The Lady's Slipper (7 page)

The room was already full when Richard arrived. About twenty people, men and women, all dressed in muted colours, greys, browns, dull tweeds. They were sitting or standing in small groups in the panelled room that had once been a library but was now furnished simply with benches set in a circle. A chandelier was suspended over a central table, casting light onto a Bible, a rolled parchment and inkstand with quill. There was a faint smell of beeswax and lavender-oil polish. Richard breathed in the familiar aroma.

‘Ah, Richard!’ Dorothy Swainson approached him with a smile. ‘It’s good to see thee.’ She talked as she led him over to two other men, a farmer in rough tweed breeches and a leather waistcoat, and Isaac Fuller, the town clerk. ‘We were just talking about Felicia.’

‘Is she still being held?’ Richard asked.

‘Aye, she is,’ the farmer said. ‘We’ve tried to plead for them to let her go, but the magistrate is determined to hold her until the quarter session–and that’s another three weeks away.’

‘It does not bear thinking about,’ Dorothy said. ‘She’s to be charged with inciting a riot, and anyone less likely I cannot imagine.’ Isaac nodded in agreement.

‘What happened?’

‘I was there, and it was not Felicia, but some of the congregation that got carried away.’ The clerk shook his head. ‘The curate was preaching that the Devil is amongst us. The same old sermon–you know the one–that the Devil comes in many guises and lurks inside the most innocent exterior. And that we should all look out for him.’ He raised his eyes to the invisible heavens. ‘He was stirring up the crowd–setting up the old atmosphere of fear and mistrust.’

‘Was that what made Felicia angry?’ Richard looked to Dorothy.

‘Not exactly. The shipping tax has already been levied this week, and the grain tax. The curate was after the salt tax,’ Dorothy said. ‘Felicia thinks these taxes on the working people are unjust. She stood up and calmly said that the only devil as far as she could see was in the hearts of those who would take money from people who could ill afford it.’

Richard nodded his head vigorously, to show his allegiance with Felicia’s stand.

‘Anyway, once she had pleaded her case, other rowdier members of the congregation got up too and started shouting her down, and some more people got up to support Felicia, and then the youths started calling the curate names, and you know what happened next.’

‘Was no one else arrested?’ asked the farmer.

‘There was all sorts of confusion. Someone rode for Constable Woolley and his men, and they arrived in a great huff to arrest the troublemakers. When I spoke with her afterwards Felicia said that Lord Kendall, who was sitting in the reserved stalls at the front, apparently testified that it was all her doing. He has always been ready to condemn us–he thinks women have no place in religious ministry.’

She turned to Richard. ‘What must it be like for her in that cold damp cell? We are sending people every day to petition the magistrate, and to take her food and blankets and anything else we can think of that might make her comfortable.’

She paused a moment to look around the room at the assembled people, and then, brushing down her skirts, said, ‘It looks as if we are all gathered.’ She clapped her hands and addressed everyone warmly. ‘Friends, welcome to the Hall. If you would like to prepare yourselves, we will start this evening’s meeting.’

Despite the evening chill, some people went to hang their coats on the hooks next to the door before filing into the two rows of oak benches. There was never a fire lit here, lest the warmth should set folk sleeping. There was a rustling of cloth against smooth wood, then boots scuffing the floorboards, as everyone sat down, followed by the usual few coughs and sighs as everyone settled in their places. The candle flames swayed in the movement of the air, then steadied, casting long shadows under their feet.

Richard glanced at Dorothy. Her broad forehead was relaxed, her lips slightly parted. Her hair, once chestnut, but now greying at the temples, was tucked under a plain linen coif. In her lap her hands lay unmoving on her dark grey skirt, one palm resting on the other. He sat upright and still, glancing around the room, taking in the open faces and lowered eyes. The moon was just visible floating like a half-pearl outside the long casement window. In the dim light the silence deepened until it was broken only by the ebb and flow of breath. Richard felt an excitement as a fullness entered the room. A strange sense of potency. He forced his body to be still, waiting for the inner voice to move him, listening to the subtle sound in his ears, a nearly inaudible hum behind his breath.

