure, and it was what she had expected he would think, so she did not feel hurt. But she was annoyed that she had wasted so much time trying to hide it from him, and a little worried at what he said about her father. Her father knew she had spoken to Robert, but that was all, and he had not questioned her further at the time.

“You know nothing, Tom, only what your own evil mind imagines! I went to Robert Pole and asked him to save my father from hanging, and he did so. That’s all there is to it!”

“A man like that would not give you mercy for nothing! I know what he wanted!”

“You judge others by your own sinful nature, Tom Goodchild! If my father had any cause for anger ‘twould be with you, not with me or Robert Pole!”

She glared at him as he strode beside her, holding his hat on with his hand against a strong gust of wind. He looked away guiltily, his handsome face grim and unsmiling. A long way down inside herself she was still afraid of him, but there had been no-one else her mother would trust to escort her on her search for her father, and she had managed to control him so far, keeping him balanced between fear of her sharp tongue and hope for that forgiveness he would never get.

“You did not see your father’s face when you turned away. He knew you had been at your whore’s tricks again!”

Ann tossed her hair out of her face and strode on, unspeaking. It was the one fear she had left, that her father would think like Tom, and be sent across the ocean to despise her for ten years without loving her or understanding what she had done. But she did not believe he could think like that; and anyway, when they caught him up she could explain.

They reached the top of a hill and paused, looking out over the hills towards the sea, where a ship was running swiftly up channel with its topsails furled.

“Even if I had coupled with him, as you say I did, would that be a greater sin than to do nothing, and let my father die?”

“Mercy is in the hands of the Lord, just like vengeance. Who can touch pitch, and not be defiled?”

“Not you, anyway.” She glanced at Tom, holding her hair back out of her eyes, and thought how stiff he seemed, how wooden, as though the wind was blowing round a megalith. And he was the man she had once thought it right to marry!

“Tom, don’t you ever
think
, instead of eternally spouting holy texts? Don’t you ever think for yourself and see that God doesn’t always do what’s good?”

His shocked reaction was utterly predictable. Entirely without thought, as Ann had known it would be. “That’s blasphemy, Ann! ‘Thou shalt not take the name of thy God in vain’!”

“I know it is. And it says ‘thou shalt not kill’ but I’ve seen people do a lot of that in the Lord’s name, and it says ‘honour thy father and mother’ which I think means keep them alive, so then if I commit fornication which it does not say anything about, only adultery, then I do that in the Lord’s name too to keep another one of His blessed commandments!”

“So you admit it. You did prostitute yourself to him!”

“I didn’t say that, Tom. I said
‘if’
.” But she knew it was a vain defence. She had meant to prostitute herself, anyway, even if it had turned out rather different.

“I know you did. And so your father can no longer lay your sin at my door. If I take you to be my wife it will be out of pity, not obligation now!”

He turned and strode ahead down the road, holding his hat on his head to stop it blowing away. She glared after him in fury, and then laughed out loud, the wind tearing her words away so that he did not hear them.

“You’re glad then! You’re really glad! You poor silly fool!” She set off down the road, and came up with him at the bottom of the slope.

“So you will go and tell my father that ‘twas a sin for me to save his life, and because of that sin you are no longer bound to marry me. Is that it?”

“Yes. But we are still betrothed, Ann. And I didn’t say I wouldn’t marry you, if you would repent of your sins and show a proper Christian respect!” He had taken his hat off now, and the wind blew his short hair into strange waves and ridges over his solid skull as he scowled at her. She felt suddenly afraid of the huge strength that was repressed within him, while the wind’s blew free. So she controlled her own scorn with irony, as she had done more than once in the last few days, and tried to look as though the marriage remained the possibility which Tom and her mother still thought it was.

“Then we had better see if we can find my father, and tell him the good news.”

“Indeed. And I will try to find some pity for you in my heart.”

So they tramped on over the high, wind-blown downs; the grim, lanky figure of Tom trying to keep his decorum in the wind, Ann letting her hair blow defiantly free to annoy him.

But they had started too late to reach Bridport that night, and when they came there in the morning, they heard that the convict train had gone ahead several hours ago. So it was not until late the following afternoon, when they got a ride in a cart half of the way from Charmouth, that they came up to the suddenly overcrowded workhouse in Honiton, and asked the soldier outside for help. He consulted his list, and then reluctantly lurched to his feet and took them inside. He called Adam’s name into the great cell.

“Here!” someone shouted, and pointed to a short burly man sitting on a bench at the back, who began to get slowly to his feet. But it was not her father, it was John Spragg. When he saw her, he stood quite still, his unshaven face grey as the old ashes in the fireplace.

“But that’s not my father. He’s not here.” Ann turned to the soldier in surprise.

The man scratched his head, plainly tired, and bored by the whole business.

“Well, I’m sorry, my dear, but ‘tis the only Adam Carter we got. You want to talk to him or no?”

“No - yes! Yes, I do!”

“All right. This young feller’ll look after you, will he? Give us a shout when ‘ee want to come out.”

Her father was nowhere in the cell, but John Spragg would know where he was. She pushed her way forward to him, and wondered why he stayed by the bench at the back of the room, staring at her like a rabbit at a fox.

“John, what is it? Why do they call you by my father’s name?”

John Spragg gazed at her, his lips moving stupidly, like an idiot’s, as though he thought he should speak but did not know the words. He shook his head faintly.

“He’s ... he’s not here, Ann.”

“I can see that! But why? Where is he?” The concern in her voice had most of the men in the cell looking at her. John Spragg still shook his head slowly, tears coming into his eyes.

“With ... he’s ... with the Lord, my dear.”

The words were spoken so quietly that she did not hear or understand them at first. Then John Spragg buried his face in his hands and began to weep. Ann started to shiver uncontrollably, chilled by a fear colder than midwinter.

“Dead? John, he can’t be dead! Rob promised me! He’s not dead!”

She snatched her godfather’s hands away from his face and stared at him, her green eyes wide with shock.

“Why do they call you by his name?”

John Spragg shook his head again hopelessly, as though trying to be rid of the whole thing and knowing he never could, not now, never.

“He ... he gave ... he gave me his life, girl. He made me do it. He said he didn’t want to live any more, after ... “

“After what?”

“After what you ... did. No!” He shook his head more violently, and clutched his forehead with his hand. “I’m sorry, Ann, I shouldn’t have said that, ‘tis not true, ‘tis all wrong! If you saved anyone’s life ‘twas a fine thing, however ‘twas done, and your father was one of the best men I ever knew. Only ... he didn’t want to live, and God forgive me, but I did!” He buried his face in his hands, shaking with sobs.

“You answered to his name.” Ann spoke very slowly, the truth sliding like a frozen knife into her soul. “And so he was taken out to hang in Dorchester yesterday, while we were coming here. But he didn’t say that about me, John, tell me he didn’t say that!”

John Spragg looked at her and clasped her hands in his own. “No, my dear, I shouldn’t have told ‘ee that, you must forget it. If he did ‘twas only by way of an excuse I’m sure, to say something to disguise his kindness to me. He was the bravest man I ever knew, girl, and he loved you dearly, really he did ... “

“And you took his life! You’re living his life now - the life I saved! Oh, John!” She wrenched her hands out of his and turned away. “Take me out of here, Tom, we must go! Jailor!”