No Shame, No Fear (7 page)

It was impossible to explain. I knew she thought me strange, with a mistress who was probably leading me into unwomanly ways. But Will Heywood approved; he had said so.

I waited nearly all day in the shop, and he never came.

I wrote out the beginning of John’s gospel over and over on the slate. I made a promise with myself that I would not look up until I reached the bottom line and then, when I did, he would be there, in the doorway. I tried this several times, but each time it failed me.

For a while I left my writing and wandered among the bookshelves. I read a little from a herbal, and looked at the pictures. Many other books were in Latin, which I could not read. But Will Heywood would be able to read them, I knew. I felt the weight of difference between us. How could he be interested in me? Perhaps I had misunderstood the manners of the merchant class. Perhaps he had meant only to buy the dance music, and the rest was politeness – or worse, no more than flirtation with a maidservant.

I was in low spirits all evening.

But next day, before I had even started writing, he was there.

I jumped up, unable to conceal my joy.

“Are you busy?” He looked around the shop, which was empty of customers.

“No. As thou can see…”

We both laughed. He’d been helping his father yesterday, he said, with an urgent order; and then later, when he came by, I was not in the shop. My fears had been for nothing; they vanished like dew in the morning.

There was no pretence, this time, that he had come to buy anything. The shop was quiet and we talked for a long time before anyone interrupted us. I’d never talked so much to anyone before. He asked me about my parents’ faith, and I found myself telling him that my mother had been brought up a Puritan; that my father had fought for Parliament in the war and afterwards turned against all fighting; that I’d been born on a commune near Bristol where my parents lived for a while before returning to Shropshire.

“A commune?”

“Yes. They held all land and goods in common and were answerable to no master.” That was what I had come to understand afterwards. All it had meant to me at the time was freedom to run wild and get as dirty as the boys and no one minding. “They were seekers,” I explained. “All the time they were looking for a new way of life. A just way.”

“And they found the Quakers?”

“Yes.”

I told him of a memory of being swept along with my parents – Isaac riding on my father’s shoulders – in a great crowd of people going out into the fields to worship because the house and even the street were not big enough to contain us all. His eyes shone at the vision.

“That’s how it should be!” he said.

His father, too, had fought in the Civil War.

“But
he
fought for the King. He was much grieved by the war, by its outcome. Most were, in these parts.”

“Hast thou always lived hereabouts?”

“The house is the only home I remember. My mother inherited it from an uncle. It has the shop and warehouse below.”

“And thy mother?”

I saw I had touched on a place of pain.

“She died when I was twelve. I miss her. My father is full of outward life: schemes and plans. He seeks money and respectability. My mother thought more of the spirit. She was of a faith as unpopular as yours. A Catholic.”

I was startled. “A recusant?”

I knew that Catholics who refused to attend Anglican services could suffer severe penalties.

“No!” he said at once. “Oh, no. She was always a dutiful wife and went to church with my father. She would not shame him. But I remember there was a drawer where she kept some things: a cross, a rosary. When she was dying my father put the rosary in her hands and sent for a priest to come secretly and give her the last rites. He risked that for her at the end.”

I thought of the Catholics with their outward signs, the trappings of superstition: candles, beads, priests. Popery was the very opposite of the inward light. And yet…

“You are like her, I think?”

He nodded. “She thought much on God. She was not learned, not educated – but she had wisdom.”

The shop door opened, and some customers came in. He moved away and browsed among the books until I had finished serving them. After that we talked more, and he didn’t leave until Mary came in from the print room and said she would look after the shop now. Then he bade us both good day.

I looked for him at Meeting next day, but he was not there, and I felt bereft. Then on second-day he came into the shop again.

Mary allowed me to serve in the shop most afternoons the following week. I think she must have noticed how often Will came in, but she said nothing, and I made sure I did not neglect my work.

On fourth-day Will found me writing with a quill.

“You have finished with the slate?”

“Yes!” I felt pleased with myself. “I am allowed scrap paper now.”

I showed him my work, and we leaned together over the table. I liked this. I was conscious of the nearness of his body, of his breath on my cheek.

“It’s not so easy as the chalk,” I admitted. “This quill—”

“You must learn to hold it correctly. Place it so, resting against the second finger…”

He took hold of my right hand. It was the first time he’d touched me, and we were both aware of it.

I became afraid of the feelings we’d stirred up. “I have rough hands,” I said. “A servant’s.”

He kept hold of me. “They are good hands. Hardworking and independent.”

“And thine show years of study.” His were a scholar’s, ink-stained and with a callus near the knuckle of his second finger where the pen rubbed.

He was still holding my hand, but let it go quickly at a sound from the print-room door. It was Nat, who bounced in, saw us, and retreated with a wink. We drew apart, and smiled.

“Nat will tease me,” I said.

He looked at me, and I knew he wanted to touch me again, and I felt a longing to touch him. But a shyness had come between us.

He picked up one of the scraps of paper I had been using for my writing practice.

“What’s this?” He read aloud: “‘Susanna … Susanna Thorn…’”

“Oh! Don’t look!” I snatched it away. “I was practising my signature.” I felt suddenly bold, and said, “Write
thy
name. I want to see it.”

He took the paper back, laid it flat, and wrote “William Heywood”, plainly the first time, and then again, signed with a flourish and many twists and curls, so that we both laughed.

I wrote to my mother next day, with help from Mary. It was easy to think of the words, much harder to turn them into written forms. In the end, I said little. I told my mother I was well, sent love to my brother and sister, and to my father in prison.

