by Mike Ashley
“She was a widow, I understand.”
“Let’s just say my sister wasn’t so fortunate in her marriage as I was.”
Geoffrey Dearborn’s wealth and influence could have secured him a bride among the landed gentry, yet it was the auburn-haired, flashing-eyed daughter of his own tailor that he had plumped for. And Eleanor, young as she was then, had known her worth.
Just as she knew the worth of a handsome, strong-backed lover who was as insatiable as he was considerate. She rolled on top of him and lifted her hips.
“Tipper Norton was a drunk and a bully, a gambler and a liar, and, as it transpired, a footpad as well,” she panted. “They hanged him in Chichester, and good riddance.”
“Chichester?” Will rasped, writhing with pleasure as her nails raked his skin. “Wasn’t that where Parson Hardwicke was born?”
“That reptile wasn’t born, he was hatched,” Eleanor gasped, and then gasped again.
“What’s the matter?” Will was alarmed by her sudden stiffening. “Did I hurt you?”
By way of answer, Eleanor rolled away. “Goddammit, I should have realized. The bribes!”
Will slumped back on the plump feather mattress and groaned. “So close,” he murmured. “So very, very close.” He swiped his hands through his hair in frustration. “What bribes?”
“The people of Sulborough Green are dirt poor, yet we have a carpenter who can afford a physician, a house with glazed windows, a new thatch somewhere else, and there’s a black foal running around in the paddock. Horses are a luxury in these parts, Will Pike.” Eleanor was pulling on her petticoat. “In fact, wasn’t it the carpenter who actually saw Alizon copulating with a cloven-hoofed beast in the churchyard at midnight?”
“His wife is very ill.”
“Betray a life to spare a life? What kind of morality is that? He lied for money – and I thought those eight pieces of silver came from Jeremy Farrell. Of course, it didn’t. Farrell would not have been so obvious, there were other ways he could have enhanced their lives. It was the priest.”
Ruefully, he watched her cover her beautiful breasts with blue silk and felt a stab of desire as long russet curls tumbled over them.
“His dingy cassock is frayed and patched and his boots have gaping great holes in the soles. Where on earth would Hardwicke get that kind of money from?”
“Selling his church artefacts and putting the blame on vagabond thieves,” she told him. “There was no robbery at all. I’ll bet you a guinea to a goose there was no meeting with his bishop in May. That he took the stuff to London to sell it. I told you this killing was planned in advance.” Eleanor squealed as warm hands cupped her breasts. “Will Pike, what the devil do you think you’re doing?”
“This,” he murmured. “And this. And oh yes, this as well.” A slip of blue silk wafted to the floor. “Then, when we’ve finished what we started, I shall come with you to St Jude’s and we will tackle Parson Hardwicke together. I’m not letting you walk into danger on your own.”
All in all, Eleanor felt that was a pretty good deal.
So much so that she did offer a single squeak of protest when he removed her petticoat. Instead, she used it to tie his hands to the bedpost and revised her opinion of his performance in bed. No, she decided. This was the best yet. By a long way.
For a man of the cloth, the parson knew some distinctly unChristian terminology, but in the end he confessed everything. Sensible decision, on the whole.
Because it was either talk – or Eleanor would fire the pistol aimed straight at his stomach.
No one who had met Eleanor Dearborn doubted that she might be bluffing. From the moment she had come blazing into Sulborough Green and bearded Jeremy Farrell in his own council meeting, every man, woman and dog in the parish had her pegged as a force to be reckoned with. They were right.
She gave the churchman a count of five, before a “terrible accident” occurred in which the pistol her dear, sweet husband had given her for protection had accidentally gone off. Poor Parson Hardwicke. Such a good man, as well . . .
“One.”
They were standing in the nave of St Jude’s. Thick stone walls ensured the church remained refreshingly cool, even in the height of the summer, although it would be perishingly cold inside in the winter. Green glass tinted the windows, adding to the summery feel, beeswax candles lined up like soldiers on parade on the altar and Tull, the church tomcat, lay curled in a ginger ball on Jeremy Farrell’s carved pew.
“Two.”
While there’s life, there’s hope, she could see him reason, the sweat breaking out on his brow.
“Three.”
Just as she could see that he was weighing up the pros and cons of snatching the pistol from her.
“Four.”
“Stop!” There was panic in his voice. “Put it down, put it down.”
The snout of the pistol remained level.
“Oh, God.” Hardwicke slumped on to the front pew and buried his long, oval head in his hands.
