Scarlet Widow

by Graham Masterton

  ‘For which I had to pledge you twenty acres of land,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘What?’ said Judith. ‘What do you mean? Twenty acres of land is more than half of all we own!’

  Jonathan Shooks raised both hands, as if he were surrendering. ‘Yes, Goody Buckley. I did ask your husband for twenty acres of land. The demons who have made your children so sick would accept no less. I think you can count yourself lucky that they didn’t demand every single daywork.’

  ‘These demons wanted land?’ asked Francis sharply.

  ‘Why should that surprise you?’ asked Jonathan Shooks. ‘Come along, reverend, you and I talked about this before. Satan is trying his best to repossess this country before you can spread the Christian religion too widely and the demons who infected these unfortunate children were acting on his behalf. They were probably using some misguided human agent, as you said yourself.’

  ‘Yes, the Widow Belknap,’ said Goody Rust from the hallway.

  ‘Something similar has happened in many European countries,’ Jonathan Shooks went on. ‘In Poznań, in Poland, Satan was so alarmed at the number of churches being built that he sent demons to lift up a hill and drop it into the river Warta so that the whole city would be drowned. Fortunately, the demons were surprised by a rooster crowing and the hill landed in the middle of a wood. But the hill is still there today. I have seen it for myself.’

  ‘So what are their names, these demons, and what do they look like?’ asked Francis.

  Jonathan Shooks put his fingertip to his lips. ‘It would be very unwise of me to utter their names now, Reverend Scarlet. Not here, with these children present. If the demons hear their names, they may very well think that they are being summoned back here, and the consequence of that could be fatal. I promise that I will tell you later, in private, and also how you may recognize them when you see them. Which, believe me, you will. Satan has not finished with Sutton yet.’

  Nicholas said, ‘I believe in Satan, Mr Shooks. But I also still believe that you took advantage of me in a moment of great weakness. What will happen to my twenty acres if I make them over to you? Will the demons farm it? Or will you? Or will you sell it for a profit?’

  Jonathan Shooks gave him a thin, humourless smile. ‘I regret to say that what happens to your land will no longer be your business, sir. I have done what you begged me to do, which was to bring back your two beloved children from the very edge of their open graves. I made it patently clear to you that twenty acres was my price for doing it, and that I could not do it otherwise.’

  Tristram began to cough and to whine for breath. Judith lifted him out of his crib and called out, ‘Jane, please put a kettle on to boil!’

  Nicholas, however, said, ‘No, Jane, don’t! These children don’t need water with burned-out sticks in it. They need prayer.’

  Jonathan Shooks turned to Beatrice. She had never seen such a complicated expression on a man’s face before. He didn’t say anything to her, but he was staring at her intently, his eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to transmit his thoughts directly into her brain. She thought that he looked anxious, but at the same time he looked frustrated, too. She felt that he wanted her to explain to Nicholas that he was making a very serious misjudgement and that unless he changed his mind his twins were in imminent danger of dying. Two precious lives, for the sake of what? A few acres of cornfield?

  ‘Mr Shooks?’ she asked him. He stared at her a moment longer, but he still didn’t say anything to her. He gave a slight shake of his head and then turned away.

  She was deeply puzzled. Why should Jonathan Shooks think that she could have any influence on Nicholas, out of everybody here? Perhaps he had somehow discovered that she was well acquainted with medical remedies and that she would know that his ‘inch-stick water’ actually worked? In truth, she had never come across it before and had no idea whether it might be effective or not. Even if it were, and even if she were sure of it, it wouldn’t be easy for her to tell Nicholas that it wasn’t Francis’s prayer that had saved his children. Not in front of Francis, anyhow. His confidence had been shaken more than enough by Jonathan Shooks.

  ‘You’re adamant, Mr Buckley?’ asked Jonathan Shooks.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Well, to put it kindly, I think you’re a fool. I sincerely hope that your twins survive without further treatment. If they do, however, I shall still come looking for my recompense because it was my ministration that saved them.’

  ‘You can come looking all you like, Mr Shooks. I have spent all of my life working those acres and I will not be tricked out of them.’

  Judith started to cry again – deep, painful sobs. Beatrice went over and held her very close.

