Scarlet Widow (20 page)

In the Buckley twins’ bedchamber they found Judith holding Apphia in her arms, while Tristram was still in his crib. Both children were flushed, with reddened cheeks, but they were awake and they looked much better, even if they did appear bewildered by all the people crowded around them.

Nicholas came away from the side of Tristram’s crib. He grasped Francis’s hands and shook them as if he were never going to let him go. His eyes were filled with tears.

‘The Lord has answered you, Reverend Scarlet! I don’t know how I can thank you! Look at them both! They have both taken milk and Apphia has even managed a spoonful or two of apple sauce.’

Beatrice took Apphia in her arms. She was hot and sticky, and she smelled of sick, but she looked up at Beatrice and gave her a bashful smile.

‘Do you think that Mr Shooks’s remedy helped at all?’ she asked Nicholas.

Nicholas shook his head. ‘I don’t see how. He made a drink of inch-sticks dropped into hot water! How could that cure anybody? But there is plenty of proof in the Bible that people can be cured by the power of prayer. Apart from
your
prayers, reverend, Judith and I prayed almost all night.’

‘Well, we’re delighted that Apphia and Tristram seem to be so much improved,’ said Francis. ‘I will say another prayer for their complete recovery.’

Beatrice smiled and handed Apphia back to Judith. As she turned around to leave, though, Jonathan Shooks appeared in the doorway. His wig was dusty and his face looked drawn, as if he had just returned from a long and arduous journey. He looked quickly around the room and his eyes fixed almost immediately on Beatrice.

‘Mr Shooks!’ said Nicholas. ‘I am very pleased to see you, sir!’

Beatrice thought that Nicholas didn’t sound pleased to see him at all. He spoke in quick, nervous blurts and as he spoke he continuously wrung his hands together.

‘How are the children this morning?’ asked Jonathan Shooks. ‘They appear to be much more lively.’

‘Yes, well, much better, thank you,’ said Nicholas. ‘It seems that the Lord has answered our appeals.’

Jonathan Shooks went over to Tristram’s crib. He placed his hand for a moment against Tristram’s forehead and said, ‘
Hmmm
.’ Then he went over to Judith and held his hand against Apphia’s forehead, too.

‘Good,’ he nodded. Then he lifted up his brown leather satchel and said, ‘I’ve brought more Chinese inch-sticks. If you would be kind enough to ask your girl to boil some water for me, Goody Buckley?’

‘As I say, sir, we thank you for your concern,’ put in Nicholas.

‘But?’ said Jonathan Shooks. He paused in the middle of unbuckling his satchel. ‘I sense a qualification, sir.’

‘Yes, you do. I – we, my wife and myself, that is – we don’t think that any more of your remedy will be necessary.’

Jonathan Shooks frowned. ‘Your twins
are
improving, sir, there’s no doubt of that. But the cause of their improvement is the infusion that I gave them, which is gradually flushing out their lungs. They are both still feverish, though, and their breathing is still laboured. They have some way to go before we can consider them fully restored to good health.’

‘You believe that they need further doses of your inch-stick water, Mr Shooks?’ Beatrice asked him.

‘Of course. You can all see for yourselves how effective it has been. But they are not well yet and it would be folly to stop the treatment now.’

‘Well, you
would
of course say that, under the circumstances,’ said Nicholas.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Buckley?’ replied Jonathan Shooks. ‘I’m not at all sure that I follow you. Why would I say such a thing if it didn’t happen to be true?’

Nicholas turned to appeal to Judith. ‘I’ve been turning this over in my mind all night, when I wasn’t praying for the twins to recover. I think that I am being played for a fool and that Mr Shooks here has taken advantage of our babies’ sickness to deceive me.’

‘My dear sir, why should I deceive you?’ asked Jonathan Shooks. ‘To what possible end? Your children’s lives are at a stake here – these twins. Surely their survival is priceless.’

‘Yes, it is. Priceless. That is why the Reverend Scarlet asked for nothing from me, saving my trust in God.’

‘So you believe that I am gulling you, sir? Is that it?’

Nicholas was so emotional that he couldn’t speak, only press his lips tightly together and furiously nod his head. Judith laid one hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Nicholas? I don’t understand, either. Even if it
was
the prayers that worked, and not the water, how is Mr Shooks deceiving us?’

