Accidents of Providence Read Online Free PDF Page B

reached for the ratty chin band that held her old hat in place, as if his proximity were going to wreck something. “Don’t.” She turned and left him standing in the middle of the carriageway near the waste kennel.
    She knew, of course.
     
    Walwyn did not travel directly home. He went to the cobbler and picked up his son’s shoes, and then he went to the river. He had no reason for walking there except it was not far from the cobbler’s and his thoughts were refusing to cooperate with him. For three hours he sat, feet dangling, on a fishing dock called Broken Wharf, a rattly embankment whose pier was no longer reliable save for tempting old men to totter out on its uneven boards and, from there, to observe that the river was darker than they remembered it, or the waterway more throttled by commerce. To the east lay Salt Wharf and Three Cranes Wharf. Above, hundreds of gulls were flying. The gulls avoided Broken Wharf. They preferred the barnacled posts and fishermen’s buckets studding the water’s edge at Salt Wharf. The gulls were wise, he decided. He sat and watched them skim the water’s surface, his son’s shoes in his lap. Not until the afternoon sun began ceding ground to a slinking fog did he remember the time and begin making his way north. He hailed a carriage. When the driver asked where to, he said Moorfields. The driver said he didn’t go north of the city wall at night.
    “It’s not night yet,” Walwyn said.
    “It is. The sun is setting.”
    “Not yet. I can still see it.”
    “It will be down in a quarter-hour.”
    The two men bickered until Walwyn offered to pay above the usual fare, and then the driver became accommodating. Walwyn climbed into the back of the carriage, facing away from the horses; a minute later they were off, crawling for home, Walwyn watching the empty street and, behind it, the muddy line of the Thames receding. He pulled his steep-crowned hat low over his forehead. The sun reddened and sank below the horizon. His thoughts returned to Rachel. He remembered squinting through a narrow slit in his Tower cell, transfixed, as she had pleaded her case with the warden below. He had willed her to remain still, not to move, to remain in his sight; but his field of vision was too narrow, and when the guards pulled her arms, she vanished. When she did not come back, he had pressed his fingers against his eyelids, imprinting her reflection on the back of them. Later that night, while his three friends were sleeping, he had retrieved it. He saw the outline of Rachel’s hip curving against her skirt where the wind had gusseted it. He traced the line of her jaw when she yielded her face to the light.
    Then William Walwyn had become like a fox that will gnaw off its leg to escape a trap. He missed her. He missed the sound of her. He stormed the walls; he threw himself at the door, rousing his companions. He cursed the guards; he bribed the guards; when that failed he swung his fist at them. The guards swung back. He drank himself into a stupor with Overton’s wine, became sick, went to sleep, became sick again; his stomach churned for hours. He sensed Rachel was in trouble but did not know what kind. He felt the trouble in his body; his bones told him. The next morning he had called his three companions around. He said they must work together to get themselves out of the Tower, preferably right away. “I am rotting in here,” he cried. When Thomas Prince pointed out that the rest of them were rotting in there too, Walwyn said they must try harder. He cursed their lackadaisicalness. Richard overton whispered to Prince that Walwyn was developing a habit of too much wine. John Lilburne suggested Walwyn was developing a fear of confined spaces.
    Four months had passed since then. Walwyn had not seen Rachel.

Four

    W ITHIN AN HOUR of Bartwain’s order, two officers of the court had retrieved Rachel Lockyer from her temporary lodgings in Southwark and delivered her to the Sessions House.