Restoration (32 page)

"Ambrose," said Pearce, "will you leave these people out in the storm?"

Ambrose went to the window: "The storm is moving east," he said. "It is passing."

"They must not come in!" said Edmund.

"No," said Ambrose, "they must not come in. And they will not. They will read the bill we have posted and they will leave."

"How if they cannot read?" asked Pearce.

Ambrose hesitated a moment before replying. "One of us will go to the gate and talk to them through the grille."

"I shall go," offered Hannah.

"No," said Ambrose calmly. "Edmund will go. He will go directly, for he does not mind the rain."

I watched from the door of Whittlesea House as Edmund, naked except for his frayed under-drawers, jogged out to the gate, soaping his chest as he went, and stuck his head into the small iron grille inset into the heavy portal. I could not hear what he said, for the drumming of the rain on the earth and on the buildings was very loud. Nor could I, from this vantage point, see the visitors, but it appeared they were very insistent for Edmund was so long at the gate he had succeeded in washing all of himself except his legs while he parleyed with them.

He at last came away and bent down to soap his knees and his calves. By this time, however, the storm had indeed moved off in an easterly direction and there was not enough rain falling to rinse off the lather he had made. Edmund threw his head back and glared angrily at the clearing sky before making his way to the pump, where he completed his ablutions. Only then did he return to us and tell us that the visitors had been the mother and sister of my would-be murderer, Piebald, and that they had come out from Puckeridge, some way north of London.

I went up to my room, which is indeed more of a room to me now and less of a linen cupboard, and looked out over the wall that surrounds us to the Earls Bride marshes. On the road to the village, I could see two figures walking, dressed in the clothes of very poor people. Every few steps, they turned and looked back towards us. Then the younger woman put her arm round the shoulders of the older one and they walked on until I could see them no more. Only after they had disappeared from my sight did I "see" that the younger of the two, Piebald's sister, carried a basket that appeared heavy. No doubt they had come with provisions and, being turned away by Edmund, had not thought to leave these at the gate.

It was this knowledge – no less, perhaps, than the knowledge that these women were Piebald's kin – that made me swiftly descend the stairs and inform Ambrose that I was going to ride after the visitors to retrieve the gifts they had forgotten to leave.

"Very well," said Ambrose, "but do not go so near them that you breathe their breath."

"They do not have the plague, Ambrose. There is no plague at Puckeridge."

"That we cannot know, Robert. The germ has come north to us from Southern Europe and so may still be moving in a northerly way."

"Very well. I will not go near them, but call out to them to put down their offerings, which I will then retrieve. Are you content that I should do that?"

"Yes."

"And say," intervened Pearce, "that we are sorry for their wasted journey."

"I will, John."

And so I went out to put a saddle on Danseuse whom I had not ridden for a long time. The storm had quite gone and, in the bright sun once again shining on us, the inmates of Margaret Fell were assembling for their airing, but I gave them no thought, my mind being intent only upon overtaking the visitors.

At the sight of a saddle, Danseuse gave a whinny of joy and her flanks shivered as I tightened the girth. And immediately I had mounted her, she began to trot very fast towards the gate, thus causing some fright to the women walking round the oak tree. I tried to rein her in, but she pulled so hard with her head that I was jerked forward and almost lost my balance. Then Daniel opened the gate for us and we were out of Whittlesea and at once my splendid mare began to gallop like a chariot horse and in no time at all we had reached the straggle of poor houses that is Earls Bride.

I had expected to overtake Piebald's visitors before reaching the village, but there was no sign of them. Managing to slow Danseuse to a quiet trot, I passed through Earls Bride and out the other side of it, where the flat, muddy track led on towards March. Because of its flatness, I could see some way down this road and there was nothing and no one visible on it. I persuaded my horse to stop. I dismounted and looked back at the village. As I have informed you, it is a place without an inn or hostelry of any kind, so I could not guess where the two women might be. It was as if the bright air that still smelled of rain had made them vanish.

