A Maggot - John Fowles (54 page)

Q. And else beside? You have said most high things of
his master. What make you of this: was it not Dick who did seem to
lead on the last morning? He, not his Lordship, who seemed best to
know when you should leave the highway, as when you should dismount
and proceed afoot? He who did first mount above while his Lordship
and you did wait below?

A. Some knowledge in him there was that more complete
men, even such as his Lordship, lack.

Q. You saw nowhere evidence to conclude either had
been in these parts on previous occasion?

A. None.

Q. It must seem that Dick had known the place, by
what he did? You have no suspicion, by what means he knew?

A. He knew not of God by rote; yet of his heart. As
beasts may return home, though lost at great distance from it, and no
man to guide them.

Q. Do you maintain, your June Eternal and your
visions was as home to him?

A. He did greet Holy Mother Wisdom when first she
came to us so a faithful dog long kept from its mistress, who now
must fawn upon her.

Q. Jones said he did run from the cavern before you
came out yourself as one in great fear and horror, that had but a
single thought, to escape. What dog does so, having refound its
mistress?

A. One that cannot cross its sin, and is not fit.

Q. Why doth this Holy Mother Wisdom, that will show
such kindness and mercy to you, show none to a poor creature? Why is
he let to run off and commit this great sin of felo de se?

A. Thee'd have me answer what only God can answer.

Q. I'd have thee answer what I may believe.

A. I cannot.

Q. Then I'll put such an answer in thy mind. Might he
not in his ignorance be moved by one likely cause alone, that he did
see his Lordship killed before his eyes, or snatched away, in some
manner henceforth lost to him as protector?

A. I know not what passed, I slept.

Q. Mistress, first, he leads you to this place, which
doth further lead to the presumption he knew what should pass there;
yet despite this, what doth pass doth bring him to end his days. Is
not this most dark?

A. All is dark if God wills it.

Q. And dark also, woman, tho' falsely so, if you
yourself will answer thus, and play the self-elected saint among the
clouds, above such flim-flam things as common reason. I marked it
when first I told you Dick was dead. What woman hears the father of
the child she bears is dead, and makes so little cry and to-do as
you? As if she but hears of a nobody's death? Yet who declares
herself later more enamoured of him than of any other, she, why she
of all women, who's known more lovers than stinking flesh has
blow-flies? Who answers now she cannot tell, she cannot know, the
matter is of no consequence? What of this?

A. This of it, I do bear his child, and yet my heart
rejoices he is dead; and that for his sake, not mine. Now he shall
rise again, without his sins.

Q. Is this your Christian fellowship?

A. I say again, thee'd have me mirror of my sex, that
thine has made. I will not suit. I have told thee I was harlot still,
I did sate his lust; for so was he, lust incarnate, as bull or
stallion. Can thee not see I am changed, I am harlot no more, I am
Christ's reborn, I have seen June Eternal? I will not suit. By faith
the harlot Rahab perished not with them.

Q. Thou art worse than reformed harlot. Thou art
bishopess, woman, why, thou'dst dare to make a theology of thy
foolish fancyings, thy flibberty-gibberty dreamings with thy June
Eternals here, thy Holy Mother Wisdoms there - what right hast thou
to coin such names, when even thy fellow conventiclers know them not?

A. I have told them to none save thee, nor shall not.
Other names beside I have not told thee, nor shall not. All are no
more than words in this world, tho' signs to greater than words
hereafter. Are thy steeple-house hymns and anthems evil, that use
words to rejoice in the Lord? Are they not to praise Him, 'less
licensed by government?

Q. Watch thy tongue.

A. If thee'll watch thine.

Q. This is brazen impudence.

A. 'Twas not I that provoked it.

Q. Enough. It was this, to thy mind Dick died by
guilt of his lust for thee?

A. So he might cross and deny his fleshly self, that
sinned.

Q. Thou wast never by child before?

A. No.

Q. Tho' with more than ample chance. How many times
wast thou ridden, of a busy night? (Non respondet.) A pox on thy
piety, answer. (Non respondet.) No matter, I may guess. What of this
bastard thou'dst palm off on thy man?

