Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [551]
Late evening in the little town of Christchurch. The priory church, with its Norman arches and square tower, dark; the little ruined castle on its mound beside the priory, dark; the river Avon flowing beside both on its way to the silent, shallow harbour inside its protecting headland, also dark; the white swans, nesting on the river bank, hidden in the dark. The houses had lights, but their shutters were mostly closed and so the light of lamps or candles was little more than a bright slit or a flicker above the street. There was a lamp though, glittering in its iron bracket at the corner of the street, lighting the cobbles below.
Now there was light and sound, as the door of an inn opened and Peter Wilson, only a little the worse for drink came out and began to walk down the narrow street towards his home. The door swung closed behind his departing figure, withdrawing the intruding sound and glare of the inn from the intimacy of the quiet shadows in the street.
Peter Wilson was not quite sober but he was happy, having been well paid the day before. He had bought his ring. He felt it in his pocket. He turned the corner.
And now, suddenly, there were too many shadows. They were behind him, before him; one of the shadows had materialised into a large, dark figure, not at all shadowy, who clamped a large hand over his mouth.
Without thinking, he bit the hand. There was a muffled curse.
“Damn the little whelp.”
Then something very hard crashed against the side of his head.
He was down; the sky was very red. A huge pain throbbed at the side of his head. Two fingers were tying his hands. He was not unconscious then, only knocked down. And now he knew what had happened.
“Press gang,” he muttered.
“Right, young sir,” a chuckle just behind his left ear. “Now keep quiet while we get some more or this cudgel will tap you again,” and the said wooden club tapped, painfully, against the rising bruise where he was hit before.
“But,” he said aloud, so they could all hear him, “I’m to be married next week.”
A guffaw of laughter.
“Quiet you fools.” A midshipman.
“You’re to be married, matey, to the King’s Navy.” The same voice, close by his ear again.
“Shsh. Here comes another.”
His hands had been securely tied.
Ralph stayed at Doctor Barnikel’s house while he waited for the storm to blow over.
Agnes and the children remained with Frances Porteus.
Ralph remained cheerful.
“The old stick will get over it,” he told Barnikel as they dined together.
But the doctor was not so sanguine.
“You should go and apologise to him – the sooner the better,” he urged.
Ralph laughed, but refused.
“Doesn’t he owe me an apology too?”
“Perhaps. But you provoked him.”
Ralph went to his work at the school as usual. It did not seem to him so serious a matter.
The next day, when Agnes came to him and demanded: “I beg you, Ralph, to submit to him,” he was furious, however.
“You take sides against me then?”
“No. But I am your wife and you have two children. Canon Porteus has influence here.”
“And I have principles,” he responded petulantly, “even if my wife has not.”
“It is only another week until our own house is ready,” Ralph told Barnikel. “We can manage as we are until then. After that,” he added, “damn Porteus.”
But two days after the quarrel, it was Agnes who approached the doctor in the street and begged him:
“Doctor, if you can, persuade my husband to apologise to Canon Porteus. I fear the consequences if he does not.”
“Do you know what he intends?”
She shook her head sadly.
“No. He is very correct with me, of course. Yet . . . I fear him,” she said simply.
The summons came the next day. It was to Lord Forest’s house.
He had changed remarkably little since the days when Adam Shockley knew him. He was an old man now, but upright. His manners were perfect, and he missed nothing.
There was a second great house, outside Manchester now, as well as the mansion in the north of Wiltshire and the house in Salisbury. But he still spent three months a year at Sarum.
It seemed