The Captive Bride (8 page)

He laughed and rose to go to her side. “Forget the potatoes! Here I'm trying to make the most important decision of our lives, and you're worried about burned potatoes!”

“And you'll be screaming like a madman when I put them in front of you for supper!” she laughed.

“Madman I may be, but not over burned potatoes—just you,” he returned, grabbing her and whirling her around the room.

“Oh, Princess,” he said, holding her tightly, “I didn't know love could be so wonderful.” He looked into her glowing face and kissed her tenderly. “My love, I—”

“Good day, Brother Winslow.”

Matthew loosed his grip on Lydia so suddenly that she almost slipped to the floor, then both of them stood there with their faces flaming, staring at John Bunyan and Elizabeth, who had come up to the front door.

“Oh—” Matthew stammered. “Why, Brother Bunyan, come in—we were just—just—”

Lydia pushed at the mass of ringlets that had fallen wildly over her shoulders and moved toward Elizabeth. “Come in. Matthew and I were just discussing our future!”

“It's a joy to see young love. I hope you're enjoying each other like this when you've been married as long as some of us!” He put his arm around his wife and smiled down at her. Then he asked, “Well, Matthew, will you be going with me tomorrow to preach at Hinton?”

“Of course.”

“Good!” Bunyan gave the young man a smile. “I think you might say a few words this time, Matthew.”

“You mean—preach?”

Bunyan smiled at his expression. “You have to begin, don't you? We all do. Come, Elizabeth, we must go.”

“He's a wonderful man,” Lydia murmured, watching them walk away. “So simple.”

“Yes, but he's a deep one,” Matthew mused. He stared after the departing pair. “Four children! And expecting another! Elizabeth's first—and he may be in jail or deported. How can he face up to that?”

Lydia took his arm and said quietly, “We must pray, Matthew. And we must cling very close together. You know what I fear most?”

“What?”

“Not jail or persecution, but that we'll be somehow divided.”

“How could that be, Princess?” he asked gently. “I would never leave you.”

She stood there staring out at the disappearing forms of the Bunyans and seemed to be struck by something in their figures. “I don't know how, but it's what I fear. Don't let it happen, Matthew!” she cried, throwing herself into his arms.

“Never!” Matthew stated, smoothing her hair. “Let the world fall, you and I will stay together.”

She put her head back and looked up at him with a tremulous smile. “That's all I want, Matthew. It's not too much to ask, is it? We may miss out on the world, but we can ask God to give us that one thing, can't we? Is that too selfish to ask Him for—to let us stay together as long as we're on this earth?”

“No, not too much.”

He led her back inside the small, dark cottage and pulled the door, shutting out the outside world with all its clamor and demands. And as it closed with a firm sound, he found himself wishing that it could be as easy as this always—just leave the world, find a snug hiding place with the one you love, and shut the door.

But as he turned to her uplifted face, he felt a wave of fatalism grip him. A cloud crossed the sun, cutting off the
bright rays and leaving her a vague and indistinct shadow as she stood before him.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SKY IS FALLING!

Justice Twisten lived in the largest house in Bedford, a sprawling two-story half-timbered affair, with five large chimneys rising high above the eaves. Plumes of white smoke rolled out of them, caught by the sharp September wind and twisted into a braided column against the iron-gray sky. Summer's emerald green lay buried under a dull covering of dead leaves that crunched briskly under the feet of the three men marching down the long lane from the main road.

John Bunyan glanced at his companions, then lifted his gaze to the house which lay in the circle of a serpentine drive. “I wish your uncle were here with us, Matthew. He's used to talking with lawyers and government people.”

“There's not much even he could do this time, John, even if he were able to come,” Pastor Gifford responded. “I have no hope of any mercy from Twisten. He's always hated our faith.”

Bunyan scraped the mud off his feet on the brick steps and grimaced as he gave the brass knocker a loud blow. “No, I suppose that's true. How is he, do you know, Matthew?”

