Hue and Cry (28 page)

‘She reads to me. She trims my beard and combs my hair. But do not fret. I have no feeling for your sister.’

‘Not gratitude, I see,’ said Hew abruptly.

‘Not even that.’

‘I understood her to perform some strange experiment. To help you walk.’

‘She does so. It’s a trial.’

Hew’s temper flared. ‘She is come here to help you, at what personal cost and risk you cannot know. Whatever debt is owed to you from boyhood I will swear she has repaid a thousandfold.’

‘There is no debt. You claim me as your friend. I do not want your help, Hew, nor your sister’s. Why are you come, playing advocate? Have I engaged you? Leave me alone.’

‘Hang you, then!’

‘They probably will,’ he conceded, quietly closing his eyes.

Hew let the door slam behind him. Meg and the doctor had apparently resolved their differences, and were talking together over a dish of beef broth. Hew begin to wonder whether he was not the alchemist of savage turns of temper, but then Giles was reconcilable to anything through food.

‘He is a difficult man to help,’ he interrupted crossly.

‘Ah. You’ve discovered that,’ Giles answered thickly, his mouth full of meat. ‘Take him some stew.’

‘We are not all so easily appeased.’ But nonetheless, Hew accepted the bowl that Meg prepared for him, and reluctantly returned to Nicholas.

‘I did not think that you would come again.’

‘Since you do not seem to care for my sister, I am resolved to feed you myself. You may pretend to like it, if you will, or not. It’s all the same to me. I see that she at least has left you clean
and neat and your linen fairly fresh. Your company is now more pleasant than it was a week ago, for though you could not speak then, yet you stank.’

‘Forgive me.’

‘Why? Could you have helped the stink?’

‘My rudeness to your sister. I am sorry, Hew.’

‘Aye, it’s a trial. Take the spoon. You will be sorry indeed to have slighted her, once you have tasted her stew.’

He waited until Nicholas had finished eating. It was a slow and painful process. The muscles of his throat were tight and sore, and once or twice he gagged and could not swallow, though the veal dropped off the bone. The effort of eating exhausted him. At last he fell back and whispered, unselfconscious, ‘Can you call the servant? I need to make water.’

‘I’ll help you. Where’s the vessel?’

‘In the corner by the door. I cannot stand.’

Hew helped him up upon the bed, and held the pot. He watched as Nicholas arranged his clothes and sank back on the mattress. Then he asked bluntly, ‘Why do you draw your own blood? Is it some form of mortification?’

‘Phlebotomists do so to balance the humours.’

‘Aye, but not like that. Why would you not go to the surgeon?’

‘It is a private matter.’

‘To do with Alexander?’

Nicholas whispered, ‘Not in the way that you think. I find the effusion of blood brings release from disordered affections. When Alexander laid bare his feelings to me, I thought that he had been able to detect it, that somehow he sensed my weakness.’

‘Which weakness was . . . disordered affections?’

He said simply, ‘Lust.’

‘But Nicholas, we all have lusts for women. If we do not act upon them, it can scarcely count as sin.’

‘I have never lusted after women,’ Nicholas said sadly.

‘We never came upon them in the college,’ Hew retorted. ‘Since we were boys, you have known nothing but men. Effie the
laundress may once have been young but has not stirred the loincloth of the loosest lad in college now for nigh on twenty years. That’s why we use her.’

Nicholas gave a faint smile. ‘Your sister has been kind to me. I know that Doctor Locke thinks well of her attractions, and for myself, I see them, but I cannot
feel
them, for my passions lie elsewhere.’

‘Doctor Locke? Does he …?’ Hew was distracted a moment. ‘No matter, tell me if you will then, where your feelings lie.’

‘With one of your magistrands,’ Nicholas confessed. ‘I swear to you, he does not know. I have behaved to him as I behaved to all the others, through the last four years. You would not pick him out among the crowd. He is a cheerful, quite ordinary lad. I cannot explain it to you. My comfort is that he does not suspect it. He is a trifle wayward in his habits, but they do not lean that way.’

‘You’ve had no hint of converse?’ Hew insisted.

‘Never.’

‘Then it’s not to be reproached. However we control our actions, we may not control our thoughts.’

‘This is how I have controlled them.’

Hew looked upon the scar. ‘Giles Locke tells me if you had gouged a little deeper, you would have spilled the artery.’

