78
By preference, Rachel was late to morning prayers. Or absent, if she could find good enough excuse. But today she was early, even before Sir Richard’s chaplain had arrived from High House. She was hoping for a few moments alone, without someone’s eyes always on her. To think. This self indulgence made her the first to spy the bundle in the chapel porch.
Another one for the parish, she thought. Common enough. No surprise, given the penalties for bearing a bastard.
Her keen eyes searched the ranked gravestones, the shadows around the Beester vault, the short grass over Philip Wentworth, who, Zeal had insisted, could not be confined in the chapel. She probed the orchard dropping its bloom beyond the low stone wall. The mother often stayed hidden, to see that her child was safely found.
A pair of finches picked busily at the moss on the wall. Rachel looked back down at the baby.
The little bundle was tied round the middle with twine like a bale of gloves, with a letter tucked under the twine. Hands on hips, Rachel stared down for a long moment. Too still. Not even a sleeping new-born twitch.
She felt a rush of rage. Should have left it to be found sooner. Or better yet, done something before the thing took on human shape. There were ways.
She laid a hand on her own flat stomach. She had not told him. You don’t present a child to a man who wants only to chase after his master like a dog. A man who imagines that you must leave home to have terrible adventures.
I won’t be your drag anchor, my man! Not me. And you won’t pull me up by the roots, like he wants to do with her, and try to plant me in some foreign earth, where I’ll rot or dry up or be eaten by something worse than sheep or deer.
She stooped down and folded the blanket back from the tiny face. The baby was sticking out its tongue and peering at her through sly, red eyes. The tiny tongue was purple and swollen.
Rachel exclaimed, leapt back, and then stood staring down, stroking her heart as if soothing a dog in a thunderstorm. When she bent at last to touch the waxy blue face, her fingers met a chill that made her shiver like a bad dream. She tried to lift the nub of its chin with her thumb, but its neck was stiff and unyielding. She looked more closely. A hemp cord had been drawn tightly around the neck with a hangman’s knot.
Not much could rattle Rachel. At six, she had survived the small pox that killed her mother, and later tried to be grateful that the scars had saved her from the sin of vanity. When she was twelve, her father was forced out as tenant of his farm. Homeless, with his family and without work, he had died soon after in an accident Rachel thought anyone could have seen coming. From that time, she had looked after herself very well, thank you. Even dead babies could be dealt with. Murdered ones were another matter.
Her usually quick-moving thoughts stumbled over each other. Though she knew it was too late, she tried to loosen the cord. She had to sit down on the shallow step beside the baby. Hands trapped between her knees and rocking slightly, she looked at the hangman’s knot.
However bleak life could be at times, it had patterns. You could rely on hard work, for example. You could rely on the plague in the summertime. You could rely on men to try to lift your skirts. You could rely on bacon after the autumn slaughter and peaches if the sun and rain obliged. You could rely on war.
Rachel liked patterns. They let you prepare yourself for the worst, when it next came round, and taught you to make the most of the good while it lasted.
She did not like any of the patterns that began to settle around this dead baby with a hangman’s noose around its neck.
She pulled the blanket back over its face to see if she could think any straighter that way.
You hide an unwanted babe, all the more urgently if it’s dead.
She closed her eyes against the memory of the little mulberry shape she had secretly buried.
It’s a message.
She lifted her head at the sound of distant voices then pulled the letter from under the twine and strained her eyes at the inky slashes on the page. Though she could not read, her young mistress had taught her enough to know the letters ‘Z…E…A…L…’ when she saw them. She refolded the letter.
I’d rather not be able to read. Then words like these have no power over me. I can leave them stuck right there where they are on the paper, thank you very much, and not let them into my head!
She stuffed the letter into her sleeve and hid the baby in the long grass behind a gravestone at the far end of the graveyard. She was back on the chapel porch by the time the High House chaplain, two dairy women and the fish man came through the gate.
