Sarum (154 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
“I am the head of the family, impudent woman,” he said with icy coldness. “Forest will yield him to me.”
“I think not. He’s an interest in keeping the boy. He’s also a magistrate before whom you are to bring me,” she added shrewdly.
Obadiah scowled, but let the subject drop.
Before he left however, when the two of them were alone together for a moment, she asked:
“If you can’t have the boy, Obadiah, why bother to persecute me?”
To which, with all the hatred of the past in his dark eyes he softly replied:
“So that you burn.”
She nodded.
“And then you’ll truly be head of the family,” she answered.
But it was no word spoken by Obadiah that day that hurt her, nor the fact that the Godfreys and the farmworkers were suddenly silent and awkward if she came close to them. It was the fact that, as they got into the cart to go to Avonsford, young Samuel sat as far away as possible and that at the manor, he had gazed at her once, with fear and doubt in his eyes, before leaving without a word of farewell. And in that, she had to confess, Obadiah had won, since he had taken away from her the love of her only child.
Aaron was not satisfied. He had spent a lifetime in business with all kinds of men and, although he had no idea of the reason, he knew that Forest was going to conceal what he had told him.
And now he was in a quandary. For even if he had the courage to raise the matter himself, what would the word of a Jew count against a powerful Presbyterian? He would do nothing but invite persecution for himself or any other Jews who passed that way.
Then he saw the boy in Wilton. He was sitting in Sir Henry Forest’s carriage, but the merchant he had been speaking to pointed Samuel out and told him, “That’s the Shockley boy.” He remembered him vaguely from the day in the water meadows.
There could be no doubt. It was a sign from God.
It did not take Aaron long to tell Samuel what he had seen. He did not say that he had told Forest, but he explained:
“I cannot testify. It will do you no good. Yet, for the love of God,” he urged, “Do something. Watch the sheep house.”
But his heart sank when he looked into the boy’s eyes, and saw they were disbelieving.
There were four days before Margaret was due to appear before the magistrate.
That night, another sheep was found dead.
Yet Samuel Shockley was not unmoved. He was confused. Was he to believe that the men of the party of his hero Cromwell, the stern Presbyters of Sarum, were frauds? Or was he to believe, as he already half did, that his sister was a witch?
He no longer even knew what he wanted to think.
Alone in the big manor house with Sir Henry Forest, of whom he was rather afraid, he plucked up courage to ask him what would happen to Margaret and the baronet had told him:
“She must come before me and I hear the charges. If I think there’s a case to answer, then I send her to gaol until she can be properly tried by judge and jury at the Assizes.”
“And will you send her for trial?”
“Probably,” Forest told him frankly. “Unless she can refute the charges.” He thought of the Jew.
“How can she refute them, sir?”
“Evidence. Reliable witnesses who will stand up in court and prove she did not do what she is accused of.”
A Jew would be useless.
He wondered whether to tell Forest about the sheep house but decided against it. What if he wanted to get up befor dawn to watch it and the dark, severe man opposite him forbade it? What would the magistrate think of the word of a Jew anyway? No, he must make sure for himself. He would have to act alone.
“And if there is no evidence to save her?”
Forest did not answer. The boy had seen the trial of Ann Bodenham.
Samuel noticed that there was an increasing awkwardness about the baronet’s answers; he supposed it was because of the likely outcome.
He slept badly that night. The Jew’s story came back to him again and again.
Just before dawn he got up and slipped out of the house. But though he wandered about near the sheep pens until the sun was well up, he saw nothing.
The next two nights the same thing occurred.
No doubt the Jew had lied. Probably he hated God’s ministers.
But the last night before the session, when he thought of Margaret, and all that she meant to him through his childhood, he was overcome with grief.
“I will save her somehow,” he vowed. Then he cried himself to sleep.
It was almost dawn when he woke. The big stone manor house was silent. Quickly he slipped on his clothes and hurried out.
In the valley, it was cold and silent. He waited.
The first hint of light was coming over the ridges. He looked hopefully up and down. Nothing.
Until he saw a figure below in the shadows.
It was tall, wrapped in a black cloak, and it was moving towards him.
Obadiah Shockley moved silently along the river’s edge. This would be his last journey. One final sheep would die, on the day she left the farm, then no more. Such proof had already impressed Hopkins and would be devastating at the trial.
By the water’s edge, a single swan pushed out into the river, so as not to encounter him.
The sheep house lay some way up the slope and he drew level with it. Obadiah left the valley bottom and made his way swiftly towards it. How tall he seemed in the faint light.
It was while Obadiah was coming up the slope that Samuel realised what he must do. Running quickly down from his vantage point, and keeping the sheep house between them, he reached the door a hundred yards ahead of Obadiah. A slight dip in the path gave him a second when the preacher could not see the door of the sheep house and he used it to slip inside.
His heart beat wildly as he looked for a place to hide. The sheep stirred uneasily. There were three pens there and a space in the far corner where a handcart stood beside two bales of hay. In a moment he was behind them.
When Obadiah entered he was swift. Hardly bothering even to glance round, he walked straight to the nearest pen and selected a sheep at random. Then reaching to his belt, he pulled out a little pouch and poured out some small pellets into his hand. He fed them to the sheep. Whatever they were, he had prepared them well; the sheep ate pacifically from his hand. As soon as the sheep had eaten most of the pellets, he stepped back, took a last, cold look at it, and was gone.
