The Crimson Ribbon (16 page)

Chapter 29

Back at the house, recovered, Lizzie installs herself at the kitchen table with a sheaf of paper and fresh ink. Her quill scratches down the thoughts in her head. Her face is set with concentration and every now and then she stops and closes her eyes, remembering. When she opens them again, they glow with inner light.

I prepare a rich broth for our supper, using the best mutton that money can buy. I scent the pot strongly with rosemary, and add hyssop and camomile – not enough to taste but enough to calm an agitated mind.

I try to draw her out, to bring her back to me. ‘What are you writing?’

She does not answer.

‘Is it a tract?’

‘Ruth, please . . .’

‘Supper is ready.’

‘I’m busy. You can see that.’

‘But you must eat. You need the strength.’

She shakes her head and goes back to her writing. I stir the pot. The flavourful broth steams and my stomach groans, asking for food.

‘The butcher said this is his best. And fresh too. Does it not smell good?’

She rolls her eyes and slams the quill on the table, sending spatters of black ink across the wood. ‘I do not want it.’ Her teeth are clenched, like a child refusing to swallow a cure.

‘Come, share a meal with me, and then I’ll leave you to work. Everyone must eat.’

‘Not I. Not today.’

‘But I made it for you.’

‘Ruth, you do not understand. What happened today was . . . was everything I have hoped for. It is what I have prayed for, all these years, that God might use me to spread His word. And now that He has chosen me at last, it is my duty to carry His message. I must tell people what I know. It is my chance to make up for the past.’

I frown. ‘But you have led a blameless life. You must not heed what others think. You must not take gossip to heart so. If Pastor Kiffin will not relent—’

‘I do not care about him.’

‘Then what is there to make up for?’

She sighs. ‘There are some things I would rather forget, but I cannot, things for which I owe a debt, in the eyes of Heaven. I’m sure you have heard the story of my mother. Charlotte will have made sure of it.’

I nod. ‘She did. But surely you do not blame yourself for that.’

She shrugs and I see the pain behind her tight lips. I recognise it as mirroring my own. I think of the nights I have spent cursing myself for my failure to save my own flesh and blood. I sit down next to her and put my hand on hers. ‘My love, you are not to blame. I have always known you are a truly good soul, blessed even, but you are not an angel yet, thank God. So, you must eat.’

She pulls her hand away. ‘I cannot. I am full. Full of His love.’

She takes up her quill, pulls a fresh sheet of paper towards her and begins again.

I see that I cannot reason with her, so I fetch a bowl for myself and ladle a good helping of broth. As I sit down to eat, a splash of liquor spills from the bowl and slops onto Lizzie’s paper. We both stare as the liquid seeps across the page, the wet ink losing form and running into a senseless mess.

‘I’m sorry . . .’ I reach across and try to blot the words with my apron but I make it worse.

She is still and silent but her eyes slide to mine and they are filled with a look I have never seen from her before. It is contempt, as if I am the Devil himself.

She stands and gathers the papers, all except the spoiled one. Then, without a word or a glance, she takes up a candle and goes into the parlour, closing the door behind her, shutting me out.

I feel like a child, scolded by an elder, as tiny as an ant, crushed under her heel. I am sick with shame. For such a small, silly thing, my feelings are so big.

She does not sup at all that night but stays in the parlour working on her papers until late. The broth turns cold in the pot, the butcher’s best mutton stagnant and tough. I scrub the kitchen table, but the mess of black ink has sunk into the grain and left a mark there, like a reminder of my misdeeds.

I go to bed alone. I cannot sleep. The bed feels cold and damp without her to warm it. I lie and stare into the darkness. I know it is wrong, but I am jealous of God.

Chapter 30

The winter months are hard for many. The rain starts in February and does not stop. The roads turn to mud and farmland is lost to the swollen Thames. People talk of more fighting to come. Royalist pamphlets, filtering through from London and Oxford, tell of growing support for the King and turncoats in the Parliament ranks. I cannot believe it will come to this. I cannot believe that people have the stomach for more killing. Besides, now Master Oliver has the army and the ear of Parliament men, I know he will do what he can to prevent it. He is a good man. He will do right by the country, as he has done right by me.

