Havoc, in Its Third Year

by Ronan Bennett

  He recognized first Lord Savile in a beautiful suit of black and azure and a cloak of scarlet. The flesh of the ancient lord’s face was wretchedly phthisical and much spotted with age, and his eyes were dim like Isaac’s. In his time the great lord had appointed terror over men, but now, in his ancient last days, it was as if terror was appointed over him, and consumption and burning ague that consumed the eyes, God’s punishment for untold and terrible sins.

  Opposite Savile in the coach Brigge saw Antrobus and one other. Amazed almost out of his senses, he stepped a little forward as the coach passed him, and the doctor, discerning some movement among those who were standing in the way, turned to see what it was. Their eyes met for a moment, then Antrobus looked away as if the man he had seen was nothing to him nor had ever been. The third man in the coach also turned his head to look back, and in his expression Brigge saw a momentary alarm. But then too Challoner turned away and the coach and its escort traveled on.

  Brigge felt a tug on his sleeve and, coming out of his astonishment, saw Dorcas. “What is this?” he said.

  “Did you not know?” she said. “The Master and Savile have allied together.”

  Brigge gazed after the coach in hideous fascination. The townspeople whooped and hallowed and whistled, and Savile’s name was shouted with the same frenzy Challoner’s had been in this very place not three years ago when the governors came into their power.

  Dorcas called to his attention. “Go from here, John,” she shouted above the roars, looking about in desperate agitation.

  He hardly heard her, so fascinated was he in watching the coach. It made a circle of the green, then came through the crowd again to halt at the middle where a platform had been erected opposite the scaffold and where waited a deputation of the town with Favour and Doliffe at their head.

  Favour came forward to receive the exalted passengers and bow his head to utter a prayer. All around, men began to go down on their knees in united show of piety and devotion. As they prayed, Dorcas gave him beseeching looks to pay her heed and be gone, but Brigge could not bring himself to leave so extraordinary a spectacle.

  He heard the nasal quiver of Favour’s voice. “The root of all evil, the greatest damnation, the most terrible wrath and vengeance of God that we are in, is willful blindness,” the preacher intoned. “God open your eyes to make you see that lusts and appetites are damnable, to make you see that to tolerate the presence of sinners and evildoers among you is a foul disorder in a commonwealth. And yet you choose not to see. There are whores and you are blind to them. There are fornicators and you are blind to them, adulterers and you do not see them. There are vagabonds and mas-terless men who wander up and down the land inciting insurrection and teaching people by the example of their untrammeled loose lives to disobey their lawful heads and governors, and move them to rise against their princes and make all common and to make havoc of other men’s goods-yet are you blind to them. Heretics and papists who conspire against established religion, the state and its loyal servants, who would overthrow all liberty and restore popish tyranny—yet you choose to turn your eyes from them.”

  Dorcas leaned to his ear and whispered to him. “I never denounced you, John, I swear it. Adam suspected what passed between us and confronted me on several occasions with bitter accusations. He suspected me because I could not dissemble passion for him, or love, and a man always knows when another holds the heart of his wife. Each time I denied what he put to me and swore I would not marry him if he continued with these questions. I lied to him. I lied to a man I esteemed and cared for. And I lied to Doliffe when he came to put me to the test. One day I shall pay for my lies.”

  She put her hand toward Brigge’s.

  “I know it was wrong but I do not regret it,” she said. “I lied then and I would lie now because of what is in my heart. I would do all in my poor power to keep you from hurt.”

  Brigge took her hand and squeezed it.

  The vicar’s preaching had come to its climax. “The time for blindness is past,” he was saying, and he pointed to the carriage before him in which Savile sat with Challoner and Antrobus. “It is time to see. The men who have come to do the Lord’s work will root evildoers from your midst and pursue them wherever they lurk, for such evil men are an affront to God’s sight and cannot be suffered to live.”

  The crowd amen’d Favour fervently.

