Havoc, in Its Third Year

by Ronan Bennett

  “Hannah has no evidence against the husband,” Brigge said to Adam as they finished their supper. “At least none sufficient to return an indictment of murder.”

  “Perhaps the neighbors will have more hard proofs.”

  “Unless they saw the actual strokes he laid on her that killed her, he will go free.”

  “And you are content for that to happen?” Adam said, indignant.

  “It is the law,” Brigge replied evenly.

  “Then I say the law makes mockery of justice. The man is plainly guilty.”

  Brigge looked over at Hewison, who sat by the constable and would not eat, posing as too distraught to heed the pangs of his belly. The coroner finished his meal and called for more candles. He directed the constable to bring the next witness forward.

  This one and the following were friends of Hewison’s and swore that they never saw him mistreat his wife, and that Hannah Smith her sister was a disputatious and scolding woman, a troublesome and turbulent neighbor who quarreled much and who did all she could to defame her brother-in-law of his good name.

  After these Brigge heard some neighbors who took Hannah’s part and were very strong against Hewison. In their account he was by common fame a notorious drunkard who spent his time and money in alehouses in the company of his friends and lewd women, to the great neglect of his wife and scandal of the neighbors. Several deposed that they had seen him at divers times and places—even once during divine service, in full view of the congregation then present—set upon his wife and beat her cruelly. None, however, claimed to witness the fatal assault, if indeed there had been such a thing.

  Finally, the coroner called the curate of the chapel, a mere youth, earnest and trying hard to conceal the uncertainties he had of himself and his place. He eyed Brigge balefully. He was, the coroner perceived, one of the hotter sort.

  The coroner asked if he had seen the body before it was buried and whether it bore any bruises or marks. The curate answered that he had no reason to look at any part of her except her face and hands and these, as far as he was able to perceive, had nothing suspicious about them.

  The jurors complaining at the lateness of the hour, the coroner adjourned the matter until morning. Adam got up to leave with the rest, but Brigge asked the boy to sit and drink with him a while before they retired to their beds.

  “In Moses’ time,” Adam said, “the Jews would have taken Hewison and stoned him to death.”

  “Is that what you think we should do to Hewison?”

  “I do not think any man would object that it was unjust.”

  “You were not always so severe and passionate in your opinions, Adam,” Brigge said.

  “I did not then see that Satan was abroad in the land,” Adam said.

  “You believe so?”

  “It is evident,” Adam insisted. “And yet those ordained of God to keep the peace sleep. Kindliness and charity will not do. The sword, which God gave to magistrates, must be used with energy. If not, the Devil will be Lord.”

  “I think perhaps you exaggerate,” Brigge said.

  “This is the argument of the faint heart,” Adam retorted.

  “Is that what you think of me, Adam? Am I one of these faint hearts?”

  Adam hesitated to answer. Brigge searched the boy’s face for his true feelings. They were not well concealed.

  “If you feel this way about me,” Brigge continued, “why do you continue in my service, in my house?”

  “You have always been kind and loving to me,” Adam said slowly.

  “So you overlook my faults, as you see them, out of gratitude?”

  “Yes.”

  Brigge nodded slowly. “But these faults, they are serious, are they not?”

  “I believe those who have power and sit by and do not act will be the ruination of the commonwealth unless they change their ways.”

  Adam was quiet for some moments; then he asked, “If the Jews were right to stone to death a man like Hewison, why are we not justified in the same?” When Brigge did not answer, Adam said, “You recoil from the terror of such a punishment?”

  “The terror comes not from the severity, Adam,” Brigge said at last, “but from the justification.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Brigge drained his pot and wiped his mouth. “What does it say about men that our only just recourse is to spill more blood?”

  “It says we are not afraid to do the Lord’s work,” Adam replied.

  Brigge’s head felt thick from the drink. “How long will gratitude allow you to overlook these derelictions?”

  He did not expect an answer and got none.

  The candle flared and flickered its last. He gazed at the flame until it extinguished itself.

  Eighteen

  WAKING IN THE NIGHT, THE CORONER WENT OUTSIDE TO THE garden and, taking his easement, heard shouts and uproar nearby. Finishing his business, he took his sword and went out to the way in front, where he found Adam and the tippler roused from their beds by the agitation. It was the dark time of the moon, and shapes and shadows slipped by like phantoms while men with torches ran here and there, shouting oaths and threats. A shadow loomed over him, and Brigge leveled his sword against the belly of a man who brought himself up to a sharp halt.

  “I will let your guts about your heels if you come any nearer,” Brigge said.

  “Stay your sword, sir. It is I, Thornton, the constable.”

  “What are you doing, Thornton? What is this havoc?”

  “Neighbors have come running into town,” the constable said in great agitation, “having heard sounds of a great fight on the road to Knaresbor-ough.” The young curate came running up, his shirttails flying, a pistol in his hand. “The papists have risen!” he exclaimed. “Now must we stand together or we will be put to our deaths!”

  The Padside men took up the chorus that the papists were up and they would fight rather than have their throats cut by Jesuits and Irish savages.

  Brigge laughed loudly and, turning back to the alehouse, said, “I leave you to stand together then. Goodnight.”

