Soon the men had managed to open up a jagged patch of water and the mayor stepped forward to address the crowd.
Behind him stood Abel and his friend, Matthew Hopkins, and the two women Barnaby had taken to be their mistresses. He saw now how wrong he had been. They were very fat, and old enough to be Abel’s grandmothers. Abel looked better than Barnaby had ever seen him. He had filled out and his face was flushed as he listened to the mayor’s words. Because of the wind Barnaby could hear very little from where he was standing but on the bank opposite Naomi’s face was set with fury. The speech ended and the guard had set about binding the Widow Moone’s waist with a long stretch of rope when Naomi attacked him. The big man threw her off into the mud, to laughter from the crowd, and some hisses of disapproval. She struggled up and turned on the mayor.
‘You approve of this nonsense?’ she shouted. ‘You consider this a wise course of action, Mayor Strudwick?’
The men ignored her and the widow was dragged towards the edge of the water. All eyes were on her as it finally seemed to dawn on her what she was about to undergo. Then Barnaby happened to glance at his brother. Abel’s attention, and that of his friend Mr Hopkins, were focused not on the Widow Moone, but beyond her struggling figure, to Naomi.
Abel said something and Mr Hopkins listened. Abel said something else: Mr Hopkins thought for a moment, then he nodded. Hopkins turned his attention back to the widow, but before Abel did likewise his black eyes swept across the crowd until they met Barnaby’s. The two brothers locked gazes for the merest second. Then Abel smiled.
Barnaby’s blood ran cold and for a moment he was frozen to the spot.
Then he turned and began pushing through the villagers behind him. They grumbled and pressed together, unwilling to give up their view even for a moment to let him pass. He forced them violently aside, breaking through the line to the clear ground behind, his heart banging. Abel had changed, that was certain. Gone was the wretched air of defeat that made people so despise him. But there was one thing that would never change. His loathing of Barnaby. He would do anything to get back at his brother: even if it meant harming others.
Barnaby skirted the perimeter of the lake, catching an occasional glimpse between the press of bodies. One end of the rope around the widow’s waist was held by the guard, but the other had been passed to someone on the opposite bank and they were drawing it tight, pulling her inexorably into the water.
Naomi stood close to the water’s edge. Her brother was there now too, clutching her and crying, and she patted him absently, her gaze fixed on the widow, whose wails had become hysterical shrieks as the water swallowed her.
‘Swim the witch!’ someone nearby shouted, and soon the cry was taken up by others.
‘Swim the witch! Swim the witch! Swim the witch!’
It found its rhythm, like the beat of a funeral drum, and the widow’s wails could barely be heard over it.
‘Naomi!’ he bellowed. ‘Come away!’ but she could not hear him.
The widow was flailing in the water now, her mouth a gaping black O as she went under and came up and went under again, veering between sinking and floating, like weighing scales finding their balance. The men at either edge of the rope strained and skidded on the slimy mud. And then a cry went up: ‘She floats!’
A gasp rippled through the crowd.
Barnaby was transfixed. It was true. The Widow Moone’s entire upper torso was bobbing above the water as if she was made of cork. The water had rejected her. It was a sure sign of witchcraft. The old woman herself had gone limp and her head lolled forwards, curtaining her face with clumps of matted black hair.
And then there was a cry as one of the rope-holders slipped onto his backside. For a moment the rope slackened and the widow plummeted up to her neck in water, but the man swiftly righted himself and she bobbed to the surface again.
Then another cry went up. ‘This is deception! They are pulling the ropes taut deliberately to make sure she floats!’
It was Naomi.
‘Tell them to slacken the ropes and we shall see the truth!’
What the hell was she thinking? The faces that had turned towards her were uniformly hostile.
The rope-bearers shouted angrily that she was lying and the crowd took up their anger with jeers and thrown clods of mud that spattered her dress.
