Richard and Peg’s back room held an excellent double bed with thick linen curtains drawn about it from rails connecting its four tall posts, several chests for clothing, a cupboard for shoes and boots, a mirror on one wall for Peg to prink in front of, a dozen hooks on the same wall, and William Henry’s gimbaled cot. There were no fifteen-shillings-a-yard wallpapers, no damask hangings, no carpets on the oak floor so old it had gone black two centuries ago, but it was quite as good a room as any one would see in any house of similar standing, namely of the middling classes.
Peg was by the cot, swinging it gently back and forth.
“How is he, my love?”
She looked up, smiling contentedly. “It has taken. He has a fever, but it is not burning him up. Cousin James-the-druggist came while you were walking, and seemed very relieved. He thinks William Henry will recover without developing the full pox.”
Because his left upper arm was sore, Richard assumed, William Henry lay sleeping on his right side with the offending limb drawn comfortably across his chest. Where the needle had passed through the flesh a great red welt was growing; his palm almost touching it, Richard could feel the heat in the thing.
“It is early!” he exclaimed.
“Cousin James says it often is after inoculation.”
Knees shaking from the sheer relief of learning that his son had survived his ordeal, Richard went to a hook on the wall and plucked his stout canvas apron from it. “I must help father. Thank God, thank God!” He was still thanking God as he bounded down the stairs, it having slipped his mind that until he saw William Henry’s pustule developing, he had quite given up on God.
For places like the Cooper’s Arms the relaxed atmosphere of long summer evenings brought benefits in its wake; the tavern’s regular clientele were respectable people who earned a better than subsistence living—tradesmen and artisans in the main, and accompanied by their wives and children. Between threepence and fourpence a head bought them plenty of palatable food and a big pitcher of small beer, and for those who preferred full beer, rum or gin or Bristol milk (a sherry much favored by the women), another sixpence would see them merry enough to tumble into bed and sleep the moment they got home, safe from footpads and the press gangs because that extended gloaming kept darkness at bay.
So Richard descended into a social club still golden-lit as much from the westering sun outside as from the oil lamps fixed to the exposed beams of walls and ceiling, black against the brilliant pallor of whitewashed plaster. The only portable lamp burned at Mine Host’s place behind his counter, at the far end of it from Ginger, the tavern’s most famous attraction.
Ginger was a large wooden cat Richard had carved after reading of the renowned Old Tom in London—a distinct improvement on the original, he prided himself. It stood diagonally across the boards with its nether regions closest to the drinkers, an orange-striped cat with jaws open in a wide smile and tail at a jaunty angle. When a customer wanted a measure of rum, he put a threepenny coin into its mouth and rested it upon the flexible tongue, which flopped down with an audible click. Then he held his mug beneath the two realistic testicles at its rear and pulled the tail; the cat promptly pissed exactly half a pint of rum.
Naturally the older children present were its greatest users; many a dad and mum were wheedled into drinking more than they ought for the sheer pleasure of putting a coin into Ginger’s mouth, pulling his tail, and watching him piss a stream of rum. If Richard had done no more for the Cooper’s Arms than that, he had vindicated his father’s generosity in taking him into the business.
As Richard crossed the sawdust-strewn floor with wooden bowls full of steaming broth distributed precariously up both arms, he exchanged conversation with everybody, his face lighting up as he told them of William Henry’s optimistic prognosis.
Mr. Thistlethwaite was not there. He came at eleven in the morning and stayed until five, sitting at “his” table under the window, which bore an inkwell and several quills (but he could buy his own paper, said Dick Morgan tersely), composing his lampoons. These were printed up by Sendall’s bookshop in Wine Street and sold there, though Mr. Thistlethwaite also had outlets on a few stalls in Pie Powder Court and Horse Fair, far enough from Sendall’s not to affect its market. They sold extremely well, for Mr. Thistlethwaite owned a rare ripeness of epithet and was apt into the bargain. His targets were usually Corporation officials from the Mayor through the Commander of Customs to the Sheriff, or religious entities addicted to pluralism, or those who presided over the courts. Though quite why he had it in for Henry Burgum the pewterer was a mystery—oh, Burgum was a dyed-in-the-wool villain, but what precisely had he done to Mr. James Thistlethwaite?
And so the supper hour wore down amid a general feeling of repletion and well-being, until promptly at eight o’clock by the old timepiece on the wall next to the slate, Dick Morgan rapped: “Settle up accounts, gentlemen!” After which, his tin cash box satisfyingly heavy, he shepherded the last toddler out the door and bolted it securely. The cash box went upstairs with him and was deposited beneath his own bed with a string tied from its handle to his big toe. Bristol had more than its share of thieves, some of them most artful. In the morning he transferred the mass of coins to a canvas bag and took it to the Bristol Bank in Small Street, a concern headed by, among others, a Harford, an Ames and a Deane. Though no matter which one of Bristol’s three banks a man patronized, it would be Quakers looking after his money.
William Henry was sleeping soundly on his right side; Richard lifted the cot closer to the bed, took off his apron, his voluminous white cotton shirt, his linen breeches, his shoes and thick white cotton stockings, and his flannel underdrawers. Then he donned the linen nightshirt Peg had draped across his pillow, untied the ribbon confining his long locks and fitted a nightcap securely over them. All this done, he slipped into bed with a sigh.
Two very different snores emanated through the gaps in the partition between this room and the front one where Dick and Mag slept, but not like the dead. Snores were the epitome of life. Dick produced a resonant rumble, whereas Mag wheezed and whistled. Smiling to himself, Richard rolled onto his side and found Peg, who snuggled up to him despite the warmth of the night and began to kiss his cheek. Very carefully Richard pleated up his nightshirt and hers, then fitted himself against her and cupped a hand around one high, firm breast.
“Oh, Peg, I do love you!” he whispered. “No man was ever gifted with a better wife.”
“Nor woman with a better husband, Richard.”
In complete agreement, they kissed down to the velvet of their tongues while she nudged her mound against his growing member and purred her pleasure.
“Perhaps,” he mumbled afterward, his eyes unwilling to stay open, “we have made a brother or sister for William Henry.” He had barely uttered the words before he was asleep.
Though as tired as he, Peg yanked at his nightshirt until it shielded his body from the bottom sheet, then adjusted her own with a dab of its tail to blot the moisture from her crotch. Oh, she thought, I wish Dad and Mum did not snore! Richard does not, and nor, he tells me, do I. Still, snores mean that they sleep and do not hear us. And thank you, dearest Lord, for being kind to my little boy. I know that he is so good You must want him to adorn Heaven, but he adorns this earth too, and he should have his chance. Yet why, dearest Lord, do I feel that I will have no other children?
For she did feel this, and it was a torment. Three years she had waited to fall the first time, then another three years before she fell the second time. Not that she had carried either child poorly, or been unduly sick, or suffered cramps and spasms. Just that somewhere inside her soul she sensed a womb leached of its fertility. The fault did not lie with Richard. Did she so much as look sideways at him with an invitation, he would have her, and never failed (save when a child was ill) to have her when they went to bed. Such a kind and considerate lover! Such a kind and considerate man. His own appetites and pleasures were less important to him than those of the folk who mattered to him. Especially hers and William Henry’s. And Mary’s. A tear fell into the down pillow and more followed, faster and faster. Why do our children have to go before us? It is not fair, it is not just. I am twoscore and five, Richard is twoscore and seven. Yet we have lost our firstborn, and I miss her so! Oh, how much I miss her!
