As Meat Loves Salt Read online

  As Meat Loves Salt

  Maria McCann

  for my parents

  There was once a king who wished to know how much his three daughters loved him. He called the eldest and asked her, ‘How much do you love your father?’

  His daughter answered, ‘My love cannot be measured. You are more precious to me than a palace full of rubies and gold,’ and the king was pleased.

  He then called the second daughter and put the question to her also.

  The girl answered, ‘My love is beyond compare. It will endure until roses bloom in snow and fish nest in the trees,’ and again the king was pleased.

  He then called his youngest daughter and asked her, ‘My dear child, how much do you love your father?’

  The girl replied only, ‘I love you as meat loves salt,’ and whatever the king coaxed or threatened her with, she would not change her

  Insulted, the king divided the youngest daughter’s fortune between her sisters, cursed her and cast her out.

  Seeing how foolish their father was, the two eldest sisters began to intrigue against him, and in a short time they had seized the kingdom and cast him out in his turn. He became a beggar, and wandered across the land he had once ruled, despised by everyone he met.

  One day, weary and hopeless, he came to a village where all the inhabitants were hurrying along the road together, dressed for a celebration. When he asked the reason for this he was told that not far off there was a great house, and that in this house there was a wedding, and the young couple had said that no one should be turned away. The king was very hungry, so he went with them hoping for some share of the feast.

  When he arrived he was put to sit at a bench with the rest of the humbler people. For some time he thought of nothing but how much he would be able to eat, but at last, on looking up, he saw that the bride was none other than his own daughter whom he had banished. The king was too ashamed to make himself known. ‘Besides,’ he said to himself, ‘she only loves me as meat loves salt.’

  Now it happened that the generosity of the bride and groom was so well known that many, many unexpected guests had come for the feast. When the meat was served and everybody helped themselves, there was not enough salt to go round, and the king was one of the guests who was left out. He took a mouthful of roast meat and tasted it, and how he longed for salt to put on his food. Then he understood, at last, the meaning of his youngest daughter’s words and the love that she had felt for him, for the meat is nothing without the salt.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Excerpt

  PART I

  ONE Scum Rises

  TWO Beating

  THREE Battles

  FOUR Espousal

  FIVE Over the Edge

  PART II

  SIX Prince Rupert

  SEVEN Bad Angel

  EIGHT Mistress Lilly

  NINE God’s Work

  TEN Golgotha

  ELEVEN The Man of Bones

  PART III

  TWELVE At Liberty

  THIRTEEN Eve of Nativity

  FOURTEEN An Incubus

  FIFTEEN Broken Men

  SIXTEEN Hope

  SEVENTEEN Brothers and Sisters

  EIGHTEEN The Uses of a Map

  NINETEEN Possession

  TWENTY As Meat Loves Salt

  TWENTY-ONE Discoveries

  TWENTY-TWO What’s Past Repair

  TWENTY-THREE Coney-Catching

  PART IV

  TWENTY-FOUR Of Snares

  TWENTY-FIVE Things Broken

  TWENTY-SIX Things Called By Their Right Names

  TWENTY-SEVEN Things Not To Be Compelled

  TWENTY-EIGHT The Stuff of Jest

  TWENTY-NINE Well-Loved Games

  THIRTY Unsealing

  THIRTY-ONE Treasures

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART I

  ONE

  Scum Rises

  On the morning we dragged the pond for Patience White, I bent so far down trying to see beneath the surface that my own face peered up at me, twisted and frowning. The three of us had churned up the water until it was half mud and spattered with flecks of weed before I knocked my foot against something loose and heavy that lolled about as we splashed. I tried to push it away from us, but too late.

  ‘It is she.’ Izzy’s lips were drawn back from his teeth.

  I shook my head. ‘That’s a log.’

  ‘No, Jacob – here, here—’

  He seized my hand and plunged it in the water near his right leg. My heart fairly battered my ribs. I touched first his ankle, then wet cloth wound tight around something which moved.

  ‘I think that’s an arm,’ Izzy said quietly.

