A Crowning Mercy (35 page)

He glanced at Campion. She was sobbing hysterically, her eyes open. He knew she was not seeing anything. He had seen his victims like this before, at the times when he would rest from his labours and walk up the stone steps to stare across the River Thames as he flexed the stiffness from his lamed body.

He picked up the seal. He unscrewed it and stared, without expression, at the crucifix. He had not known what to expect, half thinking it might contain a naked woman like that inside the Seal of St Mark. The small, silver statue was very still in his fingers.

He glanced at her again. He was thinking.

He screwed the two halves of the seal together, stood up, and crossed gently towards her. Her eyes moved as he came close, but he knew she was still not recognising him. He made soft, crooning noises of reassurance as he stooped over her. She did not move away from him. She seemed aware that someone was present, she seemed to want comfort, and, indeed, his hands were surprisingly gentle as he tipped her head forward and slipped the seal round her neck.

Then, still making the quiet, comforting noises, he backed away from her. He opened the door to the long gallery, slipped through, then locked it behind him. He nodded at those who waited outside, expectancy on their faces, and put a finger to his lips. 'A few more minutes, I think.' One of his men offered him wine, looted from the castle cellars, but the offer made Ebenezer scowl. 'Water! Bring me water! But make sure it's clean!'

He leaned against the door, shut his eyes, and reflected on the satisfaction of a job well done.

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

For what seemed hours, yet were only minutes, Campion did not move. She shrank into the window corner like a trapped, scared animal, fearing everything, not daring to move in case the motion should invite new horrors. The blood on her smelled thick and nauseating, and she heard her great, lung-emptying sobs, and only slowly did she realise that she was listening to herself. She touched a finger to her face, feeling the stickiness, and she thought she was in the realm of madness, or else falling through some wild, shrieking hole towards hell itself. She wailed like a child in pain and the sound, or else the thought of hell, made her strength rebel against her predicament.

She moved. She shook her head. She made herself see where she was and the first object before her eyes was the great, dark hole in Scammell's throat. She felt her stomach heaving, heard the retching mingled with sobs and threw herself sideways, away from the body. She was gasping for air, panting, but she forced herself into one action at a time. First to reach the bed, next to wipe her hands, her face, and then to suck at the wound on the base of her thumb that still bled. She wiped with the corner of the sheet at her breasts which were sticky with blood. The seal hung there.

She held it in her right hand, staring at it as if she had never seen it before, seeing where the bright gold had been smeared with congealing blood. She loathed it, knowing it trapped her, and the sudden, surprising discovery of it about her neck threatened to drive her once more into the abyss of madness from which she was so painfully climbing. She shut her eyes, leaning back against the high bed and clutched the seal in her hand as if to hide it.

Toby. Sir George. The cat. Scammell. The smell of blood. Vomit rose in her throat. She moaned, but again a part of her forced her to move, to do one thing at a time, and she pulled herself up on the bed, sitting on it, and dragged the runner that was draped over the pillows towards her. She put it on like a shawl, covering her nakedness, and only then did she start to breathe more shallowly, to take stock of herself.

The room was smothered in blood. Scammell's body, grotesque in its layered armour, was sprawled crooked by the window, one plump hand outstretched in helpless appeal. Mildred, her fur matted with blood that looked black, seemed tiny in death. The light was full outside now. Through the small leads of the window she saw the piling clouds that would have meant her salvation this coming night. James Wright, Toby, Lady Margaret. They all seemed so distant now. Her old life had flooded back in a horror that still threatened to overwhelm her. Now, just as she had endured the wrath and punishment of God at Werlatton as a child, she must simply survive. She shut her eyes, crooning to herself, and heard the dread sound of the key turning in the lock.

She opened her eyes, clutching the shawl at her neck.

Ebenezer smiled at her. He spread his hands as if in welcome. 'Sister Dorcas! My dear sister!' He seemed to glance casually about the room and took a dramatic backward pace when he saw Scammell's body. He gasped.

Goodwife Baggerlie was next into the room. She pushed past Ebenezer and stared at the body of Samuel Scammell. She took a deep breath. 'Murder! Murder!'

