The Coven Read online

  Jeremy put down his mug and said, ‘You nearly smiled then.’

  ‘I will have to learn how to smile all over again, Jeremy. From the moment I realized that Noah was missing, I have been incapable of any other humour but dread.’

  ‘You know why I followed you here from England, don’t you?’

  ‘Jeremy, we have spoken of this before. I am fully aware of your affection for me, and I am most warmly disposed to you, too. But there is a difference between affection and warmth and true love. Besides which, I have yet to recover from losing Francis, if I ever will. As I hope you never discover for yourself, you don’t stop loving people just because they have died.’

  ‘But it has been almost three years since, Bea. And isn’t it possible that you could grow to love me at least half as strongly as you loved Francis?’

  ‘Jeremy, you have been wonderful, and you saved my life, for which I will always be grateful. We are cousins, though, and I simply cannot think of you as a lover and a husband.’

  ‘I have a handsomely paid job now, Bea, and even if it took you some time to see me as a husband, I could support you financially and comfort you emotionally in your time of grief.’

  Jeremy paused, and took a deep breath, and then he said, ‘I love you, Bea. I love you with every fibre of my being. If I have to wait longer, then it will hurt me, but I will endure it. So long as I know that one day you will be able to give me your hand.’

  Beatrice stopped kneading her bread dough, and closed her eyes. She felt as if she were falling down a black and bottomless well, falling and falling with no end in sight. Jeremy had never tried to make a secret of his attraction to her, ever since her parents had died and she had been taken in by his mother, her Cousin Sarah in Birmingham.

  He had been drunken and feckless when he was younger, but he had grown up to be hardworking and loyal and Noah and Florence adored him. He was handsome enough, although his eyes were small and Beatrice always thought he had looked a little sly. His lips, too, were full and red for a man, and she couldn’t imagine kissing him in the way that she and Francis used to kiss.

  She thought that it was deeply unfair of him to ask her to marry him when she was so distraught about Noah, but he probably knew it, and had seen it as his best chance. She did badly need somebody to take care of her, because she had almost no savings left, and she could see no future for herself if she stayed in Sutton. The money she made from selling salves and medicines to people in the village was barely enough to cover the cost of their ingredients, and how long would the church go on paying her a widow’s pension?

  She opened her eyes to see Jeremy looking at her with his eyebrows raised, as if he were expecting an answer. He was young, and he was far from ugly, and he loved her, and who else did she know who would make her a suitable husband? All of the men in the village were already married, with the exception of Henry Nobbs the bootmaker who was fifty-five years old and bald and almost always intoxicated.

  Very few of the married couples she knew appeared to love each other as fiercely and as passionately as she and Francis had done, but they lived and worked cheerfully together, and they seemed to be content. Why could she not have a marriage like that with Jeremy?

  At last she said, ‘I appreciate your offer, Jeremy, but I cannot give you an answer, not today, and probably not for many weeks to come. I am far too distressed at losing Noah, and he is all that I can think of.’

  Jeremy looked down into his cider mug with a frown, as if the mug had spoken to him, instead of Beatrice. Without raising his eyes, he said, ‘I understand, Bea, and I am sorry if I have been too forward. I thought it might help you in your time of need to know that you are loved and valued, and that I would do anything to protect you.’

  ‘Jeremy – there is no need for you to apologize. I would rather you expressed your feelings for me openly than keep them bottled up. And at any other time, I would have been flattered.’

  ‘But what do you think you might have said, at any other time?’

  Beatrice finished punching the big lump of dough into shape and lifted it into an earthenware basin to prove.

  ‘I cannot tell you, Jeremy. If there is one thing I have learned about time, it is that it takes no notice of our dreams or our desires. It sweeps us along helpless as twigs in a flooded stream.’

  *

  She went in to see Florence before she went to bed that night. By the light of her candle she could see that Florence was deeply asleep, but all the same her lips were moving as if she were talking to somebody in a dream. Beatrice bent over her crib and kissed her.

