Martha Peake (20 page)

Martha stood in the shadow of the doorway of the Theatre of Anatomy, watching Lord Drogo as he set the knife in the notch at the base of the dead man’s chest. She saw the blade sink into the flesh. She saw the blood well up and spill sluggish across the pallid skin. And then, behind her, she heard a noise. She turned. Squatting by the front door like a grotesquely embellished umbrella stand, and watching her with what she at once recognized as a kind of gloating contempt—it was, of course, Clyte. He lifted his hands from his knees and opened them wide, as though to say: what now?

Then he grinned at her, and she knew, too, what that grin expressed: lechery. Clyte was a lecher and Martha was the object of his lechery. Without taking her eyes off him for a second she boldly crossed the hall to the staircase, and still with her eyes fixed on the foul creature, who squatted there still, and still displayed his ghastly yellowing incisors, like the rabid runt of a sick vixen’s litter—she darted up the stairs, not pausing until she reached the gallery at the top. There she turned again, and he was gone.

Her composure deserted her. She ran back to the west wing in a panic, pausing only when she reached her door, and there brought herself under control.

She sat that night in the window, watching the marsh in the moonlight, alert to movement in the yard below; but there was none. She was confused and frightened by what she had seen that day, and she had no one to whom she could confide her feelings. Would God protect her? Doubtful. Could my uncle William? Doubtful also, if the suspicion was aroused in her, as it had certainly been aroused in me, that her father was bound for the dissecting table in Lord Drogo’s Theatre of Anatomy, and that her own presence in Drogo Hall would be instrumental in bringing about that abomination.

14

I
had grown stronger under the care of my uncle, but he advised me to stay in bed a few days longer; these marsh fevers, he said, had a way of turning putrid unless a proper term of convalescence was observed. So I lay abed, and despite some aching in my joints, and a persistent headache, and the occasional bout of delirium, enjoyed a welcome respite from my duties in town. I perused volumes of history and literature from the library downstairs, and undertook some light correspondence. And late every afternoon, as the light thickened over the marsh outside my window, there came a knock on the door, and then in came the mothlike Percy, wheeling a clanking contraption of metal and wood which contained various bottles and glasses, pipes and jars, that were adequate to my needs and, more important, those of my uncle, during the hours of narrative that were to follow. Candles were lit, fresh coal was laid on the fire, and when all was in readiness—my uncle’s chair must be positioned just so, lest he strain his eyes with an excess of gloom, or take a chill from being placed at too great a distance from the fire—Percy rang a small silver bell and a few minutes later in shuffled the old man in his tasselled skullcap and velvet slippers, and I would lie back into my pillows as his story once more rolled over my skeptic ear.

I now knew that plans had been laid for Martha’s departure. One night William spoke to her about what was to happen.

“You cannot stay here,” he said. “He is sure to find you. Lord Drogo encourages him to visit again.”

Martha was silent. She could not but feel that events had slipped beyond her control, and her desperation, I believe, was fuelled by wild thoughts that came to her as she sat watching the marsh by night, and filled her with forebodings about the man who sheltered her.

“He knows you are here,” whispered my uncle. “You must get far, far away from here, somewhere he will never follow you.”

Martha said nothing.

“You are not safe here,” he hissed, insistent, “he has said he will murder you, you have heard it yourself. He came here to find you, and but for me he would have done.”

Still she said nothing. She would not look at him. But at last, unable any longer to hold her tongue, and my uncle still insisting that she agree with him, she told him she did not believe that her father intended to murder anybody. Nor did she intend to let anyone murder him!—though whether she said this I do not know.

Oh, but then William grew stern with her! He reminded her of what the gin did to him, what it turned him into, what he had done under its influence, his inability to control himself in spite of all good intentions, and more in this vein, such that Martha was overwhelmed by the very flood of it, and no longer knew what she thought or believed or wanted; although she was aware, even as reason told her that what he said was true, she was aware, said William, for he knew her well by this time, so he claimed, of a small hard nut in her heart that would not be dislodged, and that nut was her love of her father, and her belief in his goodness; and she also believed that he would never hurt her again. But it was no argument, and she did not say it.

“Where am I to go then?” she said.