There was a slight noise to his left and Dorothy stood. Her cheeks were flushed as she spoke, her hands animated. ‘I feel moved to say to you that perhaps what has happened to our friend Felicia could contain a greater message. That maybe we should seek to change ourselves first, before looking to change others. That we should look deep within at our own shortcomings, and in seeing them allow the Spirit to work in us.’

There were nods and expressions of agreement around the room. No one spoke. They sat silently considering Dorothy’s words and letting their meaning sink in. Often it was like this, that only one, or maybe two people felt moved to speak, and then only a few short words. Richard mulled over his own shortcomings. He wondered if he had been too hasty calling so early at Alice Ibbetson’s house yesterday, and practically accusing her of stealing the orchid from his wood.

He had been fired up by indignation, and should have waited until a more respectable hour. It had been awkward, and may have antagonized her into her stubborn behaviour in town today. But he was quite sure she had taken the flower–he had seen pink paint water in the jar and felt sure she must have been painting the orchid when he called, not that other, most uninspiring green plant. He had been of a mind to search her house there and then. But that would have been tantamount to saying she had stolen it, and her husband was already bristling at his early intrusion, and he looked like a man who did not like surprises of any sort. He knew Mistress Ibbetson was supposed to be an authority on flowers, but it riled him to be treated as an idiot. When he had bumped into her today on Highgate she had been almost arrogant. He cast his mind back further to the empty hole, and the coppers; he frowned, they were obviously intended as an insult.

Someone had been trespassing in his wood last night, despite the fact that Isaac had helped him keep watch on the orchid. There was talk in the village that Old Margaret, the cunning woman, was about, and asking after it. She would be interested in its use for medicine, and he certainly did not want to be party to any sort of witchcraft or sorcery. Dorothy would never forgive him. He was determined to make sure Alice Ibbetson returned the flower to its rightful place, and that it stayed out of Widow Poulter’s hands. It was his duty before God to restore the orchid and deal fairly with the person who had stolen it, and he would do this to the best of his ability. After all, he had fought for the common man to have his own patch of land, to be able to keep his roots, not to be pushed from place to place on some wealthier man’s whim.

Not a day went by when he did not remember the men who had died fighting for a piece of this black soil that lodged in his fingernails each day as he dug his vegetable plot. This rare orchid, with its blood red petals, sprung from that same earth, also deserved to stay where it belonged. No good comes of it, if you interfere with the natural order. He sincerely hoped Alice would return it, as he had suggested.

His thoughts slid back to Alice as if on skates. Her hands had been trembling when he visited her, and he knew she was hiding something. He had seen it in her eyes. He had quite liked the feeling of seeing her flustered. It made her more attractive, more feminine. Was he imagining it, or had she looked a little in disarray? Little tendrils of her copper hair had escaped from her cap. She had blushed scarlet when he said he liked her paintings, and it was becoming to her to have a little colour in her cheeks. When he had seen her before, she always looked so pale and sad. And she had very beautiful hands. He went over the image of her hands smoothing her apron in his mind and a slight sweat broke out on his forehead, the room seemed to have grown warm. He imagined Alice’s hands painting the waxy petals of the orchid. Between his legs, his breeches began to stiffen and bulge.

Suddenly he realized he had been caught up in a train of his own thoughts and he dragged his mind back to his place before God, and the silence in the room. Dorothy was right. There was a battle to be fought, and it was with his own mind. He fought to gain control of himself. He gathered his thoughts, and returned his mind to the company of the good people around him.

After a time he managed to settle back into the companionable quiet. When about an hour had passed and the candles had burnt low, Dorothy leaned over to the person next to her and shook hands. This little ritual was repeated round the room with people reaching out to each other to smile and clasp each other’s hands.

Isaac Fuller, the clerk Richard had been talking to earlier, stood up by the table in the centre. ‘I have one or two items of business for us to attend to, Friends.’ He looked genially round the room. The people craned forward to listen. Richard shuffled. He hoped the business would not be too long.

‘Firstly, this petition, which is going to the king.’ He held up a piece of parchment.

