No Shame, No Fear Read online

  “Come in, Meriel,” my father said. “I must go back to the shop. And you’ll come with me, Will; I’ll find you work to do.”

  I went down the stairs ahead of him, glanced back, and saw him talking to my stepmother, reassuring her.

  He kept me all afternoon in the shop and warehouse. I was not much needed there, but was able to see how Richard kept accounts and dealt with customers. It was useful to me and I would not have resented it, except that I knew my father wanted me under his eye.

  That evening, at supper, he was as good-humoured as usual. I realized that he considered the matter closed; he had told me what to do and expected me to obey.

  I could not, but neither could I find the courage at that moment to confront him again; so I went out, thinking to find Susanna, and he watched me put on my hat and said nothing.

  I went first to the Mintons’, but Judith told me Susanna was still at Faulkner’s, so I made my way there.

  It was a warm evening, and the air would have been mild and sweet had it not been for the rank smell from the channel in the middle of the road, which is always worse in such weather. In order to calm myself and clear my thoughts, I took the long way to Broad Street and walked along the town walls. A rosy sunset lit the fields and woods below, but the trees were knots of shadow. I saw a man – a vagrant, probably – settling with his pack in the lee of a hedge, and envied him his freedom.

  No one answered my knock at the printer’s, so I found a way round the backs of the houses, and came upon Nat and Susanna in the yard. He was washing something in a bucket, while she leaned against the door frame and chatted with him.

  They looked so easy together that I felt a stab of jealousy. He lives here, I thought, sleeps in the next room, works with her, prays with her.

  Then Susanna looked up and saw me. Her face brightened, she smiled, and I knew I had no cause for fear.

  I opened the gate and went in. Nat, I found, was cleaning the ink daubers in a bucket of urine.

  He grinned as I stepped back from the smell. “Got to be done. Every night, after a day’s use.”

  He had taken off the leather covers and put them to soak in the urine – “That softens them” – and was clearing the horsehair stuffing of lumps.

  He nodded towards the house. “John’s still here. We’ve been working late on a pamphlet for Friends.”

  “How do they fare, those in prison?” I asked.

  I did not want to talk about the prisoners; I wanted to speak to Susanna alone, to tell her what my father had said and how I felt about it. But she and Nat were both angry on behalf of their friends, and Susanna responded with a flash of fire. “There is still no warrant, and they don’t know when they will come to court! They are crowded together with no room to lie down, and there is only one chamberpot which all must use, male or female. Judith’s mother is so overcome with the foulness she cannot bring herself to eat or drink.”

  “Can they not be bailed?”

  “They will not pay. And will not have others pay for them.”

  “I spoke to my father,” I said. “Asked him why they are kept without authority.”

  “Thou told him?”

  Both turned startled eyes on me. Susanna looked fearful and yet glad. Before I could say more, John Pardoe came out, greeted me, and said he was going home.

  “I was to have walked back to the Mintons’ with Susanna,” he said to me, “but…”

  “I’ll walk with her,” I said.

  We left soon after, leaving Nat to lock up. The alley was deserted, and when we reached a shadowy corner I put my arms around Susanna and kissed her. It was so long since we’d had a moment alone together that I felt as if I’d been starved. I pulled her closer, feeling the slender curves of her body outlined by her stays.

  “Will…” She spoke between kisses, her voice low and anxious. “What did thy father say? Does he know about me?”

  “He has guessed there is a girl – but don’t fear, he doesn’t know thee. He has forbidden me to see any of you again.”

  “And yet thou’rt here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he know?”

  “Not yet. But he will. He must.”

  We walked the slow way back, along the town walls, where we saw the countryside now almost in darkness, the hills blended with the sky. I held Susanna’s hand and wished with all my heart that we could walk like this with my father’s blessing. A watchman passed us with his lantern, and as he turned up an alleyway into the town we heard his call: “Nine o’clock and all’s well.”

