The Blood List

by Sarah Naughton

  And tonight, while the fire whispered in the grate and beetles clicked in the thatch, he found it hard to scoff at her beliefs.

  Instinctively he glanced across at the black square of the window. But it was cloudy now – too cloudy to see any flying shapes silhouetted against the moon.

  ‘You were lucky to escape unharmed,’ Juliet said. ‘Something was protecting you. It seems that the spirits of the forest have not forgotten you.’

  He looked at her uneasily, then quickly finished the milk and went up to bed. There were times he liked to be reminded of his origins, but not tonight.

  3

  Kingdoms of Darknes

  He woke the next morning stiff and bruised from his fall in the forest. But no-one seemed to care about that. All they were interested in was that he had gone there alone. His normally level-headed mother screeched like a fishwife and after haranguing Barnaby she turned on her husband. Henry was too soft and indulgent with Barnaby, the boy was growing up spoiled and arrogant and needed to be disciplined with a firm hand or he would become unmanageable. While Abel smirked from the landing Barnaby just stared at her in astonishment. It was not like her to care so much about his comings and goings: usually she was far too busy coddling and fussing over his brother. If it had been Abel with a bruised backside, he would have been bedbound for a week with hot compresses and spiced honeyed wine.

  It was an eternal mystery to him (and, Barnaby suspected, his father) how Abel occupied such a position in his mother’s affections. Abel was self-pitying, humourless, spiteful and cowardly: a snivelling little toad, as Griff put it. And yet whenever he raised his long face from his Bible Frances was there with a beaming smile for him, listening politely as he spouted some verse obviously chosen for Barnaby (‘Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall . . .’). When his skinny legs hurt from kneeling on the cold church floor, his mother would massage them; if he got a tickle on his bird-chest she would rub beeswax and eucalyptus into it.

  Barnaby, on the other hand, could do nothing right. If he been brave, it was reckless attention-seeking, if he was charming he wanted something, if Abel struck him he must have said something cruel, if he struck Abel he was a bully.

  When one of Henry’s associates brought back a pineapple from the Americas one Christmas, Frances allowed Abel to polish off the whole thing, for the sole reason that Barnaby had refused to eat his goose wing – and this was only because the previous year he had choked on one of the bones. Though he was only ten, Barnaby had forced himself not to weep at this gross injustice and, in the bitter darkness of that Christmas night, he vowed to harden his heart to his mother. From that day forth he had turned to the welcoming arms of his father. Henry had always seemed to have the measure of Abel and was as cool with his second son as Frances was with her first.

  But a few days after Agnes’s funeral something unexpected happened.

  Barnaby and his father were breakfasting when his mother came down from Abel’s room, sat down stiffly at the table and sighed unhappily.

  ‘What’s the matter, my love?’ Henry said, looking up from his eggs.

  She did not answer him but turned to Barnaby. ‘Go and tell Juliet that she may tighten the bed-strings today.’

  Without protest Barnaby got up and went out to the kitchen, leaving the door ajar. Juliet looked up from the sink and opened her mouth to speak but he put his finger to his lips and leaned in to listen at the gap.

  Frances sighed again and ran her fingers through her hair.

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ she muttered. ‘I just wonder whether Abel’s interest in the Bible isn’t becoming rather . . .unhealthy.’

  ‘How can the Bible be unhealthy?’ his father spluttered, spattering the table with masticated egg white.

  ‘I just don’t like the message he takes from the texts,’ Frances murmured. ‘It is so harsh. So simplistic.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Henry said, patting her hand in a way that made her purse her lips. ‘It’s only a young boy’s imagination.’

  Frances seemed unsatisfied. ‘I might ask Father Nicholas to speak to him.’

  Barnaby thought about this as he munched his way through Juliet’s plum jam tarts out on the back step. His mother really must be worried if she was prepared to speak to Father Nick. Was Abel’s halo slipping a little in his mother’s eyes?

  The following morning, when Abel had gone to church for his daily prayer session, Barnaby persuaded Juliet to lend him the key to his brother’s room, on the pretext of borrowing some linen.

  He had not been into Abel’s bedchamber for at least three years, nor even seen inside, since their rooms had been moved to opposite ends of the house after Abel complained that Barnaby’s snoring kept him awake.

  Abel’s was the only locked door in the house and for a split second, as he turned the key, Barnaby wondered if his brother had set a trap for interlopers. If so, it was bound to be the nastiest, most mutilating trap his vile little mind could imagine.

  The door swung silently inwards revealing an interior as bare and white as a monk’s cell. It smelled faintly of beeswax. He knew his brother was scrupulously clean, but there was not even the merest whisper of smelly feet or unwashed bedlinen. He walked across to the wardrobe and opened it. The clothes were arranged in order of colour: brown jackets at one end, white shirts at the other, separated by a large gap, as if Abel feared cross-contamination.

  On the table beside the bed sat one of Abel’s many Bibles. Barnaby glanced at the open page.

  Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself . . .

  So that was Abel’s bedtime reading. What a strange person his brother was.

