‘What form of bewitchment did you use to usurp your brother from your parents’ affections?’
Barnaby smiled and as he did so his lips cracked.
‘Handsomeness and charm,’ he tried to say, but his voice rasped like tearing paper. He was gratified to hear the scritching of the pen pause.
‘Is the devil as handsome, Barnaby?’
‘Not at all,’ Barnaby said. ‘He’s ugly as a horse’s arse compared to me.’
Hopkins gave a friendly laugh.
‘Is he dark or fair?’
‘Dark as a mole, like Abel.’
Hopkins laughed again. The scritching paused.
Barnaby was going to continue but his eye was caught by a movement in the corner of the room. Two black demons hovered by the roof beam. Rams’ horns curled from their heads and they clacked their teeth together, grinning. Even from where he sat Barnaby could smell their stench of decay.
He stole a look at Hopkins and found he was watching him.
‘What is it, Barnaby? What do you see?’
‘Nothing. What do you see?’
Hopkins turned, and after a moment turned back. ‘I am of the Lord’s party, boy. I see only the wall and the roof beam.’
Something changed now. The questions became harsher, more rapid, more confusing.
Did he make waxen effigies of those he hated?
Did he stick bent pins into them?
Did he bury the foetuses of animals in hallowed ground?
Did he pray backwards?
Did he lame the horse of Lord Fairfax?
Had he sent fleas to torment Abel in his bed at Cambridge?
‘Gladly!’ Barnaby cried, jerking up his lolling head. ‘Fleas and slugs and rats and leeches – even they would find his blood too foul to suck; the devil’s pen would melt at the touch of it!’
Still Hopkins went on. The stars came out and danced for Barnaby in the little square of window. He could move no part of his body beneath his neck. Someone had opened a window and moths were crawling all over the lanterns. One landed on his knee, fat and furry and heavy as a mouse. He could not twitch his leg to shift it. His vision blurred and blackened at the edges, as if singed. He was covered in vomit but couldn’t remember being sick.
Hopkins droned on. Barnaby’s head lolled back and he stared at the pulsating colours on the ceiling.
And then a blast of wind blew a flurry of snow through the window. A few flakes fell into his open mouth, moistening it. It was enough to wake him briefly from his torpor. He found that a piece of paper had been thrust onto his lap. The spidery writing scuttled across the page every time he tried to focus on it.
‘Sign,’ Abel said.
Barnaby tried to read it but his head wouldn’t stay still.
‘Just sign and this will all be over,’ Hopkins said.
Barnaby picked up the pen. A spot of ink dripped onto the paper, where it began to morph into outlandish shapes.
‘Sign it and you can sleep,’ Abel said.
Barnaby’s head swayed and he squinted up at Abel, trying to focus on his brother’s dark eyes.
‘What is it?’ he slurred.
Abel’s eyes flicked to Hopkins and back.
‘Just a transcript of everything you have told us,’ Hopkins said, behind him.
‘Read it to me.’
Abel glanced again at Hopkins then lowered his head and began to read.
‘This is the testimony of Barnaby Nightingale . . .’
But as he went on Barnaby frowned. Abel was a fluent reader but he seemed to be stumbling over the words, as if he wasn’t actually reading the testimony as it was written at all. As if he was making it all up as he went along.
With his last ounce of strength Barnaby lifted the pen and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and black ink spattered the whitewash.
Abel made to strike him again but Hopkins stepped between them.
‘Enough, Abel.’
He turned to Barnaby. ‘Many thanks.’ A whisper of a smile passed across his sickly face. ‘We have all we need.’
Barnaby awoke to a woman’s gentle murmurs. Soothing hands were passing over his body. He was lying on his front and the cramps had gone, but he was still freezing cold. Why hadn’t they covered him? The hands paused at his elbow and rested there.
‘What’s this?’ the woman said quietly.
‘Nothing but an old graze,’ another said.
They resumed their explorations up and down each arm before moving onto his back.
He opened his eyes. A woman’s broad hips were before them. The skirts smelled nice. A hand came to rest on the mattress by his cheek. The fingers were plump and pink, the nails clean and neat. He had a sudden urge to hold them. That was when he found he was still bound.
‘Try beneath his hair.’
The voice was Abel’s.
Now he could feel that he was naked. The cold breeze from the window chilled his buttocks. His balls had shrunk to peanuts. Had they already probed the other side of him? A hand moved between his thighs, and he jerked and cried out.
‘Hush, boy,’ the woman said. ‘We are nearly done.’
‘Check the hairline,’ Abel said again, and Barnaby moved his head to try and see him but he was out of his sphere of vision.
The motherly fingers moved to his temple and began probing his hair, in just the same way Agnes had checked him for lice when he was a child.
‘There is nothing,’ the woman said. ‘His body is unblemished.’
‘The nape of his neck,’ Abel said.
The fingers moved over his scalp to the back of his head and it dawned on him what Abel meant.
Plenty of times he had sat in the kitchen with his head bowed while Juliet pressed a handkerchief to the mole that bled so easily.
The fingers stopped.
‘Bring the clippers, Grace.’
They cut away the hair at the nape of his neck.
