Scarlet Widow (38 page)

She sat up. What she needed to do was to talk to all those farmers and landowners who had made over their acres to Jonathan Shooks and find out exactly which areas of land they had given away. A map of those areas might show her a pattern and give this robbery some meaning. Pieces of material were just pieces of material until a pattern made them into a petticoat.

She could almost hear her father saying to her:
Nothing in God’s universe is random, Bea. There is logic and order and reason behind everything, even if you can’t see it – and even if you
can
see it, but can’t understand it
.

For the rest of the night she was unable to sleep, and as soon as the sun came up she dressed and went downstairs. Jonathan Shooks had frightened her yesterday with his threat that she would suffer. This morning, though, she felt that she had the strength to stand up to him.

*

The first farmer she visited was George Gilman. He was standing beside a gently sloping field with his hands in his pockets watching five of his slaves and two of his sons scything down timothy grass and heaping it on to a wagon. Beatrice went over to join him. The smell of the newly cut grass made her sneeze. George Gilman turned around when he heard her.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I think I know what you’re after.’

She came and stood beside him. The morning was hot and hushed, with only the swish of the scythes and the chipping call of blackbirds from the nearby trees. Blackbirds always gathered when the crops were cut.

‘I need to know which particular acres you gave to Jonathan Shooks,’ she told him.

‘What you need to do is steer wide of that man.’

‘How can I? He is stealing land from my husband’s communicants right, left and centre. He’s taking their property from right beneath their feet. My husband can no longer do anything to stop him, God rest his soul, but I can.’

George Gilman wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirt-sleeve. ‘You know me well enough. As a rule, I never concede nothing to nobody, not for nothing. But that Shooks is different. You can call me a coward if you like, but I don’t intend to wind up as Gilman soup in some horse-trough. There’s cowardice and then there’s common sense.’

‘Just give me a rough idea of what you gave him.’

George Gilman sniffed and then pointed over to the far side of the timothy grass field. ‘You see them pines? Beyond them pines is a cornfield, and he’s taken that, and off to the side of that there’s a pumpkin patch, and he’s taken that, too, right up to the boundary line on the top of that ridge. See those white oaks? There.’

Beatrice tried to draw a map of the fields in her mind’s eye. They were almost hatchet-shaped, with a long handle and a large triangular head.

‘Couldn’t you just have told him no?’ asked Beatrice. ‘Surely you and some of your fellow farmers could have banded together and made it clear to him that you weren’t going to give in to him. He’s only one man, after all.’

‘It’s not him I’m afraid of. It’s that demon he’s doing business with. And that demon is the procurator of Satan himself.’

‘Supposing there is no demon?’

‘Well, try telling that to Prince and Cumby and Isum. There’s nobody human who could have set fire to them and hung them up that high.’

Beatrice didn’t argue with him, or try to explain that there had to be a way in which his slaves had been hoisted up to the rafters and cremated. She had got what she had come here for, and that was an approximate idea of the size and shape of the land that he had given to Jonathan Shooks.

*

She drove out next to Fiddler’s Lake, which lay to the north and the east of Henry Mendum’s property. The lake itself lay in a deep, forested valley, noisy with the plaintive squeaking of sapsuckers, but beyond the valley the land was high and undulating and it was there that James Moody grew Indian corn and alfalfa and grazed his cattle.

When she arrived at his farmhouse, Beatrice found James Moody in one of his outbuildings mending a broken plough. He was a lean, tall man with a long, lugubrious face and a pointed nose like a pickaxe. Beatrice had never seen him look anything but sad. When he saw her approaching he came out into the yard, one eye closed against the sunlight.

‘Goody Scarlet! Good day to you.’

He took hold of Uriel’s bridle and led him over to the side of the outbuilding and tied him up.

‘This is not really a social call,’ Beatrice told him.

‘Under the circumstances, I didn’t imagine that it was. Again – you have our sympathy, mine and Abigail’s. The Reverend Scarlet was cut from the finest cloth.’

‘I have to ask you a question,’ said Beatrice. ‘I have to ask you how much of your land you have given over to Mr Jonathan Shooks.’

James Moody looked away, as if he had seen somebody else in the distance.

