Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [563]
Yesterday, at one such infamous place, I saw what I took to be a small black dog emerging from a mine shaft. I went over to it to find that the black creature, though it went on all fours and could indeed have been taken for an animal, so utterly degraded was its filthy condition, was not a dog but a child, sent by its parents down to work. It – I say it – was four years old.
We know poverty at Sarum; but we have nothing, I thank God, like this.
These conditions, in England, were to persist for some time.
To his wife, however, Ralph, through delicacy did not think it proper to describe such terrible particulars. He wrote only in general terms.
There are things here that seem to me, more than ever, to be a crime against human freedom and dignity: I see conditions that are worse, I believe, than slavery. Porteus himself would agree with me I think, but it is useless, I suppose, for me to communicate with him at present.
And Agnes, seeing nothing of her husband, and like most well-meaning folk at Sarum, knowing nothing about the conditions to which he was referring, assumed that he spoke of conditions on the estate or his relationship with the Forest household, and shaking her head sadly, wondered if he would ever grow up to be a mature man. So that when Frances tentatively asked her: “Do you think Ralph is growing any wiser in his absence?” she could only reply, “I trust so,” without much conviction.
The resistance of Canon Porteus to Ralph’s return took everyone by surprise. It was awesome.
“And the devil of it is,” Barnikel confessed after a year had passed, “he’s only to stir up trouble at the school and in the close, for his position here to be quite untenable. He must either return with Porteus’s blessing or not at all.”
He thought the triumph of Trafalgar, which the town celebrated joyfully, might provoke a change of mood. But the gloom of Ulm and Austerlitz and the death of Pitt made the canon sourer still and the mood of the town more conservative than ever.
By the end of summer 1806, Ralph was reaching another conclusion. He wrote to Agnes.
Since it seems the vindictiveness of Canon Porteus has closed Sarum to me, I have asked Lord Forest if he will help me find a post elsewhere, if possible in London, where there are many schools and where I may be reunited with my wife. He has engaged, if I will tutor the two boys until next summer, to find me a good post with a generous salary by next September.
The letter arrived on the day that Thaddeus Barnikel was to escort Agnes to an open air entertainment.
The sport of single-stick combat was similar to fencing except that the weapons in question were sticks rather than pointed swords, so that the worst injury a man was likely to get was a bruise or two. Unlike the great bare-fisted prize fights that took place occasionally on the downs, single-stick combat was, in Barnikel’s opinion, fit for a woman to see. The purse was handsome and they saw some excellent contests. It was afterwards, as they walked through the town, that Agnes told Thaddeus about Ralph’s letter, and his plans for her to leave Sarum.
“To London?” He swallowed. For a moment he could not speak.
For it was only then that he realised how much a part of his life she had become. “Though we have never even touched,” he realised sadly, “it’s as though we were married.”
“I should be sorry if you left,” he said at last, and they walked in silence for a little time.
They were outside the door of her house in New Street. There were no people about at that moment. She stopped.
“I fear that in London, my husband would soon cause as much trouble for himself and his family as he has caused in Sarum,” she said with a gentle smile. It was the first time in two years that she had said a word to him against Ralph. He looked down. “Besides,” she went on steadily, “I have no wish to leave Sarum – or my good friends.”
Then, before she left him and went through her door, she reached out and gently touched his