‘I’ve killed no one! All honest men know that!’
‘She lies!’ cried Wentworth. ‘As she lied under oath to the courts!’
‘You know that all charges were knocked down before matters ever went so far! I was never called to court!’ Just keep them out of the house, she thought. Or Mistress Margaret’s heart will stop with terror.
‘See how she tries to turn you now as she turned the others!’ cried Wentworth. ‘Close your ears to her sweet dangerous words.’
Gun, useless. One bullet. So many of them.
She walked forward to the edge of the top step, dropped Philip’s rapier and gun. ‘If you mean to violate the laws of both man and God, kill me now,’ she shouted. ‘Or else act in a more neighbourly fashion. With more warning that you were coming to call, I might even have been able to offer you refreshment.’
The crowd subsided slightly. The bake house bell began to toll.
‘Though you set the law on others, you think that you’re beyond the law!’ Wentworth rode to the foot of the steps. ‘“But, be sure, your sins will find you out!” We shall raze Gomorrah!’ Holding her eyes, he waited for her to grasp the totality of his triumph.
She had to look away. The hatred in his face scattered her thoughts like a blow to the head. It filled the air between them as thickly as water, stole the breath from her lungs. ‘You wrote the letters!’
‘Yes, madam! I admit it with pride.’
‘And the babe?’
‘A virtuous deception to expose the truth. I have you now, madam. You may have hoodwinked the law, but you’ll find me and these others harder to charm than that whey-faced Winchester magistrate or old fool Sir Richard who can’t take his eyes from your dugs!’ He wheeled his horse so that he half-faced the crowd again. ‘Murderess!’ he shouted. ‘Triple murderess. Whore! Witch!’
More than a deputation…private angers spurred on by a wilful, unreasoning malice.
‘Hang her now and be done!’ screamed a woman’s voice from the trees.
‘Do you put yourselves above the authority of the courts?’ Zeal shouted back. But she had lost all hope of quelling the mob with reason, when unreason rode at its head.
Gifford kicked his horse forward to join Wentworth and raised his hand to still the mob. ‘A man’s conscience now has as much authority as the courts.’ Unlike Wentworth, he did not shout, but his voice carried like a trumpet. ‘When civil authority is divided against itself, where else can we then turn if not to our own conscience?’ More quietly, he added, ‘I did try to warn you, madam, but you chose to reject my help. Let God’s will be done.’
‘No more words. Let us in!’ cried Wentworth.
‘Into the heathen house!’ cried a man’s voice from the back.
‘In!’ echoed other voices.
A stone crashed through one of the windows. ‘Put out its eyes!’ screamed a woman’s voice. ‘Put out all its eyes!’ More stones smashed through glass.
‘Seize her and keep her fast while we search the house,’ Wentworth ordered. ‘Then we will deliver justice at last.’
Zeal looked past him in the thickening darkness, at a dark man with a musket who stood silent at the back of the crowd.
Now that she had seen him, she could not look away from him, even though the crowd below her shouted and pressed forward.
Death has come for me, she thought. She felt his gaze calling her. His stillness sucked at her. It pulled her towards him, over the tossing waves of the mob. He was the true heart of this moment.
‘No!’ she shouted at him. ‘You won’t have me. Call off your dogs!’
‘We will have you, mistress!’ yelled one of the masons. He brandished his pick. ‘We’ll dig out the bones of the murdered babes and children you had your Frenchmen and Spaniards conceal in your walls! Then see what you have to say!’
‘The human bones in your plaster figures. Your heathen sacrifices!’
‘My son!’ shouted Grindley.
‘Is this your doing?’ she cried to the silent man. Wide-brimmed hat, ragged beard. Gleam of eyes. ‘Are these your lies?’
‘Not lies, madam!’ Gifford stood up in his saddle so that he might be clearly heard by all. ‘A clear light will at last burn away the darkness of your sins.’
Gifford was a cloud, a gnat. Death stood at the back of the mob, the still centre of the world.