‘I realize that your transaction was supposed to be confidential, Mr Moody, but this is a matter that is affecting all of Sutton and I am determined to put an end to it.’

James Moody turned back to look at her. His eyelids were very droopy, like curtains that were sagging halfway down. ‘You should tread very careful, Goody Scarlet, believe me. I was told what would befall my family and me if I refused to give Shooks some of my land, and I would hate to see such a thing happening to you.’

‘So Jonathan Shooks threatened you?’

‘Not himself, no. He promised that he would do everything within his power to keep us unscathed. But he did say that Satan would be unforgiving if I didn’t give him thirty acres of my lower fields.’

‘Did he tell you what he meant by “unforgiving”?’

‘My family and me would be gathered together and sat in a circle, children and all, that’s what he said. Our bellies would be sliced open and our bowels would be heaped together and burned in front of our eyes.’

‘So you assigned him your fields?’

‘Satan has done for your husband, Goody Scarlet. Turned him to wood by witchcraft, despite him being a minister. It’s plain that God can’t protect us, or
won’t
. So wouldn’t you have done the same?’

Beatrice didn’t answer that. Instead she said, ‘Show me which fields you gave him, Mr Moody.’

James Moody waved his hand in a southerly direction and said, ‘Most of my lower fields, that way. I shall suffer for it, I can tell you, because they’re all well watered and the grazing is good.’

‘I thank you for telling me,’ said Beatrice. ‘I’m sorry if my intrusion has upset you.’

‘So long as you don’t let Shooks know that I spoke to you. He was quite insistent that our arrangement should remain confidential. But I am sorely aggrieved by it, as you can imagine. Sorely.’

‘Nobody else shall learn that I came here, Mr Moody.’

She drove away from Fiddler’s Lake Farm with James Moody standing in front of his outbuilding and watching her go. She turned around when she reached the entrance to the farm, over a half-mile away, and he was still standing there as if he had forgotten how to move.

She decided to return home now, and have something to eat and drink, and start to draw her map.

*

Back at the parsonage, she walked through to the kitchen where Mary was chopping up pumpkins.

‘Oh, I’m so
hot
!’ said Mary. ‘I do believe I’m going to be nothing but a puddle of lard by the end of the day!’ Beatrice smiled at her, although she couldn’t help thinking of Nicholas Buckley, pinky-grey and glutinous, dissolved in the horse-trough.

‘I’m just going to help myself to a slice of that chicken pie,’ Beatrice told her. ‘Would you like some? I have to go out again this afternoon, but I shan’t be back late.’

Mary finished her chopping and tipped the pieces of pumpkin into a large copper pot which she filled up with water from the pump beside the sink. ‘I’ll bring little Noah in, shall I? I can mash up some pie with milk for him. He always likes that.’

While Mary went out into the garden, Beatrice took the pie out of the pantry and set out two plates and a bowl. Although it was so warm today, she was surprised how hungry she was. She almost felt as if her hunt to find out the truth about Jonathan Shooks and his demon had given her an appetite.

She poured out two mugs of cider, too, and a cup of milk for Noah.

While she was waiting for Mary to bring Noah in from the garden she went to the hutch and took out a sheet of paper and a stick of charcoal. She sat down at the kitchen table and began roughly to sketch the areas of land that George Gilman and James Moody had surrendered to Jonathan Shooks.

From outside she heard Mary calling, ‘Noah! Noah! Come in for your dinner, Noah! Come along, Noah!’

This afternoon she planned to visit Ebenezer Rowlandson. She would probably have to leave William Tucker until tomorrow because Billingshurst was over four miles away and it would take her most of the morning just to drive there and back.

‘Noah! Noah! Come on, Noah! Where are you hiding yourself? It’s your dinner time, Noah! Come along!’

Another minute went past, with Mary continually calling, and then she came back into the kitchen looking flustered and even hotter.

‘I can’t find him, Goody Scarlet! I’ve been calling and calling and I’ve looked in all the places where he usually hides, like the tool shed.’

Beatrice stood up and followed her outside. The garden was empty and silent except for the sound of Jubal and Caleb chopping back bushes by the brook. Noah’s go-cart was lying on its side by the bean beds.

