The Pilgrim (10 page)

“Meanwhile, let us give the humble poor plenteous alms not only to satisfy the hunger of our brethren but to fulfill and accomplish God's command.”

My Sarah said, “Charles and I most heartily agree.”

After the service, in frosty Tower Street, we were beset by eight or ten unruly beggars. It cost me two shillings to be rid of them. My Sarah said, “Why, my darling Charles! Except these warm gloves of your mother's, those two shillings are your love tokens that please me most. You are a righteous man.”

“Aye,” said Rigdale. “And one of the Elect, Mistress, I am confident of it.”

“I too am sure of it,” said she.

I said, “At this instant, God's love is washing over me again, Zachariah, just as you said it would. My faith in my salvation hath immersed my heart. The world is crystalline! God's love shines through it. My soul hath never before known this sweet peace! I cannot describe the pleasure I feel! No, not pleasure—is there no word that can describe what I feel? Fie! Is there not a word for this?”

Zachariah said, “Be silent, friend! Be silent. Let your silence speak for you.”

I said, “Look! Look you into my Sarah's luminous eyes! Therein you can see what I feel.”

“Yes,” she said. “I too am saved. I am sure of it.”

I said, “That makes the three of us. Saved! Saved! By the grace of God, we are all of us saved! Praise Him! Let us thank Christ, who hath given us a moment together of surety and bliss—for want of a word unknown to me.”

It began to snow; Sarah caught some flakes on her tongue. She said, “Bliss!”

• • •

Appletree and I had a conference in his chambers, wherein we signed the marriage contract, with free consent on both sides. As a dowry, he presented me with a draft on the goldsmith, John Loop, for two hundred pounds, which I was free to convert to coin or invest with Loop at five percent interest for future use. At his suggestion, I decided to invest it with Loop. He said, “I tried to get you eight percent, but Loop is as mean as a Jew.”

I thanked Appletree profusely for his generosity. He said, “If, God forbid, Sarah should die before you, whatever money remains shall, according to our contract, be returned to me in one year. You have a considerable fortune there, Charles. Use it wisely. I propose you rent a house, live therein, and work in the front chamber.”

“But at what, sir? At what? What am I capable of doing?”

“Why, being a conscientious scrivener! Hire two or three clerks. I will send you work aplenty and recommend you to my attorney friends. You should make a good living.”

“A scrivener!”

“Do you not enjoy your work?”

“I do, sir. Oh, I do.”

“I should find it tedious.”

We dined at the fashionable Sign of the Bell in Kings Street with Mistress Appletree, her spaniel that licked the matron's greasy lips, and my Sarah, who said, “Thank you, Father, thank you for everything.”

“Sarah, do me this service. Henceforth, wear my magical ring. I know you do not believe in its power but wear it to please me.”

“I will, Father.”

It proved too big for her slim fingers, so she wore it upon her right thumb. I said, “Nay, not there, my sweet. You are a freeborn Englishwoman! As I remember, thumb rings were worn by Roman slaves.”

“Then my thumb is the appropriate place for me to wear it, for look you, sir, I am henceforth your humble slave. How now! My nails want paring!”

I poured me another cup of sack and asked, “Are thy nails good and sharp?”

“Like a cat's.”

“Then come, puss, and scratch my itchy back.”

“
Ubi, domine
?”

“In the middle. No, lower down. There! Ah! Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

Her tipsy parents applauded; the spaniel barked. But what I now remember best is the portent from Providence in my Sarah's mention of paring her nails.

She never wore her veil again; I grew a beard.

We were betrothed in St. Martin in the Fields on the fifteenth of April in the year of Christ 1619. When I promised to take her to be my betrothed wife in time convenient, Appletree said, “The time convenient shall be five months hence, on my birthday, which is the fifth of August.”

Sarah said to me, “I was going along in the street this morning, coming to church, when on a sudden a voice called, “See here, mistress, fine cobweb lawn, good cambric, or fair bonelace,” and I thought of us in the linen shop. I bought two ells of cambric, I remember, and I recall the drooping white feather in your hat. Charles, have you not noticed? Your feather droops like an ass's ear. And the sleeves of your suit are too short. Never mind. I shall find you a goodly tailor, my love, and a haberdasher, too. You also need new shoes.”

