Scarlet Widow (31 page)

Ye mourners who in silent gloom

Bear your dear kindred to the tomb,

Grudge not when Christians go to rest,

They sleep in Jesus, and are blest.

Afterwards, as the coffins of Nicholas and Tristram were lowered into their graves, Beatrice kept looking around, shading her eyes with her hand, but there was still no sign of Francis. She went across to the Buckley house to give her condolences to Judith, and to make sure that little Apphia was still improving, but she didn’t stay for burnt wine and biscuits. She urgently needed to return home in case Francis had been hurt and had managed somehow to make his way back to the parsonage.

Hurrying back along the roadway, with her black gown lifted to help her to walk more quickly, she couldn’t stop herself imagining all kinds of horrifying scenarios. Francis covered in blood. Francis brought back home unconscious in the back of the shay, his skull broken. Francis beaten by robbers and his dead or senseless body thrown into the porch.

She even began to think that he might have been right, after all, and that Jonathan Shooks
had
been meeting with a demon, and that when Francis had followed him he had been discovered and the demon had melted him like Nicholas.

Perhaps all the time she had been too pragmatic and hadn’t allowed herself to accept that the world really was full of wonders and miracles and spirits both good and malevolent.

‘Ma-
ma
!’ called Noah, trying to keep up with her, but she only hurried all the faster.

*

When she arrived home, though, she found that Francis had still not returned. She heard squealing noises from the back of the house and when she walked round she found that the farmer from Londonderry had delivered their pigs. Caleb had already filled their trough with water and was feeding them with bran and cabbage stalks.

‘Bacon’s come, ma’am!’ he called out to her.

Beatrice walked over to the pig-pen and said, ‘Thank you, Caleb. Thank you.’

She started to ask him, ‘The Reverend Scarlet hasn’t been home, has he?’ but before she could finish her throat tightened and she started to sob. Her eyes blurred with tears and she waved her hand uselessly because she simply couldn’t speak.

Caleb dropped his pail of bran and let himself out through the gate.

‘Goody Scarlet! Goody Scarlet! Whatever’s wrong?’

‘It’s the Reverend Scarlet, Caleb,’ Beatrice managed to tell him, smearing the tears from her cheeks with her fingers. ‘He’s been missing since early this morning. He didn’t come to the Buckleys’ funerals to officiate. I have had no word from him at all.’

‘Did he tell you where he was going?’

Beatrice shook her head. ‘He said only that he was going to follow Mr Shooks, to discover what manner of business he was up to. I cautioned him not to, but he insisted and now I don’t know where he is.’

‘Well, we’d best go look for him,’ said Caleb. ‘I’ll fetch Jubal. He’s down by the brook cutting back the bushes and he has two of Mr Barraclough’s boys with him. They can go out looking, too.’

‘Thank you, Caleb. I’m worried that he might be lying hurt somewhere and needs our assistance.’

‘Did you see which direction he first went off in?’

‘Left, towards the village, but after that I don’t have any idea. Jonathan Shooks is staying at the Penacook Inn, so they might have headed that way, but he is very elusive. Like a ghost, the Reverend Scarlet called him.’

*

Jubal and Caleb and the two Barraclough boys went off to search for Francis. The Barraclough boys had come to the parsonage on one horse and they said that they would first ride back to their home-lot and saddle up another, so that they could widen their search even further. They would also try to enlist the help of as many people in the village as they could. Francis was well liked in Sutton and nobody in his congregation would wish to see any harm come to him.

Beatrice stayed at home. She knew that she would be of very little use trampling through the woods in her mourning dress. Better that she stay here, so that she could welcome Francis when he did return and tend to any injuries he might have sustained. She couldn’t get the thought out of her mind that he was badly hurt, almost as if he were trying to communicate with her by animal magnetism.

The afternoon passed and there was still no news. The sun began to sink behind the pines. Beatrice fed and washed Noah herself, even though Mary had stayed on, and she tucked him up in his crib and sang him a lullaby.

Dear God let Francis be safe
, she thought.
Don’t let Noah become a fatherless child
.

Noah cried when she left the room, but she knew that he would soon fall asleep. As she reached the bottom of the stairs she heard horses outside, and a carriage. Immediately she opened the front door to see who was out there.

