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.’
‘Did you remove them?’
‘I took out just the one piece, for you to see.’
‘You didn’t take it into the house, I hope?’
‘Yes, why? Did I do wrong?’
‘You weren’t to know, my dearest. But we must remove it from the house at once. It is a piece of Satan’s mirror, through which the Devil can see us as clearly as we can see ourselves.’
He looked around at the pigs and shook his head. ‘This is plainly the work of some witch.’
‘A witch? You really think so?’
‘Believe me, Bea, Satan is still doing everything he can to prevent us from establishing our faith in this country, and as usual he is using weak and immoral people as his instruments. We were discussing it only today, at the parish meeting, and trying to decide what steps we could take to defend ourselves.’
‘But why would anybody kill our pigs? What would be the point of it?’
‘I really don’t know, my dearest. Perhaps it’s because I’m a pastor. Shake the roots, Satan surmises, and the whole tree will tremble and all of its fruit fall to the ground and spoil.’
‘You don’t really think it could have been a witch?’ asked Beatrice. ‘I mean, look what happened in Salem. So many poor women were hanged for witchery but every one of them was shown in the end to be innocent.’
‘I know, yes,’ said Francis. ‘But this is quite different. What happened in Salem was common hysteria. There was no material evidence, only hearsay.
‘But here, look, we have the material evidence lying before us, and nothing could be more material than five dead pigs. They have no marks on them, have they? They show no sign of sickness. But they all have these pieces of looking-glass on their tongues. What other conclusion can we come to?’
They stood for a few moments longer looking at the pigs and then walked back along the garden path. Beatrice went into the kitchen and Francis followed her. ‘So what can we possibly do?’ she asked him. ‘If this person is so determined to do us harm, witch or not, how can we protect ourselves?’
Francis went over to the kitchen table where Beatrice had left the triangular piece of mirror. ‘Is this it?’ he asked. He bent over it so that he could see his eye reflected in it, but he didn’t touch it. ‘Our first urgency is to bury this outside so that Satan is unable to see where we are or what we are doing. Once that is done, I will bless this house and pray to the Lord to be our shield against anyone who wishes us evil.’
He picked up a damp grey cotton rag from the side of the washtub and wrapped it around the piece of mirror. He took it outside, with Beatrice carrying the lantern for him so that he could see his way. It was completely dark now because the clouds had rolled right over to the eastern horizon, so that no stars were visible. Using the garden trowel, Francis dug a hole in the earth next to the paddock fence and dropped the piece of mirror into it. Kingdom came up to the fence and whinnied, as if he were asking them what they were doing.
‘There,’ said Francis. ‘We have blindfolded his Satanic Majesty, at least for now. Tomorrow morning early I will ask Jubal to help us burn the pigs to ashes.’
‘Burn them? Can’t we just bury them?’
‘The blowflies will have laid their eggs in them, and their larvae will hatch, and when those larvae in turn become blowflies they will carry the Devil’s infection in their spittle. If they enter the house and settle on our food, then we could be infected with it, too.’
‘What about the witch?’ asked Beatrice.
‘I will make discreet enquiries of the men in the village, and perhaps I can ask you to do the same among the women. I know how much they like to gossip. Maybe some goodwife has overheard her neighbour spreading slanders about us, or seen her behaving strangely – brewing up unusual potions or talking to dogs or suchlike.’
‘It’s not someone we know, surely? I can’t think of anybody who would wish us ill.’
‘I’m keeping an open mind, Bea. There are several women in this village who are not malevolent in themselves but have the weakness of character to lay them open to being suborned by Satan. Goody Merrow, for one, or the Widow Belknap. I passed the Widow Belknap’s cottage last week and heard her singing to her goat. A love song, too, as if that on its own were not profanity enough.’
Once they were back in the kitchen Beatrice patted some of the dust from the shoulders of his coat and said, ‘Why don’t you change out of those clothes, my dear, and I will serve up our supper? Go in to see little Noah, too. He was out in the garden most of the day, picking strawberries for me. I think he ate as many as he picked, but we have more than enough for our meal tonight.’
