The Pilgrim by Hugh Nissenson Page A

very alike. We both value words. Words and money. Yes, like me, you are a shrewd yeoman who knows the value of a shilling! You would have made a goodly master of Hempstead! But, alas, it was not to be. Tom Foot is now my heir and my bailiff of husbandry. You will have to obey his commands. He is a forward knave who drinks too much, but your aunt Eliza thinks of him as her son—the one she could never have. She takes all things in good part but being barren. She bears great sorrow in her heart for being barren.”
    â€œUncle, I well nigh forgot: I heard the Head Porter of Emmanuel say, ‘He came home like a cuckoo in spring.’”
    He said, “A good phrase. Why then you are a cuckoo! Welcome home, cuckoo! ‘He came home like a cuckoo in spring.’ Good! I will remember it. But that nice phrase cost me dear. Think on it! Forty-five pounds this year alone!”
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    Here will I spill my soul. I had no power to turn to the Lord. I was nothing but a mass of sin. I was scared of the dark, wherein I was stalked by devils.
    I was sorely tempted to run my head against the wall and brain myself.
    It was ploughing time. After a day’s labour, I accompanied Foot to The Sign of the Bull, wherein we each drank a bottle or two of muscatel and ate a loaf of bread and a cluster of raisins.
    On my solitary walks upon the Downs. I tried to decipher the song of the skylark, and the clustered bellflower, buttercups, and clovers in the south meadow, but they did not appear to me as ciphers writ by God. They were merely birdsong and flowers—nothing more; the plough was not His pen.
    My aunt Eliza gave me a drink of hollyhocks, violet leaves, and fennel decocted in ale. She said, “This may purge your melancholy. I know of melancholy; it hath come and gone with me since I have known that I am barren. I ate artichokes and prayed for five years to conceive a child, but to no avail. And even when my melancholy goes, I fear it will return. I fear so even now, though it hath been four years since I last suffered from the affliction.
    â€œDrink the decoction,” she said. “And here are two shillings. I have bidden Tom to fetch Doctor Troth. Consult him. He hath helped me.”
    I told Doctor Troth everything—everything!—and cried out, “I have crucified Christ anew! I am damned.”
    He said, “You are not damned! Remove that thought from your mind! Yours is the broken and contrite heart which Scripture tells us the Lord will not despise. Yours is the poor spirit on whom the Lord pronounces His blessing. Yours is the affliction whereof the spirit of God is called the comforter.
    â€œRemember, the Devil is likewise a spirit and an effectual worker through corporeal means—in your instance, the humour of melancholy which runs in our blood. The humour of melancholy is an apt instrument for Satan both to weaken our bodies and terrify our minds with fantastical ideas. What will not a possessed man conceive? What strange forms of bugbears, demons, witches, and goblins? Why do witches and old women fascinate and bewitch children? Answer me that! Because of the power of Satan!
    â€œIn your spiritual and corporeal battle with him, do not play the milk sop. Be of good courage. Struggle with Satan and love God.
    â€œBecause melancholy blood is thick and gross, and therefore flows easily, I shall open your vein—the middle one of your left arm, here—and draw off ten ounces of your blood. The middle vein links together head, liver, and spleen, and as melancholy is seated in the brain, bleeding you from there will do the most good.”
    This being done, Doctor Troth said to me, “Mistress Wentworth here knows the diet you must follow and will prepare it for you. Things that are wholesome and meet for melancholic folks. Eat only what she serves you; drink her decoctions and only a little ale with your food, for liquor greatly aggravates melancholy. You