Scarlet Widow (19 page)

*

‘So how did Shooks expect those children to be cured with nothing more than hot water and inch-sticks?’ asked Francis, tossing down his quill-pen.

They were sitting in their parlour after supper. Beatrice was finishing a sampler while Francis was trying to write this Sunday’s sermon. His theme was ‘how to appeal to God’s mercy’, but Beatrice noticed that he had fiercely crossed out almost as many lines as he had written.

‘My dearest, I have no idea,’ she told him. ‘We don’t even know if they
will
be cured yet, do we? For all we know, they could have passed away by now, God forbid.’

‘I know it’s uncharitable of me to say so, but I really dislike that man,’ said Francis. ‘He has such a
smugness
about him. Whenever he walks into a room, he makes me feel as if I’m twelve years old and that I have no understanding of religion at all. I don’t like the way he looks at you, either.’

‘I can’t say that I’ve noticed.’

‘Well, it’s salacious. That’s the only way that I can describe it.’

‘Why, Francis! I do believe you’re jealous!’

*

A few minutes after nine o’clock Francis announced that he was going upstairs to bed. Beatrice told him that she had to bring up some washing from the back yard that Mary had forgotten, but that she wouldn’t be long in joining him.

There was very little washing hanging up on the line, only two shirts and some of Noah’s clouts, and once she had collected them under her arm Beatrice went to the stable, where Kingdom’s body was still lying on its side in the straw.

He looked stiff and strange, with his legs sticking out straight, like a horse that her father had turned into one of his wooden animals. His stomach, however, was hugely swollen and he was beginning to smell cloying and sweet. She knelt down and used one of Noah’s clouts to gather up some of the diarrhoea-caked straw from under his tail. Then she did the same for the straw that was covered in his dry green vomit.

Holding up her lantern, she peeled back his lips and looked into his mouth. Underneath his tongue and between his back teeth she discovered six or seven dark green needles, although they were so well chewed that it was difficult to tell what they were. She picked these out and wrapped them up, too.

She looked down at Kingdom for the last time. Francis had instructed Jubal and Caleb to cremate him at the end of the field the next day, to destroy any traces of satanic infection, in the same way that they had cremated the pigs. It seemed as if, day by day, their secure and happy lives were going up in smoke, although she had no idea who could bear them such ill-will. She was seriously fearful that one of the family might be next, either Francis or herself, or even little Noah.

She walked briskly back across the yard to the house. She had to will herself not to break into a run, for the night all around her was black and noisy with the grunts and screams of nighthawks.

*

Just as dawn was beginning to lighten the sky outside their window, Francis turned towards her and slipped his hand up underneath her thin linen nightgown. She was already awake but she had been lying still, thinking about Apphia and Tristram and how Kingdom had collapsed between the shafts of their shay.

‘Francis—’ she said, but he had cupped his hand around her left breast and was gently rolling her nipple between finger and thumb, until it stiffened.

‘
Francis
—’ she repeated, more insistently, as he dragged up her nightgown and tried to turn her over on to her back. Her mind was too filled with questions and anxiety to think about making love.

‘I
need
you, Bea,’ he said hoarsely. It didn’t sound like a demand. It was more of a plea for help.

‘Francis, please,’ she said. As he lifted himself over her, however, she stopped trying to resist him and lay back on the pillow and parted her thighs so that he could kneel between them. He was her husband, after all, and if he needed her, then how could she deny him? He was only showing her how much he loved her.

She closed her eyes as he entered her. He pushed himself into her as far as he could go and leaned forward to kiss her. He kissed her again and again, but his lips were very dry and rough and his breath smelled of the onions he had eaten yesterday evening. She turned her face away and closed her eyes, although he continued to kiss her neck.

‘What would I do, Bea?’ he asked her. He was pushing himself into her again and again, unusually hard and unusually quick, and was starting to pant. ‘I don’t know how I could live without you.’

In spite of his exertions, she could feel that he was beginning to soften. He slipped out of her, and although he managed to cram himself back inside her again, using his fingers, it was hopeless. After two or three more pushes he lost his erection altogether and he was gone. He rolled off her and dropped heavily on to the bed beside her.

