Milton in America, page 7
“Irregular motions may be necessary on earth sometimes, Goosequill. But we shall not shrink back from our destiny. We shall go on with the strength of divine assistance. We shall find fresh woods and pastures new. Is there more food?” I gathered pieces of the cooked flesh which I had thrown towards that bear, and he ate them eagerly.
That evening we sat beside the fire.
Just as we are doing now, Goose?
It was less snug and cozy, Kate. I had found some wood from the wreck, and I blew upon the timber as it hissed and crackled in the silence. He did not speak, but seemed to look into the heart of the fire. What could he have seen there, but the heat itself?
He saw stories, Goose, as we do. When I sit with him sometimes, he will speak of ancient things. Of old kings, and buried cities, and suchlike. Mr. Milton is fond of his ruins.
He looked like one that night. “It is growing cold,” he said at last, wrapping his newfound cloak around him. Then we were quiet again. I started humming some little tune, but he carried on speaking as if there had been no silence at all. “I hope that we have not traveled too close to the frozen zone. That would be unfortunate indeed. Are you benumbed?”
I could not help but laugh. “What was that word?”
“Benumbed. Frozen. Pinched with cold.”
“Oh no. It is warm enough for me.”
“Then you are not benumbed.”
“If you say so.”
“I do so say.”
We sat quietly again, and he put his head to one side so that he could listen to the flames. I loved to watch him at those times and guess, from the movements and expressions of his face, what he was thinking.
Oh, Goose, I know of that. When his nose twitches, it means that he is about to say something humorous. When there is a little crease upon his forehead, he is thinking of a quotation. When it grows larger, he is about to come out with his own words. Am I right?
Yes, Kate. And on this occasion a very large crease appeared. “Do you believe, Goosequill, that there will be some western millennium?”
“Perhaps there may be some Goosequillennium, sir.”
“We have been led into this wilderness by some strong motion. I have not yet fully learned the intent behind it, and perhaps I need not know it. What concerns our knowledge, God reveals.” He had scarcely finished when we heard the most terrible sounds from the interior. May I howl for you, Kate? There. That did me good. “What desolate noise was that?” he asked me.
My hair stood up like bristles. “Beasts, sir.”
“Ravening creatures of the night?”
“Wolves, I think.”
“Quench the flame.” He was trembling as greatly as if he had swallowed down quicksilver. “Put out the fire!” So I smothered it with my hat and we both sat quaking in the darkness. “I have heard reports,” he whispered, “of their assaults upon travelers in Germany. How much more fierce might they be in this wilderness?”
“What shall we do then, sir?”
“Pray.” He began to murmur to himself. “Who brought me hither will bring me hence.” He was giving a very good impression of a chandler reciting his accounts. “Teach me to know what I can suffer, and how I must obey. Who best can suffer, best can do.”
I crept over to an outcrop of rock, and peered into the night. I could see lanterns being carried here and there among the woods, but of course, Kate, these were the very eyes of the roaming wolves! They set up their howling once again, which was enough to make the whole earth ring like a church bell, but Mr. Milton had somehow composed himself. “They are moving away from us,” he told me firmly. “They are traveling inland. God be thanked.” You know how he is always right? So I rekindled the fire, and we slept.
The next day we began our journey into the unknown territory. First of all we knelt down and prayed. I could manage only a little bit of devotion but, while he rocked to and fro on his knees, I packed our bread and cheese in the knapsack. Then I took his hand, and led him away from the shore. He stumbled over the shells and small stones, but I kept as solemn as a mule while he made continual yelps. “What flints are these?” he asked me.
“Mere pebbles, sir.”
“They feel to me like boulders and cobbles. I shall be cut to death, and my feet will die first.” He was getting into an ill temper, and suddenly turned upon me. “Will you stop forever twirling your hair, like some seamstress at her thread! It distracts me.” I was still holding his hand, so he must have sensed my movement. “Of course our Lord survived thirty days in the wilderness. I must learn to follow His divine example.”