  She went to her own bedroom and undressed. She could hear Jeremy’s bed creaking in the bedroom next to hers, and the sound of him closing the door of his wardrobe. Once she had put on her long white nightgown she blew out her candle, but before she went to bed, she looked out of the window. It was a clear, breezy night and the stars were out, millions of them. It brought tears to her eyes to think that Noah was somewhere out there, looking up at those same stars, but scores of miles away from her by now.

  Eventually she climbed in between the sheets. She still slept on the left-hand side of the bed, as she had done when Francis was sleeping next to her. Somehow it seemed as if the right-hand side was still his – chilly and empty as a winter landscape, but still the side on which he had preferred to sleep.

  It took her over an hour to get to sleep. She had several bottles of her own sleeping tincture in the cupboard in the kitchen – a mixture of opium, musk, nutmeg and brandy – but whenever she took it she still felt drowsy the following day, and she knew that if taken too frequently it could be addictive.

  The gibbous moon came up, so bright that it was almost like daylight. She whispered a prayer for Noah, and then closed her eyes and sent him a mother’s love, to be delivered by whatever spirit might be listening.

  She turned over so that she was facing the window, but as she did so she heard the soft squeak of her bedroom door being opened. She lay still, listening, and after a few moments she could hear breathing. She turned around again and saw Jeremy standing in the doorway in his knee-length shirt.

  ‘Jeremy!’ she whispered. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I thought you might need comforting,’ he said, hoarsely.

  ‘I need to sleep, that’s all,’ she told him, but without saying anything else he came across the bedroom, lifted the blankets and slipped into the bed beside her.

  ‘Jeremy! No! Get out, please!’

  She tried to sit up but Jeremy put his arm around her shoulder and held her down. She could smell brandy on his breath.

  ‘Bea, it’s all right. I won’t harm you or take advantage of you, I promise. All I want to do is hold you and reassure you that you’re safe.’

  Beatrice struggled and pushed him, but he was much stronger than she was, and he continued to hold her pressed down against the mattress. She tried to kick him but her legs became tangled in her nightgown.

  ‘Jeremy, you cannot do this! If you don’t leave go of me and get out of this bed at once I shall have to throw you out of the house for good!’

  ‘Why would you do that? You know that you need me! You know how dearly I love you!’

  With that, he took hold of her left hand by the wrist, and levered it downwards towards his crotch. Through his cotton shirt she could feel his penis, as hard as her bedside candle. He tried to make her take hold of it, but she managed to twist her hand away. He shifted himself nearer to her, trying to kiss her.

  With her right hand, Beatrice reached under the pillows and found the butt of the loaded coat pistol that she kept there every night in case of intruders. She was still trying to push Jeremy away with her left hand while she cocked back the pistol’s hammer with her thumb.

  ‘Jeremy, get away!’ she panted, as if she were reprimanding a naughty dog, but he was growing more and more excited by the second.

  ‘Bea! I’ve never touched another woman! I’ve always kept myself for you! Please, Bea! If you do
n’t permit me to take you, I shall surely explode!’

  Beatrice pulled the trigger, and the pistol went off with a deafening bang. The pillow burst open and the whole room was filled with a snowstorm of goose feathers, shining white in the moonlight. The pistol ball had hit the wall on the opposite side of the landing, and buried itself in the plaster.

  Jeremy sprang up, clapping his hand to his left ear. He lost his balance and tumbled backwards off the bed and thumped onto the raggy rug, hitting his head hard on the bedside table. He lay there, stunned, staring up at the goose feathers as they softly see-sawed down on top of him.

  Beatrice got out of bed on the opposite side and came around to stand over him, still holding the pistol.

  ‘I thought you’d killed me,’ Jeremy croaked up at her.

  ‘It was lucky for you that I didn’t. You swore to me that you would take care of me and that you wouldn’t take advantage.’

  ‘You’ll have to speak louder. I’ve gone deaf.’

  Beatrice knelt down beside him and shouted, ‘You know how grief-stricken I am, at losing Noah! You swore that you would look after me!’

