The Crimson Ribbon (14 page)

My heart constricts. I stare at the food before me. The meat swims in bloody juice, making my stomach turn. I can only hope that Cheyney is right. I can only hope that the Fen spirits have listened to my silent prayers and will take their revenge for Annie Flowers, who served them well for so long.

‘No doubt the justice will get to the root of it,’ Cheyney says. ‘Such lowly people, the Fenlanders, always susceptible to superstitious nonsense.’

Rainsborough catches my eye and throws me a small smile.

‘Indeed, these are wondrous times,’ Pendarves says. ‘I have heard reports of such strange events all around the country. Thunderstorms that sound like battlefield drums, with hailstones the size of a pigeon’s egg, and a plague of flies sent down upon the sectaries in the West Country. And some speak of spectral armies, fighting in the skies above Kineton and Naseby. Let us pray that these are all signs that the Lord is preparing to walk among us once again.’ He holds up his cup. ‘To this, the year of miracles.’

We take up ours and echo thinly, ‘The year of miracles.’

Chapter 25

It is late when we leave the Pendarveses and summer rainclouds have broken over Abingdon. I’m glad of the cool wetness soaking through my cap and turn my face up to the sky, catching raindrops on my eyelashes. My head swims a little with the good wine I have drunk.

Back in our kitchen, Lizzie unpins her hair and lets it fall over the sea-green shine of her dress. She lights a candle from the embers in the hearth and puts another log on the fire. It will burn and smoulder until morning. For a few moments we warm ourselves.

She stands there, watching the flicker and dance of the flames, deep in thought.

‘You should be more careful, Lizzie,’ I say. ‘The things you said. You don’t want to make a name for yourself as a radical. We are doing so well here.’

‘Oh, I know you’re right, but I cannot help it. John Pendarves is a godly man but a pompous one, with worn-out philosophies. Even Thomasine says so, behind his back. How silent she was tonight, playing the good hostess. And that mayor, with his little mouse of a wife. It will do them good to be shaken up. Colonel Rainsborough is just the man to do it.’

‘Then leave it to him. He has nothing to lose here.’

She reaches out and runs her finger down my cheek. ‘Oh, my angel, always so careful, so cautious. Our good colonel will be gone in a day or two, and then who will speak up?’

She is right. I have learned to be cautious. There is a fear in me that runs deep in my bones. I always thought that as I grew older I would not be so afraid of the world and the people in it. But instead it is the opposite. I wonder what happened to the wild, carefree girl I left behind in Ely and whether she is a part of me still.

Lizzie picks up the candle. ‘Come, let’s go to bed.’

The room is chill and dank without a fire. I feel my skin shiver into goose bumps under my wet clothes.

Lizzie begins to undress. ‘So, what did you think of our colonel?’ she asks.

‘He is a good man. He has kind eyes.’

She laughs. ‘Everyone is offended by his politics, and you notice his eyes. I might think you have a liking for him.’ She is spiky in her jest.

‘Well, he said too much, more than was sensible in the company.’

‘So, you listened.’

‘Of course I did.’

I cross the room to her and help her unbutton her dress. Lifting her hair aside, I notice the tiny curls at the nape of her neck, soft as down. I long to put my lips to them, to feel them against my cheek. She steps out of her dress and stands in her shift. Then she turns and begins to unfasten my stays. Feeling her fingers working the lacings at my chest, my breath comes fast.

‘And what of his views about women and marriage?’ she asks.

‘Is not his talk of equality blasphemous? If God and the law tell us that a wife must submit to her husband, surely that is the right way of things.’

She helps me out of my stays, then works at the ties of my dress. ‘There is something William taught me. Pastor Kiffin, I mean. “From the beginning of creation God made them male and female. And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.”’ She stops and looks me in the eye. ‘One flesh, Ruth . . . one and the same. Equals.’

I step out of my dress and lay it on the chair next to hers. We stand face to face, neither of us making for the warmth of the bed.