‘Many other groups, Friends like ourselves, have already signed it, and it will go forth from our meeting to other groups. It is our testimony against strife and war. We have all seen to our cost what war between people brings. The paper here is for you all to bear witness to this with your signatures. Those who can’t write may make a mark and I will scribe his name alongside.’

He held up the quill and beckoned. ‘Make sure thou canst stand by thy word. It will be no shame on thee if thou art unable to sign. But I hope that most of us will.’

Already there were men and women standing in the queue. At the mention of the war Richard’s thoughts lurched back to his command in the Roundhead Army. He had a sense of drowning, as if the pictures were filling his lungs, choking him. Fragmented images of galloping horses and mutilated men lying in pools of their own blood swelled in his mind, but strangely distant, as if he was seeing them whilst floating under water. He glimpsed again a white ringlet of hair still attached to its bloodied roots, and saw before him a soldier’s wild laughing mouth, the strings of saliva between his teeth–broken pictures that made his heart pound and his body turn cold. He saw Geoffrey’s eyes, full of horror and disgust, and he saw himself, as if from above, turning away in shame. Richard remembered, and shakily lurched to his feet. One by one they went to the table and signed. When it was his turn, Richard picked up the quill and read the words on the parchment.

‘We, the Society of Friends of Netherbarrow, do hereby testify that we are against all war and strife. We declare that we will not lend our support to any armed force, and that we will not take up arms or weapons against another for any cause whatsoever. We will seek to bring peace and truth to our dealings with others. We seek that all people might be brought into love and unity with God and with each other. On this Day of our Lord the 3rd September 1660. We state that our word is our truth, with the help of God. Amen.’

He dipped the nib in the stoneware inkpot and rested it a moment on the edge of the pot to drain the excess ink. He took a moment to bring his attention to the act of signing. Resting his left hand on the parchment to hold it flat, he added his name carefully and deliberately. The nib made a scraping sound as he formed the curled capitals ‘R’ and ‘W’ of his name.

As he stood up he moved a little too quickly and his sleeve trailed across the parchment. He glanced down and saw that his name was smudged. He picked up the blotter next to the paper and pressed it down, but his signature still looked ragged below the other neat names. He felt a pang of disappointment; he had spoiled the parchment. He was angry with himself–he should have taken more care. He sat back down heavily on the bench.

Outside the window a drift of cloud eclipsed the moon. An owl screeched in the darkness. The farmer next to Richard, sensing some unknown disturbance in Richard’s demeanour, patted him on the shoulder in reassurance.

When Richard’s mind quietened, he found Isaac saying that George Fox was shortly to be released from Lancaster Gaol, and was to speak on the hill above Lancaster town in three days’ time. A ‘threshing meeting’ was what they called it, where the good grain would be separated from the chaff. Anyone who wished to hear him speak should make their way there. There was great excitement in the company and much talking whilst people arranged to convene and travel together. Richard offered some of the farmhands and the cobbler a ride on his wagon. It looked like it would be a grand day out, with a big crowd of people. The women were already discussing foodstuffs for a shared repast, and neighbours they might invite, who might possibly be ‘convinced’ at the assembly.

Richard had never heard Fox speak. He was supposed to be a man of great charisma, inspired but not a fanatic. Dorothy had been convinced at one of his meetings. Richard had great respect and admiration for Dorothy, who always seemed to be able to see past her own concerns and into a larger view. She was kind, no matter to whom she spoke. All people were equal to Dorothy, rags or royalty. To Richard she seemed the model of self-control and common sense.

Richard had met Dorothy by accident when he was garrisoned with Cromwell’s men on her land. After one of the early skirmishes with the king’s army, he had brought one of the injured young men up to the Hall because it was obvious the soldier was going to die from his wounds. Richard had heard that Lady Swainson was a religious woman, that she was a Puritan, and hoped she would be able to do something with the dying man. The young man was screaming in pain from a wound to the stomach, and was obviously terrified. He was disturbing everyone else, and it seemed politic to take him away from the other young men who were raucous with drink and jubilant at the latest victory. The Puritan ethic of abstinence rarely held when there was something to celebrate. He and a friend had carried the soldier still screaming between them.