The Coven Page 4

  ‘If I may, I shall leave you to think it over,’ said the Reverend Bennett, folding the letter and placing it on the table. ‘The cost of your passage to England will of course be met by the church, and you and your daughter will be accommodated free of charge at St Mary Magdalene’s. On top of that, you will be paid nine guineas per annum for the help you give to their young girls.’

  He hesitated when he saw that Beatrice had tears in her eyes, but then he said, ‘Widow Scarlet, I assure you... the Reverend Mills will be instructed to look out for Noah, in the event that by some miracle he should return here to the parsonage. He will also encourage the residents of Sutton village to stay alert for any sign of him. Apart from that, there is little more that we can do.’

  ‘I know,’ said Beatrice, miserably. ‘It is just that the pain of losing him is too much to bear. I can still hear him singing, inside my head. I can still feel him in my arms.’

  ‘There is little more that you can do yourself, Widow Scarlet,’ said the Reverend Bennett. ‘If Noah were to be found, he should be sent to join you in England by the first available sailing. We are thinking only of your own welfare now, and the future that you and your daughter have to face.’

  Beatrice picked up the letter and then put it down again. ‘Thank you, Reverend Bennett, and God bless you.’

  The Reverend Bennett laid his hand on top of hers and said, ‘God bless you and protect you too, Widow Scarlet, and bring you comfort in your time of sorrow.’

  After the Reverend Bennett had left, Beatrice opened the letter and read it. Had she not had Florence to take care of, she might have considered staying here in Sutton and finding herself some employment, even if it was only as a housemaid or working in John Levinson’s bakery. But she would need a nursemaid for Florence, and she would simply not be able to afford to hire one, even if it was only one of the girls from the village.

  Besides, she had been brought up in London, and she still had many friends there. Compared to New Hampshire, it was overcrowded and filthy, but it was familiar.

  She went into the living room and looked at herself in the mirror over the fireplace. The glass was slightly distorted, so she always seemed to have a secretive smile on her face. But in her plain black dress she was surprised how young she still looked now that she was nearly thirty, with her wide blue eyes and her brunette ringlets and her perfect oval face, like a Madonna from a Renaissance painting.

  I have a whole life behind me, she thought, but then I have a whole life ahead of me, too. And it was then that she decided that she would have to find a way to contain her pain about Noah, and go.

  6

  Shortly after noon, when she had bought all she needed in the village, she drove her shay to the north-east end of the triangular green and tethered her horse outside Widow Belknap’s house.

  This corner of Sutton was where the poorer residents lived, artisans and smallholders and odd-job men. Their homes were ramshackle and crowded together, and the grass outside was deeply rutted with cart tracks and reeked of horse manure. Clara Belknap’s house, though, was set well back, and she had a triangular front yard that was overflowing with flowering weeds – yarrow and dame’s rocket and fleabane.

  It was an odd house – five-sided and strangely proportioned, like an optical illusion. It had a lean-to kitchen and a dairy at the back, which added to the oddity of its appearance. It used to be pale yellow but Clara had recently had it painted a shiny sea green.

  Beatrice carried Florence up the path between the flowers, but before she had reached the porch the front door opened and Clara came out. She was a thin woman of about forty, and although her face was as pale as a midsummer moon, she was quite beautiful, in a very unusual way, with green, feline eyes and thin bow-shaped lips. As always, she was wearing a black bonnet and a black dress. Beatrice had arrived too late in Sutton to have known her late husband, but Clara continued to dress in mourning, year after year.

  ‘Gerald is still inside me,’ she had once told Beatrice. ‘I shall only be able to cast off my widow’s weeds and dress gaily once he has gone, and that day may never come. He clings on. He whispers in my ears. He is terrified to leave me, and to fly out into the spirit world by himself.’

  Beatrice had hesitated to ask her if Gerald’s spirit could be exorcised, although she knew an exorcist in Salem, the Reverend Sparks, who had been a friend of John Wesley.

  ‘Beatrice!’ said Clara. ‘What brings you to my door? Not that you aren’t welcome.’

  ‘I was wondering if you could kindly tell my fortune for me,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘I have heard about Noah, of course, and my heart bleeds for you. Do you want to consult me about him?’