  Dorcas whispered, “You must go while you can, John, while there is yet time.”

  He saw that she was not false, that the care in her eyes was not play. “I have come to see justice done,” he said, “and I will not leave until I have seen it done with my own eyes.”

  There was a rolling of drums and the crowd fell silent. Looking up, Brigge saw a cart being driven into the green, a hurdle trailing behind it, and brought to a halt. The prisoner was cut and taken from the hurdle and pushed forward to the scaffold. Though he was too far to see his face, Brigge recognized Father Edward from his size and shape. Brigge pushed forward through the throng. Dorcas came after, clutching at his coat. He could not make out what words Favour used to rebuke the priest, being too far distant, but got close enough to hear the priest return the reproach, saying he was going to be delivered from all his sufferings and enter into the joy of the Lord.

  Brigge got to some thirty paces from the scaffold but could go no further for the press of people. He saw the priest mount the ladder and make the sign of the cross, at which there was much jeering and hawking. The priest began to speak but Doliffe interrupted him sharply, “You have not come here to preach, but to die! Better you use the moments you have left to prepare yourself.”

  “I have no need for further preparation,” Father Edward replied. “My whole life has been for this moment.”

  The priest took the noose and kissed it. “Precious collar,” he called out.

  Brigge would not watch longer but dropped his gaze. He heard the familiar voice again. “Thy yoke is sweet, thy burden light.” Then there was a great roar as every man and woman assembled there applauded the hangman for turning the priest off the ladder.

  Brigge stumbled, feeling he was about to collapse to ground. He kept his feet and found himself looking into Dorcas’s eyes. He put a hand to her face. “If I was ever unkind in my thoughts of you,” he said, “I hope you know it was because of the lack in me. Forgive me, Dorcas,” he said, kissing her face, “for all that I have done against you.”

  She smiled a small smile at him. Then her eyes, looking beyond him, froze in a sudden expression of alarm. Brigge turned to follow her gaze and found Adam and Scaife with armed men of the watch. His arms were pinned and his sword removed from his belt.

  Adam gave his wife a violent, accusing look before pushing Brigge forward through the crowd. Brigge heard his name whispered and echoed by the blabber-lipped multitude, the rumor going up with the breeze that John Brigge the papist was apprehended. Then came the shrieks and cries as the priest was cut down and the boweling and quartering begun.

  THEY TOOK HIM to the House of Correction, but it being overfull with prisoners, they put him in the storeroom, which had little enough of space, being new-stocked with coals and kindling.

  “Tell the Master where I am kept,” Brigge said, “and have him come to me.”

  “Who are you to summon a beggar to you, let alone the Master?” Scaife sneered.

  Brigge ignored the fool and addressed Adam. “He will wish to speak with me. I arranged to have brought to him the serving girl Susana Horton. He will by now have spoken with her. I have further information touching Horton’s evidence that he will wish to hear.”

  “What prattle do you have to relate, sir?” Scaife demanded.

  “Adam,” Brigge said, “for pity’s sake, do this for me.”

  The boy stared at him with hard eyes. He said, “I doubt the Master will have inclination to come to you.”

  “Adam, do not let whatever suspicions you have of me stand in the way of what justice requires. Fetch the Master to me,
for what I have to tell him is of the greatest consequence.”

  Adam said nothing but looked rather downcast and uncertain.

  “You will have opportunity to tell him tomorrow,” Scaife said, “when you will be arraigned before the commission on which the Master sits with Mr. Doliffe and Lord Savile.” He smiled mirthlessly. “You and those skeptics, heretics and reprobates like you who disparage the truth and mock the great work we have undertaken here will learn what justice is. Evildoers may hide from other men, but they cannot escape those guided by a higher authority, whose eyes see all and whose conscience will not be satisfied other than by a final cleansing of the earth.”