‘Noah!’ called Beatrice as loudly as she could. ‘Noah, where are you?’

No answer.

‘Noah! Mama will be cross with you!’

Still no answer.

Beatrice began to feel a hurting sensation in her chest, the beginnings of panic. She picked up her gown and hurried through the field beyond the garden until she came to the slope that led down to the brook. She could see Jubal standing knee-deep in the swiftly running water, hacking at some of the overhanging branches.

‘Jubal! Have you seen Noah?’

Jubal shook his head. ‘Caleb!’ he shouted. ‘Have you seen Master Noah at all?’

Beatrice couldn’t clearly hear what Caleb shouted in reply, but Jubal shook his head again. ‘Sorry, Goody Scarlet.’

Beatrice ran back to the house as fast as she could. Mary was coming back around the side of the house next to the paddock.

‘He’s not in the front neither!’ she said. ‘I don’t know where he could be! He went out only a half-hour since, just to play!’

‘Oh dear Lord,’ said Beatrice. ‘Dear Lord, protect our little son from harm.’

‘I thought he would be safe, Goody Scarlet. Honest I did! I couldn’t see him but I could hear him singing and riding his little go-cart up and down.’

‘Oh dear Lord,’ said Beatrice, closing her eyes for a moment. She was trying very hard not think the worst, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Our bellies would be sliced open and our bowels would be heaped together and burned in front of our eyes... children and all
.

*

They searched the orchard and the fields and all the surrounding woods until dusk began to gather. Caleb went down to the village to ask if anybody had seen Noah there, but nobody had.

Beatrice wanted to drive to the Penacook Inn to see if Jonathan Shooks had any idea where he was. By now, however, it was totally dark and the moon wouldn’t rise until well after midnight. She stood in the garden holding up a lantern and calling and calling but still Noah didn’t answer. She knew that it was futile. She knew that he couldn’t hear her, either because he was much too far away or because he was dead.

Please be too far away, but alive, and not in any distress. Please. Please don’t be dead
.

She spent the night awake, not even bothering to undress. Mary offered to stay with her, but Beatrice told Caleb to take her home. There was nothing Mary could do to help and she was so upset that she was almost hysterical and she needed her sleep.

Several times during the night Beatrice went outside. A heavy bank of clouds had moved across the sky from the west, blotting out the moon, so that it remained dark all night. In spite of that she stood in the garden holding up her lantern and calling Noah’s name, even though she could hardly make herself heard over the furious chirping of the crickets.

*

A grey dawn began to lighten the sky at last and Beatrice splashed her face with cold water and lit the fire so that she could make herself a cup of tea. The cup of milk that she had filled for Noah’s dinner was still on the table. There was a fly floating in it, so she emptied it down the sink.

Losing Francis, and now Noah, she could almost believe that Sutton
had
been taken over by Satan. What had she done, after all, that she should be punished like this, except love her husband and her son and believe absolutely in God?

Jubal and Caleb arrived just after six o’clock. Caleb came in to tell her that Mary was running a fever and might not appear until later, if at all. Beatrice suspected that Mary hadn’t slept, just as she hadn’t, and that she was simply too tired and distraught to come to work.

When she had finished her tea she went into the parlour to brush her hair in the mirror. It was tangled and untidy, and she hadn’t had time to put in curling-papers. She looked very white, but much more composed than she actually felt. In fact, the distortion in the glass made it appear as if one side of her mouth was raised in the slightest of sardonic smiles. Perhaps this mirror was possessed by Satan. Perhaps all mirrors were.

She pinned on her black mourning cap and went out to ask Caleb to harness Uriel for her. As she opened the front door, however, she saw Jonathan Shooks’s calash coming briskly towards her down the driveway. She felt like slamming the door shut again, but she stayed where she was until Samuel had slewed the calash in a circle and brought it to a halt.

Jonathan Shooks was dressed in black today. His coat was black and his britches were black, although his waistcoat and his stockings were grey.

He came up to the porch with his hat tucked under his arm but said nothing, not even ‘good morning’.

‘You had better come inside,’ said Beatrice. She turned and went along the hallway to the parlour and he followed her, closing the front door behind him.