Puritan

by David Hingley

  ‘Oh.’ She smiled. ‘A letter Goffe has started to his wife. I will have to leave this for Percy so he can take it for him to finish.’ She continued to peer through the pages. ‘More correspondence. And what is this? Drawings, to pass the time no doubt.’ She cast her eye across the small pictures covering the entirety of one of the sheets. Then she turned cold. ‘Hell’s teeth!’

  ‘Have you found something?’ Nicholas called.

  She ignored him, her attention captured by the series of drawings on the page. It was a number of impressions of the monas, some complete, some split into its parts. A series of drawings of the alchemists’ symbol that had been divided among the murderous codes.

  ‘Christ.’ Nicholas’s shout startled her. ‘’Tis so dark in here we missed this!’

  Her mind in turmoil, she turned to look. In one hand he was gripping his torch, while in the other, he held out a saw for her to see. She did not need to examine it to know it would be the same Kit claimed to have lost. Near Nicholas’s feet, his light was illuminating a large knife.

  ‘It is speckled with dried blood,’ he said.

  ‘Is it?’ she replied. ‘Is it?’

  She turned back to the papers, leafing swiftly through, and then a shiver passed her soul as she found what she had never thought to discover, not in this cave, at least.

  Nicholas peered over her shoulder. ‘What is it?’

  It was a series of ten leaves of paper, designed to be used in pairs: the first set of five sheets numbered one through to five, and the second set the same, numbered one through to five. On the first set, the letters of the alphabet were scattered over the page, each time jumbled in a different order. Tiny windows were cut into each sheet of the second set, twenty-six square holes with a cursive letter alongside. When the matching pairs were placed together, the windowed page on top, corresponding letters were revealed on the jumbled sheet beneath.

  ‘It is a key.’ She closed her eyes. ‘A key, Nicholas. Indeed five of them.’

  He took a shallow breath. ‘To go with five codes.’

  Holding the papers in one hand, she reached with the other for the unfinished letter to Goffe’s wife; her heart sank as she saw the writing matched. Then she pulled from her pockets the by now tattered parchment on which she had scrawled all five codes.

  ‘Here, take this.’ She passed him the parchment, and then assembled the first pair of papers, the windowed sheet on top of the jumbled alphabet. ‘And read me the letters from the first code, the powwow’s. My mind is too affected to recall them precisely.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ He peered at the code. ‘S. I think.’

  She looked at the key. The window labelled ‘S’ showed a ‘T’ underneath.

  ‘And then the second is – X,’ he said. ‘That’s easy. Everyone I know signs their name with X.’

  ‘X is the letter … O.’ She looked up. ‘T, followed by O. To?’

  ‘Makes sense. The next is W.’

  ‘Which is K.’

  ‘Now, L.’

  ‘E, then.’

  ‘Another L.’

  ‘Another E.’ She shook her head. ‘As Winthrop thought. If only we had tried harder.’

  ‘You tried as hard as you could. You couldn’t know each code would have a different key.’ He looked back down. ‘The next is R.’

  ‘Which is … P.’ She considered a moment. ‘T-O-K-E-E-P … tokeep – to keep! To keep what?’

  ‘Let’s continue. The next is I – no, J. There’s a curl at the bottom.’

  ‘You are sure?’

  ‘Yes. J.’

  ‘J corresponds to … S.’ She frowned. ‘Isn’t there a J at the end of that code too?’

  He paused. ‘Yes. Yes there is.’

  ‘So another S, at the end.’

  ‘Seems that way. But going in order, the next letter is L.’ He coughed. ‘Damn this smoke. E again, correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Then there is Q, and M.’

  ‘Which are … C … and R.’ She stared down at the papers. ‘To keep … S-E-C-R…’ She closed her eyes. ‘The next will show E and T, I think.’

  ‘Well, the final three letters are … L again … S … and that J.’

  She read from the key to be sure. ‘E … then T … and S. So yes. This code reads, To keep secrets.’ A melancholy washed over her, a cold sense of betrayal and despair. ‘A motive, perhaps. We should move onto the next.’

