The Pilgrim Read online

  Robin and I passed our afternoons together. It was the most precious time of the day to me. We walked along the Cam, feeding the swans, wandered the streets of Cambridge, or sat and talked under the walnut tree in the northeast corner of the Emmanuel Quadrangle. He told me about his three elder brothers, his younger sister, and his mother, who regularly sent him a jug of strong, Kentish cider, which he shared with me. We were both much troubled by constipation. My father sent me money to buy suppositories, which I shared with Robin. Our intimacy was much noted by many of our fellow students, who called us “David and Jonathan.”

  One warm, spring evening after supper, under the walnut tree, Robin said to me, “Dear brother, I await in despair for Christ to regenerate me,” and I said, “Dear brother, God is withdrawing His presence from me a little more each day. My own regeneration seems at times like a dream.”

  My recurring spiritual anguish bound me closer to him.

  • • •

  When I returned home for my summer vacation, I went fowling with my uncle upon the Downs. I aimed the musket, loaded with goose-shot, at a gander in a flock of grey geese flying toward me above a thorn thicket, and pulled the trigger. The musket blew up in my hands. I cannot recall a noise; it seemed to me I was at the center of a great flash of light, and the next I knew, I was laid out upon my back with sundry fragments of the piece scattered about me. The barrel was burst in twain. Thanks be to God, I was unhurt, excepting a slight burn on my right wrist.

  I knew that there are no such things as accidents. Was my escape from death a special interposition of Providence? Was it a sign that God was not departing from me as I feared? My ignorance tormented me.

  Toward the end of my second Michaelmas term, there were grievous sins in Trinity College; a woman was carried from chamber to chamber in the night. The eight culpable students were caught by the College Head Porter, who brought them before Trinity’s High Master the following morning. The youngest student, fifteen years of age, was thrashed; one was fined, and the others were sent down.

  Robin said to me, “I too long for women. Would that I longed so for God’s grace!”

  That night, I dreamed about Jane Fuller’s breasts. I related this to my tutor, Charles Morton, who said, “God help us, since the Fall we are defenceless against Satan in our dreams.”

  As the year progressed, Robin spake so longingly of his hope for grace that I loved him better than before. Our summer vacation drew nigh; my father wrote me a letter, inviting Robin to spend two weeks with us in Winterbourne. Robin accepted.

  Because of my fear of horses, Robin and I traveled in a carrier wagon; he had never been west of London. He gazed at length upon Salisbury Cathedral and said, “Let us build such churches in our hearts.”

  We journeyed over a week, far spent in drink. It was a slow going we had of it because of the heavy rain. Our roof leaked through numerable rents in the canvas. I wrapped my sodden cloak about Robin and myself, and we clung to each other for hours. He guzzled sack and praised the rich soil, the fertile pasture lands, and the lush fields of divers corn. In Dorset, the other traveler in our wagon remarked that the heath surrounding us was a tedious view of furze, fern, and heather.

  Robin said, “Look you closer, sir, and you will distinguish dry heaths, marked by heather, and wet heaths—as over there—no, to the left—marked by—what do you call those yellow flowers, Charles?”

  “Bog asphodels.”

  “Is that so?” He took a swig. “Asphodels: the flowers that bloom in Hades. A wonderful paradox! Asphodels in a paradise. For that is what our England is! This lush island garden of ours, so succulent and luxuriant in growth, is a paradise—rainy, ’tis true, and sometimes stricken by drought. But it is nonetheless an earthly paradise, wherein the air is usually temperate, the ground fertile, the earth abounding with all things needful for man and necessary for beast.”

  We drank to England—“our lush island paradise, sometimes stricken with drought!” Because of the ungodly Church of England, God did not choose a place within our fecund, tamed, and cultivated English garden as the site of a righteous and godly commonwealth of Saints, but He chose here, in New Plymouth, wherein, on last night, I heard a pack of wolves howling in the darkness to the northwest.

  I shall briefly relate but one comment my father made to Robin. The three of us were chatting after supper about Latin and Greek writers, and my father warned Robin of the dangers he faced from reading the atheistical works of Polybius, Livy, Epicurus, and Lucretius. He said, “Do not be seduced by their graceful styles. Beware of the godless doctrines they preach.”

