The Crimson Ribbon (19 page)

Tears wet his cheeks, but I feel no pity. I feel disgust. He has spoken the word I fear so much, a word that holds so much power and spreads such terror. Those women were not witches. They were guilty of no more than their sex. I imagine wives and daughters, following their men to battle, cooking their dinners and mending their clothes, believing themselves safe, protected by the unspoken laws of the battlefield. I imagine them fleeing, stumbling over the bloodied bodies of their husbands and sons, cut down as they run. Even the basest camp whore does not deserve such an end. No one deserves it. I asked to know this, but now I wish I had not – I have meddled too close. I taste bile in my throat.

And still Joseph goes on: ‘It was a woman who cut me. This scar was made by a cleaver, meant for the kitchen, not a soldier’s sword. There is no honour in my war wounds. I cannot forget what I did in the name of vengeance. I will spend the rest of my life atoning for it.’

‘And so you should,’ I say coldly. This is not the man I thought I knew. That blackness in his eyes, now I know what it is – there is a devil in him. No friend of mine could commit such an act. If he can do this to a stranger, what might he do to me? He belongs with Isaac Tuttle and his ilk; those twisted men with a taste for blood, learned by battlefield butchery. There is a word for what he is, a forbidden word, marking out the very worst of sinners: murderer. I want him away from me, away from this house.

At last he wipes his eyes and looks at me. ‘How is it that even now, even when I know there is no hope for us, you can still draw out my darkest secrets? Perhaps there is something of the spellbinder in you after all.’

My skin crawls. I stand and walk away from him, my back turned. ‘And if there was, would you assign me the same fate?’

‘Ruth—’

‘I want you to leave,’ I say, struggling to level my voice.

He says nothing for a moment and then he sighs. ‘You see? I’m right. I am not a good man. And now you will never forgive me.’

I will not look at him, or turn to him, or answer him.

‘Well, then . . .’ he says, standing. ‘I’ll leave you . . . if you are sure that’s what you want?’ His voice is as unsteady as my feelings.

I nod.

He gathers his hat and jacket. As he reaches the door, he looks back at me one last time. ‘I cannot blame you. How can I expect forgiveness when I cannot forgive myself? But I hoped you might understand. I would forgive you anything . . .’ Then he leaves, without bidding me goodnight.

It is only when I creep to Lizzie’s room and slip under the coverlet beside her that I let the tears come. She is deep in red-poppy dreams, lips parted, sweet night breath upon my cheek. She does not stir to comfort me. I watch her sleep for a long time, but I cannot join her.

Is there anyone on this earth who is really as they appear to be? I’d thought I knew Lizzie’s heart, but she keeps its depths hidden. I’d thought I knew Joseph, but my belief in him has been turned about, and about again, until I no longer know which part of it is true. Lizzie is warm and soft next to me, but I find no consolation in her; I am more alone than ever.

In the morning Lizzie puts on her green brocade and goes out into the street without her cap. At the conduit an old woman spits at her feet and calls her ‘holy whore’. Lizzie does not answer. She holds her head high, shakes out her hair and smiles.

She is brazen. She is beautiful. I have never felt more strangely proud of her, or more afraid of what she has become.

Chapter 34

The weeks that follow are bitter. The winter comes on fast and the Thames freezes over by early December. There is no snow, just the ice and biting winds from the north that still the city streets. The conduit is frozen and each morning children make a game of breaking up the water with stones.

After the rally at Colonel Rainsborough’s funeral, there is a brief lull, as if people are drawing breath, waiting to see what will happen next. The King is brought home to Windsor, and the newsbooks argue over whether this is a good omen or not.

I consider Joseph’s belief that I could have an influence on those great men, in these turbulent times. I hear that Master Oliver is returned to Whitehall and I wonder if he would see me. But what would be the use in that? I have nothing to say on matters of state, so I put the thought aside.

I think of Joseph often, sometimes with disgust, sometimes fear and sometimes guilt. His admission has culled any sentimental feeling I might have harboured, as I realise how close I have come to the Devil once again. Images of the story he told, of those poor innocent women, plague me when I close my eyes at night. But I cannot marry up these pictures with my own memories of the man, and I wonder if I ever truly knew him. People have so many parts that it is impossible to know them all.

Lizzie is consumed by events, visiting the churchyard, even in the cold, eager for the latest news. Her thoughts turn to the King’s fate and she seeks out the Whitehall gossips daily. She tells me that she must know if the King is to be put to trial. I do not understand this obsession, but I have come to see that Thomasine was right about one thing: there is much I do not understand about Lizzie.

