by Jane Adams
Randall ordered her to stand and Kitty got to her feet, gazing suspiciously at the newcomer. Randall was a known threat. This other one who stood aloof, regarding her with eyes so cold that they made her shiver in spite of the stuffy heat, he was clearly something new.
‘This is Master Prescott,’ Randall told her. ‘An expert in the study of your kind.’
‘And what would that be?’ Kitty asked him. ‘Am I no longer of humankind?’
Randall began to answer, but the other stopped him, raising a hand and gesturing for silence.
‘Let the woman rile you at your peril, sir. The devil will guide her words and confuse your thoughts.’ He set his candle on the floor and began to circle Kitty, looking her up and down with the same expression she had seen on those inspecting livestock with a view to buy.
‘You wish to inspect my teeth?’ she asked him. ‘Perhaps you can tell my age that way. Or lift my feet and see if they are rotten.’
‘Or cloven, like your master’s,’ Prescott said.
‘Cloven! . . . What?’
But Prescott raised his hand again and Kitty, more from confusion than solid fear, fell silent.
Prescott paused when he had completed his circuit and looked her in the eye. ‘I will inspect your teeth, woman, though I doubt if your age could be told that way. And I will inspect your feet and your eyes and any other section of your person that I see fit to inspect. I will search for the marks and workings of your master wherever he has hidden them upon your body and I will not cease until I have the evidence that the court requires.’
‘And if it isn’t there?’ Kitty questioned. ‘In truth, man, I have done no wrong. I am no servant of the devil. I fear God and worship him as best I might.’
‘You fear God,’ Prescott repeated. ‘I’m glad of that, Mistress Hallam, glad of that indeed, for it makes my work easier. Though let me tell you, if you did not already fear the Lord a brief time in my presence would convince you of the rightness of such thoughts.’
He stepped closer to her. So close that she could feel his breath on her cheek. Over his shoulder she could see Randall with a pomander raised to his nostrils and, even in the dim light, see how pale he had become from the heat of the tiny cell. Prescott seemed immune. His voice was soft, almost gentle as he said, ‘I could have you tried for heresy, you know that, don’t you? I could bring charges of heresy and then nothing could protect you. I could put you to the rack. I could burn you with irons and tear your body limb from limb and there would be none to prevent me. You know this, don’t you?’
For a moment she was too taken aback to speak and she could only stare at him. Then she recovered herself a little. ‘I am neither witch nor heretic,’ she told him. ‘The charges they have brought against me none but a fool would believe.’
‘And none but a fool would deny. I ask you, woman, would you rather confess your sins and be tried and hanged as a simple witch, or be tortured and burned for heresy as the law permits?’
‘I have spoken no heresy.’
‘You have spoken against your minister. Disobeyed him when he ordered that idol burned. Sought to corrupt his children and denied his teachings. You are as much heretic as any Cathar or Bogomil. I tell you woman, I could have you burned for what we have proof that you have done, never mind what you might be persuaded to confess.’
‘You might accuse me, but that does not make me guilty.’ She turned to Edward Randall. ‘Have you listened to this man? Your wife tells you that I have sinned and I understand that you must believe your wife, that you yourself believe that I have done wrong, but this man would increase my so-called crimes. In all conscience, can you allow that?’
Randall turned away and said nothing but she could see the anxiety written on his face.
‘Master Randall will not speak for you,’ Prescott told her. ‘He would not wish to risk his soul.’
* * *
After a time Helen’s nerve failed her. She stumbled over words and found it impossible to keep the story in her head. Ian wasn’t listening anyway. He continued to stare at Enwright, his eyes round with fear and his body jerking with shock at every noise and crash from the other rooms as the officers searched. From time to time, Enwright wandered over to the doorway and watched, giving instruction to the searchers. The rest of the time he sat looking over at Helen with a quiet smile, head slightly to one side as though listening to the story.
‘Oh, don’t stop on my account,’ he said, when finally her voice cracked and she could go no further. ‘I was enjoying that. Weren’t you enjoying that . . . Ian, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t you talk to him!’ Helen pulled her son closer. ‘Don’t you even look at him. You hear me? You hear me?’
Enwright just smiled at her. ‘A cat can look at a king,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think he’s any king.’
An officer appeared in the doorway with a piece of paper tucked into an evidence bag. Enwright went over and took it from him. He frowned as he read the list of names, the remainder of the list that Helen had been preparing for Ray.
‘What’s this?’ he asked her.
‘It’s a piece of paper.’
‘Funny. It’s obviously a list. What are they? Contacts? Buyers? What?’
Helen hid in half-truths. ‘It’s just a list of people Frank knew,’ she said. ‘I was getting a list together of people that phoned me and stuff, you know, to say they were sorry he was dead.’
Enwright scanned down the list. ‘That’s a good few names,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe that many were sorry when Frank snuffed it.’
Reflexively, Helen hugged her son, lifting a hand to his head as though trying to stop him from hearing.
‘Frank was a good man,’ she said. ‘There were a lot more people than that sorry when he died. What’s up, pig? Scared no one’s going to care when someone does for you?’
