No Shame, No Fear (3 page)

I delved in my pack, relieved to draw back from his smell. “We brought thee a blanket, Dad. But where…?”

I looked around the cell. There were perhaps a dozen prisoners, men and women crowded together, and only two benches, enough for three or four people to sleep on; for the rest, there was straw piled against the walls. In one corner was a bucket which served as a chamberpot.

“Most of us sleep on the floor,” my father said.

He looked pale, with dark circles under his eyes. His linen was grimy and I was glad we had brought a clean shirt and could take the other home to wash.

“They have taken thy loom,” my mother said.

“I know. John Davies told me.” He smiled. “I have been much visited by Friends from round about. Don’t fear, Bess. The Lord will provide.”

This seemed the time to tell him of my plans. He gave his blessing; said I was old enough to leave home and that there were Friends in Hemsbury to watch over me.

I looked around at the people crammed into the cell; not chained felons but ordinary folk – debtors, probably, or petty thieves.

“How long will they keep thee here?” I asked, and heard a tremor in my voice.

But he didn’t know. He was calm and accepting as ever. He is a small man, slight of build, with a quiet voice; yet he has a strength that commands attention, and I knew he would endure for as long as was needful.

He gazed around at his companions.

“We wait on the Lord, and pray,” he said. “Already several here are convinced.”

At this a man near by broke in to tell us how my father had brought him to the truth.

We gave my father the food we had brought, knowing that he would share it with his cell-mates. And I thought: If they want to be rid of Quakers, as they call us, this is not the way to do it.

“There may be many more joining us here before long,” he said, “when they bring in the new act. And it
will
go through, London Friends say, in the summer.”

My mother looked agitated. “I can’t believe it will happen! What harm do we do? How can they forbid us to meet?”

He shook his head. “This Parliament is against us. There’s trouble to come. Be sure of that.”

As we walked home, I thought about what my father had said. I knew little of government and Parliament – it was a faraway thing in London. But I had begun to realize that this Parliament – the Cavalier Parliament, folk called it – which had come in last year, was even more opposed to people like us than the Puritan Parliaments had been.

“Whenever there is unrest,” my mother said, “they seek to blame us for it.”

“Why?”

“Our beliefs. They fear our ideas because we say the light is in every man and every woman, and we see all equal to one another.”

So they will persecute us, I thought. And I wondered what it would be like to live an ordinary life, such as most people live: people who never go to prison; who live their whole lives without ever being beaten, or whipped, or fined; who don’t have to find courage to endure, year after year.

My parents had that courage. They lived in the power of the Lord. But did I? I feared that I could not live up to them, that when the test came I would fail.

William

I
t was good to be home. When my father remarried, a year after my mother’s death, Anne and I feared that everything would change, and the house be refurbished; but our stepmother is a woman of our father’s age, and did not rush to change things. Now, as she came out and kissed me and led me inside, I saw that the house looked much as it always had: well furnished but homely, the hangings a little faded, the cushions scratched by cats. A great fire blazed in the hearth and I could smell beef roasting.

But my father’s business had prospered, and money had been spent. He is a wool merchant and a man of standing in the town. I noticed a portrait of him on the wall, done in oils, and he showed me the artist’s sketches for a family group which was to include me.

“We must have your likeness put in, now you are home,” he said.

I had been hearing for months of the sittings for these portraits.

Anne showed me another new possession.

“See! Mother has persuaded Father to buy it!”

A virginal stood at the end of the drawing room, in a window bay. I stepped eagerly across to it. Its polished dark wood gleamed and felt like satin under my hands. I opened the lid and saw that the keys were new and white. I tried them; played a snippet of “Bonny Sweet Robin”.

“More!” exclaimed Anne. “Oh, sit down, Will, please, and play for us! We can sing ‘The Fair Maid of London’ to that tune. Mother has the words.”

“My fingers are stiff.” I blew on them and rubbed my hands together.

“Have mercy, child,” said our stepmother. “Let your brother get warm and take a sip of wine after his journey.”