A. My barrenness was Christ's will; and His will,
that I am what I now am. My husband shall be her father in this
world, as Joseph to Jesus, she shall be no bastard.

Q. What of its father not in this world?

A. Thy world is not my world, nor Jesus Christ's
neither.

Q. I will have it said what thou'dst hide from me,
woman. Which is the most father in thy unruly mind-is it Dick or is
it his Lordship?

A. His Lordship is what he is, no less, no more;
which is not father in this world.

Q. But in another thou dost count him so?

A. Of the spirit, not the seed.

Q. Is it not divinely appointed it is sin to rebel
against the authority of man? Witnessed in the Almighty's first act,
and ever after?

A. 'Tis reported so, by men.

Q. The Holy Bible is false witness?

A. Witness from one side alone. Which fault lies in
man, not in God or His Son. Eve came of Adam's rib, so 'tis said in
the second of Genesis. In the first 'tis said God created man and
woman in His own image, male and female created He them. Which Our
Lord Jesus Christ did further speak of in the Gospel of St. Matthew,
the nineteenth chapter; and there nothing of ribs, but of Moses, who
did allow men to put away their wives. And Jesus Christ said, from
the beginning it was not so. Equal were they made.

Q. I do not believe thee a new-born woman, no, not
one tittle, beneath thy plain cap and petticoat. Thou hast found a
new vice, that is all. Thy pleasure's now to fly in the face of all
our forefathers have in their wisdom told us we must believe; there
hast thou malignantly found shot to weight a base resentment. Thou
wert drab to serve men for their pleasure, was it not so? And now
thou'dst have them serve thine, and put off the old as a ribband, a
last year's fashion, thou cunning jade. Religion is thy mask, no
more. 'Tis all the better to have thy unwomanly revenge.

A. Thee'll not snare me so.

Q. Snare, snare, what snare?

A. Thee'd have me say I am lost in revenge, as
termagant or virago; and cannot answer to the good reason for fear it
be taken for the bad.

A. I'll tell thee my evil
purpose. Most in this world is unjust by act of man, not of Our Lord
Jesus Christ. Change that is my purpose.

* * *

Ayscough stares at her, this assertion once made. Now
it is he who is slow to reply. She sits bolt upright in her armless
wood chair, hands as always on her lap, intent on his eyes, as if she
faced the Antichrist in person. Her eyes may hold still some hint of
meekness, but her face seems pinched, determined to be obdurate, to
concede nothing. Ayscough speaks at last, it seems rather more of
her, than to her.

'Thou art a liar, woman. Thou art a liar.'

There is no reaction in her expression. John Tudor
looks up at her from his shorthand, as he has often in the
interrogatory, during such pauses. She stares. So it has gone, since
the beginning; always the lawyer on the attack, always Rebecca
staring, slow-answering in her manner. It has become obvious
Ayscough's patience grows thin. He had opted to begin in a kinder,
more polite way than on the previous day; yet as things wore on, knew
she did not give to such pretended respect. Neither soft nor hard
words would break her, reveal the enigma she hid: what really
happened. Once or twice his mind slipped back to the days of the real
question; interrogation aided by rack and thumbscrew. By that method
at least one had got to the bottom; but the Bill of Rights had ended
such procedures in England. Except for high treason, they survived
only in wicked and degenerate Catholic countries like France; and for
all his faults Ayscough was English, not French. That did not prevent
him feeling a growing ill temper.