The faint smile on Enwright’s face faded. He shoved the list back at the uniformed officer. ‘Anything?’ he demanded.
‘The place is clean, sir.’
Helen followed him as he left the room. She followed him from room to room as he pulled drawers from cabinets and emptied them on the floor. Dragged Helen’s clothes from the wardrobe. Marched into Ian’s room and tipped his books and toys from the shelves.
‘Sir!’ The uniformed officer holding onto the list watched in disbelief.
‘Call this a search?’
‘But, sir, the place is clean. I told you. There’s nothing here.’
Helen said nothing, she was past words. Ian had begun to cry. The uniformed officers seemed unable to figure out what they should do.
‘There’s only one sort of language scum like her understand,’ he told them. ‘Remember that.’
He turned back to Helen as they left. ‘They found nothing, this time,’ he said. ‘But you should watch yourself. Who knows what might turn up if you can’t keep your nose out of other people’s business. You might not get so lucky, next time.’
Helen slammed the door and locked it, feeding the chain into the latch. Then she dragged the hall table across the threshold and stood still, leaning on it and trying hard not to cry. Ian was sobbing. The mess and the threats she could put aside. They didn’t matter. What cut her to the quick was that they had scared her son. She reached out and grabbed him, kneeling on the floor and cuddling him close. ‘It’s all right,’ she soothed. ‘It’s going to be all right.’ Then she struggled to her feet, still keeping a tight hold on her son and pulled him through to the living room. For a moment she hesitated, angry that it was really all Ray’s fault. Then she found the piece of paper he had given her and dialled his number.
* * *
Halshaw had been drinking steadily all day and becoming more and more depressed. The truth was he could no longer see any way forward and could not even bear to look back. The sugar pack that Ray had given him still lay on the table and he picked it up, turning it between his hands and studying the creases as though they might map out the answers.
Then, in a sudden energy of decision he reached for the telephone and dialled. The engaged tone purred back at him. Halshaw closed his eyes and lowered the receiver.
Chapter Fifty-two
They had her listen to the charges brought against her. They were couched in such absurd terms that she might have laughed had she not been so afraid. She could not see herself in the portrait that they painted, that these righteous men went to such pains to depict. But she listened, knowing that there would be no counsel to defend her and perhaps no witnesses willing to speak in her favour and, as she listened, her heart sank and she knew there could be no hope of reprieve.
Item: That said Katherine Hallam did consort with Satan in Southby wood on the Lord’s own day, committing with him sinful and unholy intercourse.
Item: That she did bewitch the children of Master Edward Randall, being minister of that parish, so that they did disobey and disregard the order and discipline of their parents’ house and their father’s teaching. That they did obey only the words and directives of said Katherine Hallam against the word of God.
Item: Further that said daughter of Master Randall did, under bewitchment by said Mistress Hallam, take shape of a cat and attack and claw at her mother’s face and hands when informed of the accused’s arrest.
Item: That when Mistress Randall sought to tell her husband of Katherine Hallam’s sinfulness that said Katherine Hallam did bewitch her and cause her to fall to the floor in a violent fit.
Item: That Katherine Hallam did seek to use the Holy Book for purposes of divination and other mischief, against the law of God.
Item: That the accused did keep within her bedchamber a certain idol that she claimed contained spirits for use in the infernal rites of Satan.
Item: . . . .
* * *
Matthew had come again to the prison, but he was not allowed to see Kitty. Each day for the past five he had come to her only to be turned away and he was desperate to let her know that he had not abandoned her.
Matthew Jordan, one-time priest of God, now just a man afraid for the life of his dearest friend, stood in the courtyard and gazed at the blank walls. ‘Katherine,’ he whispered. ‘Katherine, can you guess that I am here?’ Then more loudly, so that the guard on the gate stared at him, ‘Katherine. Katherine, do you know that I am here?’
And then he shouted, ‘Katherine, I’ve come to see you but they won’t let me inside. Can you hear me, Katherine?’
The guard at the gate moved towards him now. ‘Come, sir, please. Get yourself home or you’ll be inside this place as well.’
‘I know that she is innocent. They have it wrong, she could never do harm. Never.’
‘Then if she’s innocent, sir, the court will find her so and she’ll be home.’
‘I want to see her, let me see her, please.’ The old man trembled, close to tears, but the guardsman was quite unable to help.
‘Go home, sir,’ he said. ‘Please go home, you can do nothing here.’
Chapter Fifty-three
At Maggie’s suggestion Ray and Sarah had spent the evening with her and John reading through Mathilda’s diaries. It had been a relief in the end to share the task with others, somehow it felt less like prying and more like research.
Mathilda had known about Kitty for years. It was a conclusion they reached slowly but once reached it was obvious.
I had my visitor again today.
Many times Mathilda had repeated the same phrase and Ray had thought nothing more than it being Mathilda’s strange way of annotating events.
Once they had taken this reference to mean Kitty the rest fell into place. ‘She’d been seeing Kitty for years,’ Ray concluded. ‘Every few days for all the time she’d lived there.’
‘It certainly looks that way,’ Sarah confirmed.