But I was already seated and playing. I love nothing better, and the instrument was a joy. My stepmother produced the song-sheet, and I soon had them all singing with me.

We finished, laughing, and Anne said, “Oh, I wish I could play like you! My playing is all clunk, clunk. But, Will, I am having dancing lessons! Mr Kirkpatrick comes every Wednesday to teach me.”

She took a few mincing steps, holding the hand of an imaginary partner, curtseyed and turned.

Our stepmother became firm. “Anne, sit down and do not be so unmannerly.”

Meriel came in then with mulled wine and pastries, and set them on a table by the fire. I smiled at Anne as she sat, upright and chastened, on her chair. She was only thirteen, although expected to behave like a lady.

Both she and our stepmother were quiet while my father and I talked.

“Mr Grace sends excellent report of you,” he said.

“I enjoyed the scholar’s life.” I told him about my studies: Latin, Greek, philosophy, mathematics, science. It was what he most wanted to hear about: his investment. For although he’d laid money aside for Anne’s dowry, I was the one he had set on a rising course: his eldest child, his only son. He had spared nothing for my education.

He leaned towards me now, enthusiasm in his face. “Will, there’s a chance for you in London. You remember Nicholas Barron, the silk merchant? He is removing to London and will be looking for an apprentice later in the year. He thinks well of what he has heard of you and wants to meet you.”

“London?” This was what I wanted, to work in London.

“Yes. I’d be sorry to let you go so far, of course – but it’s an opportunity. Barron has done well for himself; he has connections in Bruges, Antwerp and Venice. You’d be able to travel. The bond would cost me eight hundred pounds, but it could set you up in a fine way of business…”

I was not thinking of business. I was imagining Venice.

I smiled, and he said, “I see the idea pleases you. And we’d have some months together before you went. What do you say?”

“I’d like to meet Mr Barron.”

He reached over and seized my hand. “You’ll like him, Will. He’s a good master. And it’d be an excellent connection for us.”

My father always seeks connections. He is an alderman of the town and had launched into his civic duties with the same enthusiasm he applied to everything. He soon began telling me about them.

“The riff-raff society produces!” he said. “You wouldn’t believe it, Will: the idleness, thievery, drunkenness…”

“Oh, I would, Father,” I said, and laughed. “Oxford is worse than Hemsbury.”

“And do they get the fanatics too? I was in court the other day, and saw a fellow up before Justice Parkes. The man was a Ranter, or Quaker, or some such; accused of causing an affray in church—”

“In
church
?”

“Yes! They go there on purpose to cause trouble – challenge the priest, interrupt the sermon. Arrogant fellow, this one! Kept his hat on in court. Refused to take it off. Stood there in his hat, answering the judge back, and theeing and thouing him as if they were equals! The usher snatched his hat off him, the fellow took it back – a most unseemly tug-of-war.”

“And what happened to him?” I was not really interested in the man. At the mention of Quakers an image had come into my mind of the girl I had met that morning.

“Oh, he was found guilty; fined. But he won’t pay, you know. He’ll lie in jail; make a martyr of himself. That’s what these people do. There are too many of them about. They meet at the Seven Stars in Cross Street, and other places around. But Parliament is to bring out a new law against them in the next session.”

That evening, unpacking in my bedroom, I was at last alone with my thoughts. The excitability and chatter of both father and sister had run over me all afternoon; my stepmother had fussed; and the servants had been set to airing sheets and heating a warming-pan for the bed. Meriel had brought hot water and scented soap to my room. And Joan, in the kitchen, had remembered that I love gingerbread and had made some specially.

Now I shut the door on them all. I put my shirts and other spare clothes in the chest; looked in vain for somewhere to arrange a few books, and left them on a chair.

The scholar’s life had suited me. But now, it seemed, I was to become a silk merchant’s apprentice, my career mapped out already. My father probably had a future bride in mind too: another connection. For three years I had read and studied and translated, and the world had seemed to expand and become full of possibilities. Now the time had come to channel my life into its adult course. I liked the thought of London, and the prospect of travel. But the bond, if it was made, would bind me to Nicholas Barron for seven years. Seven years! I’d be twenty-four. It seemed an eternity.

