Scarlet Widow (28 page)

‘
Please
, constable, try to be compassionate,’ said Beatrice. ‘Goody Buckley has seen him for herself.’

‘But he’s been
liqueficated
!’

‘Yes, he has, God rest his soul. Somehow, somebody dropped him into oil of vitriol, or poured it over him. Whether he was still alive when it was done, we will never be able to tell.’

Constable Jewkes remembered that he still had his hat on and removed it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, tucking it under his arm. ‘I was so much amazed by your husband’s condition, that’s all. You have my sympathy, Goody Buckley.’

He stood in the doorway for a moment, swaying slightly, and then he said, ‘I gather that you have been accusing the Widow Belknap for his death, which is really why I’m here.’

‘Who else it could be?’ Judith demanded, with tears in her eyes and her chin tilted up defiantly. ‘Nobody else in the village bore Nicholas a grudge of any kind, only her. He told me that she threatened to boil his bones and make him into broth – those exact words, and in front of witnesses. And surely she is the only one who would have the knowledge and the wherewithal to commit such an act. She is a
witch
, Constable Jewkes, and she should be tried for her witchcraft and face punishment according to the law.’

‘Very well, Goody Buckley,’ said Constable Jewkes. ‘Since you have brought a formal accusation against her and there are witnesses to her intention to murder, I will detain her. It’s high time the jailhouse had an airing in any event.’

He turned around and walked unsteadily back down the hallway, tripping on the front doorstep and only managing to save himself from falling by seizing the door handle. Beatrice stood up and said, ‘I think I’d better go, too. We don’t want this to turn into a pantomime.’

‘You
do
believe that the Widow Belknap killed Nicholas, don’t you?’ Judith asked her.

‘The court will have to decide that, Judith. But she did threaten him, I agree. I heard her myself.’

She left the house and walked quickly to catch up with Constable Jewkes. Francis was standing by the horse-trough while Rodney Bartlett pumped water into it, a red scarf tied tightly around his nose and mouth to save him from breathing in the fumes. It had been Beatrice’s suggestion to dilute the oil of vitriol until Nicholas Buckley’s remains could safely be lifted out. Acid and water were pouring down the sides of the trough, but fragments of clothing and human membranes were sliding down, too.

Four or five more men were gathered nearby, including William Rolfe, the shoemaker, and Peter Duston, the carpenter, who had crossed the green from the meeting house still wearing his long leather apron. It was Peter Duston who made coffins for Sutton’s deceased and usually he had two or three ready, but this morning he had none spare. Instead, Thomas Varney, the weaver, had brought over his farm wagon with two empty tea chests on it.

Beatrice quickly went over to Francis and told him that she was following Constable Jewkes to the Widow Belknap’s house.

‘Very well, my dearest. I will keep my eye on you, but I have to stay here for the moment out of respect for poor Nicholas. It will not be a pretty sight when they lift him out.’

Constable Jewkes was walking so slowly and unsteadily that Beatrice quickly caught up with him. As she did so, they were joined by Goody Rust and Georgina Varney, a tall, flaxen-haired, wide-hipped girl with upper arms like two pale hams. She was Thomas Varney’s youngest daughter, who helped Goody Rust with her scouring and her laundry. Goody Rust was clearly intent on seeing that justice was done.

They came to the Widow Belknap’s front door and Constable Jewkes knocked three times with the wolf’s-head knocker. They waited, but there was no answer, so he knocked again, much harder this time, and called out, ‘Widow Belknap! This is Constable Jewkes! Open your door!’

There was still no response, only the mournful bleating of the Widow Belknap’s goat from the side of the house.

‘Widow Belknap! Do you hear me? I order you to open up your door, in the name of the governor!’

Still no reply, so Constable Jewkes said, ‘I shall be obliged to force the door open. Goody Scarlet, if I cause any damage, will you bear witness that I had no alternative?’

He took a step back, trying to balance himself so that he could kick at the door, but before he could do so Beatrice had turned the handle and pushed it, and it silently swung wide open.

They stepped into the Widow Belknap’s parlour. Beatrice had never been invited inside the Widow Belknap’s house but it was not what she would have expected from a witch’s lair. There was a bed in the opposite corner with linen curtains embroidered with roses and a counterpane to match, and a small fireplace with a vase of wild flowers in it. Three pine chairs were arranged around a table and on the table was a plate with two slices of bread on it, one of them half-torn, and a piece of yellow cheese, and a tipped-over cup which had spilled milk across the tablecloth.

