Scarlet Widow Read online

  Cousin Sarah wouldn’t say if she had also attempted to rub them off with ‘piddle’, and Beatrice didn’t dare suggest it again, but that probably wouldn’t have worked, either. They would just have to wait until they wore off.

  On Thursday afternoon, after a fine rain had finished falling and a weak sun had begun to shine, cousin Sarah asked Beatrice to go with Agnes to the haberdasher’s in the High Street for green silk thread and needles, and then to the barber’s for a pound of orange-scented hair powder.

  Beatrice and Agnes walked through the High Town arm in arm. The street was crowded and the sun was shining so brightly off the wet cobbles that they were dazzled. That was why Beatrice didn’t see Jeremy lurching out of the doorway of the Old Crown tavern and pushing his way through the throng of shoppers towards them. Suddenly, though, he appeared in front of them, with his wig tilted to one side and brown beer stains down the front of his camel-coloured coat. He was so drunk that he kept staggering to one side as if somebody were repeatedly shoving him.

  ‘You! You nose! Thought you were clever, did you, little Mistress Bea-hive, marking that money? The trouble you got me into! I could’ve swung for that if it had been somebody else’s money and not my own mother’s! I could’ve been twisted!’

  Beatrice said, ‘I’m sorry, Jeremy.’

  ‘You’re sorry? You’re sorry? What good to me is sorry? She says she’s going to write me out of her will! What am I going to live on when she croaks? I thought you and I were going to be married! Some wife you turned out to be!’

  ‘Honestly, Jeremy, I didn’t know it was you who was taking it.’

  ‘Who the purple-spotted pig did you think it was? The servants would’ve have been too scared, or too stupid, or both! And my dear demented father wouldn’t know a bender from a button!’

  Agnes pulled Beatrice away from him and said, ‘Leave her alone, Master Minchin. She only did what she thought was right.’

  But Jeremy lurched towards them with his hand raised. He was shouting so loudly and so hoarsely, almost screaming, that shoppers were turning to look at him. Spit was flying from his lips. ‘You know what I should do to you for snitching on me like that? I should cuff you till your nose bleeds! That’s what I should do! A bloody nose for a bloody nose!’

  Agnes tried again to pull Beatrice away, but when she stepped back, Beatrice lost her footing on the cobbles and almost fell over. She was saved, however, by somebody catching her from behind and helping her back up on to her feet again. She turned around and saw to her astonishment that it was Francis Scarlet, the boy who had been staring at her on Sunday morning.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her gently, and when she nodded, too surprised to speak, he turned to Jeremy and said, ‘Don’t you dare to touch her! Do you hear me? Go back to your beer and leave her in peace!’

  Jeremy lurched sideways again and stared at Francis with unfocused eyes. ‘You—’ he slurred. ‘You, you whippersnapper! I shall have you!’

  Francis let go of Beatrice’s arm. He took two steps forward and pushed Jeremy in the chest, very hard, with the heels of both hands. Jeremy lost his balance and fell heavily backwards, on to his shoulder, with his legs flying up in the air. He rolled over into the gutter, which was still running with dirty rainwater, and lay there, stunned, blinking up at the sky.

  Beatrice pressed her hand over her mouth. She didn’t know what to say. Two of Jeremy’s friends had emerged from the Old Crown to find out where he was and when they saw him sprawled in the gutter they hooted with laughter.

  ‘Help me up, you cods’ heads!’ he shouted at them. ‘Help me up!’

  Agnes was laughing, too, but Beatrice said, ‘Oh, no! Oh, this is terrible! He’s never going to forgive me for this.’

  Francis smiled at her and shook his head. The look in his eyes was strangely old for his age. Beatrice could imagine that Jesus had looked at his disciples with the same kind of expression – caring, strong, but infinitely tolerant.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of you always.’

  With that, he turned round and walked off up the hill. Beatrice stood and stared after him until he had disappeared into the crowds of shoppers. Cackling with laughter, Jeremy’s friends had by now heaved him on to his feet and all three of them were zigzagging back across the street to the tavern. Jeremy didn’t even look round at Beatrice and Agnes. He was so drunk he had probably forgotten why he had crossed the street in the first place.

  ‘Well!’ said Agnes, still smirking. ‘I do declare!’

  But Beatrice couldn’t speak. She had the most extraordinary feeling, as if the whole world had begun to revolve slowly around her – clouds, rooftops, trees, shops and people – but that she was standing totally still at its centre, suspended in time. She was deaf to all the noise in the High Street, shoppers chattering to each other and carriage wheels grinding and street traders shouting.

  All she could hear in her head was Francis saying, ‘I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of you always.’

  *

  The next time Francis spoke those words to her, those very same words, was on the day they were married, on Saturday, 14 May 1750, in Geoffrey Scarlet’s parlour over the Swan Tavern in the High Street.

  According to law, their marriage banns had been read three Sundays in a row at St Philip’s church, but they exchanged their vows here, in front of Roger Fulton, justice of the peace, a large, overflowing man with the loudest laugh that Beatrice had ever heard in her life, and all of their friends from the Nonconformist congregation. Beatrice wore her best blue velvet dress and a new lace bonnet.

  Geoffrey Scarlet made a long and complicated speech about devotion, and awakening, which nobody really understood, and then they all sat down to a cold supper of roast meats and pies.

  Of all her relatives, only cousin Sarah came to see her married. None of the others had been ready or able to make the arduous journey from London, and Jeremy had gone late the year before to join his brothers in Manchester, where they had started up a shipping business to the East Indies. Jeremy had forgiven her long ago for the telltale stains on his fingers, but Beatrice suspected that he had never forgiven her for not responding to his advances.

  Cousin Sarah came up to her and took hold of her hands. ‘I shall miss you, Beatrice. The house will be very empty without you, especially now that Roderick has gone, God bless his poor demented soul.’

  She paused, and then she added, ‘I have been sharp with you sometimes, and expected much from you, but believe me I have grown to love you as my own daughter. There are fifty-two guineas left of your father’s proceeds, and you shall have them, as my wedding gift.’

  Beatrice didn’t know if she should thank her or tell her how parsimonious she was – but it was her wedding day and she was so happy that she couldn’t find it in herself to be resentful. She kissed cousin Sarah’s cheek and for the first time she was aware of how withered she had become, and how bony she was, as if all of those years of being so mean-spirited had dried her out.

  ‘God thanks you, cousin Sarah,’ she said. ‘And I thank you for taking care of me.’

  *

  That night, when Beatrice came into the bedroom in her long white nightgown, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders, she found Francis standing by the window, staring at his own reflection. The spare bedchamber over The Swan overlooked the hills behind the city, so that the window was utterly black.

  He turned round. Since she had first seen him on that Sunday morning all those years ago he had grown very thin, with a long, chiselled face and a straight, pointed nose. He put her in mind of one of those bony, attenuated saints painted by El Greco, especially because he still had those dark, compelling eyes. His eyes were both pious and understanding, but somehow sad, and when at last he had come to admit that he had loved her, ever since he first caught sight of her, she had been unable to resist the way he looked at her, as if he could see right into her heart – what troubl
ed her and what aroused her.

  Tonight, though, his expression was unexpectedly rueful.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked him. ‘I haven’t done anything to upset you, have I, my darling? We’ve been married for less than half a day!’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s me. I have been a poor husband to you already.’

  She came up to him and clung on to the sleeve of his nightshirt, frowning. ‘Francis, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I have done something without consulting you, because I was afraid that you would try to dissuade me. I’m truly sorry. I should have shown more courage, and more belief in you. But it is something that I have been burning to do for years now, and now that I have found a wife I believe that it is the right course for me to take.’

  ‘Francis, what on earth is it? Tell me! You’re making me feel frightened now!’

  He gently wound one of her ringlets around his finger, around and around. ‘I have booked us passage to America. There is a small community in New Hampshire which is in need of stated supply – that is, a temporary pastor – and I have agreed to go.’

  ‘America?’ exclaimed Beatrice. ‘Oh, Francis! What have you done?’

  ‘If you really don’t want us to go, my dearest, I’m sure I could find a ministry here, in Birmingham.’

  But then Beatrice thought of the time that she had been standing at her bedroom window, watching the sun go down behind the hills, and she remembered the feeling that one day she would follow it and find happiness.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I am your wife now, Francis, and where you go, I shall go, too.’

  Ten

  ‘Goody Scarlet! Goody Scarlet! It’s the pigs!’

  Beatrice looked out of her kitchen window to see Mary running along the back fence where the sunflowers grew. She set down the large bowl of flummery that she had been stirring and went to the door, just as Mary came bursting into the hallway. Mary’s cheeks were bright red and her mob cap was askew.

  ‘It’s the pigs, Goody Scarlet! All of them! Dead as doornails!’

  ‘God preserve us,’ said Beatrice. She followed Mary outside and hurried along the garden path to the pig-pen, which stood at the side of the house. It was surrounded by a waist-high wooden fence made of sharpened stakes and against the wall stood a lean-to shed crammed with straw for the pigs to sleep in at night and keep themselves warm in the winter.

  Mary had gone out to feed the pigs only a few minutes before, but her wooden pail of Indian corn and potatoes and turnip peelings was now tipped out across the grass. Lying motionless on the rough dry mud were five fully grown Berkshires, a boar and four sows, their eyes still open but with blowflies already crawling in and out of their mouths and into their snouts. With their black bodies and white blazes they looked like five stranded whales. The ripe smell of pigs was overwhelming.

  Beatrice unlatched the gate and went inside. Gathering up the hem of her plain blue linen skirt, she crouched down beside the nearest sow. She ran her hand along her sides and lifted up her hind legs, but she couldn’t see any obvious injuries. She looked up to Mary, and said, ‘Here, help me turn her over’.

  With a complicated thump, the two of them heaved the four-hundred-pound sow on to her left flank. The blowflies rose up in an irritated cloud, but quickly settled again. Beatrice examined the sow’s side and back, but still she couldn’t find any wounds or lesions or animal bites. She stood up and went across to the other four pigs. There appeared to be no marks on them, either. In any case, she thought, even if they had been stabbed or beaten with cudgels or bitten by some wild animal, it was unlikely that all five of them would have died without setting up a squealing that she would have been able to hear from the kitchen, or even the parlour. And if they had been shot, surely she would have heard the crack of the muskets?

  ‘What do you think did for them, Goody Scarlet?’ asked Mary. She was a plump, gingery girl with curly ringlets, only fifteen years old, although she had been helping out in the Scarlet household since she was twelve.

  ‘I can’t tell, Mary, not just by looking at them,’ said Beatrice. ‘They have no marks on them, do they? And if somebody has deliberately killed them, why did they do it? We have no enemies that I know of. Who would do such a thing to spite us? And if it was Indians looking for food, why didn’t they carry them away – or drive them away while they were still alive? That would have been easier, wouldn’t it?’

  It occurred to her that it might well have been Indians, but Indians who were seeking revenge rather than provisions. The Penacook tribe still bitterly resented the English settlers for driving them off the land that had once been theirs, and they would raid the village every so often. If that were the case, though, they would have been much more likely to enter the house and kidnap Beatrice and Mary for ransom, and maybe take little Noah, too, who was still asleep.

  She didn’t mention this thought to Mary, however. The poor girl was upset enough as it was.

  ‘What can we do now?’ asked Mary. ‘Should we butcher them? We should butcher them, shouldn’t we, before the meat becomes maggoty? It’s so hot today.’

  ‘No, Mary,’ said Beatrice. ‘Not until we know what killed them. It could have been the scour, or another infection much worse. If we were to eat their meat, we could suffer the same fate as them. When Francis returns I’ll have to see what he decides. My Lord, he’s going to be mortified. We paid more than two pounds ten shillings a head for these poor creatures.’