‘It is a strange colour,’ Grace said.
‘Like a large flea-bite.’
‘It’s ragged at the edges, as if it has been gnawed recently.’
‘It’s a birthmark,’ Barnaby croaked.
‘Come and see, Mr Hopkins.’
‘No, no, ladies, this is your job. You must decide if you have seen such an unusual blemish before or whether it might perhaps be the cunningly concealed mark of an imp’s teat.’
There was a beat of silence.
‘I believe it is, Grace.’
‘Yes, Marjorie. I have never seen such a mark before. It’s shape is . . .’
‘Infernal?’ Barnaby croaked, but no-one answered him.
‘What happens if you touch it with your nail, Mistress Tatley?’ This was Abel.
‘You know it will bleed, you dog!’ Barnaby shouted but the women pressed his face into the mattress. He jumped at the sharp nick of a nail followed by a pinch. They were squeezing it to get the blood to come, and sure enough a moment later he felt a warm trickle down his neck.
‘It bleeds for me most willingly,’ Marjorie said.
‘Enough to sup on?’ said Hopkins.
‘Certainly, for a small familiar such as a mouse or spider.’
It’s a birthmark! Barnaby tried to shout, but his voice was muffled by the mattress.
‘Prepare him for the watching,’ Hopkins said.
After the third blow he allowed them to dress him without a struggle. They weren’t his clothes. These garments were drab and patched: the garments of a peasant farmer. When they tied him to the chair, for some reason they left his legs outstretched. Then they went away, leaving him alone with their henchman, Leech.
He managed to catch a few moments’ sleep but woke with a cricked neck and the grumblings of cramp in his upper arms. He rolled his shoulders as much as he could and wriggled his feet to get rid of the pins and needles.
Leech was asleep so Barnaby made a few half-hearted attempts to get out of the bindings, but when the chair legs banged against the floor the thug s
tirred at once. Even if he did free himself the door would be locked, and if he did get out of the room there was the problem of getting out of the village unseen, then finding shelter before the cold killed him, then trying to make his way to a town where he wasn’t known. But there was one deciding factor against escape: he would be abandoning Juliet and Naomi to their deaths. At least if he remained he might find some way to save them.
His brother wanted him dead, that was plain enough, and perhaps during the interrogation he had said things that might go against him, but in a court he would deny them. True, they had found that damned birthmark, but if he was allowed to show it to the magistrate it would surely be dismissed. Whatever this ‘watching’ was that had to come next, he would be strong and admit nothing. He would have to try and withstand the physical discomfort for one more night. It was night, wasn’t it? He glanced at the window but they had pulled a curtain across it now, perhaps to disorient him. Besides, his parents would be working hard for his release, talking to everyone they knew of any stature. The Slabbers must surely be doing all they could, and Griff’s family would vouch for his good character. In fact, apart from his brother there was no-one who really disliked him.
Then he remembered: the deaf boy.
A chill crept into his bones. The furrier had no standing in the village so there was no reason why his son should be listened to, but if he repeated his story that Barnaby had killed his mother, there might be some who believed it. Barnaby had been trapped here so long he had no idea what was going on in the village. Perhaps it had been gripped by the witch hysteria he had heard of in other towns, with people accusing their own mothers and grandmothers, or even the village priest. If so it might be a good thing for him and Naomi and Juliet. They could hardly burn all five hundred villagers.
Or perhaps they could . . .
He heard voices on the stairs, laughter. The key turned in the lock and the two women were back, alone this time.
Their dresses were spotted with grease stains and as they smiled he saw bits of food caught in their teeth.
‘Upsy-daisy, Mister Leech,’ Grace sang and the big man stirred and farted.
‘Let’s get a fire going,’ Marjorie said. ‘I ain’t sitting here all night in the bleeding cold.’ Her words were slightly slurred.
‘You sure? Hopkins won’t like it.’
‘Don’t be stupid; the talking bit’s done now. And besides, the creatures will be drawn to the warmth.’
‘Get a fire going, Leech,’ she said, ‘then go and wait downstairs. Any trouble and we’ll call you.’
When he had kindled the fire and gone down, Marjorie produced a bottle of wine from her skirts.
‘Heaven be praised,’ Grace chuckled.
They sat by the fire, drinking.
Every glug into the pewter cups, or slurp from the women, was agony to watch. The fire just made it worse.
‘Will you at least let me wet my lips?’
Marjorie swung her head round to him. ‘What?’
‘I’m so thirsty.’
With a sigh she got up and walked over to him unsteadily.
‘Thank you, Goodwife,’ he said, opening his mouth, but she merely dipped her fingers into the wine and wiped them across his lips. The fire dried them at once and they became more cracked than they were before.
Crouching down beside the chair she stroked his cheek, breathing wine fumes in his face.
‘You’re a beauty, aren’t you? You got a girl?’
He nodded, trying to smile to play for their sympathy.
Marjorie sighed. ‘Poor thing.’
‘Why?’
‘Why, because she’ll be taken too, of course.’
She got up but he grasped a scrap of her skirt between his fingers.
‘Is there any hope for us?’