‘How the hell did she put up with it? I mean, how can you plan anything in your life when this ghost might turn up unannounced any time?’
‘She obviously coped. Maybe it stopped her being lonely.’
‘Did you ever ask Mathilda’s cleaning lady about Kitty?’ Maggie asked.
‘Yes, when I found the first entry, but the name meant nothing to her.’
‘I never heard Evie mention a ghost,’ John commented. ‘Mind you, knowing Evie, if she did see one she’d probably dust it and tell it to mind out while she did the hoovering. And I certainly never saw her.’ He laughed briefly. ‘I feel quite left out.’
John always slept in the spare bedroom, Ray thought wryly.
‘Have you any idea what this anniversary is?’ Sarah asked. ‘Mathilda mentions Kitty returning on the anniversary, as though it had special significance. Seeing as how she was used to Kitty being around it seems odd she should note her coming in a particular way like that.’
‘Her death?’ Maggie speculated. ‘Actually, that’s a point — why doesn’t Matthew Jordan mention how she died?’
‘Because he passed away in the August,’ Ray told her. ‘He’d not been well for a long time. He complains of having a fever in his final entries and on, I think, the 26th, someone else has written that he died in the night. It must have hit Kitty really hard.’
‘If she knew about it. Do you think they told her, or just let her think he no longer cared?’
‘I’ve no idea. But I hope his family got the news to her somehow. Matthew visited the prison every day, but they only allowed him to see her twice. He sent food and clean water, but he never knew if she received it. He records in his journals that he used to stand in the courtyard and shout, just so that she would know he still cared and still came to try to see her. It nearly got him arrested as well. I think only the fact that he’d been a priest protected him. That and his nephew’s money. The twice he got in was only because his nephew had managed to bribe the guard.’
‘He should have forgotten they were cousins and married her,’ Maggie said. ‘What a sad waste.’
Chapter Fifty-four
Apart from the day of her arrest she had been naked before no man until now. They stripped her and put a blindfold over her eyes while the man called Prescott touched her and Randall watched.
And Prescott talked, explaining what he did and the importance of it all. ‘The devil leaves his marks,’ Prescott said. ‘At his infernal sabbaths where he makes their soul his own he marks them where his fingers touch.’
‘She is badly scarred,’ she heard Randall say. ‘How can you be certain of what you find?’
‘Trust me, sir. I have had much practice.’
She tried hard to control herself but she knew her body shook as the man’s hands moved across her skin. His touch sickened her, its intimacy so threatening and invasive. He held some metal device in his hand and every few moments pricked her skin, sometimes so lightly that she could hardly perceive it, sometimes plunging it so deeply into her flesh that she cried out in pain.
‘How long will it take?’ Randall questioned. His voice told her that he had no taste for this.
‘How long does God’s work take?’ Prescott asked.
She lost count of time. It might have taken hours for Prescott to complete his task or it might have taken days. Finally, they left her, throwing her clothing to the floor and leaving her to scrabble in the dark as she tried to find it.
Her body hurt, but it was her heart that pained her more. There were points upon her body where she had been unable to perceive his touch and each time he came to one and it was clear that she felt nothing, the man cried out in exultation.
‘You see,’ he told Randall. ‘Now you see. The devil touched her here and here. There is no perception. His fingers burn so coldly that all sensation is for ever destroyed.’
And after so long a time of this, after so much hurt and so much tension as she waited each time for the pain to come — or even worse, the absence of it — she began to doubt her own knowledge. What if she was truly guilty? What if she did not know of her own guilt? If the devil, as Prescott said, had so confused her mind th
at she no longer knew that she had sinned?
The thought terrified her above all other thoughts. Or almost all. As Prescott left her he had told her what form his questions might take when he returned. He would give her time to reflect, he said, on which other persons shared her guilt. Which of those she counted friends had joined her in her sin.
And then Kitty knew real fear. The thought that Mim or Hope or any of those she had loved could be condemned. Could be put through what she had been through, be locked alone in some dark cell and have their souls stripped bare by such a man as this.
She wept until sleep finally overtook her but even her dreams would not give her peace. In her dreams her friends came to her. Begged her to set them free from the enslavement she had cast around them. Little Hope and Mim and Thomas Myan and even Matthew, her most beloved friend. They stood in court and condemned her for her sins and she knew they spoke only out of fear.
And worse than this, the man she had seen so many times, who had invaded her dreams and set her body burning with feelings she could have never known. He stood before them all. Judge and jury and even executioner as he hung the rope about her neck and drew the knot tight beneath her chin. And even as she stood there, the rope pulled tight, forcing her head back and her feet losing their purchase on the solid ground, this man with the scarred hands and face, he touched her as a lover might. Caressed her as he had that night in her own bed, his hand moving between her legs until the pleasure-pain spread through her body and she woke screaming in her cell.
What if Prescott spoke the truth? What if he looked into her eyes and saw knowledge that no unmarried woman had a right to? What if this man who seemed real enough to give her pleasure and to cause such pain was in truth the devil or the devil’s messenger? What if she worked such evil and did not know? Oh God help her! She no longer knew which way her heart should turn.