May 1703
A place far from the sea
Henry has come.
He arrives late and brings gifts. Cutlets of veal and a quart of sugar. Potted lampreys. He knows his sister appreciates such offerings, as we can rarely afford them ourselves. He has a habit of trying to press money on us, but neither of us will hear of accepting a larger present; we have everything we need.
Henry is now the Honourable Member for the borough of Tavistock. His rivals would regard him as a Tory, but his voting record can only be described as eclectic, hardly surprising for a boy raised to manhood by that most enigmatic of thinkers, John Milton.
As it turned out, Henry was never stupid. His learning was only becalmed by poverty, his apparent foolishness a protective ploy. As he grew under the diligent tutelage of the famous poet, who offered our little family a home in those months following the wreck of the Swiftsure – for this was, we discovered later, the name of that unfortunate vessel – he discovered a vast appetite for knowledge, and our host found in him a careful and conscientious student.
The house that had been mine was completely destroyed by the fire and, though it was to be rebuilt in time by others, we were never again to live in it. There was too much danger of discovery. We decamped immediately to Chalfonte after the storm, where in due course I recovered from my injuries. After only a little longer, I acquired a brother, as well as a wife, the two blessings which remain with me as the most valuable of my life.
When, after a year had passed and – though we fed her no more of the drug, as we found she did not stir even without it – Esther showed no signs of regaining her wits, I sold the farm in Norfolk and we moved to our present holding, the exact location of which I still choose not to disclose. Henry remained in Chalfonte. This was partly out of loyalty to the man who had pulled him from the water, and partly, I think, because he never reconciled himself to being in the same house as Esther. It was a relief to him, I believe, when we came here, where we could more easily conceal her.
But we saw him often. There was enough money from the sale of the land to fund his time at Cambridge, and then, when the time came, to Henry’s delight, Milton sponsored his ward at the Bar. And when, in later years, his adopted master became infirm and the curse of his blindness returned, Henry acted occasionally as his secretary, putting pen to paper in gratitude for the many kindnesses we had received. To make our living, I entered the book trade, buying and selling such rarities as I could find, and that took me often to Chalfonte, where I would see them keeping late hours with heads bent over raked-out embers, debating some obscure point of law or politics. It is how I remember Milton best. For myself, although I grew to like my old tutor, and to understand him much better, I never grew to love him like Henry did, like a father. Still, I was charmed by the closeness that grew up between them. I even envied it.
For I was never to become a father, or Mary a mother. A child never came. When we first married, we gave little thought to it. We took joy in one another, freely, as man and wife, and it comforted us, even in our strange circumstances. We assumed a family would follow. But when the first child failed to quicken inside her, and then the second, we began to ask ourselves whether it was meant to be. Mary went further; she thought we were punished by God, that the evil we harboured conspired to banish innocence, and that it always would. For a time, after the second of our griefs, we faced the real possibility that she would leave me. I could not have blamed her, and would have released her, had she wished it.
But we fought through it. And our love changed. It grew, even in the shade of our sadness.
Mary greets her brother today with a cry and an embrace that gives me joy. She has not seen him for several years, as he is still a busy and successful man, with children and grandchildren keeping him occupied, whereas we enter our dotage. As we settle in the parlour, she offers a glass of perry and he readily agrees. He takes his seat by the fire, shrugging off his cloak and pulling at the fingers of his gloves. He looks tired and unshaven.
‘Tell me of the country,’ I say.
He shakes his head and releases a hissing noise through his teeth. ‘I’ve ridden hard to get to you, brother. But I had to wait upon the weather.’ He rubs his hands together, recalling his journey. ‘First a delay in Exeter, then another week in Bath. It’s hard to believe the breadth of the destruction after the storm. Like the world’s ending. Coast to coast, trees flattened, uprooted, whole forests thrown about like firewood. Entire villages blown down. Mills afire.’ He lifts his head and, unexpectedly, laughs. It is a sound of disbelief. ‘Fish, truly, Thomas, lifted from the rivers and deposited inland, miles from any waterway.’ More soberly, he continues. ‘Many, many dead. They’re calling it the Great Storm. And out at sea…’ His finger drums the arm of the chair, pattering like a light rain. ‘Such wrath. The whole Navy fleet battered, and tossed to smithereens. God, but I hate to think of it; those men, less than a mile off the coast, sitting – thinking themselves safe – on top of all that iron, all that oak, all that human power, and then the sea rising around them, ship after ship dragged down with the resistance of a child’s toy raft. And they see they are nothing, just dots on the skein of time.’ Wearily, he removes his periwig, revealing thinning grey hair beneath, and lays it on the table beside us.