  ‘Partly. But I would also like to find out what might become of us, Florence and me. I have been told that a new parson is coming to Sutton next week, and we will have to leave.’

  ‘Come inside,’ said Clara, and ushered Beatrice and Florence into her parlour. The room was so filled up with furniture that it was more like a shop than a parlour – five Windsor chairs and a brocade-covered ottoman, as well as side tables crowded with candlesticks and figurines and framed pictures of various relatives. Almost every inch of the walls was hung with dark oil paintings of angels and engravings of monks and ghosts and extraordinary animals. Florence had been in here before, but she still found some of the pictures frightening, because she clung close to Beatrice’s skirt.

  Apart from all the furniture and pictures, the room was also filled with a strong aroma of incense and cloves and stale tobacco smoke. Beatrice didn’t find it unpleasant, but she always felt when she entered the Widow Belknap’s parlour that she had entered into another world – a shadowy, claustrophobic world of mystery and magic. If she hadn’t been able to see the sunlit green outside the window, she could have felt that she was being carried away in the captain’s cabin of a supernatural ship.

  ‘May I offer you tea?’ asked Clara. ‘Or I have some cider if you prefer, and apple juice for Florence.’

  ‘Yes, a glass of cider would be welcome,’ said Beatrice.

  Clara went into the kitchen, but while she was there she called out, ‘I didn’t think you really believed in my fortune-telling, Beatrice. Doesn’t the Lord light your path for you?’

  ‘He lights it, yes, but he doesn’t give me a map of where it will lead me tomorrow, and in the days after that.’

  Clara came back with a jug of cider and two glasses, a mug of apple juice, and a plateful of thumbprint cookies filled with blueberry jelly. Florence immediately detached herself from Beatrice and sat up with a smile.

  ‘Nothing like cookies to overcome your fear of the Devil,’ said Clara. She poured out the cider, and then she said, ‘You brought a luckybone, I trust?’

  Beatrice reached into her pocket and took out the wishbone that she had saved from the last chicken that she had cooked. Clara held out her hand and they both hooked their little fingers around it.

  ‘One, two, three – what will we see?’ chanted Clara, and they snapped the bone apart. Beatrice had the larger piece, and she shook her head in amazement.

  ‘Every time we do this, I win,’ she said.

  Clara tapped the side of her nose. ‘We witches, they train us to do that from birth. It takes much more skill to lose than it does to succeed. Now, I used the crystal ball last time to look into your future, didn’t I? But only last week my cousin sent me a pack of new fortune-telling cards from London. She claims they are wonderfully exact in predicting what will happen in the months ahead.’

  She pulled out a drawer underneath the low table between them, and produced a cardboard box of cards. They looked like ordinary playing cards, with clubs and diamonds and hearts and spades, and royal cards, too, but each of them had a four-line rhyme printed at the bottom of them.

  ‘They have been newly produced by John Lenthall of Fleet Street,’ said Clara, as she shuffled them. ‘He has produced many types of cards, but these are the first that can tell your fortune. T
here are only forty-eight of them, instead of fifty-two. As your conjuror I am commanded by the Oracle of Delphos to multiply the twelve signs of the zodiac by the four seasons of the year, and no more than that, which means that the four aces have had to be excluded.’

  She laid all forty-eight cards face-down on the table in six rows of eight. Florence stopped pretending to feed Minnie with a thumbprint cookie and watched in fascination.

  Clara said, ‘Now, Beatrice, place your right hand on your left breast and say, “Honi soit qui mal y pense.” Then pick out a card. If you do not wish to reveal what it says, you can return it to the table and choose another, but whatever your lot, that second card must be abided by. You may pick four cards altogether, one for each coming season.’

  ‘Will they say when No-noh is coming home?’ asked Florence.

  ‘They may,’ said Clara, gently. ‘Let us hope so. But most of all they will say what your mother can expect.’

  Beatrice said, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense,’ and picked out a card. It was the seven of hearts, and the rhyme said, Now the seven I’ll maintain, Shews thou hast not lov’d in vain, Thou wilt have the golden prize; But with maids ’tis otherwise.