We do not see Master Oliver again, but the money arrives, delivered by a notary in the days after Candlemas. With it comes a letter, sealed with red wax and addressed to me. Lizzie opens it, reads it once and tosses it into the fire.

‘Pleasantries,’ she says. ‘Nothing of consequence.’

I watch the flames take it as though it is a piece of rubbish, or one of the tracts that she has abandoned, wondering what it says, wondering that she can toss away such proof of our good fortune.

Each pamphlet that Lizzie brings home, I scan the frontispiece, looking for a certain printer’s mark, waiting for the day I see it there and know that it is Joseph’s work. That day does not come. With the passing of time I wonder what has become of him, and what might have happened between us had he not been poisoned by Isaac Tuttle’s lies. There is no point in these daydreams, but I cannot help myself. For every choice I have made, a hundred possibilities have closed to me; for every path I follow, other roads are barred; Joseph is just one. There is a sore bitterness in me when I think of him now, and a sad regret that he will never know the truth. His lack of faith in me and his belief in Isaac Tuttle have tainted every good thing that passed between us.

I try to join Lizzie and Thomasine in their work but, truth be told, I do not have the burning passion for preaching and prayer that they share. Now I have coin in my purse and a warm fire at nights, I give as much as I can to their cause, but I’m not one for speechifying in the marketplace or going from tavern to tavern, talking to labourers and soldiers who are more interested in a woman’s good looks than her godly words.

Whenever I am with them both, I feel as if they are two parts of a great truth that I do not understand. My letters are well learned, but I do not have Lizzie’s fine hand, so cannot act as scribe for her. I am of no use to her. In the evenings when she sits, bathed in candlelight, quietly toiling at her papers, there is a hollowness in my heart. She is here with me and yet I miss her.

As winter turns to spring and the woods creep into life, I spend my time searching the sodden pathways for early herbs and preparing my kitchen for the drying and boiling and distilling that will mark the summer months. I would rather serve God in my own small way, by helping those who need it, the dying and the sick, than by trying to save the souls of those who do not want to be saved.

When May Day comes I am determined to mark it. This year it will not be a day of fear and flight, of happiness shattered, but one of celebration, just like the old days. There may be no drunkenness and no dancing, but there will be Lizzie and me, and good food, and togetherness. It is one year since we left London, one year since that night in the woods when she first held me in her arms, one year since her lips first touched mine. That is something to celebrate.

I spend the day preparing, walking out to fetch the best foodstuffs I can find and collecting flowers to decorate our table, and our bed. I make a pie and spend a whole hour fashioning miniature pastry vines to twine about the crust. I sweep the kitchen and rub the table with beeswax until it shines. Once the pie is baking, I make a thick gravy and spice it with pepper to give it a pleasing heat that makes my nose tingle. I lay out trenchers and knives, cut a chunk of manchet and set the daisies I have picked in a jug of water. I am about to call her from the parlour when she enters, dressed for the street, tying her cap under her chin.

‘Are you going out?’

‘Yes. Thomasine asked me to attend her this evening, so that we may study together.’

‘Again? But I have made supper . . .’

She looks at me blankly. ‘You know I’m fasting today.’

‘I got beef from the butcher. He saved it for me. I made a pie.’

She sniffs the air. ‘That may be, but I’m fasting.’

‘It’s May Day.’

‘Ruth, you must leave these old country ways behind.’

I search her face for some recognition. I find none. ‘It is one year since we left London. Almost to the day.’

‘Oh.’

‘I thought that perhaps we might celebrate.’

‘Celebrate? What is there to celebrate in that?’

I have a hard, flat feeling in my chest. She does not understand me. ‘Can we not share a meal before you go? You must eat some time.’

‘God will sustain me.’

