Mrs. Jeffries Rocks the Boat (29 page)

“Just answer the question,” Henry insisted. “We have
heard how soft your heart is for a savage. How is it with this babe? Here, look at it, which is not breathing now who was when it was born. Was it not very much alive when you pulled it out of my wife’s belly not three days ago?”

A voice came from the back of the crowd, strong, male, and insistent.

“An answer, mistress, we need to know the truth.”

Catherine turned toward the voice, but she could not identify the speaker. It came from a knot of people that had gathered just beyond Ned in the shadow of a tall tree.

“The truth,” the voice said again, and then was joined by other voices, male and female, rising from the group beneath the tree, and then spreading across the surface of the crowd like whitecaps in a storm-tossed sea. “The truth,” they clamored, “tell us the truth.”

“What says the mother, then?” Catherine demanded. “What says Goody Jameson?”

“Nothing,” came the response from the group.

Catherine turned back to Henry.

“Your wife, Henry, what does she say?”

“Nothing,” Henry repeated. “She no longer speaks. She came to me not an hour ago, holding the babe in her arms, and handed it to me, and she does not speak.”

Catherine studied Martha’s face. Its expression did not change as her children moved about her. She did not seem to see that her husband was holding her dead infant in his arms, and she did not hear the insistent cries for the truth. It was as though she were standing in a meadow daydreaming while butterflies circled her head. Every moment or two she extended her hand toward the toddler that clung to her knees, but the gesture was vague and inconsequential, and her hand never found the child’s head.

Catherine stepped close to Martha, close enough to feel the woman’s breath on her face.

“Martha, you must speak,” Catherine said, and Martha’s eyes now focused on her, as though she had just returned from that distant meadow. She shook her heard, slowly at
first, and then with increasing agitation. Catherine took Martha’s shoulders in both hands and squeezed and then the nodding motion stopped. Still Martha did not speak.

“My poor wife is distracted by the death of our babe,” Henry declared. “Can you not see that? Mistress Williams, you must answer for her.”

“Well, then,” Catherine said, “if Martha Jameson will not attest to the truth, I needs must say that this babe was born alive, and alive it was when I left it. Truth you want, and there it is.”

A murmur arose from the crowd. It pushed toward Catherine.

“It is surely dead now,” somebody said.

“If Goody Jameson won’t speak, we have ways,” said another.

“Yes, press her, stone by stone. She will talk, then, I warrant.”

“You will leave her alone,” Henry said, and the crowd, which had come within several feet of the clustered Jameson family, stopped. Henry held out the babe toward his wife.

“Tell them, Martha,” he said. He thrust the babe toward her, but she did not hold out her arms to take it. He shook his head. “She brought the babe to me. It was dead. She said she had been asleep, and when she woke she saw the servant girl leaning over the babe. When she picked it up, it was not breathing. Then she brought it to me. That girl, she did something while my wife was asleep.”

Catherine felt the anger rise in the crowd toward the servant. She remembered once, when she was a girl in Alford, how a crowd just like this one had fallen upon a little boy whose family was Catholic, and how they had beaten him with sticks until he lay senseless in the road. She strode to Ned and grabbed his arm.

“Let her go,” she said.

“You are now interfering in my household, mistress. Leave be.”

“Step away, mistress,” a woman in the crowd said. “You have told us what we needed to know.”

“She,” Henry shouted, “standing there with the pitcher, ask her what she was doing with our babe.”

The servant girl turned her terrified and starting eyes toward her master. Their whites loomed preternaturally large in the failing light of the early evening.

“A priest, it was, I was after,” she said.

Ned pushed the girl forward so she stood quivering in front of the crowd.

“That is it,” he said, “that is how we found her, practicing her papist ritual on our babe, pouring water on its innocent face, and mumbling some words, a curse they must have been.”

“Its poor soul,” the girl muttered. “There was no priest. I asked for one. So I tried myself to save its precious soul.”

Henry looked at his wife, whose eyes were now studying the ground at her feet. Then he stared hard at the girl, his face brightening as with a new understanding.

“You drowned it, for certain,” he said. “Or you cast a spell on it so it could not breathe. What, a papist priest? In Newbury? You have killed our babe and driven my poor wife mad.”