  Sitting on the bed in that dry, cold little room, Barnaby felt a fleeting pity. What did Abel have in his life that gave him pleasure? Not hunting nor fishing, good food nor fine clothes, not friendship nor girls. There were no copies of the Iliad or Odyssey on the shelf beside the crucifix, no plays, no poetry. Even the Bible was a plain, brown thing without illuminations. Barnaby and Griff had spent a very educational afternoon poring over Father Nicholas’s copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses that featured a graphic illustration of Leda being ravaged by the swan. Abel had to make do with the frontispiece of his Bible, which showed a dour King James in a feathered hat.

  And then he realised. If Abel did possess such a thing, he wouldn’t keep it on show for Juliet to stumble upon. After Griff had smuggled the priest’s book out of the church library he had concealed it beneath his mattress. Barnaby leaned over and slid his hand under Abel’s.

  At first he felt nothing. Just the strings of the bed and a few loose strands of hay. He pushed his hand deeper and this time his fingers came into contact with some papers.

  He smiled.

  Crouching down beside the bed, he carefully drew them out.

  They were dog-eared from use, some were torn, others water-damaged. At first he thought they might be erotic etchings done by some clumsy local artist – the first featured a gang of half-naked cavorting women – but then he read the title.

  The Kingdom of Darknes

  He looked more closely. Now he could make out the figure at the centre of the dancing women. Apart from the crescents of its slitted eyes it was entirely black; its bat-like wings raised above its head, claws spreading from the bony wing tips.

  A line of text beneath read:

  Exodus 22.18. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

  He tossed it onto the table. The next pamphlet was entitled Signs and Wonders from Heaven, and the image beneath made him snigger. It was an etching of a human being with the physical attributes of both a woman and a
man, but with no arms or legs. A beatific smile lit its face. A chunk of text beneath read:

  WITH A TRUE RELATION of a Monster borne in Ratliffe Highway, at the sign of the three Arrows, Mistress Bullock the Midwife delivering thereof. Also shewing how a Cat kitned a Monster in Lombard Street in London. Also how the Divell came to Soffam to a Farmers house in the habit of a Gentle-woman. With divers other strange remarkable passages.

  He didn’t bother to open the pamphlet to discover these remarkable passages. Surely Abel didn’t believe this horse shit.

  The next did not have an amusing illustration, only a pompous title in an almost unreadably elaborate font:

  Barnaby tossed it with the others.

  The one beneath was particularly comical. In the centre was a grinning devil, surrounded by women who were kissing various parts of his hairy anatomy, while a ferret and a toad mated nearby and another woman suckled a fox. This apparently represented:

  A TRUE RELATION of the Confessions of eighteene Witches, who by confederacy with the Devill did not only cast away their soules and bodies, but made spoyle and havock of their neighbours goods and so were executed the 17 day of August 1644.

  The list of names beneath seemed very long. He was surprised to see a vicar heading the first column: A ‘Mr Lewes, parson of Branson’. He looked for him in the picture and finally saw him, his black cassock pulled up to his waist while devils poked his backside with pitchforks.

  An amusing idea came into Barnaby’s mind and he searched Abel’s drawers until he found a scrap of writing lead wrapped in string. Beside the grinning devil surrounded by women he wrote: Barnaby. He gave the tortured priest buck teeth and a cloud of fart puffing out from his naked backside. Beside this figure he wrote: Abel.

  After chuckling to himself for a few minutes he tucked the papers back under the mattress and let himself out of the room, feeling slightly giddy.

  When Abel came down for dinner that evening his expression was thunderous.

  The wine was poured. Henry threw back two glasses in quick succession then began talking to Frances about the latest shipment of textiles from Arabia. Soon there was an animated discussion between them; now and again she gave a tinkling, almost girlish laugh. Barnaby smiled at the sight: it was rare to see his mother so animated, but then his eyes met his brother’s.

  ‘You are the devil,’ Abel breathed. Barnaby gave a quiet snort of laughter.

  Abel’s gaze did not falter.

  ‘Even Satan doth transform himself into an angel of light.’ he hissed.

  Barnaby made a face at him.

  ‘And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.’

  ‘You’re off your head.’

  He concentrated on eating but his brother’s stare seared the top of his head. His heart began to beat harder.

  ‘Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty. Thou hast corrupted thy—’ The sprout struck Abel on the nose, spattering his face with onion gravy.

  ‘Barnaby!’ his father bellowed.

  His parents glared at him while Abel pressed his napkin to his eye and gave little whimpers of pain, which as far as Barnaby was concerned were entirely faked.

  ‘My eyeball is scalded!’ he wailed. Frances gave Henry a meaningful look before going to kneel down at Abel’s side.

  Henry glared at Barnaby.

  ‘Father, I just couldn’t stand—’

  ‘ENOUGH!’ Henry shouted, banging the flat of his hand on the table so hard the crockery rang. Then he stood up and, to Barnaby’s horrified disbelief, undid his belt buckle.

  ‘Father, what are you . . . ?’

  ‘It’s time you learned that you cannot do exactly as you please, Barnaby.’