‘
Francis
,’ she said, stroking the stubble on his chin. ‘Please don’t feel badly, my love. You have so much to worry about apart from making love.’

‘It’s that Jonathan Shooks,’ said Francis. He pulled at his softened penis in frustration, stretching it up as if he wanted to strangle it for letting him down.

‘Don’t let him concern you, Francis. It amuses him to taunt people, you know that.’

‘It’s no use, Bea! I can’t stop seeing his face, even when I close my eyes! The way he smiles at me, so self-satisfied, as if he’s a personal friend of God and chats to Him intimately – while I can do nothing more than call out to Him from the next room, so to speak, through prayer, and only hope that He can hear me.’

He paused for breath, and then he said, much more quietly, ‘Shooks makes me think the most unchristian of thoughts.’

‘Tell me, Francis. If this is affecting you so much, I have the right to know what it is.’

Francis bit his lip. ‘I found myself hoping that the Buckley children would not survive, so that it would prove to the whole village that Jonathan Shooks is nothing but a charlatan. Can you believe that I allowed such a thought to enter my head?’

‘Oh, Francis. You shouldn’t let him trouble you so! He is very much travelled, very experienced, and he has a very bold way about him. But you are just as strong as he is, and you are true to your beliefs. If he is nothing but a boaster, then God will eventually reveal him for what he is.’

‘I don’t know. What disturbs me about him most of all is that he might be much more skilled at dealing with the Devil than I am. He hasn’t shaken my belief in God, Bea, but he has shaken my belief in myself.’

Beatrice pulled down his nightshirt to cover him up and then drew the sheets over him, up to his neck, and kissed him.

‘It’s still very early,’ she said. ‘Hold me in your arms and let us sleep a little more. Try not to think any more about Jonathan Shooks. I know you think that his presence belittles you, but perhaps he will prove himself to be your ally rather than your enemy.’

*

Beatrice slept for another half-hour. A little after five o’clock she gently disengaged herself from Francis’s arms and eased herself out of bed. He was deeply asleep now and softly snoring. She went to the window and drew back the crewel-work drapes, which she had embroidered herself. The morning sun was casting long shadows across the paddock where Kingdom had grazed, until yesterday.

She felt sad, but this new day also made her feel more determined. If she could find the time, she had the dried-out traces of Kingdom’s illness to examine, as well as the tarry samples from Henry Mendum’s field. Her father had often analysed his customers’ vomit, or their urine or their stools, to discover what they might have eaten or drunk to make them fall ill, and she was fairly confident that she could do the same from the evidence that she had collected.

She took off her mob cap and shook her dark hair loose. She crossed her arms in front of her, grasping her nightgown, and she was just about to lift it off when she saw one of the long shadows in the paddock detach itself, amoeba-like, from the rest of the shadows and move across the grass.

She could see now that it wasn’t a shadow at all but the figure in the long brown cloak that she had seen yesterday, standing at the end of the driveway. It paused for a moment, as if it were staring up at her window. Then, using its staff as if it were poling a flat-bottomed boat, it quickly walked away and disappeared underneath the trees. As it did so, she heard a bird screeching.

Beatrice stayed by the window for over half a minute, wondering who the figure was and if it would reappear. She turned around and looked at Francis. She considered waking him up, but now that the figure had gone there was really no point to it, and he needed his sleep.

She turned back to the window but all she could see was Mary, walking up the driveway in her apron and flappy yellow bonnet. She could hear Noah singing in his crib, as he almost always did when he first opened his eyes in the morning. It was time to get dressed and go downstairs and set her dough for baking today’s bread.

*

By the time she came down to the kitchen Mary had already taken Noah from his crib and changed him, and was feeding him bread soaked in milk. He bounced up and down in his baby chair when he saw her and cried, ‘Mama!’ so that a wet lump of bread dropped out of his mouth and on to his smock.

‘Come on, Noah!’ Beatrice chided him. ‘Don’t be such a messy puppy !’ She went over to the hutch to fetch a mixing bowl. She usually had her own breakfast much later, about ten o’clock, after she had finished her baking and any other early chores that had to be attended to, such as mending and scouring the pewter and preserving the pears that she and Mary had collected from the orchard.