  “Where do you go, sir?” the curate called after him.

  Brigge stopped and, turning, saw the curate had leveled his pistol against him.

  “I go to my bed,” Brigge said evenly, “as you would do well to go to yours.”

  “So you might murder us the more easily?”

  “What do you say?” Brigge said, taking an angry step forward.

  “This man is one of them!” the curate cried. “He is the notorious papist John Brigge!”

  Brigge swore at him and called him a fool and a coward. The argument went quickly from less to more and the Padside men gathered, carrying torches and armed with sticks, staves and pikes. Among them were jurymen who, only hours ago, had sat before Brigge in full acceptance of his authority. Now they were impassioned and goaded and very ready to set upon him.

  Brigge felt Adam’s shoulder against his and, glancing down, saw a dagger in his clerk’s hand.

  Turning to the constable, the curate said, “This man cannot be left at liberty. He should be put under restraint and taken before a justice.”

  The constable licked his lips but did not speak. Someone lunged forward to stab at them. Adam swung his knife, and the man withdrew himself into the crowd again, though not before Brigge had sight of Hewison’s face.

  The curate took aim with his pistol.

  “Put up your gun, sir!” the constable said. “I will take them under restraint.” Thornton turned to Brigge. “Give me your sword, Mr. Coro-ner,” he pleaded.

  “I will not be taken under restraint by you or anyone else,” Brigge said. “Let any man who wants come close and he will see what he will have for his pains.”

  The curate urged the Padside men on. Brigge stood fast with Adam at his side. One or two of the neighbors made feinting strikes with their staves and pikes, and they circled the coroner and his clerk, ready to rush them. Thornton pleaded for quiet and reasonab
leness.

  At that moment they heard a sudden cry and turned as one to see a man stagger forward, moaning pitifully that he was murdered. The neighbors hurried to the stricken man, save for the curate, who kept his pistol leveled at Brigge’s heart.

  “Come, sir,” Thornton said to the curate. “Let us go, for God’s sake!”

  Brigge did not wait for the curate to put up his gun but pushed contemptuously past to follow the throng. He found a man collapsed on the ground, his face and hands all bloodied and his clothes torn, his chest heaving with the effort of his recent running.

  “Who is this man?” Brigge demanded.

  “He is Morrison, sir, the corn badger,” the constable said.

  The man fought to find his breath. Raising his hand, he pointed down the road. “They came out of the dark,” he panted, “their faces covered, some wearing white sheets. They had swords and cudgels and threatened to murder me without mercy.”

  The cry went up that now it was proved: the Jesuits were coming to wreak slaughter.

  IT WAS LIGHT by the time they came upon Morrison’s cart in a close near a watermill, men and women clambering over it like ants, and children by the back end and by its wheels picking grain from the grass where it had spilled. Others were making off as best they could with plundered sacks of barley and corn across their shoulders and backs. The curate raised his pistol and discharged a blast, knocking one man over, tumbling him from the cart, though he got up quickly again and broke into an awkward skipping run. The rest scattered, taking with them what they could. Most were so loath to abandon their booty they were apprehended with little effort. Some pleaded with their captors to release them for mercy’s sake; others fought with their hands and feet and so struggling some got away, for there were too many to subdue them all. They were all men and women of the poorer, ignorant sort.

  “Here are your Jesuits, sir,” Brigge said to the curate.

  He ordered the prisoners lined up by the cart. “Why did you set upon this cart?” he demanded of them.

  No one answered, but one woman sniggered loudly in derision of him. She appeared not in the least broken or overcome, but, like the rest, wrought-up and defiant, though she like the rest surely knew that some of their number would hang for an example to the rest.

  “Why did we take Morrison’s grain?” she laughed bitterly. “Last summer oats were four shillings a bushel. Then they were six shillings and now they are twelve. I do not have twelve shillings, but I do have five children and so took for nothing what I could not pay for.”

  Her haranguing of him set up such a commotion in her fellow prisoners that the Padside men had a time to subdue them and make them quiet again. Brigge instructed the constable to have the prisoners conveyed to the town where, he had no doubt, the Master and Doliffe would see justice done.

  “Come,” Brigge said to the constable.

  “Where do we go?”

  “To the churchyard.”

  THE EARTH AT THE top was mild and loamy, but the deeper the bury men dug, the darker the smell. Brigge knew this smell and would never be accustomed to it, to the dreams of worms and bones and decay it inspired. The grave-makers’ work done, the coffin was brought up. Brigge led the way back to the tippler’s parlor.

  The jurors had taken their places on benches arranged to the left of the rough trestle table, prattling and hawking and much heated in their talk of the assault on Morrison the corn merchant. But they fell silent the moment Brigge and the bury men entered with the coffin. Brigge looked them over, lingering over the faces of the men who only hours before had seemed ready to kill him. One by one he stared into their eyes until they turned their gazes from him in acknowledgment of his power over them. Had he mind to, he could prosecute them for affray and riot, and they knew this all too well.

