When they went through to the Buckley children’s bedchamber they found that Nicholas Buckley was there, too, his clothes still dusty from travelling back from Durham. He was a small, dark, grave-looking man with eyebrows that met in the middle and a hawk-like nose. He was standing close to Judith as she gently patted little Apphia’s forehead with a muslin cloth.
Both Apphia and Tristram were breathing in shallow, clogged-up gasps. Now and then one of them would stop breathing altogether and everybody in the bedchamber would fall silent, waiting anxiously for them to start up again. Goody Jenkins was sobbing quietly in the kitchen. She sounded like a kitten mewing for milk.
‘Where’s Doctor Merrydew?’ asked Francis.
‘The good doctor took his leave of us twenty minutes ago,’ said Nicholas Buckley. ‘He said that he had done his best, but there was no other cure that he could think of and he was late for his supper. That’s why we sent for you.’
Francis looked down at Apphia and Tristran. ‘I thank you for your faith in me, Nicholas, but I have to confess that my prayers have done no more good than Doctor Merrydew’s fumitory smoke.’
‘Please,’ Judith begged him. ‘I could not bear to lose them. Please.’
‘Of course I will pray for them again,’ said Francis. ‘I have to tell you, though, that for you to lose these two dear children may be the will of God. Sometimes, for no reason that we can understand, He wants them back in heaven almost as soon as He has sent them here.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that I’m being punished?’ asked Judith.
Francis shook his head. ‘There are many reasons why the Lord calls children back before their time, Goody Buckley, and it is not for us to know them all.’
Beatrice glanced at him. Considering that Judith was asking him obliquely if she should blame herself for having Apphia and Tristram as a result of her adulterous affair with John Starling, she thought that his words were deeply kind and forgiving. She knew plenty of other pastors who would have told her that she was a trull and that to lose her two children was all that she deserved.
Francis stood between the children’s cribs and clasped his hands together.
‘Dear Lord,’ he said, ‘I implore of Thee yet again to grant both Apphia and Tristram a longer life on this earth, that they may fulfil their duties to Thee and bring joy to Thy servants Nicholas and Judith. We ask Thee in all humility to show Thy sympathy and generosity and spare them from death this day, and for many days to come. Amen.’
He stepped back. Nicholas and Judith both repeated ‘amen’ under their breath, but it was clear from the stricken look on their faces that they didn’t believe that God would respond. Tears were streaming down Judith’s cheeks and she had her hand clasped tightly over her mouth to stop herself from sobbing out loud.
Beatrice felt a tightness in her throat, too. She wished now that she had argued much more forcefully with Doctor Merrydew and insisted that he give the children an infusion of lungwort instead of filling their bedchamber with fumitory, but it was too late now. Even if Doctor Merrydew had any lungwort, which she doubted, Apphia and Tristram were too close to death for it to do them any good. It would take at least an hour to prepare an infusion, and the children were too sick to chew the leaves, which were very slimy.
Francis started to recite Psalm 103: ‘Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love.’
As he did so, however, Beatrice heard voices in the hall, where six or seven goodwives were still crowded, and after a moment Jonathan Shooks appeared in the doorway. He was wearing his light grey linen tailcoat and his light grey wig, and was carrying a brown leather satchel. He looked across at Beatrice as he came in and gave her a quick, knowing smile, as if they shared some secret, but then immediately went over to the children’s cribs.
‘I can see that their condition is very much worse, Goody Buckley.’
Judith nodded, but she was too upset to be able to say anything.
Francis spoke up. ‘Mr Shooks! This is Goodman Buckley, Mr Shooks – the children’s father. Nicholas, this is Mr Jonathan Shooks—’
He paused, and then added, ‘Mr Shooks claims to have some special talent for curing the sick. Which is why, I presume, he has returned here this evening.’
Jonathan Shooks held out his hand to Nicholas Buckley. ‘I am truly sorry that I have had to make your acquaintance under such distressing circumstances, sir, but I assure you that I have come here with the intention of doing good.’
‘Can you save our children, sir?’ asked Nicholas. His lower lip was quivering.
‘I can only try. The Reverend Scarlet doubts my abilities, I’m afraid. But I will tell you what I told him, that I have travelled almost all around the world and I have learned that the Devil manifests himself in different forms wherever you go. To beat the Devil, sir, you have to know what shape he has taken on. The Devil in New Hampshire bears little resemblance to the Devil you knew in England, just as the plants and animals here are different and the Indians speak languages of which we know nothing and observe rituals we cannot comprehend.’
‘I am not at all sure that I understand you,’ said Nicholas. His voice was tight-throated with emotion. ‘All I ask is that Apphia and Tristram do not die.’
‘If I may have a brief word with you in private,’ said Jonathan Shooks. ‘Meanwhile, Goody Buckley, if you would be so kind as to bring a full kettle to the boil.’
Beatrice asked, ‘What are you intending to do, Mr Shooks?’ She didn’t want to say that the children were probably past saving, not in front of the Buckleys.
‘I am not making any promises, Goody Scarlet,’ said Jonathan Shooks. Again he gave her that amused, conspiratorial look, almost as if they had once shared a bed together without anybody else knowing. ‘However, I will do my utmost to dismiss what possesses them.’
