Puritan

by David Hingley

  ‘Probably just talking, Nicholas. As you said, this is not London. There are few places to go to be—’ She broke off as a movement in the near distance caught her attention. ‘Nicholas, what is that?’

  ‘What is what?’

  ‘That!’ She stopped dead, pointing towards the town’s northern gate. ‘Is it a bear?’ A shock of fear coursed through her body. ‘’Tis rearing up!’

  Nicholas ventured forward. Outside the gate a large black figure was lurching left and right, just about lit up in the moonlight.

  ‘I don’t think ’tis a bear, if bears in these parts are like those in the Southwark pits.’ He craned his neck. ‘Stay here. I think ’tis a man, but let me be sure.’

  She let him move on a slight way in front, then followed regardless.

  ‘Mercia.’

  ‘Just … keep moving.’

  As they approached, the figure came into focus. Closer up, she could tell it was clothed. ‘It must be one of the townsfolk wandering abroad at night,’ she whispered, feeling foolish. ‘Keep back, Nicholas. We do not want them to see us.’

  ‘I think – I’m not sure – is he in trouble? Look how he’s wobbling about.’

  ‘You are right. Damn.’ She followed him forward again. Now almost on the dark figure, she could see he was clutching at something in his hands.

  ‘He definitely doesn’t seem well,’ said Nicholas.

  The man lurched over, hitting the earth. His hat fell to the ground, revealing his bearded cheeks.

  ‘Shit.’ Nicholas dashed forward. ‘I think ’tis Hopewell.’

  ‘Is that a bottle he is holding?’ She raced behind Nicholas to come alongside the prostrate man. ‘He is drunk, isn’t he?’ At their feet, Hopewell began to roll on the ground, groaning and grabbing at the long object in his hands.

  Nicholas crouched down. ‘Are you well, friend? What’s the matter?’ He jumped back as Hopewell began to convulse. ‘By God’s truth, Mercia, he is starting to shake.’ He turned round. ‘Mercia?’

  But Mercia was not listening. She was staring at Hopewell’s hands, at the bottle she had assumed he was holding. Suddenly she threw her head to the side and was violently sick.

  ‘Mercia! What is—fuck!’ Nicholas recoiled as he saw what had made her so ill. He turned away, retching himself.

  She recovered enough to turn back to Hopewell’s writhing figure. She wiped her mouth and spoke in a trembling voice: a simple, heartfelt phrase.

  ‘But he is still alive.’

  ‘Yes.’ Nicholas looked at her, horror in his eyes. ‘My God, Mercia. Yes.’

  ‘And there is nothing we can do.’ Despairing, she looked at Hopewell’s shaking body, his constant moans betraying the agony he must have been feeling. ‘Nicholas! What can we do?’

  ‘Help!’ Nicholas shouted as loud as he was able, his strident voice booming around the night. ‘Help!’

  For a time Mercia took up his chorus, but then she dared to look back at Hopewell and her cries fell silent. His trembling hands were overrun, covered in a thick fluid that could only have been blood, a gurgling noise stemming from his throat. For it was no bottle of rum that the trader was holding, but a more sinister thing entirely, a throbbing, viscous mass pouring from a deep gash in his clothes, draining from the savage rip in his flesh she knew must be lying beneath.

  He was holding his own entrails in his quivering hands, fast on the way to death.

  Chapter Sixteen

  From behind, the sound of heavy boots came thudding on dry earth. Percy and Sil rushed up, alerted by the cries for help. With Nicholas they carried Hopewell into the town, but by the time they rested him once more on the ground, he was mercifully dead, blood dribbling from his mouth as it continued to trickle from his stomach.

  ‘Who did this?’ Percy looked up at Mercia, his mouth open in apparent shock. ‘Did you see?’

  ‘No.’ Feeling utterly sick, she forced herself to speak. ‘We only saw Hopewell, staggering towards the gate.’ She looked at Nicholas, unbelieving. ‘We thought he was drunk.’

  Nicholas made to wipe his brow, but stopped abruptly, the stench of Hopewell’s entrails covering his fingers. ‘Oh God,’ he cried, flinging bits of stomach to the ground.

  ‘The alarm!’ Sil whipped round. ‘Percy, the alarm!’

