by Mary Wood
Panic set in. Folk ran in all directions, dropping their lighted torches, revealing a scene of fire all around Ruth, and filling her with the terrifying thought that the end of the world had come. But although she was filled with horror and fear, she remained in the same rigid position, sitting upright and staring at the fire.
Now, outlined against it, she could see the silhouette of a man: tall, slim and looking towards her. Her heart thudded, as her mind made her think this was the devil incarnate come to get her. Her body slumped. No inner demon helped her now. Everybody and everything had left her. She was nothing.
‘Ruth. Ruth, it’s all right, you’re safe. They’ve gone. I won’t hurt you. Don’t be afraid. Let me untie you.’
She wanted to ask who he was, but she had no voice. In the light of the fire she could see a man whom she judged to be in his late twenties. His face held kindness. But who was he, and how had he come to be here? Confusion vied with the drained feeling and extreme tiredness that had overcome her. Something in her registered that she had been saved, but nothing would show her the sense of it.
Lifting her as if she weighed no more than a bag of chicken-feed, the man took her towards the fire. Cringing away from the horror it held for her, she clung to him. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m only taking you nearer to give you some warmth. You’ve had a massive shock and have been through unimaginable terror.’
That terror cracked a little as the full horror of how it had begun hit her. ‘But Josh and Nora – me husband and his ma . . . Look, over there on the other hill: that fire. They’re caught up in it. They may be hurt or—’
‘Your husband? You married?’
‘No. Well, yes; we married ourselves, for fear of me whereabouts being known. I – I’m wanted for sommat as happened a while back, sommat as I couldn’t help. And then there were them from Pradley, them as would burn me as a witch. But I ain’t a witch. Things as happened were a coincidence. I—’
‘I know. I know what happened here, and in your past. I have been looking for you.’
‘Oh? Are you some kind of policeman?’ Even as she thought he was, no fear of him being so reached her. If Josh was gone, then her world as she knew it was gone, and with that her spirit would die. For at this moment she was so low that she didn’t care about the prospect of facing the gallows. It would be a better death than the one she’d faced a few minutes ago.
‘No, I’m not police. I’m an investigator. I find people for those who want them found. Mostly folk who owe someone money, but in your case, why an earl should want to find you was a mystery. But then I looked up all that had happened and realized he just wants to put things right. He is a rare being: a toff with a social conscience. A good man. And I never thought I would say that of any of the aristocracy.’
‘The Earl! But I thought he would hate me?’ Her heart pounded with an emotion other than terror, and for a fleeting moment she felt joy nudge away all the fear that was in her.
‘I know, it would be natural to think his motives were other than good. I did myself, but I know now: he only wants to make amends, for you and your sister.’
‘Amy! Have you found Amy?’ All of it seemed incredible. This man had plucked her from death in a way that had seemed like black magic, and now he was saying he knew all about her past and was making her feel everything would be all right. But then how could it be, if Josh . . . ? ‘Look, Mister, I’ll be fine, I promise. Only thing as will help me is to get me back to Josh and his ma. We must try to save them. We must!’ Pointing to where the sky was still lit by huge flames, she begged him, ‘Ride over there. Leave me – just go. I can drive the cart back. I have driven it before. Please go and help Josh, please.’
‘I am not leaving you, now that I have found you. Over this rough terrain it will take as long with a horse as it would with a horse and cart, especially as I don’t know the way. We’ll ride over there together.’
He had no urgency about him, which frustrated her, but she sensed she would not be able to change his mind. ‘I know there is a road that winds around the bottom of here and passes the bottom of the track we have to ascend to Josh’s farm, but that takes an age. The way the mob brought me is new to me, and I was bound and blindfolded. Oh, it is useless! Josh, my Josh.’
‘Don’t let go again, Ruth. You’re doing well and I need you, if we are going to help them. I watched them bring you here, and they came that way.’ He nodded towards the valley, before saying, ‘Besides, we have the fire to guide us. We’ll ride together on my horse, but our progress will be slow. I’m sorry.’
