A Crowning Mercy. Bernard Cornwell

with a string of mules, and the farmer’s wife arranged for Campion to go with the man and his wife. The carrier, like so many travelling people, was a Puritan and Campion was glad of it. She might find their religion oppressive and cruel, but she knew they would also be honest and trustworthy. The carrier’s wife clucked as she heard Campion’s story. ‘You poor thing, dear. You’d best come to Southampton, then on to London. It’s safer that way nowadays.’

      She slept that first night in the public room of an inn, sharing the room with a dozen women, and there were times in the reaches of the night when she wished she was back home in Werlatton. She had launched herself on the stream, and its current was already taking her to strange, frightening places where she did not know how to behave. Yet the thought of Scammell, of his flabby, heavy desire for her, of being forced to mother his children, made her determined to endure.

      In the cold dawn she paid for her lodgings with a gold coin, causing raised eyebrows, and she had to trust that she was given the correct coins in change. The women’s privy was an empty pigsty, open to the sky. It was all so strange. The broadsheets pasted on to the wall of the tavern told of Puritan victories against the King, for this was an area loyal to Parliament.

      The carrier’s wife, having settled her own bill, took her out into the street where her husband had already strung the mules into their chain. They walked into the dawn again and Campion’s spirits soared to the sky for she had survived one whole day.

      The carrier, Walter, was a taciturn man, as stubborn as the mules that made him a living. He walked slowly at the head of his string, his eyes on his Bible that his wife proudly told Campion he had recently learned to read. ‘Not all the words, mind you, but most of them. He reads me nice stories from the scriptures.’

      It clouded over that day, great clouds that piled from the south, and in the afternoon it rained. That evening, in a tavern on the edge of the New Forest, Campion dried herself in front of a fire. She drank small beer and stayed close to Walter’s wife, Miriam, who protected her from the men who tried to flirt with the beautiful, shy girl beside the hearth. Miriam tutted. ‘Your mother should have married you off.’

      ‘I think she wanted me at home.’ She instantly feared that Miriam would ask why, in that case, her mother had sent her to London, but the carrier’s wife was thinking of other things.

      ‘It’s not a blessing, dear.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘To be fair, like you. You can see the disturbance in the men. Still, the Lord didn’t make you proud, and that’s a blessing. But if I were you, dear, I’d marry and marry soon. How old be you?’

      ‘Eighteen,’ Campion lied.

      ‘Late, late. Now I was wed to Walter at fifteen, and a better man God could not have shaped in His clay, b’aint that be, Walter?’

      Walter, puzzling his way through Deuteronomy, looked up and grunted shyly. He went back to his scriptures and his pot of ale.

      Campion looked at Miriam. ‘Don’t you have children?’

      ‘Lord bless you, child, but the children be growed. Them that God let grow. Our Tom now, he be married, and the girls are in service. That’s why I travel with Walter, to keep him company and out of trouble!’ She laughed at her own joke and Campion was surprised to see a warm smile soften Walter’s stern face. The joke was evidently an old one between them, a comforting one, and Campion knew she was with good, kind people and wished that she did not need to deceive them.

      They crossed the New Forest the next day, travelling in company with two dozen other people, and Walter pulled out a great pistol that he stuck in his belt and laid a sword across the leading mule’s packs. They were not troubled in the forest though, except by more rain that soaked the path and dripped from the trees long after the showers had stopped. By afternoon the sun shone again and they were coming close to Southampton where Campion must leave Miriam’s company.

      Each stage of her journey loomed ahead to worry her. She had reached Southampton safely, and she was further from home now than she had ever dreamed of going, but there was still the largest obstacle to be cleared; the journey to London itself. Miriam asked if she had much money and Campion said yes, about five pounds, and Miriam told her to take the stage wagon. ‘It’s the safest way, child. Is your uncle expecting you?’

      ‘I think so.’

      ‘Well, you take the wagon. Who knows, maybe he’ll pay for you?’ She laughed, then took Campion to the huge inn where the wagons left, and kissed her farewell. ‘You’re a good girl, I can tell. The Lord protect you, child. We’ll pray for you.’

      And perhaps the prayers worked, for at Southampton Campion met Mrs Swan, and although Mildred Swan was not the likeliest person to be God’s instrument, she was undoubtedly effective. Within minutes of seeing Campion, lost and frightened, she had taken the girl under her wing. They shared a bed and Campion listened to the interminable story of Mildred Swan’s life.

      She had been visiting her sister who was married to a clergyman in Southampton and was now returning to her own home in London. The story, interrupted by sleep, was picked up the next morning as they waited in the cobbled yard. ‘I’m a widow, dear, so I knows about sorrows and troubles.’ She had a huge, untidy bundle on the ground, next to a basket filled with pies and fruit. As she turned to check on their safety she saw an ostler loitering near her belongings. ‘Get your thieving eyes off them! I’m a Christian woman travelling defenceless! Don’t you think you can thieve from me!’ The ostler, astonished, made a hasty retreat. Mrs Swan, who liked to arrange the world about her, smiled happily at Campion. ‘You must tell me about your mother, dear.’

      Mildred Swan was a plump, middle-aged woman, wearing a dress of faded blue, with a gaudy, flowered scarf about her shoulders and a bright red bonnet crammed on unruly, fair hair. She did not wait for Campion to answer, instead she wanted to know whether Campion planned to travel on top or inside the coach. Campion said she did not know.

      ‘You’d better travel with me, dear. Inside. Then we can protect each other against the men.’ The last words were spoken loudly enough for a tall, gloomy-looking minister to hear. Mrs Swan watched him to make sure the words had registered, then looked back to Campion. ‘So?’

      Campion had changed her story a little. She had kept a sick, failing mother, but now she claimed to be travelling to London to see a lawyer about an inheritance. It was close enough to the truth, for Campion had conceived the idea that Grenville Cony must be the lawyer who had arranged the Covenant.

      By the time Campion had explained about the inheritance they were inside the wagon, perched on a cushioned bench, and Mrs Swan had jostled the other passengers unmercifully to make herself ample space. The minister, a Bible now in his hands, sat opposite Campion by the window.

      Mrs Swan was fascinated by Campion’s sick mother. ‘She’s got thin blood, has she, dear?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Buttercups, dear, buttercups. Buttercups work for thin blood, dear. My mother had thin blood. She died, of course, but it wasn’t just the thin blood. Oh no.’ She said the last words darkly as though they enshrined a terrible secret. ‘What else does she have, dear?’

      For two hours, as the wagon rumbled and lurched northwards, Campion heaped upon her mother the troubles of a female Job, each ailment more terrible than the last, and for each Mrs Swan had a remedy, always infallible, though she also always knew of someone who had died despite them. The conversation, though tiring on Campion’s imagination, was a very heaven for Mrs Swan. ‘The ague, dear? My grandmother had the ague, God bless her, but she didn’t die of it. No. She was cured, but then she prayed to St Petronilla. Can’t do that now, of course, thanks to some I won’t name.’ She glowered at the minister to whom she had taken an irrational dislike. ‘Does she have sore breasts, dear?’

      ‘Very.’

      ‘She would, she would,’ Mrs Swan sighed heavily. ‘I had sore breasts, dear, when my husband was alive, but then he was a sailor. Yes. He brought me the image of St Agnes