Scarlet Widow (27 page)

‘So what do you think affected those fish?’ he asked her, dully, almost as if he didn’t really want to know.

‘I’m not at all sure, Francis. There was white foam on the surface of the pond, but I don’t know what could have caused it. But of one thing I am practically certain. Those hoof prints were created by some human artifice, not by any kind of creature.’

Francis didn’t say anything, but tore off a piece of bread and dipped it into his bowl and waited for her to continue.

Beatrice said, ‘The substance that they are composed of is not a natural secretion. It does have civet oil blended in with it, which is natural. It comes from the glands of civet cats. There used to be a perfumier in our street in London and he used it to make scents.’

‘Go on.’

‘So far as I can tell from the odour, the hoof prints and the two crosses are a concoction of coal tar, cloves, civet oil, sulphur and some other ingredients, possibly molasses. I think that it’s been deliberately mixed to make it smell like something from hell.’

‘But, Bea,’ said Francis, ‘even if it wasn’t naturally secreted by the demon itself, could it not still have originated in the underworld?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you and I trample through mud, we leave muddy tracks across the floor, don’t we? If a demon has been trampling through the mires of hell before it enters
our
world, would its hooves not leave traces of whatever those mires are composed of? Remember that when Satan was cast out of heaven he was thrown into a lake of burning sulphur, and where else would that lake have been, except in hell? And what is the purpose of perfume, except to arouse our lust?’

‘Francis, the hoof prints were far too evenly spaced out to have been those of a living creature. Each of them was almost exactly a yard apart, with no sign of hesitation whatsoever.’

‘Yes, but we are not talking about a horse or a goat here, Bea, we are talking about a
demon
, and who can say how a demon may run?’

Beatrice took hold of his hand again and squeezed it. ‘Why you are so determined to ascribe all of these incidents to Satan? Surely it is much more likely that some member of our community is working mischief?’

‘It
must
be Satan, Bea, because his motive is so obvious! He wants to dispossess us of our farms and fields so that we leave New Hampshire and take our faith with us. He wants to reclaim this land for heathens. But that –
that
I can fight against, with prayer and with the help of God.’

‘Supposing, though, it
isn’t
Satan. Supposing it’s somebody from the village?’

‘Why should anybody from our village wish to commit such terrible acts? What could they possibly want? I’m even beginning to doubt that the Widow Belknap is in any way involved. Surely she can’t feel so slighted that she would murder a baby and set men on fire?’

Beatrice didn’t know what to say. She had never felt so torn in her life. She was devoted to Francis and she believed implicitly in God, but she couldn’t ignore what she had clearly seen for herself. Her father had always said: God gave you eyes to observe and a nose to smell and a tongue to taste. Trust the senses that God gave you, because they will always tell you the truth.

*

After she had dressed in her nightgown, Beatrice went into Noah’s little bedchamber and stood beside his crib watching him sleep.
My precious, only child
, she thought.
If there is a demon abroad, please may God protect you from it
.

She was still standing there when Francis came in and put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek.

‘I will go first to Ebenezer Rowlandson’s tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘If you care to, I will take you into the village so that you can visit Judith Buckley. Perhaps you could also go to the meeting house and see if Peter Duston has finished raising the bench at the back.’

‘What about buying new pigs?’

‘We should have time to go to Londonderry afterwards. If not, we will have to go on Friday. But I need to see how Ebenezer’s fish are faring. I have a bad feeling about them. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems to me as if it’s a deliberate mockery of the feeding of the five thousand. Instead of five thousand people being fed, five thousand fish are dying, or maybe are already dead.’

‘Francis, don’t let your fancy run away with you.’

‘I’m trying not to, my dearest, but everything that has been happening seems to be some travesty of Christian belief. The pigs in that Devil’s Communion, and Henry Mendum’s cows arranged as a pentacle, and those three slaves hanging as if they had been crucified…’

*

It was still dark when Beatrice woke up the following morning. She sat up to find that Francis had already got out bed and was dressing.

‘Did you sleep?’ she asked him.

‘A little,’ he told her. His nose sounded blocked up. Then, ‘Not much, frankly. Hardly at all. I am finding that this is all very stressful.’