  The smell was already noxious. Some lit their pipes to have the clouds of tobacco keep off the odor, others put handkerchiefs hard to their mouths and one or two had nosegays of rosemary and sage. The coroner ordered the coffin opened, and Thornton and one of the neighbors, holding their breath in their lungs, lifted the cadaver to the table. Hewison, Brigge noted, was very uneasy, not certain what lay in store for him, and sent Brigge pitiful pleading looks with his tender brown eyes as if the coroner were some wench into whose affections he could by his dolefulness insinuate himself.

  Adam sent a questioning look as Brigge parted the sheet to uncover Mary Hewison’s face. He gazed down on the body.

  I was full fair and now am I foul

  My fair flesh begins to stink

  And worms find in me great prow

  I am here meat, I am here drink.

  It was not possible to tell from the skin of the face and hands, being now so discolored in decay, whether it was bruised by blows. Brigge put his fingers to the eyes, then peered into the nose. He opened the mouth. Flies crawled over the dead woman’s lips and gums.

  In my wanton breath an adder keen

  My dazed eyes smart dim

  My guts are rotten, my hair is green

  My grinning teeth smart grim.

  Waving the swarm away, Brigge peered inside, angling the candle for better light. Wax dripped onto Mary’s face along with his sweat. Resolving himself, he called out to Adam that the front tooth on the left side was broken in half but that otherwise her mouth appeared undamaged. The inside of the lips, as far as he could tell, showed no sign of having suffered cuts.

  Opening the sheet further to uncover her body, he examined with particular care her chest, stomach and sides. When he could discover nothing, he called Hannah forward to show him where she had seen the marks she spoke of. Hannah came up, averting her eyes from her sister’s face. Taking courage, she leaned over to look at the body. She peered for some time.

  “There,” she said, pointing to the right side. “I think there is some—thing.”

  Brigge could see nothing but the blotches and stains of the dead. He called the jury up to look for themselves. When they had satisfied themselves, he went on to inspect the legs. These appeared in some degree swollen, as did the feet, but whether from disease, decay or cruelty he could not say. The flies had settled again on Mary’s face; they crawled over the cheeks and over the black lips and gums toward the promise of their fetid feast.

  With the constable’s assistance the coroner turned the body to survey the back, but to little purpose, it being as decayed as the front. Turning the corpse once more, Brigge, with his hands symmetrically placed, put his fingers to the head, feeling first at the forehead, then at the crown, then at the backside of the skull. Though at the left side above the ear he came upon a hard lump about the bigness of a hen’s egg, which could as easily be the manifestation of disease as the result of assault, the skull wall did not appear smashed, but he knew that his fingers alone would never detect a fracture. The only sure method to discover such an injury would be to have the head without the flesh, for thus he had heard a dead man’s broken skull ring unperfect, like an earthen pitcher with a crack, or a thread held between the teeth and struck like a fiddle string. But the law did not allow the opening of a corpse.

  Finishing his work, Brigge pulled the sheet up over the dead woman, leaving only her face exposed. He turned to the jury. “From my examination, I have discovered no evidence of wounds or marks or bruises that came about by violence.”

  Hannah shouted in rebuke of him, calling the coroner blind, foolish and corrupt. But there was no mistaking the relief on Hewison’s face. His friends winked and smiled at him, and there was a smirking lightness in his brown eyes which he could not hide.

  Brigge then called Hewison forward. At first Hewison did not move, not crediting the summons. His friends became quiet.

  “Come here,” Brigge said coldly. Hewison approached the table slowly. “I ask you on your oath,” Brigge said, “did you kill your wife?”

  “I swear I loved my wife with my whole heart,” he said, appalled that the accusation should be made just when he had thought himself f
ree of danger.

  Brigge stepped back to let Hewison see his wife’s body. Hewison swallowed and turned his head away.

  “Touch her,” Brigge said.

  Hewison looked up suddenly at Brigge, alarm coming to him with understanding of what the coroner was about. Adam left off his writing. The constable and jurymen were silent.

  The curate came forward. “What papistical superstition is this?” he demanded.

  There were shouts and dissensions from among the jurors so that Brigge had to bellow to be heard. “It is nothing of superstition,” he roared, “Romish or otherwise.” Still the commotion would not settle. “The authorities approving this as one of the proofs of murder are many and weighty,” Brigge shouted out. “Mr. Dalton, a gentleman of very excellent learning and reputation, has written in his book for the instruction of justices of peace that when a murderer puts his hand on the corpse the victim’s blood will flow anew. For those who will not accept the authority of Mr. Dalton, there is Sir Francis Bacon, the noble lord chancellor that was, a very learned author in both divinity, law and science, who held the same sign of murder to be evident. Who here will say he knows more than these eminent and learned gentlemen?”

  The tumult began to subside. Brigge continued, quieter now, “In Erringden, five years ago, one Raistrick murdered his friend by drowning him in the river. I called on him to lay his hand on his dead friend and, as soon as he had, blood poppled in the corpse’s mouth and came out of his nose. I was present at this, I saw it with my own eyes. So did the jury, and Raistrick, confronted with the proof, confessed the murder. I saw him tried at the castle. He was found guilty and hanged. God will not suffer murder, which is the most horrible crime, to rest unpunished.”