by Ann Swinfen
‘This is the work of that preacher,’ I said.
‘Aye. Likely,’ Jack said. ‘But it would have come to nothing if those two witchfinders had not arrived, prodding their staves and long noses into matters of no concern to them.’
‘They are wicked, wicked!’ I cried. ‘Is there nothing we can do to help Agnes?’
Jack shook his head. ‘She is already taken away to Lincoln a week ago. Likely she is dead by now.’
‘It is a terrible place, Crowthorne,’ Tom said. ‘I would not have dealings with them, Jack.’
He shrugged. ‘Now we are losing our grazing, I thought to sell some of my sheep. Besides, I need the coin. And the affair of Agnes Pettifer is not the only foul blemish on that place.’
‘What else?’
‘It seems that troop of soldiers is billeted in Crowthorne, those who broke up the baptism. They were posted there to come to the aid of the drainers if we should make another attack. They dare not billet them here.’
‘I had heard they were there.’
‘It seems they demanded that a whore be provided for them. Now, of course, in a godly place like Crowthorne there are no whores.’
‘Of course.’
Jack glanced sideways at me, as if he might offend if he said more.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘You will not shock me.’
‘Well, they needed to find someone. There was a parish foundling, a bit like Kitty, a girl of fourteen or so. Nell, they called her. A pretty girl. I’ve seen her. She was servant to the blacksmith’s wife. Anyway, they forced her to go to the soldiers’ camp and all the men slept with her.’
‘Raped her, you mean,’ I said savagely.
He inclined his head. ‘You are right, Mercy. They raped her. And when she returned to the blacksmith’s house the next day, they turned her away. The whole village drove her out with stones. She was now nothing but a dirty whore, and they would not let her live among them.’
‘What is to become of her?’ I could barely get the words out.
‘I suppose she has become a vagrant, or gone to whoring in some town or other. ’Tis a pity, for I believe she was a good girl, before all this.’
She would be beaten from parish to parish as a homeless vagrant. And before long, no doubt, she would give birth in a ditch and probably die there. A child not much older than Kitty.
‘How can they square this with their consciences, these godly people?’ I spat it out, as if it was Jack’s fault.
He held up his hands in protest. ‘I am only the bearer of the story. No doubt they believe, as sure as they are Saints and Saved, that she – being born out of wedlock – was already one of the Damned.’
He got to his feet.
‘Thank you for the food and drink, Mercy. But I think what should worry you more is the fate of Agnes Pettifer. If she was friend to Hannah, it would be best to warn Hannah to be on her guard. If Hopkins and Stearne come this way, she may be in danger.’
‘I will warn her,’ I said.
Chapter Nine
The next morning I took Hannah aside and told her everything Jack had said about the events in Crowthorne. In particular I warned her of the danger she might be in through her well-known friendship with Agnes Pettifer. It seemed she also knew the child Nell, and it was this that most upset her.
‘The poor lass.’ Hannah mopped her eyes with the corner of her apron. ‘She was a good quiet girl, never a trouble to anyone. Very pretty, too, though I don’t think she knew it. Now she is ruined. She should have come to our village, away from those devils who call themselves Saints.’
‘At least she lives,’ I said. I was not sure Hannah had understood what I had told her of Agnes. Besides, I was not so convinced our own village would have taken the girl in, after she had been defiled. It would have been different if she had been one of our own, but a girl from Crowthorne? Our neighbours are good people, but they are not without prejudice.
‘We must pray for Agnes,’ I said, ‘and we must be watchful, lest anyone try to link you to her.’
‘But she has but been taken to the assize at Lincoln,’ Hannah said. ‘Surely they will soon see that it is all nonsense, what they accuse her of.’
I was uncertain whether I should say more. I did not want to frighten her, but she needed to understand the seriousness of what had happened. I took both her hands in mine.
