Scarlet Widow (30 page)

In a strained voice Francis said, ‘I have been given intelligence, sir, that both George Gilman and Ebenezer Rowlandson have deeded you considerable tracts of their land.’

‘Yes, very true,’ said Jonathan Shooks, nodding his head as if Francis had said something very reasonable. ‘And you know, of course, why they should have done so.’

‘Your demons demanded it?’ Francis challenged him.

‘One demon in particular, as a fee for Satan’s protection.’

‘That is nothing short of extortion, Mr Shooks.’

‘I realize that, reverend, but when a man is given a choice between ruination and possible death or surrendering some of his acreage, which do you think he will choose? Let me remind you that if it weren’t for me, Gilman and Rowlandson wouldn’t have even been offered such a choice. The demon would either have destroyed their livelihoods, so that they were forced off their holdings completely, or thought up some grotesque way of killing them.’

‘So who is this demon? Or
what
?’ asked Beatrice. ‘Is it a man or a woman or a two-legged beast with horns and hooves? Does it have a name?’

Jonathan Shooks smiled and touched the tip of his finger to his lips. ‘I have said before, Goody Scarlet, that I cannot say the name. If I say the name, then all will be undone and Satan will take a truly terrible revenge.’

‘Can I not come with you, next time you meet this demon, and reason with it?’ asked Francis.

‘If you come with me, reverend, then you will discover its identity, and as I say, all will then be undone. Once you know its identity your holy calling will oblige you to try to exorcize it, and that can only bring catastrophe. Whatever choice we make, whether we choose to defy the demon or to come to some arrangement with it, the consequences will be unpleasant, so I am opting for the lesser of those evils.’

All the time he was saying this Jonathan Shooks didn’t once take his eyes off Beatrice, and although his voice was so serious he seemed to be smiling very slightly.

Francis vigorously shook his head. ‘I cannot permit this to continue, Mr Shooks. Sutton is my ministry and while it remains under my authority I will not have bargains made with Satan here, nor with any of Satan’s representatives.’

Jonathan Shooks still didn’t take his eyes away from Beatrice. ‘Would you condemn yet more of your congregation to an agonizing death, like Nicholas Buckley? Is that what you would do? Because that is what would surely happen, I assure you. Your ministry would become a ministry of martyrs simply because you were so inflexible.’

‘Mr Shooks – I insist that you return the land that has been deeded over to you, every work-lot of it, and I also insist that either you desist from your dealings with this demon or else leave my parish altogether. I will take this matter to the highest church authorities if I have to, and to the courts.’

Jonathan Shooks didn’t answer immediately, but turned his head and frowned out of the parlour window as if he had seen somebody quickly walk by. Beatrice looked, too, but she couldn’t see anybody.

After a moment, he turned back to Francis and said, ‘No, Reverend Scarlet, I will not desist. If members of your congregation decide that it is in their own best interests to hand over the acreage that this demon demands, then there is nothing you can do to stop them. They have seen for themselves what this demon can do to them if they refuse.’

‘Is it the Widow Belknap, this demon?’ Francis demanded. ‘Or perhaps some malign spirit that has
possessed
the Widow Belknap?’

‘I have told you, reverend. I will name no name.’

‘Then you are warned. I will take this matter as far as I have to. I will take it to Governor Wentworth if necessary.’

Jonathan Shooks shrugged. ‘Do what your conscience dictates. All I can tell you is that
I
have the ability recognize the demons that appear in this land on Satan’s behalf, be they wizards or witches or Wendigos, even if you cannot. Since the only way to save the lives of innocent people is to do business with these demons, then do business with them I shall.’

With that, he bowed again to Beatrice and said, ‘Good day to both of you. I hope when we meet again it will be under more amicable circumstances.’

Francis said, ‘I’m serious, Mr Shooks. I will not allow this extortion continue. Good day to you, too!’

Beatrice escorted Jonathan Shooks to the front door. Outside, in the sunshine, Samuel was waiting with his calash and he waved when he saw her.

‘I am not over-fond of wild flowers, Mr Shooks,’ she told him as he put on his hat.

He looked at her with one eyebrow lifted. ‘Are you not, Goody Scarlet?’

‘Some of them I like. It depends who gives them to me.’

