Chase the Morning

Le Stryge snorted – much closer, I knew now, to a real laugh than that evil cackle of his. Contempt must be one of his few remaining links with human feelings. ‘The safest? Is it? I would not be so sure, boy. Stay away if you like, from this wider world of ours – and pray for your own sake that it stays away from you! I wonder if it will. Your destiny is uncertain, even in my eyes – do you know that? But should it chance to lie beyond the limits you once knew, that would not surprise me. And should that be so, then whatever you do to avoid it, it will surely find you out.’

I swallowed. The deck felt suddenly chill beneath me; but Clare’s arm was warm on mine, and held me tight. As if she was anxious to draw me away …

I rose, and she rose with me. ‘How long before we reach home?’ she asked.

‘Why, hours yet, m’dear,’ rumbled Pierce. ‘Till we cross the dawn again. At sunset – which sunset, sailing master?’

Jyp grinned. ‘The sunset after the dawn we sailed. They’ll hardly have had time to miss you.’

I gaped, but Mall just chuckled. ‘Not for naught’s he named the Pilot. Time holds few shoals for him.’

I shook my head wonderingly. Clare, accepting as ever, just chuckled, and drew me with her to the companionway. Laughing, skipping lightly to the tune of Mall’s music, she led me by the hand down to the deck. I went, not looking back. But at my cabin door I hesitated, staring out into the night. Far ahead there, just above the horizon – was that faint streak of deeper darkness the first sight of land, or just a line of dark cloud? Whatever it was, it hung there like a frontier between sea and sky, or a barrier between the wider world and the narrow, between many dreams and a single cold awakening. Suddenly I was afraid of it, of crossing that dark bar once more and into the embrace of harbour walls, both sheltering and imprisoning. There I could find my firm berth again and never leave it, rooted fast to the mud. While all the seas of the world, all the infinite oceans of space and time beat between shore and shadow, only the breadth of a memory beyond my reach. I was afraid to go home.

But then, softly, Clare opened the door, and drew me in.

Why not? If she’d soon forget – if I might, also – what harm could it hold for us? We’d earned our holiday; and I, my first new lessons in living. And loving; there was time for a little of that. Time enough, till morning.

Appendix

From The Consistory of London Correction Book for 27th January 1612 …

Officium Domine contra Mariam Frithe

This day & place the sayd Mary appeared personally & then & there voluntarily confessed that she had long frequented all or most of the disorderly & licentious places in this Cittie as namely she hath vsually in the habite of a man resorted to alehowses Tavernes Tobacco shops & also to play howses there to see plaies & pryses & namely being at a playe about 3 quarters of a yeare since at the ffortune in mans apparell & in her bootes & with a sword by her syde … And also sat there vppon the stage in the publique view of all the people there presente in mans apparell & playd vppon her lute & sange a songe …

& hath also vsually associated her selfe with Ruffinly swaggering & lewd company as namely with cut purses blasphemous drunkardes & others of bad note & of most dissolute behaviour with whom she hath to the great shame of her sexe often tymes (as she sayd) dranke hard & distempered her heade with drinke

And further confesseth … she was since vpon Christmas day at night taken in Powles Church with her peticoate tucked vp about her in the fashion of a man with a mans cloake on her to the great scandal of diuers persons who understood the same & to the disgrace of all womanhood …

And then she being pressed to declare whether she had not byn dishonest of her body & hath not also drawne other women to lewdnes by her perswasions & by carrying her self lyke a bawde, she absolutly denied that she was chargeable with eyther of these imputacions … [Mulholland, R.E.S., new series xxviii (1977), 31]

Mary Frith, popularly known as ‘Mad Mall’, was remanded for further investigation, but seems to have come to no great harm – certainly not the public whipping usually reserved for ‘lewdnes’. She is last heard of almost fifty years later – having reached an astonishing age for that period – and apparently still going strong.

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Michael Scott Rohan (1951 – )