  ‘Father, please, I didn’t mean to hurt him . . .’

  But Henry wrenched him out of his seat, dragging him through the kitchen, where Juliet stood staring in disbelief, and out to the stables.

  The sun was just setting and even the deepest recesses of the yard were bathed in a honeyed glow, visible to anyone who was passing.

  ‘No, Father!’ Barnaby cried. ‘Not here!’

  Henry was breathing hard. A vein the width of a finger had sprung out on his forehead, pulsing with blue blood. The tip of the belt dangling at his side flicked this way and that as his clenched fist trembled.

  ‘Unfasten your breeches.’

  Barnaby stared at him. His father’s stomach wobbled and his face was shiny with sweat. The muscles of his youth were drowned in fat and both his shoulders were so stiff with arthritis it would be simple for Barnaby to snatch the belt from him and toss it over the gate.

  ‘Unfasten your breeches,’ Henry said again.

  They stared at each other. His father’s faded blue eyes locked to Barnaby’s bright ones; the grey curls and the blond caught the glow of the sunset.

  Henry swallowed, then he glanced over at the kitchen window.

  If Barnaby chose he could humiliate his father now in front of the whole household, and anyone who happened to be passing: show him that the old order had changed, teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget. It wouldn’t take much – a kick to the old man’s behind to send him reeling into the pig dung, a backhanded slap that would sting but leave no mark. With that he would assert his place in the household and no one would dare defy him again, including his foul brother.

  Barnaby sensed faces at the window. Juliet was there, surely, and Abel wouldn’t resist such a spectacle, though perhaps their mother would not choose to watch.

  Henry blinked rapidly and slapped the belt against his open palm.

  The sun had dropped lower in the sky even in those past few minutes. It threw Barnaby’s shadow across the yard, broad and ten times his normal height, entirely covering his father.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, then he opened them and, in full view of the street and the faces at the window, he unfastened his breeches.

  Barnaby lay awake listening to the sounds of the evening as it gave way to night. The streets became suddenly noisier as the inns threw out the last remaining customers. A drunk passed beneath his window, singing a love song punctuated by hiccoughs. Somewhere nearby two cats yowled like demons.

  Carefully he shifted his position, rolling onto his stomach, then up onto his other hip, shuffling round so that he could still see out of the window. The whole of his lower back, his buttocks and the backs of his thighs throbbed. One or two of the lashes had broken the skin and the blood was now drying, so that every time he moved the scabs cracked and wept afresh.

  He hadn’t cried. For some reason, though no-one had passed by and the household had seen him cry often enough times, that fact was important. His father, however, had sniffed noisily throughout. It actually made matters worse since the tears had blinded him, and instead of striking his son’s well-padded parts he had lashed the small of Barnaby’s back and the muscles of his thighs, which hurt considerably more.

  During the assault, which had probably lasted no longer than a minute, Barnaby’s rage and humiliation and impotence had turned to a white-hot point of utter clarity. An idea had bloomed in his brain like ink in water.

  He would get rid of Abel.

  He rolled over onto his stomach and breathed in the thyme-scented pillow. How much happier the household would be with his brother gone. His mother would be able to see Barnaby’s qualities for what they were, without them being refracted through the twisted mirror of Abel’s jealousy. His father would not have to pretend impartiality any more, but could concentrate all his affection on the son he had patently always preferred. Griff and his friends would feel comfortable visiting the house without that black crow looming over them, judging them for having a second crumpet or laughing at a joke.

  Eventually the throbbing of his injuries settled to a dull ache and finally he went to sleep with a smile on his face.

  4

  A New Maid

  But the next day something happened
that made Barnaby entirely forget his plan.

  His mother hired a new servant.

  This in itself was not anything unusual. They were a wealthy family with a reasonably large house and since their cook had died the previous spring it was high time Juliet had someone to share the load. But it wasn’t a cook or laundrywoman who had been hired. It was another maid: a girl of fourteen with no particular skill and barely two years’ experience. Experience that had been abruptly curtailed by her dismissal from her last position.

  This bombshell was announced over breakfast.

  ‘Dismissed for what?’ Juliet asked tightly, frozen in the act of ladling porridge into her mistress’s bowl.

  ‘For stealing,’ Henry said, looking meaningfully at his wife.

  ‘Is that true, Mother?’ Abel said sharply.

  ‘It’s true that this was the reason given by the Slabber family,’ Frances began. Already Abel was opening his mouth, no doubt to deliver a pertinent passage from Isaiah about the evils of stealing, but Frances raised her voice to speak over him.

  ‘But it is not the real reason.’

  Abel frowned. ‘What are you saying, Mother?’

  ‘She is saying,’ Henry interrupted, ‘that our neighbours – highly respected upstanding members of our community who can trace their lineage back three hundred years – are liars.’

  For a moment there was silence.

  ‘Are you?’ Barnaby said eventually.

  Frances hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘Mother!’ Abel gasped.

  ‘Well, they are,’ Frances said. ‘At least John Slabber himself is.’

  ‘Explain to the boys why you believe this to be the case, my dear,’ Henry said mildly.