As Meat Loves Salt (28 page)

I woke with a violent pang in the chest: someone had touched my neck. I must have slept at last, for Ferris was risen without my knowledge, his hair white in the bluish light. He was in shirtsleeves. Clutching my snapsack, I rose and followed him across stiffened mud which crunched beneath my boots. As I did so I felt a familiar stab and trickle: the thigh wound opening. At the entrance to the courtyard he stopped and waited for me to come up.

'You've left your jacket,' I hissed, trying to still the thumping of my heart.

He put one finger to his lips, then pointed. Not ten yards off men lay asleep.

I could not see our cart and bent to whisper in his ear, 'Now where?'

'Follow me. If you hear anything, if they wake, stop dead.'

We passed between heavily laden wagons, the inside of my shirt all sweat and my mouth as dry as ever it had been before the assault. From inside my snapsack came a
clink
and I bit my lip, expecting the guards to rise up roaring. This was where the priests had been tied. Now there were so many carts there, a man could see nothing but their sides. London was licking her lips for the fruits of sin. Ferris pulled me alongside a covered wagon and out of the moonlight. I jumped, feeling his fingers on my face in the dark; he tugged at my hair to make me decline my head.

'There are men in these,' he mouthed into my ear. 'Yonder is ours.' He turned my jaw with his hand and I saw a cart standing in the full beams of the moon. Something moved next to it.

'The guards are there,' I gasped.

Ferris at once pinched my lips together. He pulled my head down again and I knew then what a fright I had given him, for his breathing came fast.

'Our friend. Come on.'

He stepped out and I was very content to let him go first. Surely moon was never so bright before, nor frost so crackling. As we drew near, the thing I had seen shaped itself into the ghostly driver of a ghostly cart. I thought of an old wives' tale told in the country, round Beaurepair, of the Man of Bones: to see him was to die within the year. The apparition remained motionless until we came up to it, and then pointed to where we should mount. Ferris stepped up delicately, and lowered himself onto some sacks. I tried to do the same. The wood groaned under my weight and the base of the thing tilted; sweat sprang in the palms of my hands so that they slipped along the rail. The grey man covered his face. Then I was in and lying beside Ferris, seeing his breath curl upwards to the moon.

My friend reached down and pulled what looked like a carpet over him, offering one edge to me. The rich thing showed oddly dulled by moonlight, as if silvered and soiled by some monstrous snail. Between us we silently tugged it this way and that until we were covered. It shut out some of the cold, but the dust from it put me in a
terror lest I sneeze.
If we are caught,
I wondered,
will they shoot him before my face?

The Man of Bones moved silently about, tying and untying. A hood was hoisted over us, and he lay down at the opening of it as if to sleep.

'Rest.' Ferris's breath warmed my cheek. 'If I snore, wake me, and if you hear anything else, pull the carpet over our heads.'

'Trust me for
that 1
I whispered back. 'What if I need to piss?'

'Don't.'

'Would you had told me before.' My knees knocked into his; I tried to get more comfortable. The smell of carpet took me back to the hangings at Beaurepair; I saw Izzy smiling, swishing about with his Turkish withy, and sent up a prayer that he might be safer and warmer that night than I.

It seemed but a minute before the carpet slapped at me, pressing on my face and limbs so that I feared to be smothered. I screwed my eyes shut against the dust. On opening them again, I observed a frail

subterranean light trickling in. Ferris, roused by the sudden movement, had raised an edge of the carpet on his fingers so that we could breathe. More weight slammed onto us: the man was loading up.

'We'll suffocate,' I whispered.

'Be still.'

Metal jingled; the man was hitching up his horse. Next we felt the cart rock as he mounted, and the whip cracked.

We were on our way. Under the carpets Ferris's other hand pressed mine for courage, as I had once pressed Caro's. Something scuttled across my scalp. When I shifted, trying to get at it, the breeches pulled the scab from my thigh once more. We lay silent, jolting to the
clop clop
of hooves, listening as best we could to those about us who went on with the morning life of the army. Most of the time the sounds were padded, indistinct, but some things came sharp and clear: the click as a catch was tried, a sword clattering on stones, and most of all, men's voices raised in complaints or exultation: this man was recounting a jest played on one Joseph, another was being scolded for not minding his weapon. There was a strangeness in it. We were already out of that life, and would no longer speak its language. No more weevil cheese, or pike drill, or lying in fields. No more Rupert Cane. I allowed myself a smile in the dark womb where Ferris and I crouched beneath the carpets, waiting to be reborn.

'Here's one still alive, at any rate.'

The hood was back; the carter's face, upside-down and haloed by blinding sun, grinned at me. To my left Ferris groaned, dusting the motes and straws from his cheeks.

'Let me out a minute,' I cried, struggling from under the layers of stuff. Leaping down onto the grass, I at once relieved myself against the wheel. Ferris followed suit, and while standing there asked the man how far we were come from Basing.

'Two or three miles,' came the reply.

As one, we turned and looked back down the road. A blackness hung on the air above the horizon.

'You see that,' the man said.

Ferris nodded. 'Still smouldering. That's slighted it.'

'Slighted?' I asked. It seemed a gentle word for what we had seen.

'Burnt it, broken it utterly. There were not men enough to hold the place.'

Feeling my bowels move, I went behind a bush at the roadside for even after the army I hated to be seen at such private business. I fancied I heard the carter laugh at my finicking ways. We mounted again and this time rode on top of the load.

I patted the carpets. 'Who will have these, friend?'

'Any that can afford them, your nobility, citizenry,' he called back. 'They look brave on a table.'

'Did you pick them up cheap?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'I buy for another. There's two or three lots gone already.'

