Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (307 page)

The Master Outreweltius and old Jan were very much afraid, for they said that all the wood was alive with devils. And once they saw a man of huge stature, who appeared to be covered with yellow fire and paint and to glide noiselessly over the ground, holding a great bow, and to vanish suddenly.

But, “Hurry on, my masters,” Edward Colman said, “for it is very late. Let us come to the water’s edge.” And he bade them not to despair; for assuredly these were men, not devils, since the arrow, which he had drawn from the soil, had mortal feathers and a stick of plain wood.

“And,” said he, “if ye fear them for devils, assuredly they, who are men, fear us for gods, who carry thunder with us and are impregnable to arrows.”

It took them nearly all that afternoon to go over the shoulder of the hill, as if it were ten miles of hard going; and over the tree-tops the sun began to sink.

CHAPTER VI
.

ON that day, which was the 4th of September, 1609, towards seven in the evening Anne Jeal was sitting watching Magdalena Colman, Edward Colman’s wife, at her sewing, when there came a message to Magdalena that a French fisherman was below that had brought a letter from her lord, and desired a fee of five crowns for the bringing it from the Newfoundland.

Anne Jeal turned more pale than death, but Magdalana Colman looked up from above her sewing, hardly moving her face, and commanded that the Frenchman be sent up to her. The man came up into the large room. His clothes, of a make of brown grogram, were encrusted white with salt, his beard was very long, and his hair fell about his shoulders; his hands were huge and knotted, like the roots of trees, and there were fish-scales still on his high boots. But his face beneath this wildness of brown hair was very jovial, because he was going home.

He held a large packet under his elbow, and, in a mixture of French and English — for Edward Colman had chosen him because he spoke some English — he cried out —

“
Ohi
,
la commère
, I have joyful news for you!” He held out the packet; it was covered with cloth and tied with twine and sealed with a yellow wax.

“I would gladly give it you for nothing,” he said, “for it makes one’s heart glad to bring good tidings from a seafaring husband to a good wife. But — what would you? — this ten crowns shall be shared by my crew, who are all poor men.”

Magdalena rose slowly, and going to a cupboard of Spanish inlaid wood, all yellow and greenish, where she kept her money and the money that she had made for Edward Colman by merchandise and ship hire, she opened the big doors very deliberately.

“Before God,” Anne Jeal said, “you do not hurry!”

“Oh, maiden,” the fisherman answered her, “such joy as this that a wife feels you do not yet know. It is a thing that makes the heart beat slowly for a while, because of the surprise.”

He whistled a little Breton air which goes with the words —

“Il était une barque à trente matelôts,”
and then uttered with a great breath, “Damn! how good it is to whistle and not to fear the rising of the wind.”

Anne Jeal rose to her feet; she beat her heel on the floor through sheer impatience.

Magdalena came slowly back with the five crowns in her large hand. She paid them to the fisherman and took from him the heavy parcel, which she set upon the table; her blue eyes were shiny, as if varnished.

“Oh!” the fisherman said; “tears of joy. How it is good to have a good wife weep tears of joy for one.”

Magdalena drew up her neck a little so that she had a certain air of matron’s dignity with all her large and gentle placidness. Anne Jeal clenched her fingers till her nails tore her soft palms.

“Was my lord and master well when you saw him?” Magdalena asked at last, and Anne Jeal laughed harshly.

“Ah, it is always that they ask!” the Frenchman said. He swept his long brown curls back and raised his right hand. “Consider to yourself,” he said, “how we poor fishermen in our coggers are fishing in the gloom. And so we see sailing before the wind a great Dutch ship, the foam curling over her bows. Like that!”

He made with a sweep of his arm a wide curve, the outline of a huge wave. Then he went on to detail the meeting, imitating the hail from ship to ship, the declarations of brotherhood, the jargon they talked in. And so, at last, he brought in Edward Colman.

“Such a gallant ship,” he said, “such a steadfast man! for sure you need have no fears. And how he loves you! Ah,
par Saint Ygoviono,
how his eyes smiled and danced at your name! And such words as he used: My wife, my good wife, my sole treasure! And so and so—”

“Had they not had great storms?” Anne Jeal interrupted him harshly.

“Huge storms!” the fisherman said. “Such waves, such lightning, such hail! Oh, you would have said there were fiends all around them. But,” and he turned again his face to Magdalena, “you need have no fear,
la commère.
For it is the noblest ship in the world. And a crew so gallant and so lion-hearted. And your good man the most gallant and lion-hearted of them all. And so he loves you that it makes him the less to fear tempests, for the more the wind howls the more he thinks of you!”

“Had he not been very ill?” Anne Jeal asked. “That I do not know,” the Frenchman said. “But I never saw a man so well as he was then. So upright, so confident, with such bright eyes and such a carriage. Ah,
la commère
, have no fear. It is not such a man as that that illness will soon kill. No,
par Saint Ygoviono!
”

“Good French fisherman,” Magdalena Colman said, “I will go to find many delicacies and sweetmeats for you that this night your shipmates and you may share the happiness you have brought me.”

“Gentle English woman,” he said, and he swept the floor with his hat, “those are brave words, and I know you would be rid of me quickly to be alone with your joy.”

Anne Jeal fell upon him when she was gone, with the words —

“Are those not lies you have told? Has his ship not much suffered, and is he not very ill?”

“Maiden,” the hairy Frenchman said, “I think those are quite true words. For, though they had great storms, the
Half Moon
is a gallant vessel. And her man appeared to my eyes to be in very fine health and complexion of the mind.”

“I think you lie,” she said, and she came near him, like a stealthy cat, and gazed into his eyes.