In the kitchen Beatrice poured them each a mug of cider and spread some muffins thickly with butter. They hardly spoke at all while they ate and drank, and Beatrice could see that Francis kept drumming his fingers on the table.

By the time they had finished their breakfast it was growing light and Mary arrived to take care of Noah. Francis and Beatrice climbed into their shay shortly after six o’clock and headed towards the village. The grass was glittering with dew but it was warm already and Beatrice could tell that it was going to become very hot later.

Francis stopped outside the Buckley house and Beatrice climbed down. As she did so, Judith Buckley came out of her front door to beat one of her mats.

‘Good morning, Judith!’ Francis called out to her. ‘Any news of Nicholas yet?’

Judith shook her head.

‘I have to go to the Rowlandson farm,’ Francis told her. ‘Afterwards, though, I will come and see what we can do about raising some men to look for him. I know that Constable Jewkes has talked to you about it.’

‘Huh!’ said Judith, turning to Beatrice with undisguised bitterness. ‘The only thing that Constable Jewkes can ever find is the stopper in a wine bottle.’

Uriel jerked forward and Francis almost lost his balance. The village horse-trough was only five yards away and Uriel was sweating and must have been thirsty. Francis let him amble forward until he reached the trough, but when he got there Uriel abruptly reared his head away and snorted.

‘Go on, boy!’ Francis coaxed him. ‘Don’t you want a drink after all?’

But Uriel not only turned his head away, he started to shuffle backwards, away from the trough, causing the shay to back up and swing around so that its wheels bumped into the hard-baked muddy ridges at the side of the grass.

‘Uriel! Calm, boy! Calm! What’s the matter with you?’

Francis pulled at Uriel’s reins to bring him under control and then stood up in his seat and peered towards the trough to see what might have unsettled him so much.

‘There’s something in there,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Beatrice. ‘What is it?’

She picked up the hem of her gown and walked across to the horse-trough. It was hewn out of rough local granite, at least ten feet long and four feet wide, with a pump at one end. Even before she reached it she could see that there was more than water in it. It looked as if it somebody had filled it with sticks and wet grey rags.

It was only when she came up close that she realized what was lying in it, and even then it took her a few seconds to get over the shock The trough was nearly full, but not with water. Instead it was brimming with a pale yellow effervescent liquid from which an eye-stinging vapour was rising. It was the same colour as cider when it was fermenting, and it made the same singing sound, but when Beatrice breathed it in it burned her sinuses and the back of her throat and made her cough.

At one end of the trough, under the pump, a human skull was floating, eyeless and mostly fleshless, except for a few stray clumps of long brown hair. It was grinning, as if it had just been told some macabre joke. Next to it, a bony ribcage was protruding, draped with the sodden tatters of a Holland shirt. Below that, Beatrice could see a half-submerged pelvis beneath the surface, like a white basin in which the victim’s bowels were simmering and bubbling as pale as porridge. Two thigh-bones were still tenuously joined to the pelvis by tendons and strings of connective tissue, although the shin-bones were no longer attached to the knees. At the other end of the trough two half-dissolved shoes were sticking up at right angles, each adorned with a shiny silver buckle.

‘Beatrice! Bea?’

Francis climbed down from the shay. A young boy was running across the green bowling a hoop and Francis called him over to hold Uriel’s reins for him. Then he came and joined Beatrice at the side of the horse-trough.

‘Good God in heaven,’ he said, pressing his hand over his mouth. ‘It’s a man, isn’t it? It’s a man!’

‘Don’t stand too close,’ said Beatrice, catching his sleeve and pulling him back. ‘That isn’t water. I’m quite sure that it’s concentrated oil of vitriol. If you breathe it in, it could scorch your lungs beyond healing.’

‘He’s
melted
,’ said Francis. ‘Look at him, he’s actually
melted
!’

‘That’s what oil of vitriol can do to you,’ Beatrice told him. She found it hard to catch her breath and her voice was shaking. ‘Look – see how bright his shoe-buckles are! Jewellers use oil of vitriol for cleaning silver.’

