I, Coriander (8 page)

Hester nodded, so I told her the story of the princess who was locked up in a tower by a wicked witch, and rescued by a penniless tailor who tricked the witch into becoming so small that she could fit into a thimble. Hester laughed when she heard this.

When I had finished she asked nervously, ‘Where is God?’

‘He is not in these stories. These are fairy tales.’

Hester thought for a while. ‘Do you think God minds fairy tales?’

‘I do not know. Maybe not,’ I said. ‘Maybe, if your mother is right about Him. According to her, He seems to disapprove of much.’

Hester looked again at the pictures on the wall.

‘I wish that were not so,’ she said sadly.

Hester was used by her mother as a whipping post for all her ill humours. Maud kicked and beat her whenever the mood took her and, believe me, it took her often. Once or twice she tried to lash out at me, but Danes was having none of it.

When my father was around my stepmother was goodness itself, holding on to her Bible and asking my father if he would be so kind as to read it to her. The passages she liked the best all had to do with floods and plagues of locusts and rivers of blood. If there was a good killing then my stepmother looked happy, enjoying every minute of the misery God’s people had to endure.

‘This,’ she said one day, clutching the Bible to her bosom, ‘is the very history of England. It foretold our past and will foretell our future.’

I was not so sure, but knew better than to say so.

My father seemed to be wise in the ways of avoidance and would sit most evenings eating his dinner in silence, his head to one side as if listening to what my stepmother was saying. In truth, I think he was miles away, his mind drifting far out to sea.

It was only when she started to interfere with Danes that my father spoke up. ‘Mistress, you will leave things alone. I like them as they are.’

My stepmother was much affronted. No doubt she thought she had married a man who had lost his tongue, one who would agree to anything. A silent man can seem many things until he opens his mouth.

‘I was only putting things away, articles I knew Jesus would find unbecoming,’ she said.

‘For the time being,’ said my father coldly, ‘I would prefer it if the house was fit for me and mine. When Jesus comes,
if
he comes, then by all means let him take down the paintings and move the furniture.’

‘All I do is for the comfort of your soul, good husband,’ said my stepmother in a small hurt voice. ‘I work night and day to make you a godly man and prepare your house for the Lord.’

My father sighed, then, taking up his pipe and his papers, retreated to his study.

My stepmother, much vexed, watched him go. ‘I will be mistress of this house,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘And no witch’s servant is going to stop me.’ That is what she called Danes, for as far as my stepmother was concerned Danes was the root of all evil.

M
atters came to a head one washday.

Twice a month, Danes took our laundry by barge across the Thames to the wash-house in Southwark. She would stay there for the best part of the day to make sure that it was all cleaned to her satisfaction. The linen would come back beautifully pressed and folded and smelling of lavender.

My stepmother decided that there was no need to send the laundry away so often and that it should be done at home. She stubbornly refused to take any advice from Danes, and so it was that on the wettest Monday of the month, when it had already rained for three days without stopping, the washing was begun. Since there was no place for it to dry, the soaking sheets were draped over banisters and suspended from beams. The house looked like a market stall covered in wet linen.

‘Why does it not dry?’ said my stepmother, stamping her stumpy feet on the ground while wet sheets dripped around her as if the rainclouds from outside had come indoors for warmth.

‘Mistress,’ said Danes politely, ‘the custom is for the laundry to be taken away and returned clean and dry. It has never been done like this. The master would not like it.’

‘How dare you tell me what the master would or would not like! I tell you it be a waste of good coinage when we have so many idle servants to hand,’ shouted my stepmother.

Later that evening when my father came home he was not best pleased to see the wet sheets dripping down the stairs on to the floor below. He was in an even worse humour when he found that there was no supper to be had because Joan had been too busy boiling pans of water.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ he said. ‘Have we sunk so low that we take in washing?’

‘No, good husband,’ said my stepmother. ‘I thought not to waste your coin and to undertake the washing here in the house.’

‘Mistress,’ said my father, ‘will you please heed the advice of Danes on the household management. She has run this house from the beginning. Surely you have enough to do without bothering yourself with laundry.’