  Robin said, “I shall, sir, you may be sure of it.”

  But for months to come, Robin said, “Livy sayeth such and such,” and “Polybius sayeth so and so.” Finally, one afternoon during the Easter term, when we were about to play tennis, he said, “Epicurus says that the soul perishes with the body. Oh, my dear brother! I believe him!”

  Then he said, “I have become an atheist. Polybius, Livy, Epicurus, and Lucretius have banished God from my mind.”

  My eyes filled with tears. Said I, “You have grieved my heart and wounded my soul. But I love you no matter what vile, diabolical doctrine you espouse. I cannot renounce my love for you. I pray thee, keep your atheism hidden from the world. I shall say nothing about it to anyone. God forgive me, my silence will make me an accomplice to your heinous sin.”

  He said, “Come, let us play tennis.”

  Robin continued to receive communion and partake of the discussions about religion in our tutor’s chamber. Robin harkened to the discussions. He gazed intently upon each speaker’s face in turn. I asked him what went through his mind during such times. “Well,” he said, “I try to appear that I am reflecting deeply upon what is being said. That is more difficult than you suppose. I am a coward and a hypocrite and am much ashamed of myself.”

  God punished me for keeping Robin’s atheism a secret. On the sixth of January 1618, I received a letter in the early morning from my father’s attorney. It informed me that my father had fallen into a shortness of breath, with extreme soreness of the breast, for which he was thrice purged by Doctor Troth. As my father’s shortness of breath continued, his attorney thought it wise that I immediately return home. Robin wanted to accompany me but could not—our tutor was to examine him in the evening by dissertation on the question, “Did Virgil foretell the coming of Christ in the Fourth Ecologue of the Aeneid?”

  I asked Robin, “What will you say to Morton?”

  Robin said, “I’ll lie and tell him that I believe that the birth of the babe in the Fourth Ecologue heralds the birth of Christ. But now I shall go carousing and whoring at The Sign of the Rose on Dowdiver’s Lane. I will join thee in Winterbourne by the end of the week.”

  • • •

  The cold wind and snow impeded my homeward journey. Just beyond Puddletown, our wagon brake its front axle-tree in a deep frozen rut; two days were required to replace it. When I arrived upon the seventeenth of January, I learned that Doctor Troth had been prescribing physics, saffron, and sundry powders and drinks to my father—all to no avail. Making violent efforts to breathe, my father passed his days abed reading Scripture.

  Once, gasping for breath, he said to me, “I have bequeathed unto you in my will twenty-six pounds in ready money and sums owed to me, together with most of my effects. Use the money to serve God!”

  Upon the Sabbath, Ben Tucker wrapped my father in two warm cloaks and carried him to St. James, wherein the young Reverend Styles of St. Peter’s, wearing a new surplice, led a prayer for the sick from the papist Book of Common Prayer.

  Ben, my uncle Roger, and I tended to my father’s every need. At night, he often missed making water into his chamber pot. Whenever that occurred, I arose early next morning and, after saying my prayers, washed the floor of his bedchamber on my hands and knees. My father said, “Thou art my beloved S
on, in whom I am well pleased.”

  I could not meet his gaze.

  Upon the Sabbath, on the twenty-fifth of January, the Reverend Styles preached his evening sermon on the parable of “The Prodigal Son” from Luke. I contemplated 15:24. “For this my son was dead and is alive again; and he was lost, but he is found.” I resolved to confess my sins to my father and beg his forgiveness.

  The morning following, at five of the clock, Robin arrived on a hired bay nag. He was grievous sick with a burning fever, vomiting, uneasiness, and abiding pain in his head and body, all of which of a sudden had come upon him but a quarter of an hour before. I laid him abed in the guest-chamber and summoned Doctor Troth. He examined Robin at length, called me aside, and said, “Your friend hath the smallpox. From what I understood from his confused speech, the young fool fornicated with a whore who had but slight symptoms of the disease—a moderate fever, tolerable pains in her body and head—but sufficient in my extensive observation to give him the virulent variety that will most likely kill him. Nevertheless, and make a note of this, prohibit him wine and drink, excepting small beer with toast in it. Feed him oatmeal porridge and barley broth. Then we shall see.