‘I suppose that would apply to almost every gift,’ he replied.

What does he mean?
She thought.
Is he asking me if I was pleased by the perfume?

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No matter what it was.’

There was a long silence between them, as if both wanted to say something but both were too wary of committing themselves. Then Jonathan Shooks said, ‘Your husband is a good and upright man, Goody Scarlet. Please try and dissuade him from doing anything rash. There are forces at work here in Sutton of which, for all of his rectitude, he has very little understanding.’

‘The Reverend Scarlet is officiating this morning at two funerals, Mr Shooks – Nicholas Buckley and his baby son, Tristram. I think he is well aware of what these forces are and what they can do, as am I.’

‘Oh, yes. I have heard it said that you are quite the amateur apothecary.’

‘My father taught me, Mr Shooks, in London. Suffice it to say that I can distinguish the difference between a concoction from hell and one from New Hampshire.’

Jonathan Shooks kept on smiling. ‘You are a very fair young woman, Goody Scarlet. Please have a care, and do try to speak persuasively to your husband. It would be tragic to see you a relict so young.’

With that he climbed with a creak of leather springs into his calash and Samuel gave one of his weird whoops and cracked his whip. Beatrice stood and watched him as he drove away under the trees. She was almost wishing that the brown-cloaked figure would appear out of the shadows as he went past, which would prove beyond doubt that it was neither him nor Samuel acting on his behalf.

She was still standing there when Francis came bustling out of the house. His cheeks were flushed and he was tugging on his cream linen coat.

‘Caleb!’ he shouted. ‘
Caleb
!’

Caleb came hurrying around the side of the house carrying a rake. ‘Yes, reverend? Sorry I’ve took so long weeding the turnip bed. Hard as rock that dirt is!’

‘Never mind that. Please harness Uriel for me as quick as you can!’

‘Francis, where are you going?’ asked Beatrice. ‘You can’t be too long – the funerals start at eleven o’clock!’

‘I’m going after Shooks. I’m going to follow him.’

‘Francis – don’t!’

‘You won’t stop me, Bea. I’m going to follow him and see this demon for myself, and confront it! I refuse to surrender my authority to some crawling creature from hell, even if Shooks is
prepared to give in to it!’

‘Francis, don’t you see? There
is
no demon!’

Caleb had brought Uriel round from his paddock and was fastening his trace buckle and adjusting his tugs.

Francis said, ‘What? How can you say such a thing, Bea? How could an ordinary mortal have hung George Gilman’s slaves so high up in the rafters, as if on Calvary Hill, and then set fire to them? Or melted Nicholas Buckley into broth? Or caused our pigs to die without any trace of sickness, like the Gadarene swine? Or stunned Ebenezer Rowlandson’s fish?’

‘I believe that every one of those events has an explanation, Francis – every one of them, even if we don’t yet understand what all of those explanations are. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I have been loath to contradict you, my dearest, or to question your faith, and several times I have been close to being persuaded myself that the Devil must be to blame. But I’m sure that he’s not. I’m convinced that we can put an end to all of this terrible mischief by other means apart from prayer.’

Francis looked down the driveway. Jonathan Shooks’s calash was out of sight now, and even the dust from its wheels had settled.

‘If you are saying that there is no demon, Bea, then by implication that means that there is no Satan.’

‘Not necessarily. Satan can turn the hearts of men, he doesn’t have to send demons to do his work for him.’

‘No, Bea. You are still influenced far too much by what your father taught you. Not everything in this world can be explained by science, nor should it be. If everything can be explained by science, then how can there be miracles? Lazarus would not have risen from the dead, nor the water at Canaan turned into wine. Don’t you understand, Bea? What has been happening here in Sutton is not just empirical proof of the existence of Satan, it is empirical proof of the existence of God.’

Beatrice didn’t know what to say to him. She had always thought that his faith was shining, unquestioning and flawless. Did he really need
evidence
that God was real?

Caleb had finished harnessing Uriel and Francis said, ‘Now, my darling, I have to go or I will lose him. I will be back as soon as I can.’

‘Francis—’ she began, but then she realized that nothing was going to stop him from going after Jonathan Shooks. It was as much to prove his manhood as it was to prove his belief in God.