I realized what a great leap of understanding lay between my reading and writing and Will’s. And yet I was determined to bridge it. I read all the Friends’ newsletters and commentaries that Mary printed. I read of Mary Fisher’s journey to Constantinople to take the Word of God to the Sultan; how he received her kindly and listened to her. And I read of the recent executions by hanging of English Friends in Massachusetts, and of the news that Charles Stuart, the King, had sent an order to the American colony that no more Quakers were to be executed by them; that if they were accused they must be sent home to England for trial. I asked Mary to show me the English colonies on a map. I was amazed at the vastness of America and the great expanse of sea that Friends had travelled across.

One day Will came in and found me reading my little book,
The Pious Prentice
.

“What have you there?”

I handed it to him. “It’s advice on how to behave in thy master’s house.”

He opened it, grinned, and read, mock-solemn: “‘From thievish pilfering let thy hands be free.’”

I started to laugh. “Thou’rt disrespectful.”

“Disrespectful? Me? Listen to this” – he put on a fierce face – “‘…the threatenings terrifying them if they walk not according to these precepts.’”

“Give it to me!” I pounced and seized the book, and darted away; he chased me, I squealed, and we wrestled for it, laughing. They must have heard us in the print room.

“You should read poetry,” he said, “not this stuff.”

“Poetry?”

We stood, not touching now, but still breathless, aware of each other’s bodies.

“Poetry.” He mimicked my suspicious tone. “Have you never read any? Is it frowned upon?”

“I think my father would feel it might … lead to unsuitable thought. It’s a thing for scholars and gentlemen, is it not?”

“I’ll lend you some,” he said, “and you shall see for yourself. John Donne – no, George Herbert. Herbert was a godly man, a parish priest, much revered.”

A priest. I felt I was entering dangerous lands. And yet I had been taught that the light was within everyone; that I should seek it and respond to it. Perhaps I should hear what this priest had to say.

Later that day Mary called me to her. I went, expecting a scolding for my noisy behaviour with Will. I knew she liked Will, and did not mind him coming to the shop, and indeed would sometimes talk with him herself about religion, and answer his questions. But now I sensed trouble.

“Thy month’s trial is almost up,” she said.

I began to tremble. It was worse than I’d feared. I had angered her; she would dismiss me.

“I’ll be pleased to keep thee on, if thou’rt willing.”

“Oh, yes!”

I think she saw how relieved I was, for her mouth twitched in a smile. “Good. Then shall we agree a year’s service?”

I thanked her, and turned to go, but she stopped me.

“When thou’rt minding the shop I expect thy behaviour to be seemly.”

I hung my head. “I’m sorry. It was a game.”

“Oh, I know these games. But the shop is not the place for them. I see thou’rt much taken with young Will. No need to blush. It’s natural enough. But – have a care.”

“Will means me no dishonour.”

“I know that. It was thy heart I was thinking of. You are both very young, and Will’s father is a man of wealth and position.”

I lifted my chin. “Will cares nothing for that.”

“Then
thou
must have a care,” said Mary.

But I could not. Will began seeking me out when I was about town. My heart would leap whenever I saw him, and my feelings must have shown in my face. I read the poems he gave me, and talked to him about their meaning, and found light in them. Alone, in the shop, I copied out his name and mine. I thought of his face, his eyes, the sound of his voice. At work around the house, and especially in my bed at night, I imagined being kissed by him, imagined his arms around me. I tried to stop these thoughts, remembering Mary’s warning, and my mother’s too, but could not. It was like being swept away in a fast river.

William

I
thought about her all the time; imagined being alone with her, being free to touch, to kiss. The strength of my feelings took me by surprise; I had known nothing like it before.

But I had to keep her secret. I knew my father would see any connection with a servant girl as beneath me, and if he found out she was a Quaker he would be furious. And yet I sought her out, not just in the safety of Mary’s shop, but around the town.

In the street I was at risk of being seen by our servants, by my father’s friends and workpeople, by Anne and my stepmother, who were often about town, shopping and visiting, and would be much quicker to notice what was going on than my father.

And yet somehow the fear of discovery added to my excitement. I soon began to know where I might catch sight of her: at the baker’s, the butcher’s, around the stalls on market days. And sometimes, dangerously and enticingly, near my home, at the Mintons’, the glover’s. The Mintons were Quakers, and she had become friendly with the eldest daughter, Judith. There was another girl I saw her with a few times: a sharp-eyed maidservant with a worldly-wise air about her. I kept well away from that one.

We never spoke for long when we met outside. Often no more than a look passed between us. I felt this secretiveness was wrong, that it demeaned her, that I should acknowledge her in public. And yet, if truth be told, I enjoyed the snatched meetings and glances; it made her more alluring.

One day I saw her when I was on my way to a sitting for the family portrait. Some musicians were playing in the street, and a crowd had gathered around them. There was a fiddler, two or three men with flutes and a drum, someone singing, and another taking a hat around. They played a lively tune, and people began to beat time and clap.

Susanna was with her servant friend, on the fringe of the crowd, both of them peering to see between the heads. The singer’s voice was bold and strong, the words bawdy. The onlookers roared out the choruses. I saw the other girl laugh, and turn to Susanna; and Susanna shake her head and move away.

Later, in the shop, we talked about it.

“My parents would not approve of such songs,” she said.

“Because of the words?”

“Yes, that. But the music, too. Music excites the passions, leads to licentiousness. So they say.”