Away from Thomasine and her prayer meetings, Lizzie searches for a new way to spread her gospel. She will not countenance a visit to Kiffin to beg a place in his congregation, and I doubt that he would take us in any case. Instead she says God is always at her side, and she needs no church and no minister to find Him.

As in Abingdon, she works hard to find her audience, and she finds it in the taverns and the marketplaces at St Giles and Smithfield. She goes to St Paul’s Cross and speaks out amid the vagrants and gossips, drawing crowds of dissidents who are ready to believe her words. And they love her for it, as they must, for her passion matches her beauty, and the people need someone to believe in now.

Lizzie refuses to take up her old trade, and while I spend my days turning away Master Poole’s old clients, she works on her writing. I often find her sitting in reverie, or poring over some new tract she is scribbling, ready for Benjamin’s press. Her pamphlets find their rightful place in St Paul’s Churchyard, amid the penny broadsheets and the countless religious treatises of London’s most radical thinkers. It is the only thing that gives her pleasure now so I encourage it, and welcome Benjamin when he comes to collect her work.

Over those weeks, we pick up the threads of our old life but, with Margaret and Charlotte in the house, it is impossible to live as freely as we did in Abingdon. I do not return to my old room in the eaves, with the truckle bed and the straw mattress for which I had once been so grateful. I stay with Lizzie now, curling up next to her once the others are gone to bed and I do not care who knows it. It is nobody’s business but our own. And yet there is a distance between us, our love a broken bridge that has not yet mended. The strings that tie our hearts together are frayed. I don’t know if time will heal them but I pray it will clear my mind of the torturous imaginings that visit me whenever we are apart.

It is harder to establish my new place in the household. I’m no longer a maid, working alongside Margaret and Charlotte and I see resentment in their eyes whenever I ask a favour of either of them. I cannot slot back into the place I left all that time before. Perhaps it is prideful, but I feel myself elevated. I am no longer the frightened girl I was when I first arrived here. Eighteen months as mistress of my own house, and the knowledge that the food on the table is paid for from my own pocket, makes sure of that.

One afternoon I am in the kitchen, banking up the fire, when Lizzie comes hurtling through the door, calling my name. The urgency in her voice tells me that something is amiss. She unwinds her cloak and abandons it on the floor. She has gone out without a cap again.

‘Oh, Ruth, what am I to do?’ She falls into my arms and starts to sob.

I hold her for a moment. Tears splash my neck. I guide her to the bench before the hearth.

Gasping for breath through her tears, she tells me the news. The army has seized power in the Commons. Anyone who would treat with the King is gone. It is said that the Army Council is determined to try Charles Stuart for treason. The churchyard is buzzing with the gossip.

So, I think, Joseph is right. They will cut off his head. I soothe Lizzie, stroking her hair. ‘But this has nothing to do with us,’ I say. ‘Why should you care so much?’

‘It has everything to do with us. They will kill the King, and when they do, they will kill me too . . .’

‘What do you mean?’

She steadies herself a little. ‘There is something I have not told you. A secret . . .’

More secrets. I’m sick of them. But I hold her hand, noticing how tiny it feels, and ready myself for bad news.

‘I have had dreams,’ she says. ‘Dreams that are so vivid, so real, I hardly know if I am sleeping or waking. The King comes to me, but he comes as an angel, sent by God from the heavens, shining with a light so bright that I can barely look at him. It is like looking into the sun. He tells me that he and I are one, that I am tied to him and that his fate will be mine. He asks me to help him in the name of God. I have to help him . . .’ She presses the heels of her thumbs to her eyes as she tries to stop the flow of weeping.

‘He tells me that if he is killed, God will be angry. A great calamity will come and the country will fall into chaos and destruction, the like of which has not been seen since the days of Sodom. And then I wake up and I cannot move. I’m lying on the bed and you are next to me and I cannot reach out to touch you, or call your name. It is as though I am already dead and lying in my grave, and there is nothing but darkness, and I know that what I have seen is a true vision of what is to come . . .’

I do not know what to say. I have grown accustomed to her fits and passions. I have seen the way she performs her visions, paling and trembling like a mystic. But this is different. Her eyes speak not of holy bliss but of earthly terror.

‘It’s just a dream,’ I say.

‘No . . . it is much more than that.’

‘We all have nightmares—’

‘You are not listening. You have not heard me.’ She pulls away, insistent. ‘This is real, and it comes again and again, night after night. God is speaking to me. The King is speaking to me. You have to believe it.’ She twists her dress in her hands, knuckles white as bones. ‘You have to help me.’

‘You know I will do anything I can.’

She looks hopeful. ‘Anything?’

‘Yes. I will go to the apothecary tomorrow, and seek out more of the good poppy to help you sleep. Or perhaps the poppy is to blame. Perhaps a little comfrey and camomile will calm you better.’

