Long Lankin (35 page)

“To stop him rising up and causing mischief,” said Roger. He swallowed down some cake before he spoke again. “Why was this Aphra Rushes burned then?”

“Well, in this country, only a very small number died by the flame. It was an extremely expensive method of execution, for a start. Wood was precious, and it took time and expertise to construct the bonfire. Witches who died in that way must have been mortally feared. Fire was considered to cleanse and purify, you see. Often, even after the body was burned, anything that was left of it was carefully collected up and burned again, so that any spells lingering in the corpse could not remain behind to pollute and taint the living.”

“So why were the people more frightened of Aphra Rushes than of other witches?” Roger asked.

“Well, most poor souls hanged for witchcraft were accused by a terrified or vindictive neighbour whose cow or child had died or was sick with some unknown disease. It was a dangerous time for people who were different, or who happened to say the wrong thing in earshot of the wrong person, but what happened at Guerdon Hall was not like that.”

“She really did do something bad, then.”

“Aphra Rushes was convicted of a pair of brutal, wicked murders. The victims were the wife of Sir Edmund Guerdon, Lady Ygurne, and the son and heir, their baby, John. It was particularly horrific because Aphra Rushes was the baby’s wet nurse.”

“Eh?”

“Well, either because Lady Ygurne couldn’t feed her own baby or because it was considered unseemly for such a high-born lady to do so, Aphra Rushes was the baby’s wet nurse. She was employed to feed him, having just lost an infant of her own.

“There was one crime on the statute for which a witch could be executed by burning, a crime called petty treason. The woman could be accused of petty treason if she was thought to have used her powers against her master or her husband.”

“And her master was Sir Edmund,” said Roger.

“Yes,” said Mr. Thorston, “and what’s more, as lord of the manor, he had the authority to decide her punishment. It is believed that Sir Edmund and Lord Myldmaye, the judge at Aphra Rushes’s trial, were great friends. To condemn a woman to die in this way, you would have to be determined to make her suffer.”

Mr. Thorston looked tired. He rested his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes. “I sometimes think,” he added quietly, “that if I had lived then, I might have been condemned as a witch.”

“You? But you’re a man!” cried Roger.

“No difference. Men, women, children, even animals — they all ended up on a rope.”

“Animals!”

Suddenly the back door burst open and, banging and clattering, Pete staggered in with the basket crammed full of vegetables and fruit. For a second, I thought someone had shot him, but it was raspberry juice smeared all down his shirt. A huge marrow rolled off the top of the basket and landed on the floor with a thud. I could have picked it up and flattened him with it for coming in just then, just at the wrong time, just when we were getting somewhere.

“How the hell are we going to get that lot back?” I said, irritated at his silly face, mottled with dried bicarb paste and bright red juice. I felt like sticking two carrots up his nose.

“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Thorston. If he was annoyed with Pete, he was good at hiding it. “We’ll divide it up amongst you. I’ve some nice strong bags.”

“Ta very much,” said Pete. “Smashing peas!”

“Don’t think anything of it,” said Mr. Thorston. “We can’t possibly eat all that fruit and veg ourselves. I make jam and chutney, but it’s never as good as Gracie’s used to be. You all right there, Gracie?”

“I’m all right, Hal.”

He rummaged around in the bottom of the dresser and brought out just one bag made of old canvas, like the postman’s.

“Oh, dear, this is all I can find,” he said, getting up off his knees. “I don’t suppose you can come back tomorrow? It’ll give me time to get some more bags from the shed.” He winked sideways at me and Cora.

I wake and sit straight up. My face is filmy with sweat. I am all alone. Auntie has taken Mimi into her own bed with her. I can hear a ripping noise, scratching, tearing, the sound of something slipping and sliding.

How on earth am I going to put Pete off coming back to Mr. Thorston’s with us? My head aches with trying to think of something that isn’t cruel or dangerous. Short of nailing his feet to the veranda, I’m stuck.

I slop into the bathroom to find an Aspro.

Mum saves the day, without even realizing it. “Grandma’s having you all over for dinner,” she says wearily, “so I can put my feet up.” I can’t wipe the grin off my face. “Why are you so cheerful about it?” she adds. “The only reason you ever go there at all is for the Smarties.”