She looks tired and has dark shadows under her eyes. In bed at nights, I notice that she is losing the flesh from her bones and I watch, transfixed, as her ribs move under her skin like ripples on a pond.

‘Perhaps just this once?’

‘I promised Thomasine,’ she says, wrapping her cloak around her shoulders.

‘You have been with Thomasine every night this week.’

She puts her hands on her hips. ‘Are you trying to tempt me from God’s work?’

‘I . . . I just want to see you. Perhaps I could come with you?’ I make to collect my shawl. ‘I can wrap the pie and take it with us. Perhaps a gift to Thomasine—’

‘You are not invited.’

I’m used to her tempers, but now she is cold and indifferent. It cuts.

‘Besides,’ she says, ‘we cannot be together all the time.’

‘We are not together all the time. I’m here, cooking and cleaning and keeping house for you. You treat me like a servant still!’

Her eyes are icy. ‘And what are you, if not indebted to me?’

‘I am not your servant now.’

‘I took you off the streets when you had nowhere else to go. I fed you and clothed you when you had nothing. I left my home to come here, to this poverty-stricken, pitiful little town, to protect you. And you want me to celebrate that?’

‘You said that things are different now. You said that we are equals.’ I feel tears springing and I blink them back.

‘Things
are
different. You have a home, food on the table, and you are respected here. I have raised you up from nothing. What more do you want from me?’

‘I thought . . . I thought you loved me. Till death . . . remember?’

‘By God, Ruth, you are like a leech! You will drain me before you are done.’

She turns and swoops down the corridor, her cloak billowing like dark wings. The front door slams. I crumple to my knees and let sobs shake me.

She has snapped at me before – it is her way – but I have never answered back. Now I feel a rage in me. She
had
said those things. She
did
promise a new life and, for a while, we have had it, together. I do not understand what has changed, but I know it is not I.

The more I think about it, the angrier I become. It is true that Lizzie saved me once – I will always be grateful for the charity she showed me then – but it is my own connection to Master Oliver that keeps flesh on our bones now. Have I not proved my devotion again and again? I was ready to face the gallows, choosing to stay by her side when I could have fled for my life. I have sworn on the memory of my mother that I will never abandon her. Even now, when she depends upon me for all her worldly needs, she can still make me feel insignificant, like the supplicant begging endlessly for favour.

I pull myself up off the flags and slam about the kitchen, crashing pots onto shelves and tossing the daisies out into the mire of the back lane. I leave the pie baking in the oven. It will burn and end up in the slop bucket but I no longer have a taste for it. Maybe I will fast too. Maybe I will show her that I am just as strong as she, just as good.

It is all she talks about now, with that light burning in her eyes – being good. Her preaching and her pamphlets, her angels and her visions, they are all she wants, all she cares about – that and Thomasine. It is Thomasine who takes her away from me.

Then a thought comes to me.

Once, it was the most precious thing I owned. Now it belongs to Lizzie. Suddenly I long to smell the leather binding and feel the stiff crinkle of the paper. I want to hold it to my chest as if it were a child’s poppet, as if it contained my mother herself. Would it be so very wrong to take the book back? Would it be so wrong to use it?

I creep up the stairs, candle in hand, a thief in my own house. I go to the chest in which Lizzie keeps her things and prise open the lid.

It is full of her clothes, petticoats and grey overdresses mostly, some stitched and mended by my own hand. Underneath is her green brocade, shining like treasure beneath the dull wools and scratchy serge. At the bottom I find a pile of pamphlets and letters and the one piece of jewellery she owns but never wears: a tiny gold cross, threaded on a faded velvet ribbon. Beneath this is the book.

I clutch it to me, snivelling and wiping my tears on my sleeve. I sit on the bed and hold it in my lap, stroking the battered brown cover. I turn to the page I want and find what I’m looking for.

I think of Thomasine and trace diagrams with my fingers, whisper the words under my breath. I make a mental note of the herbs I might need. Then I close my eyes and pray. I pray to the spirit of my poor dead mother. If Annie Flowers can curse her killers from beyond the grave, then surely she will do her worst for her own daughter.

