A Crowning Mercy. Bernard Cornwell

make boats. Not I personally, you understand, but the men I employ.’

      ‘Sea-going ships?’ Ebenezer asked, with his usual demand for exactness.

      ‘No, no, indeed, no.’ Scammell laughed as though a joke had been made. He smiled at Campion. His lips were flecked with the pastry of Goodwife’s chicken pie. More pastry clung to his thick black broadcloth coat, while a spot of gravy was smeared on his white collar with its two tassels. ‘Watermen’s boats.’

      Campion said nothing. Ebenezer frowned at her, then leaned forward. ‘Watermen’s boats?’

      Scammell put a hand to his stomach, opened his small eyes wide, and tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a small belch. ‘Indeed and indeed. In London, you see, the Thames is our main street.’ He was addressing Campion again. ‘The watermen carry cargoes and passengers and we build most of their craft. We also serve the big houses.’ He smiled at Matthew Slythe. ‘We built a barge for my Lord of Essex.’

      Matthew Slythe grunted. He did not seem over-impressed that Samuel Scammell did business with the general of Parliament’s armies.

      There was a silence, except for the scraping of Scammell’s knife on his plate. Campion pushed the stringy chicken to one side, trying to hide it under the dry pie crust. She knew she was being rude and she sought desperately for something to say to their guest. ‘Do you have a boat yourself, Mr Scammell?’

      ‘Indeed and indeed!’ He seemed to find that funny, too, for he laughed. Some of the pastry scraps fell down his ample stomach. ‘Yet I fear I am a bad sailor, Miss Slythe, indeed and indeed, yes. If I must travel upon the water then I pray as our Dear Lord did for the waves to be stilled.’ This was evidently a joke also, for the hairs in his capacious nostrils quivered with snuffled laughter.

      Campion smiled dutifully. Her brother’s feet scraped on the boards of the floor.

      Her father looked from Campion to Scammell and there was a small, secret smile on his heavy face. Campion knew that smile and in her mind it was associated with cruelty. Her father was a cruel man, though he believed cruelty to be kindness for he believed a child must be forced into God’s grace.

      Matthew Slythe, embarrassed by the new silence, turned to his guest. ‘I hear the city is much blessed by God, brother.’

      ‘Indeed and indeed.’ Scammell nodded dutifully. ‘The Lord is working great things in London, Miss Slythe.’ Again he turned to her and she listened with pretended interest as he told her what had happened in London since the King had left and the rebellious Parliament had taken over the city’s government. The Sabbath, he said, was being properly observed, the playhouses had been closed down, as had the bear gardens and pleasure gardens. A mighty harvest of souls, Scammell declared, was being reaped for the Lord.

      ‘Amen and amen,’ said Matthew Slythe.

      ‘Praise His name,’ said Ebenezer.

      ‘And wickedness is being uprooted!’ Scammell raised his eyebrows to emphasise his words. He told of two Roman Catholic priests discovered, men who had stolen into London from the Continent to minister to the tiny, secret community of Catholics. They had been tortured, then hanged. ‘A good crowd of Saints watched!’

      ‘Amen!’ said Matthew Slythe.

      ‘Indeed and indeed.’ Samuel Scammell nodded his head ponderously. ‘And I too was an instrument in uprooting wickedness.’

      He waited for some interest. Ebenezer asked the required question and Scammell again addressed the answer to Campion. ‘It was the wife of one of my own workmen. A slatternly woman, a washer of clothes, and I had cause to visit the house and what do you think I found?’

      She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘A portrait of William Laud!’ Scammell said it dramatically. Ebenezer tutted. William Laud was the imprisoned Archbishop of Canterbury, hated by the Puritans for the beauty with which he decorated churches and his devotion to the high ritual which they said aped Rome. Scammell said the portrait had been lit by two candles. He had asked her if she knew who the picture represented, and she did, and what is more had declared Laud to be a good man!

      ‘What did you do, brother?’ Ebenezer asked.

      ‘Her tongue was bored with a red hot iron and she was put in the stocks for a day.’

      ‘Praise the Lord,’ Ebenezer said.

      Goodwife entered and put a great dish on the table. ‘Apple pie, master!’

      ‘Ah! Apple pie.’ Matthew Slythe smiled at Goodwife.

      ‘Apple pie!’ Samuel Scammell linked his hands, smiled, then cracked his knuckles. ‘I like apple pie, indeed and indeed!’

      ‘Dorcas?’ Her father indicated that she should serve. She gave herself a tiny sliver that brought a sniff of disapproval from Goodwife who was bringing lit candles to the table.

      Samuel Scammell made short work of two helpings, gobbling the food as though he had not eaten in a week, and swilling it down with the small beer that was served this night. Matthew Slythe never served strong drink, only water or diluted ale.

      The pie was finished without further talk and then, as Campion expected, the conversation was of religion. The Puritans were divided into a multiplicity of sects, disagreeing on fine points of theology and offering men like her father and Brother Scammell a splendid battleground for anger and condemnation. Ebenezer joined in. He had been studying Presbyterianism, the religion of Scotland and much of England’s Parliament, and he attacked it splenetically. He leaned into the candlelight and Campion thought there was something fanatical in his thin, shadowed face. He was speaking to Samuel Scammell. ‘They would deny our Lord Jesus Christ’s saving grace, brother! They would dispute it, but what other conclusion can we draw?’

      Scammell nodded. ‘Indeed and indeed.’

      The sky had gone ink black beyond the windows. Moths flickered at the panes.

      Samuel Scammell smiled at Campion. ‘Your brother is strong in the Lord, Miss Slythe.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘And you?’ He leaned forward, his small eyes intent on her.

      ‘Yes, sir.’ It was an inadequate answer, one that made her father stir in suppressed wrath, but Scammell leaned back happy enough.

      ‘Praise the Lord. Amen and amen.’

      The conversation, thankfully, passed from the state of her soul to the latest stories of Catholic atrocities in Ireland. Matthew Slythe warmed to the subject, anger giving his words wings, and Campion let the phrases hammer unheard about her head. She noticed that Samuel Scammell was stealing constant looks at her, smiling once when he caught her eye, and she found it unsettling.

      Toby Lazender had said she was beautiful. She wondered what he did in London, how he liked a city ‘cleansed’ by the Puritans he so disliked. She had asked Charity, three weeks before, if a visitor had been in church and Charity had said yes. A strong young man, she said, with red hair, who had bellowed out the psalms in a loud voice. Campion was sad. She guessed Toby must have thought she did not want to see him again. She saw Samuel Scammell staring at her again and it reminded her of the way other men looked at her, even, though she found it hard to believe, the Reverend Hervey. Scammell seemed to eye her as a bull might a heifer.

      The owl that hunted the beech ridge sounded in the night.

      Samuel Scammell excused himself from the table and walked down the stone-flagged passage that led to the close-chamber.

      Her father waited till his footsteps stopped, then looked at his daughter. ‘Well?’

      ‘Father?’

      ‘Do you like Brother Scammell?’

      Her father did, so her answer was obvious. ‘Yes, father.’

      Scammell had not closed the chamber door and she