A Measure of Light (23 page)

MARY LIFTED HER WOOL CLOAK
from its hook, chose a flat-brimmed beaver hat. She left Urith’s house. Late autumn, a dark sky. The stone walls exuded a dank, mossy smell; her shoes slipped on the cobblestones.

In the churchyard, sheep grazed; they lifted their heads, wary, and watched her with rectangular pupils. She went to her parents’ headstone, stood with her hand on its rough surface.
Tiny William. Apple blossom cheeks, lonely headstone in London
. She sought, then, her brother’s stone, and Uncle Colyn’s, with Aunt Urith’s name freshly inscribed. The soil still bore the marks of spade and boots. She pictured her aunt as she had last seen her, laid in her coffin, a fragile husk surrounded with tansy.

“Aunt Urith,” she whispered. “Canst hear me?” Wisps of mist clung to slate roofs. She left the churchyard, followed a path behind a row of houses. Past the sheep dip, she climbed a stile and slipped like a fugitive through the walled field-garths, heading for a small lake in the hills, “the tarn” they had called it when she was a child.

She turned from the road, followed a footpath that rose and twisted beneath rocky escarpments. Like a beacon, she saw the tarn’s solitary, stunted oak. Rain began as she approached and she stood beneath the scant protection of its branches, watching the blinking silver of rain-struck water.

The insidious thoughts began. They had started once Urith was gone and she had remained, alone, in the house.

Massachusetts. Chill air rising from the spaded soil. The bundle coming towards me, a hand moving to pull the shroud from its face. Would I see, then, not a monster but a perfect infant girl? “No, Mary, ’twas true, ’tis a blessing the creature did not live.”

She looked up towards the fells. She could simply continue walking. Until she succumbed to starvation. She pictured it—a stagger, a fall. Too weak to rise. Palms clasping the earth. Sleep. A scroll of snow between her lips. In spring, rabbits, heedless upon the bones of her fingers.

Then she remembered the Boston meeting house. Sermons detailing the fates of the damned.
Extreme torment. Racking torture. Dreadful grief, groaning and shrieking. For ever and ever
.

Movement, high on the moor, dark in the veiling rain. People. Emerging from the mist.

They carried long cloth-wrapped bundles by ropes tied at each end. Two women came first, wending their way down a slope. The bundle swung heavily, throwing off their balance. The rope gave a jolt.

“Sorry, love.”

The words carried across the emptiness, small and clear.

Corpses
.

Two men trudged behind them, lugging a second body. Three others, two women and a man, carried packs. All seven wore broad-brimmed hats and sad-coloured clothing.

“Tarn, dost thee see?” she heard one call.

They worked their way down the switchbacks until the young woman in the lead tripped, flung out her arms, fell. Her companion lost hold of the rope and the wrapped corpse flew forward. Mary saw it sprawl on the young woman, watched her struggle from beneath it, saw her sit, rocking, holding her ankle. Someone took her place and they continued picking their way down the hillside.

As they neared the tarn, one of them noticed Mary and waved. She raised her hand.

The people came up to the tree, laid their burdens onto the grass. The woman who had fallen limped forward. She peered at Mary from beneath hair multi-coloured as a hen’s feathers—rust-red, orange, scarlet, ochre.

“Be thee unwell?” she said. “Be thee lost?”

The men and women gathered around. Their faces were calm, inquiring. They rubbed their hands, kneaded bruised shoulders.

Mary looked from face to face.

Something, different. In the way they regard me
.

“I am not lost. I have walked from Kettlesing.” She heard in her own voice the flattened accent of the colonies.

“But surely thee be in sore distress.”

Mary began to shake her head in disavowal. Then she hesitated. Words came, surprising her.

“I did come to this tarn as a child to gather rushes. When I lived with my aunt and uncle. Recently my aunt hath died. Now I am alone. I am … I feel …”

They listen, patiently, they care to know. They seek my eyes
.

“I am as a dead woman amongst the living …” She checked herself, glancing at the rain-tapped bundles.

“We will wait upon the Lord with thee, if thou hast a mind for it. We are Friends,” a young man said. “Our brethren were imprisoned in York Castle for many months. They died there, within a day of one another. The authorities would not give us leave to bury them in their churchyard so we bear them to our meeting place.”

“Quakers?” she said. Hand flew to mouth. “I am sorry …”

“Nay, we do not mind the name, though it be spoken by some in misunderstanding.”