Bury it! Burn the letter, she told herself.
Even as Rachel decided, she changed her mind. Don’t be a fool. Someone clearly wants it known. Wouldn’t have left it here for the whole world to fall over otherwise. That’s a fine wool blanket, not a dairymaid’s rag. Someone intends a vile mischief. I smell it. My lady must think how to protect herself. How to protect me, for that matter!
Rachel had already been questioned once and had not cared for such close proximity to the law. Better to be unknown, invisible. Particularly now that Sir Richard, poor man, could no longer offer much protection.
She stared into the questioning face of the young woman who now stood before her. If she’s accused of anything more, it might be the last straw. They might change their minds about the past. They might say that I helped her. Who is closer to her than I am?
But how can I tell her what is being said? A girl who does only good as far as I can see, though I sometimes want to thump her to make her sit down for a moment. She has enough to deal with already, doesn’t need a murdered baby added to her account.
Though Rachel’s imagination was limited, it was quite able to conjure up a gibbet. She had seen a few, and with women kicking the air under them.
I have to tell her.
Her mistress might be young, but she was quick. Just the flick of the eyes as they went into the chapel was enough to tell her something was up.
Zeal saw panic in the eyes of her steady, dry, sometimes humourless Rachel. If Rachel was afraid, so was she.
A cold, tight fist gripped her.
It was getting closer now. Hard to breathe.
Don’t know exactly, but I know all the same. This is the one.
Can’t breathe. ‘Our Father Which art in…’
I’m so weary!
‘…our sins as we forgive…’ Precious little forgiveness around…
‘Go in peace,’ said the chaplain.
Zeal straightened her shoulders and rose to face whatever waited for her.
Before she could speak with Rachel, however, she had to decide how many of the few, precious, remaining chickens to kill for dinner the next day, who would churn…please God, let Tuddenham not start on seedling hot beds and manures!
Numbly she looked where Rachel pointed in the long grass. She stooped and examined the little body as Rachel had done. She noted the hangman’s knot. She put out a fairly steady hand for the letter Rachel offered. Unlike Rachel, she recognized the writing. Even invading her Underworld had still not drained the writer’s bile.
‘What does it say, madam?’ asked Rachel after Zeal stood silently staring at the paper for a very long time.
Zeal fainted.
A copy of the letter was posted that same morning in the Bedgebury market square. Arthur was the unhappy messenger, having walked to the village early, before prayers, to try to buy eggs. Zeal, who might once have gone for the pleasure of the bustle and company, now avoided Bedgebury for fear of meeting Gifford or members of his congregation, or, unwittingly, her invader.
That evening, Geoffrey Comer, newly elected to head of the parish council, arrived with the parish constable who, after eyeing the little mechanical ship set near the entrance, began to study the ceiling of the hall with open-mouthed astonishment.
Comer was a tall thin man, on whom all lines flowed downwards like the branches of certain pines or weeping trees. In his plain blac
k, narrow coat, he seemed to extend upwards forever.
‘I suspect you know what brings me, mistress.’
Zeal looked at him a little wildly but took comfort from his calm civility. ‘Arthur told me that I could save sending.’
‘As our magistrate, Sir Richard, is unwell, I thought it best if I dealt…’ Comer hesitated.
She managed to find words to invite the two men into the little parlour to the right of the entrance hall and to offer refreshment. She sent Rachel to bring the dead baby, which had begun to bloat in the warm early summer weather. She showed it to Comer along with the letter that had accompanied it.
Comer inhaled sharply, then asked the constable to take the child away.
‘Yours is a copy of the letter I saw in Bedgebury,’ he said.
‘I have some others I should perhaps have shown you long before.’ Zeal sent Rachel to bring the other anonymous letters. ‘But Sir Richard knew.’
Comer spread all the letters on a table.
‘The same hand,’ he agreed.
‘I thought at first that they were from Doctor Gifford.’