The mayor called for silence. Abel and his new friend were now standing beside the old man, and while Hopkins’s face was an expressionless mask Abel’s fury was easy to read. He spoke something in the other man’s ear and Hopkins glanced sharply at Naomi again.
Barnaby set off at a run. Even as he did so he could hear a woman screech that Naomi must be one of the widow’s accomplices. The drab colours of the peasants’ clothes merged into one brownish-green smear as he tore through the reed beds and leaped the tussocks. A cheer went up but he did not stop to find out its cause. The lake was much broader than he remembered and it took agonisingly long minutes to skirt around to the opposite side. Once there his way was blocked by an even greater crowd.
He thrust through them, cursing them under his breath at first, and then out loud, deliberately elbowing soft parts and kicking feet out from under their owners.
Finally he burst out into the open. At first he wondered why they had not crowded this part of the bank too. Then he saw the cause. The widow’s motionless body was being hauled from the water. Weed trailed from her boots and the sulphurous stink of rotting mud made those near the front cover their mouths. Others crossed themselves and made the sign to ward off the evil eye.
Naomi was on the other side, her eyes locked onto the scene by the water’s edge. One of the rope-bearers slapped the widow’s face and she groaned. The wretched sight of her vomiting up lake water a moment later dispelled the crowd’s fear and soon they were chatting amongst themselves about whether or not she would be burned, and how long it would take her to die.
‘Naomi, come away! It’s not safe!’ he cried. But he had to call her name three times before she looked up and when she did it was as if she did not recognise him. And then, for the briefest of moments, her eyes lit up.
‘Talk to your father!’ she cried over the hubbub. ‘Get this nonsense stopped!’
He nodded. She held his gaze a moment, then turned and was gone.
That evening, in need of something to calm his nerves, Barnaby called on Griff and persuaded him out to the Boar. It wasn’t the best idea since he might very possibly bump into his brother. But if Abel were to venture into such an ungodly place he would certainly stick to the dull, silent dining room with its smoke-blackened oil paintings, not the spit-and-sawdust bar which would be full of drunken villagers celebrating the day’s excitement. Though Barnaby didn’t feel much like socialising tonight. When he got home from the lake he did as he had promised and spoke to his father, but was shocked by his reaction: he had never seen Henry so angry.
When Barnaby told him that Naomi thought the rope-bearers had pulled it tight to keep the widow from sinking, his father threw down the pen he had been using to mark his accounts.
‘I heard what the idiot girl said!’ he roared. ‘And it was as good as accusing the mayor!’
‘Well, it did seem as if—’ Barnaby began, but his father shouted over him.
‘I will not be drawn into this! The old woman has been accused by upright people of the village, she has confessed her crime, and she has failed the swimming test.’
‘She confessed?’ Barnaby said.
‘Indeed! To Abel’s friend, Mr Hopkins. That is, I believe his job – to extract confessions from witches.’
‘Let’s hope he will soon be on his way then,’ Frances said from the doorway.
‘Of course he will,’ Henry snapped. ‘The witch has been discovered and will be punished. He has done his job.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ his mother repeated faintly.
When Naomi finally appeared back at the house she was sent home in disgrace for the remainder of the wee
kend.
But the atmosphere in the Boar was lively enough to cheer him up. In fact it was positively carnival as the drinkers compared recent misfortunes that had befallen them and discussed whether or not the Widow Moone had been responsible.
‘I had a boil come up on my backside a couple of weeks ago,’ Griff said thoughtfully over their first pint of ale. ‘Perhaps it was because of Mother refusing her the vegetable scraps.’
‘I should think it more like you caught it from Mary behind the smokers’ shed,’ Barnaby said, starting to feel better.
They drank steadily and after an hour or so Barnaby headed to the yard to relieve himself. He picked his way through the smoky, crowded room and out into the cold night air. Usually he preferred to pee up against the stable wall rather than use the privy, but tonight his spot was taken by an amorous couple who clearly did not mind the sharp tang of ammonia that rose up from the sawdust beneath their feet.