  ‘I wanted nothing more, except to hold you in my arms. I swear it. I thought you would find it comforting.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jeremy. You gave me hard evidence that you wanted more than just an embrace. I have a good mind to reload this pistol and have done with you.’

  Jeremy’s lips puckered up and he started to make deep sobbing noises like a donkey. ‘I beg your forgiveness, Bea! I have wanted you so much, for so long! I couldn’t help myself!’

  Beatrice stood up. ‘Go back to your bed, Jeremy. In the morning I will feed you breakfast and then I want you to leave. Go back to Portsmouth and your office and I hope that you become prosperous and one day find yourself a wife. I shall never know, because after you have gone I have no wish to see you again.’

  Jeremy reached up and held on to the side of the bed so that he could heave himself onto his feet. Brushing feathers from his sleeves, he looked down at Beatrice with a beaten expression on his face, but said nothing. He had known her long enough to appreciate that she meant what she said.

  He shuffled out of her bedroom and returned to his own, closing the door behind him. Beatrice went in to see Florence and wasn’t surprised to see that her eyes were open, although she wasn’t crying.

  ‘There was a bang!’ she said.

  ‘Yes, my darling, but it was only God moving his armchair. He wanted to sit where he could see you better, and make sure that you stay safe.’

  ‘I heard you shouting. Are you cross with Uncle Jeremy?’

  ‘No, I’m not. But sometimes people pretend they can’t hear you, because they don’t want to hear you, and then you have to shout to make sure that they have.’

  ‘Is No-noh coming back in the morning?’ asked Florence.

  ‘I don’t know, Florrie. We can only pray that he does.’

  ‘Are you going to give me a kiss?’

  Beatrice bent over her crib and said, ‘Yes, my darling. Tonight, tomorrow, and always.’

  She went back to her bedroom and locked the door. All the feathers had settled now, but she would pick them up in the morning. She would have to change the sheet, too, because it had been peppered with black spots when the flintlock had discharged, and the pillowslip had been torn to rags.

  She eased herself wearily into bed and closed her eyes. In spite of what had happened, or perhaps because of it, she fell asleep almost immediately, and didn’t wake up until her bedroom was filled with six o’clock sunlight.

  5

  After she had washed and dressed and stepped out onto the landing, she saw that Jeremy’s door was open. He hadn’t bothered to tidy his bed, but he had probably guessed that she would strip it and launder his sheets, if only to rid them of the smell of him. His big leather travelling bag had gone, and he had left his wardrobe door open, and it was empty except for some crumpled brown paper and a long-handled shoehorn.

  When she went downstairs, she realized that he had left without staying for breakfast or saying goodbye. She hadn’t heard a carriage, so he must have walked into Sutton to find a driver to take him back to Portsmouth. He hadn’t even left a note.

  She stood in the porch, looking down the driveway with its line of oak trees rustling in the sunshine, and she felt immeasurably sad. The only family she had now was Florence, and she couldn’t even be sure that Francis was Florence’s father. Shortly after Francis had died, she had been attacked and brutally raped by an evil chancer called Jonathan Shooks, and if Jeremy hadn’t intervened, Shooks might have killed her too. But now she had even lost Jeremy.

  She looked up at the huge white cumulus clouds sailing across the sky and she couldn’t help thinking, God, are you really there, and if you are, why are you hiding behind those clouds?

  She went back inside to dress Florence and to give her a bowl of porridge for breakfast. She decided that she would harness the shay that morning and go down to the village to buy some more provisions. She had been keeping her diary so religiously that she had run out of ink, and she also needed more wool.

  She was clearing the ashes from the stove when she heard a knock. Florence looked up at her expectantly, but she doubted that it was anybody bringing her news of Noah. She went to the front door and found that it was the Reverend Miles Bennett, from the neighbouring parish of Canterbury, who had been standing in for Francis since his death.