She had no other choice but to agree to this. During the journey he talked. Part of her wanted to scream at him to shut up, but she listened as she clung to him, and they made their way much more slowly than she wished.
She learned that his name was Haydon, and that the Earl had told him to begin his search at Pradley. When he’d arrived there at a late hour the evening before, he’d picked up on an atmosphere that didn’t seem right. Huddled groups whispered to each other, but stopped doing so when he approached. Folk he asked questions of scurried away, shaking their heads. And then, whilst he enjoyed a jug of beer in the bar of the hostelry he’d booked into, a man came in and asked him what he wanted with Josh Bottomless. Disinclined to share his business, Haydon said he needed supplies on a regular basis and had been recommended to try Bottomless; and, having been told that he lived near Pradley, he’d thought it a good place to start. At this, the man had said, ‘Aye, well, he lives a good ride from here, but on the morning he’ll be down for the market.’ The man who told him this had been McNaught.
The very name struck horror into Ruth, as she remembered McNaught’s death. Oh God, how will this all end?
‘Are you all right, Ruth? I can tell you another time.’
‘Naw, tell me now. I have so much confusion in me.’ She couldn’t tell him that Josh had killed McNaught, and that the mob had thought she had done it. She couldn’t dwell on that, or what they would find when they arrived at the farm.
‘McNaught didn’t hang around, but bade me farewell without making any other conversation, leaving me certain that something was afoot. Why should the folk of Pradley need a spokesman? Why hadn’t one of the dozen or so others I’d asked given me this information? My investigative instincts took over, and I decided to make it look as though I was content to wait till market day.’
Listening to him, Ruth learned that with the skill he’d nurtured to glean information without seeming to want it, Haydon had found out where Josh lived from the barman. Armed with the knowledge the Earl had given him, regarding some folk thinking of Ruth as having powers that she used to hurt folk with, he’d begun talking to the man about the most famous event of recent history: the Industrial Revolution. It was a subject far from the one he’d wanted to talk of – Pendle Hill. Eventually the barman had come round to talking of it and had said there were still witches in the area, to his reckoning.
‘What marks out a witch?’ Haydon had asked, and had been horrified to hear that the locals still thought that the crippled or afflicted had been given extra powers, and that most used them for evil. A few jugs more had loosened the fellow’s tongue further.
Haydon told her the words spoken by the barman: ‘We had one living here, but we thought we had rid ourselves of her when her da passed on, as the family had to move. But she’s back in the area and has caused a lad to take sick, and no one knows if he’ll survive, and that after him just having got a job to support his family.’
Ruth felt a sick feeling churn her stomach. It deepened as Haydon told her that the barman had spat his tobacco into the brown-stained fireplace and had said something that, on hearing it, made the horror inside her settle into a pit of despair: ‘A curse on Ruth Dovecote, curse on her. May she burn in hell.’ How could folk think such things about her? And to the point they were prepared to – to burn her!
More ale, and the man had revealed that the community planned to rid themselves of her soon. ‘I
asked him: Where does this witch live then? And I told him I’d never seen one and would like to take a look at her.
‘And then I had it! Confirmation that you lived with Josh Bottomless and his mother.’
‘Confirmation?’
‘Yes. The Earl had suspected that Josh was harbouring you.’
After hearing how the Earl had spoken to Josh, Ruth couldn’t think why he hadn’t told her. Was it because he feared for me, or because he feared the Earl wanted to take me from him?
Haydon continued, ‘Once I knew where you were, it was a simple matter of a few more jugs of ale and a handsome tip, to get directions to Josh’s farm.’
Walking out of the bar a while later, he’d come across some children playing. Their game entailed one of them being the witch and the others hounding her down. A farthing each had furnished him with all he needed to know.
