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Bristol - 1651

There it was, propped up on the chest that had held their marriage clothes, lit by candlelight, in spidery, half worded script as if written by an idiot’s hand. It mocked him with its silence, it taunted him, it sat, dumb and yet shouting at him, trying to be heard, screaming at the top of its demonic voice and yet mute as the grave, for the grave it might have been. Mordecai Prynn wished that it was, it was, after all a foretelling of his death, for the words on this tiny scrap of paper, torn from the fly leaf of a bible or some other common work, meant that his life was over, there was nothing, nothing left to keep him from swallowing the poison that stood on the small dresser.

 

Prynn crossed the room and picked up the scrap. How he had read these six words over and over again. How he had jumped when first he had read them. How, somehow he had known their truths before he had even been informed of them, how he had secretly, always known that they had been true, how a husband always knows.

 

These six words that, separately meant so little but together meant everything, that if rearranged could mean an entirely different thing. These six words that separated himself from her, and indeed the way he had been. He looked into the small mirror that lay atop of the dresser. Who was that stared back at him? Who was that in the mirror? So old now and bitter, the years of torment and suffering scarred on his face as if they had been cuts and grazes by fist or knife. Who owned this grey hair that fell, like wisps onto his shoulders, that had once been cut so neat and trim, so that she could marvel at him, a little more, perhaps than she did. Whose were these shoulders? What had made them stoop so, to be so misaligned, to crack so whenever he moved, to creak, to groan, to cause such pain? And these eyes - He moved further to the mirror - Who owns these sad eyes? These eyes that shone once, that were deepest brown, so brown and wide that the sun could shine from them in happiness. Who owns these eyes, so lifeless and dull and grey ringed now that death seems to have visited them already. He looked at himself. Who was that face in the mirror? And why did it hate so?

 

His gaze fell on the scrap of paper and its words, written in childish hand, a scrawl more than writing, telling of things that were, but are ended. The six words making up his fate.

 

Tonight your wyfe lies wyth another.

 

Where it came from, he knew not, who wrote it was a mystery to him and yet, for the last five years it had haunted him. It had been there, wherever he had gone. It had always kept a place, in his black heart, festering, causing sores to grow where once there were none, causing pain where once there had been joy.

 

                         Tonight your wyfe lies wyth another.

 

How often had he looked at the scrawl that had made up those words, how often had he looked upon this scrap of paper, yellowing now with age and bitten at the corners by the beetles and the rats. He picked it up, one more time, brought it closer to his lips, breathed in its scent. To the world it smelt of damp and fusty, brackish rooms, cheaply rented, to Prynn it smelt of betrayal, of pain, of years of hunger such that would rip a normal man to pieces. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, letting the words touch his skin. Then grasped it between his fingers, curling them up into a fist, he crushed and crunched the paper into a tight ball. Here the end was at hand. Here the hunger was terminated. Here, through perseverance the situation was to change. He unfurled the paper and held it over the candle flame, watching it first blacken and then, with alarming speed catch light. He held on to its edges and watched as the words disappeared one by one, becoming charred and scarred and then turn into the smoke that charged from the flame. He breathed deeply and felt them become a part of him, being sucked into his lungs, coursing around his bloodstream, becoming, gradually part of his body, part of his mind instead of just the part of his soul that they all ready were.

 

The smoke made him feel young again, the man that he had been. Now the paper was destroyed and soon she will be too. There was nothing to keep him here, the ship was waiting, his chest was packed, there was a fair wind and nothing could stand in his way. Now. Now everything was in place. There was a knock at the door. Prynn startled, answered.

“Yes?” He said.

A man’s voice came through the door.

“Master Prynn?”

“ Yes,”

Prynn said.

“Orders from the captain, sir, says we’ll be sailing in the hour. Says I’ve to come and hurry you a long, coz says he, he won’t wait for no man.”

Prynn said,

“Fine, man, wait for me outside, I will be there presently.”

 And packed away the rest of his belongings in the trunk that was, by now heaving and full to the brim.

 

Outside, it was light, as early as the lark but crisp and fresh. Prynn blinked in the sun and saw his messenger standing by the door jamb, picking his teeth with a nail.

“My chest is inside,”

 Prynn said and walked out, into the street that led to the docks, filled with people. There were hawkers and sailors and stevedores and loaders and women in pretty dresses with small hand luggage, there were gangs of swarthy men with guards beside them and children running to and fro, picking up rubbish, testing it, moving on to the next. There were the smells of early morning Bristol, the sea, the people, the sewers but here there was also the smell of the produce heading for other places, the stench of the food for the long voyage, already past its best. The sounds of the animals, taken for their milk or their eggs or their meat, being led up gangplanks, creaking and bowing, slipping on faeces, tramping in hay to the deck and the dockside. Here there was shouting, from the loaders to the quartermasters, from those on shore to those already on ship. Shouts of longing and shouts of half remembered questions. Have you remembered the salt? What about the linen for the captain’s table? There were stored, barrel upon barrel of fresh water, box upon box of grain and wheat, thousands of plates, stores, letters, lives and people.