“America.”

Martha lifted her head. America! At the sound of the word a flood of incoherent ideas, and half-glimpsed images, and strange alien passions swept rapidly over the girl, strong, wild feelings she could not identify, nor even say whether they were pleasurable or not. The sound of the word, and the seriousness, the awe with which my uncle William spoke it—America. America. She murmured it under his breath. There was power, there was magic in it, the word
America
. Ah, but there was terror in it also!

“He could not follow you there. He need never know where you had gone,” said William.

All at once Martha laid her head on the table and hammered on the wood with her fists.

“But you would be
safe
!” cried William.

He sat down beside her and stroked the back of her head. Martha would not lift her face. He kept talking to her, he kept stroking her head, and after a little while she sat up and said with some petulance: “How should I go to America? I have not enough money.”

“We will help you.”

She rubbed her eyes. America. Despite her reluctance she wanted to go to America, the very prospect of it thrilled her beyond words. But to go for this reason, for this reason alone, to escape her father—it was too cruel.

“When?” she said.

“Soon.”

She pondered this.

“A new life,” said William.

But this was killing her! How could she tell my uncle that although such words thrilled her to the very quick of her being, she could not freely embrace them, for there was a voice in her that added to each of them the words
without him
. A new life
without him.
The New World
without him
. America—
without him
. It was too much for her, and she turned to William with arms outstretched, he took her to his breast, his old eyes shining at the memory of it, as a small pellucid droplet of liquid phlegm hung trembling from the tip of his thin red nose. So they comforted one another, and after a while they were quiet, and able to think over these dramatic developments with some composure.

Harry had often talked to Martha about the colonies, indeed they had friends in Smithfield who spoke of little else. America was for these men and women a country in which English liberties, long neglected at home, and fallen into decay, stood every good chance of flourishing. If the Americans should rise against the king—and in truth, it was muttered, such words being treasonous, what need had they of a king, that prospering people?—Harry and Martha would not be alone in supporting them. Had not Edmund Burke spoken for them all, when he rose in the House of Commons to defend the industry and ingenuity of the people of New England, and deplored King George’s attempts to constrain that people’s trade, and then their freedoms?

Now Martha was to go and live among them; but without her father, who had taught her to admire them, and who was, it was said, a sort of American himself, and was even called
Harry America
by some, having created in his ballad of Joseph Tresilian the very type of the defiant patriot. It was too bitter to be thought of—she would go to America without her father, because her father in his madness believed her to be his enemy! So yes, Martha was divided—torn, rather—by my uncle’s proposal, but she decided, wisely, to say nothing yet of her reluctance and her doubts.

The American plan was a well-kept secret in Drogo Hall. Letters were dispatched to the colonies, where Martha’s aunt, Maddy Foy, lived in
New Morrock, a small fishing port some way north of Boston. She must sail soon, while the weather still permitted, and William took it upon himself to arrange her passage; and so, while these preparations went forward, poor Martha swung violently between a wild anticipation of this imminent journey to the New World, and the grim knowledge that somewhere out there her father, who now had the ear of Lord Drogo, and had been told he could come to the house whenever he chose—and who believed, moreover, that his daughter was under this very roof—wandered the Lambeth Marsh.

Poor confused child! I saw it all, I knew what Drogo wanted, he wanted Harry Peake to return to Drogo Hall, and Martha was the lure. If it meant that he must give her shelter, then he would do so, it was nothing to him, she was but poultry exposed that the fox may be taken. But to prevent Harry carrying her off—which Drogo most emphatically did not wish to happen—then she must be removed elsewhere; which was why my uncle was packing her off to the colonies.

15

A
h, but Harry Peake was not to be had so easy—he was no nobleman’s dupe! He came out onto the marsh but he did not visit the house again, for all he wanted was to see his Martha. In his desperate loneliness and misery I believe he forgot for a time his wild conviction of her treachery; but not knowing how to reach her, he wandered the marsh by night, he came around the house, never showing himself, staying clear of the dogs, and of Clyte, who was always active in the hours of darkness. No, he did not want to storm the citadel and carry her off, but he did want her to know he was out there, that he was out there waiting for her.