Scarlet Widow (33 page)

That was all Clement Bannister had written about wormwood oil, but Beatrice thought about the Widow Belknap dancing in the woods around Johnson’s Pond.

She finished reading just as her candle went out. At first, she laid the notebook beside her on the bed, where Francis should have been lying, but then she leaned over and dropped it down on the floor in case it was bad luck to assume that he wouldn’t be coming back tonight.

In the first few hours the night seemed darker and more stifling than ever, but just after midnight the moon rose and shone through the pines and the bedchamber was filled with a cold, inhuman light. She hadn’t been able to sleep in any case. Whether her eyes were open or closed, she hadn’t been able to blot out the pictures in her mind of Judith Buckley screaming for help at her upstairs window and Apphia whirling down to the ground in flames.

Beatrice lay on her back with her fists clenched and her mouth tightly pursed and tears streaming from her eyes, in physical pain for the pity of it all.

*

Three more days went by and still there was no sign of Francis. Major General Holyoke sent out messages to all of the nearby communities and at the same time organized a search by more than fifty of the local men and boys. They covered all the surrounding area for three miles in every direction, but found no trace of Francis. In the woods to the south-east of Sutton they came across a makeshift camp, where a fire had only recently been burning and there were signs that somebody had been sleeping, but whoever had occupied it must have moved on.

In any event, Francis wouldn’t have been camping in the woods, not unless he had lost his reason and forgotten who he was and where he lived.

Beatrice kept the parsonage and the ministry going as best she could. She helped Benjamin Lynch to organize funerals for Judith Buckley and Apphia, and on Wednesday morning they were buried in the graveyard next to Nicholas and Tristram. For once, Benjamin’s address was short and moving, and he told the congregation that the Buckley family were now ‘together with Jesus’. Afterwards, Beatrice and Goody Rust and Goody Bridges held a wake in the meeting house, with wine and cake.

Most wakes became quite animated after a few hours, even merry. After all, death was common enough and was sure to come to them all, and some of the women who had passed away in the past few years were much better off in heaven than in the arms of their husbands. But apart from some of the smaller children running around this wake remained sombre, with very few voices rising above a whisper. After they had exchanged their memories of Judith and Nicholas Buckley, the mourners talked about nothing but the strange and frightening events that had been taking place around Sutton of late, and how fearful they were of what might happen next.

‘Locusts, it wouldn’t surprise me,’ said Goody Goodhue, looking all pinched and proper. ‘You only have to read your Bible’ – as if to suggest that nobody read it as assiduously as she did.

After the funerals Beatrice continued with her household duties – baking and cleaning and feeding the pigs and tending the vegetable garden – but as each day passed her chores seemed more and more pointless. On the morning of the third day, when she woke from yet another restless night, it occurred to her that she might never see Francis again and that she might never discover what had happened to him. She wasn’t sure that she could bear that. She wouldn’t even have a grave to tend.

For some reason, she was moved to open the drawer in the pinewood hutch and take out the bottle of perfume. She took out the stopper and sniffed it, and then she dabbed a little on each of her wrists and on her neck behind her ears. She didn’t really understand why she did it, but perhaps it was something to do with attracting Francis back home, or making her feel more like a woman again. Some man had wanted to please her by giving her this bottle of perfume, so somebody cared for her, even if he was anonymous, and she wasn’t entirely alone in the world.

Mary arrived at five past six, but she didn’t come on foot as she usually did. She was driven by Peter Duston, the carpenter, in the wagon he used for carrying lengths of timber. He was wearing a large floppy hat and leather jerkin and he was looking distinctly grim.

‘Mr Duston,’ said Beatrice, stepping out of the porch with Noah in her arms. ‘What brings you here? Is something amiss?’

Mary came up to her and held out her hands. ‘Let me take Noah, Goody Scarlet.’

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Beatrice, holding Noah even tighter. ‘What’s happened? Please tell me! Is it my husband?’

Peter Duston took off his hat and bared his bald sunburned head. ‘I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet. I really am. It
is
the Reverend Scarlet, yes.’