His story was predictably one-sided. How, as a young curate in Chichester, he had been in love with – of all people – his Bishop’s niece. And of course the inevitable happened. Jane fell pregnant. But knowing the Bishop would never countenance a marriage between a penniless curate and his niece, Hardwicke suggested the same course of action that the Bishop himself (surely?) would have advised. That Jane paid a visit to a certain surgeon in London, who was known to abort children safely. Jane, unsurprisingly, was horrified. Refused to murder her own child, she said, how dare he even suggest it, and at that point, according to Hardwicke, she stepped backwards and caught her heel in her skirt at the top of the stairs. Frantically he reached out to save her, he said, but it was too late. By the time he reached the bottom, his beloved was dead. Her neck snapped like a hare’s.
He panicked, he assured Eleanor.
If he ran, he would not be implicated in any way. If he stayed, his career and his reputation would be in ruins. Jane was dead, he had to consider his own interests, he whined.
“And that was when I first met Alizon Norton,” he said mournfully.
Alizon had been a servant in the house, and whereas he believed everyone was out, Alizon had been confined to bed with a megrum. When the argument broke out, she got up to listen. She had seen everything, too. Including the young curate’s crucifix clutched in Jane’s stiffening hand . . .
“By Alizon’s reasoning,” Hardwicke said, “this was proof positive that I had murdered the girl. Alizon threatened to go to the Bishop, tell him about Jane’s condition, the row over abortion, and that I had deliberately pushed my darling down the stairs. It was an accident, of course, but the way Alizon told it, it looked bad.”
It was bad, Eleanor thought. Jane would not have reached out to clutch at her lover had she been tipping backwards. Her hands would have been outstretched to cushion her fall. Instead, she clutched at whatever she could to save her own life.
Hardwicke gulped at the unwavering pistol.
“She blackmailed me,” he said. “Not money. I had none. But her husband was a criminal of the vilest order. Alizon demanded I gave him an alibi from time to time, to save his neck from the gallows.”
A year later, promotion brought him here, to Sulborough Green. Three more years passed. Life settled into its rhythm.
“Naturally, during one of my visits to the Bishop, I heard that Tipper Norton had finally got what he deserved. At last, the nightmare was over. I was free of that bitch’s stranglehold on my life. Or so I thought.”
He could not believe his eyes, he said, when she turned up in the village in May.
“ ‘Hello, parson,’ she said. Just like that. Calm as anything.” Hardwicke wiped his ashen face with his hand and Tull, the church tomcat, turned around in Jeremy Farrell’s pew in his sleep. “With just two words, my world crumbled,” he said thickly.
“She wanted money, I suppose?”
Money was the reason she married Tipper Norton. She imag
ined his thieving would keep her in luxury, when the reality was he gambled and drank away his ill-gotten gains, usually before it had gone fifty yards from his victims’ purses.
“She knew about the chalices and the cross inlaid with jewels. ‘Sell them,’ she demanded. ‘Then I swear you can have your crucifix back.’ As if she meant to keep her promise, the blackmailing cow.”
“You could have sent her on her way. After all this time, there was no proof, only her word against yours.”
“The damage was already done. At the time, there was some concern raised about bruising on Jane’s body. Whether the Bishop believed me or Alizon, I would have been tainted with suspicion. That would have ended my prospects. They would have stripped me of even this wretched parish. I would have been ruined.”
So he decided to kill her instead. In a way that left him totally blameless.
Witchcraft is a basic human fear. Shape-shifters, bloodsuckers, unnatural lusts. It was easy. Hardwicke sold the artefacts in London, making up some cock-and-bull story about thieves breaking in while he’d been visiting his Bishop in Chichester and spinning another tale to Alizon about how payment had been deferred temporarily. Then he set about bribing the more vulnerable and needy villagers. Like the carpenter, whose wife might live with the ministrations of an expensive physician – but who would have gone straight to her coffin otherwise. Alizon Norton is a witch, he would whisper. We all know she cursed Bessie Nokes’s baby and I personally have listened to her satanic chants, seen her consort with the devil. She must stand trial for witchcraft – but (and there is always a but) it would add strength to the church in its fight against evil if others had witnessed her wickedness. If anyone else could add weight to the case, then naturally the church would reward their bravery and courage in stepping forward.
When prices were outstripping wages, the temptation was too great to resist. The witch was denounced. Selling the idea to Jeremy Farrell had been easy, too, he explained. He simply reported the mood of the villagers, so that by the time Farrell saw for himself the crowds jeering and screaming outside the place where Alizon was under arrest, he needed no further convincing. JPs are no less removed from the terrors of Satanism than anyone else.
“Why kill Tom Shaw?” Eleanor asked.
“Expedience,” he shrugged. “He’d made a pass at Alizon the day before – pawing at her in the alley behind the Magpie – and the world and his wife heard what she called him. Next day, I asked him to show me how he boiled his dyes . . . and tipped him in. He died instantly.”