  “I almost forgot,” Dr. Troth said. “Robin bade me stable and have his hired mare fed and watered. If you will pay the cost, I will have Charlton at his stable on Sheep Street tend to it.”

  “Pray do so,” said I. “I will pay the cost.”

  Robin could not swallow the oatmeal porridge I proffered him, nor rouse himself to use the chamber pot. I changed his filthy bedclothes six times in the four-and-twenty hours after his arrival. He gave off a distinctive, sweet smell. I heard him sobbing in the night.

  My uncle Roger paid Troth his two shillings. That day, and every morning thereafter, for the weeks following, my uncle likewise had firewood, wholesome victuals, and drink brought to the parsonage. Ben, my father’s housekeeper, and the cook, all of whom lived in the parsonage, remained there with my father, Robin, and me; the two maid servants slept in the small, thatched barn at the bottom of the garden. Save Ben, they refused to tend Robin, nor did my father blame them. Ben and I undertook the task ourselves.

  My father’s shortness of breath eased. On the third evening, I decided to tell him the truth about my acquiescence in Robin’s blasphemy, &c. Father was seated upon the edge of his bed with his naked feet on the floor. I confessed everything to him.

  He said, “You aided and abetted Robin’s blasphemy and Patch’s buggery. For shame! For shame! Shame on you!”

  His face was sweaty and pale. He stood up, grasped his left arm above the elbow, and cried out, “You have killed me!”

  He fell face down upon the floor, full upon his nose, and died. His broken nose bled copiously.

  I howled. Ben came into the room, lifted the corpse, and laid it upon the bed. Then he cleansed the bloody floor with a wet rag.

  The word spread throughout the parish during the night that my father was dead. At five of the clock the following morning, four women arrived to wash and lay out my father’s corpse. Ben rose above his station for the first time I could remember and dismissed them. I waxed very angry with him, until he said to me, “Sir, these matters with your father’s corpse are best handled by us, for our love of him.”

  He entreated me to pay the women their customary fee and have them fed their customary plenteous meal by the cook in the kitchen. They took the money, ate the food, drank four pots of ale, and fled the house with relief. Ben put off my father’s clothes, then thoroughly and tenderly washed his naked body and cut a long strip from clean linen bedclothes. When I had squeezed my father’s gaping jaws closed, Ben tied them shut with the length of linen by wrapping it beneath the corpse’s chin and about its head. God struck me dumb; I could not speak a word for an hour. Then I said to Ben, “My heart’s broken. I shall never be merry again.”

  I burned my father’s surplice upon the kitchen grate. In the afternoon, a joiner and his apprentice, whom my uncle Roger had hired, carried a coffin and two trestles into the parsonage and placed the coffin upon the trestles in the parlor. I took a better piece of linen bedclothes from the household stock for a shroud. Ben and I wrapped my father’s naked corpse therein, carried it from its bedchamber, and laid it out in the coffin.

  When I lay abed in the dark, all the bugbears and terrors of the night, the fairybabes of tombs and yawning graves remained before mine eyes. I bitterly inveighed with myself and thought that I should cut my throat to be revenged for my father’s death.

  Because of the smallpox in the house, few of my father’s parishioners were brave enough to come and view his corpse. His face was changing before mine eyes: it seemed to me that his sunken cheeks and eyes belonged to a stranger.

  Only my aunt Eliza possessed the courage to come and view him. In her heart she was the brave daughter and wife of English yeomen. As was usual, she cast a covetous eye on the carved oaken chest in the parlor. All of my father’s former servants viewed the corpse as well. Among my uncle Roger’s farm servants, Esau Fletcher and Peter Patch came to the parsonage house.

  Esau said, “I shall always remember your father’s last sermon. He said, ‘Let all be swallowed up and nothing be seen but Christ.’ So it is with me. Christ is all I see—everywhere—even here—in the presence of your dead father.”

  Peter Patch said, “I am here, sir, for your sake—in gratitude to you.”

  I said, “Lest you get caught by someone else, take care, Peter Patch. Take care!”

  Said he, “I will, sir, that I will.”