The rain intensified, made runnels down the men’s leather doublets.

“My aunt’s house is large,” Mary said. “Kettlesing is but a twenty-minutes
walk. And one of you is injured. I would have you come and stay the night.”

A man gestured toward the bodies. “We have, as thee sees …”

“I have stables,” she said. “Sheds.”

They looked at one another. Then they hoisted their packs, lifted the rope-bound corpses.

Mary turned to the red-haired woman. “Please, do you lean on me.”

They stepped from the sheltering tree into the rain. The young woman gasped as she put weight to her ankle.

“Ah, ’twill be good to sleep beneath a roof tonight. My name be Dafeny Hardcastle.”

“Mine is Mary Dyer.”

By the time they reached Kettlesing, their lanterns illuminated handfuls of rain falling like coins through darkness. They carried the bodies past half-timbered houses, over the humpback bridge. Aunt Urith’s stone house was halfway up the hillside. They took the bodies to an outbuilding, laid them in an empty stall.

Mary served mutton pottage, made with oatmeal and the garden’s last greens—parsley, thyme and strawberry leaves. They ate at a table in the great hall. Wet clothing steamed on the hearth.

No one spoke, so fatigued they could say no more than “thank thee” before following Mary upstairs.

After the others had gone to bed, Dafeny and Mary pulled chairs close to the fire.

Dafeny removed her cap; her hair fell to her shoulders. Her face was a map of cinnamon freckles, some placed so densely as to be a continent. She was goat-thin, green-eyed. She raised long-fingered hands to the flames.

“A year ago, ’twas a blizzard, and all the family was a-bed. My husband, Dougald, did go to the barn to check an ailing cow. He did
find a man sitting in the hay loft and brought him to the house. ’Twas a young man, round Dougald’s own age, twenty-eight. His hair … long …”

She passed her hands over her shoulders. She drew a quick breath as with the acceleration of her heart and Mary saw that she relived the excitement of the moment, the door of the tiny cottage opening with a flurry of snow, and a stranger, come from the night.

“…  and he had no beard. Too tall, he were, to stand straight. Dressed all in leather—pack, breeches, doublet. He had a big hat. Wide-brimmed. We did pull forth our chair. Dougald’s mother and our wee ones, they sat up in their beds.”

Box beds, with curtains. Mary had seen them long ago in hill cottages, on visits of mercy with Aunt Urith. And the beams, so low that cobwebs caught in one’s hair.

“He did sit and tell us his name. ‘George Fox,’ he said.” She paused, her lips parted, gazing at the flames. “ ‘My name is George Fox.’ Ah, we did not know! Who ’twas ’neath our roof. I took him my good turf cake and he ate like a starved person, smiling the while. ‘I am walking over moors and dales spreading the word of the Lord,’ he did say.”

Dafeny pulled her cloak close around her neck. “I am walking over the moors and dales spreading the word of the Lord,” she repeated, hushed, as if to secretly inhabit the young man’s mind. Mary did not take her eyes from the young woman, nor blinked.

“Dougald did ask what was the word.”

“Canst remember?” Mary said.

“Aye.” The young woman straightened. “Now that I travel to spread his words, I do know them by heart. But ’twas the first time I had heard them.”

“Tell me.”

Dafeny laid her long fingers upon her temples, closed her eyes. “ ‘I have been opened to the Lord. I desire to pierce the husks in which
people are wrapped and bring them into the light of day. I am sent to direct thee to the Spirit that gave forth the Scriptures, by which thee may be led into truth. Truth is in the heart, in thine own hearts. The manifestation of the Spirit of God is given to every one of us to profit withal.’ ”

A rapt stillness entered the room.

“ ‘All the world’s religions are in vain. Those ministers who have been taught in Cambridge and Oxford preach form without power. Their dogma, prayers and singing be …’ ” Dafeny corrected herself. “ ‘… are unneeded by those who stand directly in the rays of God’s unspeakable love for the world.’ ” She paused. Then, nodded. In a rush—“ ‘We need no images and crosses, no sprinklings, no holy days, no sacraments.’ ”

She drew breath, opened her eyes.

“And then he did jump to his feet, and I went to the children, who were …” She made an excited flurry with her hand, rushed ahead. “ ‘I declare against them all,’ he did say. ‘I declare against the steeple houses. We need pay no tithes to maintain church or minister. God is at home in house, meadow, barn or fireside.’ And I did think, ‘Our house?’ ”

Mary imagined it. Smell of cows and peat-reek. Stone floor with worn rugs, bulging plaster walls and manure-crusted boots by the door.