She thought she saw eyes like sparks blown into the darkness from a fire, searching for new tinder. She was a dry leaf, withered grass, a dead branch about to snap. She felt the heat of his danger. Felt the dream of fire before it flared. In her imagination, she was already singed. If only he would speak. Or move. Make some small human gesture. She wanted to challenge him again but her throat had closed.
Look away before it’s too late.
The tossing horns of the mob hooked at her. Their boots poised to trample her. But the true fear flowed in a cold stream from the silent man at the back. The mob turned to mist, swinging ghost horns, a stampede of wraiths.
I am going mad. Must think how to save myself. Save us all. The house and all who live in her.
Hatred beat at her feet like the tide.
I am dreaming. Seeing phantoms. An Indian woman, as Philip had described. Polished black ropes of hair hanging on either side of her head. In her arms, the phantasm of a small child, bronzed and oiled like a sword. Black eyes. So many eyes, no, only four, but bright darkness. Darkness can glow. The glow burned her. Still the man did not move.
The woman and child were not clothed in gold. They wore ragged smocks, the woman, a brightly striped shawl.
Now, when she needed to act more than ever before in her life, she felt as empty of will as she had in her secret chamber.
Another stone glanced off a pillar. A chip flicked across her wrist. She looked down at the thread of blood that sprang out on her skin. The sight woke her.
The danger below her was real. Her flesh could be torn, cut, burned. Her spirit stamped out like a fire.
‘You’ll find no bodies in this house!’ she cried.
‘The murdered babes!’ screamed a woman. ‘Killed to feed her devil house. Uncover their bones!’
‘A place of idols and darkness!’ Gifford waved the mob forwards. ‘We must earn God’s Grace. We must beat off the forces of Satan destroying England! To survive, we must purify!’
‘In! In!’ roared the mob.
‘You will not enter this house!’ She felt them pressing forward. Wentworth’s eyes had fixed on her like claws.
‘Tear down the walls!’ shouted a man.
I can’t hold them!
‘The bones!’ prompted Wentworth.
‘The bones! The bones!’ The chant began again.
I am about to die, she thought. She felt too heavy to run.
She heard the shot but felt no blow or pain.
The crowd turned to look back.
A mere man after all. He still held his musket raised into the air while the echoes of the shot bounced back and forth across the valley of the Shir. She saw him clearly now, without the veil of fear across her eyes, as the smell of the burnt powder reached her.
He wore filthy leather breeches and stained pigskin boots. In his belt, he carried a butcher’s knife. A floppy, wide-brimmed leather hat cast a shadow over the top of his face while a beard of the same leathery colour hid the rest. He held his four-foot musket aloft in his right hand. His left hand was thrown out as if to protect the Indian woman and child. The child clung tightly to the woman’s neck.
‘Stay out of this, whoever you are!’ shouted Wentworth.
‘If you are a Christian,’ shouted Gifford, ‘you’ll help us seize her.’
The barrel of the man’s gun dropped to point at Gifford’s chest. ‘Whom did you say she killed?’
‘Her own babe,’ said Wentworth when Gifford turned suddenly silent.
The gun barrel dipped for a second, then returned to its original angle.
‘She killed a babe?’ the man asked quietl
y. ‘You say she killed her own babe?’
‘And others not her own.’ Gifford regained his nerve and waved his arm to draw an echoing roar of agreement from the mob.
‘A heathen blood sacrifice,’ added Wentworth. ‘The blackest witchcraft…I have a witness to her practice…’
‘And don’t forget the two husbands!’ shouted Jake Grindley.
‘Three! If you count Sir Harry,’ cried another voice.
‘Several babes and three husbands, you say?’ The man sounded suddenly and unaccountably relieved. He looked at Zeal again across the heads of the crowd. Showed white teeth in an unlikely smile. ‘A woman of great dispatch, I must say.’
Zeal gasped.
‘I heard a contrary rumour that Sir Harry’s executioner was his horse.’ He took a step forward, his gun held casually in his hand but still pointing at Gifford. The crowd parted to let him through, with the woman behind him. The child stared wide-eyed at those they passed, its grip tight around the woman’s neck.