‘But if Eve was made from Adam . . .’ I say.

‘Eve was weak and fell to temptation, but in doing so, she changed the world. She had power, you see, beyond that of Adam. We may be weak in body but there is power in women that men are afraid of. Men keep us shackled because they are afraid of that power. They call us witches and whores – they tell us we are wild in the mind when we speak out. Colonel Rainsborough is not like other men. He sees us not as weak and fragile women, to be cosseted or controlled, but as equals, with the capacity to think and to feel and to fight as boldly as any man. He is no ordinary soldier, I think. He is truly brave.’

‘So . . . temptation is not always wrong?’

‘I suppose it depends on the nature of our temptation.’

‘Suppose it is another person. Suppose it is love. Suppose it is . . . desire.’

‘There is a difference between love and lust. One is a gift, the other a sin.’

‘How do you know which is which?’

She looks at me. Her voice is steady. ‘I think, sometimes, they can be two parts of the same thing, so intertwined that they cannot be unravelled.’

Perhaps it is my passion, perhaps it is the wine, but I feel a rush of daring. My heart begins to pound. I slip my chemise down over my shoulders, let it puddle around my feet and stand naked before her. Love or lust – I may not know the difference, but my longing for her is my master now, and I want her to know it.

She is silenced. Her eyes slide over my body. A great wave of wanting sweeps from the very pit of my stomach. I cannot move. I am pinned by her gaze. Then she takes a step towards me. I reach out for her and press myself against the rough cotton of her shift. I put my mouth to hers and kiss her deeply. I will die if she does not kiss me back. But her arms come round me and her hands are on my back, pulling me closer. I shiver as she runs her fingers down my spine and over my hips. Then I am untying the fastening at her breast and touching her skin as her shift falls to her waist.

I pull back, clasping her hands in mine, our eyes locked. Hers are half closed, her lips parted. The candlelight catches the gleam of her pale skin. Her chest is scattered with freckles, gathered here and there in constellations, a map of the heavens written on her body.

I did not know how much it is possible to want another person, how the hunger takes over until there is nothing else. All these months I have yearned to take her into my arms and make her mine, and yet I did not know how. And now she is here, opened up to me, showing herself like one of God’s angels in a painting.

It is her eyes that give me the strength to do what I do next, to take her to the bed like a wife to her husband or a whore to her john – her eyes, blazing with love, questioning me and making my body burn in reply.

Chapter 26

Trade is quiet at the Monday market. Even with a good summer behind us, grain is scarce and apples from the Abingdon orchards rot in their barrels, infected with some flying pest that the farmers cannot name.

In the market square, gossip is the favoured currency now. London newsbooks exchange hands as if they are precious stones. The King is held prisoner, captured by the army, and some say that the country cannot prosper. There can be no progress without God’s elect on his throne. Others blame Charles Stuart for the years of war and call for a new government to set the country straight.

All I care about is whether there will be wheat to see us through the lean months and whether I can afford a scrap of meat to tempt Lizzie, for she eats little these days and she needs the strength.

As autumn comes in, I dig for burdock roots and nettles along the riverbank and in the woods. I boil them with vinegar and make ointments with pig’s fat begged from the butcher’s boy on Ock Street. I take down bunches of dried lavender that have scented my kitchen for the long hot summer, and sell them as nosegays to ladies in the square. But my stocks will not last for long.

Lizzie does not seem to worry. She is much engaged with Thomasine and spends her time preaching to the debtors and drunkards in the Gatehouse Gaol. God will sustain us, she says, if we do His will. We need nothing more.

But she changes her mind on the day that
he
comes.

I am returning from the woods, swaddled in my cloak. A grey drizzle saps the colour from the world and I do not notice the two red-coated men until I’m almost home.

They are stationed at either side of our front door, armed with pistols and swords. One is holding a large white horse by the bridle, and is petting the beast to calm it.