Sitting up in his room, he’d waited. The main street of the town was visible to him, but nothing happened at the allotted time. Three chimes of the village clock told him that, if the children were right, somebody should make a move soon, but nothing happened. Then he saw it: a snake of flickering lights in the distance . . .
‘They must have gathered somewhere at the back of the town. This filled me with fear, as I needed to get to the farm before they did, but how? Once on my horse, which I had left saddled and loaded ready with what I needed, I realized that my task was hopeless, so I changed tactics and headed for Pendle Hill instead.’
The very name of the place had Ruth holding him tighter.
Huddled against the cold, Haydon waited. All was ready. A chill had seized him when he’d arrived, as the full moon had lit up the shape of the huge bonfire and, on his approach to it, he’d found that one side was open, leaving a pathway to the centre. Here he saw a deep hole, with a huge stake protruding from it. The thought of the planning that had gone into Ruth’s burning made his stomach retch and added urgency to his intentions to make sure he had everything in place. Then he’d waited and watched as the ever-swirling stream of lights had made its way up the hill opposite him, the cold steel barrel of his gun giving him reassurance.
‘When the night was suddenly lit by a massive glow, I thought I’d done the wrong thing, as I’d felt certain the light meant the farm had been set alight – and maybe you with it. For a moment I thought I should have tried to catch up with them and stop them. But once I saw the lights head this way, I knew I had made the right decision; they were bringing you to the bonfire they had built, and I stood a chance of saving you.’
Then Haydon told her of his plan. He’d thought his only chance against such a crowd was to use an element of surprise and scare the life out of them. To this end, he’d used a technique he’d learned from a Chinese man, who made firecrackers on his children’s birthdays. The noise from them was like gunfire. Learning how to make them had been a skill he thought he’d use only at friends’ parties, as a novelty factor. He laid the crackers in the ready-built fire. This meant that if the crowd didn’t disperse, he would have destroyed the fire they intended to use. ‘Though I must say, your flailing about and cursing helped.’ He chuckled at this, but Ruth couldn’t join in. That moment was seared into her as a time when something had entered her and taken her over. It held extreme dread of what she was capable of. Did she have the powers they thought she had? She didn’t allow herself to dwell on the question, but instead listened to Haydon’s description of how the bangs that had saved her life had been made from gunpowder extracted from cartridges, and how he’d kept some of the powder and had laid a trail of it from the bonfire to the place where he waited.
‘Ha, I can only imagine what went through the heads of that mob! No doubt most of them will have been sent mad, having seen what they thought was you bringing the wrath of hell down on them.’
Ruth didn’t laugh. Her eyes stung as the smoke from the farm swirled around them. It clogged her throat. ‘Ride faster. I will hold on. Please, we have to hurry.’
But still Haydon only walked the horse at a very slow pace, though she had to admit even that must have been a trial for the poor animal, as it wove its way over the rough terrain.
As they neared the farm the horse snorted in fear, lifting and shaking its head and stepping backwards. ‘It’s no good. We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot. Don’t worry, I will carry you on my back. The horse is terrified and exhausted.’
The heat engulfed them at that moment. Sparks settled around them and threatened to set their clothes alight, but at least the wind had changed and now blew the flames and smoke away from them. In the light of the fire she could see the still figure of Josh lying on the ground. Scattered around him, some distance from him, lay three bodies. All, she knew, had been shot by Josh in his attempt to save her. One of them would be McNaught’s.
Her mouth filled with spittle as they came up to McNaught’s body. She gathered the spittle and spat it onto him with a hatred that contained venom for all of his family.
‘Don’t! If you fill your heart with bitterness, there will be no room for any happiness to enter you.’
‘Happiness? I’ll never feel that again.’
‘You will. Your heart—’
Her gasp of pain stopped Haydon saying whatever he’d started to, as they reached Josh and she felt all hope of him being alive leave her. The handle of a butcher’s cleaver stood out from his skull. The blade was embedded so deep it had almost sliced Josh’s head in two. She realized that she hadn’t seen Whalley Bradstone, but to her, this was evidence enough that it was Whalley who had killed her lovely Josh. One day – she didn’t know when – she would get even with him, with all of them, for she doubted any of them would face charges for what they had done here tonight. The police hadn’t done anything to stop it happening and they must have known. Nothing passed them by.
