Four men, mounted on black horses and dressed in the ancient livery of the High Sheriff of Lancaster, rode on to the Green and came to a halt before the Witching Post.
‘Who hath done this?’ their captain demanded.
‘We have all done this,’ Wilf Dimdyke answered.
And the villagers agreed.
‘We have all done this! We have all done this!’
The captain shook his head – perhaps in disbelief, perhaps in disgust.
‘Who am I to take with me to Lancaster?’ he demanded. ‘Who will bear the guilt for this shameful act?’
‘There is no guilt, for this was no shameful act,’ Wilf said in a deep, confident voice which seemed to belong to a much older man. ‘But if any men must die, then we – the Dimdykes – are more than willing to be those men.’
The captain thought for a moment, then nodded to two of his men-at-arms. The soldiers each reached for a length of rope which was wrapped around their saddle horns, dismounted, and walked over to where Wilf and Tom were patiently waiting for them.
‘Put your hands together!’ one of the soldiers barked. ‘Put your hands together and hold them out!’
Father and son mutely obeyed, offering their clenched hands as if they were about to pray. One soldier wrapped and knotted the end of his rope tightly around Tom’s wrists, the other around Wilf’s. They tugged on the binding, to test that it was firm, then walked back to their horses, leaving a trail of rope behind them. Neither Wilf nor Tom moved so much as a muscle.
The soldiers remounted. Once in the saddle, they tied the other end of the ropes firmly around their saddle horns.
‘Onwards!’ the captain said.
The soldiers spurred their horses, and set off at a slow trot. The ropes which connected the Dimdykes to the saddle horns became taut, and Wilf and Tom were jerked forward. The procession made its way to the edge of the Green – the horses moving with graceful ease, Tom and Wilf running behind with all their might – then turned on to the street and was gone.
Now – finally – the Witch Burning was over. The visitors gave a collective sigh, and began to drift away. The locals waited until most of the intruders had gone, then started to leave themselves – slowly, as if even the simple act of walking were an effort after all they had been through.
‘Very impressive,’ Paniatowski said sombrely. And then, perhaps in an attempt to shatter the tension which she had felt building up in her during the performance, she added flippantly, ‘Of course, they’ve taken a bit of a dramatic licence with the whole thing, haven’t they?’
Woodend said nothing. Paniatowski waited for a moment, then decided the silence was becoming unbearable.
‘I mean, it’s a bit like a Hollywood film, isn’t it?’ she continued, knowing she was almost babbling, but not caring. ‘You know what I mean, sir? They compress time. In a way, I suppose they have to – because if they didn’t, the audience would get bored.’
There was still no response from Woodend.
‘What I’m trying to say is that it couldn’t have happened exactly like it’s been played out,’ Paniatowski persisted. ‘We’ve just seen the sheriff’s men ride up right after the burning, but we know that, before he was arrested, Harold Dimdyke had time to get married again and sire a child. So in practice, it must have been days – perhaps even weeks – before the arrests were made.’
‘What?’ Woodend asked.
‘I was just saying there must have been quite a considerable time between the burning and the arrests, don’t you think?’
‘Aye, probably,’ Woodend agreed.
‘Is something the matter, sir?’
‘I’m thinkin’,’ Woodend said, perhaps a little more harshly than he’d intended.
And he was. Fragments of the puzzle had been drifting idly around his brain ever since he had first become involved in the case.
But that was all they’d been.
Fragments!
Slivers of a whole picture, each of which meant nothing on its own.
But now, at this Witch Burning which represented for the villagers the truth as they saw it, the fragments were coming together – and he was beginning to see a truth of his own.
The village was a kingdom, ruled over by the Witch Maker. He’d always known that. But until now he’d never seen the true extent of it – had never fully understood the depth of the obligations which were imposed on the monarch’s subjects!
‘She didn’t have the mental strength of the other women,’ Alf Raby had said of his dead wife.
‘What other women? The ones who killed themselves?’
