Just after the last house in the village I found a sign which told me I could turn left onto the Devizes road. I had some crazed idea of walking to Bristol, now that the city was fallen. Any kind of work requiring strength was mine for the asking; in such a large place I might surely earn my bread in safety.
It came to me that if Caro and Zeb were not gone home they might also fix on Bristol as being a place where they could offload the rings and necklaces. Should I find her there, I would throw myself on my knees and beg pardon. I trudged along rehearsing a vow that all the rest of her life I should never lift a hand save in her defence. At other times I blamed her for leaving me so utterly destitute of the means to live: her loud honesty, I reflected bitterly, had not stopped her taking all the gold. Then I recalled their plight, a beautiful young woman in a low-cut gown, the only man who might protect her broken and feverish. Some kite would have the jewels away from them as easily as I had possessed myself of Walshe’s knife, and perhaps do evil on them as I had upon him. But if they scaped – and here the Devil put it in my mind that they lay together at an inn. The bed was soft; she dressed his wounds and passed her hands over the rest of him. Again I saw the shirt slide up over his chest; she gazed, and gazed – she fastened the gold chains round his neck – at that I shook my head like a baited bull, to clear it, and felt her put the betrothal ring in my hand. I had searched for it on discovering their flight, but it was lost in the leaves. The memory of her flinging it away was a knife to me. I prayed that I might learn of their safety, might be delivered from my misery, might be revenged – I knew not what to pray for, and all for nothing anyway. God is not moved from His great designs by the prayers of the righteous, how much less does He care for the whinings of the damned!
The Devizes road was straight enough, but I made slow progress as my feet pained me sadly by now. After an hour of walking I took off my shoes and found a fat blister on the back of each toe, and my right heel split like a plum. Yet it was better than going barefoot and even limping along I could surely manage fourteen miles before dark. As I went along my conscience wrangled within me, and my sense, also turbulent, worked me to such a pitch that I passed along the road without seeing it, thus saying to myself:
She is my wife. Espoused de praesenti, and the – act – in the wood does consummate.
Aye, but spiritually it is clean different. Tears do not argue consent—
I AM HER HUSBAND.
Zeb will lie with her. She will be as Patience – she put her hands on him that way in the wood, they have made their game of me I perceive—
CHRIST let me think no more of this.
My thirst returned upon me most cruelly.
Once, when I was a growing boy, the three of us were allowed back to Mother’s cottage for a saint’s day, and while in the village I stole some walnuts from a neighbour’s tree. This neighbour was a bandy, red-haired old man, whom I think now had a liking to my mother but at the time I saw it not. I took the nuts for their green shiny coats and was scratching at these the better to smell them when he called out, ‘Jacob,’ and the name leapt in my breast. I was already a big lad and very strong from the field work. When he came up to me he was no taller than myself, but I was sore afraid of him. He took the nuts from me and cast them on the ground along with the little knife I was carrying.
‘Now get down,’ said he. I had been raised to bear punishment meekly, and I knelt thinking he would beat me.
‘No, lie down. On your back.’ And I did indeed lie down, hoping he would not kick me. Instead of which he placed a foot on either side of my body and then hunkered down until he was sitting astride me. He took up the walnuts and the knife.
‘See this boy?’ He peeled one of the things before my face. ‘Here, eat it.’ And he pushed the unripe nut into my mouth and pressed my teeth into it. The burning made me scream and some of the nut got down my throat. In my agony I threw him off and ran home, spitting and wailing.
‘Green fruit, boy!’ he shouted after me.
My tongue was black weeks after.
I cannot say why this suddenly came to memory except the thirst, now growing outrageous. Still I went on up the Devizes road, having no idea how far I might be from Beaurepair. Soon I made up my mind for it that I would beg at the next door for water if Cornish himself lodged there, but it was another hour at least before I came upon a group of straggly dwellings, not even an alehouse, and the whole place strangely quiet. An elderly man stood in one of the cottage gardens and stared at me as I staggered up to him.
‘Save you, Friend,’ I wheezed, ‘and where might I find some water?’
He looked me over and did not answer.
‘I faint from the road.’
The man spoke almost without moving his lips. ‘You’ll be a quartermaster.’
‘What?’
He gestured at my dirty wedding gear. ‘With the King’s forces.’
‘All I seek is water, for myself. Give it me and you’ll see me no more.’
He dawdled still. I observed that his body was bent over on one side by injury and the hands had twisted black nails: the hardness of long oppression.
‘I wear another’s clothing for all my own was stolen,’ I cried. ‘Don’t you hear my voice crack with the thirst? Be a Christian, Friend.’
The Christian moved away from the wall and pointed silently over his shoulder. I saw, and ran to, a well. The water tasted like sucking an iron spoon but I drank enough to split my sides, far beyond the prompting of need, for I had learnt what it was to thirst on the road.
‘Now get you gone,’ he said. ‘Those are your garments right enough; you’re big like all the rich. Tell them we’ve nothing to eat but the scurf off our heads.’
He must be crazed with want, I thought, to fancy that a quartermaster would come with neither horse nor weapon. I started along the street and looked about me for saner company, and a house where I might beg a little bread. But my surly friend was right: wherever I looked I saw folk draw back from the windows. There were no cows, nor no grain neither, in the fields, the fruit trees in the gardens were all picked bare or even lopped and not a single hen picked a living from the clay and stones of the road. I walked on, and on, and on.
We had suffered nothing of this at home: by some stroke of luck or stupidity they had never asked us for free quarter. I had heard of it, how the soldiers ate everything they could and stole or broke up the rest, nay, debauched the women too if the commander turned a blind eye. The King’s forces were the most dreaded for that their officers had precious little control over their men, but no army was welcome. Now I was seeing it for myself. At every house where I tried to beg I had the same answer in words angry or civil, and many seemed persuaded I was a spy, sent to ascertain what remained to be devoured. In the end I took to stealing by night, mostly the odd apple in a garden or griping crabs from the hedges. Breaking into the dairy at one place I found a cheese, and wept with joy. In this fashion I passed perhaps a week, and was lucky not to be put in the stocks.
But at last there were no more houses, and the torment began in earnest. The Devil lashed me onwards with ugly pictures of Caro and Zeb; he rode me hard, driving in the spurs. I had pain all along my breastbone and I thought of the words broken heart. My pace had slowed; I knew that beggars could walk for days without food, but I could not do as they did, being used to good feeding. What victuals I had picked up no longer sustained me. My path began to zigzag, and from time to time a knee buckled or the heel of my shoe turned aside. I was like one that has had a beating, my body tender, swerving, weakening as I went, and my throat parched. There was none on the road, and I sat for a moment to ease my blisters. When I made to get up I could not, and sprawled on the grass. It was sweet to dissolve into blackness and the earth. When daylight came back, I was talking to someone who asked me, Is Isaiah in gaol? I answered, Patience and Cornish might name him. They are most hardened against Zeb and me.