A Cruel Fate (Quick Reads 2014) Page 5

********

  When Parliament’s agents leave Oxford, Marshal Smith soon stops letting friends and wives see the officers.

  Mrs Wingate decides to travel to visit her young children, who have been left at home. She needs the comfort that seeing them will bring. While she is away, Jane may stay in her room, which is better than where Jane has been lodging.

  Left quietly on her own, it is Jane’s turn to fall victim to despair. She continues to visit the castle, still asking for news of her brother. Her pleas feel more hopeless than ever. Now the guards seem to know that her protector has gone away. Their manners become coarser, their words vile, their advances unbearable.

  All the soldiers are jumpy. A rumour, which the troops will not confirm, suggests that prisoners from Bridewell have escaped. Smith is out looking for them.

  ********

  In a battered mood, Jane takes herself away from the castle, walking. Nearby there is an ancient garden, called the Paradise. She knows the place. It is an old orchard, in the grounds of a medieval monastery. There, even so close to the scene of cruelty at Saint George’s Tower, she knows she will find peace and fresh air, amid the innocent sounds of birdsong.

  She has been to this garden before, seeking comfort. Few people ever come. So she is surprised to see someone here.

  Barely aware of his surroundings, the man has collapsed. He looks half dead, from want and misery. Seeing Jane, he tries to struggle upright. He ends up only on his knees, in the act of vomiting. His stomach is too empty.

  He looks like a vagrant. The gaunt, pale-faced figure has a wild beard and hair, and dry, staring eyes. Even from a distance his stench makes Jane recoil. It is Martin Watts.

  Jane is terrified at first. Even so, she believes this is not a normal homeless man. She guesses that he is an escaped prisoner. She sees that he is more afraid than she is – afraid she may report him to the soldiers. Jane knows what going back to prison would mean to him, and his despair affects her deeply.

  Jane looks around to see if they are watched.

  ‘You escaped from Bridewell,’ she says, certain this is true. She speaks in a low, careful tone, as if calming a stray dog. The man closes his eyes and slumps, thinking she is going to call out for help. But Jane Afton has an urgent need to speak to anyone who has been inside Marshal Smith’s prison. ‘I shall not betray you. Stand up if you can,’ she orders him. She will not go and touch him. She is not that brave. ‘For your own sake, you must come away from here.’

  So Jane Afton leaves the Paradise garden, and Martin Watts finds the strength to follow. Jane, who was always the sensible one in her family, has reached her decision. She takes a strange man home with her.

  Chapter 13

  Martin’s Life in Jane’s Hands

  First she gives him water.

  Jane stands Martin in the yard by the pump and lets him gulp from a bowl as much as he wants. Almost at once he starts to know where he is again. Before Jane brings him into the house it is urgent to wash him. As he half strips, shyly, she commands, ‘All off!’ When he blushes, she adds, ‘I have a brother. I have seen it before.’

  Jane leaves him to it while she goes to her own lodgings to fetch the clothes she brought to Oxford for Nat. All the foul rags Martin has been wearing in prison will have to be burned. Even his shoes. Especially his shoes, in which he has stood for weeks in human waste.

  At this time of day, luckily no one is at home. None of the other tenants who rent rooms where Mrs Wingate lives see Martin being stripped, scrubbed and dressed in a shirt. Jane brings him secretly indoors and warms him by the kitchen fire. Then she puts him in Mrs Wingate’s bed. By this time, he has run out of strength. He lies there, barely conscious. Jane risks leaving him again and hurries to get help.

  She goes for the surgeon, Mr Betterise. When she tells him her mission, the surgeon seems uneasy because he has suffered at Marshal Smith’s hands himself – yet Jane persists. He sets aside his fear and comes with her to the house.

  He exclaims over Martin’s starved body. As he examines the poor man, he tells Jane to bring warm broth. ‘A little only. His stomach is so unused to food, it may throw the first back up. You must feed him sips from a spoon. He has no wounds – that’s one comfort.’