He left the room. Nicholas Buckley gave his wife a reassuring kiss on the cheek, and squeezed her hand, and then followed him.
Beatrice went back to the children’s cribs. Their breathing was even harsher now and little Apphia’s lips were a pale turquoise. Judith went to the kitchen to put a kettle on the stove. When she returned she came and stood close to Beatrice and looked down at her children with infinite sadness in her eyes.
‘This man, this Jonathan Shooks, whoever he is – can he really cure them?’
‘We don’t know, Judith,’ said Francis. ‘But if he can, it will only be with God’s approval.’
Beatrice said nothing. She didn’t want to crush Judith’s hopes by saying no, she didn’t believe that Apphia and Tristram could be saved, but neither did she want to raise them by saying yes.
After two or three minutes Jonathan Shooks and Nicholas Buckley returned. Judith Buckley looked at her husband as if to ask him what they had talked about, but Nicholas simply shook his head to show her that he didn’t want to discuss it. Jonathan Shooks appeared very calm and confident. He opened his leather satchel and took out six or seven thin pinewood sticks, wrapped in paper.
‘Is the kettle boiled, Goody Buckley?’ he asked. ‘If so, please bring me two bowls of hot water, as quick as you can.’
When Judith Buckley had gone back to the kitchen he unwrapped the sticks, and Beatrice saw that they were Chinese fire inch-sticks, which her father had sometimes used for lighting his pipe. Judith returned with two white china bowls filled with steaming water, which Jonathan Shooks put down on the three-legged stool beside the children’s cribs.
He used one of the candles beside the cribs to lit the inch-sticks, one after the other, so that they flared up brightly, crackling as they burned and giving off pungent yellow smoke.
‘This is the fire that the Devil fears, the Devil in the woods,’ he recited, as if he were talking to himself. ‘This is the smoke that makes the Devil choke, the Devil in the trees.’
After each inch-stick had burned down about halfway he dropped them into the bowls of hot water, three inch-sticks in each one. They spluttered out and when they had done so he stirred the water with his fingertip.
‘This is the brew that the Devil cannot swallow. It will catch in his throat so that he will run away to seek out fresh water and his minions will follow. Begone, Devil. Begone and never return!’
Again he stirred the bowls of water with his fingertip, but this time he was testing it to make sure that it had cooled down. ‘Goody Buckley,’ he said, ‘please pick up your daughter and seat her on your lap. She must drink this water to clear her lungs of the Devil’s contagion.’
Judith Buckley did as he asked her and lifted Apphia out of her crib. Apphia’s arms and legs were as disjointed as a doll’s and her head flopped forward, her blonde curls damp with perspiration. Jonathan Shooks carefully cradled her head in his left hand, tilting it back a little while he poured the inch-stick water between her lips, one sip at a time.
It seemed to Beatrice that it took almost an hour for him to empty the bowl, but it was probably no more than five or ten minutes. Apphia spluttered a little after she had finished it, but Jonathan Shooks patted her on the back and she took several deep breaths. Her lungs were still crackling with fluid, and she still didn’t open her eyes, but she was alive.
Judith laid her back in her crib and picked up Tristram. Jonathan Shooks repeated the procedure with him, patiently tipping the second bowl of inch-stick water into his mouth, a little at a time, until that was empty, too.
When he had finished, Jonathan Shooks looked at Beatrice again, but this time his expression was much more of a challenge. Now we’ll see who can make the Devil turn tail, Goody Scarlet, your sainted husband or me.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Nicholas.
Jonathan Shooks stood up. ‘There’s nothing more that we can do tonight except wait until your children show signs of recovery. I shall return at first light and give them more fire-stick water, and then again around noon tomorrow. But they should be much improved by then.’
‘I shall pray for them, too,’ put in Francis. Beatrice went over and stood beside him to show her support. He put his arm around her shoulders and smiled at her, but she could tell that he was upset. Jonathan Shooks had come into the Buckley home with his incantations and his inch-sticks and completely undermined Francis’s authority in front of his own parishioners.
*
Jonathan Shooks left them, climbing into his hooded calash so that Samuel could drive him off into the darkness, with only a dimly flickering coach-lamp to light his way. Francis and Beatrice stayed for another half-hour, but since the Buckley twins both seemed to be breathing more easily and had stopped their spasmodic twitching, they decided to leave and to call back the following morning.
As Beatrice went to the front door Judith caught at her sleeve.
‘Thank you and the Reverend Scarlet for being so kind,’ she said. ‘I’m sure that the pastor’s prayers have helped just as much as Mr Shooks’s remedy.’
‘Well, we shall see,’ said Beatrice. She paused, and then she said, ‘Do you know what it was that your husband and Mr Shooks spoke of, before Mr Shooks treated them?’
‘I asked Nicholas but he would not tell me. Perhaps he will when the twins are well again. If they get well again, please God. Perhaps Mr Shooks was warning him not to hold out too much hope.’
‘Bea!’ called Francis out of the darkness. Ambrose Cutler had brought his wagon around so that he could drive them home.