I said, “And my cloak? What think you of my cloak?”

“You fished fair and caught a frog, as the saying is.”

“I am in your hands. Fashion me anew from top to toe.”

“I want only to make your heart grow full, like the moon.”

I wrote my uncle Roger the good news, and he congratulated me in the return post, “Yes, my dear boy, may your heart grow full, like the moon. A fine simile!”

Sarah accompanied me to buy a new hat, a new suit, and a new pair of shoes. Appletree and I spent two months searching for a house in Westminster. We found one in Axe Yard that was three storeys high. It had seven chambers, including the work chamber on the ground floor. There were two brick fireplaces, a cellar, gables at the front, and a well in the back. The ceilings were plastered. Rigdale, who knew something of carpentry, said it was solidly built with a goodly timber frame. I found two large cracks in the casement windows on the second floor.

The owner asked sixteen pounds a year for rent; we agreed upon twelve. He said he would have the windows repaired at his expense. I agreed to take possession of the house upon the first day of the August following.

I signed a contract with Rigdale to make Sarah and me furniture for a total of twenty-three pounds: a four-poster bed that we would hang with green serge, a dining table, six joint stools, a bench, and two cupboards. We decided to keep her oaken chest at the foot of our bed and cover the wattle walls with painted blue cloths.

I also hired Rigdale to make four desks and six stools for my working chamber, and bought a goodly amount of paper, ink, and pens.

My Sarah said, “When we are married, we shall plumb each other's depths and find such new things therein that rival the discoveries of the New World.”

Three weeks following, we went to Rigdale's shop to watch him at work upon our bed. He was making a strong mortise-and-tenon joint, with fish glue and wooden dowels. Thereafter, I said to my Sarah, “We shall soon lie abed, taking pleasure in each other as man and wife, according to the ordinances of God. May our bodily delight be a temporal intimation of our eternal spiritual union with Christ, the husband of our souls.

“And may it bring us children, my beloved. I do so want your children to love.”

Providence, though, decreed that my Sarah had less than one month to live.

On the morning of the second of June, while paring the nail of her left forefinger with a pair of scissors, she cut away a piece of flesh around the nail on its right side. Two days thereafter, the little wound was red, hot, swollen, and painful.

Sarah felt feverish and took to her bed. Applegate summoned Dr. Nicholas Bunn. He said the wound was sorely inflamed and prescribed a slender, diluting diet, plentiful bleeding, and repeated purges. The skin around her nail grew very tense and caused her great pain. On the doctor's instructions, I constantly bathed it with a mixture of sweet oil and vinegar and afterwards covered it with a piece of wax plaster.

The morning following, she said to me, “My fever is rising. My finger greatly pains me. My whole body resides there, within each throb. Give me more laudanum, my beloved. Thank you, yes. Ah, thank you! A good thing, laudanum, a most excellent thing. Thank God for laudanum, though it constipates me.

“Such a little thing—a snip of my scissors. I looked away, for an instant, at a stain upon my sleeve, and snip! 'Tis the little things upon which life and death turn. One little snip, and I am done. Yes, I will die, as you shall see. Mine was a short, sad life until I fell in love with you. Tell me the truth. Were you falling in love with me during our last months together?”

“I was.”

“God hath apportioned me to spend eternity with Him among His saints. I am saved. I knew it for sure upon that Sabbath, after church. It began to snow. Some flakes melted upon my tongue. I said, ‘Bliss!' Do you remember?”

“I remember.”

“I have here your mother's gloves. Keep them in remembrance of me and give them as a token to the woman whom you shall marry. Yes, you will marry, Charles. We shall not be husband and wife in heaven. That vexes me.”

Her fever increased during the night, and the tumor on her finger grew larger. She suffered violent pain. I remained awake and tried to promote the tumor to suppurate with a soft poultice. Toward noon, she said, “Tell me again that you were falling in love with me in those few months we had together.”

“My sweet Sarah, I love you now.”

“Why, look you, my big, tall man weeps! I never saw you weep, Charles. Yes, weep, my beloved, my dearly betrothed. Weep! I shall take your tears with me to my grave as tokens of your love.”