‘Is he dead? Where is he?’

‘We believe you need to see this for yourself, Goody Scarlet. There is no way that words can describe it.’

‘I’ll take care of Noah,’ said Mary, still holding out her hands.

‘I can’t believe you won’t tell me what’s happened to him!’ said Beatrice. ‘
Tell
me!’

Peter Duston looked down at the ground, but said nothing. Realizing that she was going to get nothing more out of him, Beatrice passed Noah to Mary and went inside to fetch her shawl.

‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘You’d better show me the worst.’

Peter Duston helped her up on to the seat and then turned the wagon around and headed back to the village.

‘He’s dead, though?’ said Beatrice, as they reached the end of the driveway, although she could hardly believe that she was saying it. Was it her, or some other Beatrice, in some dream or parallel existence? ‘You can tell me that much. He must be dead, or he would have come home.’

‘I can only show you, Goody Scarlet,’ said Peter Duston. She noticed for the first time that two fingers were missing from his left hand, the index finger and the middle finger. ‘You’ll just have to see for yourself.’

The village green was already crowded when they arrived, but hushed. As Peter Duston drove Beatrice towards the meeting house, the crowd stepped back and several of the men took off their hats. Beatrice was filled with a terrible sense of dread because she couldn’t even begin to imagine what must have happened to bring most of the village here this morning, so early, when almost all of them should have been working at their businesses or in their houses or on their farms.

Peter Duston stopped his wagon about thirty yards short of the meeting-house fence. He helped Beatrice down and as he did so Major General Holyoke came forward. He took her right hand between both of his and said, ‘My dear Goody Scarlet. Beatrice, my dear. I am really so sorry.’

‘Where is he?’ Beatrice asked him. ‘What’s happened? Mr Duston wouldn’t say.’

‘We debated among ourselves whether to bring him down before you saw him,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘In the end, it was my decision to leave him where he was. I believe you have the right to see exactly what has been done to him, and I know you to be a woman of considerable strength and character.’

‘Bring him down? What do you mean, general, “bring him down”?’

‘You can blame me if you want to, my dear. As I say, it was my decision and if I have in any way exacerbated your grief, then I can only beg for your forgiveness.’

He took Beatrice gently by the arm and led her round the front of the meeting house. When they reached the opposite end of the fence, where the graveyard was, he turned her round and pointed upwards, towards the roof.

Beatrice opened and closed her mouth, but she couldn’t speak. She felt her knees weaken and her head fill with darkness, but she was determined not to faint. In spite of that, she held on tight to Major General Holyoke’s arm and took six or seven very deep breaths.

Twenty-five feet above her, Francis was standing upright on the ridge of the roof with his arms stretched out wide, as if he were just about to dive off it. He was completely naked, white-skinned apart from his sunburned face and hands, with a crucifix of dark hair across his narrow chest. His head was crowned with wilting red roses, their thorny stalks twisted tightly around his temples.

Beatrice stared up at him in disbelief. When she spoke, she thought she sounded like somebody with phlegm in the back of their throat. ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ she said. ‘How can he be dead? He’s standing up by himself, there’s nothing to support him!’

Major General Holyoke said, ‘I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet. Two of my men have been up on the roof already and he is quite dead. His ankles are tied to two stakes that have been fastened to the roof, but that is all the support he needs. His body is as hard as wood, they tell me. In fact, he could be carved out of wood, except that he is unmistakably formed of flesh and he is unmistakably your husband, the Reverend Francis Scarlet.’

Beatrice turned to stare at him. ‘
Wood
?’ she asked. ‘You say that he feels like
wood
?’

‘Now we know for sure that it’s witchcraft!’ put in Goody Rust, who was standing nearby. ‘One man turned to soup and another turned into timber! That’s witchcraft, no mistaking it!’

Beatrice raised her eyes again. Francis was still standing there, utterly motionless, his arms spread wide
. Everything that has happened has been a travesty of Christian
belief
, that’s what he had told her. And there he was, as if his arms were held out to welcome his flock, or as if he had been nailed to an invisible cross.

