Maria McCann - As Meat Loves Salt

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk

Copyright © Maria McCann 2001

Maria McCann asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006552482

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 9780007394449

Version: 2016-02-02

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

for my parents

There was once a king who wished to know how much his three daughters loved him. He called the eldest and asked her, ‘How much do you love your father?’

His daughter answered, ‘My love cannot be measured. You are more precious to me than a palace full of rubies and gold,’ and the king was pleased.

He then called the second daughter and put the question to her also.

The girl answered, ‘My love is beyond compare. It will endure until roses bloom in snow and fish nest in the trees,’ and again the king was pleased.

He then called his youngest daughter and asked her, ‘My dear child, how much do you love your father?’

The girl replied only, ‘I love you as meat loves salt,’ and whatever the king coaxed or threatened her with, she would not change her

Insulted, the king divided the youngest daughter’s fortune between her sisters, cursed her and cast her out.

Seeing how foolish their father was, the two eldest sisters began to intrigue against him, and in a short time they had seized the kingdom and cast him out in his turn. He became a beggar, and wandered across the land he had once ruled, despised by everyone he met.

One day, weary and hopeless, he came to a village where all the inhabitants were hurrying along the road together, dressed for a celebration. When he asked the reason for this he was told that not far off there was a great house, and that in this house there was a wedding, and the young couple had said that no one should be turned away. The king was very hungry, so he went with them hoping for some share of the feast.

When he arrived he was put to sit at a bench with the rest of the humbler people. For some time he thought of nothing but how much he would be able to eat, but at last, on looking up, he saw that the bride was none other than his own daughter whom he had banished. The king was too ashamed to make himself known. ‘Besides,’ he said to himself, ‘she only loves me as meat loves salt.’

Now it happened that the generosity of the bride and groom was so well known that many, many unexpected guests had come for the feast. When the meat was served and everybody helped themselves, there was not enough salt to go round, and the king was one of the guests who was left out. He took a mouthful of roast meat and tasted it, and how he longed for salt to put on his food. Then he understood, at last, the meaning of his youngest daughter’s words and the love that she had felt for him, for the meat is nothing without the salt.

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Excerpt

PART I

ONE Scum Rises

TWO Beating

THREE Battles

FOUR Espousal

FIVE Over the Edge

PART II

SIX Prince Rupert

SEVEN Bad Angel

EIGHT Mistress Lilly

NINE God’s Work

TEN Golgotha

ELEVEN The Man of Bones

PART III

TWELVE At Liberty

THIRTEEN Eve of Nativity

FOURTEEN An Incubus

FIFTEEN Broken Men

SIXTEEN Hope

SEVENTEEN Brothers and Sisters

EIGHTEEN The Uses of a Map

NINETEEN Possession

TWENTY As Meat Loves Salt

TWENTY-ONE Discoveries

TWENTY-TWO What’s Past Repair

TWENTY-THREE Coney-Catching

PART IV

TWENTY-FOUR Of Snares

TWENTY-FIVE Things Broken

TWENTY-SIX Things Called By Their Right Names

TWENTY-SEVEN Things Not To Be Compelled

TWENTY-EIGHT The Stuff of Jest

TWENTY-NINE Well-Loved Games

THIRTY Unsealing

THIRTY-ONE Treasures

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

About the Publisher

On the morning we dragged the pond for Patience White, I bent so far down trying to see beneath the surface that my own face peered up at me, twisted and frowning. The three of us had churned up the water until it was half mud and spattered with flecks of weed before I knocked my foot against something loose and heavy that lolled about as we splashed. I tried to push it away from us, but too late.

‘It is she.’ Izzy’s lips were drawn back from his teeth.

I shook my head. ‘That’s a log.’

‘No, Jacob – here, here—’

He seized my hand and plunged it in the water near his right leg. My heart fairly battered my ribs. I touched first his ankle, then wet cloth wound tight around something which moved.

‘I think that’s an arm,’ Izzy said quietly.

‘I think it is, Brother.’ Feeling along it, I found cold slippery flesh, which I levered upwards to the air. It was certainly an arm, and at the end of it a small hand, wrinkled from the water. I heard My Lady, standing on the bank, cry out, ‘Poor girl, poor girl!’

Zebedee reached towards the freckled fingers. ‘That’s never – Jacob, do you not see?’

‘Quiet.’ I had no need of his nudging, for I knew what we had hold of. Ever since we had been ordered to drag the pond I had been schooling myself for this.

‘You forget the rope,’ called Godfrey from the warm safety of the bank.

I looked round and saw the end of it trailing in the water on the other side of the pond, while we floundered. ‘Fetch it, can’t you?’ I asked him.

He pursed his lips and did not move. A mere manservant like me must not speak thus peremptorily to a steward, though he were hanging by his fingernails from a cliff.

‘Be so kind as to fetch it, Godfrey,’ put in the Mistress.

Frowning, the steward took up the wet rope.

The pond at Beaurepair had a runway sloping down into it on one side, made in past times to let beasts down into the water. It was coated with cracked greenish mud, which stank more foully than the pond itself. We grappled, splashing and squelching, to drag the thing to the bottom of this slope, then Zeb and I crawled to the top, our shirts and breeches clinging heavily to us. Having forgotten to take off my shoes, I felt them all silted up. Izzy, who lacked our strength, stayed in the water to adjust the ties.