The Deadliest Sin (34 page)

Perhaps it was to clear away those shadows that I wanted to find out what had happened. Or perhaps I felt I had an obligation to the physician who had saved me from death.

I had only two things to help me, and one of them was no more than a memory. There was the little talisman I’d picked up from the ground, the golden image of a lion in a wooden frame. And,
though it no longer existed, clear in my mind’s eye I had the image of the shoe-marks in the wet earth of the spinney. From their size, I knew they were not the print of the physician’s
shoes but belonged to whoever had been waiting in ambush for him, for surely no one would stand fixed in one spot under the trees unless they had a purpose. I struggled to see the scene through the
eyes of that unknown man – for I was sure it was a man, from the size of the shoes and the violence of the attack – but I could see and understand nothing. Then I thought of the
cunning-woman who lived in the woods, Mistress Travis. She had the gift, like Hugh Tanner. But, unlike him, she was prepared to use it. Many villagers went to her to find out things that they could
not see for themselves, things happening just beyond the corner of their eyes and even things that would happen in the future. They paid these visits in an uneasy way, sometimes, and in defiance of
Master John, but they paid them all the same.

At once, I was seized with the desire to go to the cunning-woman and show her the only thing which I had: the talisman. But I did not want to do this by myself. Laurence and I talked about it,
of course. I think there were shadows over Laurence’s house too during that summer. His father was even more silent than usual while his mother would not stop talking, and they grated on each
other like a knife against stone.

In the end, Laurence agreed to go with me. Perhaps he was as I was, half eager, half afraid to discover the truth.

Mistress Travis, the cunning-woman, was not so fearful to me as she was to some others in Wenham. As a child, I once got lost in the Great Wood and I ran into her, in my tears and panic not
realising she was there. Though the first sight of her was terrifying, she spoke soothing words and took me by the hand and led me through a maze of over-grown paths until we reached the edge of
the trees and when I saw the chimney-smoke from my home in the distance, I slipped out of her grasp and ran towards it without a backward glance. So I had no reason to be daunted by her. Even so,
Laurence and I approached the hut in the woods in great trepidation. If we hadn’t been driven by our desire to find out the truth we would have turned and run back home.

It was a late afternoon in autumn and the trees were almost bare. The branches creaked. The way to the cunning-woman’s was not so hard to find, for other village folk apart from us were
accustomed to beating a path to her door. As I walked, I clutched the talisman with the image of the gold lion. The hut was in a clearing where nothing seemed to grow, as though the ground
immediately around it was blighted. The door of the hut was open, or perhaps it could never be properly closed since it hung drunkenly on a single hinge of rope. We came to a halt either side of
the entrance. Mistress Travis was squatting on a low stool just inside. Her white hair curtained her face and the bedraggled smock she wore concealed the shape beneath like a tent.

‘You are too big to be lost in the woods now,’ she said in her singsong voice.

This was directed at me. I was surprised she remembered the frightened child.

‘I have my friend Laurence for company,’ I said.

The cunning-woman ducked her head slightly. She knew Laurence, of course, even if they’d never spoken. She knew everyone in the village and everyone knew her.

I waited for Laurence to say something but he would not even look the cunning-woman in the face, instead keeping his eyes fastened on the earth, so I stretched out my hand instead and said:
‘We have brought you something, Mistress Travis, an offering.’

The old woman put out a palm that was oddly smooth and soft. I placed the talisman in it. She tilted it so that it caught the little light remaining in the clearing. Her eyes were pure blue. She
raised the talisman to her nose and sniffed at it. Looking at her, I thought that despite the hairs on her face, she must have been handsome many years ago. I remembered one of the stories
I’d heard about her: that she’d been in holy orders and was once a woman of learning and refinement. ‘This is not yours,’ she said.

‘I found it.’

‘Where?’

‘In a copse of trees near a stile.’

‘Where the physician was done to death?’

‘Yes,’ said Laurence, speaking up for the first time. ‘You were there that afternoon, Mistress Travis. I saw you.’