‘Gifford?’ Comer raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
‘He and I have our differences,’ Zeal explained hastily. ‘But Master Wentworth was certain the writer was someone else. And I came to the same conclusion.’
Comer nodded, again studying the letters. ‘I’m relieved that you’re not accusing a man of his standing and influence in the parish.’ He lifted a single eyebrow. ‘In any case, though our minister can be extreme in his fervour, he strikes me as more likely to seize you by the throat than to work in darkness like this.’
‘Philip said just that.’
Comer touched the most recent letter with a long knobbed finger. ‘Did you do it?’
Zeal’s head jerked as if he had slapped her. ‘Have you come to arrest me?’
‘Not unless you did it.’ Comer looked down at her steadily.
She shook her head tiredly. The letter still made no sense. Still made her head swim.
This babe was murdered by the woman who now calls herself Mistress Parsley. In the same way, she killed her own bastard and two husbands. Look no further for reason than the devilish deceptions of that abomination of extravagance she calls the Memory Palace. It is there that she practises her black arts. It is there that she charms and destroys her victims. If you would find the bones of others whom she has sacrificed to heathen gods, you will find them used to model the obscene simulacra of infants and children among the other images of idolatry and wickedness.
It is widely known, too, that she consorts with Catholic traitors and has welcomed these enemies of England to live amongst us. If you search, you will still find a theatre in that place, though theatres are banned. And most damning of all, a hidden priest’s hole, final proof that this woman is an agent of the Antichrist and sister to the Great Whore of Babylon.
‘Who can hate me so much?’ she asked.
‘None of this is true?’
‘I never killed anyone. And the courts have agreed. The rest is a wonderful confabulation of half-truths and rumour.’
Comer watched her coolly.
‘I never used, or caused to be used, the bones of any creature in the making of my house. That last accusation may have been inspired by the use of tree branches under the plaster in some of the friezes, to give verisimilitude. I was inspired there by the example of the Countess of Shrewsbury at Hardwick.’
‘And the theatre? The priest’s hole?’
‘Nothing plays in my theatre, I keep no players – and I haven’t heard yet that theatres must be destroyed as well as closed. The so-called priest’s hole is in fact a goodly-sized closet reserved for my own private contemplation and study.’
Comer picked up and refolded the letters. ‘I must take these with me to show the magistrate in Basingstoke.’ He waved away a mug of ale, which had finally arrived.
‘What will happen now?’ asked Zeal.
‘I can’t speak for the magistrate. In your place, I would pray that he detects an act of malice against you. By a person who may or may not also be guilty of infanticide if you are not. Praise God, that’s not for me to discover.’
She walked with him to the front door. He frowned up at the painted ceiling, then at the map on the floor as they travelled across South America, then at the walls.
‘An officer may need to return to look at those friezes, and perhaps your closet.’
She nodded.
‘Mistress…a warning.’
She looked up the long distance to his narrow face.
‘Old scores get settled in bad times,’ he said. ‘The war has set the devil free in England. Ugly rumours are being put about.’
‘Uglier than the murder of a babe?’
Comer glanced away. ‘And also, someone is paying those carters of Sir Harry’s to spout their stale accusations again to anyone in the parish who will listen – and there are always those who will. Stay close to home for the moment.’
Later, Zeal stood before the blank panel in the hall outside her chamber, as if its oiled surface might suddenly shiver and reveal the future like a diviner’s mirror.
If not Gifford, who can hate me so much? she wondered again. And what do they hope to gain by proving me a murderer?
Jake Grindley?
But the letters had started long before Jamie ran away, with her marriage.
She could think of only one other old score to be settled.
She remembered Sir Richard’s voice four years earlier, saying, ‘…unless you oblige him by killing someone in truth…’
79
The mob turned into the beeches at the top of the drive.
‘The bones! The bones!’ Their shouts were muffled by the trees.