Leading Danseuse by the reins, my hand close to the bit, I endeavoured to turn her round so that I could return to the village and knock on the door of one Thomas Buck (who is a thatcher and the only jovial man in this sad community) and enquire of him whether the two women had asked for shelter or rest in any of the houses. But Danseuse would not let herself be turned. She showed me a white, angry eye and reared up, jerking the reins from my hands. I stepped back, involuntarily. She is a large and powerful horse and, discomforting as my life is, I did not wish to be crushed by her hooves and thus lose it altogether on this lonely Fenland causeway.

But I see now that instead of stepping back, I should have tried with all my might to catch hold of Danseuse's bridle. For I was about to lose her. Once out of the Whittlesea gate, she had smelled her freedom in the sunshine. Now, she saw the straight, flat road before her and she took it. She kicked up her heels in a final little dance of joy and then she bolted away, faster it seemed to me than I had ever ridden her, faster even than on our night journey to Newmarket, and I was left with one foot in the ditch, staring stupidly after her.

Collecting myself, I did the only thing that came to my mind: I ran after her, shouting her name, the while knowing this action to be futile, as if a chicken tried to fly after an eagle. But then, at my side, appeared two boys, very ragged and with no shoes on their feet, aged about ten or eleven.

"We'll catch 'im, Sir!" they said and without waiting for permission from me, hurled their thin bodies down the track, calling: "Answers! Answers!" which they thought, from hearing my shouting, to be my horse's name.

I stopped and took a handkerchief from the pocket of my breeches and wiped the sweat from my face. Then I stood and watched. The speed of Danseuse had not slackened at all, but the boys did not seem to understand how easily she would outrun them, for they bolted gamely on, racing with each other to be the first to get to her and bring her back. I saw one of them stumble on the road made muddy by the storm, but he quickly recovered his balance and charged on. Seeing their determination it was tempting to hope, just for an instant, that if I waited patiently, I would, late in the afternoon, see them return, leading my mare between them. Yet I knew this would not happen. Danseuse would run until night fell. She would run until she was lame. She would never return to Whittlesea.

In less than five minutes, Danseuse and the boys passed out of sight. Feeling very stupid standing in the road, and remembering at length the errand on which I had come, I walked to the cottage of Thomas Buck. The thatcher was not at home. His scrawny wife, who is like a pullet with no flesh on her bones, informed me she had seen two women pass through the village but now they were gone along the road to March. I thanked her and she closed her door in my face. I had a great longing to sit down.

Recollected now, that day when I lost Danseuse, that day when Piebald's mother and sister and their basket of provisions seemed to vanish into the air, was one of the most momentous of recent time. For in it I passed from being a kind of visitor to Whittlesea (one who, whenever he heard the whinny of his horse always imagined some future hour in time when he would ride away, back into his old life) to a state
of belonging
. Since that day, with the stable once occupied by Danseuse empty, I have surrendered to Whittlesea. When I imagine my life passing, it is here that it passes. I shall change utterly. I will no longer be too "restless and dazzling" for fishing. I will be a quiet, brown person. And my skills as a physician and Keeper I shall allow to grow. And I am most moved by all this. For I see that all of it will come about because of Pearce's love for me which allowed me to come here and which – although I really do not know why this should be – is the greatest love I have ever been shown by anyone.

But I must tell you a little more about that day. Another event of importance took place upon it.

The urchin boys did not return for an hour, during which I sat on a pile of willow planks and counted the money that I had upon me, which was fourpence exactly.

They were very disappointed that they had not been able to catch the horse, both for my sake and for theirs, for they clearly understood that there was reward in the thing and when I handed them the two pennies apiece they looked long at the coins, as if willing them to turn into silver.