  ‘God, yes, I—’ Percy ran back to the gate, reaching up to grab at a hidden object, shaking it back and forth. A loud bell rang out across the town.

  ‘Alarm!’ Percy cried. ‘Alarm! Everybody out!’

  ‘Alarm!’ Sil took up his call. ‘Alarm!’ Now Nicholas and Mercia joined them. ‘Alarm!’ The quartet’s cries drowned out the bell, Mercia’s shouts alone louder than she thought possible. ‘Alarm!’

  Dogs began to bark, cows to grunt, pigs rummaging around the gardens squealed, adding their mammalian chorus. And now candles began to move inside windows, doors squeaked open, people poured into the streets. An eerie procession of candlelit townsfolk wavered outside the gates of their houses, looking towards the alarm call, straining to see. Some carried weapons in their free hands, perhaps assuming the town was under attack.

  Finally – or quickly, Mercia could not tell – some of the men made their way towards the gate, encircling her group, drawing in appalled gasps as they caught sight of the macabre spectacle at their feet.

  ‘God protect us!’

  ‘Who could have—?’

  ‘Fetch the constable!’

  ‘I am already here.’

  The crowd stepped aside to let Godsgift Brown through their midst. The burly constable crouched over the corpse, no trace of emotion on his face.

  ‘He is dead.’

  ‘Of course he is dead!’ Percy loomed above him, hands on his hips. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Godsgift scratched at his cheek. ‘This was an Indian.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An Indian, I say. One of the bastards must have killed him.’ He looked impassively at the bloody entrails. ‘With one of those axes of theirs.’

  Percy looked down, incredulous. ‘Why? Of all of us, he was the best liked among them.’

  ‘You know as well as I do how they are quick to turn. Perhaps the rum he insisted on giving them addled their heads.’ He stood, stroking his chin. ‘You found him?’

  ‘Yes – I mean, no – Mrs Blakewood did, and Wildmoor.’

  Godsgift turned to face her. ‘So yet more death since you have returned.’

  Mercia recoiled, physically stung. ‘We must discover who did this.’

  He licked his bottom lip. ‘Did you find him here?’

  She shook her head. ‘He was walking – lurching – towards the gate. He must have been attacked nearby, and not long before we saw him, with … these wounds.’

  Godsgift nodded, addressing the crowd. ‘I need a group of men to come with me to search.’ Every man in the circle stepped forward. ‘Good. Those of you without arms, go and fetch them, and tell others you see.’ He looked at Percy. ‘Any Indians nearby will be brought back here and we will have just revenge.’ He grabbed the sword hilt at his side. ‘No savage does this to an Englishman and lives.’

  The men murmured in ready approval, drawing their weapons. Nicholas placed himself in front of Mercia, but she stepped to the side, wanting to see what would occur.

  ‘Wait!’ called Sil. ‘You cannot merely go and kill whichever Indians you find!’

  ‘Can’t I?’ snarled Godsgift.

  ‘No.’ Another man stepped through the crowd. ‘No, Godsgift, you cannot.’

  ‘Lavington.’ The constable’s hands twitched on his sword hilt, his voice dripping with scorn. ‘So what do you propose? That we do nothing?’

  Lavington raised himself up, sweeping the open flaps of his hefty cloak to each side. Although Godsgift was stockier, Lavington was taller, and the thickness of his cloak distorted the difference between them. The crowd’s eyes swivelled from one to the other, waiting.

  ‘What I propose, Constable, is that we do not le
ave the town undefended by sending all its men out to search in the darkness for an Indian who may not even be there.’

  Godsgift moved his hand from his sword, folding his arms across his puffed-out chest. ‘So we do nothing.’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘So far you have said little.’

  More people were now joining the group, swearing in horror at the corpse on the ground. They joined the circle around Lavington and Brown, as intrigued as Mercia at the power play taking place in front of them. What Winthrop had said appeared to be true. The constable and the magistrate did not always get on.

  ‘Father.’ Percy approached Lavington, his hands red from the dead man’s blood. ‘Hopewell has been murdered.’ He paused. ‘The person responsible must still be near. Whether ’tis an Indian or not, the men should at least go and look.’ He glanced at Godsgift. ‘But ’tis only recently that their powwow was slain, they think by an Englishman. If we kill another now without consulting them first, they will assume the worst kind of treachery and retaliate.’

