Free A Crowning Mercy by Bernard Cornwell Page B

obedience seemed a bad bargain.
    She lit six of the big candles and saw Goodwife's face pressed against a window. Goodwife rapped on the glass, asking what she thought she was doing, but Campion simply drew the thick, heavy curtains, blotting out the mean, angry face. The candles and the shut, curtained windows made the room stuffy. She stripped to her petticoat, took off her bonnet, ate her food, then settled to her task again.
    A quarter of the papers were long, rambling essays on God. Matthew Slythe had tried to plumb the mind of God as Campion now tried to plumb Matthew Slythe. She sat with her long legs crossed on the floor and frowned over his tight, crabbed handwriting. He had despaired of God as a master impossible to please. Campion read wonderingly of his fear, of his desperate attempts to appease his unpleaseable God. There was no mention in the essays of God's love; for Matthew Slythe it did not exist, only God's demands existed.
    A greater part of the papers seemed to be explorations in mathematics and those she put aside because she had discovered bundles of letters that promised to be far more interesting. She felt like an eavesdropper as she read them, these letters that stretched back to the year of her birth, but through them she could trace the story of her parents' lives and learn things they had never told her.
    The first letters were dated 1622 and they surprised her. They were from her mother's parents to Matthew and Martha Slythe, and they contained not just godly advice, but admonitions to Matthew Slythe that he was a poor merchant who must work harder to gain God's favour and prosper. One letter refused to lend him any more money, saying that enough had already been proffered, and hinting that he must examine his conscience to see if God was punishing him for some sin. At that time, the year of her birth, her parents had lived in Dorchester where her father, she knew, had been a wool merchant. Evidently, from the letters, a poor one.
    She read three years of letters, skipping the passages of religious advice, reading swiftly through the stilted news that John Prescott, her maternal grandfather, wrote from London. She came to a letter that congratulated Matthew and Martha on the birth of a son, 'a cause of great rejoicing and happinesse to wee all'. She paused, trying to pin down an errant thought, then frowned. There was not one mention of her in any letter, except for general references to 'the childrenne'.
    The letters of 1625 introduced a new name to her: Cony. Letter after letter talked of Cony; 'a goode man', 'a busie man', 'Cony has written you, wee believe', 'Have you replied to Mr Cony? Hee deserves your answer', yet not one of the letters gave the smallest hint why Mr Cony should be 'busie' for Matthew Slythe or John Prescott. One letter, evidently written after Matthew Slythe had visited London, spoke of 'the busienesse wee had words on'. Whatever the business, it was too important to entrust to letters.
    Then, after 1626, there were no more references to Matthew Slythe's inability to manage his financial affairs. Now the letters spoke of Slythe's riches, of 'God's bounteous grace to you, for which wee give manifold Thankes', and one of the letters looked forward to 'oure visit to Werlatton'. So her father, sometime between 1625 and 1626, had moved from Dorchester. She would have been three years old at the most and could not remember the move. Werlatton Hall was all she had known. She skipped through more letters, seeking a clue to her father's sudden wealth, but there was none. One year he had been a struggling merchant, the next master of this huge estate with its great Hall.
    A letter from 1630 was in a different hand, telling Matthew Slythe of his father-in-law's death and Slythe had written in the letter's margin a laconic note recording the death of his mother-in-law a week later. 'The Plague' was the brief explanation.
    Someone knocked loudly on the study door. Campion put the letter