‘The inch-stick water
does
work,’ said Jonathan Shooks. ‘Believe me, Goody Buckley, if I had not given your twins my infusion, they would never have lasted the night. We would be arranging two funerals this morning, not arguing about the merits of further treatment.’

‘And the reverend’s prayers had no effect, I suppose?’ Nicholas challenged him.

‘I hold nothing against prayer, sir,’ said Jonathan Shooks. ‘Prayer can be very beneficial when you feel that you have nowhere else to turn. But in this case, you and your goodwife
did
have somewhere to turn. You could turn to me, and my wider knowledge of the unfamiliar guises in which Satan and his attendant demons can appear in foreign lands. And, of course, how to dismiss such demons.’

‘For which I had to pledge you twenty acres of land,’ said Nicholas.

‘
What
?’ said Judith. ‘What do you mean? Twenty acres of land is more than half of all we own!’

Jonathan Shooks raised both hands, as if he were surrendering. ‘Yes, Goody Buckley. I
did
ask your husband for twenty acres of land. The demons who have made your children so sick would accept no less. I think you can count yourself lucky that they didn’t demand every single daywork.’

‘These demons wanted
land
?’ asked Francis sharply.

‘Why should that surprise you?’ asked Jonathan Shooks. ‘Come along, reverend, you and I talked about this before. Satan is trying his best to repossess this country before you can spread the Christian religion too widely and the demons who infected these unfortunate children were acting on his behalf. They were probably using some misguided human agent, as you said yourself.’

‘Yes, the Widow Belknap,’ said Goody Rust from the hallway.

‘Something similar has happened in many European countries,’ Jonathan Shooks went on. ‘In Poznań, in Poland, Satan was so alarmed at the number of churches being built that he sent demons to lift up a hill and drop it into the river Warta so that the whole city would be drowned. Fortunately, the demons were surprised by a rooster crowing and the hill landed in the middle of a wood. But the hill is still there today. I have seen it for myself.’

‘So what are their names, these demons, and what do they look like?’ asked Francis.

Jonathan Shooks put his fingertip to his lips. ‘It would be very unwise of me to utter their names now, Reverend Scarlet. Not here, with these children present. If the demons hear their names, they may very well think that they are being summoned back here, and the consequence of that could be fatal. I promise that I will tell you later, in private, and also how you may recognize them when you see them. Which, believe me, you will. Satan has not finished with Sutton yet.’

Nicholas said, ‘I believe in Satan, Mr Shooks. But I also still believe that you took advantage of me in a moment of great weakness. What will happen to my twenty acres if I make them over to you? Will the demons farm it? Or will
you
? Or will you sell it for a profit?’

Jonathan Shooks gave him a thin, humourless smile. ‘I regret to say that what happens to your land will no longer be your business, sir. I have done what you begged me to do, which was to bring back your two beloved children from the very edge of their open graves. I made it patently clear to you that twenty acres was my price for doing it, and that I could not do it otherwise.’

Tristram began to cough and to whine for breath. Judith lifted him out of his crib and called out, ‘Jane, please put a kettle on to boil!’

Nicholas, however, said, ‘No, Jane, don’t! These children don’t need water with burned-out sticks in it. They need prayer.’

Jonathan Shooks turned to Beatrice. She had never seen such a complicated expression on a man’s face before. He didn’t say anything to her, but he was staring at her intently, his eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to transmit his thoughts directly into her brain. She thought that he looked anxious, but at the same time he looked frustrated, too. She felt that he wanted her to explain to Nicholas that he was making a very serious misjudgement and that unless he changed his mind his twins were in imminent danger of dying. Two precious lives, for the sake of what? A few acres of cornfield?

‘Mr Shooks?’ she asked him. He stared at her a moment longer, but he still didn’t say anything to her. He gave a slight shake of his head and then turned away.

She was deeply puzzled. Why should Jonathan Shooks think that
she
could have any influence on Nicholas, out of everybody here? Perhaps he had somehow discovered that she was well acquainted with medical remedies and that she would know that his ‘inch-stick water’ actually worked? In truth, she had never come across it before and had no idea whether it might be effective or not. Even if it were, and even if she were sure of it, it wouldn’t be easy for her to tell Nicholas that it wasn’t Francis’s prayer that had saved his children. Not in front of Francis, anyhow. His confidence had been shaken more than enough by Jonathan Shooks.