  My father’s corpse was removed to his church, where it was laid out on view for two more days. My uncle Roger insisted that I pay half the expenses of my father’s funeral. My share came to four shillings and six pence.

  Early Wednesday morning, I observed small red spots covering Robin’s tongue. I asked him to stick it out. He called for the little cracked looking-glass, which belonged to Joan Goare, my father’s old housekeeper. Robin methodically examined the reflection of the inside of his mouth and said, “The spots are everywhere, even unto my gums.”

  I told him the circumstances of my father’s death.

  He said, “Forgive me, brother. I have no tears left to shed.”

  Robin bade me write his father in Kent of his plight: “Beg my good father to attend me very soon, lest it be too late. Secondly, send for a Minister.”

  “A Minister?” said I.

  “A Minister,” said he. “Write Morton too, and bid him farewell for me. I will not see Cambridge again.”

  I wrote Morton and the Rev. Barstow, then fetched the Rev. Styles. He came with me at once, notwithstanding the fear that showed in his eyes. He offered a prayer by Robin’s bed, and the three of us said, “Amen.”

  Robin addressed Styles thus, “I am sure the indiscreet Doctor Troth has told you how I caught this loathsome disease. Well, I am justly served. God hath rightly punished me for my whoring. Our God is a righteous God. Let my fate be an example in your sermons to errant youths. Tell my father that I died repenting my sin.”

  I was much astonished by his words and, after Styles left, inquired of Robin about them.

  Robin said, “I lied for my father’s sake.”

  “I told my father the truth, and it killed him,” I said.

  The day following, Robin’s spots turned into sores that burst open within hours and oozed. At the same time, a rash appeared upon his face. By the following evening, it had spread all over his body, down to the soles of his feet. But his fever suddenly broke, and he regained his appetite, feeding himself two bowls of oatmeal porridge. He inquired after his hired mare, saying to me, “I shall yet ride old Nell back to Cambridge. And you? How fare you?”

  I said, “God help me, I long for death.”

  “Death? Speak not of death, dear friend. Not death. You have never tasted such apples for cider as we grow in Kent, w
herein they are ground and pressed in presses made for the nonce. You drank our cider. Was it not wonderful? Our cider bestows good health and long life upon those who liberally imbibe it. Both my grandfathers, who drank only cider, lived well past eighty years of age. Why, I was raised on Kentish cider! Quickly! Write my father another letter and entreat him to bring me at least four jugs. Make that five! No, speak not to me of death.”

  ’Twas then that I knew that it was God’s will that I would catch the smallpox and die. I prayed, “Let me be of good courage, for Thou art just. Thou art justly punishing me for my transgressions against Thee, which are a sign that I am damned.”

  From then on, I looked upon the progression of the disease in Robin as foretelling my future on this earth. His fever returned. He said to me, “After my death, bring Nell back to Drake’s stable on Market Hill in Cambridge, wherein I hired her for sixpence a day. Or better yet, bid my father do so. Entreat him, I pray you, to pay my debts. They do not amount to much. Contrary to your expectations, dear brother, I was careful with my money. And take good care of Nell. She is an honest nag.”

  I never received an answer from Morton, but Robin’s father wrote him that immediately he recovered from a fever and a congestion of the lungs, he would ride in haste to be with his beloved ailing son.

  On the third day, Robin’s rash became raised bumps; on the fourth, the bumps had hollows in their centers that resembled a navel. Robin called again for the little cracked looking-glass, gazed upon his disfigured countenance, and said, “In truth, being fair of face gave me much pleasure.”

  My father’s funeral was on the thirtieth of January in the year of Christ 1618. His will provided for mourning gowns to be worn by his family and servants, together with seven bushels of wheat to be made into bread and as much cheese and drink as was needful to be given to the poor. That night, by the light of the full moon, I looked upon his fresh grave.

  Robin died the morning following. We exchanged no last words. His father arrived, with an obstinate cough, a day thereafter and took Robin’s body home to Maidstone, in Kent. He paid Charlton three shillings for stabling and feeding Nell and agreed to have her returned to her stable in Cambridge. Before the Reverend Barstow departed, the Reverend Styles repeated to him, unknowing, Robin’s lies that he was repentant for his sins.