  ‘I think it is, Brother.’ Feeling along it, I found cold slippery flesh, which I levered upwards to the air. It was certainly an arm, and at the end of it a small hand, wrinkled from the water. I heard My Lady, standing on the bank, cry out, ‘Poor girl, poor girl!’

  Zebedee reached towards the freckled fingers. ‘That’s never – Jacob, do you not see?’

  ‘Quiet.’ I had no need of his nudging, for I knew what we had hold of. Ever since we had been ordered to drag the pond I had been schooling myself for this.

  ‘You forget the rope,’ called Godfrey from the warm safety of the bank.

  I looked round and saw the end of it trailing in the water on the other side of the pond, while we floundered. ‘Fetch it, can’t you?’ I asked him.

  He pursed his lips and did not move. A mere manservant like me must not speak thus peremptorily to a steward, though he were hanging by his fingernails from a cliff.

  ‘Be so kind as to fetch it, Godfrey,’ put in the Mistress.

  Frowning, the steward took up the wet rope.

  The pond at Beaurepair had a runway sloping down into it on one side, made in past times to let beasts down into the water. It was coated with cracked greenish mud, which stank more foully than the pond itself. We grappled, splashing and squelching, to drag the thing to the bottom of this slope, then Zeb and I crawled to the top, our shirts and breeches clinging heavily to us. Having forgotten to take off my shoes, I felt them all silted up. Izzy, who lacked our strength, stayed in the water to adjust the ties.

  ‘Pull,’ he called.

  Zeb and I seized an end of rope each and leant backwards. Our weight moved the body along by perhaps two feet.

  ‘Come, Jacob, you can do better than that,’ called Sir John, as if we were practising some sport. I wondered how much wine he had got down his throat already.

  ‘Her clothes must be sodden,’ said Godfrey. He came over and joined Zeb on the line, taking care to stand well away from my brother’s dripping garments. ‘Or she’s caught on something—’

  There was a swirl in the water and a sucking noise. Izzy leapt back.

  The body sat up, breaking the surface. I saw a scalp smeared with stiffened hair. Then it plunged forwards as if drunk, sprawling full length in the shallower waters at the base of the runway. I descended again and took it under the arms, wrestling it up the slope until it lay face to the sky. The mouth was full of mud.

  ‘You see?’ whispered Zeb, wiping his brow.

  The corpse was not that of Patience Hannah White. Our catch was a different fish entirely: Christopher Walshe, late of this parish, who up to now had not even been missed.

  ‘He is the servant of Mr Biggin, Madam.’ Godfrey tried yet again, his beard wagging up and down. ‘One of the stableboys at Champains.’

  The Mistress pressed her veiny hands together. ‘But why? Where is Patience?’

  ‘Not i
n the pond. Not in the pond, which is as good news as the death of this young man is sad,’ fluttered Godfrey. ‘Might I suggest, Madam, that it were good for you to lie down? Let me take the matter entirely in hand. I will send the youngest Cullen to Champains and Jacob shall lay out the body.’

  My Lady nodded her permission and went to shut herself up in her chamber. Sir John, ever our help in time of trouble, made for the study where he had doubtless some canary wine ready broached.

  My brothers walking on either side, I cradled the dead boy in my arms as far as the laundry, and there laid him on a table.

  ‘Directly I saw the hand, I knew,’ said Zeb, staring at him. He pushed back the slimy hair from Walshe’s face, and shuddered. ‘It must have been after the reading. Two nights, pickling in there!’

  ‘A senseless thing,’ said Izzy. ‘He went out the other way, we all of us waved him farewell.’

  Zeb nodded. ‘And not in drink. Was he?’

  ‘Not that I saw,’ I said. ‘Unless you gave him it.’

  Izzy and Zeb exchanged glances.

  ‘Well, did you?’ I challenged.

  ‘You know he did not,’ said Izzy. ‘Come lads, no quarrels.’

  ‘I have yet to say a harsh word,’ Zeb protested.

  In silence we took off our filthy garments in the laundry and washed away the mud from our flesh. Izzy gasped in lifting the wet shirt over his head and I guessed that his back was paining him.