  Scaife stepped out of the room. Adam hesitated to follow. When he spoke, his lip trembled and he seemed on the verge of tears. “My wife was very familiar with you,” he said. “She has always denied that anything untoward ever took place between you. Does she tell the truth?”

  Brigge made no reply.

  “Tell me!”

  “Are you content with Dorcas?” Brigge said. “Does she please you?” He waited for Adam to answer; when he did not, he said simply, “If she does, turn your eye from whatever past fault you suspect.”

  “And if I cannot?”

  “Then accept that your contentment is over.”

  Brigge was left without candle or any light save the little which came in at the small barred window high up on the wall. He moved a foot from side to side to clear an arc where he might rest. He sat down with his back to the wall and waited for the door to open again.

  HAD ONE HOUR gone, or two or three? He could do nothing to estimate the passage of time. Perhaps only minutes had passed when the door opened and Challoner appeared at the threshold. The Master turned to dismiss the keeper, took a lantern and stepped inside to be with Brigge.

  “I am sorry to see you here, John,” he said.

  “I am the sorrier, Nathaniel, believe me,” Brigge said; then added, “Did you enjoy your ride in Savile’s carriage?”

  Challoner drew in his breath, a weary man who has once more to vindicate himself before the stubborn though he has had enough of rebuke. He said, “You know the town was in great tumults with men at such variance and strife they were almost brought to a civil war. To bring an end to these dangerous and lamentable times, we have allied ourselves with Lord Savile. It is nothing perverse, nothing strange. Why should the two most powerful factions be at each other’s throats? Small points of doctrine may separate us, but, ultimately, we share the same principles, do we not? We believe in order, prosperity and good government; so does Savile. We believe in discipline, property and good religion; so does Savile.”

  “I can still remember your speeches condemning Savile for a pernicious, corrupt man, a rack-renter and monopolist, one who put his own interests and those of his friends above the town’s,” Brigge said. “Those were very pretty speeches, Nathaniel. I remember how people cheered them.”

  “I could not say so at the time,” Challoner said, “but I always maintained a great admiration for Savile. He was, whatever opinion you might have of his dealings, and I do not believe they were as bad as some would have it, a very great leader. Now we are joined, our government will be stronger and the town more united.”

  Brigge gazed at Challoner; he searched for winks and tokens of sarcasm in his friend’s face. He found none.

  “I sent Susana Horton to you,” Brigge said. “You have examined her?”

  “I have,” Challoner replied so levelly that Brigge was momentarily taken back.

  “Well?” he prompted.

  The Master merely shrugged.

  “Did she not tell you the dead child was hers? She was the mother, Nathaniel,” Brigge said, peering at Challoner, the feeling of unease growing in him. “She was the mother and Doliffe the father.”

  Brigge waited for the Master to confirm what he said, but Challoner only shook his head as at the ravings of a maniac outcast.

  “She confessed it to me, Nathaniel,” Brigge said.

  “I know exactly what she has confessed,” the Master said.

  “Then you know the child was Doliffe’s.”

  “No, John,” the Master said.

  Brigge became animated. “Susana Horton confessed it,” he said.

  “She confessed what you wished to hear from her, John,” the Master said. “You put into her mind a strange and tangled story, which she repeated back to you because she divined it pleased you. The truth of the matter is not so dark. It is plain and ingenuous. It was Quirke who made the girl with child and it was he, unable to perform the deed himself, who solicited another to do away with it.”

  “It is a lie!” Brigge exclaimed. “Doliffe is the father. He did away with the child!”

  “Quirke has already confessed. He also conceived the idea of fixing blame upon the Irishwoman, she having confessed earlier to Susana that she had given birth on the road and the child dying only the day before. You would have discovered it for yourself, John, had you not been so resolved to find cause to condemn Doliffe.”

  “You are in concert with him,” Brigge said. “You are trying to save his neck.”

  Challoner shook his head as though he were sorry to have disappointed his friend by his news.

