Bernard Cornwell - A Crowning Mercy

‘No!’ She had not meant to speak aloud.

‘My dear?’ He looked eagerly at her.

‘No, no, no!’ She could feel the tears now and she rushed her words, hoping the speech would hold them back, as her resolve to submit with silent dignity broke almost as soon as it was born. ‘I want to marry, sir, and I want to marry in love, and have my children in love, and raise them in love.’ She stopped, the tears flowing now, and she knew the futility of her words, the unreality, and her head throbbed with the horror of marriage to this slack-lipped, piss-splashing, wind-passing man. She was angry, not at him, but because she had broken into tears in front of him. ‘I do not want this marriage, I do not want any marriage, I would rather die …’ She stopped. She would rather die than have her children raised in Matthew Slythe’s house, but she could not say so for fear the words would be passed back to him. Despite her incoherence and her tears, she was seething with anger at Scammell.

He was aghast. He wanted this marriage, he had wanted it ever since Matthew Slythe had proposed the settlement, because marrying Dorcas Slythe would make Samuel Scammell into a very rich man. Then, last night, he had seen her and he had wanted the marriage even more. Matthew Slythe had not described his daughter and Scammell had been astonished by her beauty.

Last night he had not believed his good fortune. She was a girl of astounding beauty and of calm presence who stirred the fleshly lust in him. Now that same grave, dutiful girl had turned on him, scorned him, and he stood up, frowning.

‘A child must be obedient to its parents, as a wife is obedient to her husband.’ He had adopted his preacher’s voice, stern and full. He was nervous, but Matthew Slythe had impressed on him the need for firmness. ‘We live in God’s love, not an earthly love of flesh and pleasure.’ He was in his stride now, as if talking to the congregation of Saints. ‘Earthly love is corruptible, as flesh is corruptible, but we are called to a heavenly love, God’s love, and a sacrament holy to Him and His Son.’ She shook her head, helpless against the Puritan harangue, and he stepped towards her, his voice louder. ‘“Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth!”’

She looked at him, bitterness in her soul, and she gave him a text in return. ‘“My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.”’

Scammell glared at her. ‘Am I to tell your father that you reject his wishes?’

She was beaten and she knew it. If she rejected this man then her father would lock her in her room, feed her on bread and water and then, as the sun faded in the west, he would come to her, the thick leather belt in his hand. He would flail it at her, bellowing that this was God’s will and that she had sinned. She could not bear the thought of the bruises and the blood, the whimpering beneath the whistling lash of the belt. ‘No.’

Scammell rocked back and forth. He dropped his voice to a whining, unctuous level. ‘It is understandable that you are upset, my dear. Women are prone to be upset, indeed and indeed. The weaker sex, yes?’ He laughed, to show that he was sympathetic. ‘You will find, my dear, that God has made a woman’s way easy through obedience. Let the woman be subject to her husband. In obedience you will be saved the unhappiness of choice. You must see me now as your shepherd, and we will live in the house of the Lord for ever.’ He leaned forward, magnanimous in victory, to kiss her on the cheek.

She stepped back from him. ‘We are not yet married, sir.’

‘Indeed and indeed.’ He saved his balance by stepping forward. ‘Modesty, like obedience, is pleasing in a woman.’ He felt bitter. He wanted this girl. He wanted to paw at her, to kiss her, yet he felt a fear of her. No matter. In a month they would be married and she would be his property. He clasped his hands together, cracked his knuckles, and walked on to the road. ‘Shall we continue, my dear? We have a letter for Brother Hervey.’

The Reverend Hervey, vicar of the parish of Werlatton, had been christened Thomas by his parents, but in the sudden religious zeal that had swept England in recent years, a zeal that had erupted into war between King and Parliament, he had taken a new name. Like many Puritans he felt that his name should be a witness to the truth and he had prayed long and hard over the choices. One of his acquaintances had adopted the name of And I Shall Bind Them In Fetters Of Iron Smith, which the Reverend Hervey liked, but thought a little over long. There was also the Reverend His Mercy Endureth For Ever Potter who dribbled and had the shakes, and if Potter had been called to glory then Hervey might have taken that name, despite its length, but the Reverend Potter lived up to his adopted name by living into a sickly and senile ninth decade.

Finally, after much searching of the scriptures and much frenzied prayer seeking God’s guidance, he settled on a name that was neither too long nor too short, and which he felt was distinguished by force and dignity. He had made a name for himself and the name would make him famous and all England would know of the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey.

For indeed, the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey was a man of vaulting ambition. He had been fortunate, five years before, when Matthew Slythe had plucked him from an unhappy curacy and offered him the living of Werlatton. It was a good living, paid for by the Hall, and Faithful Unto Death received no less than thirty pounds a year from Matthew Slythe. Yet he yearned for more, for his ambition was overpowering, and he suffered torments of jealousy when other divines gained the fame that was denied to him.

He was now thirty-two years old, unmarried, and, despite his fashionable change of name, quite unknown outside the county. This was not entirely Faithful Unto Death’s fault. Two years before, in 1641, the Irish Catholics had rebelled against their English overlords and sent a shiver of horror through Protestant England. This shiver, Faithful Unto Death decided, would become the wave that would sweep him into prominence. He wrote a pamphlet, that lengthened to a book, that became a manuscript equal to two books, purporting to be an eyewitness account of ‘The Horrors of the Late Massacres Perpetrated by the Irish Catholicks Upon the Peacefulle Protestants of That Lande’. He had not been to Ireland, nor was he acquainted with anyone who had, but he did not see this as a hindrance to his first-person account. God, he knew, would guide his pen.

He equipped himself with a map of Ireland from which he drew the names of towns and villages, and had he kept his account brief and bloody, then he might well have been rewarded by the fame he sought so eagerly. Yet brevity was not within his power. Feverishly he wrote, night after night, his pen embellishing his nightmare thoughts. Rape came easily to his imagination, though at too great length, and by the time his catalogue of ravished Protestant virgins reached the London book publishers, two other men had already printed their own histories and had offered them for sale. The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey had missed the tide. His book was returned, unprinted.

If the world’s ignorance of his own abilities was one disappointment to Faithful Unto Death, then there was another equal sadness in his life. A clergyman with thirty pounds a year should not have lacked for a bride, but Faithful Unto Death had fixed his ambition on just one girl, a girl he thought a fit and meet companion for his rising life and a girl who could endow him with worldly goods. He wanted to marry Dorcas Slythe.

He had wanted her for five years, watching her from his low pulpit and seeking every opportunity to visit Werlatton Hall and stare at her beauty. The absence of other suitors had encouraged him to approach Matthew Slythe and propose himself as her husband, but Slythe had scorned him. He had been short, brutal, and unmistakable. The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey was never to speak of the matter again. Yet Slythe’s dismissal had not diminished Hervey’s lust. He wanted Dorcas so much that it hurt.