  ‘Shush,’ she whispered. ‘Shush.’

  ‘They’re going to die, aren’t they?’ wept Judith. ‘My poor, dear babies! They’re going to die!’

  ‘Shush,’ Beatrice soothed her, and then, very close to her ear, while everybody else in the house was talking loudly, she said, ‘I’ll come back this afternoon with something to help Apphia and Tristram get better. Don’t tell Nicholas, though. Don’t tell anybody.’

  She glanced across at Francis, who gave her a hesitant, uncomprehending smile.

  ‘Don’t even tell God,’ she whispered.

  Nineteen

  Young Ambrose Cutler drove Beatrice home on his wagon, but Francis stayed in the village to visit Major General Holyoke and discuss the forthcoming court cases.

  That afternoon, Francis had been invited to go to Henry Mendum’s stables to choose a replacement for Kingdom. After he had heard about Kingdom’s death, Henry Mendum had sent a message to Francis saying that, among other horses, he had a strong three-year-old bay that would make an excellent driver and that he could let him have it for £7 instead of £9, which it was probably worth.

  Jonathan Shooks had stalked out of the Buckley house without saying another word and Samuel had driven him away immediately. Because of that, Beatrice hadn’t had the opportunity to ask him if it was he who had sent her that bottle of Queen Margot’s Perfume. She had no fear of asking him, although she wasn’t at all sure what she would have said if he had admitted that, yes, that it had been him. Would she have dared to ask what he expected in return – if anything?

  As Ambrose circled the wagon around to make their way back to the parsonage, Beatrice saw that the Widow Belknap was leaning over her front fence, with her black parrot, Magic, perched on the gatepost beside her. She was wearing a brick-red dress with a matching bonnet, and was smoking a clay pipe.

  ‘Do you mind turning down that way, Ambrose?’ she asked him. ‘I want to have a word with Widow Belknap.’

  Ambrose turned the wagon around again and drew it to a halt outside the Widow Belknap’s house. The Widow Belknap blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth and said, ‘Well! Good day to you, Goody Scarlet! You’ve been to visit the Buckley babies, I presume? How are they?’

  ‘Better, for the time being, anyhow,’ said Beatrice. ‘Unlike our horse, Kingdom, who died yesterday, not long after we had stopped here to talk to you.’

  The Widow Belknap took another puff at her pipe. ‘I heard about that, yes. Very unfortunate.’ She paused for a moment, and then she said, ‘You don’t blame me for it, do you? You and that holy husband of yours?’

  ‘We don’t know what caused his death, Widow Belknap. Not yet, anyhow.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry, you can blame me if you like! Everybody in Sutton blames me for every misfortune that befalls them, great or small, and I’m really quite used to it. In fact, the more my neighbours fear me, the more they stay out of my business and leave me alone, which is just the way I like it.’

  ‘Please – I am not accusing you of anything,’ said Beatrice. ‘But I shall be trying to discover why it was that poor Kingdom died so suddenly, and if I do find evidence that he was killed with malice, I believe that I shall also find proof of who was responsible.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said the W
idow Belknap. ‘I don’t know how you expect to do that, Goody Scarlet, but you don’t alarm me one bit. As I say, I am quite used to being blamed. All I can say is that anybody who makes false accusations against me had better be prepared to accept the consequences. I don’t answer to the gossips of this village, nor to you, nor your saintly husband. I answer only to my own conscience and the Powers that Be.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And what does that mean? The Powers that Be?’

  ‘Whatever you take it to mean, Goody Scarlet. You’re a pastor’s wife, aren’t you? Haven’t you been reading your scriptures lately?’

  ‘There are powers of good mentioned in the Bible, Widow Belknap, but there are many powers of evil, too.’

  The Widow Belknap didn’t answer that, but sucked on her pipe again, although it had now gone out. Even if she had caused Kingdom’s sudden seizure – whether by curse or by poison or by satanic spell – she clearly had no intention of admitting it.

  Beatrice said to Ambrose, ‘Thank you, Ambrose, let’s go,’ but just as they lurched forward she caught sight of a mass of pink and purple flowers by the Widow Belknap’s front porch. She hadn’t noticed them before because they were growing so deeply in the shade.