Zeal threw open the window of her chamber to see without the distortion of the window glass. The deputation had come, at last.
A horseman rode out of the beech avenue towards the new bridge. The light was going and he was still too far for Zeal to see his face clearly, but she knew the shape of his shoulders, and his horse. The first of the mob boiled out of the trees close behind him. Their sticks and pikes tossed like the horns of cattle. Half a dozen people carried torches.
Burning torches.
This is what Gifford had meant.
‘Sweet Lord in Heaven save us!’ cried Rachel, looking over Zeal’s shoulder. ‘There’s Mistress White as well as her husband!’
Besides five of Sir Richard’s pikes, Zeal counted two scythes, six clubs and lost count of the staves.
She did not see Comer nor the constable among them, only the man she had feared to see. Who had hated her enough to kill her child.
Roger Wentworth moved at the head of a strange, shifting beast, which stretched and re-coagulated like a swarm of bees as it moved down the drive. Almost hidden among the trees lurked more women and some older children.
‘The bones! The bones!’ they shouted.
As the mob crossed the bridge and climbed the drive towards the new house, Zeal began to make out their faces. Four militia men, all from Bedgebury, armed with muskets. Five of the joiners, whom she had dismissed. Jonas Stubbs. And the two masons who had attacked Dauzat. The six men who had come with Gifford to the bonfire. And Jake Grindley. At the back rode Doctor Gifford.
Zeal held tightly to the window ledge.
This battle may be too great for me to fight, she thought. If John is still trying to come home, he will be too late.
I’m sorry, she told him. I tried.
She recognized the families of three of the men likely to hang for Paroli’s murder.
Wentworth saw her in the window and gave a shout. He kicked his horse up to the foot of the wide pale steps. ‘Whore!’ he shouted. ‘Murdering witch! We have come to uncover your sins!’
The crowd gave an approving roar. Someone began to chant ‘Let us in! Let us in!’ The others picked it up. ‘Let us in! Let us in!’ They banged the ends of their weapons on the
ground. ‘Let! Us! In!’
Zeal looked around at her defending army, who had come rushing to her chamber. Mistress Margaret, Agatha, Rachel. Two chalky-faced grooms.
‘Arthur’s gone to ring the bake house bell for help,’ said Rachel.
They all watched in silence, as Zeal took Philip’s pistol from under her pillow and his rapier from his sword belt hung beside the bed.
‘Shall we get our staves, madam?’ asked one of the grooms.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Then I charge you to stay here and guard this gentlewoman and her companions.’
‘Zeal, don’t!’ Mistress Margaret tried to grab her sleeve. ‘Oh, please, don’t!’
‘What should I do instead? Please bar the door.’ She went down the great staircase into the entrance hall.
In the illusion of endless blue sky, her birds sat frozen in silent readiness. The little ship waited at the dockside. She had another choice.
She could go now, before this sweet, false imitation of worldly order gave way to the chaos that pressed in on it. Her means of escape lay close at hand. She stood on her map, which pretended that geography could be tamed with meridians. She looked down at the floor. She could vanish, flee into her secret room in the elbow of the tower and close the door behind her. And rest at last. She could abandon her people. Abandon her mappa mundi to those who wanted to destroy it.
She opened the door and stepped out into the portico.
The crowd gave a jubilant yell. A stone struck one of Lamb’s columns.
‘What do you want with me?’ she shouted. The hair around her temples was dark with sweat and her eyes were fierce. ‘Jonas Stubbs! Are you after a commission for my tombstone? And Jake Grindley! I’m surprised to see you here. Is this how you repay me for your farm?’
‘You stole my son!’ he shouted back. ‘And sent him to live among foreign whores and mountebanks. Then tried to buy me off like he was a bullock or shoat.’
‘Unless she killed him too!’ screamed another voice. ‘How do we know he’s not dead too? And in there with all the rest!’
The Memory Palace Page 38