  Martin stirred anxiously when the doctor arrived. He lets himself be examined, but seems relieved when it is over. He trembles violently. Jane brings another blanket. All this time he has not said one word.

  ‘Can he speak?’ asks Jane. ‘Is he mute?’

  ‘He has lost his trust.’ Mr Betterise gazes at her. ‘You will bring him back to the world with kindness. I have no doubt of it.’

  Before the surgeon leaves, he cuts off Martin’s matted hair and beard, throwing them in the kitchen fire. He does not need to explain. Jane has seen for herself that Martin is infested with lice. She senses that he was once clean and healthy. His current state shames him.

  She feeds him. He vomits. She pauses, then feeds him again. She spoons in broth as she has done in the past when her brother was a sick child.

  While Martin rests, worn out, Jane folds her hands modestly. She is frank about her nervousness of being alone with a strange man: ‘I am a single woman. I have no husband to protect me. I must rely on you, sir, not to offend against my modesty.’

  For the first time, Martin visibly revives. He indicates how helpless he is. Then he shakes his head ruefully, laughing until Jane has to laugh with him. She feels her fear subside.

  He says his name. She tells him hers.

  Jane leaves him to rest, but Martin cannot sleep. He lies on his back, watching a very small spider creep across the ceiling. He lets himself relax, enjoying the luxury of being in a bed for the first time in three months, with his skin newly clean, with good broth inside him. He turns his face against the smooth pillowcase. In the silence of this almost empty house, he considers how he came to be here, wonders what will happen to him now. There is nothing he can do about anything, and he no longer minds that.

  Jane looks in, sees him still awake. She comes to his bedside, gives him more water, then states her request.

  ‘I have a young brother. Nat is his name. A prisoner of Marshal Smith. He was taken at Cirencester, but he never came home with the rest and I can hear no news of him. Nat Afton. You are in his shirt.’

  Martin looks down. That he is wearing Nat’s shirt affects him painfully.

  He knows he has probably seen Jane’s beloved brother in the Bridewell dungeon. Nat is probably the boy they had to leave behind, too weak to move, too sick to escape – and if he is not helped soon, almost certainly dying.

  Martin cannot bear to say this to the young woman who has saved him from his own plight. He takes the coward’s way out. He tells Jane what is strictly true: that in prison he never heard the name Nat Afton.

  He regrets it at once. He can see she believes he is lying.

  Chapter 14

  What Happened to Nat

  It is indeed Nat who was left behind in the dungeon.

  Nat Afton has had unexpected adventures. After being captured by Prince Rupert’s men at Cirencester, instead of keeping out of trouble, as he always did before, he found himself in the worst trouble of his life.

  He and his comrades were brought to Oxford in February. That was around a month ago.

  Being starved, and whipped along the road on a four-day journey did not suit Nat at all. He has always wanted an easy time. But easy times are over for him now.

  ********

  When they arrive, the prison in Oxford Castle is already full to bursting. Men from Marlborough and Banbury are taking all the space. Nat finds himself in an overflow group, which Marshal Smith keeps locked up in local churches. Conditions there are better than in Saint George’s Tower, and much better than in the filthy hole at Bridewell. Nat has no idea of that. He knows only that he is starving, parched and bitterly cold.

  He is bored too. Marshal Smith does not allow exercise hours. And his staff have better things to do than supe
rvise family visits. There is nothing to do, and no space to move anyway. Prisoners are crammed in, as many together as possible. They are forced to endure barbarous treatment that will, hopes Smith, soon kill them.

  Nat is outraged when he works out that Smith plans to kill them by neglect. What has he done? He is an innocent. He joined up as a soldier, with little idea of what that meant. He did not care about the politics; he could as easily have joined the King’s army, if they had asked him first.

  Still, a strange loyalty comes over him now. He sticks with his choice. He does not know why Parliament is defying the King. But the men he was captured with, who do seem to know, are his mates and comrades. If they are rebels, he is one too.

