Scarlet Widow

by Graham Masterton

  Francis said to Beatrice, ‘Wait here,’ and handed her Kingdom’s reins. As he was about to climb down from the shay, however, the front door opened and the Widow Belknap came outside, her left hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun.

  ‘Reverend Scarlet!’ she called out in a piercing voice. ‘Are you visiting your flock today? Have you come to bring me some unexpected news from God Almighty?’

  She was quite a tall woman, very thin, and although she was a widow she was not yet forty years old and looked even younger. She was wearing a stiff black linen cap over her tangled blonde hair and a black ribbon around her neck. Her gown was black, too, but scooped very low, with a cameo attached to the front.

  Beatrice thought that the Widow Belknap was beautiful, in a strange, almost unearthly way. Her face was perfectly oval, with a straight, thin nose. Her eyes, however, were huge and green and she always made Beatrice feel that she was being stared at by a very inquisitive cat.

  Francis stepped down from the shay and took off his hat. ‘Good day, Widow Belknap. Are you keeping well?’

  ‘What do you want, Reverend Scarlet? Don’t tell me you’ve come to offer me a better seat for Sunday services, away from those wriggling children.’

  ‘I would, if only I could, Widow Belknap, but you know how crowded we are. No, I have come about Apphia and Tristram, the little Buckley twins.’

  ‘I have heard that they are ailing. Why come to me? Your wife knows more about medicinal remedies than I do.’

  ‘I haven’t come looking for a cure. To be quite open with you, I’ve come looking for whoever was responsible for making them so sick.’

  The Widow Belknap stayed where she was, her hand still lifted to shade her eyes. She licked her thin pink lips, as if she had thought of something that irritated her but she was going to have the self-control to keep it to herself. The fragrance of her overgrown front yard reminded Beatrice of her father’s herb garden, especially since so many bees were droning from one flower to another.

  She could almost hear her mother singing, ‘Thou pretty herb of Venus’ tree, Thy true name it is Yarrow.’

  Francis said, ‘Several members of my congregation have reported that your behaviour has been less than sociable of late, to put it mildly.’

  ‘Several members of your congregation have been less than sociable to me, Reverend Scarlet, not to put it mildly at all!’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that they have been gossiping behind my back, mostly accusing me of behaving waspishly with their menfolk. They call me witch and their children toss rocks at my windows. Harriet Mendum said that I should be locked up or exiled from the village altogether, and Judith Buckley said to my face that I should be taken out to the whipping-post and publicly whipped. But is it my fault, reverend, if I am a single woman, widowed by fate? Just because I am single, may I not converse in a friendly manner with some other woman’s husband? Must I speak only to my goat?’

  ‘There is a difference, Widow Belknap, between a friendly manner and flirtation.’

  ‘And you think I don’t know that? But they are all silly, vindictive women and I would have thought they had enough to do, baking their bread and pickling their pork and spinning their yarn, without wasting their time inventing vindictive rumours about an innocent and well-meaning neighbour!’

  Francis said, ‘I’m sure you recall what Paul wrote in his epistle to the Ephesians.’

  ‘Not offhand, no. I have to admit that I don’t.’

  ‘He wrote, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slander be put aside from you, along with all malice”.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you should remind the goodwives of Sutton of that,’ said the Widow Belknap. She came down her pathway, bending down as she did so and tearing up a bunch of weeds. She crossed over to the green and went up to Kingdom, patting his flank. He had been chewing at the rank, rutted grass, but when she offered him the weeds he lifted his head and ate them out of her hand.

  ‘There, you fine fellow,’ she said. ‘Those taste better, don’t they?’

  Beatrice watched her for a while as she fed Kingdom more weeds. Then she said, ‘The Buckley twins are very ill, Widow Belknap. In fact, they look very close to death.’

  Widow Belknap stared up at her with those green feline eyes. ‘Are you suggesting that I know what made them so sick?’

  ‘Well, do you? If you know of a cure, it could be for your own protection. I very much fear for your safety if they die.’