‘How many dead?’
He shrugs. ‘They do not know. Thousands?’
I nod. ‘Thousands, indeed.’
Is the creature responsible? Our eyes meet, and the possibility lies before us like an uncovered sin. Now it has stirred it will not be buried again.
‘So, she is awake,’ he says, finally, his still-youthful face framed by a severe frown. ‘I knew it, and I came.’
The mystery of Henry’s ability to discern truths about the creature that others cannot has never been solved. Mary attributes it to the silent, watchful nature of his youth. She says it made him sensitive to that which escapes other people. As he watches me hawkishly, I wonder how much he knows of its thoughts now.
‘Yes,’ I answer, without elaboration.
‘You must act, brother,’ he says, with a similar lack of expansion.
‘As I did last time?’ I ask.
His eyes fall to the neck of my shirt, open at this late and more casual hour, revealing the network of branch-like scars, so like Esther’s, which I have hidden for many years but which, in the privacy of our home, I have no reason to conceal.
I cannot help it; I close my eyes as my mind retreats to that far-off day, rowing into the storm with Esther at my feet. Lightning is all around us, more bolts than I suspect fell, in truth, as age and faulty memory amplify my senses. The sea still churns, so although I row with all my might, the boat makes no progress, and the waves carry us ever back to shore. But the storm moves with more purpose. Soon, the flashes are so close by they are blinding. It is still morning, but the gap between each strike is black as night, followed by shrieks of white, pulsing light. I hold Esther close and she shivers in my arms. This fire will take us both, I vow. My sister will see Heaven with her own eyes.
I am dragged back to the present moment. Henry watches me with pity, but it is a hard pity, uncompromising in its conclusions, not unlike Milton’s.
‘While she slept, she was no threat,’ he says, grimly. ‘Now…’
‘You do not need to tell me,’ I say, peevishly. He does not react. ‘Do you think in all these years I have not thought what would happen if she came back to us? Do you think we have not lived these weeks…?’ I stop, waving away my own words.
The sadness in his eyes deepens. But he does not hesitate to cut me. ‘She did not. Come back to us, that is. Esther is still far away. It is the creature that has returned.’
‘You don’t remember her,’ I say, fearful my voice has become an old man’s whine. ‘She would have been your sister had she lived, yes, but you never met her. Her kindness, her goodness – you have only known them through me. But I remember. I remember what she was.’
Mary, who has not spoken so far and is so close by the fire that it creates a red halo about her white head, speaks. ‘Nobody could have done more for Esther,’ she says, softly. ‘And none could doubt your love for her.’ The words are intended to soothe, but they can only bring home how I have done nothing. Nothing of use or note. Even my effort to end our lives ended in ignominy.
I shake my head. ‘It is not for me to rule that her life must end. I do not hold that power. Nobody should hold that much power.’
Henry speaks slowly, steadily, iterating as though he stood before the lawmakers of our nation. ‘I authorise and give up my right of governing myself, to this man or this Assembly of men.’
My smile is humourless. ‘A sovereign? You would have me be that man? Wear that cloak?’
He smiles back, with equal seriousness. ‘Somebody must wear it. Or we will have chaos.’
‘These are your modish beliefs talking,’ I say, wearily. ‘In reality there is right and there is wrong; above all, there is God, and not solely power, as your friend Mr Hobbes would have us believe. John knew that.’
Henry inclines his head in acknowledgement of his debt, hesitates, then says, ‘Once, you believed it. Once, you did not fear to row into the storm.’
I watch the fire crackling and spitting. Mary is silent and Henry waits.
My memories take on a dream-like cast. In the eye of the storm, within a stone’s throw of the beach, we rock on quietening waters. I hold Esther close. Prayers form on my lips, prayers for our souls. Even through closed lids, the bright flashes about me sear nightmarish shapes into my sight. The next flash engulfs everything. I remember no more before waking on the beach, with Mary holding my hand to her lips, kissing it fervently.