‘Hannah, they will search Agnes for the marks of a witch. Anything can be taken as a sign. A mole, a mark on her skin. And if she does not confess freely, they will put her to the torture. Under torture, who knows what a person will say to make them stop? What would I say? What would you say? If it is known you were her friend, they may come for you.’
Hannah smiled and shook her head. ‘You worry too much, child. No one thinks me a witch. Nor will they think it of Agnes. It will all pass over like a summer storm.’
I could see there was no convincing her. When Nehemiah and Tom made their trip to Lincoln market the following day with their eels and baskets, they returned with word that Agnes had already been hanged. I could not bring myself to tell Hannah.
‘However, one piece of good news,’ said Tom. ‘Hopkins and Stearne are away into Huntingdonshire with their filthy practices.’
That was good news indeed. Perhaps I had been too ready to worry about Hannah. ‘And how is Father?’ I asked.
Tom frowned. ‘Not well. He has suffered a bout of the ague and now has a cough that will not leave him. The fellow in his cell is even worse. It is like to be gaol fever.’
This was worrying. In the close confinement of the cells disease spreads quickly from man to man, and gaol fever can be fatal. Worry for Hannah was overtaken by worry for Father. And the time for paying his fine was drawing ever nearer. Between us we had raised some of the money, but nowhere near enough.
With our church desecrated and its rector rumoured to be dead, the spiritual needs of our parish clearly came to the attention of someone somewhere, for we heard that the preacher from Crowthorne would be caring for us until a replacement could be appointed for Gideon, who was now relieved of his living, whether he was alive or dead.
Soon after he regained consciousness, Gideon asked me to go to his house to fetch away his belongings.
‘Here are my keys,’ he said, groping for them blindly in his breeches, which lay across the foot of the bed. ‘I have a few spare clothes. And my books. If you could bring my books. If there is any food worth keeping, you must bring that as well, for I cannot go on living off the Benningtons’ stores.’
I promised to bring everything.
‘And in my bedroom, to the right of the fireplace there is a loose board under the candle table. Bring the box you will find there. I have a little money from my stipend. It will help us all.’
The next day, the day before the Crowthorne preacher was to make his first visit, I took Kitty and two large baskets, and we walked to the village. It was the first time I had been there since the day of the christening. We went first to see Alice. She was looking better, less fine-drawn and with more colour in her face. She held me close and wept a little.
‘What a terrible day! My poor son, to have such a welcome into the world. I fear it will haunt him all his life.’
‘You must not think that. He was properly baptised. Everything that happened, happened afterwards. He was untouched. See how well he looks!’
Already the baby had grown and he looked about him with eyes that focused and noticed everything. I had brought a pretty bunch of ribbons which I tied to the hood of the cradle and at once he began to reach for them.
‘And Master Clarke?’ Alice said tentatively.
‘We are saying that, sadly, he did not survive the beating.’
She nodded, with a small smile. ‘That is also what we are saying in the village, to any who come asking.’
‘Has anyone come asking?’
‘A few days ago. One of those troopers came. Rode about on his horse without dismounting. Looked down his long nose
at us. We all shook our heads and said sadly that the rector had died.’
‘Good. Kitty and I are going to fetch his belonging from his house before any intruder moves in.’
‘Shall I come?’
‘Best not. The less you know, the better.’
We found Gideon’s house just as he must have left it the morning of the christening. No one else had yet been there. It was scrupulously neat, but simple to the point of austerity. The rector’s house was intended for a married man with a family, but Gideon had used only three rooms: the kitchen, a bedroom, and a study, which must have been where he sat of an evening. It seemed a bare and lonely sort of place and I felt we were intruding. However, Gideon had asked us to come, so we must do as we were bid.
I felt curiously shy entering his bedroom, as though I had breached some barrier of intimacy. There were his few spare clothes carefully folded in a coffer, a pewter candlestick, and on a stool beside his bed one of those small Bibles that men had carried with them into battle during the War. I examined it curiously. It was stained and battered, the spine broken, not nearly so fine a volume as the prayer book the captain had destroyed. Still, it must mean something to him, so I laid it in my basket on top of his clothes.