‘Thank the Lord,’ she said, because it was their own shay, with Uriel pulling it. When she hurried out of the porch, however, she saw that Henry Mendum’s black stable-boy was driving it, and that Henry Mendum himself was riding beside it, still dressed in his black cocked hat and his funeral coat.

‘Goody Scarlet,’ he said, lifting his hat. He climbed down from his horse and handed the reins to his stable-boy.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked him. ‘Where’s Francis? What’s happened to him? Have you found him? Is her hurt?’

‘I regret that we haven’t yet found him, no,’ said Henry Mendum. ‘Less than an hour ago Bobbin turned up at my stables pulling your empty shay behind him. I don’t know where your husband is, Goody Scarlet, but obviously he and the shay parted company at some point, so Bobbin made his own way home.’

Beatrice laid her hand against the horse’s neck. ‘Uriel, we call him, after the archangel Uriel. Could you tell how far he might have travelled, or where he might have come from?’

‘There was steeplebush caught in the wheel spokes which caught my attention, because steeplebush grows mainly beside rivers and lakes, not close to the highway. In particular it grows around Johnson’s Pond, and that’s a good six miles off.’

‘Can you send some of your men to Johnson’s Pond, to see if Francis is anywhere nearby? I am so worried that he might be badly hurt and unable to walk.’

Henry Mendum looked towards the tall pines beyond the orchard. The sun had sunk behind them now and the evening air was whirling with bats.

‘It’s too late now, I regret. It will be so dark soon that we won’t be able to tell if our eyes are open or closed. But I promise you that I’ll have every available man out at first light tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, Mr Mendum. I understand, and I appreciate it. And I thank you, too, for bringing Uriel back.’

‘My heart is with you, Goody Scarlet,’ said Henry Mendum. ‘So soon as I have any news, I will let you know. I bid you good evening.’

With that, he heaved himself up into the saddle, turned his chestnut horse around and trotted off down the driveway, with his stable-boy trotting behind him on foot.

Mary came out and helped her to unbuckle Uriel from his traces. She led him to his paddock and opened the gate for him.

‘There, Uriel. Good boy. If only you could talk.’

*

Mary stayed the night in Noah’s bedchamber, so that as soon dawn broke Beatrice could harness Uriel again and get ready to leave for Johnson’s Pond. She knew that any search she made for Francis would probably be fruitless, but she was too agitated to remain at home any longer, constantly going outside and looking down the driveway to see if anybody was coming, or listening for the sound of horses or carriage wheels.

She had hardly slept all night, and when she had she had been woken by the trickling of rain down the window, which she had thought at first was somebody whispering very quietly in her ear.

Mary had insisted on wrapping up a small crusty loaf for her in a cloth and giving her a stone bottle of apple juice, but she felt neither hungry nor thirsty. As she drove Uriel towards the village she could see from the clouds that the weather was going to be much more disturbed today, with strange streaky clouds, and cooler, too.

There was nobody in sight around the village green as she drove past it, although she could hear clanking coming from Ronald Bartlett’s smithy. Because it had rained during the night the green smelled strongly of horse manure.

She passed by the Widow Belknap’s house, but it didn’t look as if the Widow Belknap had returned, either. Her curtains were half-drawn and her goat was gone. Either the goat had gnawed through its rope and escaped or else it had been taken into care by one of her neighbours.

The road to Johnson’s Pond wended its way northwards for a little less than five miles, almost parallel to the Merrimack river. Then it turned sharply north-east, with the forests growing denser and the ground becoming rockier. At last it sloped to the north again, sharply downhill, until it passed through a thickly wooded valley with a large dark pond in the middle of it, as black and reflective as a sheet of glass.

This was Johnson’s Pond, and as Henry Mendum had said, its banks were thick with fuzzy purple steeplebush, like the brushes that her father used to use for cleaning out bottles. Beatrice stopped the shay beside the water so that Uriel could rest and have a drink. The woods all around were dark and cool and aromatic, and every now and then the silence was interrupted by the repetitive whistling of nuthatches. She took a drink of apple juice herself and then tilted her head back and tiredly closed her eyes.