By a quarter to eleven, Francis had still not returned home, so Beatrice took Noah and Mary and walked down to the village. Both Beatrice and Mary wore black and Noah was dressed in his dark grey pinafore.

Beatrice was desperately hoping that Francis had decided to go to the village first, in order to make sure that the meeting house had been properly prepared for the funerals. As soon as she reached the village green, however, she could see that even though a large crowd of mourners had gathered outside the front doors, Francis was nowhere to be seen, nor Uriel, nor their shay.

‘Goody Scarlet!’ called out Major General Holyoke, as she crossed the grass. He was a short, stout man with wiry grey whiskers, ruddy cheeks and a black eye-patch over his left eye socket. ‘Is the reverend not with you? Most of these people were here betimes but now we are more than ten minutes delayed.’

It was well past eleven now and the congregation were beginning to file into the meeting house and take their seats, with the men in the front benches and the women and children right at the back, although Peter Duston had raised the women’s benches so that they had a better view. The only exception was Judith Buckley, who was sitting beside the two elm-wood coffins that stood on trestles in the centre of the aisle, her head covered with a black lace veil.

Inside the meeting house it was hot and airless and smelled strongly of musty clothes and warm people. The only sound was a low, reverential murmuring, the scuffling of children’s feet, and the flap-flap-flapping of fans.

Both of the coffins were closed now because the weather had been so hot. Peter Duston had been concerned that if he delayed screwing down the lid of Tristram’s little coffin before much longer, Tristram’s body would become so bloated that he wouldn’t be able to screw it down at all.

Outside, Beatrice said, ‘Francis went off on an errand four hours ago and I have not seen him since. I’m worried that he may have met with an accident.’

‘Did he tell you where he was going?’

‘He didn’t know himself.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘I’m not sure that I quite understand you. He went off on an errand but he didn’t know where to?’

‘He was following Jonathan Shooks. He’s mentioned Jonathan Shooks to you, I presume?’

‘Yes – yes, he has. He has told me more than once that he suspects Shooks of being a mountebank, although he has no real proof of it. Is that why he was following him?’

Beatrice nodded. ‘I’m very worried for him, general. Jonathan Shooks has always been the soul of courtesy to me, but I very much fear that he is not a man to be meddled with lightly.’

Major General Holyoke took out his pocket watch. ‘We will give the reverend ten more minutes, Goody Scarlet, but if he doesn’t arrive by then we will have to commence the funeral proceedings without him. We have to consider poor Goody Buckley, with both her husband and her infant son to commit to the ground. I’m sure that Goodman Lynch knows the words of the funeral service off by heart.’

Benjamin Lynch was Francis’s sacristan and had frequently led prayers when Francis had been away on ecclesiastic business, or unwell. He was easily the oldest man in Sutton, nearly seventy, and Beatrice could see his white hair shining like a dandelion puffball on the opposite side of the graveyard.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But if he doesn’t appear by the end of the service, I think we should send men out to go looking for him.’

‘Don’t you worry, my dear,’ said Major General Holyoke, patting her on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure that no harm has come to him. His carriage may have lost a wheel, nothing more serious than that, or perhaps the traces have snapped.’

‘If that had happened he would have unharnessed our driver and ridden him here.’

‘You never know, your driver may have been lamed.’

Beatrice was looking around to see if Jonathan Shooks was among the crowd, but there was no sign of him, either. She could see Henry Mendum, all dressed in black with a black cocked hat, looking sombre but bored. His wife, Harriet, had her nose lifted as haughtily as ever and she was wearing a voluminous black silk hood which denoted her social status in the community. A woman of lesser standing would have risked a fine for wearing such a hood.

‘Come on, Goody Scarlet, let’s go inside,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘Fretting will do you no good at all. There will be a good reason for Francis’s delay, I’m certain of it, and he’ll be back before you know it.’

*

But Francis didn’t come back. Benjamin Lynch had to conduct the funeral service in his place, which he read from the pulpit in a high, scratchy voice like a crow cawing from a nearby tree. It seemed to Beatrice that it took him hours to get through it, with interminable quotations from the Psalms. ‘
You have made my days a mere handbreadth
,
O Lord
.’ He ended with an uplifting verse: