“See,” I said. “Do you remember? For fifteen years one of the elect, persecuting loyalty and applauding fanaticism. And now look. One of the king’s most devoted subjects.”
“And soon to be thrown out of his places as he deserves. Allow him a bit of oblivion for his troubles.”
“You think? I don’t. Some people always survive. He is one.”
“Oh, you are an old misery, Wood,” Lower said with a great grin. “This is the greatest day in history, and you are all sour-faced and glum. Come, have another drink and forget about it. Or someone might think you a secret Anabaptist.”
And so I did, and another, and another. Eventually Lower and the others wandered off, and I couldn’t be bothered chasing after them; their simple (to my mind) good humor and careless pleasure made me melancholy to tears. I wandered back to Carfax, which was a fateful thing to do. For as I got there, and helped myself all alone to another cup of wine, I heard a cackle of laughter from a side street; normal enough that evening, except this time there was that slight but unmistakable edge of menace which is difficult to describe and impossible to miss. Made curious by the sound, I peered down the alley and saw a group of young oafs gathered in a semicircle against a wall. They were laughing and shouting, and I half expected to find in the center of the crowd some charlatan or raree man whose wares and tricks had failed to please. But instead it was Sarah, her hair astray, her eyes wild, her back against the wall, and they were taunting her mercilessly. Harlot, they said. Traitor’s bastard. Witch’s daughter.
Bit by bit they were working themselves up, taking a little step further each time, edging toward the point when words ceased and assault began. She saw me, and our eyes met, but there was no entreaty in them; rather she bore it all herself, almost not seeming to notice the foul words hurled at her. Almost as though she wasn’t listening, and did not care. She might not want help, but I knew she needed it, and knew no one but myself would lift a finger for her. I worked my way through the crowd, put my arm around her and pulled her out and back toward the main street, so quickly the mob hardly had time to react.
Fortunately it was not far; they did not like the theft of their entertainment and my status as scholar and historian would have served me little had the spot been any more isolated. But there were people drunk, but still civilized, only a few yards away, and I managed to get us close enough to safety before the insults erupted into actual violence. Then I pulled her through the cheerful, good-humored celebrations until, seeing their prey lost, the mob dissolved and went in search of other sport. I was breathing hard, and the fright and the drink made me slow to recover my wits. I’m afraid that physical danger is not something to which I am used; I emerged more shaken than Sarah.
She did not thank me, but just looked at me, with what seemed like resignation, or perhaps sadness. Then she shrugged and walked away. I followed; she walked faster, and so did I. I thought she was walking home, but at the end of Butcher’s Row she turned and cut across the fields behind the castle, walking ever faster with myself now maddened by my beating heart, swirling head and confusion.
It was in the place called Paradise Fields, once the most beautiful of orchards and now fallen into a sad and infertile neglect, where she stopped and turned round. As I came up to her, she was laughing but with tears coming down her cheeks. I reached out for her, and she clutched hold of me as though hanging on to the only thing left in the entire world.
And, like Adam, in Paradise I sinned.
Why me? I don’t know. I had nothing to offer her, not money nor marriage, and she knew that. Perhaps I was gentler than others; perhaps I comforted her; perhaps she needed some warmth. I do not deceive myself that it was much more, but nor do I lower myself now to think that it was any less—perhaps no virgin, she was no harlot either. Prestcott lied cruelly there; she was virtue itself and he was no gentleman to say otherwise. Afterward, when her tears had stopped, she got up, straightened her clothes and walked slowly off. This time I did not follow. The following day, she cleaned my mother’s kitchen as though nothing had happened.
And I? Was that the Lord’s answer to my entreaties? Was I sated and satisfied, the demons exorcised from my soul? No; my fever was stoked up even further, so that I could hardly bear to see her for fear that my trembling and pallor would give me away. I kept to my room, and alternated between sinful thoughts and atonement through prayer. By the time she came up to my room a few days later, I must have looked like a ghost, and I heard the familiar steps coming up the stairs with a mixture of terror and joy such as I have never experienced before or since. And so, of course, I was rude to her, and she played the servant with me, each settling into our roles like actors in a play, but all the time willing the other to say something.
Or at least I did; I do not know about her. 1 told her to tidy up better; she obeyed. I instructed her to lay a fire; she dutifully and without a word did as she was told. I told her to go away and leave me in peace; she picked up her bucket of water, and opened the door.
“Come back here,” I said and she did that too. But I had nothing else to say to her. Or, rather, I had so much. So I went to embrace her, and she allowed me; standing upright and still, enduring a punishment.
“Please, sit down,” I said, letting her go, and again she obeyed me.
“You ask me to stay, and to sit down,” she began when I said nothing. “Do you have something to say to me?”
“I love you,” I said in a rush. She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “You do not. How can you?”
“But two days ago… Was that not something? Are you so coarse that it meant nothing to you?”
“Something, yes. But what would you have me do? Wilt in the despair of love? Become your woman, twice a week instead of cleaning? And you? Are you going to offer me your hand? Of course not. So what is there to be done or said?”
It was her practicality which maddened me; I wanted her to suffer as much as I, to rail against the unkindness of fate that so separated us, yet her robust common sense did not allow that.
“So what are you? You have had so many men that one more has no effect on you?”
“Many? Perhaps so, if that is what you want to think. But not as you mean; only ever for affection’s sake, when I was given the choice.”
I hated her for that frankness; had I taken her virtue, and had she been weeping with remorse at her fall in value, I would have understood and comforted her; I knew the words for that because I had read them somewhere. But to regard her loss as of so little moment, and to discover that it had not been given to me but to someone else was more than I could endure. Later, although I could never condone something so obviously in contradiction to God’s word, I accepted it, as much as possible, for she was her own law. However much she might obey my orders, she would never be obedient.
“Anthony,” she said gently, seeing my distress, “you are a good man, I think, and you try to be Christian. But I know what you have been doing. You see me as a fitting recipient of your charity. You want me to be good, and virtuous, at the same time that you want to roll with me in Paradise Fields before you go off and marry a woman with as much of an estate as you can find. Then you will convert me into a harlot who tempted you to sin while you were in drink, if that makes your prayers easier and gives your soul comfort.”
“You think that of me?”
“I do. You manage easily enough when you are talking to me about your work. Then your eyes light up and you forget what I am, in your pleasure at talking. Then you treat me honestly, without foolishness or awkwardness. Only one person has ever done this before.”