The cunning-woman looked at Laurence. I could not tell whether her look was an admission – yes, I was there – or whether she didn’t know what he was talking about. I wondered
why he’d raised the subject. Why should she remember where she’d been six months ago? Now she bent her white-haired head over the object that nestled in her palm.

‘For sure, it is one of the physician’s things,’ said Mistress Travis, examining the golden image tucked inside the little frame. ‘They say the image of the lion is a
protection against the stone. It is also for those of a choleric disposition or humour and all other hot conditions.’

‘Then the physician must have dropped it,’ said Laurence.

‘No,’ said the crouching woman. She brushed her finger-tips several times back and forth across the little image and she cocked her head, as though she was listening to someone we
could neither see nor hear. ‘Its story is plain enough if you have the ears to hear it. This passed from the physician’s hands into another’s. There was no loss
involved.’

I thought she meant that the talisman must have been sold or given away, not stolen.

‘Whose hands?’ said Laurence.

I felt my heart beat faster. Mistress Travis did not reply. She clasped the talisman in both her own hands now and rubbed it gently. She raised her hands to her face and then cradled her cheek
against them and closed her blue eyes. She looked like a child trying to fall asleep. Laurence and I gazed at each other. It was growing more gloomy in the clearing and the evening breeze rattled
above us. We were startled by a sudden moan from Mistress Travis. Then, with her hands still to the side of her face and without changing her crouching posture on the stool, she started to
speak.

‘The rain is coming down hard. He is walking along the path across the fields. He is moving fast because he is eager to see her. Anger and hatred boil up within me and cloud my vision. The
rain is coming down hard even under the trees where I am standing and I wipe my hands across my eyes to clear them but I still cannot see clearly. And now he is drawing level with me and all I see
is his arms swinging and his legs moving like knives. Soon he will be with her in the dry and the warm and his legs will be moving like knives, and hers too moving against his, and the anger and
hatred boil over and spill down my sides. Here, at my side, somewhere at my side, I have a piece of rope that I have been keeping for just such an occasion. No, it is for this occasion now, as he
walks past me so fast and then stops close to the stile. He is thinking for a moment how best to get over it without marring his clothes, and now is the same moment when I go and—’

The cunning-woman delivered all this in her usual singsong tone. When she stopped it was in mid-flow, as if she had been cut off by some external force. That was odd because neither Laurence nor
I had spoken a word or moved an inch. But even odder was the fact that though Mistress Travis talked of anger and hatred her voice had not changed in its up-and-down style. It was as if she were
reading words she did not understand out of a book. Gooseflesh rose on my arms and I felt my hair stir. Beside me, I sensed rather than saw that Laurence was just as horrified as I.

We waited, not certain what to do next. The woman lowered her hands to her lap. She unclasped them to reveal the lion-talisman crouching there, unchanged. Her eyes opened and, after a moment in
which she gazed blankly at the two of us standing either side of her doorway, she came back to herself.

‘It is getting late,’ she said. ‘Home before dark.’

We were being dismissed like children. The inner chill I’d felt while she was telling the story was starting to fade, to be replaced by the outer cold of the evening. I wanted to thank
her, even if I wasn’t quite sure of the meaning of what she had told us. I gestured at the talisman in her hand.

‘What do I need it for, Agnes?’ she said, passing it back to me. ‘I do not suffer from the stone and I am not choleric. Take it back and give it someone who has need of
it.’

Even so, I was reluctant to take the thing and she sensed it was because I was frightened of the talisman brooch now and considered it unlucky. Mistress Travis said, ‘There is nothing to
fear here. It was created to ward off harm and some small trace of that remains. The person who lost it under the trees cannot touch you.’

I reflected that I had already kept the talisman secret for the whole summer without coming to grief and so I took it back and thanked her in my stumbling way. Laurence said nothing. We turned
away from the hut and threaded a path back through the woods. It was fortunate we were together and that we were not children, despite Mistress Travis’s words, for otherwise we might have
been fearful of the gathering shadows and the sounds of animals settling down or stirring themselves for the night.

