Scarlet Widow (22 page)

‘Before this happened, did you see any strangers near the barn?’

Nathaniel shook his head. ‘I was working too hard, Goody Scarlet, bent over, planting potatoes. If the Angel Gabriel himself had flown right over my head, I wouldn’t have noticed him.’

*

The Gilman farm lay across a sloping valley, with maple woods on the north-west side and a shallow river meandering down the middle of it. The farmhouse and all the other outbuildings were halfway up a hill in the north-east corner where the ground began to rise towards Henry Mendum’s property.

As they jolted down the narrow stony path, Beatrice could see that hazy grey smoke was still drifting out of one of the barn’s doorways. Apart from black soot smudges above its side windows, however, like devilish eyebrows, the building didn’t appear to have been extensively damaged.

They arrived in the yard, where George and Elizabeth Gilman were gathered with the rest of their sons and most of their farm-workers and slaves. These included three African women, one of whom was wailing uncontrollably and beating herself with her fists, and four or five African children. The other two African women stood silent, but they both looked miserable and bewildered and their cheeks were streaked with tears.

‘What, no reverend?’ said George Gilman, stepping forward to help Beatrice climb out of the carriage. ‘You are very welcome here, Goody Scarlet, but it is your husband that I have urgent need of, rather than yourself.’

Unlike his sons, George Gilman was a slight, wiry man, with a beaky nose and a shock of grey hair. He was never still, however, and endless hard work had made him very prosperous. He reminded Beatrice of one of those clockwork figures that continually rushes around from one side of the room to the other, and she always thought he ought to have a key sticking out of his back.

‘Nathaniel,’ said Beatrice, ‘if you would be so good as to go up to Mr Mendum’s farm, you should find the reverend there.’

George Gilman flapped his hand at Nathaniel to indicate that he should go and then said to Beatrice, ‘Has Nat told you what’s happened here?’

Beatrice nodded. The stench of charred wet hay was making her eyes water, but she was glad that it was strong enough to mask the smell of cremated human flesh.

‘He said that some of your slaves have been burned. And a cross painted on to the wall, upside down. There was a cross painted like that on the wall of the Buckley children’s bedchamber when they were taken ill.’

‘We heard about that, of course,’ said Elizabeth Gilman. She was just as small and sharp-featured as her husband and it seemed almost impossible to Beatrice that she had given birth to so many strapping sons. ‘It’s the Devil walking among us, no question of that. Either the Devil himself or one of his disciples, naming no names.’

‘First it was your pigs, Goody Scarlet,’ said George Gilman, counting them off on his fingers. ‘Then it was Henry’s Devons. Then the Buckley children. Now our poor slaves. But we heard how the reverend’s prayers saved the Buckley children’s lives.’

Beatrice said, ‘Yes, I’m sure that his prayers are helping their recovery, but—’

‘What else could it be? It’s the power of prayer. It’s too late to save our unfortunate slaves. But I am very much hoping that the reverend will be able to call on the Lord to protect the rest of my family, and our livestock, and all of our remaining slaves. It will be very costly to replace them if I lose any more. Two hundred pounds each, at the very least. More, if their teeth are good.’

‘How were your slaves burned?’ asked Beatrice. ‘Nathaniel told me that one of them has survived. Is he able to talk?’

‘Quamino? No, he is being tended to, but he is still unconscious. Whether he will last much longer is anybody’s guess. I can show you those who died. We still haven’t cut them down yet. I thought it was essential for the reverend to see them
in situ
, as it were.’

‘George!’ said Elizabeth Gilman, ‘I don’t think that Goody Scarlet will thank you for showing her. You will give her bad dreams.’

‘Well, yes, of course, you’re right, my dear. Goody Scarlet, why don’t you and Elizabeth go into the house and take some tea while we’re waiting for the pastor to appear?’

Beatrice stayed where she was. ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Gilman, I would very much like to see your dead slaves.’

‘I warn you, it’s not a pleasant sight. Elizabeth’s quite correct. I shouldn’t even have suggested it.’

‘Thank you for warning me. But I have mentioned to you before, have I not, that my father was an apothecary in the City of London? I have seen every kind of disease and injury that you could imagine, and many that you wouldn’t want to imagine, including some truly terrible burns. It takes a lot to turn my stomach, believe me.’