  ‘Thank God Patience was not in there.’ Zeb, drying himself on a linen cloth, shivered. ‘But this lad! Poor Chris, poor boy. Suppose we had not looked?’

  ‘You were wise to leave off your shoes. I fear mine are ruined,’ I said.

  ‘Dear brother, that is scarce a catastrophe here,’ Izzy replied. He found a basket of clean shirts and tossed one in my direction. ‘That’ll keep you decent until we can get back to our own chamber.’

  ‘Godfrey could have bidden Caro bring clothes down for us,’ said Zeb. ‘What are stewards for, if not to make others work?’

  ‘I would not have Caro see this,’ I said.

  ‘What, the three of us in our shirts?’ asked Zeb.

  ‘You tempt God by jesting,’ said Izzy. He limped over to the boy and stood a while looking at him. ‘Suppose it had been Patience? I would not be you in that case.’

  Zeb started. ‘The Mistress doesn’t know, does she?’

  ‘No, but it is the first thing thought on if a lass be found drowned,’ Izzy replied.

  Zeb considered. ‘But there were no signs – if I remarked nothing – if any man had the chance, that man was I—’ He broke off, his cheeks colouring.

  Izzy crossed the room and took him by the shoulders. ‘They can cut them open and look inside.’

  ‘Are we in a madhouse? Cut what? Look at what?’ I cried.

  The two of them turned exasperated faces upon me.

  ‘Ever the last to know,’ said Zeb. ‘So Caro has told you nothing?’

  ‘Our brother has been hard at work, Jacob,’ said Izzy. ‘Patience is with child.’

  So that was the key to their mysterious talk: Patience with child by Zeb. The great secret, taken at its worth, was hardly astonishing – I had been watching Zeb and Patience dance the old dance for some time – yet I was riled at not having been told.

  ‘Two days and not in the pond. She is run away for sure,’ said Zeb. ‘But why, why now?’

  ‘Shame?’ I ventured – though to be sure, shame and Patience White were words scarce ever heard together, except when folk shook their heads and said she had none.

  ‘She would not have been shamed. Zeb agreed to marry her,’ said Izzy.

  ‘What!’ I cried. ‘Zeb, you’re the biggest fool living.’

  ‘I like her, Jacob,’ protested my brother.

  ‘Oh? And would you like her for a sister?’

  Zeb was silenced. What he liked, I thought, was the place between her legs, for what else was there? We would be all of us better off without Patience. It was impossible any should miss her braying laugh; for myself, I had always found her an affliction. She was Caro’s fellow maidservant and a mare long since broken in, most likely by Peter, who worked alongside us and was roughly of an age with Zeb. Patience and Peter, now there was a match: loud, foolish, neither of them able to read, neither caring to do so. I had a strong dislike to Peter’s countenance, which was both freckled and pimply and seemed to me unclean, yet I was obliged to admit that in many ways he showed himself not a bad-hearted lad, for he worked hard and was ready to lend and to share. I much preferred him to Patience, whose constant aim was to draw men in.

  She had tried it once with me, when I was not yet twenty. Coming through the wicket gate with a basket of windfalls from the orchard, I found her in my way.

  ‘That’s a heavy load you’ve got,’ she said.

  ‘Move then,’ I told her. ‘Let me lay it down,’ for my shoulders were aching.

  ‘An excellent notion,’ Patience said, ‘to lay a thing down on the grass.’

  She had never before fastened on me, and though I knew her even then for a whore I was slow to take her meaning. My coat was off for the heat, and Patience put her fingers on my arm.

  ‘You could give a lass a good squeeze, eh?’ She pressed my shoulder so that I felt her warm palm through my shirt. ‘I’m one that squeezes back. I wager you’ll like it.’

  ‘I wager I won’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve no call for the pox. Now let me through or you’ll feel my arm another way.’

