No Shame, No Fear (11 page)

“And thee, Will?” asked Tom.

I looked up sharply at Will’s face. His answer was important to me.

“To London,” he said, “if the bond is agreed. “But” – he sighed and struck with clenched fists on his knees – “thou know’st how I am torn.”

I had never heard him use our way of speech before; and it seemed he had done it without thinking. He is being drawn in, I thought; and I was both glad and fearful for him. I didn’t want him to go to London, and yet, if he stayed, he might suffer in prison, and how could I wish that? God will uphold us, I thought, no matter what comes.

The fire was now so low that the walls were almost invisible, and when we stood up the darkness enfolded us and Nat and Will had to cast about to find their coats and hats. Judith looked out and checked that the Mintons’ servant, Hester, had lit the outside light. The shop sign, swinging below the window, creaked in a rising wind.

“I’ll walk back with thee, Will,” said Nat.

They said goodbye, and Will briefly touched my hand. “I’ll come tomorrow.”

I shared Judith’s bed that night. Both of us were wakeful, aware of her parents’ empty chamber and of how uncomfortably they must be lodged, and of Abigail near by, who made small whimpering sounds in her sleep. We whispered, so as not to wake her.

“I think thou lov’st Dan Kite,” I said.

“Oh! Is it so clear to see? But what of thee and Will Heywood?”

We laughed and shushed each other.

“But has Dan spoken?” I asked. “Will you be wed?”

“Oh, Su, I don’t know! I think he likes me. Indeed, I know he does. But he’s a man full of action and schemes and ideas. I don’t know if I could live such a bold, outward life. My mother thinks him wild. And she says I’m too young.”

“
My
mother was young, like thee, when she married,” I said.

I lay thinking of Will, and whether we would ever be married. Would he want me? And if he did, would his family allow it?

“Everything is different,” my mother had said, “in a time of war.”

It feels like a time of war now, I thought.

William

“F
ather…” I took a breath. “Father, I must speak to you about the prisoners.”

It was Monday, and we had finished our midday dinner. The women had left us, and we were drinking: small beer, not wine, for my father likes to stay alert for business in the afternoon.

He was alert now – and puzzled.

“Prisoners?”

“The Quaker prisoners. Those who were arrested yesterday.”

He stared at me and I felt myself beginning to tremble with a mixture of anticipation and fear. My father, wearing his hat, as he always did indoors as head of the family, was an intimidating figure.

“They are kept without warrant,” I said. “Therefore they don’t know why they are detained or when—”

“Don’t
know
!” he exploded, and I flinched. “They know exactly why they are detained. They are a most wily people and know everything about the law and how to use it to their advantage. As for the warrant, with so many arrested at once it is bound to take time… But what’s your interest in this? Who have you been talking to?”

“I … have some friends among them.”

“Friends? Among the Quakers? Ah…” He leaned back in his chair and regarded me with cynical amusement. “I see it all now. It’s this girl, isn’t it? The one Richard saw you with. You’ve got yourself a Quaker girl and now you want her released from jail. Is that it?”

“I have several friends, both male and female.”

Abruptly he sat upright; the smile was gone. “Then break with them, Will. I order it. Those people are no right companions for you. They threaten Church and state; they pay no tithes; they refuse to take the oath of allegiance. They are a danger to the constitution and to the very fabric of society. I forbid you to associate with them.”

I had never defied him before. It took all my courage to reply. “I find them to be good Christians, sir, who seek the will of God in silence.”

“Do you argue with me, boy?” His face flushed red, and I was reminded of times when I was a child and he had beaten me for some fault. He might do so still, if I disobeyed him.

“I have been drawn to them for some years,” I said. “In Oxford I heard two women speak—”

“Women!”
He almost spat the word. “So we are to have women preach to us now?”

“They say – the Quakers say – that we need no hired priests to intervene between ourselves and God; that the light is in everyone.”

He made a sound of contempt. “So every fishwife, every pox-ridden whore, is to look into her heart and receive the truth and broadcast it? It’s a recipe for chaos, Will. They must be rooted out, and this new law will do it.”