She almost nodded off to sleep for a moment, but then she heard a crackling sound, like somebody stepping on twigs, and she opened her eyes and turned her head in alarm. She gasped in surprise, because a figure in brown was stealthily creeping towards her and was less than thirty feet away.

Although it was dressed in brown, it didn’t look the same as the brown-cloaked figure she had seen around the parsonage. Its head was covered so that its face was hidden, but it was wrapped only in a blanket, rather than a cloak.

‘Who are you?’ said Beatrice, trying to sound challenging. ‘What do you want? I have no money!’

The figure came and stood beside the shay, not moving. Beatrice stared at it with her heart beating hard against her ribs – so hard that she thought the figure might be able to hear it.

Another nuthatch whistled and as it did so the figure swung its left arm so that it dropped its blanket to the ground. Beatrice jerked back in her seat, startled. The figure was the Widow Belknap, completely naked, skeletal and white-skinned except for a triangular suntanned V on her chest where she had worn her low-cut gown. Her tangled blonde hair was prickly with twigs and leaves and burrs and hung right down to her bony shoulders. Her breasts were flat and pendulous, with nipples as dark as raisins, and covered in criss-cross scratches. She had no pubic hair and her legs were as thin as broomsticks.

She stared up at Beatrice with those emerald-green eyes, although she didn’t appear to be able to focus on her, and she was swaying very slightly from side to side, as if she were being blown by the wind, though there was no wind.

‘Widow Belknap,’ said Beatrice. ‘What’s happened to you? What are you doing here in the forest? Where are your clothes? Has somebody whipped you? You look as if somebody’s whipped you!’

‘
Who
did you say I was?’ asked the Widow Belknap in a slurred voice.

‘You’re the Widow Belknap.’

‘I’m nobody of the sort. My name – my name is
Bernice
.’

‘Very well, you are Bernice. But what are you doing here, and where are your clothes? You cannot roam around here naked. I’m looking for my husband, Francis, the Reverend Scarlet. Have you seen him?’

‘I am looking for revenge. I am preparing to wreak
havoc
!’

‘Revenge against whom? And for what?’

The Widow Belknap lifted one finger and then looked around her as if she suspected that somebody might be eavesdropping.

‘Revenge for all of their slanders, every one of them. Revenge for all of their hypocrisy, especially that brown one.’

‘What “brown one”? Who are you talking about?’

‘Oh, he seems to be so upright. He seems to be so blameless. But there are devils and then there are devils. At least Satan makes no pretence about what he wants, unlike
this
devil.’

‘Who is it, Widow Belknap – I mean, Bernice? Can you tell me his name?’

The Widow Belknap frowned at her as if she didn’t understand what she was talking about. She bent over and picked up her blanket from the ground, wrapping it around her shoulders. Then she spat emphatically, and after she had done so the spit dangled from her pointed chin.

‘Who is it, Bernice?’ Beatrice repeated.

‘I haven’t finished yet,’ said the Widow Belknap. ‘
All
will suffer, I promise you! All will suffer! Goodmen, goodwives, children, babies, cattle and swine! The plagues of Egypt will be nothing to what will be visited on this community!’

‘But I still don’t understand why,’ said Beatrice. ‘If people in the village have been slandering you, you can always take them to court and have damages awarded against them. Don’t you remember Goody Sanderson, when Abigail Belling called her a “Jewess” and a “hobbling Joan”? She received five shillings for that.’

‘Goody Sanderson? Hah! She didn’t deserve it. She was never pitiful to the poor. But it isn’t money I want, Goody Scarlet. It’s a settling of scores! Call me a slut and I will be a slut, that’s vengeance for you. Call me a witch? I’ll fly down your chimney at night and choke your children!’

‘But who is this “brown one”, Bernice? And what has he done to offend you so grievously?’

The Widow Belknap raised her left arm so that her blanket half covered her face, and winked at her. Then she started to laugh – a high, screaming, hysterical laugh that made Beatrice feel as if her skin were shrinking.

She lifted her blanket high over her head and danced around in a circle, still laughing. Then, without saying anything else, she went dancing off around the side of the pond, kicking her way through the steeplebush so that their fuzzy purple flowers scattered in all directions. There was nothing that Beatrice could do except sit and watch her disappear between the trees. She could still hear her laughing when she was no longer in sight, but then there was silence again, with no birds singing.