With Rebecca it was less, as it might be today, that
she felt herself and her religion insulted and disbelieved; she would
have been surprised had they not been, and acutely suspicious. Such
scepticism and persecution were commonplace. It was far more that
this interrogation did not let the religion be fully seen - its
right, its reason, its crying need, its fierce being now. In truth
these two were set apart from each other not only by countless
barriers of age, sex, class, education, native province and the rest,
but by something far deeper still: by belonging to two very different
halves of the human spirit, perhaps at root those, left and right, of
the two hemispheres of the brain. In themselves these are neither
good nor evil. Those whom the left lobe (and the right hand)
dominates are rational, mathematical, ordered, glib with words,
usually careful and conventional; human society largely runs on an
even keel, or at least runs, because of them. A sage and sober god of
evolution must regard those dominated by the right lobe as far less
desirable, except in one or two very peripheral things like art and
religion, where mysticism and lack of logic are given value. Like
Rebecca, they are poor at reason, often confused in argument; their
sense of time (and politic timing) is often defective. They tend to
live and wander in a hugely extended now, treating both past and
future as present, instead of keeping them in control and order,
firmly separated, like honest, decent right-handers. They confuse,
they upset, they disturb. So truly are these two human beings of
1736. They speak for opposite poles, though long before such physical
explanations of their contrariness could be mooted. Rebecca is driven
now to the very brink of her left-handed self, that is her kind. At
last she speaks, it seems almost to herself.

Thee play blind. Thee play blind.'

'Address me not so. I will not have it.'

She falls.

'Thee will not have it, thee will not have it. Thee's
cloud, thee's night, thee's Lucifer with thy questions, thee'd blind
me with thy lawyer's chains, that blind thee worst theeself. Can thee
not see this world is lost? 'Tis not new sinning, 'tis oldly so,
since time began. 'Tis cloth a thousand and a thousand times rent and
soiled, 'tis sin every thread, I tell thee it shall never be washed
clean nor newed again. No, never made new again by thee and thine,
nor its evil ways thrown off, that corrupt the innocent from the day
they are born. Can thee not see, thee and thine are blind?'

Ayscough rises abruptly from his chair.

'Silence, woman! I say silence.'

But Rebecca now does the unheard-of. She stands also,
and continues her denunciation; not slowly now, but rapidly, almost
to the point of incoherence.

'How dost honour Heaven? By turning this present
world to Hell. Can thee not see we who live by Christ are thy only
hope? Flee thy ways, yea, live Jesus Christ's ways now forgotten. Thy
sinning world doth mock and persecute, yea, it would bury them; thee
and thine are certain damned, and each day more. Yea, it shall come
to pass, yea, His way shall be resurrected, yea, so shall the sinners
see, yea, we of faith shall be justified; and thee and thy legion
accursed in Antichrist damned for thy blindness, thy wicked ways. By
this we shall conquer, I tell thee Christ returns, it is prophesied,
yea, His light shall shine through every deed and word, the world
shall be all window, and shining light, all evil seen thereby, and
punished in Hell, and none of the damned like thee withstand it.'

'I'll have thee thrown in gaol and whipped!'

'No, no, thee evil dwarf, thee'd bind me in thy evil
snares, thee shall not. I tell thee time past did never once return,
thee cling to it in vain, 'tis now, 'tis now, I tell thee a new world
comes, no sin shall be, no strife more between man and man, between
man and woman, nor parent and child, nor master and servant. No, nor
wicked will, nor washing of hands, nor shrugging of shoulders, nor
blindness like thine to all that breaks thy comfort and thy selfish
ways. No judge shall judge the poor, who would steal himself, were he
them; no, nor greed shall rule, likewise not vanity, nor cruel
sneers, nor feasting while others starve, nor happy shoes and shirts
while any go naked. Dost thee not see, the lion shall lie with the
lamb, all shall be light and justice; dear God, dost thee not see,
thee cannot be so blind to thy own eternity, thee cannot, thee cannot
. . . '

Ayscough throws a look at John Tudor, who has
remained head down, rapidly scribbling his shorthand.

'For God's sake, man, stir thyself. Stop her tongue.'

Tudor stands, hesitates a moment.

'I tell thee I see, I see, dost not see I see, it
comes, it-'