‘And washed the trespass clean. I have tried prayer and fasting. Still the thoughts come. I find that the blade brings release of a kind. There is a purging of the spirit in the flowing of the blood. This alone offers some peace from the turmoil. So yes, if you will, it is a form of mortification. It scarcely atones. But the pain is a reminder; I shall never act upon the will.’

‘Alexander’s revelation must have brought you great disquiet.’

‘I thought he saw through me.’

‘Yet you had never desired him?’

‘Why should I?’ he asked quietly. ‘Because I love one boy, must I therefore love all boys? Do you lust after every woman in the street?’

‘Most of them. In passing.’

‘Ah. I see you smile. I do not think you do. But understand how I have fought this.’

‘I begin to understand. But when you knew how Alexander felt, for all you protest, then you kissed him.’

‘Yes. For pity, for I did know how he felt. I know not how we should have resolved it. And for that kiss, I did the violence to myself which brought me here. Had I caught the vein, I could have washed the sin away. But there are many depths to Hell. The irony is, it was a chaste kiss.’

‘He left you letters,’ Hew persisted. ‘I saw you take the letters.’

‘Aye. I could not read them, though the drift was plain. You would think, would you not, I might have done him that last courtesy? I had not meant to keep them.’

‘And I suppose he gave no word of blackmail when he spoke to you?’

Nicholas was startled. ‘Blackmail? How? For he was artless, Hew. He was a child. He spoke wildly, from the heart. He could not threaten or conceal. How should I have killed him then? For passion, for love, for anger or fear? For
pity
, Hew! I kissed his head and sent him home. I promised him he should not fear, and when I saw him next, the child was dead.’

Agnes had repented her deceit. The lass had come as guileless as a child. It was providential, surely, and simplicity itself to trick Meg into giving up the remedy. It was only part a lie. ‘I did no wrong,’ she whispered. God had disagreed, for what was done was not so easily resolved. She felt it now, the flutter in her ribs, the pittering of moths against a flame.

‘Where are you taking the sheets? It is too late to wash them.’

Tibbie was watching her. Wearily, she forced a smile. ‘It’s fair, and there’s a good brisk wind. I thought I’d rinse these out before the winter comes.’

‘But Minnie, it’s so cold!’

‘They’re Alexander’s sheets. I would not have them lie until the spring.’

‘Oh. Then I’ll help you,’ the girl said reluctantly.

‘No, lass, bide at home. I’ll call upon the dyer’s wife. The house is a low and foul place, but Janet has kept there since she lost her child. In pity, I should call on her. Don’t tell your dad.’

Her daughter nodded, understanding. ‘Aye. I’ll keep him sweet.’

‘I’ll not be long.’

This she must do on her own. And in the wind and water after all, with bloodied feet and breaking back, she might be rid at last.

The sheets had wanted washing, Agnes thought bitterly, shaking out the creases in the burn. The water was achingly cold. She had taken off her dress, and knelt down in her smock upon the stone. She pushed her skirts high, and pummelled with her bare arms on the rocks. When her arms became to ache, and she could not feel her fingers, still she did not stop. She looked at her wrists. The marks were faded now, the colour on her breasts become a
film of grime. The other thing she could not cleanse. She stooped and scrubbed and bent into the freezing flow. The heavy load, the dragging of the damp sheets through the mud, the scrubbing with the soap of ash and lye, the dredging through the icy stream, the wringing out and stretching on the bank, were purgative, surely. Again and again she dragged and scrubbed and sluiced, until her spine ached hot and heavy to her belly and her thighs, and the sheets flopped sullen on the green. Agnes rubbed her arms and legs and rinsed off the trailing weeds, drying her feet on the gorse. She fastened her shoes and straightened her skirts, tucking the loose hairs into her cap. Hugging close her plaid, she made her way to the dyer’s house through the long grass.

She had not wanted to come. Not for the squalor, and the pity of the place, but for the fear.

She was afraid of Janet, frightened of her little house, perfumed like the sink with its smoke trails high and bluing, frightened of the dyer who lay dead. Dead, aye, and his bairn was dead, there was the rub. God knew, you could not clear the air around the house. It hung oppressively heavy, an indigo cloud. She swallowed, deliberately breathed in, a long choking draught of it, blinding her. She drank as though she hoped to drown in it, rattling at the door. And then Will came. He put out a hand to steady her, made bold by his concern. ‘Mistress, you breathe in too deep.’ And it was like drowning; she took in a great gulp of air, drinking in poison. He put out his hand to steady her. ‘Gentle, now mistress, breathe low.’ She felt his fingers stained with dye, and flinching, saw him colour at the hurt of it. He dropped his hands. ‘I cannot help you, mistress,’ he said abruptly, ‘if you are unwell, ye maun go home. My mother’s sick. My sister’s gone. There’s nothing for you here.’