‘If I have offended you, my good husband, may the Lord smite me down,’ said Maud, and much to my delight He did, with toothache. The pain was so bad that she stayed in her bedchamber.

‘Is she going to die?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Nay, I doubt it,’ said Danes.

After two days of moaning and groaning my stepmother demanded to see Doctor Turnbull. This time my father did not hesitate to call him. I was delighted to see the old river rat again and only hoped that he had brought his friend and helpmate Death with him.

‘Do you need pigeons?’ I asked.

He snorted with self-importance and brushed past me.

‘Black leeches, then?’ I called cheerfully as he went upstairs.

Doctor Turnbull ignored me and disappeared into my stepmother’s chamber.

‘Do you think we should call in a barber?’ I asked Danes, who was down in the kitchen making gingerbread with Joan.

‘Why, my little sparrow?’

‘So that he can cut Maud’s hair and we can put two dead pigeons at her feet.’

Danes laughed. ‘There is not much wrong with the mistress. ’

‘How do you know that?’ I asked disappointedly.

‘Because she eats enough for a small army, toothache or no toothache.’

‘It would be better,’ said Joan, ‘if she fed her eyes a little more and her stomach a little less.’

At the end of the week my stepmother, still not having the strength to leave her chamber, called for the preacher.

‘This is a good sign,’ I said to Danes. ‘Maybe now we should call the barber.’

Danes wrapped me in her arms. ‘Little sparrow,’ she said, ‘there is no fairness in who lives and who dies. Death is one of the great riddles that none of us understand. Nothing, short of fire or plague, is going to do away with Maud Leggs. If there were pigeons, she would ask Joan to put them in a pie.’

There were some good things to be had from my stepmother being bedbound. We no longer had to say endless prayers each evening, and for the first time since the marriage I got to spend time with my father alone. Hester had to stay with her mother and so the two of us would eat together as in days gone by. Then I would sit with him in his study while he went through his books.

I liked his study. It was the only chamber now untouched by Maud’s hand, because my father kept it locked. He had moved things in here from other parts of the house, things he did not want Maud snooping into. Among them was my mother’s oak chest that used to be in their bedchamber. It was very big with a heavy lid and was beautifully carved with hunting scenes and castles.

‘What is in there?’ I asked.

‘All your mother’s dresses,’ said my father, opening it up. There on the top were the two miniature portraits that he had had painted when they were just married, and beside them the little casket I knew held my mother’s fairy shadow.

It was like looking at treasure from a long lost world. Here, in amongst the fine silks, lay memories more precious to me than fairy gold. Once more I was haunted by the image of a ship drifting out to sea, and this time I could hear my mother’s voice softly calling to me.

10

Bad News

T
hree days later Maud was up from her sickbed, with a look of iron in her eyes.

‘Good husband,’ she said that evening when we were all seated for dinner, my father as silent as ever and Hester looking pale and troubled. ‘I have gathered much strength from my prayers under the kind and learned counsel of the preacher Arise Fell, and it came to me that Coriander and my humble daughter would also benefit from his great wisdom in all matters concerning the Bible. If -’

She was interrupted by my father’s steward, who came in and handed him a letter. As he read it, the colour drained from his face.

Maud continued, ‘It would perhaps be to our advantage if Master Arise Fell were to live and board with us.’

‘This cannot be so,’ said my father, taking no notice of what she was saying. ‘There must be a mistake.’ He turned to his steward. ‘Is the messenger still here?’

‘He waits in the hall, sir, for your reply.’

‘Oh Lord,’ said my father, ‘what more troubles wilt Thou heap on me?’

‘Good husband,’ said Maud, ‘it is a sin to use the Lord’s name in vain. Blasphemy is a hanging offence.’

My father stared at her astonished, as if she were of feeble mind.

‘We should be praising the good Lord and thanking Him for providing food for us to eat,’ said Maud, stuffing another large piece of meat into the tiny slit of her mouth.