Reluctantly he turned his steps towards the far side of the courtyard, taking a deep breath before kicking open the rickety door and stepping gingerly into the gloom.
The sawdust squelched beneath his feet. The dampness seeped into the leather of his shoes and he prayed the soles would not leak. God knows what was festering down there. The board was so rotted that no-one dared sit on it any more for fear of falling into the cess-pit below, the smell of which was so deadly you had to keep the door open.
Keeping as far as possible from the ragged hole in the wood, Barnaby took aim and peed quickly. He was rearranging his clothes when he heard voices outside.
It was Abel.
‘Your reward will be in heaven but in the meantime . . .’
There was a soft clink, as of coins being passed hand to hand.
‘Thank you, Abel. But it was only my bound duty as a Christian.’
‘It was, Flora, it was.’
Flora.
As quietly as possible Barnaby moved to peer through the crack in the door. Directly opposite, above the entrance to the dining room, there were three floors of guest accommodation. Standing on the first-floor balcony were Abel and Flora. Something in her palm flashed in the lantern light as she tucked it into her skirts.
‘And you will not tell it was I?’
‘By no means,’ Abel said. ‘We would not wish to expose you to the risk of injury.’
‘You believe she is dangerous, then?’
‘All witches are dangerous, Flora.’
‘Well, goodnight, then.’
Abel gave an obsequious bow as she turned and made her rather hurried way down the stairs to the courtyard. As she passed the privy door and was lost to the sight of those above, her smile drained away and she wiped her fingers on her dress.
Afterwards Abel stood for a long time in the shadows, utterly still. Even though Barnaby was lit only by a sliver of grimy lantern light, he felt as exposed as if he were standing in a shaft of noonday sun. After a few minutes Abel walked back up the landing towards a door to one of the guest rooms. As he did so his face briefly passed into the lantern light and his smile made every hair on Barnaby’s body rise up.
12
Bile
The next morning at church, although neither Abel nor his new friend were present, prayers were said for Mr Hopkins: that he might be guided to root out all that was rotten in the village. There were lots of intercessions for the sick and dying; far more than usual. Barnaby’s attention wandered.
The church seemed more cheerful somehow and he remembered that the deaf boy had finished his frescoes. He was not a bad artist, Barnaby mused as he peeped out from behind his clasped hands. The folds of the disciples’ garments and whorls of their beards were so realistic you might grasp them in your hand. This eastern wall dealt with New Testament stories and the colours here were the bright blues and golds of day. The western wall depicted Old Testament scenes and here the mood was darker: Adam and Eve trudged through barren wastes, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace, Elijah prayed by the widow’s dead child, Lucifer was hurled from heaven.
Barnaby did a double take.
The falling angel looked nothing like the demons Barnaby had seen in books or paintings. It wasn’t black and hairy, or even scaly like a serpent. It was a man; peach-fleshed and perfectly formed. He tumbled head first, his yellow hair streaming out behind him. White light radiated from his body but his face was stained red by the scarlet flames that licked up from the base of the painting, waiting to receive him. Barnaby turned in his seat and bent his head sideways to try and make out more clearly the features of the Lucifer figure.
He froze. His mouth dropped open. He looked around the church for the artist and saw him a few rows back, his dark eyes glinting with amusement as they gazed back at him.
After the service the deaf boy was waiting for him in the graveyard. As Barnaby stumbled over the hummocky graves, the boy’s back straightened and his eyes glittered.
‘What’s that supposed to mean, you bastard?’ Barnaby shouted as soon as he was close enough. There was a sudden silence from the congregation that milled around the porch behind him.
The deaf boy didn’t move or speak, but just watched his approach.
‘Answer me!’
He twisted his ankle clambering over the final grave and righted himself, cursing. The deaf boy dropped onto his back foot and raised loose fists.
‘Really?’ Barnaby yelled. ‘You want to take me on?’
He was within a few feet of him when the boy finally spoke.
‘You are a dog.’
‘What?’