  And so it went, Mercia descending through ever more layers of hurt. The second code, from George Mason: To protect many. The third, the worst, from Clemency: We must kill few. The fourth, from Hopewell: Lord forgive us. The fifth, from Silence, a repetition of the fourth, an emphasis perhaps of the anguished plea. Now all five meanings were revealed.

  To keep secrets

  To protect many

  We must kill few

  Lord forgive us

  Lord forgive us

  She slumped in the cave, the message ringing through her heart. A motive indeed. And a confession no less.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  She talked with Percy. He could not believe it: indeed, partisan as he was, he refused to believe it, dismissing the idea out of hand. Understanding his point of view, and yet unwilling to be so inflexible herself, she rode to Hartford to talk with Winthrop. The calm and rational governor could not believe it either. How could such noble men be guilty of such crimes, went his argument? And yet there, in that cave, she had found the key to the codes, apparently written in William Goffe’s hand.

  But to her doubting mind, her confusions dipping and rising much like the ruts in the Meltwater road, it seemed wrong. That the regicides had left the incriminating key, and more so the saw, seemed too careless, the killings far too callous. She decided there was only one thing to do: confront the men herself and demand the truth. In a rage, Percy had snapped that they were safe in a town called Hadley, some hours to the north, and so to Hadley she would ride, even if Percy refused to go with her to show her the way.

  As she returned to Meltwater from Hartford, the inaugural Guy Fawkes festivities scheduled for that night were underway. It had been two weeks since Silence’s murder, and the townsfolk were still on edge, understandable, so she thought, but they were pouring their energies into this new distraction, hoping the burning of the guy would help burn away some of their fear. In the western field, Humility Thomas was overseeing two boys as they stacked frayed pieces of wood in a haphazard pile, the macabre guy discarded in a small cart beside them, its long black hair and stern expression an uncanny surrogate for the Duke of York.

  She passed inside the palisade, finding Nicholas sitting with Amery on the meeting-house steps. Rising, the schoolmaster greeted her with little enthusiasm before sauntering towards the schoolhouse to leave them alone. She was shocked to learn from Nicholas that the whole town was humming with the news that the regicides had moved on from killing Kings to killing ordinary people too.

  ‘Percy,’ he explained. ‘He was so angry he took it on himself to rubbish the claims before anyone could spread them. Now Thorpe is demanding to know what really happened, and the town is full of wild tales.’

  She bit her lip. ‘Do they believe it?’

  ‘After Whalley’s appearance against the Indians?’ Nicholas shrugged. ‘Not many, but I sense a few just want to accuse someone and be done with it. ’Tis easier that way, perhaps.’

  ‘But not just.’

  ‘No.’ He hesitated. ‘Sir William was asking where you were. He seemed upset you’d gone to Hartford for a couple of days.’

  She sucked in her cheek. ‘He can be as upset as he wants. What says he of all this?’

  ‘Oh, come now, you don’t expect him to talk to the likes of me, do you?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ She took a deep breath; the air still seemed fresh, even now. ‘Have you seen Nathan? Daniel was asking after him.’

  ‘How is he? Daniel?’

  ‘Growing restless now. Eager for home.’ She sighed.
‘So ’tis past time we concluded this. I am going to Hadley. Will you come?’

  ‘Hadley?’ His eyes flicked down. ‘What about Nathan?’

  ‘What of him? He seems more interested in farming nowadays.’

  ‘I wouldn’t—’ He broke off as he saw her face. ‘Look, since the attack, none of the Indian farmhands have dared come back to work. He likes to help.’ He looked at her askance. ‘I take it you haven’t spoken with him yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Don’t you … think you should?’

  She frowned. ‘Is there something you are not telling me?’

  ‘Just … speak to him.’

  She shook her head. ‘I will, after I have wet my face. That Hartford road feels very long.’ She fixed him a stare as she walked away. ‘But we ride tomorrow. At first light.’