“Try her, then,” came the voice from the knot of people, still grouped by the tree. “Have her touch the babe. Then we will know.”

The crowd surged forward and Catherine found herself staggering toward Henry, who dropped to one knee against her weight. Henry threw one hand behind him to brace himself, and Catherine reached for the babe so as to stop it from falling. As she grabbed for it, its swaddling blanket fell. The babe’s skin was cold. Henry regained his balance and wrapped the babe tightly in the blanket.

“Try her,” again came the cry from the crowd.

“Surely not,” Catherine said. “Magistrate Woolsey is coming. This is a matter for him.”

“We need not wait for the magistrate. We will have our own answer now,” shouted one.

“Now,” said another.

“Right,” said Ned. “We will try her now.”

Catherine turned to face the crowd and to peer over it to the road, where day was giving way to dusk. She thought she say two figures approaching.

“The magistrate is coming even now,” she said.

Henry looked at Ned, and the boy pushed the servant girl toward him.

“Touch the babe,” Ned demanded.

“Yes, touch it,” Henry said. “If it bleed, it cries out against you.”

“There is no need for that,” Catherine said. “Talk of the dead bleeding. It is surely blasphemy.”

“The blood will talk,” came a voice from a crowd.

“Yes,” others confirmed, “let the poor dead babe’s blood cry out against its murderer.”

The girl clasped her arms in front of her chest, but Ned pulled her hands out. She struggled, but he was too strong, and he was able to bring one hand to the exposed skin of the babe’s chest. He pressed the hand onto the skin, and then let her pull her hand back. Henry peered at the spot she had touched, and then lifted the babe over his head in a triumphant gesture.

“It bleeds,” he said. “It bleeds.”

He held the babe out for the crowd to see. Catherine strained her eyes as Henry and the babe were now in the shadows. Henry turned so that all could view. Catherine was not sure she saw blood on the babe’s chest, but something on its back caught her eye, and then she could no longer see.

“Blood,” cried voices in the crowd. “The babe bleeds! Seize her!”

There was a violent surge forward, and Catherine felt herself being thrown to the ground. She got to her feet just in time to see rough hands grabbing the servant girl and pulling her away.…

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Emily Brightwell

THE INSPECTOR AND MRS. JEFFRIES

MRS. JEFFRIES DUSTS FOR CLUES

THE GHOST AND MRS. JEFFRIES

MRS. JEFFRIES TAKES STOCK

MRS. JEFFRIES ON THE BALL

MRS. JEFFRIES ON THE TRAIL

MRS. JEFFRIES PLAYS THE COOK

MRS. JEFFRIES AND THE MISSING ALIBI

MRS. JEFFRIES STANDS CORRECTED

MRS. JEFFRIES TAKES THE STAGE

MRS. JEFFRIES QUESTIONS THE ANSWER

MRS. JEFFRIES REVEALS HER ART

MRS. JEFFRIES TAKES THE CAKE

MRS. JEFFRIES ROCKS THE BOAT

MRS. JEFFRIES WEEDS THE PLOT

MRS. JEFFRIES PINCHES THE POST

MRS. JEFFRIES PLEADS HER CASE

MRS. JEFFRIES SWEEPS THE CHIMNEY

MRS. JEFFRIES STALKS THE HUNTER

MRS. JEFFRIES AND THE SILENT KNIGHT

MRS. JEFFRIES APPEALS THE VERDICT

MRS. JEFFRIES AND THE BEST LAID PLANS

MRS. JEFFRIES AND THE FEAST OF ST. STEPHEN

MRS. JEFFRIES HOLDS THE TRUMP

MRS. JEFFRIES IN THE NICK OF TIME

MRS. JEFFRIES AND THE YULETIDE WEDDINGS

MRS. JEFFRIES SPEAKS HER MIND

MRS. JEFFRIES FORGES AHEAD

MRS. JEFFRIES AND THE MISTLETOE MIX-UP

MRS. JEFFRIES DEFENDS HER OWN

Anthologies

MRS. JEFFRIES LEARNS THE TRADE

MRS. JEFFRIES TAKES A SECOND LOOK