‘You act like a lord, but you are nothing.’
‘I’m better than you’ll ever be!’
But the boy didn’t say more. In fact he clamped his mouth shut, blushed furiously and raised his fists. As they circled one another there were shouts from the parishioners: his father’s voice was becoming rapidly louder and closer. Realising that they didn’t have long the two boys launched themselves at one another.
Barnaby landed two good punches to the boy’s face and the boy got one in on Barnaby’s nose and a crippling knee to the groin before they were pulled apart. Barnaby struggled to be released, though only half-heartedly, but the deaf boy allowed himself to be led away without a backward glance.
Barnaby stamped home cursing and threatening dire retribution, to Juliet and his father’s sympathetic murmurs and his mother’s tight-lipped disapproval, and they were almost at the gate before they saw the diminutive figure hunched against the cold. It was Benjamin. His face was as white as the frost that covered the road.
‘Mister Nightingale!’ he cried when he saw them, running forwards. ‘Can you come straight away?’
‘What is it, child?’ Frances said gently. ‘Is Naomi sick?’
‘Not yet, though she will be if they carry on.’
‘They? Who?’
‘Your son, Sir, and his friend Mister Aitkins.’
‘Hopkins.’
‘They say Naomi has been accused of witchery and they must find out if it’s true.’
Barnaby’s heart stopped.
He, Benjamin and Henry passed quickly through the village, grim-faced and silent. They had come at dawn, the boy said, with a letter from the mayor, which they claimed allowed them to carry out all necessary investigations. They demanded to speak to Naomi alone and then afterwards Abel left to fetch the ‘searchers’. Benjamin did not know what this meant, only that his sister had gone so pale he thought she might faint.
‘What are these searchers?’ Barnaby had asked his father, but Henry didn’t know.
The little cottage was partly shrouded in mist from the lake and the path up to it had been churned to mud by the feet of the excited crowd from the widow’s swimming. The place was in darkness except for an upper window, which shone bright butter-yellow.
They hurried to the front door, wide open despite the bitter cold, and followed a trail of muddy footprints into the house.
Waters and his wife
were huddled together by a dead fire, their faces turned to the ceiling. Benjamin ran over and pressed himself into his mother’s arms. Waters looked up at Barnaby and his father. ‘The searchers have come. With ropes.’
Barnaby ran to the staircase and scrambled up, until he came to the door at the top. It was locked. Behind it he could hear a man’s voice.
‘Abel?’ he shouted, hammering on the wood. ‘Are you in there?’
The voice stopped abruptly. He thought he could hear whispering, then there was a tremulous cry, ‘Barnaby? Is that you?’
‘Naomi!’
Swift footsteps approached the door.
‘Master Nightingale.’
It was a voice he did not recognise, soft and insidious.
‘Let me in!’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. I have been instructed by the authorities to interrogate Miss Waters on suspicion of witchcraft.’
‘Well, you may do so in the presence of her father and employers.’
The man, Hopkins, chuckled. ‘That is not the way it is done.’
Barnaby kicked the door and the hinges splintered. One more and the thing would come off. He swung back his foot.
‘If I am not allowed to continue my work unmolested,’ Hopkins said smoothly, ‘then the interrogation will have to take place in the county gaol.’
Downstairs Naomi’s mother mewed a pathetic no.
Barnaby leaned forward and pressed his lips to the gap between the door and the jamb. Warm air trickled from inside the room.
‘Abel, you piece of shit,’ he snarled. ‘Get out here, now.’
‘Yes, Abel.’ Barnaby was surprised to find his father beside him. ‘Come out here and explain your involvement in this wretched business.’
‘I will not!’ Abel said shrilly, but after some reassuring mumbles it was Hopkins who spoke again.
‘Mister Nightingale. Your son is assisting me in my endeavours and, as he is now an employee of the government, I’m afraid the calls of family must come second.’
He gave a breathy chuckle that made Barnaby gouge his fingernails into his palms.
The Blood List Page 15