  ‘Stop, please!’ she said, and Ambrose pulled on the brake. ‘That’s lungwort! There, Widow Belknap, by your door! Pulmonaria.’

  The Widow Belknap turned around to see where Beatrice was pointing. ‘Oh, yes. I call it “spotted dog” myself, but yes, you’re right. Lungwort.’

  ‘Do you mind if I take a few leaves?’ asked Beatrice. ‘I thought I would have to go all the way to the woods to find some.’

  ‘I suppose so. What do you want them for?’

  ‘I want to make an infusion to treat the Buckley twins. Their lungs are all clogged with fluid and lungwort will help them to breathe more easily.’

  ‘You want me to help you to cure them? I thought you suspected me of making them sick.’

  ‘Was it you who made them sick?’

  ‘You’re very barefaced, Goody Scarlet. Do you seriously think that if I had done I would confess to it? My life may not be a happy one, but I have no desire to lose it just yet.’

  Ambrose Cutler said, ‘I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet, but I can’t tarry here much longer. I have chores to be doing at home.’

  ‘Well?’ said Beatrice.

  The Widow Belknap smiled. ‘All right, pick some leaves if you want some. Take as many as you like.’

  Beatrice lifted up her muslin petticoats and climbed down from her seat. ‘If it was you who made those children ill, Widow Belknap, God will see this as a gesture of redemption.’

  The Widow Belknap stared at Beatrice with her green feline eyes and gave her an eerie smile.

  ‘You know what your trouble is, Goody Scarlet? A pretty young woman like you – you’ve been married to a man of God for far too long.’

  *

  As soon as she arrived home Beatrice went through to the kitchen to fetch Ambrose some jumble cookies for his trouble. While she was wrapping them up in a cloth, she asked Mary to fill a copper pan with water and put it on the stove to simmer.

  Mary picked up one of the floppy green silver-speckled leaves that Beatrice had laid in a heap on the kitchen table and cautiously sniffed it. The leaves gave off a sappy, fresh fragrance, like comfrey or cucumbers.

  ‘You’re not thinking of making soup with those, Goody Scarlet?’

  ‘An infusion, Mary, to save two little lives. I will show you how to make it yourself, in case any of your family ever get sick with consumption, or the croup.’

  ‘I must hang out the wash,’ said Mary. ‘The bread’s almost ready, by the way.’

  That morning Beatrice had left the house with Francis before her dough had proved, but while she was away Mary had rolled it out for her and put the loaves into the oven to bake. Mary had boiled all the laundry, too, and swept the floors, and peeled and chopped a whole barrel of quinces, ready for jelly-making. Because she had done all this, Beatrice at last had a little time to examine the residue of Kingdom’s sickness and the tarry substance that had looked like the Devil’s hoof prints.

  She didn’t expect Francis to be home until late, and although she felt guilty about making these tests without telling him what she was doing, she didn’t want him to think that she, too, was questioning his authority. She was his wife, and she loved him, and she respected his absolute trust in God. When they knelt beside their bed at night and prayed, she would often open one eye to watch him and wish that her own faith burned as brightly as his.

  ‘Noah!’ she called. ‘Go out in the yard and play, my darling! Mary’s out there, hanging up the sheets!’

  Noah toddled out into the sunshine. Beatrice meanwhile went to the musty-smelling leather-bound chest at the end of the hallway and took out her father’s notebooks, as well as a bottle of pure alcohol and three glass flasks, all wrapped up in grey tissue paper. Back in the kitchen, she half-filled two of the flasks with warm water and then pushed the clouts that she had used to wipe up Kingdom’s vomit and diarrhoea into them. To the flask with the vomit she added some of the dark green needles that she had found under his tongue and between his teeth.

  Into the third flask she tucked the linen handkerchief with the tarry hoof print on it, and then poured half a cupful of alcohol into it. She had guessed from its strong naphtha smell that the hoof print was mainly composed of coal tar, even though it was mixed with other substances, and she knew that coal tar was insoluble in water. Her father used to make a mixture of alcohol and coal tar for the treatment of chronic skin complaints, like psoriasis or St Anthony’s Fire.