‘Widow Belknap?’ called Constable Jewkes. ‘Are you at home, Widow Belknap?’

He went through into the kitchen, which was very small and mostly taken up by the wide brick fireplace. The fire had died to grey powdery ashes, although it was still faintly warm. Above it hung an iron pot and Beatrice took a quick look inside it to see what the Widow Belknap might have been cooking. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t. The pot was filled with peas and beans which had all boiled dry, but lying on top of them was the bedraggled body of Magic, the Widow Belknap’s black parrot, its beak open and its grey eyelids closed.

‘Constable Jewkes,’ she said and beckoned him over. He peered inside the pot and the sight of the parrot seemed to sober him up on the spot. Goody Rust peeked inside it, too, and pulled a face.

‘Well, the widow’s not here, is she?’ said Constable Jewkes. ‘The bird has flown the nest. Well, not
this
bird. You know what I mean.’

‘It looks as if she might have been taken,’ said Beatrice. ‘She loved this bird, she wouldn’t have harmed it herself. And why would she leave her breakfast half-eaten, and not wipe up that milk when it was spilled? You only have to look around you to see what a careful housekeeper she is.’

‘If you ask me, she was boiling that bird as a potion to make a spell,’ said Goody Rust. ‘She hasn’t been taken. Who would want to take her?’

‘It could have been Indians,’ said Georgina. ‘My cousin Susan was kidnapped by the Abenaki when she was only twelve and we never saw her again.’

‘It’s possible, I guess,’ said Constable Jewkes. ‘But Indians haven’t taken any captives around here for two or three years now, have they? And if it
was
Indians, why did they take only her?’

‘She killed Nicholas Buckley and then made good her escape,’ said Goody Rust.

‘With her breakfast half-finished?’ asked Beatrice.

‘It could just as well have been her supper.’

Constable Jewkes looked around the kitchen and then shrugged. ‘Not much more that I can do, excepting put out the word that folks should keep their eyes peeled for any sight of her. Depending on when she left, she could be five miles away by now.’

They went back outside, just as Francis was coming up the path.

‘Where is she?’ he asked. ‘Have you not arrested her?’

‘She’s gone,’ Beatrice told him. ‘Either she was abducted or else she has flown.’

‘Well, maybe that will prove to be a mercy. If she really was Satan’s procurator, as Nicholas Buckley suspected her to be, perhaps we will see an end to all of these terrible events.’

‘Oh, poor Nicholas,’ said Beatrice. She could see that Rodney Bartlett had stopped pumping and was emptying the diluted oil of vitriol out of the horse-trough with a pail. Thomas Varney and Peter Duston were carrying between them a drooping tarpaulin, which they swung up on to the back of the wagon and then emptied with a sloppy clatter into one of the tea chests.

‘We will of course give him a decent coffin,’ said Francis. ‘I have prayed for his immortal soul, Bea, which is all I can do for him now. He was a very good man, pious and honest and hard-working. He certainly didn’t deserve to die so horribly.’

He looked up to see how high the sun had risen. ‘I must go to see Ebenezer Rowlandson now. I think we will have to leave Londonderry until tomorrow.’

Francis never showed his affection for Beatrice publicly, but at that moment Beatrice ached for him to hold her tightly in his arms, just hold her, and tell her that he loved her and cherished her.

He
might believe that Sutton would return to normality now that the Widow Belknap had disappeared, but she suspected that there was far worse to come.

*

She stayed with Judith Buckley until Francis returned from the Rowlandson farm.

‘You saw the fish?’ she asked him as they started for home.

‘Yes, I did,’ said Francis. ‘About a score of them have died, but no more than that. The remainder look quite lively.’

‘Really? When I saw them yesterday they were all in some kind of a trance. Ebenezer had no trouble in plucking one out of the water with his hand.’

‘I asked him about that, but he seemed reluctant to discuss it. In fact, I have to say that he was more than a little short with me, as if he resented my coming to see him.’

‘Why should he? You were only showing him your concern.’

‘I don’t know. But he said he was certain now that the fish had not been affected by anything satanic, but by green pond weed. It always blows in spells of very warm weather.’

