No Shame, No Fear (12 page)

At last his rage was spent. The blows stopped; I heard him breathing heavily. I turned stiffly to face him, and we glowered at each other.

“You will not dare insult my customers again,” he said.

I struggled to keep my lips from trembling, to maintain dignity. “I insulted no one. But I
will
dare! I will dare anything for the truth.”

He stared at me, and I saw bewilderment in his face as well as anger. He exclaimed in a voice of desperation, “Will, you must sever yourself from these people!”

“I can’t. My conscience—”

“Damn your conscience!” He flung the rod into the corner of the room. “You are too much your mother’s child, too concerned about your soul; you do too much
thinking
, Will. But your mother knew what came first. She put duty before conscience.”

“I can’t do that. I must be true. Be a witness.”

“Even if your conscience” – he spoke the word with a sneer – “ruins your father’s business and your own prospects? And your sister’s?”

“I shall go to the Quaker meeting next first-day,” I said.

At that he looked triumphant. “You will not,” he said. “On Thursday I leave for Welshpool, for several days’ business, and you will come with me.”

Susanna

O
ur people remained in jail. On fourth-day they were all brought before a magistrate, but he only heard the charges against them and committed them to prison again to await the next sessions.

We visited them every day. Nat would go each morning to ask Mary’s wishes about her work and what was to be done. She put him in charge of the print room, and it was he who took orders and made sure the work was delivered on time. It surprised me to see Nat take charge. I’d thought him light-minded and playful – and so he was sometimes – but now he seemed to grow in response to Mary’s trust in him.

I went about my tasks in the shop and kitchen, and tried to do all that Mary would have wished. Will did not come the next day, or the one after. I looked for him when I was out at market but did not see him. His home in the High Street gave away no secrets. It was a house that turned its back on the town: the windows small and high, and all the life of the place facing inwards, onto the courtyard that lay beyond the arched entrance. That powerful man, his father, had forbidden Will to see me again. I feared that he had prevailed, that Will was locked up, or sent away. The other possibility, that he had been persuaded into obedience, I tried not to think about.

When the shop was not busy, I read more from the book of George Herbert’s poems that Will had lent me. Some were difficult; others I loved at once and copied out as my handwriting improved. I longed for Will to walk in, to take me in his arms, to read with me, and talk. Surely he loved me and would defy his father for me? I put George Herbert aside, and wrote “Susanna Heywood” on my scrap paper – and then quickly scratched it out for fear someone should see. And I began to think, then, about what might come of our love. I was causing him to quarrel with his family, perhaps to renounce them. If it were not for me he might never have gone to another meeting, never been led into such danger as we now faced. His family would say I had lured him away from the Anglican Church, and perhaps they were right. I thought of my own loving parents and how I would feel if anything came to cause a rift between us.

And yet I could not give him up. I knew I was not unworthy of him; we were equal before God. And I was determined to learn to write and print and carry the truth to any who would hear it, and be an equal partner to him, if he would have me; if God willed it.

I slept at the Mintons’ that week, but came home in the mornings to prepare breakfast for the men and afterwards serve in the shop. In the afternoons I met up with Judith and the younger children, and we all went together to the prison.

The Castlegate prison, where our people were held, is in the castle vaults. We could hear the noise as we went down the steps. Despite the smell and overcrowding, our friends talked and received visitors and dictated letters and petitions. All were locked into one room, without means to wash. There was a stinking bucket they must use as a privy, and the straw on which they lay at night was rank with filth.

Mary’s eyes were red from lack of sleep. She was plagued by lice and fleas and her linen was soon smeared with dirt. On fourth-day I brought her a clean cap and apron, and all the visitors brought food. Most of it was shared in common and passed around: jugs of fresh milk, bread, cheese and meat.

Judith’s neighbour, the tailor, was there; he was trying for the second time that week to bail out her parents, Samuel and Elinor, but they would not consent to it.

Abigail begged her mother, “Please let him pay. Come out, Mam. Jude, tell Mam to let George Woodall pay.”