‘Well... very well. But if the Reverend Scarlet berates me for it, you will have to tell him that you twisted my arm.’

‘He won’t complain, sir. Honestly. My husband respects my strength as much as I admire his.’

Accompanied by two of his tousle-headed sons, Adam and Augustus, George Gilman led Beatrice into the barn. The hay was only smouldering now, but its smell was so strong that Beatrice tugged a handkerchief out of her pocket to hold over her nose and mouth.

‘I sent for Constable Jewkes, too, but so far there’s no sign of him,’ said George Gilman over his shoulder. ‘I think we can all guess why that is.’

Beatrice didn’t answer. She knew that Constable Jewkes would probably be drunk, even though it was early afternoon, but she didn’t want to say anything uncharitable.

George Gilman stopped in the middle of the barn. Bales of hay were stacked high on three sides, but it was mostly the hay on the left-hand side that had been scorched black, nearly to the roof. It was still sullenly smoking, although George Gilman and his sons must have thrown scores of bucketfuls of water over it, because it was sodden. The discarded buckets were still lying scattered around on the floor.

George Gilman touched Beatrice’s arm and said, ‘There,’ and pointed upwards. Beatrice lifted her eyes and directly above her she saw the three burned slaves. They were suspended among the rafters by ropes, almost twenty-five feet up. All three of them had their arms spread out wide as if they were flying, and they were lashed to rake handles to keep them that way.

They were all naked, but they had been charred so badly that their skin was hanging in tatters, so that they looked as if they were wearing ragged black clothes. Underneath the tatters their flesh was scarlet and raw. Their legs were drawn up under them, with their knees bent, but Beatrice knew that this was only because the heat had made their tendons shrink. She had once seen the victims of a fire on a coal barge on the Thames and they, too, had all been crouching in this monkey-like posture.

The slaves’ mouths were stretched wide open, baring their brown and yellow teeth, and their ash-grey tongues were hanging out. Their eyes were open, too, but the pupils had turned milky-white because they had cooked.

George Gilman pointed to a star-shaped scorch mark on the floor. ‘Quamino wasn’t strung up, like those three. He was kneeling right there, with his hands together like he was praying, although he was all bound up with rope so that he couldn’t move. He was on fire, too, but of course we were able to throw water over him because he was down on the ground, within reach. The other three... they didn’t stand a dog’s chance.’

He looked up again. ‘I think you can understand why I wanted the reverend to see these poor fellows before I brought my ladders and cut them down. It’s my belief that they were strung up like this on purpose. A blatant act of blasphemy, that’s my belief. And that’s why I’m sure the Devil did it, or one of the Devil’s disciples.’

Beatrice stared at the three black figures with their arms stretched out wide. ‘It looks like the Crucifixion, doesn’t it? Jesus and the two thieves, on crosses, with one disciple kneeling and praying in front of them.’

‘Exactly!’ said George Gilman. ‘That’s the way I see it, anyhow. I believe the Devil has deliberately done it to mock our Redeemer, right at the very moment of His Redemption!’

George Gilman was so agitated that he jerked his arms this way and that, and paced around in circles, and kept taking his wig off and putting it back on again. He was one of the more fervent members of the Sutton congregation and he often helped Francis to organize prayer meetings and Bible study groups, as well as giving readings from the Psalms every Sunday.

‘Your poor slaves,’ said Beatrice. ‘They must have gone through such agony!’

‘Yes, indeed, I’m perfectly sure that they did! But the Devil has done much more than burn four undeserving slaves. He has put the torch to everything that our faith means to us! I don’t think there’s any mistake about it, Goody Scarlet! The rascal is trying to hound all of us God-fearing folk out of Sutton, maybe out of New Hampshire altogether, or at the very least he’s trying to make us renounce our religion.’

‘Nathaniel mentioned an upside-down cross.’

‘Ah, yes, the cross! As if we needed any more proof!’ George Gilman stalked across to the opposite side of the barn, where the doors were closed. Daubed on the raw pine planking was a cross, inverted like the cross in the Buckley house, but painted much larger, nearly three feet high, with much thicker tar.