He crossed himself and said — using two Breton saints called Pedrodal and Caramuton to back up Saint Ygoviono —

“You are a very anxious woman. One would say you do not wish to hear the good truth. Yet it is quite true.”

“His shipmates?” Anne Jeal asked, “they were all in good health? They were not affrighted by the tempests?”

“Why,” the Frenchman said, “if you have a lover on that ship you may be well contented. For I never saw men so contented!”

Anne Jeal threw up her hands with a passionate gesture of rage and despair.

She had observed very carefully the maxims of the sorcerer in London, who had told her to give over her plotting, to spy upon Magdalena Colman, and, by enchantments, so to beset Edward Colman upon the seas with storms and fearful apparitions, that at the last he should return to her awearied and affrighted and a beaten man.

 
She had left his waxen image alone and unharmed, all save once since then, for she could not bear to think that she was killing him. Only once, when she had been unable to bear never hearing his voice she had sweated it a little before a fire — three weeks or so before — and she had heard his voice then, uttering the words, “I
believe this is death coming to me!
”

This sweating she had done, not to harm him so much as from sheer longing to hear his voice. It was unbearable not to do it when she had always that remedy. But she carried the image always with her, beneath her farthingale or between her breasts, for she was afraid that, if she let if out of her keeping, by some mischance it might break, and so he would die.

She had told all the townsmen that men said lies against her if they said she had sought to do ill to Edward Colman. It was all lies, she said, invented by Justus Avenel, who hated her and had had her taken prisoner. In London, she said, where she had seen the King, she had prayed him to pardon Edward Colman and to confirm the charters of Rye town. And the King had promised her these things.

With Magdalena Colman she had a different tale, for she could not do away with the words she had uttered in the Pastor’s hut. So she compassed that she had loved Edward Colman with such a passion that she had denounced him. But then she had been half mad. When she had understood what she had done she had gone up to London to pray the King to pardon him, and this the King had promised her. And she said that she had found another lover — for the cornet of horse pursued her still with his suit, and every Monday he sent her presents of jewels and eggs from Lewes. And she told Magdalena that she loved Edward Colman now only as his cousin or sister, and that, to make further atonement, she would be Magdalena’s servant till her husband came back. And she begged Magdalena to keep her guilty secret from the townsmen. And she said —

“As you are so rich in your husband’s perfect love, pardon me who was starved.”

Magdalena said nothing at all of whether or no she believed Anne Jeal, but with a placid silence she accepted Anne Jeal’s offer of service, setting her tasks of sewing, for Anne Jeal sewed very beautifully, and assigning her a room in that house to sleep in so that at times the humiliation had been more than Anne Jeal could easily bear. But she set her teeth hard at these crises, and she hung round Magdalena, spying over her for ever and always, hardly keeping her fingers off her face, but gloating over the thoughts of what one day she should do and say to her, when Edward Colman came back a beaten and trembling man to be her own slave. And in the evening, with her sieves and pease, she worked hard at conjuring up the spirits that should break his spirit.

Therefore it had pleased her very much when she had heard him say, last time she had sweated his image —

“I
believe this is death coming to me.”

For she was certain that, when she proved to him that she could slay him thus at great distances, he would forsake Magdalena to save his own life. So she had redoubled her efforts to stand well with the fair girl, and made mocking faces where she sat behind her back.

And towards June there came news that the King had confirmed the charters of the town, and a little later there came from Amsterdam a Dutch lawyer called Husum, who bore the pardon for Edward Colman with the King’s seal and the signature of the King’s Attorney. Then all the townsmen believed that Anne Jeal was innocent, and Justus Avenel was disgraced and avoided in the streets, and he began to drink himself to death in his solitude, and on Midsummer Day Anne Jeal’s father was again elected to be the Mayor.

So the time had glided very tranquilly away, save that every three weeks or so Anne Jeal was pervaded by such a fit of longing rage that she must go out at night into deserted places and scream, so that it was said in Rye that there was a new kind of ghost abroad, and it was seriously debated whether thirteen clergymen should not be sent to Gallows Marsh to exorcise the spirits that screamed unrestfully there. But on the whole Anne Jeal was so sure Edward Colman was being, bent to her will, that, save for her exorcisms, she could rest very much in peace, and she set her mind to work to invent tales against Magdalena about men, for indeed the townsmen of Rye gave themselves much trouble to shield and protect her. They sent many cargoes abroad in her ships and let her sit higher in church than was her real due, for, though she was christened, there remained about her a savour of Anabaptists, and every day she visited her father.

Thus Anne Jeal had felt a sense of tranquillity and of such secureness descend on her as she had not felt for many months now. So that, when the Frenchman, with his hair about his ears, said that Edward Colman was well and confident, she was for a moment sure that he lied. But, by the time Magdalena came back to thank him and bid him depart with her apprentice, such a bitter rage seized upon the girl that she could hardly hold her tongue.

Magdalena stood in the midst of the dim room and appeared to think for a long time after they had heard the last sound of the fisherman’s boots die away on the stairs. In the dusk the parcel of cloth showed its seals like glimmering disks of blood, and Anne Jeal prowled round it like a cat round a jug of milk that she dared not touch.

“By God!” she said at last, “you do not hasten as I would to read my husband’s words.”

“Why,” Magdalena answered slowly, “these days have seemed very long: shall I not draw out my joy for as long as I may?”

Anne Jeal shrugged her shoulders up to her ears. “Like a boy with succades!” she sneered bitterly. “Even so,” Magdalena answered. “And I give time, too, to thanking God for this news and praying Him to make me not over glad.”

Her emotions had made her more talkative than she had ever been, and this touch of showing what passed in her inner self filled Anne Jeal with a gloating and a savage curiosity.