  Despite her persisting rancour at Nathan for having written to Sir William, she did as Nicholas suggested and rode out to the Davisons’ farm. Walking through the town to collect her horse, she heard people talking in the streets, gossiping in closed huddles.

  ‘I said it all along,’ one man was saying. ‘Richard was right. We should have listened.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ replied his companion. ‘’Tis as Percy says. Something doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘Tell that to Standfast. He is raving still with despair.’

  Outside the palisade, she mounted her horse and rode the short distance to the farm. She found Nathan bent over in the corner of a half-harvested field, nailing together a shaky fence. She paused for a moment to look at him, dressed in clothes he must have borrowed – rough farmworkers’ attire designed to get dirty. He seemed quite at ease working in the fields, even more than when she had watched him supervising his own farm back in England. Strange, she thought. The soldier, a man who had killed men, become a farmer, tending the earth to grow food to feed them. The circle of life, and on, and on.

  She reined in her horse. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘So you are talking to me.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘I told you why I wrote to him.’

  She focused on the nearly finished fence. ‘You seem quite happy here.’

  ‘That is beside the point.’ He laid his tools on the dry earth. ‘How is Daniel?’

  Her lips twitched into an aborted smile. ‘He is well, thank you.’

  ‘Was he asking after me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I wager he wants to return home too.’

  She jiggled her head. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Come, Mercia.’ He patted the horse’s neck. ‘There is no sense in our falling out.’

  She looked across the meadow, into the distance. ‘We do not seem to have done much more of late.’

  ‘No. Under the windmill in New York, it seemed like such a good idea to come here. Now … maybe not.’

  The breeze whipped up around them, teasing the horse’s mane. ‘But Clemency would still be dead, and there would be nobody to avenge her.’

  He glanced up. ‘Avenge?’

  ‘Avenge, help her find peace, what does it matter?’ She jerked at the reins. ‘I came to say I am going … somewhere again.’

  ‘Yes. To see Whalley and the others. I thought you might.’ He rotated his neck as though creasing out the stiffness of his labour. ‘But there is no need. I have gone for you.’

  She looked down aghast. ‘When?’

  ‘While you were in Hartford. I wanted to do something to help you. Can you understand that?’

  ‘But … Nicholas said nothing.’

  ‘So you have spoken to him already.’ He sighed. ‘There was a time when you would have come to me as soon as you returned. Well. I suppose he wanted you to hear this from me, as he should.’

  Agitated, she jumped from her horse. ‘Wait a moment. Let me tie her up.’ That done, she turned to face him, lowering her voice. ‘Now speak.’

  He leant against the newly sturdy fence, talking quietly. ‘As soon as you had gone, I went to see Percy, but he refused to ride with me to see them. His mind, you see, cannot accept they could be guilty.’

  ‘And you? What do you think?’

  ‘I think any man can commit atrocities when he fears for his life. I have seen as much.’

  She nodded, waiting for him to continue.

  ‘I spoke to Nicholas. I rebuked him for letting you travel to Hartford alone and then I got him to tell me more about what happened in the cave. You never told me he had been attacked.’ His face seemed to fall. ‘You trust him now, it seems. You took him to search for answers instead of me.’

  ‘Nathan, I did not want you to worry. And I was angry with you. To speak true, I still am.’ Some of the hurt she had buried inside burst up, breaking through the wall she had built. ‘Why the hell did you have to write to Sir William without telling me?’

  ‘You know why.’ He did not turn away. ‘I think you are suffering here, and I want to take you and Daniel home.’

  ‘That is for me to decide, not you. But … carry on with your account.’

  He looked at her a moment as though trying to read her thoughts, but she held her face impassive. He shook his head.

  ‘I rode to Hadley. ’Tis two days’ journey, by rights, but I managed it in one. I wanted to be back by the time you returned.’

  ‘Did no one question where you were going?’

