John Saturnall's Feast (8 page)

‘You light a fire,’ Josh said. ‘Then we'll see to him.’

The boy had dismounted the mule and now stood in the clearing. The animals were unloaded and hobbled. Josh led John into the courtyard. The boy sat on the stone without protest and let himself be positioned. Josh moved behind him and picked up his knife. He tested the edge then angled the boy's head. Then he brought the blade down.

When the task was done, Josh stepped back and puffed out his cheeks. ‘Never thought something like that'd be so hard,’ the driver declared.

‘You did well,’ Ben said solemnly.

‘Better now, ain't it?’ said Josh.

‘Much better,’ agreed Ben.

Hanks of matted black hair lay on the ground around the boy. Odd tufts still stuck out from his scalp.

‘That's the lice,’ Josh said with satisfaction. ‘Let's hope he ain't got anything worse.’

‘Worse?’ Ben looked puzzled. ‘Like what?’

‘Whatever took off all them children.’

Flickering rushlights turned the church walls yellow. Oily smoke curled up into the roof. The last candles had been burnt on Holy Rood Day, Father Hole remembered, two weeks after Abel Starling fell sick. Now that seemed a lifetime ago. Bare and bonneted heads filled the pews of Saint Clodock's. At the front, on the floor, the penitents knelt.

More than a dozen were lined up tonight, men and women costumed alike in their thin white sheets. They held long wands of hazel and knelt bare-kneed on the hard flagstones. Father Hole watched them grimace and shift, clutching their sheets to their breasts. And in case they stirred from their places, Jim Clough's brother Aaron stood behind them with his stick.

After the first deaths, Father Hole had preached from Romans.

We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience.

A hard text. But the last grains in the glass had hardly fallen before Mercy Starling had risen from her pew.

‘Patience, Father? It ain't want of patience making our children retch.’ The woman had cast her eye about the church. ‘Is it, Meg? You ain't laughing at me now, are you? Or you, Rose. Or you . . .’

Her finger had stabbed in accusation and the Lessoners had risen around her. Then a terrible clamour had filled the church, of accusing voices and fearful oaths. He should have descended, Father Hole knew. He should have stridden among them as he had on the night of the Ale, cuffing heads and scolding ears. But the noise had befuddled him, echoing back and forth in the nave until at last a voice had bellowed over the din.

‘How dare we defile God's house with curses!’

Timothy Marpot had marched down the aisle.

‘God tested Adam with Eve. His own wife. Now he tests us.’

‘And how's he do that, Brother Tim?’ a sullen voice had challenged from among the villagers. One or two chuckled. But Marpot raised his Bible.

‘My name is Timothy,’ he declared, his blue eyes raking their faces. ‘Timothy means Fear-God. And I fear only God. He tests us as He did once before. With a witch.’

The church fell silent. In the pulpit, Father Hole looked on.

‘We will let our faith guide us,’ the warden had declared. ‘If the witch walks among us, we will find her. We will examine consciences.’ Then he had raised his eyes to the pulpit. ‘That is, if Father Hole permits.’

So the hearings had begun.

‘Keep silent there!’ Aaron barked now as Connie Cullender shifted her weight and grunted. Marpot's instructions were precise, Father Hole knew. No idle speech. No raising of the eyes to heaven. For the defiant, the stocks beside the animal-pound. Tom Hob occupied them now. Or worse, thought Father Hole. At the end of the line of penitents, Jake Starling fixed his gaze on the floor, his lips moving in silent prayer. A livid bruise closed one eye.

Some examinees proved recalcitrant, Brother Timothy had explained. They might kneel before the table until nightfall while their neighbours bore witness to their deeds and misdeeds. They might resist until dawn, or even mid-morning. But at last their penance would be handed down and they would don the white sheet. Then the Lessoners would gather with their long switches and harsh laughter, ready for the run to church. They had mocked God, Marpot had declared. Now God mocked them back.

