A Crowning Mercy. Bernard Cornwell

It was the perfect summer’s day; a day devoted to the ripening of wheat, barley and rye; to the weighing down of orchard branches; a day of heat hazing the land with sweet smells. She was crouching at the very edge of the pool, where the grass fell away to the gravel beneath the still, lucid water. From here she could see only the rushes and the tops of the great beeches on the far ridge.

      A fish jumped upstream and she froze, listening, but there was no other sound. Her instinct told her she was alone, but she listened for a few seconds more, her heart loud, and then with swift hands she tugged at her petticoat and the heavy, black dress, pulled them up over her head, and she was white and naked in the sun.

      She moved swiftly, crouching low, and the water closed about her cold and clean. She gasped with the shock and the pleasure of it as she pushed herself into the deep place at the pool’s centre, giving herself up to the water, letting it carry her, feeling the joy of fresh cleanness on every part of her. Her eyes were shut and the sun was hot and pink on them – for a few seconds she was in heaven itself. Then she stood on the gravel, knees bent so that only her head was above the water, and opened her eyes to look for enemies. This pleasure of swimming in a summer stream was a pleasure she must steal, for she knew it to be a sin.

      She had found she could swim, an awkward paddling stroke that could take her across the pool to where the stream’s swift current tugged at her, turned her, and drove her back to the pool’s safety. This was her sin, her pleasure, and her shame. The quill scratched in the great book of heaven.

      Three years ago this had been something indescribably wicked, a childish dare against God. It was still that, but there was more. She could think of nothing, nothing at least that bore thinking about, that would enrage her father more than her nakedness. This was her gesture of anger against Matthew Slythe, yet she knew it to be futile for he would defeat her.

      She was twenty, just three months from her twenty-first birthday, and she knew that her father’s thoughts had at last turned to her future. She saw him watching her with a brooding mixture of anger and distaste. These days of slipping like a sleek, pale otter into the pool must come to an end. She had stayed unmarried far too long, three or four years too long, and now Matthew Slythe was finally thinking of her future. She feared her father. She tried to love him, but he made it hard.

      She stood now in the shallow part of the pool and the water streamed from her, making her hair cold against her back. She brushed water from her breasts, her slim waist, and she felt the touch of the sun on her skin. She stretched her arms up and then her body, feeling the joy of freedom, the warmth on her skin, the sleekness of water around her legs. A fish jumped.

      It jumped again, then a third time, and she knew it was no fish. It was too regular. Panic swept her. She waded to the pool’s edge, scrambled desperately on to the bank and fumbled with her petticoat and dress. She pulled them over her hair and down, forcing the heavy, stiff material about her hips and legs. Panic was coursing through her.

      The splashing came again, closer now, but she was decent, even if dishevelled. She removed the wet hair from within her collar, sat down and picked up her stockings.

      ‘Dryad, hamadryad, or nymph?’ An easy voice, full of hidden laughter, came from the stream.

      She said nothing. She was shivering in fear, her wet hair obscuring her view.

      He smiled at her. ‘You have to be a nymph, the spirit of this stream.’

      She jerked her hair away from her eyes to see a smiling young man, his face framed with unruly dark red curls. He was standing in the stream, but curiously bent forward so that his hands and forearms were beneath the water. His white shirt was unbuttoned, tucked into black breeches that were soaking. Black and white, the colours of a Puritan’s sober dress, but she did not believe the young man to be a Puritan. Perhaps it was the fineness of the linen shirt, or the hint of black satin where the breeches were slashed, or perhaps it was his face. She decided it was his face. It was a strong-boned, good face, full of laughter and happiness. She should have been frightened, yet instead she felt her spirits rise at the sight of the stooping, wet man. She disguised her interest, putting defiance into her voice as she challenged the trespasser. ‘What are you doing here?’

      ‘Stealing Slythe’s fish. What are you doing?’

      There had been something so cheerful in his admission of poaching that she smiled. She liked his face. It was crossed by the odd reflections of the sunlight from rippling water. She saw that he had no rod or net. ‘You’re not fishing.’

      ‘You’re calling me a liar!’ He grinned at her. ‘We Lazenders don’t lie. At least, not much.’

      A Lazender! That made everything more fitting somehow for this private place where she defied her father. Sir George Lazender was the Member of Parliament for the northern part of the county, a great landowner, a knight, and a man of whom her father had a low opinion. Sir George Lazender supported Parliament in its war against the King, but Matthew Slythe believed that support to be lukewarm. Sir George, Matthew Slythe believed, was a man too cautious in the great fight. There was worse. Sir George, it was rumoured, would keep the bishops in a Protestant church, would keep the Book of Common Prayer for its services, and Matthew Slythe believed both to be the works of the Papist devil.

      The young, red-headed man bowed clumsily in the stream. ‘Toby Lazender, nymph. Heir to Lazen Castle and stealer of fish.’

      ‘You’re not stealing fish!’ She was hugging her knees.

      ‘I am!’ He proved it by slinging a bag from his back and showing her a half dozen trout. Yet he had no fishing gear with him.

      She smiled. ‘How?’

      He told her. He waded to the bank, lay on the grass a few feet from her, and described how to catch fish with bare hands. It was, he said, a slow business. First he immersed his hands and forearms in the water and left them there until they had chilled to the temperature of the stream. Then, very slowly, he walked upstream still keeping his hands under the water. He explained that trout were lazy fish, lying in the thick weed and swimming only enough to hold their position against the water’s flow. He said she could creep into the weeds and, moving slow as thistledown, feel with spread fingers for the presence of a fish. He grinned at her. ‘You don’t feel the fish, at least not at first. You just feel the pressure of it.’

      ‘The pressure?’

      He nodded. ‘I don’t know. It’s just there. The water’s thicker.’

      ‘And then?’

      ‘You stroke.’ He showed her how he worked his fingers back and forth, closing on the strange pressure until he could feel the fish’s belly. Because his fingers were as cold as the water, and because they moved with infinite slowness the fish suspected nothing. He told her how to stroke the fish, always stroking backwards and always gently, until the hands knew precisely how the trout lay in the water. Then he pounced. The fish was jerked out of the weed, faster than it could twist away, and he would send it spinning to the bank. ‘Then you hit its head.’ He grinned.

      She laughed. ‘Truly?’

      He nodded. ‘On my honour. Were you swimming?’

      She shook her head and lied. ‘No.’

      His legs were bare, his wet breeches rolled up. He smiled. ‘I’ll look the other way while you finish dressing.’

      She felt a pang of fear. ‘You shouldn’t be here!’

      ‘Don’t tell anyone and I won’t.’

      She looked about her, but could see no one watching. She put on stockings and shoes, her apron, and laced up her dress.

      Toby made her laugh. She felt no fear of him. She had never met anyone with whom it was so easy to talk. Her father’s absence meant time was not pressing on her and they talked all afternoon. Toby lay on his stomach as he told her of his unhappiness with the war and of his wish to fight for the King rather than his father’s side. She felt a chill go through her when he proclaimed his loyalty for the enemy. He smiled at her, teasing her gently, but asking