  Lavington peered at his son. ‘I believe I implied that?’ Then he turned back to Godsgift. ‘You may search the fields, but you will not take all the men, and you will not kill. If anyone is out there, I want them brought back here to explain themselves.’

  Godsgift stared, his eyes aflame, but then he broke off his gaze to review the men in the circle, ordering those already bearing a weapon to follow him through the gate. Once they had marched out, Lavington removed his thick cloak and knelt by the corpse. He reached his hands close in, but the gore repelled him, holding him back.

  ‘I spoke harshly with him but yesterday afternoon. ’Tis strange the ways God presents His will.’ Again he hovered his hands over the body, but again he did not touch. Then he stood, pushing his large frame off the ground. ‘Percy, will you take him to my storehouse? Perhaps Stephen can help you.’ He gestured at the crowd, waving across the male servant Mercia had seen at his house.

  ‘Let me help,’ said Nicholas. ‘I am already … dirty.’

  ‘No!’ Lavington shook his head. ‘These two will be enough.’

  Nicholas turned to Percy, who nodded. ‘Stephen and I can manage.’ He looked at his father. ‘But why take him to your yard?’

  Lavington rubbed his eyes. ‘Percy – just do it. And quickly. We do not want – this – on sight for women and children to see.’ He gestured at Amery to trundle over a nearby cart. ‘Especially women who are strangers.’

  Loading the cart with its gruesome cargo, Percy led his father away into the dark. The rest of the town waited, fired up by Godsgift’s certainty and the sight of the ravaged corpse. As their constant murmurs attested, Hopewell might have been a pariah in the town, but death had made him one of them, and they were ready to avenge his loss. No matter, it seemed, that they would not do the same for Clemency, persisting in their belief that she had taken her own life.

  The fear running through the group was palpable, leaping from person to person and nestling in their nervous glances, but they seemed incapable of returning to their homes. For her part, Mercia hung back with Nicholas, feeling ill at what she had found. And she began to question, and to wonder, and to think: George Mason, Praise-God Davison, Clemency Carter, Hopewell Quayle. Four deaths, two at least unnatural. Were any of them connected, or was the town merely cursed?

  Percy returned from his unwelcome errand, standing beside her with Amery and now Kit, who had run into town from his sawmill after Godsgift’s party had left. He comforted her for her discovery as the other townsfolk did not, and she wondered too about Lavington, about why he had insisted Hopewell be taken to his store. She turned to Percy, who was looking out over the gathered crowd.

  ‘Does your father always keep the dead in his yard?’

  He frowned. ‘Usually the minister would see they are cared for. Perhaps as we don’t have one, he thought that duty was his.’

  It was logical, she supposed. ‘Perhaps. Where is he now?’

  ‘Father? He will come back.’ He sighed. ‘Each time there is a death here, he feels it, you know. Whatever else, he cares deeply for this town. When someone dies, a small part of himself goes with them.’

  She let out a bitter laugh. ‘But he did not feel that way with Clemency?’

  His face seemed to darken. ‘It is not for us to judge how he feels.’

  Beside them, Kit broke from his conversation with Amery and Nicholas. ‘In the fields,’ he said. ‘I think I see movement.’

  The group tensed, uncertain what to expect. Then Seaborn Adams came in through the gate at the head of Godsgift’s party of six. But no. Seven. The hunters had brought quarry: six powerful men dragging a skinny Indian boy, his frailty no match for their brawn. He was young, in his teenage years certainly, in the fire of twenty candles his face full of fear. One of the townsmen, Mercia did not know him, had never seen him, she thought, threw him to the ground, his long black hair strewn across the earth. The people of the town – the women, the men – formed a circle around him, its enclosing menace surer than the firmest earthworks or the sturdiest fence. The boy could not escape.

  ‘What did I say?’ said Godsgift, sheathing his rapier. ‘An Indian.’

  ‘Wait.’ Percy stepped forward. ‘You are saying this boy killed Hopewell?’

  ‘We found him right near the town, just at the edge of the field,’ said Seaborn. Behind him, the other men nodded their confirmation. All but one: while the rest looked down on the boy, Vic Smith’s pockmarked face was turned to the gate.