He was a good man, and she had not meant to offend him. It was only the blue of his hands. There were tears in her eyes then, and not just from coughing.

Shivering, she recovered herself. ‘Ah, forgive me, Will,’ she pleaded, ‘I forgot the lye. It was for your mother, in her sickness, that I came. I fetched her some sugar.’

She had scraped an ounce or two from the sugar loaf Gilbert had brought, crusted, almost black within the centre, and wrapped it in a paper, close inside her bodice from the water and the wind.

‘I’m cold, Will. Won’t you ask me in?’

Uncertain, he stepped from the door. ‘This is no place for you. And my mother is not well.’

‘I came to bring her sugar,’ she grew a little more confident. ‘I heard of her loss.’

‘I thank you for your kindness, but my mother will not see you.’ He wondered why she had not come earlier; nor had she come when his father died. ‘She’s distracted, barely speaks.’ He softened unexpectedly, ‘The bairns will like the sugar, though. I’ll tell her that you called.’

‘Well then, where’s your sister?’ she said desperately.

‘She’s run wild. I know not where she goes, without her dad to hold her here. Sometimes she’ll be gone for days. My mother does not care.’

‘Wee Jennie? She’s a good girl.’

A wilful child. She remembered the disturbance in the kirk, the stubborn features streaked with tears.

‘She used to be. Now when the weans come greetin, she’s nowhere to be found.’

‘She wants a mother,’ Agnes thought, and felt a prick of pity. ‘I might help,’ she pleaded.

‘Well,’ he shrugged, ‘I’ve work to do. But you may try my mother if you will. And if you mak her mind her bairns, I’ll be obliged to you.’

Agnes could not stop the shivering. It was cold from the water, she knew, and a dark and giddy sickness that had crept upon her. It was fear. She did not want to see the dyer’s wife. Yet she made herself go on. She stepped into the house and called out brightly, gulping down the bile, ‘Why Janet, it is Agnes, Agnes Ford has come to call on you. You’ll get up from your bed and sit with me?’

A child was crying listlessly. Agnes found the infant, Jennie’s
smallest sister, sitting in a box beside the fire. She scooped her up into her arms and felt her scrabble damply at her breast. Resolutely, she pulled up a stool and settled herself upon it, with the infant on her lap. She opened the paper of sugar, and scraped off a piece with her fingertips. The child sucked greedily.

‘Janet,’ Agnes called again, ‘you maun nurse your bairn, she’s wet and famished. Here, it’s Agnes, brought you sugar loaf. Come, see.’

‘My bairn is dead.’ The curtains parted slowly.

Agnes saw the thin face streaked with dirt, for all its cares still curious. She felt a coldness grip her bowel. But brightly she said, ‘Aye, and I am sorry for it. But you have other bairns. Wee Bessie, is it, damp, she wants her mammie too.’

‘Why have you come?’ Janet stared at her. She pulled herself up to her knees to peer through the curtain. The drapes framed her face like a shroud.

‘I have heard you are unwell, and you do not come to kirk. You have no husband now, and as your friend, I come to help you.’

‘He died a while back,’ Janet said reasonably, ‘and I had his bairn, and that too has died. What of it, though? Why would you come?’

Agnes shifted in her chair. Why would she? It was easy, after all, to stay away. She swallowed nervously. ‘To comfort your loss. I hear your daughter’s gone.’

‘Jennie? She’ll be back. For all the use she is.’

‘Well,’ Agnes pointed out, ‘she might mind the weans.’

‘Aye, once she would. She’s like her brother James and thinks herself too grand. For all they’re dyer’s bairns. They’ll die like their da, with his filth on their hands.’

Agnes shivered. ‘Janet, I am sorry for your loss. But I need to talk to you about your man.’

The child became restless again, paddling like a cat against her breast. She twisted her face towards Agnes and attempted a wail. Janet repeated, ‘My husband is dead.’

Agnes set the infant down and gave her the sugar-loaf paper.
She clutched it with fat fists and tried to cram the whole into her mouth. Her eyes upon the bairn, Agnes said carefully, ‘He was not a good man. He did hurt to me before he died.’