“Better to follow me first, sir. There is a path and even ground ahead of us.” It was a dainty piece of cliff, somewhat like our hills in Islington, and I led him upwards.
Not as large as our Devon hills, then? They are beautifully made, Goose. I miss them.
We have only a few hills in London, Kate, but we have Cornhill.
We have moors where the wild beasts roam.
We have Moorfields, where the wild men are imprisoned.
We have the sea.
We have the Marshalsea. Now that we are at evens, may I return? So I lead him up this hill which is smaller than any in Devon. “Ah,” he said, “clear air. So pure and so wholesome that we might take our sustenance from it.”
“If it is all one to you, I prefer to keep my cheese. Now here is a sight.”
We had come out upon a level area at the summit, and I could see ahead of me valleys and hills, woods and lakes, and white mountains in the far distance. When I pictured them to him, he clapped his hands. “We have come out of Sodom into the land of Canaan! Nature has poured forth her bounties with—” He put out his arms, like this, and somehow overbalanced himself. That was when he slipped over the edge of the cliff. I screamed, but stopped when I saw that he had slid only three or four feet into the arms of a waiting tree. Somehow he had got entangled in the bushes beneath it and had his arms around its trunk. “What is it, Goosequill?”
“It is a tree, sir.”
“I know it is a tree. But what type or kind?” Already he was running his hands along it, and sniffing the bark.
“Might it be an oak?” I helped him to his feet, and dusted off his coat. “Or a pine?”
“You are a true boy of Farringdon ward. You would not know an acorn from a berry.”
“But I know my knife.” I had taken it from the knapsack, where it had been having a perfectly comfortable journey with the flint, and cut into the wood. “It is red. Like a stave.”
“Yes indeed. This is a holy tree, Goosequill.” He was embracing it again, but I stood beside him in case he took another fall. “The cedar. It smells as sweet as juniper, does it not? No more than a foot in girth. Tell me how high.”
“As high as my old master’s house in Leadenhall.”
“Which was?”
“Not very high at all.”
“Enough. This tree, fool, is such as Solomon used for the building of his temple in Jerusalem. No doubt it is an emblem of the many temples which will one day rise in this land, and yet—” He looked up into its branches. “Not very tall, you say?”
“No, Mr. Milton. Quite short.”
“Certainly it seems a little inferior to the cedars of Lebanon, so much commended in the Scriptures. If sacred works are our guide, then nature’s work is wanting here.”
“I am your guide, sir, at the present time. Would you prefer to continue rolling down the cliff, or to walk with me?”
“A hard choice, Goose. But perhaps I will follow you.”
So we walked all that day, but not before slaking our thirst at a little spring which gushed out from some rocks nearby. Now where there is a spring, as you will know from your Devon days, there will eventually be a stream, and where there is a stream, there will soon be a river. That is, as Mr. Milton said, an adamantine law. And, fortunately, a watery law too. So we were much heartened as we continued our journey through the wilderness, and by dusk we came upon a clearing at the edge of a great forest. All the ground was scorched and blackened but, when I pictured this to our dear friend, he sniffed the air. “A bolt of flame,” he said. “It has always been believed that those territories smitten by lightning are deemed sacred. This is a holy place.” It looked to me as if the area had been burned and wasted by someone, but I kept my peace. You know how quiet and thoughtful I can be?
No, Goose.
Instead I collected some wood and, having made a fire, we sat and munched upon our cheese. We might have been at Greenwich, Kate, after the fair. Please not to ask me anything about Greenwich. Except that there were these rowdy crickets singing all around us. I am accustomed to them now, but at that time they sounded very sharp. I was about to object but Mr. Milton was nodding his head to their chirrups, just as if he had been listening to some nimble trickster on a clavichord. Then the lights came. They were hovering in the air a few yards distant, and I suddenly thought that there were wolves approaching. So I leapt up, spilling all my cheese onto the ground, and screamed. He sprang up, too, and screamed with me. Of course I realized then that these lights were too small to be the eyes of any creature, and there were so many that the air itself seemed to be on fire.