  A lamp was shining outside the Mintons’ door. We knocked, their servant, Hester, opened it, and Susanna went quickly inside.

  I walked the short distance to my own home. The servants were about, but to my relief my father had already gone to bed. I went up to my room and flung myself flat on my back on the bed and gave way to thoughts of Susanna and the feelings she aroused in me. She’d be with the Mintons now, sharing a bed with Judith. Suppose I’d brought Susanna here, to my own bed? I imagined smuggling her in, holding and kissing her as we reached the secrecy of my room; imagined how she’d feel without stays, with her hair loose and falling across my neck and arms.

  We must be together, I thought. We must marry; it’s the only way. But how? My father would never agree to it. Perhaps the Quakers would marry us? But where would we live? Where could we go? I found no answers.

  The next day I had other concerns. After a sleepless night, I had resolved to speak as the Quakers did when I met my family in the morning, using “thee” and “thou”. I wanted to prove, to myself as much as to them, that I was convinced of the truth. I was tense and ready for the confrontation this would produce. But then we all met, and in the humdrum exchanges of family talk, I forgot. It was difficult to remember a different way of speaking. I felt foolish, but it was too late to make the change.

  In the shop and warehouse that morning my father and I were both busy, not talking together. But later he sent me out on an errand, and when I returned I saw horses – a pack-train – in the yard. When I went in he was talking to a Welsh merchant he often had dealings with.

  “Ah, Will!” he said, and turned to the other man. “Mr Rhys: you remember my son, William?”

  The merchant swept off his hat and bowed to me.

  My own hand moved instinctively towards my hat – then I let it fall back. I acknowledged the man’s bow with a nod and said, “I’m pleased to meet thee, John Rhys.”

  He looked surprised, glanced at my father, then back at me, and smiled uncertainly.

  My father had turned dark with rage.

  “Go home, Will,” he said in a low voice. “We’ll speak later.”

  He led the merchant away, remarking, “My son has taken up with some loose people in the town, but…” The rest of his words were lost as the two of them moved further into the warehouse.

  I stood trembling. I had dealt with this badly, I knew. I should have confronted my father alone, at home, not here. I had embarrassed him and insulted his visitor. And yet – how else? I was convinced that the Quakers were right, that hat-honour and sweeping bows were nothing but sham and show, that honest men should look each other in the eye and no man should bow to another, since all are equal.

  But it had been hard to do, and all my instincts were against it, for I had been schooled in polite behaviour from my youth.

  I did not go home, but out, through the Eastgate and down to the river, where I liked to go to walk and think. But I would not disobey my father more than necessary. I was home when he returned.

  Anne had persuaded me to pick out a tune from Playford on the virginal for her and was practising the dance steps as I played. When my father came and called me out of the room she stood still, and her frightened glance flicked between the two of us.

  I followed my father down to his accounting room, where he keeps the bills and ledgers. He also keeps a rod, and it was here that I used to be summoned for a beating as a child. I tried to re
member some of my misdemeanours; small things, easily remedied by a beating: telling a lie, misbehaving in church, not learning my lessons properly, breaking a window with a ball … nothing like this. There was no remedy for this.

  I heard the pent-up anger in his voice as he said, “You are my son. I hoped – I expected – that you would be a credit to me, that I might be proud of you.”

  “Father, I meant no disrespect—”

  For answer he flung me against the table and ordered me to lean over it.

  “I’ll teach you respect,” he said.

  He seized the rod and struck out at me. The blows fell on my back, buttocks, arms and shoulders, and he grunted with the exertion. I was taller than he was now and could have resisted, but I did not. I clenched my teeth against the pain and made no sound. It was not the pain I minded; it was the humiliation, being treated like a child again, the breaking of the new adult relationship that had been growing between us. By law he was within his rights to beat any of us – child, wife, or servant – but at that moment I hated him for it.

  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

  Our 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, no
t 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.