  The Reverend Bennett was a tall, kindly man, skeletally thin, with a flapping wing of grey hair that looked as if an exhausted pigeon had settled on his head. He had near-together eyes and a large, complicated nose, but he always had a benevolent smile on his lips.

  ‘A very good morning to you, Widow Scarlet,’ he said. ‘I had been hoping to pay a visit to you earlier, as soon as I received the intelligence about your son, Noah. Unfortunately, I was delayed by important church business and also by my poor wife’s sickness.’

  ‘How is your wife?’ asked Beatrice.

  ‘Not at all well, I regret to tell you. She has been suffering for some weeks now from chin cough, and no matter what treatments she has been given, they seem to afford her only temporary respite.’

  ‘You should have come to me earlier,’ Beatrice told him. ‘I have a preparation which I have twice administered to children in the village for chin cough, and it gave both of them great relief. It’s a mixture of spring water and a syrup of pale roses, with a grain of hemlock-mass.’

  ‘Hemlock? Surely that is toxic.’

  ‘Not if sufficiently diluted. And one must balance the risk of death from hemlock poisoning against the risk of death from chin cough.’

  ‘Well, if you recommend it, Widow Scarlet, I will surely take some and see if it can relieve my wife’s agony. With every spasm it feels as if she is coughing up her very soul.’

  The Reverend Bennett followed Beatrice into the kitchen. Florence stood up to give him a curtsey, which made him smile even more. She had been kneeling in the corner, using one of Beatrice’s bake-kettles as a pretend boat for Minnie. Beatrice no longer allowed her to play outside on her own. Even though she was reasonably sure that the Ossipee had long gone, she was still fearful that one or two of them might double back and snatch her, too.

  She went to her cupboard and took out a small dark-green bottle. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘One teaspoonful three times every day, and two before retiring. That will be half a dollar, I’m afraid.’

  The Reverend Bennett took out his leather purse and paid her, but then he said, ‘The purpose of my visit was not to tell you of my wife’s sickness, Widow Scarlet, although I am heartily grateful that you have given me a cure.’

  ‘Please, go on. Can I offer you some tea?’

  ‘I am sufficiently refreshed, thank you. But I have to inform you that a new parson has been appointed to this parish, and he and his wife will be arriving next week. They came from Lincoln, in England, and at the moment they are in Boston, awaiting the remai
nder of their belongings.’

  ‘So that means Florence and I will have to leave?’

  ‘I regret that it does. The Reverend Mills and his wife have three children, and they will need all of the accommodation that this parsonage provides.’

  ‘I see,’ said Beatrice. ‘So what is to become of us? Will the church continue to pay my widow’s stipend?’

  The Reverend Bennett reached into the pocket of his coat and produced a letter. He unfolded it and held it up. ‘Reverend Mills brought with him this invitation from the Reverend Edward Parsons, the church’s superintendent minister at Windmill Hill, in London. He asks if you would consider returning to England to assist at St Mary Magdalene’s Refuge for Refractory Females. He is aware of your expertise as an apothecary, and believes that would be of great advantage.’

  Beatrice said, ‘My son Noah is here, Reverend Bennett. How can I possibly leave New Hampshire and return to England until he has been found? That would mean I had abandoned him.’

  ‘I understand entirely, Widow Scarlet,’ said the Reverend Bennett. ‘But if he has indeed been abducted by Indians, as you suspect, then the chances of him ever being returned to you are so slim as to be negligible. And that is to assume that he has survived his ordeal, although we pray of course that he has come to no harm.’

  ‘Do you know what you are asking of me?’ said Beatrice. ‘You might as well ask me to cut off my right hand and throw it in the fire. Noah is my flesh and blood and, more than that, he is the flesh and blood of my dearest Francis. He is all that I have left of him.’

  The Reverend Bennett looked across the kitchen at Florence. She had overturned the bake- kettle so that Minnie had fallen out, and now she was calling out in a squeaky voice that she was drowning. Beatrice saw him looking, and although he said nothing, she could guess what he was thinking. Is Florence not Francis’s flesh and blood, too?