  ‘People can think whatever they like about me, Goody Scarlet. I don’t have to make excuses for myself or the way I lead my life. What are you going to do? Call for Constable Jewkes to arrest me? Apart from the fact that he’s always in his cups and wouldn’t be able to find me, what charge could he possibly bear against me?’

  She paused for a moment, and then she said, ‘You should remember this, the two of you. It is just as dangerous to take the name of Satan in vain as it is to gainsay God.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that?’ Francis demanded. ‘Are you telling me that you would call on Satan to punish those who are backbiting you? That would be deserving of arrest!’

  As he said that a scruffy-looking black bird appeared in the open doorway of the Widow Belknap’s house. It hopped along the path, uttering two plaintive cries as it did so. The Widow Belknap held out her left arm and the bird fluttered up and perched on it, cocking its head from side to side. Kingdom snuffled and took a nervous step sideways, away from it, but the bird itself didn’t seem to be at all daunted by Kingdom.

  ‘He’s a black parrot,’ said the Widow Belknap. ‘His name is Magic and he’s very tame. A seafaring friend of my late husband gave him to me. He said that he found him on some island in the Indian Ocean.’

  Francis waited for her to answer his question, but all she did was coo to her parrot and stroke its head.

  ‘Do you know of the Devil’s Communion?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘I’ve heard of it. Isn’t that when Satan is supposed to take your soul with a piece of broken looking-glass instead of a communion wafer? Your own self-adoration ensnares you.’

  ‘Have my wife and I ever spoken ill of you, Widow Belknap, or done you harm?’

  The Widow Belknap didn’t look at him but turned her eyes towards Beatrice and smiled. Her utter repose made Beatrice feel strangely vulnerable and unsettled, and she began to wish that they could just leave now and drive back home.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Widow Belknap. ‘You’re referring to your pigs.’

  Beatrice could see that Francis was clenching and unclenching his fists, as he always did when he was anxious, but he was holding his ground in front of the Widow Belknap, his chin defiantly lifted.

  The black parrot gave another sad cry. The Widow Belknap made kissing noises to it and then she said, ‘Have you thought, Reverend Scarlet, why you were the first to be stricken by misfortune, before Henry Meldum or the Buckleys?’

  Francis frowned. ‘No, I can’t say that I have.’

  ‘Don’t you think that it might have been done to demonstrate right from the very beginning how impotent you are? You might be God’s own messenger here in Sutton, but if you were powerless to safeguard your pigs from the works of Satan, how can we possibly expect you to protect the rest of us from harm?’

  ‘It is not me who protects us, but God,’ said Francis. ‘I am only a man, I admit, with all of a man’s weaknesses. But God will answer me when I pray to Him, and should He consider us worthy of His protection then I am sure that He will afford it to us.’

  ‘In that case, amen,’ said the Widow Belknap. She turned her back on them and walked back towards her front door. Halfway there, she shook the black parrot off her arm, as if she were tired of it. It flapped on to the ground with a harsh, resentful squawk.

  ‘Well?’ said Francis, as he climbed back into the shay and took the reins. Just as he did so, the Widow Belknap slammed her front door very hard.

  ‘S
he certainly bears a grudge against us all,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Perhaps she’s justified. You know yourself how malicious some of the women’s gossip can be, and how petty. Look at all that business when Goody Roper thought that Mercy Gardner had stolen her bodkin. It was only a bodkin, but she accused her of all sorts of immorality.’

  They passed by the Buckley house. The fumitory smoke was no longer billowing out of the front door, but Goody Rust was still there, standing with her arms folded.

  ‘Well?’ she called out. ‘What did the witch have to say for herself? Did she admit her witchery?’

  ‘How are the children?’ asked Francis, deliberately ignoring her question.

  ‘No worse, but no better.’

  ‘Tell Goody Buckley that I shall pray for them constantly. I shall come back later to see if they’re recovering. Let us give Doctor Merrydrew’s nostrum some chance to work – and let us give God a little time, too, to show them His mercy.’

  *

  On the way back to the parsonage Francis said, ‘I confess that I am deeply confused by all of this, Bea. And very troubled. What if the Widow Belknap is right? What if our pigs were killed to show the whole community how – how ineffectual I am?’ Beatrice noticed that he didn’t used the word impotent.