I thanked them for their gallant chase and asked them, if Danseuse should return to Earls Bride, to bring her to me at Whittlesea. They nodded and one of them asked: "Why is he called Answers, Sir?" to which question I could think of no reply but the feeble pun, "Because he answers to that name and no other." The boys appeared downcast by this, as well they might, so I left them to go in to their suppers of corn porridge and samphire and walked slowly back to Whittlesea, remembering deliberately as I went along all the daring and brilliant rides I had had on Danseuse since she was given to me from the King's stable; and then, upon arriving at the Whittlesea gate, putting them from me for ever and going in with a sprightly step, as if the loss of my horse was nothing to me.

I went into the kitchen of the Keepers' house, it being my turn to help Daniel prepare our supper, and there found Ambrose seated at the scrubbed table looking most grave and troubled. He asked me to sit down and I could sense that some news of a terrible kind was going to be given to me. Daniel, scraping potatoes in a bowl, looked from Ambrose to me and then to Ambrose again and said softly to him, "Robert is not at fault in this, Ambrose," and Ambrose nodded.

There was a long pause, during which Ambrose arranged his hands into their habitual steeple beneath his beard. He then told me, in a most sorrowful voice, that an incident had taken place that afternoon in Margaret Fell while I had been absent. The woman Katharine had bitten and torn her blanket into shreds and with these shreds knotted together a rope and with the rope endeavoured to hang herself from a crossbeam of the roof.

"Most fortunately," said Ambrose, "the screams of the other women brought us all running and we cut her down before she choked and died. But we cannot run any risk that she will try such a thing again and so, for the time being, we have had to put her in William Harvey."

The silence of the kitchen was broken only by the scraping of Daniel's knife on the potatoes grown by Pearce. I wished to speak, but felt a great choking in my throat. To hear these things about the one person I had believed I was helping caused such a shock to my mind that I was quite unable to speak. And the revelation that followed was the most terrible of all: when asked by Ambrose why she had tried to kill herself, Katharine had replied simply: "Because Robert has left me. He has ridden away."

That evening after supper, while the others assembled for their Meeting, I went into Margaret Fell and retrieved from Katharine's place the doll she called Jesus of Bethlehem. Then, breaking the rule that no Keeper must go alone into William Harvey, I went in there and found Katharine who was chained by one foot to the wall. She was sleeping. She had been dosed with laudanum and the smell of it was on her breath. I put the doll into the straw beside her and then came away.

I could not sleep that night. Near one o'clock, I rose and lit a lamp, being suddenly very tired of the darkness. And in the yellow lamplight I examined my hands, which is a thing I do sometimes when I am troubled, and in consequence I know the appearance of my hands extraordinarily well. My fingers are wide and red and the ends of them very flat, with flat nails. My palms are moist and hot. On the backs of my hands are a few hairs and some freckles. They are Merivel's hands, not Robert's, yet when they take up the scalpel they do not tremble and they do not err.

It was not my turn for a Night Keeping, but at two, I heard Ambrose and Edmund get up, so I pulled on my breeches and my boots and took my lamp and joined them. On our way to William Harvey (where, in truth, I hoped to find Katharine awake so that she could see me and know I had not abandoned her) Ambrose whispered to me: "The diseased mind, alas, is more prey to violent affections than that which is well."

I smiled. "I know that well, Ambrose," I said.

"Whereas," continued Ambrose, "the true saint loves all men and yet none in particular. And this is a vow that we, the Keepers, have taken at Whittlesea – to emulate the love of saints."

He said nothing more, only strode on very fast, but I knew that I had been reproached. I turned to Edmund, who still walked in step with me. "It was pity for Katharine, for her condition – which touches upon several unanswered questions in my own life – that moved me to help her, Edmund," I said.

"I neither gave to her, nor sought from her, any promises of love."

"I believe you, Robert."

"But we cannot, each on our own, help all of them…"

"Although it is precisely this that we must try to do."

"And I believed that if I could just help
one
…"

"What did you believe?"

"That I would know at last that I was useful."

"Useful?"

"Yes."