Samuel waited as long as he could, until he reckoned Obadiah must be twenty yards away, then raced across to the sheep. He prised open its mouth. It was still half full. Reaching in, he pulled out all he could until he had half a handful. Then he waited, several minutes, until he was sure that Obadiah would be gone.
He had decided what to do.
It was an informal court, for in recent years the operations of the justices had been less well organised than in formal times. To suit himself, Sir Henry Forest had convened it in the great hall of his own manor house.
But a court it was, a petty session, with its proceedings properly recorded and forwarded to the next quarter sessions. The magistrate sat on a high-backed chair, behind an oak table, raised on a low platform, and he looked impressive.
There was a crowd of fifty standing pressed against the back wall of the hall. For there were few in Avonsford who were not curious to see the Shockley woman brought before the magistrate by her own brother.
As Margaret and her accusers came forward, Sir Henry Forest’s stern face gave nothing of his own feelings away.
In fact, his feelings were very mixed. Like many justices, who were mostly of the gentry, he did not believe in witchcraft. Still less did he believe in most of the evidence presented at witchcraft trials. On the whole by this time, local justices and the judges in the Assize courts were trying to discourage these prosecutions. But the state of popular opinion was still some way behind them. Secretly, Forest despised the proceedings from beginning to end. But wisdom taught him to give the people at least some of what they want. If they wanted to burn Margaret Shockley as a witch and her brother and Matthew Hopkins were set on it, then he supposed she would have to burn. In any case, he did not have to try the case, only send it to a higher court.
The private revelation of the Jew however made him uneasy. He looked at the parties before him warily.
Margaret’s face was pale. Its expression registered nothing except contempt. Since it was clear to her that every hand was now against her, she looked at no one, not even Samuel.
But the evidence, briefly recited by Hopkins, was devastating. Her dressing up in men’s clothes, and fighting with a strength which, he suggested, could not be natural; her conversation with animals; her command over birds, which she knew by name. Catholics had come to her house in the war – he had discovered Charles Moody. She had threatened to set her dogs on a Presbyterian preacher. And now, no less than four sheep had died on her neighbour’s estate. Clearly all these argued malignant powers.
Forest had to admire the thoroughness of the case. He looked about for anyone to contradict the charges. He did not expect anything.
But now, Samuel stepped forward and to everyone’s astonishment announced that he had testimony. Forest frowned.
“Are you sure?” What could he know?
He was sure.
His face was very pale, his back straight. Samuel Shockley stood in the middle of the great hall and told them what he knew. He told them how a passer-by had seen Obadiah in the sheep house. Obadiah shrugged, as though it meant nothing. The crowd murmured. He told them how for three mornings he had waited and watched. Obadiah said nothing but began to look uneasy.
Then he described, moment by moment, all that he had seen that morning, up to the point when Obadiah left the sheep house. And the crowd in the court fell silent.
As he went on, Obadiah’s face grew ashen. He began to tremble, not with fear but with rage. Was yet another of his family, a new generation, to ridicule him – to destroy his hard-won reputation? He began to shake with rage. He would destroy this boy.
His anger made him incautious.
“’Tis a lie,” he cried. “All a lie to save his sister who is sunk in sin.”
It was too much. Now Samuel feared neither Obadiah, nor Forest, nor the witch hunter any longer. And as he exploded, he used the Old Testament gestures and phrases which were all he knew.
Reaching into the little bag at his side, he marched to the table and poured the contents out upon it.
“Then what is this?” he shouted. “Poison! This is what I pulled, from the sheep’s mouth, after you left.” He turned to Forest. “Feed it to a sheep and see how it does. Search him and his house and you may find more.”
Obadiah’s mouth had fallen open. He almost staggered back.
“Viper!” the boy cried, raising his arm and pointing his finger at the preacher: “False witness.” His blue eyes flashed with rage. “See him grow pale, who tried to murder his sister. Abomination of desolation,” he cried, carried away with the grand Biblical words that suddenly welled up within him, “sitting in the temple where it ought not.” And then, overcome with rage at what had been done to Margaret, at how he himself had been made to doubt her, he added the words of contempt that only he, Margaret and Obadiah understood: “Biter.”
Without waiting to be told what to do, he walked to the back of the court.
Long before the boy had finished, Forest had seen what to do. After this, the Jew, too, might speak. He could see trouble ahead – it must all be stopped.
He beckoned Obadiah and Hopkins to approach him.
“Withdraw this matter.” He looked at Hopkins. “This case will not work in Sarum.”
Hopkins nodded. He had no wish to spoil his cause. There were plenty of witches elsewhere. Obadiah said nothing and was ignored.
“The complaint is withdrawn,” Forest calmly announced to the crowd, and moved swiftly on to other business.
There was a happy reunion at the farm between Samuel Shockley and Margaret that afternoon.
But to Samuel’s surprise, a week later, it was Margaret who insisted he return to the Forests.
“Come and see me here, Samuel,” she told him. “But it is time, now, that you learned to be a scholar.”
Aaron the Jew left Wilton for Southampton soon afterwards. As he took the road from Wilton, he met Sir Henry Forest, who looked at him cautiously.
Aaron was wise. He looked down and did not meet Sir Henry’s eye.
1688:
DECEMBER
DECEMBER
Doctor Samuel Shockley stepped over the watercourse in New Street, which still stank despite the cold weather, and made his way swiftly towards the close.
Today was a great day; today England was having a revolution and in a few hours he would meet the man who would soon be the new king.
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