“Like an angel,” Dafeny whispered. “Come from the dark. He said he had been cast into prison and dragged before the magistrates, only because he did use ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ to all, whether they be squire or magistrate. Because he would not doff his hat before any man. Nor take oaths, as being an artifice to ensure truth. And he said: ‘I carry no arms.’ ”

Mary made no move to replenish the fire, nor to stir the metheglin that steamed over the flames. Her hands lay open, palms upward. She felt a fine tingling around the edges of her lips.

“How?” she said, after a long silence. “How would he worship?”

“Anywhere,” Dafeny said. “Beneath tree or cliff. In parlour or stable. Men and women sit together in silence and if the Lord doth move within them, they stand and speak. Together, he would have us listen and wait for God, who lives in every second, in every hour, in each house and in every heart. He doth call us Children of the Light, or Friends.”

“Did he sleep in your house?”

“Nay,” Dafeny smiled. “Dougald’s mum came from her bed. She did take her stick and make her way across the floor to George Fox. She laid a hand on his cheek. ‘My son,’ she said, ‘I will sleep the rest of my days in peace if thee rests in my bed.’ ”

Mary half-smiled, guessing the conclusion.

“ ‘Thank thee. But I go back to my good nest in the hay.’ He opened the door and he pointed a finger and said: ‘Stir up that which is pure in one another …’ ”

“Did you see him again?”

“He was gone in the morning. Awhile after, when the snow was gone, Dougald went down into the village and he did hear that George Fox had opened many people and that a meeting had been settled. ’Twould be held at a neighbouring farm on every First Day, as Friends name the Sabbath. So we did ride over the moor to attend. ’Twas only a cold room and we did sit in silence and ’twas as if had come a presence. ‘The Lord doth appear to us daily,’ the farmer’s wife did tell us, when we sat on our ponies, after. ‘’Tis to our astonishment, amazement and great admiration. We are but people of small parts and little abilities but we will take this honour and carry it to all corners of the earth.’ Her own husband had promised George Fox that come spring, he would take to the roads and publish the truth.”

“How do you yourself come to be travelling?” Mary asked.

“Ah, we both wished to follow, but when lambing began, the old cow died and the walls of the laithe house needed repairing, and we
knew that if one of us went, it must be me. I waited to plant my garden. Dougald’s mother said she would care for it. ‘Could be my travels will bring me round this way anyhow, sometime durin’ the summer,’ I said to her.”

Mary pictured the exchange. Hill folk were silent people, for they saw few others besides themselves. The quiver of a mouth’s corner was happiness, thanks or gratitude; an eye’s darkening might be either anger or a decision taken. She imagined the children, silent, worried, as hers had been on the morning of her departure. Perhaps: a little boy and girl, in the lee of the garden wall, scratching at dirt with slate shards. Dafeny—hands at waist, sober glances at the old woman and then at the children, hair playing over her freckled face.

“Thee be sad,” Dafeny said, glancing at Mary.

“I left my own children,” Mary answered. They held each other’s eyes.

“ ‘The Lord will see to the children,’ Dougald’s mother did say to me, ‘since he doth send for thee.’ I went to the house and packed.” She laughed. “Only a chicken, come to the door to watch me. My heart …”

No words for it, Mary saw. How someone could take your heart and make it lift and then thud down again, as if askew. So George Fox had disarranged Dafeny.

Dafeny sat back. Tired, now, as her tale came to an end.

“And your children?” Mary asked. “Do they understand? Do they miss you?”

“My two be safe with my husband and with their granny.” She yawned and stretched, arms over head, feet to the fire. “I did tell them that they needn’t be feared, for the Spirit of God lives in their own hearts. I did hold them tight and said I did love them and that I had no choice in my leaving.”

They sat listening to the rain. There was no other sound, save the crackle of the fire and the purring bubble of metheglin, smelling of honey and ginger.

“In Boston, you can hear the howling of wolves,” Mary said. She spoke slowly, spaces between each phrase, like drips from thawing ice. “There is another world, there, the world of the wild, so strange and frightful that it takes hold of our own people and makes them cruel. The ministers say they have brought the New Jerusalem and that they will raise up God’s kingdom. Those who disobey their rules are as if knocking holes in a wall. There is much talk of sin.” Her voice hardened. “They told us that some are born sinful. Some will have no redemption. I am such a one.”