I’m mindful of time passing. I do not expect Lizzie back for hours, but she may repent her harsh words and come home to make her peace. I begin to pack away her things, a little guilty now at my actions. But as I pick up the book once more, a letter falls from between its leaves and lands on the floor. It is dirty with curled edges and smudged with remnants of black sealing wax. I cannot stop myself. I open it and read.

Devonshire Square, May 1647

My dearest Elizabeth,

I do not write to excuse my actions, but to beg that you heed my warning.

Your presence in my congregation has stirred me in ways I never knew before. I have believed our friendship to be a rare gift. But I am married, bound by oath in the sight of Our Lord, to another until death. What we have done, what you ask of me, is sin, and now I am punished for it. My wife lies abed as I write, sick with the loss of another child. She is punished for our sins. I see now that I have been under the influence of a darker force.

I fear for your immortal soul. That is why you must go. For your sake and for my own, that the Devil within us both might be banished and this affliction might be lifted. If you ever loved me, you will go. And if there are other men, I pray you do the same for them.

Beware, my Elizabeth. The eyes of the world are upon you. God is benevolent, but the world does not forgive or forget.

Burn this paper, for it condemns us both.

God have mercy.

William

I read the letter three times and then I weep. I weep for Lizzie and her lies. I weep for Kiffin and his poor tortured wife. But, most of all, I weep for myself.

I am a fool. I have believed her innocence utterly. I have raged on her behalf. I have believed in her purity.

I am deceived.

My mind whirls. I thought I knew her heart. It seems I do not. If she has lied about Kiffin, what else has she lied about?

I wipe my eyes and put the letter back in its hiding place. My hands shake as I fold the clothes carefully so she will not know they have been disturbed. I try to reason with myself. One lie does not mean there have been others. But all I can think of is Thomasine’s face. I must know the truth. I must know it at once.

Out in the street the rain comes down hard. Fast-moving clouds blot out the moonlight. I forgo the comfort of a lantern. I do not want to be seen.

As I near the Pendarveses’ house I feel dreamlike, as though I am moving without will, a greater force carrying me forward. My stomach is twisted in a great knot of anxiety. I must know the truth, but I fear it too. I am driven on by a certainty that what I find there will bring me pain, but not knowing is even worse.

Visions of Lizzie and Thomasine take away my sense and reason. I see her copper hair tangled with Thomasine’s dark locks. I see Thomasine’s skin like tallow wax next to her pale, creamy flesh. I imagine fingers meeting, lips touching. What I see in my mind’s eye becomes reality and I must see it. I must know for certain that I am betrayed.

I dare not go to the front door and, besides, what is the use in that? If I want to know the truth it must be by other, more secret means. So I sneak from window to window, keeping myself low, hidden by the shadows. There is a light in the kitchen where the hearth smoulders and Dot snoozes on the settle. I see more light from a downstairs casement at the back of the house.

I’m weak with the blood rushing in my limbs. I hold my breath. As I peer over the sill I swear my heart thumps so loudly that they will hear it.

I see Lizzie.

She is sitting on a bench by the fire with a book in her hands and she is watching Thomasine. Thomasine is pacing back and forth, talking and gesticulating wildly. I strain to hear what she says but the noise of the rain covers her words. I see Lizzie speak, although I cannot hear her, and she points at something on the page.

There is no passionate embrace, no naked skin and no ecstatic clinch. The only heat here is in the debate.

Now I am double the fool. Jealousy has turned my mind wild.

At home, I sit and stare into a single candle flame until the wick burns itself out. I think hard. I think back.

I realise she never lied to me about Kiffin. She never denied, absolutely, the rumours that caused him to abandon her. I believed that she
had
denied it because I wanted to believe it. If she did love him, her heart must have broken when he turned from her. Her desire to flee London, to put many mud-soaked miles between them, makes sense now. How she must have suffered, alone and deserted, unable to speak her pain. I know how that feels. I wonder if she loves him still.