Father Hole dropped his own gaze to the floor. John Sandall had drawn the palm tree on these stones, the boy's hand shaking more than his own before the first drink of the morning. How long was it now since Susan Sandall's return to the village? Eleven years? He remembered her reappearance after Lady Anne's death, the church hung with black by Sir William's order and her belly bulging with the child who would take the chalk. A week ago they had watched him together from the door of the hut, picking his way through the meadow. What would become of him, she had demanded? She had exacted his reluctant promise. Now it weighed upon him. He felt weary. And thirsty.

Outside the air was damp. Tom Hob's snores resounded across the green. Lights burned in Marpot's house but the other cottages were dark. Some had hung buckthorn over their lintels until Brother Timothy's men had torn it down. The old ways, thought Father Hole. The old fears.

‘Only the pure of spirit can see her,’ the blue-eyed man had told him, flanked by Aaron Clough and his scowling boy Ephraim. ‘That is why she attacks the innocent. To blind them to her true guise. For a child will know her, Father. Mark my words.’

But Father Hole remembered the bent old man in his blue smock. Would he have beaten simpletons? Or forced old women to kneel for hours? Would he have sent a witch to poison their children? From across four decades, the sound of breaking glass reached Father Hole's ears.

Absurd, he told himself sternly. His warden was no Zoyland zealot. The sickness would pass. His promise to Susan Sandall would lapse. He stood alone at the edge of the deserted green.

‘The palm tree stands,’ he murmured to himself. Then he turned and trudged back towards his house.

The sickness leapt from cottage to cottage, back and forth across the village. The children it touched burned with fever first. Then the retching began. Just as Mercy Starling had warned. At the end, John's mother told him, they writhed like worms on a pin.

After Mercy's outburst John's mother had banned him from the village. In the mornings he walked the slopes until the afternoon heat drove him down to the meadow and the stand of beech trees in the corner. There he waited and listened.

Sometimes he would sit in the shade all afternoon. On other days he would wait no more than a few minutes, listening and peering down the bank from time to time. Then the hedge would rustle. The bushes would part. One by one, the faces appeared.

Dando sneaked out whenever he could. Seth found it harder with his ma dragging him down to the church every day. Tobit came when he liked. The boys settled themselves about the gurgle of the water trough.

‘My ma says Mercy Starling lost her wits years ago,’ Dando declared.

‘Mine says Jake ain't much better,’ added Seth.

They looked up the path as if they could see through the elder and hawthorn to the white-fronted cottage.

‘You hear about Maddy Oddbone?’ Dando asked. ‘Her waters broke in Marpot's lesson. They didn't let her out till evening.’

‘What about old Connie Cullender,’ Tobit said with a smirk. ‘Aaron Clough promised they'd go easy on her. Then they stripped her naked and made her kneel half the day . . .’

‘Naked?’ asked Dando. ‘Connie Cullender?’

John remembered the old woman murmuring to him outside church. It was hard to imagine her naked.

‘Ephraim saw her,’ Tobit added.

John and Seth exchanged glances. But before they could ask how come Tobit was talking with Ephraim, a soft high sound drifted down the path, growing in volume as they listened, the first note swelling and soaring. A high clear voice shaped the verses. John listened intently. Tobit rolled his eyes.

‘There she goes.’

Cassie sang psalms every afternoon. Sometimes she sang in the evenings too. Then John walked the meadow above the Starling cottage, creeping closer and lying down in the grass so as not to be seen by Mercy.

‘Singing's all she does,’ said Seth.

‘She's praying,’ said John. ‘For Abel.’

The boys stared at their feet, silenced by the mention of Abel. At last Cassie's voice fell silent.

‘Ephraim asked me to come with him,’ Seth said abruptly.

‘You say yes?’ Dando asked.

Seth shook his head. ‘I ain't going around with them.’

‘Nor me,’ said Tobit.

‘None of us are,’ said Dando. ‘Are we, John?’

John shook his head.

Tobit was the first to stop coming. Seth, Dando and John sat on the edge of the trough dangling their fingers in the cold water and discussing his treachery.