But Judith shook her off, impatient. She was turning about, looking for someone – and I realized Daniel Kite was not there.

“Where is Dan?” she asked.

“He’s in the Pit,” said her mother.

I felt shocked. We had all heard about the Pit, where unruly prisoners are kept. It’s entered through a hole in the floor; the prisoner must climb down a ladder, which is then drawn up. There is no light or air, the walls run with water, and there are rats.

Judith was desperate. She went to speak to the jailer, and I heard their voices raised. On the way home she told me, “No one can see him. He’s chained and manacled like a felon! Oh, Su—” Her voice broke. “We must pray for strength.”

That evening, at last, Will came to me.

When Hester called me I was upstairs, in the Mintons’ parlour, and I rushed to the top of the stairs and saw him waiting below in the empty shop.

“Will!”

I ran down the stairs and he came towards me and we caught each other on the lower steps and clung together. There was only one small candle in a niche of the stairwell, so I could not see his face clearly. I felt him flinch when I hugged him, and drew back. “What is it?”

“My father beat me. It’s nothing. Don’t let go.” And he gathered me into his arms. I felt his kisses on my mouth and his body hard against mine; and I was excited and yet frightened because I sensed that he was in the grip of feelings more powerful and urgent than my own, and that I was the cause of them. I struggled, and he released me and held me more gently.

“I could not come before. My father keeps me at work, under his eye.” And he told me how he had challenged his father and been punished for it.

“I have to go away tomorrow,” he said. “My father is going to Welshpool to buy wool, and I must go with him.”

“How long?” I breathed in the smell of him: a sharp male scent mixed with the soap and lavender of his linen, which was always new-laundered and pleasing to me. I couldn’t bear it, I thought, if he went away. And Welshpool was far off.

“He won’t say. A few days, I expect. He means to keep me from Meeting on first-day. And he thinks I’m at home now. I must go back.”

But he didn’t go, not at once. We stayed there on the stairs and kissed and whispered and caressed until sounds of creaking floorboards from above reminded me that it was late and the others would be going to bed.

We drew apart, and he kissed me one last time, his face and lips hot against mine.

“I
will
come back,” he promised. “My father shan’t keep us apart.”

When he was gone I felt warm, excited and unhappy all at once. I straightened my collar, tucked strands of hair under the edge of my cap, and ran upstairs. Judith was already in bed, and I undressed quickly to my shift and squeezed in beside her. Her hair tickled my face as she rolled over and put her arms around me. Her face was wet.

“Thou’rt crying,” I said.

Judith sniffed. “I fear for Dan,” she said, “and my parents, and how I’ll manage the younger ones – Abby especially. Oh, Su! Don’t
thou
cry too.”

I told her Will’s news, burrowing against her. “He’s in such trouble with his father, and I fear we’ll never be together.”

“Better for Will if he’s not here on first-day,” said Judith. “The authorities are sure to come back. They are breaking up meetings all around.”

I thought of my parents at Eaton Bellamy Meeting. We expected any day to hear of their arrest.

“Dost thou think they’ll arrest us all tomorrow?”

“Not thee. Thou’rt too young.”

“‘Persons over sixteen years’,” I said, remembering Mary reading out the act to us. “I might be taken for sixteen.”

“No. Thou’rt young in thy looks, and small. And Tom’s scarce fourteen, and the others just children.”

“Perhaps they won’t come,” I said. “Perhaps they have seen that we are not afraid to meet.”

“They’ll come,” said Judith.

They came soon after we had gathered, when John Pardoe was on his feet and speaking. They burst in as before with cudgels and swords, and when John demanded to see a warrant, Robert Danson drew his sword with a cold scrape of metal and pointed it at John’s belly. “This is my warrant,” he said.

It was over quickly. They took all the adults: John, and Nat, and several old women. They tore Abigail’s hands from her sister’s and arrested Judith. I watched in despair as my friends Nat and Judith were taken from me and driven out into the street and marched away. Tom and Joe ran at the soldiers and tried to stop them, but the men jeered and prodded them back with the points of their swords. One of them seized Joe’s hat and filled it full of horse dung and slapped it back on his head. The lad pulled it off, but the mess was all in his hair and they laughed at his distress.