  At first they are made to work. Nat is angry about that. They are marched out daily to take up picks and spades, and help create the massive earth walls that protect the city for the King. Nat can dig but he does not like it. If he wanted to spend all day in the open, digging, he could have worked on a farm. At least he would then have had labourers’ rations, instead of just a penny loaf and one pot of beer a day. It’s not enough to keep a rat alive, let alone a rat who is being forced to build huge walls.

  The life of a prisoner does not suit Nat at all – hardly surprising when no normal work suited him either. He has abandoned work of various kinds, to the sorrow of his dear relations, but he never even considered hard manual labour. He wants to go back to his life as a tavern tapster. It was a poor life, but Nat was comfortable with it.

  A life like that may not be the kind of freedom that hot radicals are preaching. But it is Nat Afton’s birthright. He even had a degree of choice. In prison, he begins to value this lost freedom. So, by taking that away, the King’s jailer Marshal Smith has created yet another rebel. Nat is not merely angry. Light-headed from lack of food, he will easily fly into honest rage.

  When the Cirencester prisoners are asked to swear the oath to the King, Nat refuses. He hates being told what to do. He feels betrayed by the other men, who change sides so easily.

  Over a thousand of Nat’s comrades do take the oath. They differ from the Marlborough prisoners, who were so steadfast in refusing. Smith does not tell the men from Cirencester how the others reacted. They are left to make their own judgements – though they are told that their town has agreed to support King Charles. So they take the oath, and are duly sent home. A thousand fewer mouths to feed is a bonus, even at only one penny farthing a day.

  Nat Afton is removed from the rest before they leave, and is accused of criminal acts. Nat has helped vandalise the church where they are held prisoner. In his current mood, he is all too ready to listen when others tell him this ornate house of God is an outrage. Many in Cirencester, where he and his companions come from, are puritans, who hate decorated churches like these high Anglican ones in Oxford. They want churches to be bare places, with basic services based on the Bible. Simplicity, they believe, is the way to pure religion.

  Nat is influenced simply by the fact that this church is his jail. Locked in, with nothing to occupy their time but dismantling carved screens and smashing ancient stained glass, he and a few others do much damage. King Charles is forced to pay compensation to the church authorities.

  When the King’s men attempt to identify the culprits, Nat flies into a rage. He wants to go home. He knows he has lost his chance by refusing to swear the oath. He is starting to feel worried. Whereas most of the prisoners dully accept whatever is done to them, Nat Afton runs amuck. He comes out yelling. When asked if he did the damage, he replies yes he did and by God he would do it again. He curses everyone from the King down, then calls Provost Marshal Smith an evil son of a whore to his face.

  This is not a good idea. But Nat has no education. He has not been taught to judge ideas or to express them with restraint.

  Marshal Smith beats his own kind of education into Nat. He attacks him with a cane – the cane he leans on because of his lame leg. He beats Nat until blood runs all over him. Then Smith burns Nat’s fingers to the bone with glowing match cord. This is the way soldiers on both sides make people own up to being spies. There is no point with Nat, who has confessed to damaging the church already. He has nothing more to tell them. The torture is pointless, carried out for the foul delight of bullies.

  Nat is not sent back to the damaged church. He is thrown into the dungeon at Bridewell. He stays there when most of his comrades are freed and leave Oxford. He is still there when forty other men are dumped inside, including Martin Watts. Nat’s wounds have never been treated. They have festered and grown worse by the day. He is very sick.

  But he does not believe his condition is serious. Cheery faith in the future has always been his way.

  When the prisoners’ escape plan goes into action, Nat tries to help dig, though he is no longer up to working. Even so, he is sure he will recover enough when the men make their run for it. Nat tells himself that if he can only escape from prison, he will reform. He will become a soldier in the cause of freedom. He will lead a good life, working hard. His family will be proud of him.

  As Nat slowly has to face the fact that he will not be fit to escape, he weeps. His sobs are raw, though he is so dehydrated no tears flow.

  Reality finally hits him. He sees that this is all there is for him. He must end his days in jail.