True. Going to Grandma’s is really trying. Behaving oneself for hours on end can be a terrible strain on the nerves. The one good thing about going there today, though, is that Pete loves Grandma’s thousand-piece jigsaws. The picture is always of something to do with the royal family. They’ve done the crown jewels, the coronation, and even the corgis. Personally, I haven’t the patience, but once Pete and Grandma get stuck in, you pretty much have to look after yourself, getting your own Ribena and thumbing through Grandma’s knitting patterns looking for pretty girls in cardigans. With a bit of luck, there’s every chance I might be able to slip away back to the Patches without him.

I wouldn’t have to keep an eye on Dennis and Terry, either, because Grandma keeps two donkeys, Flora and Heather, at the end of her garden. Dennis and Terry can spend hours down there, jumping out of the bushes and poking them with sticks.

“By the way, Grandma says it’s fine for Cora and Mimi to come to dinner, too. She’s doing stew. But I don’t think we’ll be seeing Mimi. She’s really poorly.’

Even better.

Grandma lives in a big house called York Lodge, which is in Hobb’s Lane. Pete and I call it the Dead End because it’s all old people down there.

Roger’s grandma had permed hair and wore a string of pearls and shiny brown shoes with little tassels on the front.

She wasn’t very nice to me.

When she answered the door, I said hello and told her that I was staying at Mrs. Eastfield’s, with my sister, and that she was my great-aunt. I also made sure before we started that I thanked her for having me over for dinner in case I forgot afterwards. She looked at me in a queer way and said something quietly to Roger that I couldn’t quite hear, and he never told me what it was, even when I asked.

While we were having the stew, she kept glancing at me across the table and making a clicking noise with her teeth. I felt I must be doing something wrong with the potatoes. It ruined my appetite, but I dared not leave the dinner. In the end, I forced it down without chewing.

Afterwards I tried to help clear away by piling up the china, but she said, “Leave those, please!”

I wouldn’t mind, but Dennis mucked about with his glass of water, spilling some onto his plate, yet his grandma didn’t scold him, and Terry, turning his nose up at the stew, only ate bread and jam, but she still let him have jelly.

When the table had been cleared, she brought out a brand-new jigsaw. The picture was of a military band. Pete ripped off the cellophane, then the lid, tipped all the pieces out onto the table, and started making a little heap of edges.

“Grandma, is it all right if Cora and me go out to play for a couple of hours?” said Roger. “Er — are we having tea here as well?”

“No, not tea. I told your mother you would be back at about half past four, so you can come and pick your brothers up at a quarter past. Do you have your Christmas watch on, Roger? I don’t suppose you have a watch, Cora.”

“Don’t worry, Grandma, I’ve got it here,” said Roger. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Thanks for dinner,” I mumbled, looking down at the carpet.

“Cheerio!” Roger shouted back as we shot out of the door and down the driveway to Hobb’s Lane.

“Whoopee! Wasn’t it lucky we went to Grandma’s today?”

I didn’t say anything.

Mrs. Thorston was sitting in the same chair as before, her head down, the big ginger cat on her lap. Mr. Thorston led us into the other room. On top of the table were two pieces of paper. The first looked very old and fragile, the curly script so difficult to read it might as well have been Chinese. The second sheet was freshly torn out of an exercise book, the handwriting sloping evenly to the right with perfect capital letters. If Mr. Thorston had written it in Sister Aquinas’s class, she would have given him a gold star and put it up on the wall. He spread his hands over the pieces of paper very gently and asked us to sit down.

“Way back in my family, on my mother’s side, there was a man called Thomas Sumner,” Mr. Thorston began. “He was a servant in the old rectory when Piers Hillyard was the rector. When the fire broke out, it seems that Hillyard and Sumner were together in the same room. Hillyard ordered Sumner to escape and take some documents with him — documents that Hillyard thought extremely important. Although Sumner seems to have been reluctant to leave without his master, Hillyard forced him to take the papers and he managed to get out of the house, but not without great injury to himself.

“Those papers have remained in that chest in the next room ever since, and from what you say, you have already read the transcriptions that Jasper Scaplehorn made, including that shocking account of the burning of Aphra Rushes written by Hillyard himself.