‘She charmed his horse so that it threw him,’ said Roger Wentworth angrily. ‘I have witnesses who saw her cast the evil eye. As for my father, Master Philip Wentworth…’
‘Wentworth!’ exclaimed the man. ‘Philip Wentworth the fisherman? Is he dead then?’
‘And young Master Parsley.’
‘No sooner married than dead,’ said Gifford. ‘All of them.’
‘John Nightingale too, I swear,’ said Roger Wentworth. ‘Even if he wasn’t a husband, good intelligence had him in her filthy bed. She put it about that he left England on the sly but none of us saw him go. I dare swear we’ll find his bones in there as well!’
‘You swear she killed them all?’
‘It’s clear to all but gullible fools like that doddering old knight, Balhatchet,’ said Wentworth. ‘There are too many deaths for chance alone to explain.’
Zeal heard none of this exchange. The machines of her being had begun to shift and churn so that nothing was properly hooked up. Thoughts froze. Breathing paused. Muscles refused to take orders. Her strength drained out through the soles of her feet.
Not like this! Dear God, not like this!
She stared at the woman and child, then back to the man’s face.
‘I vow you won’t find Nightingale’s bones in the house,’ said the man. ‘And aren’t much more likely to find the rest.’
‘Sir,’ said Gifford. ‘You are a stranger. Beware of meddling where you are ignorant.’
‘With respect, sir, you must trust me on the one point at least. I’m John Nightingale.’
Zeal found herself sitting on the stone floor of the portico.
John reached the steps, climbed halfway and turned. ‘I don’t much care for this welcome after so many years away. Come back tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to trim my beard. We can talk then, man to man, in a more civil fashion.’
Some on the edges of the crowd had already begun to sidle away, some muttered among themselves, while others pushed forward in eager disbelief.
‘Master John, by God! Alive and all!’
John took the child and set it on the top step. ‘Whoever the pair of you may be,’ he said to Wentworth and Gifford, ‘I’ll shoot one of you if you don’t leave now – and I’m not saying which I favour most.’
‘No need to choose,’ said Tuddenham.
Zeal turned numbly, to see the estate manager beside her on the porch. He had picked up the dropped pistol. Four of the Bedgebury men had now gathered uncertainly beside John, while eight of her tenant farmers and Arthur stood behind Tuddenham, armed with two muskets and staves.
But, oh, not like this!
‘You may be alive, sir,’ Jake Grindley called. ‘But what of the babes and Wentworth? And Sir Harry? And that London bugger she married last?’
‘I meant what I said. Call off your dogs,’ John told Wentworth and Gifford. He placed the spade-shaped stock of his gun against his shoulder. ‘Someone take the child out of harm’s way.’
‘Wait!’
Startled faces turned to look at Zeal.
‘Let a half dozen of my accusers come in and seek proof of what they say I’ve done. I want this matter settled beyond all doubt.’ She had to look away from his face or be overwhelmed again.
The child’s black eyes stared up at her, the accused murderer of babes.
80
Two men from Gifford’s congregation stood either side of Zeal, holding her by the arms lest she disappear in a cloud of fiendish smoke or suddenly mount a broom and fly away. Gifford called for ladders, more torches and lanterns. His wiry body danced from one foot to the other as if a spring in him had been over-wound.
While the masons climbed up with picks and hammers to crack open the plaster children in the hall frieze below the painted sky, John stood with the Indian woman and child against the wall farthest from the destruction. After seeing the work started, Wentworth went to lean against another wall with the drained elation of a man who has at last arrived on his mountaintop.
Each blow of the hammers rattled Zeal’s bones. She watched the masons carefully. Though they did dreadful damage to the frieze, they did not harm any of her mechanisms. Nor did they reach as high as the clockwork birds.
The sounds of destruction brought Rachel and then Mistress Margaret to peer fearfully into the hall. The two grooms, clutching their staves, advanced on the wreckers, albeit uncertainly.
‘These men have my leave,’ Zeal called to them, ‘but I thank you for your courage.’
‘Ha!’ cried a mason. ‘I’ve struck something! Send up more light.’