“Very poorly.” Anger flew across Matthew's face as he thought of his uncle jammed into a common jail in London. “He has weak lungs and that cold cell could be the death of him.” The Winslow blood flared up and he struck the moss-covered bricks with a clenched fist. “Curse them! An old man like that who's served his country all his life!”

“But they'll never forget he served Cromwell,” Pastor
Gifford reminded them. “I hear the jails are packed with Fifth-Monarchy men and Separatists, but—” He broke off as the door opened and he announced, “We are called to see Justice Twisten.”

“He's waiting for you,” the tall, thin man who answered the door said. He led them across a large open room, down a broad corridor lined with a series of portraits of stern-faced men. “In here, please.”

The three men stepped into a large book-lined study, dominated by a massive desk behind which sat Justice Simon Twisten. He was a large, portly man with a neck of a bull, his small eyes buried in the folds of fat lining his face. He offered no greeting.

Pastor Gifford waited for a moment, then seeing that the man was not going to speak, said, “You sent for us, Justice Twisten?”

Still he waited, the antagonism in his piggish eyes gleaming; then he said abruptly, “You know why you've been sent for, Gifford. We'll have no discussion!” His high voice rose, incongruous in such a bulky form, and his fat face flushed as he added, “You are lawbreakers, and I'll have none of it in this country.”

“Sir, if I might—”

“None of your smooth talk, I said! You have been told of the Conventicle Act, and you can spare me your pleas for mercy. The law is plain; it forbids the assembly of more than five people for any religious gathering.” He glared at Bunyan and spat out maliciously, “You, John Bunyan, are a known felon!”

“I am no felon!”

“Quiet!” Twisten roared. He heaved his bulk out of the chair and stood there, massive and dangerous, “You have been preaching at night to groups of people—we have information on this. And I warn you, Bunyan, if you are apprehended, you are subject to the full weight of the law!”

“Surely, Justice Twisten,” Gifford objected, “you would not classify a few simple preachers with murderers and thieves!”

“The law, Gifford, the law does the classifying!” Twisten shot back as he leaned forward like a huge bear, resting his fists on the desk and glaring at the three of them.

“The same law that throws an old man like my uncle in jail with common murderers?” Matthew raised his voice and took a step toward the justice in a move so unexpected that Twisten straightened up and stepped backward, alarm on his face. “You call that
law?
I call it cowardly tyranny!”

“Matthew!” Gifford warned, taking a firm grip on the young man's arm, but he was too late.

Twisten wheeled and moved across the room surprisingly fast for such a big man. He threw open the door and shouted, “Matthew Winslow, is it? You will join your famous uncle the moment I hear one word of your defying the Act! Now get out, all of you! I called you here to tell you that I am set against you! You had your way with the true servants of the King while that traitor Cromwell lived—now we'll see who will bend their necks to the Royal Monarch, King Charles the Second! Get out!”

Matthew made to move toward the justice, but his arms were pinned at once by Gifford and Bunyan. As they struggled to get him outside the door, he cried out with a ringing voice, “You godless dog! Put me in the jail! I'll stay there until the moss grows up to my eyes before I'll give in to you!”

He was still raging as they cleared the front door.

“You young fool! What good did that do?” Bunyan said roughly as he jerked the young man so hard his neck popped.

“You expect me to stand there and listen to that—!”

“Shut your mouth!” Bunyan interrupted fiercely. As soon as they were clear of the drive and back on the main road, he released Matthew and turned to walk rapidly toward the center of town, Gifford joining him.

Matthew stood transfixed, then hurried to catch up with
the two men who ignored him, speaking quietly only to each other.

“No hope for mercy from Twisten, just as I said,” Pastor Gifford said despondently. He gave a quick sideways glance at the burly tinker beside him. “What will you do, John?”

“What God tells me to do!”

“But you know the end of that—I mean, if you are apprehended preaching, you'll be deported, maybe for life!”

Bunyan did not look at Gifford. His eyes were fixed on the horizon where small groups of scudding clouds broke the monotony of the gray sky. He seemed to be lost in thought and it was not until they were abreast the field where the lane turned to his cottage that he stopped and turned his eyes on Gifford and Winslow.