  She stirred all three flasks with the handle of a wooden spoon and then waited for a few minutes for the solids to dissolve. While she did so, she looked out of the kitchen window at Noah sitting next to Mary while she hung up the wash, playing with her clothes pegs. He was tapping them together and then throwing them as far as he could across the grass.

  She felt sad for him – and sad for herself, too. It had taken her nearly five years before she had first fallen pregnant, even though she had prayed every day for a child and regularly taken solutions of red clover and motherwort. Since Noah’s birth she still hadn’t fallen pregnant a second time, even though she wanted so much to give him brothers and sisters. Most of the goodwives in Sutton had at least five children and some had seven or eight, or even more. Goody Knowlton had eleven.

  Beatrice knew that Francis wanted more children. He considered it his duty to set a good example to his parishioners and multiply. But he had always been considerate and understanding and if he was disappointed by her inability to conceive he tried not to show it. He had reassured her several times that Noah was a blessing and that God might have some other mission for her apart from motherhood.

  She sniffed the flask of diluted vomit first. She was relying mainly on her sense of smell to find out if Kingdom had been poisoned. Her father had encouraged her to open every jar and bottle that crowded the shelves of his apothecary and breathe in the contents until she could identify them with her eyes closed, as he could.

  The vomit water smelled distinctly like tonquin beans or vanilla. She knew that tonquin beans could make you very sick if you ate too many of them, although many wives used them for flavouring cookies and cakes. They were also supposed to have magical properties. When she had been trying for Noah, Goody Rust had told her that if you held a tonquin bean in your hand and made a wish, your wish was supposed to come true, and only a month afterwards she had conceived.

  The Widow Belknap was familiar with poisons and herbs and magical potions. Perhaps she had fed Kingdom a handful of tonquin beans along with the weeds that she had torn out of her garden? But Beatrice doubted if she would have been able to feed him enough to stop his heart – and she could detect another smell in the liquid, much more pungent than vanilla, which put her in mind of cat’s urine or leather.

  She sniffed the diarrhoea water and that smelled similar, although no
t as strong.

  She opened up her father’s notebooks and flicked through page after page until she came to a chapter that he had written about ‘Equine Ailments’. His writing was tiny and crabbed, but very neat, and at last she found what she was looking for: ‘Vegetation Toxic to Horses & Cattle’.

  Wm Chandler ask’d me to come to Islington to see to his piebald mare which was suffering from palpitations of the heart and sickness. By the time I arrived at his property it was too late and the mare had expired. It was clear however the cause of death. His gardeners having trimmed his yew hedges had thrown the cuttings into the field where he keeps the mare and she had eaten them. The vanilla smell was most distinctive on her breath and her mouth was still filled with yew leaves and berries, both of which are toxic to horses. Less than 6 lbs of yew leaves can kill an adult horse in less than 5 mins, even quicker in the winter, when the toxin is stronger.

  Her father had painted a watercolour picture of the yew leaves that had poisoned Mr Chandler’s mare and they were almost identical to the slimy green leaves Beatrice had found in Kingdom’s mouth.

  She knew now what had probably caused his death, but she was still frustrated. She had hoped that if she discovered how he had died, she would be able to tell if somebody had poisoned him on purpose, and if so, who. But she would have to go back to the village to see if there were yew bushes growing in the Widow Belknap’s garden, and even if there were, she would have no absolute proof that it was the Widow Belknap who had fed them to him.

  She glanced out of the window and saw that Mary had almost finished pinning up the wash, so she turned to the third flask. She took out the linen handkerchief and sniffed the alcohol inside it, which had now been turned pale amber by the dissolving coal tar.

  The smell was very complex, but when she closed her eyes Beatrice could detect several other notes in it apart from coal tar and cloves. She was sure that there was civet oil, which gave off an odour even more like cat’s urine than the yew leaves. There was sulphur, too, which reeked like rotten eggs. There was also an aroma that was cloying and very sweet, but which she found hard to identify. She guessed that it was molasses. There must also have been some strong acid or alkali content which had burned Francis’s fingers when he had touched it, but it had no smell.