There was very little in the kitchen. My mother had been right when she suspected that since his housekeeper had died he had not eaten properly. There were a few dried beans and some barley, half a dozen of last year’s apples withered on a shelf, and an end of mouldy cheese. A telltale trail of crumbs and mouse droppings on the table showed where he had left part of a loaf on that last morning before coming to the church.
The study was better. Here there were two shelves of books, not just religious texts but poetry and a work on architecture and another on mathematics – books left, perhaps, from his time as a student at Cambridge. There were copies of his sermons, beautifully written in his fine Italian hand, a sheaf of paper, ink, and quills waiting to be sharpened, lying in a neat row beside a penknife. All of this was too much for our baskets.
‘I’ll find another basket, Mistress Mercy,’ Kitty said.
I heard her ferreting about in the kitchen and she came back with a buck basket.
‘Too large,’ I said. ‘We would draw attention to ourselves.’
I went out into the hallway where I had left the baskets of clothes and pulled out two belts.
‘We’ll tie the books into parcels with these,’ I said, ‘and put everything else with the clothes.’
When we were done, I looked around at the bleak little house and thought of Gideon sitting here alone on cold winter evenings. Then I remembered.
‘There is something else,’ I said.
I ran up to the bedroom and moved the candle table near the fireplace. The loose board was easy to see, not a very secret hiding place. Below it was a small carved box in a wood that looked like yew. When I picked it up it rattled. I did not open it, but slipped it into my pocket. When I came downstairs Kitty looked at me enquiringly.
‘Just something Master Clarke asked me to fetch,’ I said. ‘Come. We should manage if we take a basket each and a parcel of books each.’ Suddenly I wanted to be away from there, as if we might be caught by the preacher from Crowthorne and damned for it.
I locked the door and looked around. The rector’s house was set back behind the churchyard, away from the village street, and no one seemed to be about. Nevertheless, I led Kitty around behind the church and we climbed over the wall into the lane. I wanted no one asking questions.
Gideon was glad to have his belongings about him, feeling everything and shaking the box. Tom helped him dress in clean clothes and with his other injuries covered he would have looked his old self, had it not been for the great bandage about his head.
‘I’m grateful to you and young Kitty for fetching my belongings,’ he said. ‘Whatever becomes of my living.’ He sighed. I touched his hand lightly with mine, but could think of nothing to say.
We had told him about the imminent arrival of the Crowthorne preacher, but had not yet broached the plan Tom and Jack were discussing, of taking him to Lynn to find a ship for the Continent. First he must regain his health.
The next morning we were obliged to attend church under the new preacher. Our absence would have provoked suspicion and a severe fine. The whole household walked down the lane to the church: my mother, Tom and myself, Hannah, Nehemiah and Kitty. We left Gideon alone for the first time since the attack, but he assured us he would be safe on his own, and would bolt the door.
‘And I have Jasper and Tobit for company,’ he said with a smile. Jasper had taken to sleeping on the end of his bed in preference to his usual place beside the kitchen fire. Hannah’s cat Tobit, an elusive creature, who spent much of his time watching for rats in the barn, had inexplicably taken to Gideon.
‘I have never known him befriend anyone but myself,’ Hannah said with a rueful laugh, the first time the cat was found curled up on Gideon’s chest. ‘It is a mark of great respect.’
As we neared the village, we saw our neighbours making their way towards the church. All were dressed soberly, as we were. Usually the village girls would adorn their dresses with a pretty lace collar for Sunday service, or tuck a rosebud under the band of their caps, but we were all afraid of the Crowthorne preacher, Reverend Edgemont, and dared display no finery.
It was the first time I had been in the church since that terrible morning. When I had come to Gideon’s house the previous day I had turned my eyes away from the church, unable to bear the sight of it. But it must be faced.