  ‘I said I had changed my mind about accompanying you to Hartford. Then when I returned first, I said you had stayed a little longer with the governor’s wife.’ He scratched at his old scar, sticking up from under his loose shirt. ‘I got into some trouble for letting you ride on your own.’

  ‘I was on my own the whole way.’ Impatient, she bade him continue. ‘What happened in Hadley?’

  A wistfulness came into his eyes. ‘’Tis a beautiful village, smaller than Meltwater, and just as remote. It is a remarkable life they lead here, you know.’

  ‘Is it?’

  His lips curled into a sorry smile. ‘When I got there, I made a fuss in the street, shouting I was come from here. It did not take long for their minister to approach me. He took me to Dixwell, and I explained what had happened. Needless to say he was outraged. He spoke with Goffe and Whalley right away, although I was not allowed to see their hiding place.’

  She leant towards him. ‘So what did they say?’

  ‘That they were innocent. That Goffe never wrote that code, not even that letter to his wife. And that they could not possibly have committed the murders, for he and Whalley were in New Haven when they all happened, other than the last.’

  ‘I had thought that would be so. But could not one of them, pushing hard, have ridden to Meltwater to carry out the killings while the other feigned his innocence?’ Even as she said it, she knew how far-fetched it sounded. She longed for Nathan to give her something to tear the weak argument apart.

  ‘Then who would have been the second person Vic saw?’ He bounced on his heels. ‘No, Mercia. Their host in New Haven can vouch for them, as can Dixwell since they came here, as can a number of people all around – people who supposedly know nothing about them, but who would come forward if their lives were at stake.’ He looked her full in the face. ‘They never left their attic that whole time. Mercia, it is not possible that they committed the murders. I do not know why, but someone is playing a heartless game with both them and the town.’

  She stared at the ground. ‘You are sure of this?’

  ‘It would be very simple to speak with the people whom they say can prove they were miles away. So why should they lie? And why should they leave those codes as admission of guilt if they did not want to be found out?’

  ‘This is incredible.’ She felt a powerful mixture of relief and guilt. ‘Have you told Percy?’

  ‘I was waiting for you.’

  She managed a smile. ‘You have saved me a long ride. Thank you.’

  ‘You are welcome. ’Tis what friends – supposedly good ones �
� are for.’

  From farm to town, the distance was not far, the Davisons’ land the closest plot to the palisade: a fatal choice of employer, then, for the innocent farmhand caught so close to the scene of Hopewell’s murder. But she pushed her horse nonetheless, leaning far over its withers, so when the face appeared at the edge of the forest, it was only the horse’s momentum that held her upright as she lost her grip on the reins.

  ‘That was Sooleawa!’ she shouted as she recovered her wits, continuing without pause.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ called Nathan. ‘Remy says she has been watching the town ever since the Indians attacked.’

  ‘I cannot hear,’ she yelled. ‘Talk to me when we get back to the town.’

  For the rest of the short ride they kept their silence, but when Mercia looked round, she could see Sooleawa looking straight at her from just outside the forest. Bow in hand, she made no move to follow or even react, and then she vanished back into the wood. Once in Meltwater, Mercia secured her horse and turned to Nathan.

  He shrugged. ‘Many of the townsfolk have seen her. Vic and Kit rode out to chase her away, but she seems not to want to leave.’

  ‘Is she alone?’

  ‘No one else has been spotted, at least.’ He looked at her. ‘I think we both know why she is here.’

  ‘She is still after Godsgift.’ She set off towards the bonfire site. ‘But I thought … did she not say she wanted to kill him in front of everyone?’

  ‘Maybe that’s the thing. With this celebration, everyone will be gathered outside, Godsgift too. Perhaps she intends to strike then.’

  ‘Is he well enough to come outdoors?’

  ‘Not really, but he—hey, steady!’ A pair of girls rushed past, the taller crashing into his legs. He smiled and they continued on their heedless way. ‘He insists,’ he finished. ‘He says he won’t let any such … Indian … stop him from joining in.’

  ‘I suspect he did not use quite that word.’