We waited until we’d reached the boundary of the woods before talking about the cunning-woman. Laurence was of the opinion that it was all nonsense. He said that Mistress Travis
hadn’t denied being near the place where the murder occurred. Either she was making things up or possibly she had glimpsed somebody lurking under the trees by the stile but had no idea who it
was. I reminded him that Mistress Travis mentioned the rope. She couldn’t have seen that from a distance. The rope wasn’t a secret, he said. Everybody knew how Thomas Flytte had died.
The coroner had pronounced on it. In truth, the cunning-woman had seen nothing, she knew nothing. All that business with stroking the talisman and pretending to go into a trance was nothing more
than foolery, designed to impress us, and all for the sake of – of . . .

‘Yes, Laurence,’ I said, ‘all for the sake of – what? Tell me. Because she didn’t want any money or gifts from us. She wouldn’t even keep the talisman. She
was still speaking to us as children almost, telling us to get off home before dark. We are hardly worth impressing.’

There was a silence and I could tell he wasn’t pleased.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Then, if we do believe her, it must be the cunning-woman herself who was under the trees by the stile. She was the one lying in wait for Thomas Flytte.
Everyone knows she had a grudge against the physician. She’s strong enough to have overpowered him and pulled a cord round his neck and choked him. You know some people say she’s really
a man.’

‘And others say that she’s a nun. But it didn’t happen like that at all. She held the talisman in her hands and, because of that, she was able to see through the eyes of . . .
the person who possessed it at the time. Through those eyes, she saw Thomas Flytte crossing the field at a run because it was raining, she saw him pass in front of her and then pause in front of
the stile. Or rather ‘she’ didn’t see all this but . . .’

‘Have you tried to do that thing, Agnes?’ said Laurence, ignoring everything I’d been saying. ‘Go on, hold the wretched object, rub it tenderly and see if you have any
visions.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Laurence. I haven’t got the gift. Even her enemies admit that Mistress Travis has the gift.’

‘Answer me this, then. Why did she suddenly stop at the very point in her story where she was about to tell us what happened? According to you, she can see or pretends she can see through
the eyes of the person who is spying on the physician while he strides across the field. Thomas Flytte pauses as he gets to the stile, and then this “person” goes and does . . .
whatever it is he does. How convenient that she cannot tell us anything that really matters. She does not see the murder, she does not see the murderer.’

‘Not convenient, just fortunate,’ I said.

‘You’re talking as much nonsense as the cunning-woman.’

I wasn’t talking nonsense and Laurence knew it, I think. It was fortunate that the cunning-woman had not seen everything in her vision. It meant that the truth was still half-hidden, which
was more comfortable for both of us.

‘I have been thinking about why Mistress Travis couldn’t see the murder being done,’ I said, ‘and it makes sense. I can explain it.’

‘Nothing makes sense,’ he said. I waited for him to ask for my explanation, which I was rather pleased with, but he said nothing more. So I was forced to speak instead.

‘Remember I told you I found the talisman under the trees, not by the stile? It was close to the foot-marks. I measured those against the boots of Thomas Flytte and it was obvious from the
length of them that he was not the person waiting in the spinney. He was shorter than that person. Which confirms the cunning-woman’s words. She was looking through the eyes of someone
watching the physician. Even the words she used weren’t her own thoughts and feelings, but his. It was his hatred and anger boiling over. His idea that the physician’s legs were going
like knives. But she could only do that for as long as the man under the trees was holding the talisman. When he no longer had the talisman with him then she could no longer see with his eyes. The
talisman is her link to . . . that person.’

I paused, waiting for him to agree, but also to catch up with my own rushing thoughts. Then a further detail occurred to me. ‘Or probably, he wasn’t holding the lion-talisman in his
hand but he had it somewhere about him, in a pocket or fastened to his belt, and in his hurry and anger as he reached for the piece of rope, which he kept with him – remember Mistress Travis
talked of the rope at her side, though it wasn’t her side but his – he accidentally dislodged it and it dropped to the ground—’