Bernard Cornwell - A Crowning Mercy

It seemed to her, that moment, as if nothing existed in all creation except herself, Toby, and the fragile, beautiful flower.

He looked at her, his own voice low. ‘I shall be here tomorrow afternoon.’

The hopelessness rushed in to spoil the moment. ‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’ The rushes were cut only once a week, and she had no other excuse for visiting the stream. The thought reminded her that she was late, that she must hurry.

Toby still watched her. ‘When will you be here?’

‘Next week.’

Toby sighed. ‘I’ll be in London.’

‘London?’

He nodded. ‘My father’s sending me to learn some law. Not much, he says, just enough to know how to avoid all lawyers.’ He looked up at the sky, gauging the time. ‘I’d rather be fighting.’ He was twenty-four and men much younger were fighting.

‘Would you?’

He sat up. ‘It will be a dull place if the Puritans take over.’

She nodded. She knew. The Puritans already controlled her life. She pinned her hair up. ‘I’ll be in church on Sunday.’

He looked at her. ‘I’ll pretend I’m a Puritan.’ He made a grim, glum face and she laughed.

He had to go. He had come to the next village to buy a horse and the horse was being shod for him. It was a long journey back to Lazen Castle, but he would do it swiftly with a dream in his head of a girl he had met by a stream.

‘Till Sunday, Campion.’

She nodded. Even talking to him was a sin, or so her father would say, but she wanted to see him again. She was in love, a hopeless, romantic, helpless love because there was nothing she could do about it. She was her father’s daughter, at his command, and she was Dorcas Slythe.

Yet she yearned, now, to be Campion.

Toby cut the rushes for her, making it all a game, and then he left. She watched him walk north along the stream and she wished she was going with him. She wished she was anywhere but at Werlatton.

She carried the rushes home, hiding the campion flowers in her apron while, unknown to her, her brother, Ebenezer, who had watched all afternoon from the shadows under the great beeches, limped to the Dorchester road and waited for their father.

She was Dorcas and she wanted to be Campion.

2

The leather belt cracked on to her back.

Matthew Slythe’s shadow was monstrous on her bedroom wall. He had brought candles to her room, unbuckled his belt and his big, heavy face was burdened with God’s anger.

‘Whore!’ Again his arm descended, again the leather slammed down. Goodwife Baggerlie, whose hands were in her hair, was pulling Campion across the bed so that Matthew Slythe could whip her back.

‘Harlot!’ He was a huge man, bigger than any man who worked for him, and he felt a thick fury within him. His daughter naked in a stream! Naked! And then talking to a young man. ‘Who was he?’

‘I don’t know!’ Her voice came in sobs.

‘Who was he?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Liar!’ He brought the belt down again, she screamed with the pain and then his anger took over. He thrashed her, shouting that she was a sinner. He was in a blind fury. The leather tip of the belt lashed on the wall and ceiling and still he drove his arm so that her screams stopped and all he could hear were her hopeless sobs as she lay curled at the pillow end of the bed. Her wrist was bloody where the belt had caught it. Goodwife Baggerlie, her hands still tangled in Campion’s hair, looked at her master. ‘More, sir?’

Matthew Slythe, his short dark hair dishevelled, his big, red face distorted in anger, gasped great lungfuls of air. The fury was still on him. ‘Whore! Harlot! You have no shame!’

Campion wept. The pain was dreadful. Her back was bruised, bleeding in places, and the leather belt had strapped her on legs, belly and arms as she had scrambled away from his fury. She said nothing; she could hardly hear her father.

Her lack of response angered him. The belt whistled again; she called out and the lash cut into her hip. The black dress hardly dulled any of the force.

Matthew Slythe’s breath was hoarse in his throat. He was fifty-four now, yet still an immensely strong man for his age. ‘Naked! Woman brought sin into this world, and a woman’s shame is her nakedness. This is a Christian house!’ He bellowed the last words as he brought the belt down again. ‘A Christian house!’

An owl hooted outside. The night wind stirred the curtains, wavered the candle flames, made the great shadow on the wall shiver.

Matthew Slythe was shaking now, his fury subsiding. He put the belt about his waist and buckled it. He had cut his hand on the buckle but he did not notice. He looked at Goodwife. ‘Bring her down when she’s tidy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

This was not the first beating she had been given; she had lost count of the times that her father had harnessed God’s wrath to his right arm. She sobbed, the pain blurring everything, and then Goodwife Baggerlie slapped her face. ‘Get up!’

Elizabeth Baggerlie, who had been honoured by Matthew Slythe with the name Goodwife after the death of his wife, was a short, fat-waisted woman with a shrewish, raw-boned face and small red eyes. She ruled Werlatton Hall’s servants and she devoted her life to the extermination of the Hall’s dust and dirt as her master devoted his to the extermination of Werlatton’s sin. The servants were driven about Werlatton Hall by Goodwife’s shrill, scouring voice, and Matthew Slythe had given her also the governance of his daughter.

Now Goodwife thrust Campion’s bonnet at her. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, girl! Ashamed. There’s a devil in you, that’s what there is! If your dear mother had known, if she’d known! Hurry!’

Campion pulled the bonnet on with nerveless fingers. Her breath came in great, sobbing gasps.

‘Hurry, girl!’

The household was awesomely quiet. The servants all knew that the beating was taking place, they could hear the belt, the screams, the terrifying anger of their master. They hid their feelings. The beating could happen to any of them.

‘Stand up!’

Campion was shaking. The pain was as it always was. She knew she would not be able to sleep on her back for at least three or four nights. She moved like a dumb thing, knowing what was to happen, submitting to the inescapable force of her father.

‘Downstairs, girl!’

Ebenezer, one year younger than his sister, sat reading his Bible in the great hall. The floor shone. The furniture shone. His eyes, dark as sin, dark as his Puritan clothes, looked unfeelingly at his sister. His left leg, twisted and shrunk at birth, stuck out awkwardly. He had told his father of what he had seen and then listened with quiet satisfaction to the searing cracks of the belt. Ebenezer was never beaten. He sought and gained his father’s approval by quiet obedience and hours of Bible reading and prayer.

Campion still cried as she came down the stairs. Her beautiful face was smeared with tears, her eyes red, her mouth twisted.

Ebenezer, his black hair cut short in the fashion that had given rise to the nickname ‘Roundheads’, watched her. Goodwife nodded to him, and he acknowledged the recognition with a slow, stately inclination of the head. At nineteen he was old beyond his years, bitter with his father’s bitterness, envious of his sister’s wholeness.

Campion was taken to her father’s study. Outside the door, as ever, Goodwife pushed down on her shoulder. ‘Down!’ Then Goodwife knocked on the door.

‘Come in!’

The ritual was always the same. After the punishment, forgiveness, and after the pain, prayer. She crawled in on hands and knees as her father demanded of her and Goodwife shut her in with Matthew Slythe.

‘Come here, Dorcas.’