Ferris stretched on top of the load and gazed at the sky. I whispered to him, 'What did you pay this man?'

'Nothing. We spoke awhile; he took to me.'

'You could give him that other shirt you found.'

'I gave it Nat, last night.'

Something now struck me, and I stared at him. 'Ferris, where's your coat?'

He crossed his arms.

'You gave Nathan that too! And your snapsack - the purse you got at Basing—'

'Remembrances,' he muttered.

'But did he not guess—?'

'I put the snapsack under his head, to find when he wakes.'

His eyes told me to leave off. I did so.

The land peeled away on either side of us, the hillslopes steaming like the flanks of a beast. From time to time we saw empty carts coming in the opposite direction, the drivers laying on the whip in their eagerness to seize some of Paulet's jewels and plate.

'Eaten up already,' Ferris bawled maliciously after the first to pass us. 'Picked clean and a fire set in the ruins.'

The driver never looked back but went straight on.

'O well, let him make the journey,' my friend said, flinging himself down on the carpets. He was out of humour and I could guess at his
contemplation:
Nat has missed me by now. How does he take it?

'Do you know this country?' I asked, to distract him.

He shook his head. 'All I know is that this is the wool route.'

'What shall we do in London?'

'Live with my aunt, eat, sleep. Go from brutes to men.'

I thought how it would be to wash after all this time.

'We must get you some new garments,' Ferris went on, looking at my botched-together coat, and again I recalled the one I had worn for the betrothal, and lost.

'That means a tailor,' I said. At Beaurepair we were allowed three suits a year, but these were often hand-me-downs, except those for myself, whom no other man's clothes would fit.

'We will get you a tailor directly. But my uncle was near as big as you. Some of his things will do until yours are made.'

I was struck by the decision in his voice. 'Ferris, are you rich?'

He hesitated. 'I am not poor. You need not trouble yourself about tailors.'

In that speech I heard how little I really knew of our coming life, and I shivered with hope and fear.

We were three days journeying to London. It might have been quicker but for a thaw that set in, softening the roads and sometimes obliging myself and Ferris to get out and help clear the wheels. I hated doing this, for the heaving and slithering was horribly like that time when I had helped drag the pond.

'Watch the goods, lads,' said the carter warningly as we struggled back into the cart after a long hard push that left my legs trembling. We tied my boots and Ferris's shoes to the horsegear and spread my coat, inside out, upon the merchandise to keep off our muddy hose and breeches, before falling asleep. Our powers of sleep astonished me; I was seemingly making up for every hour lost over the past month, and passed in and out of the day like one in a fever. Ferris, who looked worn to skin and bone, did likewise, and in this way we both of us escaped our wounds awhile.

My snapsack was buried in the carpets, out of reach of prying hands. No pay remained to me at all; we had been promised our arrears in November. However, I still had the ruby necklace and the candlesticks, which I thought would serve for Ferris and myself at the inns. Our deliverer, however, put up at houses that he knew, and when the horse was securely locked away Ferris and I were left sleeping under the hood to guard his merchandise. This suited me well, for I kept the plunder for myself.

The first night was passed at the house of a Mistress Ovie, and Bradmore's relations with her it were better not to enquire into. To be sure, she kissed him in full view of us, and not coldly neither, as the cart set off. We were greeted by a woman the second night also, but this one was evidently his married sister. The husband, one Walters, came out to see the cargo and gaped to see men stored along with the goods, at which Bradmore laughed heartily.

That night I slept deep and dreamless. While the sky was still grey I woke, and found myself full of a blind joy, the like of which I had not felt since the
blessed time,
as I privately called that part of my life unsoiled by Walshe and my later doings. Ferris, as usual, slept on; I had already observed how he hated to rise of a morning. I studied his face. Though too thin, it was a good one. With the scarred cheek turned away from me and thus unseen, there was grace in his looks, and strength. His mouth curled upwards as if his dreams were happy, and his eyelids fluttered; I wondered what he saw, and wished he would wake. My wish was granted, for he straightway mumbled something and began an awkward scratching of his neck.

'O, I am eaten alive,' came his voice, thick with yawns. His eyes opened on mine. 'Crawling. Are not you?'

'Ever since I joined up.'

Ferris now smiled. 'Today—' he broke off to claw at his thigh, 'there will be clean linen. I have not let myself think of it till now, for fear of weakening. Feather beds, coal fires. Conserves.' He stretched himself out under the canvas hood. 'But most of all, clean linen.'

'To each his Paradise,' I said.
'Methinks the proverb should not be

'—
the wars are sweet to those that know them not,'
he finished. 'But where is Bradmore?'

'He is not late, but you are early this once,' I told him, amused by his impatience.

"This is London day! Ah, Jacob, when you know my aunt—' He raised a finger for silence. The horse was heard crossing the cobbles towards us and a minute later Bradmore pulled back the hood, letting in a crisp new air that made us blink.

'Here, lad, catch hold of this. For you, from my sister.'

I took what he thrust at me. It was a pasty and a piece of cheese, wrapped in a paper.

'Your sister is a true Christian,' said Ferris.

'She is indeed, though it's I that say it.'He laid a jug of ale next us. 'No drinking that on the road, eh, or we shall have spills. She would have fetched you in the house last night, only I told her you were needed out here. "Lord, sister," I said, "they're young men, soldiers. The ground's as good as a feather bed to them."'

Ferris grinned at me.

Bradmore had by now backed the horse between the shafts. His sister came out for a last embrace and kiss before we pulled away to the sound of her little ones crying, 'Farewell, Uncle Harry.'As soon as we were out of their sights, I pissed from the back of the cart, kneeling on the folded-down hood; I had wanted to do this ever since the idea was come to me the day before.