'No, no! My sister!' Ebenezer came into the room properly. 'No! No!'

Campion was shaking her head, rocking back and forth on the bed. 'Go away! Go away!'

'Murder!' Goodwife's shrill voice filled the room. 'She killed him!'

'No!' Campion moaned.

'Don't go near her! Don't touch her!' A new voice cut over the clamour, a voice that touched a memory in Campion. She opened her eyes, looked around dully, and there was the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey, one hand raised, the other clutching a Bible to his black jacket.

'Harlot! Murderer! Witch!' Goodwife shouted.

Ebenezer had knelt beside Scammell's body. 'How could she have killed him? She's only a girl! He was an armed man! She can't have killed him!'

There was a slight pause before Goodwife remembered her cue. She stepped forward, her voice like the breath of the pit, and she raised a raw, bony finger which she stabbed towards Campion.

'She's a witch! I saw the devil rescue her in Mister Scammell's house. Flaming hair, he had! From hell itself. The devil! She's a witch!'

'No!' Ebenezer protested.

'Quiet!' The Reverend Faithful Unto Death moved into the centre of the room. He had studied witchcraft these last few months, seeing in demonology a ladder that would take him to the vast pinnacle of his ambitions. This was the thing he had suggested to Ebenezer on Christmas morning; that Dorcas Slythe was a witch and that he, Faithful Unto Death Hervey, would unmask her. He had not been selfish with the thought, admitting that Goodwife Baggerlie had always maintained the girl to be possessed of a devil, but now, at last, he was ready to pit his strength against the Prince of Darkness who was Dorcas Slythe's ally. He also still wanted this girl, but now he wished to abase her, to humiliate her, to use her for his fame. He looked grandly about the room, remembering what Ebenezer had said. 'Ah! A cat! Her familiar!'

Goodwife gasped, recoiled in horror.

Faithful Unto Death stepped resolutely closer to Campion. He put his Bible on the table, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down his long, pale throat. 'There is a sure way to find out. A sure way!'

'Brother Hervey?' Ebenezer sounded awed.

Faithful Unto Death took another pace towards the staring, gasping girl. 'I will need your help, both of you. Fear not! God is with us!' He did not need to tell them what was expected. 'Now!'

Campion screamed, but the three had her on the bed, Goodwife forcing her head back, Ebenezer swinging her legs on to the mattress. Campion screamed again, fought against the hands that groped at her, but she was powerless. Faithful Unto Death tore the dress apart, pulled the shawl away and Goodwife seized Campion's hands.

'Hold her!' Faithful Unto Death bent over her breasts, his breath warm on her skin. She struggled, but Goodwife had an arm over her throat while Ebenezer weighed down her legs.

Faithful Unto Death's hands were dry, almost scaly. They stroked her breasts, touching her nipples. His voice, like his hands, was dry. He might have been explaining the doctrine of the Trinity. 'These, Brother Slythe, are the teats for giving suck to children. A witch will not use those when she feeds the devil, for those teats come of God.' His fingers rubbed her nipples. His hands slid down towards her belly, kneading her ribs. 'We are looking for another mark, the witch mark. Ah!' He probed the mole above her navel, the mole that Toby had teased her about on Christmas Day. 'Here it is! The witch mark!' His hands, even though they had found the mole, moved back to her breasts.

'Sir! Look!' Goodwife had the seal. 'Is this what you looked for?'

'It is! It is!'

Faithful Unto Death was forced to help Goodwife remove the seal. Released from their grip, Campion turned away from them, curled herself up, and sobbed into the bed's cover. She felt as if filth had been smeared on her, irrevocably smeared.

'Look!' Ebenezer had unscrewed the seal, was showing the crucifix to Faithful Unto Death.

'A Papist witch!'

Campion was past caring. She wept. She was sliding into the abyss again. She dimly heard Faithful Unto Death intoning the 23rd psalm, heard her brother call for the guards, and then, mercifully, she fainted. They wrapped her in a blanket, unwilling that Colonel Fuller's soldiers should know what they had been doing, and Campion was carried down to the travelling coach which had been prepared.

Ebenezer smiled at the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey. 'You were right, brother.'

'God has been good to us.'