All during those four days and nights, at different times, on a sudden, I felt compelled to pray, “O Christ, restore my Sarah's health.” The words welled up within me, unbidden, while I wiped my nose or changed her poultice. Once, to my shame, I prayed in the midst of making water; my prayer and my piss streamed together from my vile body, one heavenward and one into the chamber pot.

The doctor came again and said, “See the thinness of skin about the wound? The abscess is ripe for opening.” He sliced it with his lancet, to a great profusion of blood and pus. The inflammation became livid. Little bladders oozing green and yellow ichors spread all over the skin. The tumor subsided, and for an hour or so, I hoped for the best. Then her whole forefinger turned black.

My Sarah said, “I bit my tongue,” and became insensible. Her pulse quickened, she had the clammy sweats, and at seven in the morning of the ninth of June in the year of Christ 1619, she died at nineteen years of age.

Someone shrieked. I looked about me. It was I. I shrieked again. Then I was benumbed. I neither grieved for Sarah, nor rejoiced in her salvation. I had no pity for her father mourning the death of the last of his three daughters.

In the churchyard, by the open grave, Mistress Appletree clasped her spaniel to her bosom. Sarah's swelled black finger was ever in my mind. I thought of her rotting in her grave and cursed God.

The owner of the house in the Axe Yard agreed to cancel my lease. I forfeited the one pound I had given him on account. Rigdale showed me the furniture he had made. Even the four-poster bed summoned no emotion in me. Rigdale promised to try to sell everything and return my money; I did not care.

I went to St. Dunstan in the East with Rigdale every Sabbath, and we alternated reading a portion of Scripture aloud in the evenings. He favored the Psalms, saying, “I like to sweeten my mouth with a Psalm before going to sleep.”

I said, “I am utterly estranged from God. I will burn in hell.”

I returned my dowry to Appletree and continued working as his clerk. I took my breakfasts, dinners, and suppers at The Sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff. I ate only calf, wether mutton, and rabbit stew, according to Doctor Troth's prescription for melancholy. The meat had lost its savour for me. I drank aunt Eliza's decoction of hollyhocks, violet leaves, and fennel, together with a bottle of sack at supper and dinner.

At The Sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff, Hendy and his companions reveled with the plump, muddy whores. One evening, two drunken boy prostitutes, about fifteen years of age, smutted each other with candle grease and soot. I watched them in the smoky room as from afar. I saw myself as at a distance: my drooping feather, filthy cloak, and ragged beard. I felt sundered from myself and the world.

After supper, I wandered round Westminster and the City, visiting again and again those places where Sarah and I had spent time together. Neither the linen shop on Bridge Street, nor a walk under the oaks in St. James Park, brought tears to my eyes.

One rainy afternoon in November, while walking abroad in Candlewick Street, I met by chance one of my former Cambridge chamber mates named Richard Witt, who was from Sussex. We repaired to a tavern. He told me that he had a lectureship in religion at St. Sepulchre's Church, endowed by a rich London linen merchant, that paid thirty pounds a year. Witt was betrothed to the merchant's daughter. He said, “I have had good luck. The Goddess of Fortune hath smiled on me.”

“I have no complaints.”

“I am glad to hear it. I heard about Robin's death. Is that how you came by the smallpox?”

Said I, “Yes, I caught it from him. He caught it from a strumpet at The Sign of the Rose on Dowdriver's Lane.”

Witt said, “Bad luck! He was so comely.
Rota fortunae volvitur
. The wheel of fortune turns. So true! So true! Share with me another bottle of sack, and we shall drink to the Goddess Fortune, who rules the world.”

I said, “Nothing or no one rules the world,” and walked out into the cold rain.

Rigdale sold the furniture for twenty-three pounds, which I paid back to Appletree.

On the third of January, Appletree said to me, “Today is Sarah's twentieth birthday. Since she died, I am without the petty anxieties and torturous fears that hitherto vexed me. I pay no heed to the fashion of the king and play bowls. I am no longer frightened of old age, losing my money, sickness, pain, death, or even God's judgment in the hereafter. My soul is calm. My three beloved daughters are dead. Nothing worse in this life or my life to come can happen to me.”