I put my head down, pull my cap low over my eyes and walk on towards the church. As soon as I’m out of sight, I duck between the buildings and make my way down a siding to the path that runs along the back of the house. As in London, the cottages are close together here and the alley is used for dumping waste. There is no street drain and it stinks of rot and vomit. I hesitate as I feel the squelch and suck of the filth beneath my feet, but Fate pulls me forward.

I reach the kitchen door at the back of the house. Ankle deep in mire, still clutching my basket, I press my ear to the slats. Silence. I lift the catch and slip soundlessly into the kitchen. The room is empty, the fire smoking, just as I had left it.

I put down the basket and stand in the middle of the room, straining to hear the sounds of struggle or distress. There is nothing but the whooshing of blood in my ears.

Then I hear it: high and fluttering, like birdsong, the unmistakable sound of Lizzie’s laughter. And then another in answer, but deeper this time and male.

The door to the front parlour is closed and I creep up to it and listen. A man is speaking, I’m sure of it now. It comes again – her laughter, pretty and light. I open the door.

Lizzie is seated on the settle by the fireplace. The hearth is cold but she stretches out towards it as if she is warming her toes. Her cap is missing and her hair is tied up, as though she has attempted hastily to dress it. She is smiling at a man who sits with his back to me on the stool opposite.

He has broad shoulders and straggly brown hair, curling over the collar of his buff coat. A black felt hat sits on the floor beside him, with a sword.

I know him immediately. I know the set of his shoulders, the stoop of his back, the stillness of his bearing. I know the soft Fenland burr of his voice. I have answered to it all my life.

Master Oliver turns, sees me, stands.

Lizzie beams. ‘Ah, Ruth, here you are at last.’

I am struck dumb.

‘We have been waiting,’ Lizzie says. ‘General Cromwell has come to find you.’

He has aged since I saw him last. His face is careworn, crumpled like an unlaundered shirt. His hair is thinning and losing its colour.

I do not know what to say.

‘Are you well, child?’ he asks. His voice is husky with the cough that always plagues him at the turning of the seasons.

‘Yes . . . yes, sir.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I have been concerned for you, ever since you left us so suddenly.’

‘I’m grateful that you think of me, sir.’

‘It pains me to think on it, but I would honour the service done by your mother. She was a fine and faithful servant. I pray for her still.’

‘I too, sir.’

‘Good girl.’

‘Come, sit,’ Lizzie says, patting the settle beside her.

Master Oliver returns to his stool and I move a few steps closer, but I cannot sit easily in his presence.

Lizzie frowns at me. ‘Have you nothing to say?’

I bow my head. I don’t understand why he is here, or how he found me when I have tried so hard to be lost.

‘Ruth is humbled by your attentions, sir,’ Lizzie says. ‘As you can see, we live a simple life here. I’m sure that she—’

He holds up a hand to silence her. ‘Sit down, Ruth.’

I obey him. He studies me with grey, fathomless eyes.

‘How . . . how did you find me?’ I ask.

He smiles. ‘Mary. She never could hold her tongue. She told me she had seen you, back from the dead, in the churchyard at St Paul’s. I thought it fancy at first, but she told the tale over and over, so earnestly that I knew it to be true. By and by, my mother told me where to find you. I sent for you at West St Paul’s, but by then you had moved on. After that, well, it is not so hard to find two girls like yourselves, especially when I have men in my service all about the country.’

I think of the soldiers who stare at me in the market square. I think of Colonel Rainsborough. I had thought that no one really noticed me here; I do not feel watched, as I always did in the city.

‘The men who came for you that night at West St Paul’s, they were General Cromwell’s men,’ Lizzie says.

I remember the night we fled London, the night I thought I was running from Isaac Tuttle and his lies, running for my life. Is it possible that instead I was running from it?

‘Your mother was a good woman. I’m sorry for what happened, that I was not there to stop it,’ Master Oliver says. ‘I have done what I can, but the perpetrators have gone to ground. There is scant justice to be found in these times.’