After a few moments she turned away. She could no longer bear to look up at that naked body beside which she had lain so many nights in bed. He had been her lover and her husband and her closest friend, and yet here was all that intimacy exposed in front of the whole village, for anybody to gawp at. Whoever had taken his life had taken her life, too.

‘We will bring him down now,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘Believe me, I will have it done with all due reverence. I deeply apologize if this exhibition has caused you pain.’

‘No, no, you were right to let me see him like that. I also want to see him after you have brought him down. Please have him taken to the parsonage as soon as you can.’

Major General Holyoke looked uncomfortable. ‘The coffin may be problematical.’ He paused, and then stretched out his arms. ‘How can I put it? He is not at all
flexible
, and it is more than
rigor mortis
.’

‘Then, please, have him covered with a shroud, or a sheet if no shrouds are available. We can decide later what we can do about a coffin.’

Major General Holyoke escorted her further along the green towards his own house. Most of the crowd nodded to her, and some called out their condolences, but they were making no move to disperse. The naked figure of their minister was about to be manhandled down from the roof of the meeting house, like Christ being taken down from the cross, and that was a sight they did not want to miss. They would be telling their grandchildren about it for years to come.

‘Come in for a glass of sherry-wine, or perhaps some tea,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘I must say that you have shown enormous fortitude. I will, of course, have my coachman drive you home afterwards.’

Beatrice gave him the weakest of smiles. ‘I will come in, yes. I think I need to sit down for a moment.’

He opened the door and Beatrice stepped into the hallway where Marjorie Holyoke was coming forward with open arms to greet her.

Three things happened at once. Marjorie Holyoke said, ‘My dear,
dear
Beatrice,’ the long-case clock in the hallway began to strike seven, and Beatrice blacked out and collapsed, knocking her forehead against the floor.

*

The Holyokes begged her to stay. They would even send their coachman to fetch Noah if she wanted them to. But she needed to return home, where Francis had already been taken. She needed to be close to him, even if he was dead.

She arrived home to find, unusually, that the parlour door was closed. She didn’t open it, but went through to the kitchen where Mary was feeding Noah his supper. Noah reached up his hands and flexed his fingers and said, ‘
Mama
!
Mama
!’

Beatrice picked him up and kissed him and cuddled him. He looked up at her and there was a question in his pale blue eyes, even though he wouldn’t have understood her if she had told him what was wrong.

Mary said tearfully, ‘They didn’t know what to do with the reverend when they brought him back. They couldn’t carry him upstairs on account of his arms held out stiff like that, so they laid him on the floor in the parlour.’

‘I thought so,’ said Beatrice. ‘If you could just finish feeding Noah for me, and put him to bed.’

‘Of course, Goody Scarlet. I’ll stay with you again tonight if you need me.’

Beatrice shook her head. ‘No, Mary. You’d be better off going home. Besides, I think I want to be alone for a while. I have to say my goodbyes.’

She returned Noah to his high-chair. He protested with a wail and said, ‘
Mama
!
Cuddah
!’ but she smiled at him sadly and said, ‘Ssshh, Noah. You can have another cuddle before you go to bed.’

She took off her shawl and hung it up in the hall. She stood outside the parlour door for a few seconds with her hands clasped together and pressed to her lips. She didn’t know if she really wanted to see Francis’s body or not, especially if it had been hardened like wood. After a few moments, though, she turned the door handle and opened the door and went inside.

The smell was unmistakable as soon as she walked in. Linseed oil. From that alone, she knew what had happened to Francis, even if she didn’t know who had done it to him, or why.

He was lying on the carpet in between the chairs, covered with a white bed sheet. His arms were still outstretched and his left hand was showing. She saw with a terrible shrinking feeling that there was a deep hole in the centre of the palm, a stigma, where Christ would have been nailed to the cross.

She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering her strength.
This is why you became a minister, Francis, to fight the forces of evil, and even if you have become a martyr in your battle against Satan, your sacrifice will not be in vain, I promise you, I promise you, I swear to you, my dearest one
.