from a great distance, for at first she did not respond. But the mood was broken for most of the Quakers, whose singing gradually stuttered to a stop. That slowed the woman’s dancing but did not stop it. Like a top, her whirling became a stagger until the sailor caught her by the arm. She gazed at him dizzily, as if she did not know him. He held her patiently until she regained her balance.
‘Martha,’ he said gently. ‘He is here. The man who saved Hannah’s life.’
She looked at him blankly, her breasts heaving as she drew in great gulps of air, and then at the clothes he was holding out to her. ‘I heard the Lord coming. I heard him. I saw him!’
‘Put them on,’ I said.
Martha took a step towards me. The lines were folding back into her face. Stretch marks slackening her belly suggested several children. ‘The sin is in your eyes, not in my clothes.’
Butcher dropped the blouse over her head and held out her underskirt. At least he was a pragmatist, I thought – he had seen the approaching constables. Automatically, Martha hooked the blouse to her skirt. Her body disappeared, except where the wet rags clung to it. Momentarily, perversely, before the constable came up to me, I felt I had destroyed something.
‘Lewdness in a public place,’ I said to the constable.
‘Your name, sir?’
His colleague dug him in the ribs and pointed to the falcon ring on my finger. ‘I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas.’
He seized Martha roughly, although she made no resistance. Some of the crowd bowed their heads; others began singing. Her daughter Hannah stood staring, thumb in mouth, before flinging herself at her mother. I suspected Martha was a recent convert, for the girl had absorbed none of her piety. When a constable pulled her off, she bit him, momentarily freeing her mother, yelling that they would escape to Spital, beyond the walls. Incensed, the constables began to drag them both away. Martha broke down and began to struggle, pleading with the constables that her daughter had the flux, and would die in gaol. This was a fine show for the apprentices, who liked nothing better than seeing the rewards of sin – unless they were committing the sins themselves – and began jeering and applauding.
I cannot say why I acted as I did next, for it was quite out of character. Perhaps the girl crying that they would escape to Spital, like her dancing mother, brought back to me the time of my life I preferred to forget.
‘Leave them,’ I said.
The constables stopped, staring at me uncomprehendingly. The girl half-wrenched away, screaming as a constable twisted her arm behind her back.
‘Release them,’ I snapped.
The girl immediately turned to run. Her mother stopped her, giving me a bewildered look which changed into one of gratitude, tinged with the piety that so aggravated me. The apprentices, robbed of their prey, began to mutter rebelliously.
‘Arrest him,’ I said, pointing at the sailor, Stephen Butcher.
‘On what charge?’ said the constable whose hand had been bitten.
‘Incitement to lewdness.’
In Puritan England there was no distinction between sin and crime. Adultery had become a felony, and, just as Eve picked the apple, it was invariably the woman’s fault. The apprentices moved threateningly towards me, but one of them, who from his superior clothes looked like a lawyer’s clerk, cried: ‘We have a Solomon amongst us. He has arrested the whoremaster, not the whore.’
The apprentices switched in a moment from threatening me to applauding me. ‘The whoremaster not the whore,’ they chanted.
Hannah stood puzzled, her thumb in her mouth again. She whispered to her mother, who pointed to me. Hannah darted over to me. She looked as if she was about to hug me but the thought of her flux, and the stench that came from her, made me draw away in disgust and she made a strange genuflection, somewhere between a bow and a curtsey, before fleeing back to her mother.
Stephen Butcher went without resistance, but stopped as he passed me. The constables attempted to jerk him away, but they might as well have tried to move one of the ships he sailed in. His muscles bulged under his linen shirt as he anchored himself in front of me. There was a livid scar on his neck and one of his ears was twisted out of shape. For a moment I thought the smile on his face was a feint and he was about to strike me, but in a voice as gentle as melted butter he had a much more cunning blow to land.
‘Your voices are telling you different things. Listen to the right one.’
When Anne and Luke first came down from the country we had a variety of dinner guests, chosen to avoid politics: lawyers, doctors, City merchants and the like. Luke was perfectly mannered and scrupulously polite, but remained at a distance. At first Anne did her best. She sparkled and drew the best out of me. But whereas her table at Highpoint was the most sought after in the county, full of wit and life, this was hard work.
Everyone knew Luke was there under duress. It was impossible to ignore and equally impossible to talk about it without the risk of an explosion or a penetrating silence. Gradually Anne’s sparkle died and she became as mechanical as Luke. I felt that, with her growing desire to return to Highpoint, tacitly she was taking his side, but would not give up. More and more guests found excuses not to come; others were reluctant to go out as the nights drew in and the disturbances increased.
Often the table was reduced to the three of us, as it was on the evening after the confrontation with Sir Lewis Challoner. Conversation ran out during the grouse soup, with stewed carp, ox tongues, fricassee of rabbits, lobsters, a choice lamprey pie, tarts and sweetmeats to come. I ate and drank well, both to cover the growing silences and because, although out of office, with Thurloe I was keeping my hand in, preparing – perhaps plotting would be a better word – for the next government. I had fallen into the bad habit of taking documents to the table, as I did when I lived alone. I finished my soup and began to glance through the documents.
Anne, who had scarcely had a mouthful of soup, dropped her spoon. A servant scuttled from the wall to give her another. She gripped it as if she was about to fling it at me. ‘I cannot stand this place!’
She stared directly at me, as if she meant it was me she could not stand. The servants were as still as the hunters woven into the tapestry behind them. Luke gazed at the piece of lamprey pie embedded on his fork. It was so quiet I could hear a candle gutter, and the rustle of silk as her bodice rose and fell. Side ringlets of her hair, normally carefully arranged, were in disarray. Among them a bead of sweat gleamed. Disconcertingly, at that moment, I wanted her. It was extraordinary how familiarity had stopped me seeing how young she still looked. She had avoided the constant ravages of childbirth that aged most women at thirty. The guttering candle went out, snatching away the ringlets and the tightly laced bodice, sketching there the lines of the haughty, scornful, but in some strange way vulnerable, girl I had first met.
A servant sprang to replace the candle. With it came back the ringlets, the sumptuous dark green of her dress and the measured voice of Lady Stonehouse.
‘I mean, sir, it is so dark and gloomy.’
I picked up her manner with relief, mingled with a lingering regret. ‘We are not spending money on Highpoint, madam. Why not employ your talents here?’
She