She stoked the wood-burning Franklin stove to warm up the big iron pot of chicken stew that she had made that afternoon, while Francis went up to their chamber. She could hear him creaking about upstairs before he eventually came down wearing his banyan, an ankle-length cotton gown with a blue diamond pattern on it, which he usually wore in the evening, or when walking through the orchard seeking inspiration for his sermons.
‘Did you see Noah?’ asked Beatrice as they sat down at the table.
Francis nodded. ‘He is a blessing from God, Bea. Such an angelic little boy. I do not know if I could ever forgive myself if some harm were to come to him because of me.’
‘No harm will come to him, Francis, not so long as I am here to watch over him, I promise you.’
‘I don’t know, Bea. It’s not just our pigs. At our meeting today, I heard of many disturbing things that have been happening in our parish lately. John Mechison said that in Dover five newborn infants have died within the past three weeks for no accountable reason. Several orchards in Ipswich have been stricken by some blight that blackens all of their fruit, both apples and pears, and in Londonderry dozens of cattle have fallen sick. It is almost as if the very air we breathe has become tainted.’
He looked across the table at her, and in the candlelight Beatrice saw something in his eyes that she had never seen before, even when they first set sail for New England. Uncertainty.
She laid her hand on his, and then he laid his other hand on top of hers, but it seemed to her that he was seeking reassurance for himself, rather than for her.
‘I confess that I am frightened,’ he said. ‘I know that God will shield us, but I wish I knew against what. It is the unknown that unsettles me the most.’
Beatrice ladled chicken and asparagus and potatoes into his bowl. Then she cut a quarter of fresh rye loaf for him and passed it over, with the brown stone jar of butter.
Francis clasped his hands together, closed his eyes and bowed his head. ‘Dear Lord,’ he said, ‘we thank Thee for this day and for this sustenance. We thank Thee for all of Thy blessings and humbly ask for Thy deliverance from whatever evil is arrived at our door. Amen.’
*
That night it was so hot and airless in their bedchamber that they left the window wide open. Beatrice was exhausted and her back ached from planting nine long rows of beans and cutting asparagus, but she found it impossible to sleep. She couldn’t help thinking about the dead pigs with the fragments of mirror stuck to their tongues, and who might have given them the Devil’s Communion. At the same time, however, she couldn’t help asking herself how such a communion could possibly have killed them.
Beatrice believed in God and Satan, but her father had brought her up always to question the inexplicable. Just because you can’t work out how something is done, my little Bea, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s magic.
She was reminded of St Luke’s account in the Bible of the Gadarene swine – when Jesus exorcized a man possessed by demons by transferring them into a herd of pigs, which then all rushed over a cliff and drowned in a lake. Maybe the slaughter of their pigs had been a deliberate mockery of Jesus’s demonstration of His power over evil. But unlike the Gadarene swine, she could not see any reason why their pigs had died, apart from witchcraft, or imagine who might have killed them.
For all she knew, that same person might be creeping around their house even now, in the darkness, carrying a bagful of broken mirrors. In the morning, she might find all of their geese and chickens dead, or Kingdom lying dead in his paddock.
She listened, but all she could hear was an owl hooting and the endless scissoring of insects.
*
She had only just fallen asleep when she was woken up again. Francis had reached across the bed in the darkness and lifted one side of her nightgown. She opened her eyes, but she didn’t move, and she continued to breathe steadily, as if she were still sleeping.
He cupped her right breast in his hand and gently tugged at her nipple, which stiffened and knurled. Then he ran his fingers down her side, making her shiver when he reached her hip. But still she lay motionless and still she kept on breathing deep and slow. She is not dead, but sleepeth.
He parted her thighs and lifted himself up so that he was kneeling between them. Then, with a struggle, he reached behind him and pulled his nightshirt over his head and dropped it on to the floor. She couldn’t see him in the darkness but she felt him as he leaned forward and guided himself into her. She was warm and slippery by now, and he slid in easily, until she felt the crispness of his hair pressing against hers.
‘Bea?’ he said, so close that she could feel his breath on her face.
‘What is it, Francis?’
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I love you till death.’
She reached her arms around him and kissed his nose before she found his lips.
‘And I you, my dearest,’ she told him. ‘And I you.’