  She read the rhyme, hesitated, and then placed the card back on the table without telling Clara what it had said. She then picked up another card, and this was the three of clubs. The rhyme said, You who now this three have drawn, Will on cursed Harlots fawn, Women who do get this trey, To their Acts do answer Nay.

  Beatrice passed the card to Clara and said, ‘What does it mean? I’m confused.’

  ‘It means that you will meet women of easy virtue, but you will stand up on their behalf and protect them from being exploited by men.’

  ‘I have been invited to work for a society in London for refractory girls,’ said Beatrice. ‘How could the card have known that?’

  Clara shrugged and smiled. ‘I told you... they are very exact. I read my own fortune with them, and so far everything has come true. I drew the king of hearts, which foretells for women that they will soon be preferred by a very amenable man, and that is exactly what has happened. Two weeks ago I met the new master who will be coming here next month to teach at the school and we took an instant liking to each other.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that? What about Gerald?’

  ‘I believe that once Gerald realizes that I have found happiness, his spirit will leave me. He loved me passionately, after all. But I don’t know how soon this will happen. I also drew that ten of diamonds, which says that I will be wed again, but “none knows when”.’

  Beatrice picked up her next card, the five of diamonds. He who draws the no. five, Where he lives he will thrive, But if drawn by woman-kind, They better luck abroad will find.

  After that, she picked the queen of spades, and this card told her that The Queen of Spades likewise, Shows thee will to riches rise, Women by the same will have, What they both desire and crave.

  ‘I have no wish for riches,’ said Beatrice. ‘I desire and crave only to have Noah back in my arms.’

  ‘If that is what you want, then you shall,’ Clara told her.

  ‘But these are nothing more than cards. How can I believe them?’

  ‘Because they are so much more than cards, Beatrice! They are like signposts, which show you which way you can go. And they are mirrors, too, which reveal to you those qualities that you sometimes fail to see in yourself – how strong you are, how attractive you are, and how you will get what you want only by taking risks and following those signposts wherever they point.’

  Beatrice picked one last card, the two of diamonds. Hast thou drawn the no. two, Thou’lt wed one that is true, But if Woman this shall have, Beware of a fly cunning knave.

  Clara looked at the card and said, ‘Well... be warned by this. Remember Jonathan Shooks.’

  Beatrice looked at Florence, who had stood up now and was wandering around the parlour, showing Minnie some of the strange creatures in Clara’s engravings.

  ‘How could I ever forget him?’ she said.

  *

  After the card-reading, Beatrice and Clara went out into the back yard, and walked around in the sunshine while Florence jumped up and down and threw Minnie into the air, pretending that she was an angel.

  Clara lit a small clay pipe and thoughtfully puffed it as they walked around the apple trees.

  ‘I know you’re frightened, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘And I also understand how much you’re grieving, not only for Noah, but for Francis, too. Grief is a kind of illness from which we never completely recover. But the cards have told you that you have to venture abroad, and that you will one day find happiness. That is not to say that I shan’t miss you. I shall miss you dearly.’

  She wedged her pipe into the crook of the nearest tree, and then she put her arms around Beatrice and held her close, and kissed her on the lips. It was strange to be kissed by a woman whose breath smelled like that of a man, but she knew that she would miss Clara as much as Clara would miss her, and she touched her moon-pale cheek with her fingertips, and kissed her back, and for a long moment they stared into each other’s eyes and shared the pain of understanding that they might never see each other again, except in heaven.

  7

  Beatrice had forgotten how foul the stench was in London’s streets, and she was sure it had grown worse since she was last here. She was thankful when their carriage at last left the narrow cobbled lanes of the City with their kennels overflowing with sewage, and arrived at Windmill Hill, by Moorfields, one of the last grassy spaces left in Shoreditch.

  It was a chilly, fresh morning, with a north-east breeze blowing. All the same, it had rained during the night and the muddy churned-up road outside the meeting house was shoe-deep in wet horse manure.

  ‘It’s so funky!’ complained Florence, as the coachman swung her down from the hackney.

  ‘Ah, you wait till the summer, young lady!’ the coachman grinned, showing his gappy walnut-coloured teeth. ‘You and your dolly will be having to hold your noses!’

  Beatrice climbed down carefully, lifting up her skirts so that they wouldn’t trail into the muck. She gave the coachman his fare of six shillings, and two pennies as a vail. Then she trod with hesitant steps over to the meeting house, as if she were playing hopscotch.

  Francis had brought her here to the Foundery before they had set off to America, to meet some of the church’s ministers. It was a collection of five large pink-brick buildings, just to the north of Bethlem Hospital for lunatics. Originally it had been built as a factory for the casting of brass cannon, but Francis had explained to her that forty years ago a shattering explosion of white-hot metal and steam had killed not only seventeen bystanders but the foundry’s owner. For safety’s sake all munitions-making had afterwards been removed to Woolwich, and eventually the damaged and derelict factory had been taken over by the Nonconformist church.

  Beatrice could see that buildings had been extended since she was last here, and the rooftops had been repaired with new slates. As she approached the maroon-painted front door she could hear children singing from the courtyard at the side.

  She knocked, and the door was opened almost immediately by a smiling young girl with a scrubbed-looking face and a long white apron.

  ‘I am Beatrice Scarlet,’ said Beatrice. ‘The Reverend Parsons is expecting me, I believe.’

  The Reverend Parsons must have heard her, because he appeared in the gloomy hallway behind the young girl, with a loud bray like a horse and a cry of ‘Widow Scarlet! You have reached us safely from across the ocean, thank the Lord! Welcome to Windmill Hill! You are heartily welcome!’

  ‘This is my daughter Florence,’ said Beatrice, and laid her hand on Florence’s shoulder to push her gently down into a curtsey.

  The Reverend Parsons had short-cropped gingery hair and ginger eyebrows. He looked excited to see her, but Beatrice would soon learn that he always looked excited, from morning till night, as if the entire world and every minute
he spent in it was a huge surprise. He was big-bellied, so that he had to leave five or six of his waistcoat buttons undone, and she doubted if he ever managed to button up his black tailcoat at all.

  The smiling young girl stepped outside and directed the coachman to carry Beatrice’s two trunks around to the side of the building. The Reverend Parsons meanwhile ushered Beatrice and Florence inside, and into a large mahogany-panelled drawing room.

  The room was austere, with dark brown curtains and comb-back Windsor chairs, and the only picture hanging on the walls was a large oil painting of Jesus at the pool of Bethesda, healing the sick. But a bright log fire was crackling in the grate, and a tortoiseshell cat was sleeping close beside it, much to Florence’s delight.

  ‘Please, sit,’ said the Reverend Parsons. ‘I am sure you must be extremely weary after so long a voyage. How many days was it?’

  ‘Twenty-seven, because we had some very stormy weather around the south coast of Ireland. One night I was even fearful that we might be run aground.’

  ‘I am a very poor sailor myself,’ smiled the Reverend Parsons. ‘All I can say for my one and only visit to the colonies was that my seasickness helped me to lose a considerable amount of my girth! I am afraid that much of it has been returned to me, though, courtesy of too many Kit-Cats.’ He was referring to the popular mutton pies that could be bought from Christopher Catt’s pie shop in Shire Lane, and which had been a favourite of Beatrice’s father, too.

  It was probably the effect of exhaustion, but Beatrice suddenly had the feeling that she had never left London, and that her life in New Hampshire had been only a dream. If Florence hadn’t been kneeling by the hearth, stroking the cat, and if she hadn’t been carrying around her own neck a silver pendant with a miniature portrait of Noah inside it, which Francis had given her for her last birthday, she could almost have believed that the last two and a half years had never happened.

  The Reverend Parsons lifted his pocket watch out of his waistcoat and sprang open the lid. ‘Goodness, it is almost one o’clock! Mrs Smollett should be here at any moment. She has been running St Mary Magdalene’s refuge for over eighteen months now, and since she has taken it over, it has proven to be a wonderful success. She has arranged gainful employment for many a penitent prostitute, and also for young women who are either abandoned or destitute or whose conduct has caused them to be expelled by their families.’