  An eighth figure ran in. Fearing Davison, Remembrance’s father, pushed through the onlookers to kneel beside the Indian as though shielding him from their malice.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘In God’s name, leave him be!’

  ‘Stand aside, Fearing.’ Godsgift reached to pull the farmer up, but Fearing thrust away his hand, knocking it back against the constable’s holstered pistol.

  ‘Not until you tell me what he has done!’

  Mercia looked at the boy. He was a slight youth, his thin frame shivering in the cold night. She leant in to Percy.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘One of Fearing’s farmhands. A helpful lad.’ He raised his voice. ‘Godsgift, where is the proof of what you claim?’

  Godsgift beckoned to one of the men, who handed him a wooden cup. He turned the vessel over in his hands before throwing it at the Indian’s feet.

  ‘There. That cup is Hopewell’s. Isn’t it, boy?’ He kicked the Indian in the stomach; doubled-over, the boy nodded, terrified. ‘This bastard was drinking from it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Fearing, the deep creases lengthening across his face.

  Godsgift snorted. ‘Hopewell has been cut open, Fearing. Killed. And your man there did it.’

  Fearing recoiled, staring at his labourer. ‘Killed Hopewell?’ His head drifted to Godsgift and his jaw seemed to shake. ‘I didn’t know. I have been inside all evening. I … I want no part in this.’

  As he continued to babble, he stepped back, merging into the crowd. The Indian, until then looking on his employer as though he were some sort of divinity able to intervene and spare him, cried out in anguish.

  Next to Mercia, Percy was laughing. ‘Hopewell bartered those cups all over. Many of the Indians have one. This boy most likely traded for it months ago.’

  ‘Who is master here? Us or them?’ Godsgift reached to his side, stroking his sword hilt. ‘Shall we let the death of one of our own pass unpunished?’

  ‘And what if it is not an Indian at all?’

  ‘Who else could it be?’ Removing his hand, Godsgift glanced at Nicholas and Mercia. ‘You said these two found him. Are you suggesting they killed him instead?’

  ‘Do not be absurd. By the time they found him he had already been attacked.’

  There was something of malice in Godsgift’s eyes, something devillike, making Mercia feel she had to explain herself.

  ‘We wished to walk off a l
ate supper,’ she said. ‘We found Hopewell on our way back into town. Percy arrived immediately afterwards.’

  Godsgift smiled, but it was not a gesture of understanding. ‘So, Percy. Who else, then, but an Indian? Surely you cannot be accusing one of us? One of your own?’

  ‘Of course he is not,’ said John Lavington. Mercia looked across, wondering how long the magistrate had been waiting in the crowd. ‘Why would he?’

  ‘Well then,’ simmered Godsgift. ‘An Indian.’

  The townsfolk shuffled and stamped ever closer to the boy, their circle somehow shrinking, the pressure within growing. Percy held his ground, protesting the boy’s innocence, but nobody would heed him, not even his father, who stood watching, his restless eyes darting, simply surveying the crowd. The people fidgeted, unable to look each other in the eye, even as they closed the circle still tighter.

  Nicholas glanced at Mercia, questioning whether they should act, but she shook her head, hopeful the boy would merely be questioned, even beaten if they must, but ultimately released. She looked at Percy, now silent, his shadow in the candlelight flickering large on the palisade. But now a chant broke out, a sinister hum, and she saw how the Devil was outstretching his hand, dissolving the people’s humanity into a primitive creature of savage retribution. The crowd in their mindlessness were calling for vengeance, and all the while Godsgift was standing at their heart, pumping their bloodlust through their veins.

  Seaborn grabbed the boy’s head, holding him down. Others held his legs, so he could not kick out. The boy whimpered, whinnying, frantic. A terrified stench filled the air.

  Mercia turned away, appalled, listening as Nicholas argued with Percy to make them stop. But then she thought, damn this. Damn their warped justice, that allows a woman’s death to go unpunished, and the first Indian they find to be accused. She pushed herself forward into the crowd. Closer now, she could see not everyone had been overtaken by madness – Kit had his eyes closed, intoning a prayer, Fearing too, although his lips were unmoving. Vic looked again to the gate, away from the boy. Thorpe stood at the back, newly arrived she thought; certainly, she had not seen him there before.