“Father, I believe—”

He sprang up then, slamming back his chair. “I care not what you believe! I am an alderman of this town, and you are my son. You will not visit those people again.”

I became aware that my stepmother and Anne had stopped talking in the parlour next door, and that Meriel was hovering in the doorway, uncertain whether to come in and clear the table.

“Come in, Meriel,” my father said. “I must go back to the shop. And you’ll come with me, Will; I’ll find you work to do.”

I went down the stairs ahead of him, glanced back, and saw him talking to my stepmother, reassuring her.

He kept me all afternoon in the shop and warehouse. I was not much needed there, but was able to see how Richard kept accounts and dealt with customers. It was useful to me and I would not have resented it, except that I knew my father wanted me under his eye.

That evening, at supper, he was as good-humoured as usual. I realized that he considered the matter closed; he had told me what to do and expected me to obey.

I could not, but neither could I find the courage at that moment to confront him again; so I went out, thinking to find Susanna, and he watched me put on my hat and said nothing.

I went first to the Mintons’, but Judith told me Susanna was still at Faulkner’s, so I made my way there.

It was a warm evening, and the air would have been mild and sweet had it not been for the rank smell from the channel in the middle of the road, which is always worse in such weather. In order to calm myself and clear my thoughts, I took the long way to Broad Street and walked along the town walls. A rosy sunset lit the fields and woods below, but the trees were knots of shadow. I saw a man – a vagrant, probably – settling with his pack in the lee of a hedge, and envied him his freedom.

No one answered my knock at the printer’s, so I found a way round the backs of the houses, and came upon Nat and Susanna in the yard. He was washing something in a bucket, while she leaned against the door frame and chatted with him.

They looked so easy together that I felt a stab of jealousy. He lives here, I thought, sleeps in the next room, works with her, prays with her.

Then Susanna looked up and saw me. Her face brightened, she smiled, and I knew I had no cause for fear.

I opened the gate and went in. Nat, I found, was cleaning the ink daubers in a bucket of urine.

He grinned as I stepped back from the smell. “Got to be done. Every night, after a day’s use.”

He had taken off the leather covers and put them to soak in the urine – “That softens them” – and was clearing the horsehair stuffing of lumps.

He nodded towards the house. “John’s still here. We’ve been working late on a pamphlet for Friends.”

“How do they fare, those in prison?” I asked.

I did not want to talk about the prisoners; I wanted to speak to Susanna alone, to tell her what my father had said and how I felt about it. But she and Nat were both angry on behalf of their friends, and Susanna responded with a flash of fire. “There is
still
no warrant, and they don’t know when they will come to court! They are crowded together with no room to lie down, and there is only one chamberpot which all must use, male or female. Judith’s mother is so overcome with the foulness she cannot bring herself to eat or drink.”

“Can they not be bailed?”

“They will not pay. And will not have others pay for them.”

“I spoke to my father,” I said. “Asked him why they are kept without authority.”

“Thou told him?”

Both turned startled eyes on me. Susanna looked fearful and yet glad. Before I could say more, John Pardoe came out, greeted me, and said he was going home.

“I was to have walked back to the Mintons’ with Susanna,” he said to me, “but…”

“I’ll walk with her,” I said.

We left soon after, leaving Nat to lock up. The alley was deserted, and when we reached a shadowy corner I put my arms around Susanna and kissed her. It was so long since we’d had a moment alone together that I felt as if I’d been starved. I pulled her closer, feeling the slender curves of her body outlined by her stays.

“Will…” She spoke between kisses, her voice low and anxious. “What did thy father say? Does he know about me?”

“He has guessed there is a girl – but don’t fear, he doesn’t know thee. He has forbidden me to see any of you again.”

“And yet thou’rt here.”

“Yes.”

“Does he know?”

“Not yet. But he will. He must.”

