Читать книгу Superstition Corner онлайн

22 страница из 47

"By Cock! Who's broken it down?"

"I dunno. Soldiers, I reckon. They say there's been a troop of 'em riding around. When I came there this evening the cross was gone—thrown down and broke in pieces."

"Shame on the deed! But reckon it had to go. I marvel it was let stand so long."

"There's like to be a fresh outbreak against Catholics after this Spanish business," said Oxenbrigge. "Catherine, you must go to church next Sunday."

"I'd sooner die."

"You're a fool!" rapped her mother. "Many parents would have you whipped every time you didn't go, instead of paying your fine."

"Paying's less trouble than whipping. My father's rich."

"I've better things to do with my money than pay for thy nonconformity."

"You might have had to pay for your own."

The Squire's good-natured face darkened.

"None o' that, now, wench! By Cock! there's things I won't endure."

"Eat your supper, Kate," said her mother. "We've all but finished ours."

Catherine sullenly fell to her supper. She loved her father—and her mother too, though a little less. But there was always this question of religion between them—ever since her father had decided to conform. He had kept to the old faith for the first twenty years of the Queen's reign, and his practice had not been attended by those martyrdoms which had visited some of his neighbours. His alliance with a powerful Protestant family—made while that family was suffering eclipse under Queen Mary—had protected him from the full severity of the law, which, moreover, worked less rigorously in the Sussex forests than in more civilized regions. He had maintained his position at the expense of an occasional fine and much private joking with Master Nicholas Pecksall, Vicar of Leasan, who, a priest in Marian orders, said his Mass regularly every Sunday, before opening the church for Morning Prayer.