  She laid her hand on top of his and said, ‘Francis, my love. You are both strong and brave. Simply coming out here to New Hampshire took so much courage and belief in yourself. Don’t let some sharp-tongued Joan discourage you.’

  Francis took out his watch and looked at the time. ‘I have an important meeting this morning with Major General Holyoke. We have to discuss the case against Charles and Maria Hubbard for fornication before we empanel the jury. I’m more than ten minutes late already, so you’ll have to forgive me if I take you home and then leave immediately.’

  ‘Go now,’ Beatrice suggested. ‘I can walk from here.’

  ‘No, I won’t hear of it,’ said Francis and shook Kingdom’s reins to hurry him up. Kingdom, however, was walking more and more slowly, and thirty yards before they reached the turning on the Bedford road that led to their driveway he lurched to one side between the shafts of the shay, as if one of his front legs had given way.

  Beatrice thought for a moment that he might have tripped on a rock or stepped into a pothole. The road had become much more furrowed after two months of heavy and persistent rain in March and April, followed by week after week of hot, dry weather.

  Francis shook the reins again. ‘Come along, boy!’ he urged him. ‘Come along, Kingdom!’ But then Kingdom took three or four more steps and collapsed on to his knees, almost tipping the shay over on to its side. As it was, it ended up tilted at a sharp upward angle. Francis climbed down from his seat and helped Beatrice to climb down, too. Then they both went to see what was wrong with Kingdom.

  ‘Lord preserve him!’ said Francis. ‘He’s having a fit!’

  Kingdom was quaking and jerking, and his eyes were rolling. With each convulsion, Beatrice could see the muscles rippling underneath his shiny skin. He was breathing in quick, harsh gasps and his tongue was lolling out of the side of his mouth. Instead of its usual healthy pink, his tongue was crimson.

  ‘What could be ailing him?’ asked Francis. ‘He was in such good fettle yesterday, and when I took him down to Bedford he was trotting so fast that I had to rein him back!’

  ‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Beatrice. ‘But if you can manage to unfasten his harness, I’ll run for Jubal and Caleb.’

  Kingdom was jolting even more violently now. The only time that Beatrice had seen a horse jolt like that was when their mare, Sheba, had been struck by lightning during an electric storm and she had danced around the middle of the field with sparks crackling in her mane. When they had examined her afterwards, however, her tongue had been dark grey, which in horses was a sign of shock. She couldn’t think why Kingdom’s tongue was so red.

  She laid her hand against his neck, trying to soothe him. He stared back at her, his eyes bulging, almost as if he were pleading with her to stop these uncontrollable spasms.

  ‘Hush, Kingdom,’ she said. ‘I promise you I won’t let you die.’

  With that, she picked up her skirts and hurried towards the house, shouting out for Jubal and Caleb.

  She was halfway there when she felt a sudden gust of hot wind, and the oaks that lined the driveway dipped and rustled, in the same way that the apple trees in the orchard had rustled after their pigs had died. She slowed and turned her head, although there was nobody there that she could see, even if it had sounded as if Satan were running away through the undergrowth.

  *

  Between them, Francis and Jubal and Caleb lifted Kingdom on to the cart that they usually used for carrying hay or potatoes or lumber boards. It took them almost ten minutes because Kingdom weighed at least a thousand pounds and kept kicking and twitching, but at last they managed to heave him on to his side and Jubal lashed him to the cart with ropes.

  ‘Take him to the barn,’ said Francis. ‘See if he’ll accept a little water.’

  As Jubal and Caleb dragged the cart down the driveway, Beatrice took hold of Francis’s hand and said, ‘This is more than ill fortune, my darling.’

  ‘So, what do you think it is? Did the Widow Belknap put a curse on us?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m sure that somebody has deliberately made Kingdom sick to show us how defenceless we are.’