'He has, he has.'

Faithful Unto Death shook his head solemnly. 'She must be tried, brother.'

'She must, she must.' Ebenezer smiled. He walked to the window and stared down to where Goodwife followed Campion into the coach. From now on, Ebenezer reflected, they could deal respectably with his sister. The law would be relentless, properly conducting her to either fire or scaffold. He looked at Faithful Unto Death.

'She must be a witch.'

'She is.'

Ebenezer shrugged and limped back into the long gallery. He waved a hand at the decorated pagan plasterwork, at the curtains, the rugs, the paintings and the fine, inlaid furniture. 'She must have used witchcraft to come here. Why else would they welcome her?'

He did not listen to Faithful Unto Death Hervey's reply. He stared instead at the richness of the room and he hated it. It was beautiful and that was an anathema to him. It had belonged to privileged people and that was a further cause for hatred. Ebenezer had always hated the privileged.

He was now one of them. He was, since Scammell's death, the legal holder of the Seal of St Matthew. He would now receive the monies of the Covenant. He would be rich. Yet, he decided as he fingered a lace tablecloth, he would use his riches towards a better end than they had been used here. He would work for an England that was disciplined under God, devout under the law, and he knew that such a country would need harsh, far-seeing masters. God's Kingdom would come and he would be one of its regents. He had discovered, in this last year, that he had the gift of leadership, though he still feared the older men of more power and experience. Those he was careful to flatter and copy.

He turned back to Faithful Unto Death, seeing in his erstwhile minister a future follower. Ebenezer's voice was grating and harsh, befitting a conqueror. 'I believe a word of thanks might be in season, brother?'

'Indeed.'

They knelt beneath the pagan plasterwork and thanked Almighty God for his mercies, for this signal providence that had brought them to this great victory.

'Amen,' said Faithful Unto Death, 'and amen.'

19

'"Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery."' Lady Margaret, listening to the Reverend Perilly's words, thought it had not been true. Sir George had not been full of misery. He had been full of worry, yet he had known much happiness.

"'He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower."' That, she thought, was true, if a flower had ever been blasted in the face by a musketeer.

She stood on the flagstones of Lazen church's aisle. Fittingly it was a grey day, threatening rain, and the light which came through the windows which had been stripped of their fine, stained glass was gloomy. The escutcheons of Lazen and Lazender had been hacked with pikes, while the stone effigies of Sir George's ancestors, beneath whose gaze he was laid to rest, had been hammered with musket fire and then daubed with limewash. They looked leprous.

Lady Margaret looked through her veil into the hole that had been made by lifting four flagstones. The vault of the church was damp. She could see the rotted end of an old coffin that abutted on to Sir George's new coffin, just lowered into place. One day, she thought, she would lie in that hole, her eyes staring endlessly towards the worshippers above. Then, with the sudden realisation that the world was turned upside down, she knew she might never lie beside Sir George. Even as the Reverend Simon Perilly read the obsequies, so was the County Committee for Sequestration meeting in Lazen's great hall. Lazen was to be taken from her, from Sir Toby, the rightful heir.

It was wicked, it was unfair, yet she could do nothing. The Committee, gleeful in their victory, had picked the hour of the funeral so that the family could not be represented. John, Earl of Fleet, newly back from the Earl of Essex's army that marched through the west, had nevertheless attended the Committee. Lady Margaret doubted if he would achieve anything. On her right stood Anne, the Countess of Fleet, and on her left was Caroline. Toby was in his bedroom, and whether he would not be next beneath the earth was still in doubt.

Perilly's voice rose.' "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen."'

Lady Margaret stood for two seconds, staring at the clean, planed wood of her husband's coffin, then turned about. 'Come.'

She stood outside, close to the charred patch of grass where the victorious Puritans had burned the altar rails, and there she thanked the villagers, tenants and servants who had crowded the church. She could give them thanks, but she could offer no hope for the future. She looked at Mr Perilly. 'Thank you, Simon. You did it well.'

The Reverend Perilly, whose theology was not to the taste of the victors, faced a future as uncertain as Lady Margaret's. He folded his scapular on his prayer book. 'He will be resurrected, Lady Margaret.'