‘No, the ones who didn’t. She couldn’t take it any more, you see. She just couldn’t convince herself that she was doin’ the right thing. I tried to tell her it was the same for everybody in the village – that we all did what we had to do – but ... but ... she just wouldn’t see it.’
And she wasn’t the only one.
‘She hanged herself, did my Beth,’ the postman had said mournfully to Monika Paniatowski. ‘I found her myself. It was so hard, so very, very hard. I really did love her, you know.’
‘I’m sure you did,’ Paniatowski had agreed. ‘Did you ever wonder why she did it?’
‘I know why she did it. She did it because she didn’t believe. But I believe. I have to believe. It’s the only thing that stops me from goin’ completely mad.’
But did the man who’d driven those two women to their deaths care? Of course not! He was above such petty considerations. He had been put above the law by others, and had become a law unto himself.
‘The Witch Maker never marries,’ Constable Thwaites had said.
‘Never?’
‘Never.’
‘Not in the entire history of the Witch Burnin’?’
‘No, sir.’
But that wasn’t to say he was always celibate – as Woodend had pointed out at the time.
Sacrifice was what they all talked about in this village, the Chief Inspector reminded himself – and to understand what that sacrifice entailed was to understand this case.
‘Have you actually made a sacrifice yourself, Mr Dimdyke?’ he’d asked Tom caustically.
‘Oh aye. Twenty year ago now. It was hard – but it was necessary.’
‘An’ what form, exactly, did your sacrifice take?’
‘That’s none of your business!’
But it was his business. It was central to his business.
There was more.
There were fragments he didn’t even need to think about now – because once he’d seen the general shape of things, they slotted themselves into place.
There were details which were still not clear, but didn’t matter – because he had no need to appreciate individual brush strokes once he had the whole canvas spread out before him.
‘Sir?’ Monika Paniatowski said worriedly. ‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘No! I’m far from all right. But at least I’ve finally got my sense of direction back.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s time we had a talk with them Dimdykes, Monika,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ I mean a real talk this time.’
Forty
The blackboard outside the Black Bull had the words
‘CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE PARTY’ crudely chalked on it.
‘Some party, eh, Monika?’ Woodend said, hammering on the door. ‘More like a wake for the death of Free Will, if you ask me.’
The landlord opened the door a couple of inches. ‘Can’t you read?’ he demanded, pointing at the blackboard.
‘Can’t you read?’ Woodend countered, holding up his warrant card.
The landlord reluctantly opened the door wider, and Woodend and Paniatowski stepped inside. The villagers were all still in their traditional dress, but now they had shed some of their earlier seriousness and austerity.
They’re drunk, Woodend thought.
He didn’t blame them. He’d be drunk himself if he was caught in th
e same trap as they were – if he, too, could feel the jaws of history clamped tightly around his soul.
Tom Dimdyke and his son were sitting in the centre of the room, as befitted the guests of honour.
‘Glad to see the sheriff’s men were all for show, an’ that you’ve not really been arrested,’ Woodend said jovially to them. ‘Or should I say, not really been arrested yet.’
Tom Dimdyke stretched across the table for his drink, and Woodend saw the rope burn on his wrist.
The visitors probably thought that when Tom was dragged away by the soldier’s horse, he had used some clever trick to prevent himself from being hurt. But no such trick existed. And even if one had, Tom and Wilf would never have employed it – because there had been no tricks the first time this had all happened, so there could be no tricks now.
Woodend shook his head, amazed at how easy it had become for him to tune his brain into the villagers’ way of seeing things. He had learned a great deal during his time in Hallerton, he thought, but perhaps the biggest step was to finally accept that the villagers didn’t mind making sacrifices and undergoing discomfort.
Didn’t mind? he repeated mentally.
No, it was worse that that – and far more frightening. They welcomed the opportunity to suffer!
‘What is you want?’ Tom Dimdyke demanded.
‘To talk,’ Woodend said.
‘Now?’
‘Now!’ Woodend turned to the landlord. ‘Have you got a room where we can have a bit of privacy?’