‘No, woman,’ said my father so sharply that even Maud looked taken aback. ‘I have provided this food and all the other comforts of this house, and I advise you to start praying that this table will still have food upon it tomorrow.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Maud, nearly choking. ‘Good husband, is all well?’

‘No and no again,’ said my father, getting up from the table, ‘all is not well.’

‘Then all I can say is, the Lord be praised for sending us a preacher who can guide us through these troubled times.’

‘Mistress, what are you blabbering about?’ said my father.

‘Arise Fell,’ said Maud. ‘Were you not listening, good husband? ’

My father walked towards the door. ‘Oh Lord, give me strength,’ he said.

‘I take it then that you have no objection,’ said Maud.

The door groaned shut behind him. Whether he had said yes or no I could not tell. Maud just sat there, and, smiling, helped herself to more roast beef and refilled her glass of claret.

L
ater I found my father in his study, sitting at his desk. I put my arms around his neck and rested my head on his back.

‘I am to be arrested,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

He hugged me tight. ‘For helping King Charles escape, and for having used my ships to smuggle Catholics out to France. It will not concern you, my poppet. It will be sorted out swiftly.’

‘When are they coming for you?’ I asked. I was fighting back tears and a scream that sat like a flightless bird in my throat. I wanted to shout ‘Do not leave me, please do not you leave me too.’

‘Not yet,’ said my father, ‘though it is only a matter of time. The letter was from a well-wisher who wanted to warn me.’

The candle on his desk faltered, and we both looked up to see a crooked man standing in the doorway, his insect-green glasses shining back at us from the gloom of the hall before he disappeared.

The next day I was told by my father’s apprentice Sam that his master had been called away on urgent business. I knew then that our fortunes had begun to ebb away like the sand in an upturned hourglass.

That morning, while I sat with Hester, I caught a glimpse of hell. Maud came into my chamber, followed by the crooked man. Far from being dismayed at what had befallen her husband, she looked as pleased with herself as ever I saw a person look.

‘This,’ she said with great pride, ‘be the preacher.’

He was, I knew without a shadow of doubt, the same crooked man that I had seen outside Master Thankless’s shop, the same man who had watched my father and me from the hall. He was dressed in black. Tight was his coat, shiny were the patches on his elbows and pockets, dirty was the white collar round his neck. His hair was thin and long, hanging down in rat-tails. The smell about him was of mildew and his green glasses caught the light. He was a cockroach of a man.

As he introduced himself I realised that he was no stranger to Hester. She did not look at him but kept her eyes on the floor, and I could sense every muscle in her body tighten.

‘I am Arise Fell,’ said the preacher. ‘My name speaks my purpose, to raise you out of your wickedness so that you may never fall into sin again.’ He put his hands together in prayer and continued, ‘Arise, O Lord, save them, for God is our light and our salvation.’

I felt a shiver go down my back, as I had done when I first saw him that day on the bridge.

Then, looking straight at me, he said, ‘Ann, daughter of Eve, come here.’

I wondered to whom he was speaking and turned to look round the room in case anyone had come in while he had been preaching at us. Hester gave me a nudge. Slowly and uncertainly I went forward.

‘Ann, what do you see?’ he asked, holding his thin empty hands out towards me. He had dirty fingers and a long yellow thumbnail that curled over like the claw of a bird.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

He turned his hand palm up.

‘What do you see now?’

‘Still nothing,’ I said, puzzled.

‘In this hand,’ said Arise, slowly advancing his empty right palm, ‘is the wrath of God. In the other is His salvation. Now tell me again, what is your name?’

‘Coriander Hobie,’ I replied.

A cruel smile curled the corner of his mouth and he slapped me hard across the face. I was so startled that I stood my ground, unsure as to whether it had really happened.

‘I will ask you again. What is your name?’

‘Cor-i-an-der,’ I said very slowly, and this time he hit me so powerfully that I found myself halfway across the floor.

‘Leave her,’ said Arise as Hester bent to help me. ‘Get up,’ he commanded, towering crookedly above me. ‘Get up now.’