  There was nothing more that she could do for the moment, not without discussing it with Francis. If the pigs had been the victims of some disease, she had no idea what it could have been, although she had treated many sick pigs in the past. Pigs with long-term illnesses would visibly waste away, but it would take them weeks, if not months, before they died. Acutely sick pigs would invariably vomit or suffer from copious diarrhoea.

  She went back out through the gate, with Mary following her. As she was latching the gate, she glimpsed a bright reflected sparkle in the boar’s open mouth, as sharp as a star.

  ‘Wait, Mary,’ she said, and went back into the pen. She bent over, and when she pried the boar’s lips open wider, she saw that there was a small triangle of broken mirror stuck to its thick grey tongue. She carefully picked it out, wiping it on her apron, and then she held it up so that Mary could see it.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Mary.

  ‘It’s a little piece of looking-glass. I can’t think what it was doing in his mouth. Surely he wouldn’t have tried to eat it.’

  ‘Oh, my Lord,’ said Mary, and pressed her hands together as if she were praying.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘You know what they say, Goody Scarlet, about a piece of broken mirror on your tongue. That’s the Devil’s Communion.’

  ‘The Devil’s Communion?’ said Beatrice. ‘I’ve never heard of that before.’ She went over to one of the sows and opened up her mouth, too. Right at the back of her tongue she saw another shard of mirror. She left it where it was and examined the other sows. All of them had fragments of mirror on their tongues, of different shapes and sizes, some of them curved, some of them thin and pointed like knife blades. Whatever mirror they had come from, it must have been smashed with considerable violence.

  ‘Satan’s work, this is,’ said Mary. ‘The Devil makes mock of the holy communion by placing a piece of a broken looking-glass in your mouth instead of a wafer. Your own vanity cuts your tongue, see, so that you drink your own blood instead of the blood of Christ.’

  ‘And who told you that?’ asked Beatrice. She came out of the pen again and fastened the gate. She was trying to keep calm but her heart was beating fast beneath her stays and she was feeling very hot and breathless.

  ‘The pastor himself told me,’ said Mary.

  ‘You mean the Reverend Scarlet? My husband?’

  ‘Yes, Goody Scarlet. When I was much younger. He said that it was to teach me not to be too proud of my appearance.’

  A ruffe
d grouse suddenly burst out of the orchard, off to their left, squittering in panic as if it had been disturbed by Satan himself, loping away through the apple trees.

  Eleven

  Francis was much later than she had expected in returning home, and the clock in the parlour had chimed eight before Beatrice heard his shay rattling and squeaking down the rutted drive. The sky had turned mauve and it was still very warm, although over to the west an ominous bank of black cloud was building up. Scores of brown bats were flying around the house to catch the insects that were rising up into the evening air.

  She came out with a lantern. Francis was backing Kingdom into the carriage-house so that he could unfasten his harness and lead him into the paddock beside the orchard. It had been a long journey from Bedford, twenty-two miles, and both Francis and Kingdom were covered in a fine whitish dust, like ghosts.

  ‘Thank the Lord you’re back,’ she told him.

  He looked at her quizzically.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.

  ‘You’ll have to come and see for yourself, my darling.’

  ‘No, tell me. Noah’s not sick, is he?’

  ‘Noah’s quite well. It’s the pigs. Mary went to feed them this morning and found every one of them dead.’

  ‘Dead? How? What’s happened to them? How can they all be dead?’

  He led Kingdom to the paddock and then accompanied Beatrice around the back of the house to the pig-pen. He stood staring at the dead pigs for a few seconds without saying a word. Then he said, ‘Please, my dear,’ and held out his hand for the lantern. He swung open the gate and went inside, shining the light over each of the animals in turn.

  ‘They don’t have any injuries, or at least none that I can see,’ said Beatrice. ‘But every one of them has a piece of broken looking-glass on its tongue. Mary said that when she was younger you told her a story about such a thing. The Devil’s Communion, that’s what she said.’