I want to scream out loud,
I know where Isaac Tuttle is – I have seen him
. But the words will not come.

‘I will do what I can for you.’

Lizzie opens her palm and shows me the shining silver shillings she holds. ‘You are to have twenty pounds a year,’ she says. She cannot hide her smile.

‘We don’t need it,’ I say. ‘We are managing on our own. You said—’

‘I will brook no argument,’ Master Oliver says. ‘I have prayed on it. The Lord has guided me here. If I cannot bring justice to those who did you harm, then, by God, I will make sure no harm comes to you again. You spent your life in my service, and if the tide had not turned, you would be in my service still. It is right and proper that you are provided for. It is the will of God that guides me in this, as in everything.’

‘Amen,’ Lizzie says.

He smiles. ‘Besides, Mary will have it no other way.’

I see he is set in this. I find I cannot argue against the man I once called master.

He retrieves his hat and sword from the floor. ‘And now I must leave you. I must attend to some pressing business.’

‘Of course,’ Lizzie says. ‘We shall be for ever grateful, sir. As simple as our household is, please consider it your own, while you are here.’

‘Alas, I can stay no longer in Abingdon. There is trouble within the army ranks that must be put down. But I will try to come again, if time and duty allow.’

‘I hope this trouble will not keep you away long,’ Lizzie says, ‘and that Our Good Lord protects you from all danger.’

‘It is an unfortunate matter and we must move swiftly to quiet any discontent, but I trust that Providence will keep me safe.’ He takes her hand and presses it to his lips in a gesture that makes him hunch-backed and ungainly. ‘Things will be as we discussed, madam,’ he says. ‘You have my word.’

He comes towards me, awkward and bulky in his thick coat. He puts his hand on my shoulder and I notice dirt under his fingernails. There is something of the farmer in him still. ‘I am glad to see you well, child,’ he says, his voice low. ‘And I promise I will not forget her. I will find him out, God willing, when the time is right, and he will pay for his sins.’ He does not need to say the name of Isaac Tuttle for me to know what he means.

‘Good day to you both,’ he says. And then he is gone.

Lizzie runs to the window and watches him mount the white horse, then clatter off towards the square with the redcoats in tow.

She claps her hands. ‘Oh, Lord, thank you for your kindness! Oh, my angel, such good luck you bring me!’

I cannot join her in her happiness. I feel strangely flat. ‘I don’t understand. Why would he come here?’

‘Because he cares about you.’

‘But I’m no one to him. A servant . . .’

She comes towards me and cups my face with her hands. ‘What does it matter, the what and the why of it? Twenty pounds a year! We will have a table to match Thomasine’s. You will have a new dress at last and we can hire a girl to cook and clean.’

‘I need no help. You said we were better left alone . . .’

‘Things are different now that we know we are safe. And we will be
safe, Ruth. Just think how word of this will travel. We will be the general’s girls now, and no one will dare question that.’ She catches my hands and squeezes them tight. ‘We will be free to speak our minds and live as we please.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There is so much good work to be done here, and now I am free to do it. No more stitching by candlelight, no more fingers pricked sore with needles. Don’t you see? Your Master Oliver is truly a godly man, and God has brought him to us for a reason. I will work only in God’s name, and I will show Kiffin that he is wrong about me. Oh, Thomasine will be delighted! I must tell her.’

She runs to fetch her shawl, humming to herself as she covers her head and ducks out of the street door, stopping only to plant a kiss upon my cheek. It has been a long time since I have seen Lizzie so excited and it raises a smile in me, despite my misgivings. I’m glad to be the cause of her happiness. I know only that seeing Master Oliver has stirred something I had hoped was put to rest.

Lizzie is right, of course. Master Oliver can bring me coin, and coin can bring us safety and comfort. Coin will put food on our table and buy fuel for the fire. Coin will keep Lizzie by my side. Coin can bring me everything, apart from the one thing I want most. It cannot bring my mother back.