  “You esteem Doliffe a fanatic. I say you are mistaken in this belief, but I understand why you, who appear so loath to correct fault where you find it, should think it, for Richard has ever been zealous in God’s causes. But what I do not understand, and will never concede, is that you should think him a hypocrite. He is a just dealer and lives by the Word. He holds it dear. It is his guiding light. He has never, to my knowledge, gone contrary to it nor has had any spot of infamy attached to his name. I would sooner accuse myself of murder than point the finger at him for even the smallest misdemeanor. If I am discontented with any man, it is with you for seeking your own safety in the ruination of one of the town’s most honorable and loyal servants.”

  Brigge knew he was lost. “The jury must be appraised of Quirke’s confession,” he said. “Shay’s innocency must be made known.”

  “The matter will be dealt with tomorrow by the commissioners of assize. All three—Susana, Quirke and the rogue who did the murder— have been apprehended. They are prisoners in this very building and will hang for their crime.”

  “And Shay will go free,” Brigge said.

  “She is a dangerous incendiary. For the people’s safety she must remain where she is.”

  “She will not live long where you have put her, Nathaniel,” Brigge said. “Let her go free. She has fantastical and misshapen opinions. She is strange and brainsick, but she will harm no one.”

  The Master shook his head in denial of him. He waited, as though preparing himself to deliver hard news. He said, “I am sorry, John, but you are beyond my help now. You will be arraigned tomorrow.”

  “On what charge?”

  “The harboring of the Jesuit that was executed tonight.”

  “I deny it,” Brigge said.

  “Lacy has implicated you and will give evidence tomorrow,” the Master said.

  Brigge could not find words to say. Challoner moved to the door. Once outside he turned and said, “Will you embrace me, John?”

  Brigge came up to the door. Challoner smiled sadly and benevolently as Brigge approached. “I have in my heart nothing but sorrow and grief,” he said, holding out his free hand for Brigge to take.

  “I cannot call you a betrayer, Nathaniel,” Brigge said. “I cannot call you hypocrite or knave. You are neither arrogant nor boastful.”

  Challoner’s look was serious and moved, as was fitting for the hearing of such a tribute.

  “I cannot call you anything,” Brigge continued, “because I do not know who you are, and that makes me an even greater fool than I already believed myself to be for ever having faith in you.”

  The prisoner pulled the door to, entombing himself in darkness. He found space on the floor and fell at once into a deep and dreamless sleep.
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  Twenty-nine

  HE WAS WOKEN BY URGENT VOICES CALLING FROM THE STREET and saw by the window that it was still dark outside. He listened, trying to imagine what could be the cause of such alarm but did not move, as though he sensed something dreadful and did not dare rise to confront it. He became sensible of how uncomfortable hot it had become in the chamber, and he wiped the sweat from his brow. The air had grown heavy and thick.

  At last, the hubbub and frenzy rising, he climbed the shifting coals and, pulling himself at the bars, got up to the window from where he saw an orange glow in the sky. His head was still unclear from the sleep he had been disturbed in and, still stupefied, he did not at once comprehend what his senses were telling him. Only when he heard the terrified screams from the prisoners above in the main part of the House of Correction and heard their pleas and entreaties that they be let out and not suffered to roast did he understand there was a fire.

  Fear clutched at his heart. He again saw the vision of himself as a child standing at the hearth, held by the fascination of the flames, his mother chiding him that the fire would consume him, as though she had known even then that immolation would be his end.

  He dropped down from the window and stumbled to where he thought the door to be, the coals rolling under his feet to make him unsteady. He pitched forward. Gaining his legs again, he went on only to feel his palms on the stone of the wall. He moved his hands about in desperation to discover the door. An ember came in at the window, sailing into his room with the grace of a delicate bird. He shouted for the keeper, for any man to come to his aid. He pounded the door with his fists, begging someone to come. He cried and called for Elizabeth to come to him. He called for his wife and called for his mother. He called for Samuel and he called for Dorcas. He sank to his knees.