“I am sorry to have disturbed you,” I said, “but there are very many sparkles flying up to the sky.”
“You have ruined my supper for the sake of glowworms. Have you never seen them before? They litter the fields of Lambeth.”
“But there are so many here. Thousands upon thousands.”
“This land, then, has its own light.” He had calmed down a little. “In the voices of the crickets, it also has its music.”
I picked up the remains of the cheese, and handed them to my master. “If it had its own towns and cities and harbors, too, then we would be merry enough. I grant you that.” That was the end of our second day in the wilderness, Kate. Kate, may I have a kiss now? Are you growing sleepy, Kate? Put your head upon my shoulder. There. Do you remember how you used to rest upon me when we sat together? What was that book we once read? A Letter of Advice Concerning Marriage.
You never took any advice, Goose.
But I was your guide, was I not? And, if I could lead Mr. Milton through the forests, I might be able to lead you to bed now. Oh, Kate.
• • •
Shall I continue now, after our delicious supper? Is Jane yet asleep? No strong water tonight, Kate, I promise. I will be the very pattern of a storyteller. I will not digress, as Mr. Milton might say. I will not embroider. We were woken before dawn by the stinging of the flies. Worse than their bites was my thirst, though, and just before the sun rose I took Mr. Milton to some bushes and grasses on the edge of the clearing. Together we licked the dew from their leaves and then he knelt down to pray, with me saying “Amen!” in all the wrong places.
“Have you noticed something?” he asked me afterwards.
“I have not.”
“There are no larks. At least I have heard none.”
“Oh, but there are birds enough. I have seen flights of them in the distance, looking like our pigeons.”
“It was a pigeon which came upon the deck of the Gabriel. Do you recall? We will in future know them as birds of false promise.”
We were eating butter out of the pots, licking our fingers like schoolboys. “I had a dream last night, Goosequill, which may presage much. I dreamed that we were in a great forest, and that many turtledoves sat upon green boughs. They watched over us, and their cooing resembled the sound of a calm sea which environed us. But then the flies woke me.”
“Oh Lord, sir. There is never a dream so grand that the world will not defeat it.”
“Yes. The heat and the dust break through.” He wiped his fingers on his cloak. “Which reminds me that I must wash. I am in decay, Goose. I am living as some anchorite in my own filth.”
“That is very shocking, sir. But we have hopes for a river, do we not? Or a running stream?” I looked around earnestly, as if I had not already looked a hundred times before. “We have the forest here, through which we could cut a narrow track. Away from it is a land of tall grasses which looks firm enough, but it may hide a salt marsh or a swamp. I cannot choose.”
“Choice is but reason. When God made Adam, He gave him freedom to choose. Which way is it to be?”
“Could it be your decision, sir? I am not so resolved in my mind as you.”
“So you seek the help of a blind man, do you?” He was pleased with his own wit. “Well, I am content to be our guide.” He stood up and seemed to scent the air; his nostrils flared, but he lifted up his head only to sneeze.
“God’s blessing, sir.”
“Thank you, Goosequill. We go this way.” He started striding towards the forest, but then stopped at the very border of the trees. It was all thickly overgrown, and he brushed something from his hair. “May I borrow your hat, please? I have a horror of crawling things.”
“Snakes?”
“Serpents.” He had such an expression upon his face, Kate, that he might have just seen one. “And what else are we likely to find as we wander? No doubt natives. Indians. Savages. Pagans. All around us.”
“No, sir. You are not in London now.” What is the matter, Kate?
There are no savages in London, are there? Or pagans?
Plenty of them. Except that they wear cloaks and hats like the rest of us. Mr. Milton sighed at my mention of London. “I wish to God that I was returned there,” he said. “I thought we might have raised Eden in this wilderness, but now—”
“Back to the houses and the sewers?”
“Oh yes.”
“The jail and the executioner?”
“What have we here but a divine punishment, more serious by far?”
“If I find a shoe, sir, I will take out the thread.”
“Why so?”
“So that you might hang yourself with it.”
“No, Goosequill, for then I am afraid that you would be compelled to a solitary life. Lead on.”
