Free Awakening by Stevie Davies Page B

Beatrice says, weeping too, without restraint. ‘Please forgive me, Annie. I wish I could take the pain myself.’
    Anna opens her eyes; nods. She understands that the treatment, by producing blisters on the outside of her body, will draw to the surface and drain the muck from the blisters whose presence Quarles suspects on her intestines. She lies trembling, bearing the biting pain that increases throughout the night.
    At three she screams: ‘Lore! Oh, come back. Help me, Lore.’
    She talks to the dead. She’s not Anna any more. She is abject pain; pain is all Anna is. Beatrice wonders whether to send out for laudanum. But wouldn’t that begin the blockage problem again? And so she’d have to hurt Anna for her own good, all over again. She’d rather chew a mouthful of stinging nettles than add a mite to her misery.

Chapter 5
    How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter .
    Mr Kyffin, exchanging pulpits with Mr Anwyl, announces the text for his sermon: The Song of Solomon. Beatrice has arranged the invitation as a way of showing Mr Kyffin’s persecutors at Florian Street the high regard in which Chauntsey holds its minister.
    Their friend’s manner is exalted. Mr Kyffin dispenses with notes, having placed his trust (so he explains) in the Spirit to speak through him, to pierce the hearts of Christ’s stony-hearted people. For there will be an Awakening! A revival! It is coming! He gazes upwards. We see the signs throughout this lethargic, secular land. Who knows whence Revival will come: north, south, east or west? Perhaps from Wales? Or from Fighelbourn or Chauntsey?
    There is a Boy, Mr Kyffin announces, a common boy of West Grimstead, chosen of the Lord, preaching at the Market Cross. Isaac Minety, the baker’s son. Who has heard the boy speak? Not yet perhaps? You shall!
    There is Mr Spurgeon in his London pulpit. Perhaps he is the coming man.
    Maybe the man will issue from America, on board the Petrel with Mr Jones of Bedwellty. It is not impossible that Mr Idris Jones may himself be the man. This we do not know! As yet. But the high wind is coming.
    â€˜And do remember,’ says Mr Kyffin in a more ordinary tone, ‘when the glorious tempest of salvation shakes this nation, that it was your friend John who told you the news. But to my text! How beautiful are thy feet, prince’s daughter .’
    The Song of Solomon is a book at which Bibles regularly fall open but on which little is ever said. A chaste veil is drawn. But why, enquires the pastor, should we fear to read Christ’s love song to his spouse the church? What should hold us back from contemplating the naked and the shod foot of the beloved? In all reverence.
    Embarrassment seethes in the chapel. Shufflings, coughs.
    Sensuous love, he says, is not a game.
    No wonder poor Mrs Kyffin has cried off; no wonder Mr Prynne is up in arms, if this is Mr Kyffin’s new theme.
    â€˜For what has John Milton, that great Puritan spirit, to say about nudity in Paradise Lost ?’ Mr Kyffin enquires. ‘Does anyone here remember? What are clothes but those troublesome disguises which we wea r ? And what is excessive modesty but dishonest sham e ? Sensuous love is a sacred and mysterious language , spoken only in deep trust between bridegroom and bride in the sanctuary of their marriage bed.’
    â€˜I shall show you the bed!’ he exclaims with a dramatic flourish. ‘Here is the bed! Here it is!’
    Silence in the pews. Consternation. Faces red as radishes. Beatrice’s lower body within its drawers, shift, petticoats, corset, crinoline cage and skirts is aware of itself. Ladies sit rigid as conscious statues. They hold their breath. What next? Will there be a walkout? Will the respectable worshippers in the pews protest?
    â€˜In my hand! The Word itself! The Book is, so to speak, the bed of consummation.’ John Kyffin holds his Bible aloft. ‘Here it is. Love