The landlord glanced in Tom Dimdyke’s direction for guidance, but it was Wilf who nodded his assent.
‘There’s a little parlour at the back,’ the landlord said. ‘You’ll be private enough there.’
‘I’m sure we will,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Well then, let’s get it over with, shall we?’
And though he could have been addressing anybody at all in the bar, it was only Tom and Wilf who rose to their feet.
‘There’s some good comes out of the way you lot take the law into your own hands in this village, an’ I won’t deny it,’ Woodend said, once they had adjourned to the back parlour. ‘Take that old feller I was talkin’ to yesterday, as an example.’
‘What about him?’ Tom Dimdyke asked suspiciously.
‘The Great War was a terrible thing,’ Woodend said. ‘Whole villages just stood by, while their young men were led away to be slaughtered like cattle on the battlefields of Flanders. But that didn’t happen here, did it? Your young men deserted before they got to France, an’ the village hid them. In fact, fifty years later, the village is still hidin’ them.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,’ Tom Dimdyke protested.
‘Of course you do,’ Woodend said dismissively. ‘The old feller I had a drink with said his name was Oswald Warburton. But that was a lie. The real Oswald Warburton died in 1912. I know, because I’ve seen his grave. This Oswald Warburton borrowed his name – because he didn’t dare use his own.’
Tom Dimdyke suddenly looked frightened. But he was not frightened for himself, Woodend thought. He was frightened that he had failed in his responsibility to others.
‘You’ll ... you’ll not tell the Army, will you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Woodend replied. ‘I assured old Oswald – or whatever his real name is – that he had nothin’ to fear from me. An’ I meant it. As a policeman, I can’t condone what the village did in 1914, but I like to think that if I’d been here at the time, I’d have done the same myself. So I’ll overlook it. But there are other things I can’t overlook – other things which nobody should overlook. Do you know what I’m talkin’ about, Mr Dimdyke?’
Tom Dimdyke shook his head forcefully.
‘All right, if you won’t come clean, I’ll just have to spell it all out,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ that could be a long process, because we have to go a fair way back in history to start makin’ any sense of this whole bloody mess, don’t we?’
Dimdyke said nothing.
‘How far back, I’m not sure,’ Woodend continued. ‘Maybe you can help me there, Tom. When was it that the Witch Maker was given licence to have his pick of the women in this village?’
Tom Dimdyke glanced briefly at his son, and then turned his attention back to Woodend.
‘Does Wilf have to be here?’ he asked, in a tone which was as close to a plea as the Chief Inspector had ever heard him come.
‘Why shouldn’t Wilf be here?’ Woodend countered. ‘He is the Witch Maker, when all’s said an’ done. What we’re goin’ to talk about surely can’t come as any news to him.’
‘The new Witch Maker isn’t told of his ... of his rights ... until after the Witch Burnin’ is over,’ Tom Dimdyke said. ‘I would have had a word with him about it tonight.’
But he already knew, Woodend thought, looking at Wilf’s face. Somebody had already told him.
‘So it wasn’t to be until tonight that you revealed the fact that he could get his end away whenever he felt like it?’ he said to Tom Dimdyke.
Dimdyke shook his head in disgust. ‘It isn’t like that. You don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Then explain it so I will.’
‘The Witch Maker has needs like any other man. But he isn’t like the rest of us. He must dedicate his life to the Witch. He must abandon all thoughts, from the very beginnin’, of a normal childhood and a normal young manhood. He must give up any hope of havin’ a family of his own – for that can only deflect him from his true purpose.’
‘I’m not sure you’re bein’ strictly honest with me there, Tom,’ Woodend told him.
‘I don’t know what you’re—’
‘Still, I suppose we can leave the subtleties for later discussion. As far as the point I was about to make goes, the simple truth of the matter is that every woman in the village – except, of course, for the Dimdyke women, who are excluded on the grounds of bein’ immediate family – is expected to offer herself as fodder for the Witch Maker’s bed whenever he feels the urge. Isn’t that right?’