‘Haydon, I need to sit with my Josh.’
‘Right, but Ruth—’
‘He needs me. Go and see if you can find his ma. Please God, she is alive. No, leave me. Find Nora. I’ll be reet.’
She meant this, as she had a feeling that nothing could touch her any more, after all she’d been through. But when she sat beside her beloved Josh, all that bravado dissolved and sobs racked her body, as the realization came to her that she couldn’t even see his face, and never would again. As her tears washed over him, she held his stiff, cold hand and told him of her love for him. Because, despite her feelings about the Earl being topsy-turvy, she had loved Josh, and with the kind of love that would have lasted them a lifetime.
‘Ruth! Ruth, she’s here. I have her. I’ll come and get you.’
Nora lay not far from Josh, unconscious but alive. Her face, blackened by smoke, showed a deep cut running from her forehead to her nose. Whalley must have lashed out at her, too, but hadn’t been able to finish his work.
As Ruth stroked her cheek, Nora let out a moan.
‘Oh, Nora – Nora love, I’m here. I’ll take care of you. Just get better, love. Everything’ll turn out. It will . . .’ But will it? What does the future hold for me? Why has the Earl gone to so much trouble to find me?
And what about the law? Would she be dragged up before the Assizes? But then what did it matter? She had Amy and Nora; and most of all, she had the Earl. For hadn’t Haydon said the Earl’s intentions had been to help her? Would he do that out of conscience alone, or had she been right when she read something in him as to his feelings? Were they like her own? But then if they were, what would he want from her? One thing she knew: he wouldn’t take her as his wife. That would be unheard of.
Oh, why am I thinking of such things at a time like this? Maybe I am possessed – possessed by my love for the Earl. It must be that, because what will happen in the future shouldn’t matter at such a moment! Telling herself this didn’t help, however, because even though she was surrounded by death and destruction and held a broken heart inside her, it did matter to her.
20
Katrina & Marcia
A Seed of Doubt is Sown
‘It’s preposterous, Katrina, you cannot allow it. Frederick cannot do this to you. That woman is a murderer! It is enough that he had her sentence commuted to six months’ hard labour, when she stood to face the gallows, but to bring her here to your home! She is his lover, for God’s sake! How you even allowed Frederick to bring her sister here and have her educated, I just don’t know.’
‘Marcia, Ruth Dovecote is not Frederick’s lover.’
‘Yet! Katrina, are you mad? You know he is in love with the girl.’
‘I do not. Frederick has told me that he isn’t, and it was just part of the spite that Lord Bellinger meted out when—’
‘Rot! Look at the evidence. Oh, I suppose he has given you reasons for his actions where that slut is concerned, has he? Explained why he paid someone to look for her, then engaged the best lawyer there is going and—’
‘How do you know all this? In fact how do you know any of it, Marcia? All you are talking about is what Lord Bellinger contrived. I didn’t tell you any of it, and I know Frederick wouldn’t have . . . You’ve been seeing him, haven’t you? You and Bellinger have . . .’ The thought hurt so much that Katrina found herself backing towards a chair. Her legs shook and almost let her down. God, she couldn’t bear it: Marcia and Bellinger. Her own sister!
The pain of this, she knew, was embedded in her own love for Simon Bellinger – a love she hated feeling, and would cut out of her if she could. He’d used her; used her and then moved on to her sister.
Marcia’s face held a mocking smile. ‘Did you think you were the only one for Simon? Silly Katrina.’
‘What do you mean? I am not for him at all. I—’
‘Oh, don’t come the innocent with me. Your wedding night, dear sister . . . remember? It wasn’t your husband who deflowered you, was it?’