Beatrice frowned at him. ‘He seemed sure when I talked to him that some demon had poisoned his pond, if not Satan himself. In fact, he said that if he had been there earlier, he was afraid that he would have met Satan face to face. Did he show you the hoof prints? They were almost exactly the same as the hoof prints at Henry Mendum’s, weren’t they?’

‘He said that you must have been mistaken.’

‘Mistaken? What did he mean by that?’

‘I could see no hoof prints on the jetty, Bea, and Ebenezer denied that there had ever been any. He said that you had probably seen the paw prints from his dog, which had been swimming in the pond just before you arrived.’

‘You
really
saw no hoof prints?’

‘None. But in any event, you said yourself that they were artificial.’

‘They may have been artificial, Francis, but they were
there
. I saw them with my own eyes. I
smelled
them. I stepped on one of them and it stained my petticoat. I can show you.’

‘Perhaps Ebenezer had them scrubbed off.’

‘But why? Why would he tell me so insistently that it was Satan who had entranced his fish but then the very next day deny it?’

‘Bea, you have constantly questioned if Satan is really among us, so are you not relieved that Ebenezer’s fish were affected by weed, rather than witchcraft? Perhaps my prayers have been answered at last and Satan has decided to leave us be. After all, the Widow Belknap has gone. Perhaps His Satanic Majesty has realized that our faith here in Sutton is too strong, and we have now seen an end to all of these horrors.’

*

When they arrived home Francis hung up his coat and went into the parlour to finish his sermon for Sunday and to write letters about what had happened to two of his fellow ministers in neighbouring parishes. Beatrice found Mary and Noah out in the yard at the back, where Mary was pulling radishes and Noah was sitting close by, solemnly eating a stick of cheese pastry with his right hand and allowing ants to run over his left hand and up his arm.

Beatrice picked up Noah and brushed the pastry crumbs and the ants from his pinafore. ‘Look at you, silly boy! They’re crawling all over you!’

Mary stood up straight and stretched her back. ‘I saw that man again, Goody Scarlet, when you were gone. The brown cloak man.’

‘Really? Where?’

‘I was going back to the kitchen to fetch Jubal and Caleb a drink and I saw him hurrying away down the driveway. He was walking very fast.’

‘Did you call out to him?’

‘No. He was too far away. And besides I was afeared to.’

Beatrice flicked an ant away from Noah’s hair. ‘There’s nothing missing, is there, from the house?’

‘I don’t know if he came into the house or not, but there was nothing stolen that I could see. There were cookies cooling on a rack in the kitchen, but none of those was gone, so I don’t think it was food he was after.’

‘Well, who can tell what he wants?’ said Beatrice. ‘I just pray that he will go away and leave us in peace. I must put my pie in the oven in any event. When you’ve finished here in the yard, can you come inside and help me with the vegetables?’

She went back into the house and gave Francis a little finger-wave as he sat writing in the parlour. She would tell him when he had finished that Mary had seen the brown hooded figure, but she didn’t want to disturb him now, especially since nothing seemed to have been stolen. Francis always laboured with great difficulty over his sermons and he didn’t like to be interrupted.

She went up to her bedchamber. As she climbed the stairs, she became aware of a sweet, strong fragrance. It grew even stronger as she reached the landing and when she entered the room she saw that a heap of wild flowers was lying on the bed, loosely tied together with a white silk ribbon. The sweet fragrance came from purple bergamot, but there were dark blue lobelias, too, and blanket flowers which looked like bright red daisies.

Beatrice slowly approached the bed, mystified. Surely Mary hadn’t picked these. If she had, she would have arranged them in vases for the parlour. Perhaps Francis had asked Mary to do it, to show her how much he loved her, but she doubted it. Although he had such romantic looks, and told her frequently how much he adored her, he had never been given to romantic gestures like this.

It was true that the flowers had been laid on
her
side of the bed, but even a stranger would have known it was hers because her nightgown was folded on the left-hand pillow.

There was no note attached – nothing to give her any clue who might have left them there. If it wasn’t Mary, then somebody had been very daring in entering their house while they were out. Trespassers were at risk of being stabbed, or beaten, or having boiling water poured over them, as Goody Buckley had once done to one of her interfering neighbours.