‘No.’
Woodend sighed. ‘You’re playin’ games with me, Mr Dimdyke. You know as well as I do that what I meant when I said every woman was every married woman. Because that’s the way it is, isn’t it? The Witch Maker gets all of the fun out of it – an’ none of the responsibility.’
‘The women are expected to give him relief, yes,’ Tom Dimdyke said. ‘It is a service they perform for him, just as others perform the service of workin’ to keep him clothed an’ fed.’
‘It can’t be as simple as that. Human relationships never are.’
‘It is that simple,’ Tom Dimdyke insisted. ‘It is duty, not lust, which drives them. They are not being unfaithful to their husbands – because the husbands both know and approve.’
Woodend nodded. ‘Yes, I can almost see that workin’ out,’ he said. ‘At least, I can see it workin’ out some of the time. But what happens when the man who becomes Witch Maker is an evil bastard – like your brother was?’
‘For a man to be either good or evil, he must have choices,’ Tom Dimdyke said. ‘And the Witch Maker has no choice. His path is set for him, an’ all he can do is to follow it.’
He believed in the words he was speaking, Woodend thought, but they were not his own. He was quoting – reciting an article of faith which had been passed down from generation to generation.
The minds of the people in this village were chained to a rock of belief almost from birth – and if a chief inspector from the outside was going to produce a solution to this case which would stand up in court, he would first have to break that chain.
Woodend turned his head towards Wilf Dimdyke. ‘The path is set,’ he said. ‘Is that what you think, an’ all?’
‘You heard what my father told you,’ Wilf replied.
‘Aye, but I was askin’ you, not him,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ you’re the one who should really know what you’re talkin’ about – because you’re the Witch Maker now.’
‘The path is set,’ Wilf said firmly.
‘You’re sure about that, are you?’
‘There was a time when I thought it might not be – but I was mistaken.’
‘Now that is interestin’,’ Woodend said. ‘So you’re willin’ to admit that you’ve had your doubts.’
‘Leave the boy alone!’ Tom Dimdyke said angrily.
‘He’s not a boy,’ Woodend replied harshly. ‘He’s the Witch Maker. If he can’t defend himself, how the bloody hell can he be expected to defend the rest of you?’
Tom Dimdyke bowed his head, but said nothing.
‘However, I am prepared to leave Wilf out of it for the moment,’ Woodend conceded.
‘Thank you,’ Tom Dimdyke said humbly.
‘So shall we get back to talkin’ about choices, Tom?’
‘If that is what you wish,’ Dimdyke answered, his expression saying more clearly than words ever could that he was very willing to put himself in the firing line if, by doing so, he could take the pressure off his son.
‘You’re wrong when you say the Witch Maker doesn’t have choices,’ Woodend said. ‘The path may be set, but there are many different ways a man can walk along it. For instance, when he takes another man’s wife to his bed he can treat her like a human bein’. Or he can be so brutal with her – treat her so much like an object – that she ends up killin’ herself. Am I ringin’ any bells for you here, Tom? Would it help if I came out with a few names of women who’ve been brutalized in that way?’
‘If the women truly believe in the nobility of their purpose, then there is no shame nor humiliation in whatever they have to endure,’ Tom Dimdyke replied.
‘The problem is, some of them didn’t,’ Woodend reminded him. ‘An’ neither did Zelda Todd. Why should she have? She wasn’t from the village. She wasn’t devoted to any sacred mission.’
‘You’re mocking us now,’ Tom Dimdyke said accusingly.
Woodend shook his head gravely. ‘No, I’m not. I’d have to think somethin’ was ridiculous before I mocked it, an’ I’ve learned to take very seriously what’s been goin’ on in this village for the last three hundred an’ fifty years. But what about Zelda Todd, Tom? She was an innocent young girl. A virgin. An’ then she met your brother, who had just burnt his Witch, just been told he could have any woman he fancied, an’ thought he was God Almighty. An’ he raped her. How’s that for stickin’ to the path?’
The Witch Maker Page 21