‘Well,’ she smiled sadly, ‘you have not confessed much, the mark is, I should say, equivocal, and no familiar has yet appeared, so . . .’
‘Shut up, Marge!’ Grace snapped.
Marjorie pressed her lips together and scuttled back to the fire.
The house ticked and creaked. Occasionally a log crashed down, jerking him from his doze. The old women murmured and burped. He developed unbearable itches that had him close to shouting that he would confess anything Abel wanted, but eventually, through gritted teeth and strained muscles, subsided.
The sun came up and Grace opened the curtain while Marjorie slumbered.
She went back and lifted the dregs of her wine to her lips, then put the pewter cup down in a shaft of sunlight.
The bang on the window was so loud they all three cried out in fright.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs and Leech burst in.
‘What is it?’ he shouted.
‘I don’t know,’ Marjorie gasped, her hand pressed to her chest.
The three of them stood in the middle of the room staring at the window.
For some minutes there was nothing. And then a great black shape came flapping up. It balanced for a minute on the frame, and stared through the glass with glittering black eyes. Then it rapped on the pane with its grey beak.
The women’s eyes were out on stalks.
‘Should I open the window?’ Leech whispered.
‘No!’ they cried in unison. ‘It might be Satan himself!’
‘It is my maid’s pet . . .’ Barnaby began then hung his head: he had just damned Juliet.
‘It is looking at the boy,’ Grace whispered. ‘Everyone move into the shadows.’
The three adults melted to the edges of the room. The bird remained, and now there was no getting away from the fact that its attention was fixed upon Barnaby.
‘Yah!’ he cried. ‘Begone, you pest!’
Tap, tap, tap went the cruel, hooked beak.
15
Black Kisses
The cart hurtled along the rutted road to Grimston, throwing him from side to side, striking his head against the frame so that he bit his tongue and jarred his back.
When it eventually came to a halt and the driver opened the door he was momentarily blinded by the glare. But the man did not wait until he could see to walk. Hauling him out like a sack of turnips, he dragged Barnaby to the door of the gaol, his bare toes carving runnels in the snow crust.
The gaoler did not recognise him and spent the whole descent to the cells complaining that he was not paid to look after so many and was rushed off his feet with all their unreasonable demands.
‘Comfort yourself that they will soon be dead,’ said the driver.
Barnaby could not orientate himself in the shivering lantern light. It took him a while to realise that the icy water he was paddling in was the channel of human filth that ran down the central aisle. The lantern stopped moving. Keys clanked, a door opened and he was flung to the ground. The door slammed shut again, the keys turned, and the lantern light retreated.
He was alone in the pitch-dark.
He spread his arms and found the wall of the cell and behind it a wooden structure that might be a pallet. Clambering up onto it he found it occupied by an ice-cold body. He got down and crawled across to a pile of straw on the other side. This too was occupied by something half naked and rank-smelling. He crawled over to the bars of the cell, a barely perceptible gleam in the sea of darkness.
‘Naomi?’ he called.
There was a faint rustling and then, shockingly close by, she spoke.
‘Barnaby? Oh God, not you too?’
‘Are you all right? Is Juliet better?’
A moment’s silence.
‘She came round after we saw you and I tried to get her to eat something, but she was too distraught. She said Hopkins and your brother had twisted her words and confused her and she believed she had said something to damn you.’
‘It’s all right,’ he called. ‘Tell her it’s all right. Abel would have got me somehow. It wasn’t her fault.’
But there was no reply from Naomi.
‘Are you there?’ he called. �
��Is she still with you?’
‘Yes,’ Naomi said. ‘She is here, but . . .’
‘But what? Is she well?’
Naomi’s voice lowered to a murmur and he pressed his ear to the bars to make out her words.
‘There is a sickness here. The Widow Moone had it and now she is gone. It begins with a cough and then these strange black lumps appear and . . . and then . . .’ She paused. ‘Juliet has them in her neck.’
Her voice was a thread in the huge silence. And then he began to make out a new sound. A sound that came from the same direction as her voice: rasping, laboured breathing.
‘Is that her?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead against the bars until his skull hurt.
‘How long did it take for the widow to die?’ he murmured.
‘Two days,’ Naomi breathed. ‘But she was old and weak. Juliet is—’
He staggered to his feet. ‘Jules!’ he cried. ‘Jules! Can you hear me?’
The ragged breathing caught and then there came the weakest, frailest croak of a voice he’d ever heard.
‘Barney, I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Jules! It wasn’t your fault. You must take some water, for strength.’
He had to strain to hear her reply.
‘My . . . throat . . . is too . . . sore.’
‘Please, for me!’
There was some movement, a slow rustling followed by the chink of a jug or cup.
‘That’s it,’ Naomi said. ‘Just a few sips and you’ll feel much better.’
Juliet began to cough.
Naomi spoke some words of comfort but the coughing continued and the cup clanked to the floor. Barnaby strained to try and see into their cell but could only make out splinters of the distant lamplight in the stream of excrement. The coughing grew worse, tearing the silence into ragged shreds.
‘Can’t you do something?’ he cried.
And then there was a violent retching, followed by a splash, followed by silence.
He panted against the bars, breathless with relief.
The Blood List Page 19