‘I heard a thing about Marpot,’ Dando offered as consolation. ‘Meg Riverett was telling my ma. He's hiding.’

‘Marpot?’ asked John. ‘How?’ He remembered the man's baleful stare.

‘The Bishop had him up in his court,’ Dando continued. ‘Marpot had a woman dancing around naked out Zoyland way. Then he beat her half to death.’

‘What'd he do that for?’ asked Seth.

‘Don't know.’

They shook their heads at the incomprehensible ways of their elders.

‘What if he's right though?’ asked Dando. ‘What if there is a witch?’

‘How come they can't find her then?’ asked Seth.

‘They ain't examined everyone, have they?’ said Dando. ‘Ain't been down to the Huxtables’.’

‘Marpot don't dare.’

‘They ain't come up here neither,’ Seth said with a glance at John. ‘I ain't saying they'd find her or anything.’

John nodded and looked back at the meadow. Ephraim Clough's father and the others stamped about the village as they pleased, banging on doors. The thought of his mother being hauled out of the hut gave him a sick feeling. What would he do if they stripped her like Connie Cullender? Or made her run to the church?

Dando was the next to go. John and Seth passed awkward comments back and forth. But at last the desultory talk petered out. Cassie's singing came as a relief.

‘Ephraim was boasting,’ Seth said when she finished. ‘Said his pa was going to examine your ma. Said he was going to test her.’

‘Test her how?’ He kept his voice casual.

‘I don't know,’ Seth said. He stared hard at the ground. ‘It's just what I heard.’ He rose to slip back through the hedge. ‘Best get back.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ called John. But the bushes closed behind the boy. Seth did not answer. The next day John waited in vain.

He began to spend his days on the slopes. Tramping up and down the terraces, he heard Marpot's hand-bell and watched the dark-suited lines form outside the long cottage. When the latest white-sheeted figure stumbled out, he imagined the harsh shouts and mocking laughter as the hapless penitent scampered under the Lessoners’ long switches.

When evening came he still wandered in the meadow, waiting for Cassie to sing. But the Starling cottage was silent. When next he heard her song it was fainter, drifting up on the still night air. It came from the church.

The soft psalm stroked the bare ceiling and walls. It slid along the pews and curled around the pulpit's dark turret. The words settled on the hard stone floor. Cassie's heart swelled. She thought of the little stones in her purse, the ones she had collected. She knew each one, how it bit as she knelt her weight upon it. Now she heard them skitter on the hard floor.

Saint Clodock had carried an axe and torch against the witch. He had chopped up her chestnut tables. He had burnt her palace. Now the witch was back. But this time Brother Timothy was waiting. Together Cassie and he would finish Saint Clodock's work. They would set the witch a sharp trial.

Cassie understood sharp trials. She drew out the pin from her bonnet and put the tip to her blackened nail. She began slowly as she always did easing the point down its prickling groove. Witches did not feel pain, she reminded herself. They did not bleed. When the first drop fell, she began to pray.

She gave thanks for her life and the lives of her families, the old one in the cottage and the one to come, with Brother Timothy, the Cloughs and all the others. She prayed that Abel and her father would find their own way to the Garden. That everyone in the village should find their way there. Everyone in the Vale from Sir William all the way down to Tom Hob.

It was time. Brother Timothy had told her so.

She had asked God to take her after Mary died but God had refused. The witch had hidden herself among them, Brother Timothy said. Cassie's penance was to find her. Every Sunday, she had prayed in the corner of the meadow. She had all but given up hope before God had answered. But at last He had sent the one she needed.

She remembered his face, startled and bloody, looking up from the water trough.

The ache from her knees crept up through her bones. A second bead of blood trembled down the pin. She would count to a dozen tonight, she thought. From her corner of the meadow she had kept watch on John Sandall, a tiny moving speck high above. Then she had seen the woman weaving her way through the brambles. Disappearing into Buccla's Wood. At that moment all was clear. Rising to her feet and hitching up her skirts, she had felt God's purpose course through her veins. She had run to Brother Timothy.