Of course, none of the villagers saw anything out of the ordinary. Who notices a priest on his rounds? He is as much a part of the scenery as the cows and the pigs and chickens –
“What I can’t understand is why Alizon didn’t denounce you straight away,” Eleanor said. “From the minute she was arrested?”
A small, smug smile twitched at his mouth. “That was the clever part,” the cleric said. “She, too, believed it was the village rising up against her, and I did nothing to dispel her fears. Instead, I told her, be patient, I would speak to Farrell on her behalf. I might despise her, I said, for blackmailing me, but it was my duty to God to see justice served, regardless of personal feelings.”
In fact, he did nothing. And by the time of her trial, Alizon Norton was incoherent. He could stand up and prosecute without repercussions.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked, lifting his flinty eyes to Eleanor Dearborn’s. “Denounce me? The word of a rambling, grief-stricken sister against that of a respected clergyman?”
“Ah.” Eleanor smiled radiantly at the parson. “It is possible that I may have misled people on that particular matter. Alizon was not actually my sister. In fact, we weren’t even related.”
“What?” His jaw dropped. “Then . . .”
“Why am I here?” Her smile broadened. “Let’s call it a vested interest, shall we?”
Eight months ago, Alizon had come to her for training. She had heard there was money to be made in the business of potions and charms and incantations, and Alizon, bless her, was a hard girl when it came to the readies. Eleanor quickly put her straight, though. Witchcraft, she told her, was no means to get rich.
At least not directly. Not unless you use your powers to hook yourself a rich husband.
And besides. As she had quite rightly told Will (or whatever his name was), Alizon was not bright enough to pick up the trade. You had to have a proper bent for that line of work. A vocation.
“There are some of us, you see, who don’t approve of our sisters being hanged willynilly, much less burned. It troubles us.”
Hardwicke clenched at his stomach. “God in heaven,” he breathed.
“He may well be,” Eleanor acknowledged. “But we don’t believe in him any more than we believe in the Devil. What we practise is the art of healing and the promotion of well-being – interspersed, of course, with redressing what I can only describe as the occasional imbalance.”
His face was white, and streaming with sweat. “My God,” he muttered. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Nothing,” she said, putting the pistol back in her soft velvet bag. “It’s already done. The ale that you had with your breakfast. Tasted a little strange, did it not? Bitter?”
Gargling in the back of his throat, the parson clawed at his stomach.
“Don’t bother to see me out,” she trilled, as he slumped on to the floor, starting Tull, the church tomcat. “And if there is a Devil, do give him my regards, won’t you?”
As she closed the door, the draught blew the pages of the Bible from Exodus to some obscure reference in Leviticus.
Up in her bedchamber in the Thistle & Crown, Eleanor packed away the last of her clothes. Outside the window, four horses snickered irritably. The ostler was not there to soothe them and the groom was too busy nursing his bruises to bother. The groom couldn’t understand it. The stonemason never left his workplace until dark. For that matter, the stonemason was equally bemused. He had just bidden a cheerful “good day” to the redheaded stranger, when he was gripped by this sudden urge to go home.
“This will get me fired, you know. Dereliction of duty.”
Eleanor leaned across the bed and checked the knots of her petticoats binding Will Pike’s hands to the post. “You’ll survive,” she said, running her hands lightly over his naked, muscular body.
Across the green, windows were glazed, roofs thatched, Bessie Nokes’s grief was lessened and would be lessened further next time, when she gave birth to bouncing twin sons. Although that would not be for another eleven months yet. She must have time to grieve properly before rejoicing in her new pregnancy.
“Suppose there had been any danger?”
“Well, there wasn’t,” she said soothingly. “I told you, the parson wasn’t at home and I decided that you were probably right, after all. Forgive and forget, and let go.”
“Hm.” His patrician nose wrinkled. “There’s something decidedly fishy about all this.”
“Apart from your name?” she laughed. “Will Pike, indeed!”
She leaned over and kissed him with genuine regret. Pity. She liked men with wit, intelligence, courtesy and compassion.
“I shall miss you,” he said, his dark curls shining in the rays of the sun as his hands strained at the knots. “Perhaps, God willing, our paths will cross again in the future.”
“I doubt that, Will Pike.” She inhaled one last breath of his juniper scent to carry home with her to Winchester. “But if it’s any consolation, I shall miss you, too.”
She had known from the outset that he was King James’s man, although she had taken him for a common spy. Except he, too, had come to investigate the unauthorized execution.
Eleanor knew this because – in his pack – she had found a small, sharp, pointed bodkin . . .