My window overlooked the street. I opened it and breathed in the cold, still air. A house door opposite opened, and a woman came out. A cat miaowed around her feet. She placed a dole-cupboard on the street for vagrants, then reached up to light the lamp above her door. The sky was almost dark, and lights were blooming all along the street. I knew that under the overhang of the upper storey, Meriel would have lit ours.

There was no view, but I could smell the river, and I imagined it winding through the town and out to the countryside, field and barn dark under the stars; imagined the Quaker girl asleep, her hair loose but its colour still hidden.

That Quaker my father had seen sent to jail had stood up in church and interrupted the priest. Why? What did he have to say that was so urgent, so important that he would risk prison for it?

“They meet at the Seven Stars in Cross Street,” my father had said.

And I knew I would go there. Just once. Just to find out.

Susanna

I
t was a rare treat for me to go to town. Sometimes a pedlar came to the village, and we might buy threads or a thimble or cup from his pack. No trinkets. My mother and I never wore such things. I owned two dark wool skirts and a finer one for special days. This skirt was striped in blue and dark red and I wore it with a blue bodice that dipped in a V towards the stomach.

My mother was uncertain about what I should wear to meet Mary Faulkner – and then accused herself of light-mindedness for being concerned about such things.

“I think the striped skirt,” I said.

“But perhaps it is too fine for a servant…”

“I shall not wear it to work in. And folk dress finer in Hemsbury.”

She agreed. She found me a plain linen collar to cover the open neckline, an apron and dark stockings. I put on my only pair of shoes: sturdy brown leather, with plain laces. My hair was hidden beneath a loose hood and a hat.

She stood back and looked at me. “Thou’ll do.”

“Pretty,” said Deb, and my mother frowned.

I wished I could see myself. I’d often wished this. We had no mirror – that would be vanity – but there was a pond in the woodland that backed onto our holding, and sometimes I would look in there, or in a pail of water. I’d see a dark, wavering reflection that never came clear. I knew I had no pockmarks, that my teeth were good, that my hair curled naturally. But on the backs of my hands and arms were faint golden freckles. Once I tried washing these with distilled water of feverfew, but was still freckled afterwards.

My mother went with me to Hemsbury. I wanted to go alone, but she was set on meeting Mary Faulkner. We walked halfway there, then got a lift on a cart into the centre of the town. I gazed around at the crowds of people, the shops with drop-down counters onto the street, the gloves and purses, linen goods, bolts of wool – Welsh russet, Irish fledge. My mother lingered awhile by the cloth merchants’ shops, then asked the way to Broad Street, to the stationer’s.

We recognized it by the sign hanging above the door: a painting of a hand and quill pen. Inside, the shop was dark and smelled of ink and leather. I glanced around and saw stacks of paper, quill pens, slates, notebooks. At the back of the shop were some shelves of books and a step-stool to reach them. A man sat at a table there, peering short-sightedly and writing in a ledger. Behind him was a half-open door, and from beyond it we could hear raised voices, one of them a woman’s – a masterful voice.

The man looked up at us, and my mother asked for Mary Faulkner. While he went to fetch her I looked around at the books. Not all were new, and while some had soft leather bindings that made me long to touch them, others were unbound, or roughly bound in vellum that had curled.

The door opened at the back of the shop and Mary Faulkner came in. I saw at once that what I wore was unimportant, that she was one who would see past such things. She was a thin woman of fifty or so in a plain cap and apron, the apron none too clean and a smear of ink on her cheekbone. She was wiping inky hands on a rag and looked irritated, but she smiled when she saw us and said, “Forgive the noise. I am served by fools. You’ll be Elizabeth and Susanna Thorn from Long Aston, come seeking work?”

I felt fascinated by the surroundings, eager to see more, and yet overawed by so much evidence of learning. “I don’t know books,” I said. “Only dairying and spinning and such.”

“Thou need not know books,” she said. “Except to sweep the floor around them, and maybe dust them and put them away. Couldst do that, Friend Susanna?”