We entered the forest, and I took care to mark each tree with my knife as we made our slow way among dense boughs, underbrush and fallen trees. After a few minutes he sniffed the air. “There is a scent of water somewhere,” he said. “To our left hand.”
At that moment I saw a rough path or track ahead of us, and I ran towards it with a loud “Halloo!”
I know that “Halloo,” Goose. You are always making it when you run or leap or dance.
Or when I catch sight of you, at first light. “It looks as if some little horses have galloped here,” I told him. “I see the marks of tiny hoofs!”
“Deer. What else is there?”
Just then some rabbits scattered among the bushes. But our voices had alarmed more than those timid things, and two creatures glided from one tree to another. They resembled squirrels, but I had never yet seen squirrels with wings. “Bats, sir.”
“Bats at day? I hardly think so.”
“But there is a track, sir, as plain as my hat. Your hat.”
“Go forward, then. It may lead us, like the deer, to water.”
So we made our way along this little track, which began to slope downwards so sharply that I held on tight to my master for fear of his slipping: he was always good at rolling down hills. He had no more breath than a turkey at Christmas and when we paused for the nourishment of the air, as he put it, we heard the sound of water. With one accord we slipped and crawled down the rest of the path, which must have been the side of some valley into which we had strayed, until I could see a stream glittering among the bushes. But it was no stream at all, Kate, it was a river. “As wide as the Thames!” I shouted, and all at once I jumped in it. “There will be fish! Fish and water and more besides!”
Our master stood uncertainly by the bank, and put his hand over the surface of the river as if he could sense how deep it was. Then he knelt down and touched it while I heard him murmuring, “I pray that this may be a true balm and cordial.” He cupped his hands and drank the water, before bathing his neck and face. I was splashing around like a dog in a pond, and some of the water hit him. “Mind my hat! Goosequill, I love your frolicsome revels—”
“You can call me Duck, sir, not Goose!”
“—but already my coat is damp and heavy enough for two men.”
“Remove it, then. This is not Lambeth Marsh. Here we are free!”
“I know it. Loosen my clothes, then, if you please.” I ceased my tumbling, and came to heel. “Good. Now, Goosequill, will you leave me to my libations?”
“Libations?”
“I am not of an effeminate mind—”
“Oh no, sir.”
“But I would like to cleanse myself in peaceful solitude.”
“In a word, go?”
“Precisely so.”
I started walking backwards along the bank, still facing him. “I am going. I am going. I am going.” I stumbled upon some root, and fell among tall grasses. “I am gone, sir. Quite gone.” I looked at him for a moment more, and wondered at his body so white and pure that it showed no signs of aging.
Is it so, Goose?
Like the body of a girl. But not so soft and pleasant to touch as yours, Kate.
Do stop stroking me. And pass me that thread, if you please. I must occupy myself while you talk.
I know how I could occupy you, Kate.
Goose! Stop it.
So I decided to explore further. Not you, Kate. The forest. I had a mind to wander, now that I was refreshed, so I scrambled up another part of the bank, where I came upon a space of ground. It was all overgrown with bushes, and from some of them hung a dark berry in many luscious clusters. As luscious as your mouth. I tasted one, and it was sweet. As sweet as your lips. “Since we are all destitute of plants and victuals,” I said to myself, in Mr. Milton’s voice, “you may pluck this purple food and even chew its pulp.” I ate another. “What ambrosial fruitage.”
That is very like him, Goose. He is always so eloquent.
There was a tree on the edge of this bushy plot, and I caught sight of some golden fruit suspended from one of its branches; it was like some bright apple bathed in light, Kate, and was as large as the crown of a woman’s hat. I could not resist touching it but, when I put out my hand, it dissolved all at once into a cloud of wasps. Not so much a cloud as a storm, though, and I was stung upon my neck and hands. Here, here and here. Why are you laughing? I roared like the bear who had almost stumbled upon us, and rushed down to the river, where my master was still cleaning himself in the water. “What infernal noise is this, Goosequill?”