Someone had swept away the broken glass and the splintered timbers. The last trailing strips of lead were gone from the window. Without altar or altar rails, and with the east window a blank space through which the wind blew, the ruined chancel of the church was stripped of its holy aura. The despoilers had been unable to shift the huge heavy bulk of the ancient font, but a dirty horse blanket had been thrown over it. There was still a large blood stain soaked into the flags of the floor nearby. In the centre of the church, below the step on which the altar rails had stood, a rough wooden platform with a lectern had been erected. We looked from one to the other in puzzlement at this, but it became clear when a big heavy-built man in a black robe strode in and climbed up to the platform.
This, then, was Reverend Edgemont.
I was too frightened, and my mind too filled with the memory of that last time I was here, to make much of his words. There was a great deal about how we were all sinners, condemned to ever-lasting Hell, and bitter accusations against our papistical practices, at which many of us stirred uneasily, but none dared speak. He quoted many fierce passages from the Old Testament and from the Book of Revelation, about killing and revenge and punishment. His words were full of anger and hate. I do not remember him mentioning Christ at all. The sermon went on for a very long time, so that the children became restless and one or two babies cried and were frantically hushed by their mothers. There was no singing, and the only participation of the congregation was the occasional ‘Amen’, muttered low and with little grace.
At last Master Edgemont swept away down the nave and out of the door. As we filtered out, slowly and without pleasure, we saw that he had not stayed to meet us, but was already mounted on a large black stallion and riding away in the direction of Crowthorne. I felt relieved that he did not wish to speak to us, and that it seemed he would not be making use of Gideon’s house.
The congregation drifted away, without our usual Sunday greetings and cheerful conversation. I spoke to no one, except for a brief ‘Good morrow’ to Alice and Rafe. Tom raised his hand to Toby and Jack, but did not stop to speak.
Walking back up the lane to the farm, we were silent until we were nearly home.
‘So,’ said Tom at last, ‘that is a taste of what we are to endure under the new regime. They take from us our lands and they take from us our decent English church. What will they leave us?’
‘And to call us papists!’ I said ind
ignantly. ‘Do they not know that Queen Elizabeth’s church is a Protestant church?’
‘Those folk,’ Nehemiah growled, ‘they think none but themselves have the right religion. They are the Saints and we are all the Damned. They will destroy the church of our fathers, or die doing it.’ And he spat into the hedgerow.
Mother and Hannah, arm in arm, helping each other over the rough patches in the lane, said nothing. Nor did Kitty. She had plucked some stems of milk parsley and was twisting them into a garland. When she set it upon her head she gave me a mischievous grin.
‘Am I condemned as a sinner, Mistress Mercy, if I wear flowers in my hair?’
I laughed. So Kitty had been listening to the preacher and had spirit enough to defy him and all his ways.
‘I am sure that does not make you a sinner, Kitty. Will you contrive a garland for me?’
She did so, and we arrived back at the farm cheered by our small act of rebellion.
After we had dined – on cold pottage and bread, for we were now forbidden to heat food on the Sabbath – Hannah tapped me on the arm.
‘I think it is time we removed the bandages from Reverend Clarke’s face and head.’
I drew in my breath. As long as he was bandaged, we could pray that he still had his sight. Once they were removed, we could no longer hide from the truth.
I nodded. ‘We will need warm water. The cloth is likely to have stuck to the blood. It will be a painful business.’
‘Aye. The wounds will open again. I will fetch my salves.’
Gideon was up and dressed and had dined with us. He had become quite adept at finding his way about the kitchen and bedroom, and could eat unaided with a spoon if one of us cut up his food. He now sat down quietly on a bench beside the table, his clasped hands resting on its surface. The others went about their work, not wanting, I suppose, to witness what would be unpleasant and perhaps heart-breaking.
‘So now we will know the truth, Mercy,’ he said.