 

Prynn walked through the early morning crowds of Bristol, looking for the Hawthorne. “A ship from a bush.”

he told himself,

“A fine situation. Better to have sailed on the Mighty oak, perhaps, or the Beech, but no, the Hawthorne it was.”

The Hawthorne and her captain who would take him out into the Atlantic and onward to America. He looked behind him and saw his messenger limping along with his heavy chest on his back. Prynn shouted at him,

“You there, with my chest be careful, there are many important things in there.”

The messenger snarled and whispered something underneath his breath that Prynn couldn’t fathom from where he was. He carried on looking.

 

As he walked, a boy sidled up to him and started to talk.

“You looking for a ship?”

The boy said. Prynn ignored him.

“You looking for a ship?”

 The boy said again, this time louder, more insistent.

“Yes,” Prynn said.

“Which one?”

 The Boy said.

“I know them all, the Drover, The Good Bess, The White Rose, The Bluebird.”

Prynn stopped.

“I am looking,”

 he said,

“for the Hawthorne.”

 To which the boy stopped dead in his tracks and turned a ghostly white.

“The Hawthorne?”

 The boy said incredulously.

“Yes,”

 said Prynn,

“the Hawthorne.”

 The boy whistled, he scuffed at the ground with his foot and swung it to and fro.

“You don’t want to be sailing on The Hawthorne.”

 He said.

“Don’t you know nothing about sailing? Nothing at all?”

 Prynn swallowed, far be it from him to acknowledge ignorance to one so much younger and grubbier than himself.

“If you don’t mind me saying so sir, you must be stupider than you look to if you want to go sailing on The Hawthorne. That is a bad ship to be sailing on.”

Prynn looked confused, felt stupid and sensed an ill wind.

“What,”

 he said,

“can be so wrong with this ship?”

The boy scratched his head and picked at the cotton that hung off the rags that he wore. “S’not so much the ship itself,”

 the boy said,

“the gunwales and masts and the sails and the decks are all fine, ship shape in fact.”

Prynn moved closer to the boy’s face.

“Well?”

He said. The boy swallowed hard.

“What is the matter with the ship?”

Prynn said slowly, evilly, like the devil himself asking a question.

“Tell, me.”

He drew a breath.

“Boy!”

 

Suddenly, Prynn felt a sharp pain in his back. He let out a yell. It was the messenger bumping into him. After many apologies and inquiries after the state of health of both parties, Prynn looked round and noticed that the boy had gone. He stared along the dock and noticed him weaving, like a dog through trees, in and out of the people’s legs. He ran, bumping into people, crashing through boxes until Prynn could see him no more. Prynn turned and looked at the messenger.

“That boy I was speaking to”,

 he said,

“do you know him?”

“Boy?”

The messenger said.

“I didn’t see no boy but then, my sight was temporarily blinded as by this here chest.” “The boy told me things,”

Prynn said,

“and did not tell me other things.”

“What things did he tell you?”

The other said.

“He told me that the Hawthorne was a good ship, good gunwales, good sails, good masts, good decking.”

The Messenger puffed out his chest as if Prynn had been complimenting him on one of his children or a particularly fine piece of carving he had completed.

“That’s right, sir, it has often been said that The Hawthorne will afford you the finest of decking, gunwales and such like.”

“But,”

Prynn continued,

“he also didn’t tell me something”.

At this the messenger looked confused.

“He did not tell you things sir?”

“Yes, he did not tell me why I should not sail on her.”

“On the Hawthorne, sir?”

Said the Messenger and thought a while.

“Sometimes, in fact most times sir, when I don’t want to say a thing, because that thing isn’t true, I don’t and you could say, sir, that by not saying it then the opposite is true, so perhaps, and this is what I am saying here, that the boy didn’t say why you should not sail on The Hawthorne, because, in fact, what he was saying was that you should. Could that be it sir? Could that be why the boy, who I did not rightly see, did not say why you should not sail on The Hawthorne?”

 

Prynn sat down on his chest and contemplated this last statement by the messenger. He mulled it over, word for word, sentence by sentence, using every ounce of his scientific and physic background. He examined the words under the microscope of his eye and boiled them in the vial of his brain but still could not make head nor tail of them. Mordecai Prynn, alchemist, man of science, master of the astrolabe, doctor and writer sat on his chest, with the early morning mist licking at his face, foxed and confused.

 

“Or maybe”

The messenger began,

“the boy was meaning to say…”

“Enough!”