Beatrice went up close to it and sniffed it. It smelled the same as the Devil’s hoof prints, of cloves and coal tar and civet oil and sulphur and molasses. If there was any difference, it smelled a little more sulphurous.

‘You see?’ said George Gilman. ‘We’re dealing with the Devil and there’s your evidence.’

Beatrice looked back up at the three burned bodies, spinning very slowly among the rafters with their knees half-bent and their arms outstretched.
No
, she thought,
we’re not dealing with the Devil. I almost wish we were, and that Francis could exorcize him with prayer
.

We’re dealing with somebody very much more inventive than the Devil
,
and more evil, too. The Devil is evil by his very nature, whereas this person has chosen to be evil
.

*

Francis arrived about forty minutes later. By the time Nathaniel Gilman had reached Henry Mendum’s farm, he had already left it and ridden their new horse to Rodney Bartlett, the farrier, to be re-shod.

Beatrice was sitting in the stuffy farmhouse parlour with Elizabeth Gilman. Mistress Gilman had served her tea, but she had taken only two or three sips of it. She was beginning to grow anxious because her lungwort infusion would be ready and she needed to take it to the Buckleys. She could only hope that the twins had continued to recover – whether they had been saved by Jonathan Shooks’s inch-stick remedy or by Francis’s prayers, or a combination of both.

As soon as Francis arrived George Gilman led him into the barn to see the burned slaves suspended from the rafters. They spent more than ten minutes in there while Beatrice and Elizabeth waited for them in silence, their tea growing cold. When he came into the parlour Francis looked shocked and confused, and he immediately came over and took hold of Beatrice’s hand.

‘
You
saw them, too?’ he asked her. ‘You shouldn’t have done, my dearest. It was too dreadful for words.’

‘I’m all right, Francis, really,’ said Beatrice. ‘I saw far worse in London when I was a child.’

‘Dear God, it’s hard to imagine anything worse than those three poor wretches!’

Francis turned to George Gilman. ‘Has anybody threatened you, George, or made demands?’ he asked. ‘I can’t think why anybody should have tried to intimidate you like this.’

‘Isn’t it enough that my faith has been mocked?’ George Gilman demanded. ‘My faith is all I have! I came to America because of my faith! I married Elizabeth and raised a family because of my faith! Here, in my prosperity, is the proof of my faith! Every breath that I have ever taken has been in the service of God, and what has the Devil done to me this day? He has tried to burn my belief to ashes!’

The long-case clock in the hallway chimed four and Beatrice said, ‘I need to get back home, Francis, if Nathaniel will be good enough to take me. Will you stay here, or will you come with me?’

‘I will remain here for a while,’ said Francis. ‘I can help George to bring down the bodies and prepare them for burial. They may have only been slaves, but they were still God’s creatures and they deserve my prayers.’

Elizabeth took Beatrice by the hands. ‘Thank you for coming, Beatrice. I’m sorry that it was under such dreadful circumstances.’

Beatrice wrapped her linen shawl around her shoulders and went outside. She was climbing up on to Nathaniel’s wagon when young Augustus Gilman appeared round the side of the house. ‘Father? It’s Quamino. He has just this minute passed away.’

Beatrice stepped down again. ‘I would like to see him, if I may.’

‘Bea – do you think that’s wise?’ asked Francis. ‘Haven’t you seen enough horrors for one day?’

‘Francis, if I am to help you to fight this evil, whatever it is, I need to look it in the face.’

Francis said nothing, but looked across at George Gilman, who simply shrugged and said, ‘Lead on, Augustus.’

Augustus took them round the house and across a red-brick yard to the stables. Behind the stables, with their own small gardens, there was a row of cottages where the Gilman’s nine slaves lived, with their wives and children. Most of them were standing outside the cottage at the farthest end of the row, sobbing and wailing.

A young woman in a black headscarf and a plain grey cotton dress was standing inside the open door of the cottage, with three small children clinging around her. She hadn’t been crying, but Beatrice thought that she had never seen anybody looking so bereft.

‘This is Quamino’s wife, Sally,’ said Augustus. ‘Quamino is right inside here.’

Inside the cottage there was only a single room with three wooden chairs and a table and a wide bed under the window. Quamino was lying on the bed covered by a blood-patterned sheet. His face was puffed up with yellowish blisters and his hair had been burned to crisp white ash.