‘I do not need your cures, Ruth. I need your help. I want you to go to Cromwell.’

‘Cromwell?’ I cannot help but smile. ‘Master Oliver is an influential man, but I doubt even he can banish bad dreams.’

‘You must listen, Ruth. I must take what I know to the highest authority. Cromwell is the one who can help me now.’

‘Lizzie, I don’t—’

‘Don’t you see? The message is meant for him. God has chosen me because of my connection to you. It is
our
duty to take His message to the general. It all makes sense.’

First Joseph, with his politics and persuasion, now Lizzie, both wanting more from me than I’m willing to give.

‘Oh, yes, this is a perfect idea,’ Lizzie says. She is dry-eyed now, a hint of colour warming her pallor. ‘I must present my case to him. He is a godly man, guided in everything. He will surely pay heed, once he knows we are in earnest. You must go to him, Ruth. You must ask him to grant me an audience with the great men of the Army Council.’

‘I doubt he will want to see me. After all, there has been no word from him for so long. Perhaps he has forgotten me.’

‘Don’t be such a fool. He will never forget you. You have his ear, I’m sure of that.’

I cannot imagine myself standing before my old master with such a tale. He has little tolerance for time-wasters. Thinking of it makes me feel like the child I once was, ever wary of the wrath of her betters. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot do it.’

Lizzie’s nostrils flare. ‘But you must. I must be allowed to speak out. God has given me this great task. I cannot fail him.’

‘I cannot go to Master Oliver with stories of dreams and imaginings.’

She gives a cry of exasperation. She stands and paces the room. There is a wild, distracted look in her eye. ‘Why do you not believe me? Do you not trust in God?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Then why hesitate?’

I ask myself the question. For a long time I believed blindly in Lizzie. I placed her higher upon this earth than any other. But now I see a desperate intensity in her that I do not recognise – something behind her eyes, as though somebody or something else resides there. She is taken over with such fire, set alight by God. Where once that fire was all for me, all for our bed, now it is all for Him. The fierceness of her conviction frightens me; I do not trust it.

But she is insistent. ‘General Cromwell is my best hope. You must go to him. He will listen to you.’

‘I doubt he will see me. I will not know what to say.’

‘I will tell you. You will carry God’s message. You will be my angel, just like I’ve always said. You will be my saviour once again, my darling.’

She comes to me and puts her hand on my chest. I feel the familiar lurch of my heart. But it is a broken heart now, and the sensation brings pain.

‘No. I won’t do it.’

She freezes for a moment and the wildness in her eyes sparks with anger. Then she lets out a great wail. ‘So you condemn me to my fate! I cannot live with this pressing down upon me, knowing I could have done something to stop it. Knowing that you would not help me!’

She stumbles to the table, where Margaret has left out her kitchen knives for sharpening. She picks up the largest. ‘You said you loved me. You promised you would do anything for me. How can you turn from me now, when I need you more than ever? After everything we have been to one another. Do you not care for me at all? I cannot go on if you have abandoned me.’ She pushes up the sleeve of her dress and holds out her wrist. The blade glints as she puts it to her flesh.

‘Lizzie, no!’ I shout, but I’m too late.

Blood wells over the silver blade and streaks down her arm to puddle in her palm. I’m with her in an instant, grabbing her hand and forcing the blade away from her skin. For a moment her grasp is strong and we grapple, neither willing to give way, but then, as her blood begins to drip, she lets the knife clatter to the flags.

I press my free hand over her wound. The cut is not very deep but she has opened a vein and I must stop the bleeding. She slumps to the floor, her face draining.

I crouch and gather my own skirts, pressing the fabric to her wrist. ‘By Christ, what are you thinking?’

‘If you will not help me, then I cannot live. My fate is tied to that of the King, and they will kill him. You know there is no other end to this trial. But the army men are wrong. Your Master Oliver is mistaken. This is not God’s will. I know it.’ She looks at me with such pleading. Her skin has taken on a sickly grey sheen and her hair plasters to her damp forehead, like riverweed. ‘I know that I am a sinner,’ she says. ‘I know that I have done you wrong. God has given me this one chance of redemption, this one task to make amends. If I cannot complete it then I do not
deserve
to live.’

I look deep into her eyes, and I see that she believes, absolutely, what she says. Something has happened to her; something beyond my understanding. I feel as though I have been struck a blow to the chest. Whatever this terrible thing is that she has seen, and wherever it comes from, it is no fantasy. I cannot ignore it. If I have doubted her before, I do not now.

‘Who else will help me?’ she whispers. ‘You are so much better than I. You are my only hope . . . my good angel . . .’

‘I will help you,’ I say. ‘Of course I will help you.’