There was a strong stench of burning flesh, and I discovered much later that Mary, my dearest Mary, scorched her hands as she beat flames from my chest. All was slow about me. I could not move my legs. My hearing was quite gone, and Mary’s words of love and concern, repeated many times in the following days and weeks, fell on deaf ears.
But my hearing recovered. The deep burns that pained my feet for months afterwards, they healed too. Yet the scars remain, mine the mirror of Esther’s, like veins, like crawling ivy on the upper halves of our bodies.
And Esther never did wake. As war swept England, as sacred blood poured from the crownless head of that most unfortunate and least foresighted of kings, Charles Stuart, as a sombre peace fell upon a hollowed-out country, and men crept towards Enlightenment, she slept on. Until now.
Henry coughs, quietly. It rouses me and I realise I have been alone with my thoughts for some minutes. Henry is holding something out to me – a thin sheaf of paper. ‘What’s that?’
‘Milton. He gave it to me. And asked me to keep it until she woke. Then I was to give it to you.’
‘Have you read it?’
He shakes his head. I believe him.
It is thin, stone-smoothed, covered margin to margin in Milton’s angular hand. Its corners are worn, its surface mottled. I handle it, smelling the delicate tobacco smoke from his pipe curling about the edges. Transportive. In that second, as my fingers close around the gridiron-lined paper, Milton might be beside me, eyeing me from over his beaky nose.
I find my spectacles. My hands are less certain than they used to be. It takes time to unfold the sheets.
Thomas,
I want you to consider the nature of power. Your power, and God’s power. All those years ago, when you came to me a bullish and overconfident boy, a boy with such a will, but lacking the ability to take responsibility for it, you blamed me, when the choices you made went awry. Happy I was, in later years, to see you come into your own, and know yourself for the author of your actions, for good or ill.
Forgive the vanity of this parallel, but it is just as easy, I am certain you will agree, for a man to blame God for the tribulations of his own life. The Enemy expected this of Job, you will remember, and Job showed he was willing to question God, to ask why He does not punish the wicked, why the innocent must suffer in the fulfilment of His purpose. It is natural enough.
We know, though, that God does have a plan for His creation. We know that He gives us free will, the power of exercising our judgement, sometimes for the immediate better, sometimes not. That is why the first man and woman fell. Yet in God’s higher Providence, even this – yes, even this – will be revealed as a blessing, when He turns all things to His good. Not without reason He asks, ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth?’ He asks that we might remember that we cannot see into the womb of Time, or our knowledge encompass the parameters of His sight.
So, when you ask why I kept from you what I am about to divulge, remember all things tend to the fulfilment of God’s purpose in the end, though we may not know it in the present.
During the time of my first blindness, when the creature showed me those wondrous, terrible sights, there were other things I saw. It revealed glimpses of the future, as well as the past. Its long sleep, its waking, a most mighty storm, and a choice; a choice that must be made by you, Thomas, its ultimate outcome still uncertain. I have faith that you will make it well, but there was one more thing I saw, that you must hear, that you will have to bear, though the knowledge will lie heavy on you.
I saw your sister. Her consciousness being so tightly bound to that of the creature, and I caught in the circle of both, she could speak freely. She recognised me, I know not how, and told me her purpose as she saw it.
The leviathan precedes disturbance in the natural order. Your sister described the deaths of kings and the slaughter of brother by brother. The century through which you have now lived was the most tumultuous of all, bar one that is yet to come. The fissures created by these periods of upheaval, sometimes – just sometimes – let it through. They give it power. Esther, that rare soul, realising the nature of what she held within her, saw it as her duty to bind that power to herself, trapping it. I was not to share this knowledge with you, until she woke. She said it was not the right time – that you would not hear God’s true voice, until later, and I would not be there to witness it, or help.
Now, a choice lies before you that cannot be made by any other save you. Its final result can be borne by no other, but you.
I can speak no other words of use. Though I feel that inadequacy like a wound, I comfort myself that the man I grew to respect is the equal of it, that it will not stand in the way of his duty, and that even in the exercise of our wills, we remain, eternally, in the hands of God.