Soldiers stood guarding the door of the meeting room. We tried to gather in the courtyard, but they drove us out with threats and curses. There was nothing we could do but go.

Back at the Mintons’, Hester cried out, “Oh, what have they done to thee, child?” and hauled Joe away to be washed. As she doused him with cold water, ignoring his yells, she said, “You won’t go back there after noon, any of you. Not today. You’ve made your witness, and that’s enough. Dost thou hear me, Susanna?”

“I hear thee,” I said; and knew she was right.

She’s a good soul, is Hester, and motherly; one of our people but not always at Meeting; she says someone must stay at home and out of trouble or how will life go on?

I left her in charge and went to the printer’s and told Simon Race that John and Nat had been taken. We stood talking with the works empty around us, the press silent.

“We must close the works down with the three of them gone,” said Simon. “I can’t run it alone.”

“I could help thee.”

He shook his head. “No. We’d need John, for the press. Besides, there’s not much work coming in now from the town. I think people are nervous of being seen here.”

He looked anxious, and I realized he had a child to support, and that if Mary’s income dwindled she might have to let him go; and me too. Mary had given me my second month’s pay early, knowing she might be arrested, and I had the weighty crown coin wrapped in a handkerchief and tucked under my mattress in the bed upstairs, where I hadn’t slept for a week. It was time I went home, I thought, and found out how things were with my parents, and gave them the money. I needed none of it, for I still had spending money left from the two shillings I’d kept from my first pay.

That night I lay alone in the bed I had shared with Judith. Abigail slept near by, and her brothers in the next room. But Judith was gone, and Nat; and Will – I dared not think about Will. I missed Mary, and wished I had her there to counsel me. But one thing I saw clearly: if we were to keep the meeting alive during this time of trouble it must be the children who kept faith. And I was the eldest. I must be the one to lead them.

William

M
y father and I returned from Welshpool on Monday, having travelled most of the day. We had not got on well. He had kept me in the background during his business transactions, no doubt fearful that I would disgrace him as I had done with John Rhys. I was angry at being removed from Hemsbury and only spoke when spoken to. And although I was attentive to his commands, he complained that I was sullen.

It was late when we reached home, and both of us were hungry. I knew the servants would have a cold meal prepared that could be put on the table quickly, but I didn’t want to wait. Ned came out to take the horses and help unload our packages, and while my father was engaged with him, I said, “I must go out. I shall not be long,” and was out of the courtyard and into the street before he could argue.

I went straight to the Mintons’ shop. Hester opened the door, and called Susanna, who came running. We flew into each other’s arms.

“What news, love?” I asked.

“They are all taken,” she told me. “Nat, Judith, John Pardoe, John and Isobel of the Seven Stars… All came before the mayor today and were sent to join the others in prison. They await trial at the sessions.”

“It’s finished, then? The meeting is closed down?”

“Only if we allow it. The children are free. We plan to keep the meeting. Will thou come? Say yes. I need thee there.”

“And shall have me.” I held her close. We would stand together as witnesses to the truth. “But with John and Isobel taken, how can we use the Seven Stars?”

“I have a key. And if they prevent us, we’ll meet outside. The meeting is not illegal unless more than five people are over sixteen.”

That pleased me. That would answer my father.

Before I went home I walked for a while around the streets to get my courage up. I knew there could be no compromise with my father now. When I arrived back at the house I was trembling, keyed up for the conflict I knew must come.

Meriel met me in the hall. “Supper’s ready, sir.”

I thanked her, wondering if she could see how tense I was.

With my hat on, I made my way to the dining room. My heart was beating fast. Anne and our stepmother were just going in, and my father, also wearing his hat, was already there, about to take his place at the head of the table.

Anne looked up at me and whispered, “Will, your hat…” and then I saw her eyes widen in alarm as she realized what I was about to do.