‘You’re adamant, Mr Buckley?’ asked Jonathan Shooks.

‘Yes,’ said Nicholas.

‘Well, to put it kindly, I think you’re a fool. I sincerely hope that your twins survive without further treatment. If they do, however, I shall still come looking for my recompense because it was my ministration that saved them.’

‘You can come looking all you like, Mr Shooks. I have spent all of my life working those acres and I will not be tricked out of them.’

Judith started to cry again – deep, painful sobs. Beatrice went over and held her very close.

‘Shush,’ she whispered. ‘Shush.’

‘They’re going to die, aren’t they?’ wept Judith. ‘My poor, dear babies! They’re going to die!’

‘Shush,’ Beatrice soothed her, and then, very close to her ear, while everybody else in the house was talking loudly, she said, ‘I’ll come back this afternoon with something to help Apphia and Tristram get better. Don’t tell Nicholas, though. Don’t tell anybody.’

She glanced across at Francis, who gave her a hesitant, uncomprehending smile.

‘Don’t even tell God,’ she whispered.

Young Ambrose Cutler drove Beatrice home on his wagon, but Francis stayed in the village to visit Major General Holyoke and discuss the forthcoming court cases.

That afternoon, Francis had been invited to go to Henry Mendum’s stables to choose a replacement for Kingdom. After he had heard about Kingdom’s death, Henry Mendum had sent a message to Francis saying that, among other horses, he had a strong three-year-old bay that would make an excellent driver and that he could let him have it for £7 instead of £9, which it was probably worth.

Jonathan Shooks had stalked out of the Buckley house without saying another word and Samuel had driven him away immediately. Because of that, Beatrice hadn’t had the opportunity to ask him if it was
he who had sent her that bottle of Queen Margot’s Perfume. She had no fear of asking him, although she wasn’t at all sure what she would have said if he had admitted that, yes, that it
had
been him. Would she have dared to ask what he expected in return – if anything?

As Ambrose circled the wagon around to make their way back to the parsonage, Beatrice saw that the Widow Belknap was leaning over her front fence, with her black parrot, Magic, perched on the gatepost beside her. She was wearing a brick-red dress with a matching bonnet, and was smoking a clay pipe.

‘Do you mind turning down that way, Ambrose?’ she asked him. ‘I want to have a word with Widow Belknap.’

Ambrose turned the wagon around again and drew it to a halt outside the Widow Belknap’s house. The Widow Belknap blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth and said, ‘Well! Good day to you, Goody Scarlet! You’ve been to visit the Buckley babies, I presume? How are they?’

‘Better, for the time being, anyhow,’ said Beatrice. ‘Unlike our horse, Kingdom, who died yesterday, not long after we had stopped here to talk to you.’

The Widow Belknap took another puff at her pipe. ‘I heard about that, yes. Very unfortunate.’ She paused for a moment, and then she said, ‘You don’t blame
me
for it, do you? You and that holy husband of yours?’

‘We don’t know
what
caused his death, Widow Belknap. Not yet, anyhow.’

‘Well, don’t worry, you can blame me if you like! Everybody in Sutton blames me for every misfortune that befalls them, great or small, and I’m really quite used to it. In fact, the more my neighbours fear me, the more they stay out of my business and leave me alone, which is just the way I like it.’

‘Please – I am not accusing you of anything,’ said Beatrice. ‘But I shall be trying to discover why it was that poor Kingdom died so suddenly, and if I
do
find evidence that he was
killed with malice, I believe that I shall also find proof of who was responsible.’

‘Oh, really?’ said the Widow Belknap. ‘I don’t know how you expect to do that, Goody Scarlet, but you don’t alarm me one bit. As I say, I am quite used to being blamed. All I can say is that anybody who makes false accusations against me had better be prepared to accept the consequences. I don’t answer to the gossips of this village, nor to you, nor your saintly husband. I answer only to my own conscience and the Powers that Be.’

‘Oh, yes? And what does that mean? The Powers that Be?’

‘Whatever you take it to mean, Goody Scarlet. You’re a pastor’s wife, aren’t you? Haven’t you been reading your scriptures lately?’

‘There are powers of good mentioned in the Bible, Widow Belknap, but there are many powers of evil, too.’