John Milton
Though its long confinement continues, Not-Esther no longer sleeps. Even in the dead of night, with only the caterwauling foxes for company, I hear my sister’s light pacing, back and forth across the boards: pressure, creak, retort. It is a sound that keeps me awake long after Mary, who, despite the strain of these days, slumbers with the ease of one who knows what it is to sleep on the streets, her gentle snores undisturbed by the noise overhead.
So, in spite of the lateness of the hour, the eyes that greet our small band as we enter the attic are alert, as hard as glass. The room is cold, a suggestion of mist in the air just dulling the edges of my sight.
Henry shadows us into the room, and I wonder what he expects to see. I receive my answer as he steps into the glow of the new-lit lamps: a gasp. Henry stares at a woman in her eighth decade, whose hair has greyed to silver, whose skin bears the same pattern of scarring as mine but who, in all other respects, retains the appearance of a girl. We decay. We go down into the dark. Yet Esther has barely aged a day since Henry last saw her.
Mary’s feelings come through the stiff set of her shoulders, the shortness of her step. It is not fear – in all these years, unlike me, she has never shown fear, but rather a brittle and unrelenting hostility to our prisoner, even while she nursed her – but there is tension there, a fierce protectiveness, as though Henry and I are the children she never had.
I had intended to speak first, yet the words wither in my throat. This leaves space for it to say something, but there is only silence, and to my surprise, Mary steps in. ‘Are you thirsty?’ she asks.
It nods. Mary moves forward with a cup of watered perry. She holds the drink up, and we hear a rhythmic gulping. ‘More?’ Mary says, and the process is repeated three times. Not-Esther lifts a shackled hand to her lips and wipes away a stray drop.
Still, my words will not come.
Henry clears his throat and a flicker of something passes over our captive’s face. What? Recognition? Remembering? As he opens his mouth to speak, I press my hand upon his upper arm, stymying his words. ‘What do you see, Henry? You once said… You said you saw her…’
The answer comes in hollow tones. ‘I said I saw a snake.’
‘And do you see it now?’
Henry pauses, and Not-Esther watches us, showing no concern, no discomfort or desire to hear our softened voices more keenly. Not a sound breaches the attic walls, not even a sliver of air through the small gaps I have not yet filled in the roof. It is as though we are cocooned together outside time.
Finally, he says, ‘I don’t know. There are pictures, but they shift… like candle flames. They are not a true reflection of what is in front of me. Yet it may be that my senses are deceived. My older eyes see what they expect to see. Its nature – its true nature…’ He shakes his head.
‘Its true nature is to be free,’ I say. ‘Is that not so?’ I come closer, not within touching distance, but so I can smell the sharpness of rosemary where I bandaged the wound in her neck. I sink painfully to one knee. ‘Is that not so?’ I do not address my sister. I address the creature. I meet its eyes, those ancient windows, searching for a glimmer of agreement, or of dissent.
‘Men turn from the great ones such as me,’ I hear, finally, in the voice that holds, for me, so much terror. ‘From fear, and the fear of fear, they offer up their will to smaller creatures, clustering together in their cities like mice. They erect new gods. They build and gather knowledge and imagine themselves to be holding off the dark, which terrifies them, when they should embrace it and shun, instead, the fire that burns forever. They doubt the fire, and trust the light of reason. But there is no reason: only chaos.’
‘Do you want to be free?’ I ask again, more harshly. ‘And if I do free you, what will you do?’ I am desperate, willing to do anything, just to know how it ends. And what I will have to live with.
Henry comes out of the shadows. ‘I see it now,’ he says, quietly. ‘It grows. It remains hidden until the twilight, and the end of all things, when the sun’s beams shine black as coal and the world becomes harsh and frigid. It rouses waves like palaces, higher than mountains, greater than continents, and it remains when the earth sinks into the sea. Then comes its death, and the deaths of the gods.’ As he speaks, his words rise and fall with laboured breath, and his eyes widen in their orbits. Hearing the pitch of his voice, Mary rushes to her brother, then staggers as he collapses. I stand, or attempt to, and together we try to bear his weight, but he falls to the floor, convulsing.