  ********

  The forty men who are able to escape all go out through the wall. Six have to be left behind.

  When Marshal Smith learns what has happened, he is furious. Since he cannot reach the men who escaped, he turns his rage on those who were too weak to go. The man lacks all logic.

  Nat is now put in irons. He has chains weighing thirty pounds that tie his neck to his feet, so he cannot move. The pain is terrible. The misery increases as Smith now holds back bread from the six men, only supplying water.

  Eventually Nat is taken from the dungeon. On Thursday or Friday – he has lost all track of time – he is taken to Saint George’s Tower at the castle. His fetters are taken off. As the blood flows back to his stricken limbs, the pain feels even worse but he is too ill to scream. He is so ill he is in a kind of trance. Put into a room where there are about sixty other prisoners, he finds they are all sick with smallpox. The room stinks. It is cramped, noxious and unhealthy, though Nat bears it very quietly.

  He knows he has come here to die.

  Chapter 15

  A Long Night of Freedom

  Kind treatment is such a great luxury that Martin can barely enjoy it. This feels like a dream.

  For nearly four months he has been either high in the tower or below ground in the dungeon. Now he is lying in a soft bed. Normal street sounds come to him through the leaded window. Since Oxford is a garrison town, there are plenty of noises even after curfew.

  Jane has found wood, so a small fire glows in the grate, its flames lazily leaping when she places new sticks on it. She saves money, lighting neither candles nor rush-lights.

  Jane has to sleep in this room. She has taken the truckle bed where Mrs Wingate’s maid sleeps when they are here. Rolling on castors, it pulls out from under the main bed where Martin is. Jane guards her modesty. She stays fully dressed. In any case she has given the blanket to Martin. March nights are cold.

  Jane cannot sleep either. She is wondering what she can do with this fugitive.

  ********

  When the surgeon was here to attend Martin, he warned that tongues would wag. The people of Oxford are not all pleased to have the King and his men living among them, but those who do not support the royal cause keep quiet about it. Jane must assume everyone supports the King. That everyone here is against the prisoners; that everyone wants them back in jail, dying of neglect.

  The forty men who escaped will have a hard time getting away. Even if they can filter through the royalist lines and swim the river, they must pass through hostile country. The nearest safe haven is Parliament’s stronghold at Reading, at least twenty-five miles away.

  How is Jane to take thi
s man there?

  ********

  He is awake. When he sees her eyes open too, he smiles a little in the dim firelight.

  Martin is aware of Jane’s great anxiety. Although she has full charge of him, he in turn considers her; he begins to think about how he may settle her fears. For the first time in his life, Martin Watts has a reason to give care to someone else. He is a good man and ready to do this.

  Besides, he has been studying Jane Afton. He has never had close contact with women, nor has he even seen one during his months of captivity. He continues to gaze her way, liking what he sees.

  Martin is man enough to bluff; he makes it seem that he is looking her way by chance. Even so, Jane knows what he is thinking.

  ********

  Hours pass quietly. Outside the house, the streets finally grow still. It is the dead of night.

  Jane comes to bring Martin water. His body has quickly healed and is nearly normal, yet he cannot drink enough. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she asks him about himself. Martin starts talking. He has not had a proper conversation since the fall of Marlborough. Stumbling at first, he tells of his childhood and schooling, then his work at John Hammond’s bookshop. He speaks of books, and why they are important. He talks of how he hopes one day to sell books and news-sheets once again. By the time he falls silent, Jane almost knows more about Martin than he knows about himself.

  In return, she tells him of her life. Although she speaks of her two sisters and their families, it is her brother Nat who takes first place. It seems like a ritual of mourning. Jane feels as if she is sharing vital memories of someone who has died – retelling a childhood before it is lost, to fix it for the empty future. She loved Nat, though he was a rascal. Stories about their early lives come rushing back to her, even stories she had forgotten.

  This is a conversation Jane will have with no one else. Once she is done, only private grief remains. She has resigned herself. She knows she will never see Nat alive again.