A Maggot - John Fowles (52 page)

'You may sit.'

She sits, but he remains standing. He turns to John
Tudor, who has sat himself to one side at the end of the table, and
makes a quick gesture of the hand: what first is to be said is not to
be recorded.

'I must praise you for your conduct yesterday eve,
that you gave no countenance to the troublous malice Wardley and your
father showed. You gave good example there.'

'They meant no ill.'

'There we must disagree. No matter, mistress Rebecca.
An august parent may differ in all else from a humble one. But in
this, the loss of a son, they are as one, and as deserving of our
concern. Is it not so?'

'I have told all I know.'

Ayscough looks down into those fixed and now
obscurely puzzled eyes, lost by this change of attitude in him. After
that last answer he tilts his head and wig slightly in his
characteristic way, as if he expects her to say something more. But
she does not, and he walks away to the window, and looks out
thoughtfully; then turns to face her again.

'Mistress Rebecca, we lawyers must be thrifty. We
must glean our fields more than other men, we must hold the smallest
grain of truth precious, the more so when there appears great dearth
of it. I would ask more of what your present piety must find it
offensive to have made quick again.'

'Ask. I would not forget I sinned.'

Ayscough contemplates the waiting, unyielding face in
the light of the windows he stands by.

'Mistress, I will not rehearse the tale you told me
yesterday, it is fresh in your mind. I would say this first, before
we begin. If, having had this last night to reflect, you should now
wish to change your sworn evidence, you shall have no blame. If aught
of consequence was left out, if you told not exact truth by reason of
fear for your state or any other cause, you shall not suffer. On that
I give you my word.'

'I have told truth in all.'

'To the best of your belief all passed as you say?'

'Yes.'

'His Lordship was transported to Heaven?'

'Yes.'

'Mistress Rebecca, I might wish it were so, nay, I
wish it so. But I have an advantage of you. You knew his Lordship for
scarce more than a month, when he did hide much from you, as you have
admitted. I have known him for these many years, mistress. Alas he I
knew, and many others likewise knew, was not he you portray.'

Rebecca makes no answer. It is as if he has not
spoken. Ayscough waits, then continues.

'I will tell you a little of him, in great
confidence, mistress. The attention he bestowed upon you would
astound his own family or circle, who counted him the churlishest man
alive towards your ex. Why, in that he was called Poor John, closer
to dead fish than human flesh. Nor in his previous life, mistress,
had he shown the

least respect for established religion, despite his
rank. He was no more seen happily on his knees in church than
swallows out of their winter mud. I may believe you were eager to
leave your former life, most ripe for whatever should assist you in
that, very well. It is his Lordship providing that assistance, and
you but a common strumpet, mistress, which he had never set eyes on
in his life till a month before. That, on my life, I cannot credit.'

Again he waits for her to reply, again she does not.
He walks back to his chair across the table, with her eyes still on
his. He might perhaps have hoped for some weakening, some
defensiveness in them, but they retain that same strange blend of
meekness and fixity as before, almost as if she is deaf to all
reason. He goes on.

'I speak not of much else, mistress, that I likewise
cannot credit. Of your being brought to a chief place of pagan
idolatry to meet Our Lord and His Most Sacred Father, in most impious
circumstance, and scarcely the less at a Devonshire cavern, and there
more improbable still in all else. Of poor husbands and carpenters
being made divine, this female figure the Holy Spirit beside; why,
that Wardley tells me is not even known among your own prophets, nor
your June Eternal neither. Mistress Rebecca, you are no common fool;
nor woman that has not seen the world. Would you not, if you heard
such a tale as yours from another, doubt either the teller's reason,
or your own? Would you not cry, I cannot and will not believe this
absurd and blasphemous tale, it must be got up to bubble and deceive,
to blind me from some much plainer truth?'

Still Rebecca will not answer beyond staring at him,
though clearly she now must make some response. What happens is in
fact what has happened a number of times in this interrogatory. She
is extremely slow to answer. It is not the look, or seems not the
look, of one searching for words, hesitant and embarrassed; but much
more a strange pause, as if she must have Ayscough's words first
translated from a foreign language before she can frame a reply. She
lacks completely Wardley's aggressive promptness and sharpness of
repartee; on occasion it is almost as if she answers not for herself,
but waits until some mysterious adviser puts one in her mind.

'I answer that most doubted or disbelieved when
Christ first came. I have told truth plain, I can no more.'

'You are too modest, mistress. Why, Claiborne said
you had as well been actress as what you were. Have you not admitted
there was no truth in what you told Jones? You may say it was forced
then upon you to lie, but not that you did not lie.'

'It was not falsehood upon great matters.'

'To be brought to paradise to meet God Almighty and
His Son is no great matter?'

'So great it may hardly be said in words. I knew not
then how to say it in words, I know it not still, to thee. Yet so did
it come to pass, and I was given sight of Jesus Christ and His
Father; which filled my soul with balm and greatest joy by Their
presence, yea, a pleasure more than mortal.'

'The Almighty a yeoman, the Redeemer a haymaking
labourer, is that seemly?'

'Is God the Holy Father not so because he sits not in
glory on a throne, is Jesus Christ not Jesus because He groans not on
a cross? Angels not angels because I see them not with wings, that
they bear sickles in their hands, not harps or trumpets? I told thee,
I was brought up to count all images of godliness false, of Satan.
What I did see was shadows of the light alone, seen of my body; of my
soul I saw the light, and first-last object of my love.'

'You may see with your eyes what you please, since
all you see is counted false? Is it not so?'