“I'm afraid, Pastor.”

“
You
—afraid?” Matthew asked in surprise. Never had a man seemed so filled with total dedication as John Bunyan, and he could not believe what the tall preacher was saying.

“Yes, I'm afraid,” Bunyan said simply. He smiled slightly, and his eyes were fixed on Winslow. “You've often told me what a good imagination I have, Matthew.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I do have more of that than most men, but it's a curse—at least in this case.” He brushed his hand across his face in an odd gesture, as if he were attempting to brush away invisible cobwebs. When he lowered his hand there was a vulnerability in his strong face that Matthew had never seen before. “Every night I have this dream—always the same. I'm in a cell, a dirty, dank cell with filth everywhere. And in the dream I've been there so long I can't remember when I came there, and there's no end to it! Every night is an eternity stretching out to the crack of doom—but that's not the worst!”

“What is it, John?” Gifford asked quietly.

“It's my family—my wife and children.” Bunyan brushed his hand across his eyes, and when he looked up Matthew
saw they were filled with tears. “I hear them outside the cell, crying—especially Mary—oh, the thought of my blind one, what she may endure, breaks my heart to pieces!”

His companions stood there helplessly. Gifford glanced quickly at Matthew as if to say,
I've never seen this side of John Bunyan.
Then he said gently, “It's asking too much—for a man with a family. Let the younger men do the front-line fighting, John.”

“Stop preaching?”

“Just for a while.”

“No! Never. I spoke too quickly against you, Matthew,” he said with a faint smile. “I like what you told the justice! What was it you said?” He searched for it, then said,
“ ‘I'll stay there until moss grows up to my eyes.' ”
He smiled and clapped Winslow on the back with a hearty blow. “That's what you said—and it's what I feel.”

“But your family?” Gifford protested. “What about them?”

“God will be the father of the fatherless!” Bunyan exclaimed. He seemed to have shaken off the weight that had fallen on him. Squaring his shoulders, he looked fearlessly back toward Twisten's house. “God will not forsake us. We are in His hand, and if it will be to His glory to be put in a cell, then by the grace of God that is what I will do!”

“Amen!” Matthew cried. “And we will go to lower Samsell tomorrow just as we planned?”

“Yes! Meet me at five. The people there will gather at the river, and we'll preach in the dark if we have to!”

“I would not go if I were you, John,” Gifford spoke up. “Twisten is no fool. He'll have you watched.”

“Well—perhaps that's so.” He thought of it, then said, “Scripture says that a wise man looketh well to his going. We will leave after dark, Matthew. That way we can be sure no one is following us. I'm sure no one in the congregation will betray us.”

“I'll be there!” Matthew exclaimed, afire with excitement. He waved quickly and ran off to tell Lydia.

“He's a firebrand, isn't he, John?” Gifford said with a fond glance at the young man.

“He's that. We could have used him in the Model Army. But this is going to be a different kind of war. If it were a matter of swords and gunpowder, Matthew would be the ideal warrior. That kind of hardship he could take. There'd be plenty of danger and excitement—which is what he's after. But his zeal is for adventures not for God. And this struggle is going to be different. Can he take persecution of another sort—jail, deportment, malice from high places?”

Gifford shook his head. “That would not be his strength, John. Until he truly comes to a personal faith, he won't be able to stand under it. We must try to keep him clear of it.”

“We can try, but he's young—and he's got a cause. A holy war.” Bunyan turned and said, “All of us are going to bear scars from this, Pastor! I pray young Winslow finds faith enough to support him!” The two men fell into silence and made their separate ways home.

Lydia was caught off guard when Matthew came rushing in, his eyes blazing with excitement. She had been scrubbing the tiny floor of their single room when he burst through the door, crying out, “Lydia! Come here!”

He seated her at the table and began pacing back and forth as he told her of the encounter with Justice Twisten and of the determination he had formed to join in the struggle against the tyranny of the crown. She smiled briefly, amused at the boyish quality of his excitement, but when he repeated Bunyan's words, she sobered and raised a hand to interrupt him.