Prynn cried,

“Enough or I fear I may die through boredom or confusion, or worse a combination of the both, just lead on, to where the ship is, man, and be quiet for pity’s sake. I have a pain my head coming and I feel the need to lie down.”

“Ok, Master Prynn, the ship she is only a few hops skips and jumps away now, sir, if you want to follow me. I might be slow but at least I get there.”

The messenger, picked up the chest and, bent double, threw it onto his back. Then he led the way, himself weaving in and out of the crowds, knocking various persons about the head with the chest as he went. Prynn followed, like a small, wizened black bird following a bull, tripping over rope and rigging, apologising for his heavy handed assistant.

 

      

The ship was considerably more than a few hops skips or jumps away from where they had started, in fact it was the other end of the dock from the Inn that Prynn had stayed at the night before. Puffing, wheezing and blowing, Prynn made it though to the gangplank, here he hailed his messenger and sat a while on his chest gazing out into wide water that made up the dock. The ship was small but well stocked, perhaps 200 feet in length, three masted, made of fine English oak. On deck, a quartermaster barked orders at loaders and stevedores who, bent double with lifting walked here and there with barrels and boxes of all kinds.

 

Prynn, knowing nothing of the sea turned to the messenger.

“He looks a fine Captain,”

he said,

“Strong and even handed.”

The Messenger laughed,

“That’s not the Captain, master, the Captain will be yet a while, that is the Quartermaster what looks after the stores and runs the ship, until we are a at sea.”,

“Not the Captain?”

said Prynn,

”But where is the Captain? I thought we were soon off.”.

The Messenger coughed and shuffled from foot to foot, he scratched at his behind and seemed to drift. Prynn spoke again,

“Where is the Captain, I said, after all he called for me did he not?”

“Oh yes,”

The messenger said,”

He called for you, and right he was too, because you can’t wait for the tide afore you go, you have to go with the tide, right enough.”

“So where is the captain, below?”

The messenger looked sheepish and pulled a cow’s lick of hair from his fringe,

“Hmmm, well, yes he probably is below by now, below somewhere’s anyway.”

Prynn begin to get angry at the obfuscation that plagued every decent and honest question that he asked,

“Where is he, man or I’ll push you over board the first chance I get.”.

“Weeeeelll,”

the messenger began,

”He may be in the Inn taking some, how could you say? Last minute victuals.”

Prynn looked,

“Last minute victuals?”,

“Aye” said the messenger.

“Of what kind?” replied Prynn. The messenger shifted his position,

“Of the brandy kind, most likely sir, is all I can guess.”

 

Prynn leapt up from his chest as if he had burnt the seat of his pants.

“You mean to say that your, our, my, captain is drunk at this ungodly hour of the morning?”

The messenger looked back with incredulity,

“Yes, sir, that’s probably what state he is in, being as he is in such a state most of the day, and most of the night too.”.

Prynn could not believe his ears. He kicked at the chest.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me? How do you cross the ocean with a drunkard for a Captain.” The messenger took a long breath as if he were about to say something momentous. “Well, sir, none of us crew like to say anything about our Captain’s proclivities because of, firstly he is our Captain and so provider of wages and such like and were we to go round telling all sorts of things like truths to people we wouldn’t not get either, a Captain or a wage. And secondly, we thought as if you might know already,. I mean half of Bristol knows and you don’t think you would get a price on such a ship if the Captain were a good sober man, does you sir?”

 

Prynn’s jaw dropped.

“And, my second point?”

 He said,

“How does one get to the New World with a drunken Captain?”.

The messenger looked amused at this, he sighed,

“The New world, sir, is a very big place, you would have to be half dead, let alone drunk to miss it.”

 

Prynn sank back down on his trunk. He felt the journey over before it had begun. He held his head in his hands and closed his eyes. Out of the darkness of his mind he saw her. Smiling, red lipped, foul breasted, bedding down with her new lover, her next lover. He could smell their bodies, sense the heat that was created between them. He could see clearly the red flush of her face as he kissed her neck, the slight opening of her mouth – white teeth behind scarlet lips – the scar of her fingernails on his back, the arch of her body in the candlelight’s glow. As he sat he saw, on the back of his hands their twisted bodies, writhing with each other, the slow and easy moans of adultery. The same adultery that had plagued him all is life, the easy virtued whore, the young harlot – so pretty and so child like. He knew she was with him, whoever he was, the face did not matter anymore, the name was of no importance, if it wasn’t the latest one it would be the next, or the last. After a time, all the faces melted into one vision, of mistrust and broken promises, of marriage vows broken and left discarded like so many glass vials. Prynn grasped at the fringe of his hair and pulled it down, to illicit some physical pain that would equal the emotional, to cause some actual, bodily discomfort to eradicate the mental pain. He knew he must go on, if only for the sake of the men who would know her, from this point on. If only for their sake must he swallow disappointment and anger.