'What I see with my eyes is of the body carnal, not
certain truth, which is of light alone. I see no less true or false
than thee in carnal seeing, or any other man and woman.'

Ayscough is left, after this exchange, in a dilemma,
though he conceals it. A modern person would not have had a shadow of
doubt that Rebecca was lying, or at least inventing. Gods, except for
an occasional Virgin Mary to illiterate Mediterranean peasants, no
longer appear; even in Ayscough's time such visions were strongly
associated with Catholic trickery, something good Protestants
expected and despised. Yet his England, even his class of it, was
still very far from our certainties. Ayscough, for instance, believes
in ghosts; he has never seen one himself, yet has heard and read too
many accounts, and by no means all from old wives and dotards, not to
credit some of them. Ghosts and spirits did not then come from an
idle, fancy-nursing imagination, they came from the very real night,
still largely unlit, of a lonely England, that still held fewer human
beings altogether than a fraction of modern London.

Ayscough has certainly supported the repeal of the
Witchcraft Act (though not for Scotland) in this very year. But this
is largely because he now associates the witchcraft cases he has
heard of, even attended as a younger man, like the occasional uses of
the ducking-stool, with defective law and always disputable evidence.
He does not say to himself there has never been witchcraft; rather
that its worst aspects have lapsed. That some malign and wicked coven
in a remote part of Devonshire still follows ancient practices
remains very far from the bounds of possibility. He may feel, he does
feel, Rebecca is nine parts hiding truth in her holier vision
(against which he has his own knowledge of his master's son to argue,
and an ancient dislike of him muted behind respect for rank); but
there remains an irreducible one part, of possible truth, he cannot
quell. He will never reveal it; yet there it sticks, a nagging thorn
in his side.

'You will not change your evidence? I repeat, you
shall not suffer.'

'Nor from truth shall I suffer. I will not change.'

'Very well, mistress. I
give you this great favour, that were we in a court of law, you
should not have. Yet you will not have it. So be it, and upon your
head if you prove false. Now we shall begin upon oath.' He sits down
and glances to John Tudor at the table-end. 'Write all.'

* * *

Q. Let us keep to thy carnal seeing, for all its
words may be false. Are you certain you had never, before his
Lordship came to you at the bagnio, seen him?

A. No, I had not.

Q. Nor heard speak of him?

A. No.

Q. Your services were often taken in advance, was it
not so?

A. Yes.

Q. Was it so with his Lordship?

A. It was writ in Claiborne's book, friend of Lord
B......, under my name.

Q. How long in advance was it writ?

A. She told me nothing of it till the morning of when
he came.

Q. This was her usual custom?

A. Yes.

Q. And you saw not what was entered, but was first
informed by what she read out?

A. I knew not who he was till after, as I said.

Q. You went out sometimes upon the town? To routs,
ridottos, the theatre, elsewhere?

A. On occasion, but never alone.

Q. Then how?

A. In larking, when we must always be with Claiborne
and her bully-boys about us.

Q. What is larking?

A. To snare sinners to the bagnio. Those who were
lured and asked for assignations were told they might have them at
the bagnio only.

Q. You or your companions never made private
assignations?

A. We suffered if we were found to cheat her.

Q. You were punished?

A. We should dine with the bully-boys. 'Twas called
so. And then were we treated worse than any punishment by law. She
ruled us thus. Better die than dine, we were used to say

among ourselves.

Q. You yourself were never so treated?

A. I have known who were.

Q. None the less, you were to be seen in public
places. Might not his Lordship have first seen you so?

A. If he did, I saw him not.

Q. Nor Dick?

A. No.

Q. After you had met, did his Lordship never say to
suggest he had seen you before? That he had long sought to meet you,
or words of that ilk?

A. No.

Q. He might have heard of you, notwithstanding? There
was gossip of you about the town?

A. Alas.

Q. Now this - did you ever, to any whatsoever,
confide you were not happy with your lot and would be rid of it?

A. No.

Q. Not in the bosom of some fellow whore?

A. I might trust none. Nor any else.

Q. Was not his Lordship's assiduity after you had
met, when he could take no ordinary pleasure in you, most
unaccustomed?

A. He had pleasure in hope, so it seemed.

Q. He gave you no sign you was chosen for purpose
other than the hope then alleged?

A. No. Not one.

Q. He asked you of your past, did he not?

A. Two or three questions, not more.

Q. Did he not ask you of your life in the bagnio?
Whether you were not tired of it, perchance?

A. He asked of it, but not whether I was tired, tho'
most men do. 'Tis nine parts fear of their own sin.

Q. How is that?

A. Is it better a man fears he sins, yet still will
sin? Some did like to call whore and still worse at the height of
their animal passion; others by the names of those they love, yea,
even to those of their wives and God forgive them, their mothers,
sisters, daughters. And others be speechless animals like those they
use. All that dwell in the flesh are damned, but those last, not
most.

Q. What doctrine is this? They that sin as coarsest
brutes are less to be blamed than they who sin with conscience of
their culpability?

A. God is now; or He is not.

Q. I follow you not, mistress.

A. He judges men by what they are, not what they
would be; and most blames not those who know no better, but those who
do.

Q. God has seen fit to open His mind to you
concerning this, is it so?

A. What harm have we done thee, master Ayscough? We
mean thee no harm, why should thee be so resolute to harm us, to
scorn when we speak plain? Our beliefs come from God, yea; but we are
humble in them, also. We do not say they are revealed to us alone;
nay, to all else beside, so be it they worship not the Antichrist. I
say this: they who dwell in the flesh are damned, more great or more
small it matters little, they are damned.