We walked the slow way back, along the town walls, where we saw the countryside now almost in darkness, the hills blended with the sky. I held Susanna’s hand and wished with all my heart that we could walk like this with my father’s blessing. A watchman passed us with his lantern, and as he turned up an alleyway into the town we heard his call: “Nine o’clock and all’s well.”

A lamp was shining outside the Mintons’ door. We knocked, their servant, Hester, opened it, and Susanna went quickly inside.

I walked the short distance to my own home. The servants were about, but to my relief my father had already gone to bed. I went up to my room and flung myself flat on my back on the bed and gave way to thoughts of Susanna and the feelings she aroused in me. She’d be with the Mintons now, sharing a bed with Judith. Suppose I’d brought Susanna here, to my own bed? I imagined smuggling her in, holding and kissing her as we reached the secrecy of my room; imagined how she’d feel without stays, with her hair loose and falling across my neck and arms.

We must be together, I thought. We must marry; it’s the only way. But how? My father would never agree to it. Perhaps the Quakers would marry us? But where would we live? Where could we go? I found no answers.

The next day I had other concerns. After a sleepless night, I had resolved to speak as the Quakers did when I met my family in the morning, using “thee” and “thou”. I wanted to prove, to myself as much as to them, that I was convinced of the truth. I was tense and ready for the confrontation this would produce. But then we all met, and in the humdrum exchanges of family talk, I forgot. It was difficult to remember a different way of speaking. I felt foolish, but it was too late to make the change.

In the shop and warehouse that morning my father and I were both busy, not talking together. But later he sent me out on an errand, and when I returned I saw horses – a pack-train – in the yard. When I went in he was talking to a Welsh merchant he often had dealings with.

“Ah, Will!” he said, and turned to the other man. “Mr Rhys: you remember my son, William?”

The merchant swept off his hat and bowed to me.

My own hand moved instinctively towards my hat – then I let it fall back. I acknowledged the man’s bow with a nod and said, “I’m pleased to meet thee, John Rhys.”

He looked surprised, glanced at my father, then back at me, and smiled uncertainly.

My father had turned dark with rage.

“Go home, Will,” he said in a low voice. “We’ll speak later.”

He led the merchant away, remarking, “My son has taken up with some loose people in the town, but…” The rest of his words were lost as the two of them moved further into the warehouse.

I stood trembling. I had dealt with this badly, I knew. I should have confronted my father alone, at home, not here. I had embarrassed him and insulted his visitor. And yet – how else? I was convinced that the Quakers were right, that hat-honour and sweeping bows were nothing but sham and show, that honest men should look each other in the eye and no man should bow to another, since all are equal.

But it had been hard to do, and all my instincts were against it, for I had been schooled in polite behaviour from my youth.

I did not go home, but out, through the Eastgate and down to the river, where I liked to go to walk and think. But I would not disobey my father more than necessary. I was home when he returned.

Anne had persuaded me to pick out a tune from Playford on the virginal for her and was practising the dance steps as I played. When my father came and called me out of the room she stood still, and her frightened glance flicked between the two of us.

I followed my father down to his accounting room, where he keeps the bills and ledgers. He also keeps a rod, and it was here that I used to be summoned for a beating as a child. I tried to remember some of my misdemeanours; small things, easily remedied by a beating: telling a lie, misbehaving in church, not learning my lessons properly, breaking a window with a ball … nothing like this. There was no remedy for this.

I heard the pent-up anger in his voice as he said, “You are my son. I hoped – I expected – that you would be a credit to me, that I might be proud of you.”

“Father, I meant no disrespect—”

For answer he flung me against the table and ordered me to lean over it.

“I’ll teach you respect,” he said.

He seized the rod and struck out at me. The blows fell on my back, buttocks, arms and shoulders, and he grunted with the exertion. I was taller than he was now and could have resisted, but I did not. I clenched my teeth against the pain and made no sound. It was not the pain I minded; it was the humiliation, being treated like a child again, the breaking of the new adult relationship that had been growing between us. By law he was within his rights to beat any of us – child, wife, or servant – but at that moment I hated him for it.