By the time Caleb arrived at his aunt’s he’d lost track of the days of the week. Indeed he’d been so shocked by Pa’s arrest and all that followed he couldn’t have said with any certainty even which month of the year it now was. But on the second morning he woke in Fishpool Anne declared that it was Sunday and to church they must go.
Caleb owned only the clothes he stood in and, after his long journey, it was not surprising that he was in no fit state to be seen by a parson.
Letty was sent for water from the well while Anne turned her attention to Caleb. From an upstairs trunk she fetched the few garments her husband had left on land. When Letty returned he was told to wash. The women kept their backs turned, but he still felt awkward. He and Pa had bathed in streams or swum in rivers. Having to manage with a jug and bowl in such a cramped space fearing that at any moment one of them might swing round and stare was a new and deeply uncomfortable experience. It made him sweat so much that the washing seemed pointless. When he was done he dressed hastily in borrowed clothes. The shirt was too large, as was the coat. The britches would not stay up without a length of cord tied about his middle. He was a ludicrous sight but he was at least respectably clean and that, it seemed, was all that Anne cared about. His aunt then turned her attention to her daughter and Dorcas was scrubbed until she wailed in protest. She was then placed in one corner of the room like a parcel.
Once Letty was washed to Anne’s satisfaction and dressed in a threadbare, sun-bleached skirt, the four of them set forth.
Letty led the way to the church, striding ahead without a backward glance. She didn’t want to be seen with him, Caleb thought, and Anne appeared to be equally embarrassed. She busied herself with Dorcas, avoiding the need for conversation with him or indeed anyone else. The villagers who trooped along the lane and up the hill chattered loudly and much of their talk, inevitably, concerned Fishpool’s new arrival. Snatches of it reached Caleb’s ears.
“Her brother’s child.” “A convict!” “A thief!” “But who was his mother?” “A whore?” “A slave?” “Wrong side of the blanket.” “Bad blood.” “The shame of it!” “Disgusting thing!” “I wouldn’t want him in my house.” “They should put him on a ship. Take him back to where he come from.” “That’s right. Send him to the jungle, I say.”
No more sense than a gaggle of geese, Pa would have said. He’d have rolled his eyes at their stupidity. Mocked their accents, made some joke, flung his arm around Caleb’s shoulders and begun to tell him an anecdote or story to stop him dwelling on their remarks. Together he and Pa would have shrugged off their talk as meaningless drivel. Anne walked ahead of him, her back stiff, her head turned towards the child on her hip. She said nothing: not to him, not to any of the villagers. All Caleb could do was fix his eyes on the road and keep walking.
The church was small, low-roofed, with a squat square tower of a kind Caleb had never seen before. It was as if there might have once been a steeple which had buckled and been slowly crushed by the weight of the vast sky.
The parson stood by the gate, greeting his flock by name as they arrived. Letty was no doubt already inside the building. Anne – who must have heard the villagers’ comments as clearly as Caleb had – held back a little and flushed scarlet as she introduced him to the parson.
Caleb extended his hand in greeting, but the parson did not shake it. Instead he stared in evident horror at the open palm as if searching for evidence of the sinner’s blood that must flow through Caleb’s veins.
Disconcerted to be so obviously shunned, Caleb turned away and found himself face to face with the parson’s wife – a small, mouse-like woman who began to babble with apparent nervousness.
“Your name is Caleb, is it not? I gather you have had a long journey to get here, and I am so sorry to hear of your dreadful misfortunes. Are you well enough now? Are you settled at your aunt’s?”
Her eagerness to talk was as disconcerting as her husband’s coldness. Caleb started to reply but was then distracted by the loud clatter of hooves and wheels as a large, open-topped carriage bowled around the corner of the lane and came to a halt by the church gate.
The mere sight of the vehicle caused both the parson and his wife to stand stiffly upright and Anne to turn and run with Dorcas up the path and into the church along with the rest of the straggling villagers.
Caleb did not move. He was intrigued to know who had such a powerful effect on these people. He’d never laid eyes on the wealthy gentleman who sat in the back of the carriage but still there was something about him that seemed familiar. The curve of his cheekbones, the line of his nose: both brought someone to mind, but the more he tried to remember who it could be, the more the memory eluded him.
There was a lady seated beside the gentleman, expensively but not elegantly dressed. Both bonnet and gown seemed designed more to scream aloud their vast cost than to show her face or figure to their best advantage.
Sitting next to the driver was somebody Caleb had no difficulty in identifying. It was the horseman in the powdered wig he’d encountered at Norton Manor: the man who’d suggested Caleb was the son of a whore and declared that Pa had died of the pox. The man who’d looked suddenly pensive when he learned of Pa’s transportation…
“Who is he?” Caleb asked the parson’s wife, nodding in his direction.
“That is Sir Robert Fairbrother of Norton Manor, and his wife beside him.” Her voice was high and tight. “Your aunt was maid to her before she married.”
“No, I meant who is the man beside the driver?”
“Oh … that’s William Benson, his steward. Why do you ask?”
“I passed him in the road.”
“He would have been out on his master’s business, no doubt. Sir Robert’s estate is of large extent: it comprises every dwelling in Fishpool.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and she added, “The parsonage too.”
Caleb didn’t respond. He was watching William Benson, who’d leapt down to open the carriage door.
“You must go in now,” the parson’s wife urged Caleb. She flapped her hands at him as if trying to shoo him away. “Go quickly. Sir Robert likes his tenants to be gathered and waiting when he enters the church.”
Does he indeed? thought Caleb. He did what he was told but with some resentment, walking steadily but not hurriedly up the path and sliding into a pew at the rear of the church beside his aunt. The moment the congregation heard Sir Robert and Lady Fairbrother enter the porch they bent their heads as if they were praying. Caleb was astonished. Who did this man think he was, that everyone in the village bowed down before him? Pa was afraid of no man. Well, he would be the same. Caleb sat stubbornly bolt upright until he felt a slap across the back of his head.
It was William Benson. “Show your respect, boy.”
Furious, Caleb started to get to his feet, but Anne seized his arm, her fingers pressing into Caleb’s flesh. Her face was deathly white and she looked at him desperately with eyes so like Pa’s that Caleb’s heart missed a beat. It was the same look Pa had given him inside the gaol. He forced himself to relax. To slump in the pew. To lower his head. From the corner of his eye he watched Benson strut down the aisle, proud as a bantam rooster. He was followed by Sir Robert and his wife, slow and stately as a pair of galleons in full sail. When they reached their family pew they settled themselves on silken cushions. While the rest of the congregation had to sit still and pay attention to the parson’s every tedious word, Sir Robert and Lady Fairbrother shut their eyes and commenced a nap that lasted the duration of the service. After the sermon, the congregation prayed for the souls of the dead, and most particularly for those lost at sea – a long litany of names that meant nothing to Caleb. Sir Robert and his lady were not required to utter a word. They did not pray, they did not sing and at the end of it all they were gently roused by William Benson. They stood and the parson’s flock kept heads bowed once more as the couple passed along the aisle towards the door.
The parson may have preached on the debt mankind owed to almighty God, but it seemed to Caleb that here, in Fishpool’s small church, Sir Robert Fairbrother was far and away the more important deity.