Wentworth stood up away from the wall where he had been leaning. Gifford ordered a second ladder put beside the other, to add another pair of hands to the uncovering. He stretched his neck again and again and clasped himself in his arms. Then swung his arms in unwitting imitation of his wreckers above him. His face darkened with impatient emotion.
‘What do you see?’ he cried.
While the masons were chipping at their discovery, Zeal felt John’s eyes on her and knew that he sought signs of guilt. How could he not, in such circumstances?
‘It’s only a piece of tree, sir.’ The two masons yanked the branch free of the wall and sent a blizzard of plaster flying down on Gifford and the others below. The shallowly moulded boy who had been sitting on the branch fell apart into chunks of plaster and rags. One hand broke off entire and shattered softly on the hall floor.
‘But that is the principle!’ said Gifford triumphantly. ‘Plaster modelled over the reality it purports to imitate. Truth at the heart of illusion!’
Zeal looked at him sharply, but the minister seemed unaware of what he had just said.
And he would not welcome my pointing it out, she thought.
‘There’s nothing else here,’ one of the men called down at last.
‘She’s too clever for you.’ Wentworth spoke for the first time since the search began. ‘You forgot the figures on the pillars. Search them all. Don’t let her escape yet again!’
‘Crack open that likeness of Jamie first,’ said Grindley. He closed his eyes as the masons attacked.
Again, they found nothing but plaster, rags and horsehair.
‘Your intelligence said the bones were in the frieze in the hall,’ protested Gifford. ‘Would you have us search the whole house?’
‘I know the bones are here.’ Wentworth touched one ravished wall. ‘You must believe me.’
By the end of the night, the searchers had destroyed the friezes in the hall, the great parlour and the gallery on the top floor of the maze wing. Chunks of plaster littered the floor and the tops of tables and seats of chairs. A fine grey dust floated like smoke after the fire. Zeal, like the searchers, soon tied a handkerchief over her mouth and nose. With each failure to uncover a skeleton, Gifford’s face grew redder and his lips pinched tighter.
‘There is nothing here,’ said Gifford at last. Plaster frosted his rusty eyebrows like ground sugar. He stirred a heap of rubble o
ne final time with his foot. ‘It seems that Master Wentworth’s intelligence was wrong.’ He glared accusingly at the masons as if they had been the source, and directed the men to sweep up the plaster as best they could.
Gifford turned to Zeal. His face, now as dark as a boiled beetroot, contorted in apparent agony. ‘We have found no evidence of murder.’ He held up a hand to stop her reply. ‘I still do not hold you innocent, madam. This house, at the very best, is a shrine to heathen worship, filled with obscene and ungodly images that should be destroyed. It harbours worldly delusion as vile as that found in any playhouse in Sodom, and I hold our work here tonight to be a cleansing pleasing to God. But we have not proved murder.’
‘Where is your friend to echo this handsome retraction?’ John interrupted.
Roger Wentworth had gone.
‘I too have a retraction to make.’ Zeal’s voice shook. ‘Do you remember those letters I accused you of writing?’ she asked Gifford. ‘I too was mistaken. Roger Wentworth wrote them, as well as those letters falsely accusing me of killing the babe. You heard him admit it earlier before you and all these other witnesses.’
‘He intended the deception to uncover the truth.’ But Gifford looked uneasy.
‘And yet you still trusted his claims to true intelligence? And were willing to encourage such mortal damage to me?’
Gifford breathed harshly in and out but said nothing.
‘And if he wrote those letters, did he not most likely also kill that foundling babe in order to lay its death on me?’
Gifford’s eyes widened. ‘I…’ He clamped one hand to his head. Zeal thought he staggered slightly.
‘I fear that you were duped by an agent of the Antichrist,’ she said, past caring what further rage she might bring down on herself. ‘He has gulled you into the terrible sins of wrath and wanton unlawfulness. Doctor Gifford, I have thought you to be many things but, until now, never a fool. You have proved to be a false shepherd leading your sheep full tilt into the slavering jaws of Hell.’
‘It…’ Gifford, for the first time in his life, had difficulty finding words.
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