On the hutch beside her mixing bowls she saw a small brown paper package, tightly tied with hairy string and sealed with blobs of green wax.

‘Mary?’ she asked, holding it up. ‘Where did this come from?’

Mary wiped Noah’s mouth and turned around. ‘Oh,
that
– I don’t know, Goody Scarlet. I found it on the front step when I came in. I don’t know who could have left it, but you’ll see that it has your name on it.’

Beatrice turned the package over. On one side of it
Beatrice Scarlet
was written in a scrawly copperplate hand. That in itself was very unusual, since most of the letters and packages she received were addressed to
The Reverend Francis Scarlet, His Wife
. She shook it. It made a dull rattling sound, but she couldn’t begin to guess what was in it, so she took a knife out of the cutlery drawer and cut the string.

Inside the brown paper wrapping there was a plain cardboard box, and when she opened it she found a teardrop-shaped glass bottle with a triangular glass stopper.

She lifted the bottle up to the light. There was no label on it, but it was filled with an amber-coloured liquid.

‘What is it?’ asked Mary. ‘It looks like perfume, doesn’t it?’

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ said Beatrice. The stopper was fastened with thin silk thread, like a clarinet reed. She cut through it and tugged out the stopper with a glassy squeak.

‘Well?’ said Mary.

Beatrice was cautious about smelling the contents of the bottle. She knew that there were several poisons that could cause unconsciousness, and even death, if they were inhaled, such as camphor and spirits of hartshorn, and if this package had been left on the doorstep by somebody who wished her harm then she needed to be very careful. Why anybody should wish to poison her, she couldn’t imagine – but then she couldn’t imagine why anybody would want give her a gift of perfume, either.

She sniffed, and then sniffed again. The bottle definitely contained perfume, and it was a perfume she recognized because it was very popular among the wealthier women around the village. Henry Mendum’s wife, Harriet, wore it – and very liberally, too. It was a strong blend of musk, amber and jasmine, and it was called Queen Margot’s Perfume, after the queen of France who had first blended it. Beatrice never bought perfume herself, but she knew that this one was very expensive, more than ten shillings a bottle.

She passed it across to Mary and let her smell it.

‘It’s wonderful,’ said Mary. ‘But who would have bought it for you?’

Beatrice replaced the stopper and put the bottle back in its box. She didn’t want Francis to come down and smell it because she could think of only one man who had looked at her flirtatiously of late, and who appeared to have enough money to buy her perfume, and that was Jonathan Shooks.

It also occurred to her who the mysterious figure in the brown hooded cloak might have been. She had heard a bird-like screech as it had vanished into the trees, but perhaps that screech had not been a bird at all. Perhaps it had been Jonathan Shooks’s mute carriage-driver, Samuel.

It was another hot morning, although thick white cumulus clouds were piling up like giant cauliflower curds behind the trees to the west of Sutton and Beatrice could hear the distant grumbling of thunder.

She was out in the garden cutting asparagus when she heard a wagon around the front of the house. After a few moments Mary came out and said, ‘Ambrose Cutler is here, Goody Scarlet! He says that he’s come to take you and the reverend into the village to see the Buckley children!’

Beatrice gathered up the asparagus stems in her apron and hurried towards the kitchen door. ‘Does he have news of them? Are they recovered?’

‘Much better, so he says.’

Francis was already sitting on the side of the bed pulling on his stockings when she went upstairs to their bedchamber.

‘This is good news, isn’t it?’ she said, as she took down her new blue linen bed-gown.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Francis. ‘At least it shows that my malicious thoughts about Jonathan Shooks had no ill effect on the children, thank God.’

Ambrose drove them down to the village. A small crowd was already gathered outside the Buckley house, although there was no sign yet of Jonathan Shooks’s black calash. Francis helped Beatrice down from Ambrose Cutler’s wagon and they went inside. Some of the women clapped their hands as Francis appeared and two or three of them curtseyed and said, ‘Reverend’.