Francis peered at the buckles and then he said, ‘Oh, God. Those are Nicholas Buckley’s. I’d recognize them anywhere.’ He quickly turned around to see if Judith was coming over, and sure enough she was.

‘Judith !’ he said, stepping in front of her with both arms spread wide. ‘This is something that you shouldn’t see.’

‘Why not?’ she demanded, trying to circle round him. ‘What is it?

Beatrice went up to her, too. ‘We think it may be your Nicholas.’

‘What, drowned? Drowned in the horse-trough? How can that be? I want to see him! How can he be drowned in the horse-trough?’

‘It’s worse than drowned,’ said Beatrice. ‘Francis is right. You really shouldn’t see. You don’t want to remember him like this for the rest of your days.’

‘I’m not a child!’ snapped Judith. She sidestepped both of them and went right up to the side of the trough.

There was a long moment when she simply stood there, her arms straight down by her sides, staring at him. Then, very gradually, with a thin whine like air leaking out of a bladder, she sank to her knees on to the ground and bent her head forward. Beatrice went over to her and laid her hands on her shoulders.

‘What’s happened to him?’ said Judith. The acid fumes were irritating the back of her throat so that she spoke in a croak. She turned around and looked up at Beatrice and said, ‘
What’s happened to him
?’

‘Judith – it’s too terrible for words.’

‘
Tell me
!
What’s happened to him
!’

Beatrice took a deep breath. ‘It looks as if somebody has plunged Nicholas into concentrated oil of vitriol. It is very caustic and can dissolve almost everything organic.’

‘
Alive
?’ Judith demanded. ‘Did they do it while he was alive?’

‘There really is no way of telling. I would pray not.’

Judith held out her hand and Beatrice helped her back on to her feet. She didn’t look around at the horse-trough again but she pointed with a stiff trembling finger towards the Widow Belknap’s house.

‘It was her, wasn’t it?
She
did it!’

‘Judith, we have no way of knowing
who
did it, not yet!’

‘It was her! It must have been her!’ Judith’s voice was rising into hoarse, breathless yelps. ‘When Nicholas went to accuse her of killing our poor little Tristram – what did she say to him? She said that she would turn him into broth, didn’t she? Boil his bones and turn him into
broth
! And that’s exactly what she’s done, the witch! She should be locked up
now
! She should be burned!’

‘Judith, you have to ask yourself how one woman could have done such a thing unaided.’

‘Who says she was unaided? She had Satan to help her, or a demon, or one of her familiars! Who knows what that black bird of hers turns into, after dark? A man as black as a shadow, I shouldn’t wonder! She’s a witch! She can cast all manner of evil spells!’

‘Let me take you back inside,’ said Beatrice. ‘You need to sit down and calm yourself. Francis will call for Constable Jewkes, won’t you, Francis? And we must find some way of removing those remains.’

Beatrice was trying to stay calm and controlled, but when she looked back at Nicholas Buckley’s dissolving body lying in the horse-trough her stomach tightened and her mouth was flooded with bile. It was all she could do to stop herself from retching. Judith was right: whoever was guilty of killing Nicholas, Satan or sinner, they
had
turned him into broth.

As she led Judith back to her house, with one arm around her, she heard carriage wheels. She looked up across the village green and saw Jonathan Shooks’s calash driving past with its black top raised, very fast, so that it raised a high cloud of tan-coloured dust behind it. It was heading in the direction of Penacook, which was where Jonathan Shooks was staying, but the same road led to Ebenezer Rowlandson’s farm, too.

Constable Jewkes arrived. Although it was so early in the morning he smelled strongly of wine and when he saw Nicholas Buckley’s remains in the horse-trough he promptly vomited on to the grass.

He was still sniffing and wiping his mouth with his cravat when he came into Judith’s parlour, where she was sitting with Apphia in her lap. Beatrice was sitting close beside her: she had promised to stay with Judith and comfort her for as long as she needed her. Buying fresh pigs could wait until tomorrow, or another day.

‘What ungodly thing has befallen your husband, Goody Buckley?’ blurted out Constable Jewkes. ‘I never saw the like of it! He looks like a storm-smashed row-boat, rather than a man!’