  For some time after that we did not speak, but servants must rub along somehow – they have enough to do coddling the whims of their masters – and besides, I think Izzy said something to soften her. Since then we had behaved together civilly, as our work required. Peter was come next, I was pretty sure, and had consoled her for Jacob; but she could never have engaged Zeb’s interest had there been a comelier woman in the house. There was Caro, of course; but Caro was mine.

  Caro. Against Patience’s slovenly dress and coarse speech, my darling girl shone like virgin snow. Naturally, there were huffs and quarrels between the two.

  ‘She’s lewd as a midwife,’ Caro complained to me once. ‘Forever snuffling after us: does he do this, does he do that.’

  But I was no Zeb. I treated Caro always with the respect which is due from a lover and never assumed the privileges of a husband. Thus I again thwarted Patience by my self-command.

  Self-command was the unknown word to my brother, and could have put no brake on his doings. Foolish indulgence had ruined Zebedee. He was only four when Father died, and missed a guiding hand all the more in that his beauty tempted our mother to spoil him.

  ‘Zeb must go on with his lute,’ she announced, when it was clear we had scarce a hat between us. To be just, he played well, and looked well even when he played out of tune. We Cullen men are all like Sir Thomas Fairfax, dark-skinned to a fault, but the fault shows comely in Zeb because of his graceful make and his very brilliant eyes. I have seen women, even women of quality, look at him as if they lacked only the bread to make a meal of him there and then – and Zeb, not one whit abashed, return the look.

  I lack his charm. Though I am like him in skin and hair, my face is altogether rougher and my eyes are grey. I am, however, the tallest man I know, and the strongest – stronger than Isaiah and Zeb put together. Not that Izzy has much strength to add to Zeb’s, for my elder brother came into the world twisted and never grew right afterwards. ‘Izzy gave me such a long, hard bringing to bed,’ my mother said more than once, ‘you may thank God that you were let to be born at all.’

  Now Zeb was to go to Champains, as being the best rider and also the most personable of the menservants. I did not begrudge him the job, for I rode very ill and was generally sore all the next day. My own task was humbler, but not without its interest: to clean the boy’s body for his master to see it, and for the surgeon. This cleaning should rather he a woman’s work, but I was glad to do it for otherwise, Patience being gone, it would fall ent
irely upon Caro. In the chamber we dressed according to our allotted duty, Zeb taking a well-brushed cassock and some thick new breeches for riding, myself pulling on an old pair over a worn shirt.

  ‘Just wait, we will be suspected for this,’ Zeb said to me, combing out his hair. ‘You especially.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You quarrelled with him that night.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it a quarrel,’ I protested. ‘We disagreed over his pamphlets, what of that?’

  ‘Jacob is right,’ said Izzy. ‘Hardly a drowning matter.’

  Zeb ignored him. ‘It will put off your betrothal, Jacob.’

  Izzy turned to me. ‘Take no notice. He wants only to tease, when he should be examining his accounts before God.’

  ‘What!’ Zeb was stung in his turn. ‘Patience isn’t dead, nor did I send her away. I heard her news kindly, sour though it was.’

  ‘So why would she leave?’ I pressed him.

  He shrugged. ‘Another sweetheart?’

  Izzy and I exchanged sceptical looks. Like all beautiful and fickle persons, Zeb aroused a desperate loyalty in others.

  ‘Are you not afraid for her, with a boy found drowned?’ Izzy demanded.

  Zeb cried, ‘Yes! Yes! But what can fear do?’ He buttoned up the sides of his cassock. ‘Best not think on it.’

  ‘Think on your duty to her,’ said Izzy.

  Zeb grinned. ‘Let us turn our thoughts rather to Jacob’s betrothal. Now there everything is proper. A little bird tells me, Jacob, that Caro has been asking the other maids about the wedding night.’

  ‘Away, Lechery,’ said Izzy, ‘and mend your thoughts, lest God strike you down on the road.’

  Swaggering in boots, Zeb departed for the stables.

  ‘Talking of my wedding night and his friend dead downstairs! He’s as shameless as his whore,’ I fumed.

  ‘He is always thus when he is unhappy.’ Izzy spoke softly. ‘His weeping will be done on the road to Champains.’