  Beatrice trusted in Francis. She knew how purposeful and strong he could be. But she thought that he was much too ready to blame Satan for what had been happening in Sutton. She met regularly with most of the goodwives in the village and she had seen for herself how malicious the residents of this small community could be to each other. Every day was not only a round of endless hard work, but a struggle for survival against drought, against snow, against Indians, against inexplicable diseases. People were quick to bear their neighbours ill-will for the slightest misdemeanour, real or imagined, whether it was slander or stealing or sexual impropriety. The case that Francis should have been discussing with Major General Holyoke this afternoon was the charge of fornication against Charles and Maria Hubbard. Though married, their first baby had been born too soon to have been conceived in wedlock and they faced a fine of fifty-nine shillings, and possibly a whipping, too.

  ‘I should send Caleb for Rodney Bartlett,’ said Francis. ‘He knows more about horses’ afflictions than anybody else in the village. More than Andrew Pepperill, anyhow.’

  ‘Let me look first at my father’s books,’ Beatrice suggested. ‘He was often called to treat animals as well as people.’

  ‘Bea – your father’s books are not the Bible. What is affecting us here in Sutton is a spiritual malignancy. You can’t lift a satanic curse with dandelion and burdock.’

  ‘Francis – I’m not challenging your faith, my dearest. But God creates remedies as much as Satan creates sickness. God cannot be taking care of every single one of us at every single minute of every single day.’

  ‘You don’t believe that He does?’

  ‘No... how can He? Instead, He has given us the means to treat ourselves. I know you don’t believe in the Doctrine of Signatures – that God gave certain plants a similar appearance to the organs that they can heal, like liverwort and bloodroot. But why do you think some plants are so effective in curing our ills? God made them so, and gave us the wit to discover what they do.’

  Francis still looked uncertain, but he said, ‘Very well. In the meantime, I’ll see if the smith can tell us why Kingdom is so distressed.’

  *

  Caleb brought Rodney Bartlett, the farrier. He was huge, six foot five at least, with a bald head covered in short silver prickles and a lumpy face that looked as if a sculptor had moulded it out of terracotta and then punched it very hard because it had turned out so ugly. In spite of his ogre-like appearance, however, he was the gentlest man in the village and he always spoke softly and quietly, as if he were apologizing for s
ome offence that he might have caused.

  He came into the barn where Beatrice was kneeling on the straw, stroking Kingdom’s neck, with Francis standing close by. It had been nearly an hour since Kingdom had first collapsed and now he was trembling uncontrollably. He had vomited several times, a greenish-grey slime, and his hind legs were streaked with tawny diarrhoea.

  Beatrice had leafed quickly through her father’s notebooks, trying to find anything he had written about sick horses, but none of his notes were in any kind of order and the only horse remedy she had been able to discover was a poultice of Epsom salts for a hoof abscess.

  ‘Goody Scarlet,’ said Rodney Bartlett respectfully, and then hunkered down beside her, his tan leather apron creaking as he did so. He laid both hands against Kingdom’s flank, feeling his heart beating, and then he looked into his eyes and inspected his tongue. Kingdom jerked even more violently when Rodney Bartlett touched him, as if he were frightened.

  ‘He’s dying,’ said the farrier. ‘I would say that he’s been poisoned, but I couldn’t tell you by what. Whatever it is, it’s done for him. His heart’s slowing down and his lungs are filled with bad humours.’

  ‘Is there nothing we can do?’ asked Francis.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ said Rodney Bartlett, standing up. ‘Has he eaten anything unusual today, apart from his feed?’

  ‘He was grazing on the village green,’ said Francis. ‘Apart from that, the Widow Belknap fed him a handful of weeds from her garden, but that was all.’

  ‘Do you know what weeds they were?’

  Beatrice shook her head. ‘Nothing harmful, so far as I remember. Fleabane, and yarrow, and Joe Pye weed – and Joe Pye weed is medicinal, isn’t it, not poison at all?’

  ‘I think a curse is far more likely,’ said Francis. ‘That woman is determined to wreak havoc on this community and she has called on the Devil to help her.’

  Rodney Bartlett nodded. ‘The Widow Belknap has had a sharp tongue lately, no doubt of that. She stopped outside my smithy last week when I was beating a horseshoe and asked me outright if I was ringing the bells of hell.’