Beatrice called back, ‘Coming, Francis!’ There was nothing more she needed to say to Judith, although she gave her one of those looks that women share when they accept that they have to be patient – but only in the certain knowledge that they will eventually get their own way.
*
‘So how did Shooks expect those children to be cured with nothing more than hot water and inch-sticks?’ asked Francis, tossing down his quill-pen.
They were sitting in their parlour after supper. Beatrice was finishing a sampler while Francis was trying to write this Sunday’s sermon. His theme was ‘how to appeal to God’s mercy’, but Beatrice noticed that he had fiercely crossed out almost as many lines as he had written.
‘My dearest, I have no idea,’ she told him. ‘We don’t even know if they will be cured yet, do we? For all we know, they could have passed away by now, God forbid.’
‘I know it’s uncharitable of me to say so, but I really dislike that man,’ said Francis. ‘He has such a smugness about him. Whenever he walks into a room, he makes me feel as if I’m twelve years old and that I have no understanding of religion at all. I don’t like the way he looks at you, either.’
‘I can’t say that I’ve noticed.’
‘Well, it’s salacious. That’s the only way that I can describe it.’
‘Why, Francis! I do believe you’re jealous!’
*
A few minutes after nine o’clock Francis announced that he was going upstairs to bed. Beatrice told him that she had to bring up some washing from the back yard that Mary had forgotten, but that she wouldn’t be long in joining him.
There was very little washing hanging up on the line, only two shirts and some of Noah’s clouts, and once she had collected them under her arm Beatrice went to the stable, where Kingdom’s body was still lying on its side in the straw.
He looked stiff and strange, with his legs sticking out straight, like a horse that her father had turned into one of his wooden animals. His stomach, however, was hugely swollen and he was beginning to smell cloying and sweet. She knelt down and used one of Noah’s clouts to gather up some of the diarrhoea-caked straw from under his tail. Then she did the same for the straw that was covered in his dry green vomit.
Holding up her lantern, she peeled back his lips and looked into his mouth. Underneath his tongue and between his back teeth she discovered six or seven dark green needles, although they were so well chewed that it was difficult to tell what they were. She picked these out and wrapped them up, too.
She looked down at Kingdom for the last time. Francis had instructed Jubal and Caleb to cremate him at the end of the field the next day, to destroy any traces of satanic infection, in the same way that they had cremated the pigs. It seemed as if, day by day, their secure and happy lives were going up in smoke, although she had no idea who could bear them such ill-will. She was seriously fearful that one of the family might be next, either Francis or herself, or even little Noah.
She walked briskly back across the yard to the house. She had to will herself not to break into a run, for the night all around her was black and noisy with the grunts and screams of nighthawks.
*
Just as dawn was beginning to lighten the sky outside their window, Francis turned towards her and slipped his hand up underneath her thin linen nightgown. She was already awake but she had been lying still, thinking about Apphia and Tristram and how Kingdom had collapsed between the shafts of their shay.
‘Francis—’ she said, but he had cupped his hand around her left breast and was gently rolling her nipple between finger and thumb, until it stiffened.
‘Francis—’ she repeated, more insistently, as he dragged up her nightgown and tried to turn her over on to her back. Her mind was too filled with questions and anxiety to think about making love.
‘I need you, Bea,’ he said hoarsely. It didn’t sound like a demand. It was more of a plea for help.
‘Francis, please,’ she said. As he lifted himself over her, however, she stopped trying to resist him and lay back on the pillow and parted her thighs so that he could kneel between them. He was her husband, after all, and if he needed her, then how could she deny him? He was only showing her how much he loved her.
She closed her eyes as he entered her. He pushed himself into her as far as he could go and leaned forward to kiss her. He kissed her again and again, but his lips were very dry and rough and his breath smelled of the onions he had eaten yesterday evening. She turned her face away and closed her eyes, although he continued to kiss her neck.
‘What would I do, Bea?’ he asked her. He was pushing himself into her again and again, unusually hard and unusually quick, and was starting to pant. ‘I don’t know how I could live without you.’
In spite of his exertions, she could feel that he was beginning to soften. He slipped out of her, and although he managed to cram himself back inside her again, using his fingers, it was hopeless. After two or three more pushes he lost his erection altogether and he was gone. He rolled off her and dropped heavily on to the bed beside her.
‘Francis,’ she said, stroking the stubble on his chin. ‘Please don’t feel badly, my love. You have so much to worry about apart from making love.’
‘It’s that Jonathan Shooks,’ said Francis. He pulled at his softened penis in frustration, stretching it up as if he wanted to strangle it for letting him down.
‘Don’t let him concern you, Francis. It amuses him to taunt people, you know that.’
‘It’s no use, Bea! I can’t stop seeing his face, even when I close my eyes! The way he smiles at me, so self-satisfied, as if he’s a personal friend of God and chats to Him intimately – while I can do nothing more than call out to Him from the next room, so to speak, through prayer, and only hope that He can hear me.’
He paused for breath, and then he said, much more quietly, ‘Shooks makes me think the most unchristian of thoughts.’
‘Tell me, Francis. If this is affecting you so much, I have the right to know what it is.’
Francis bit his lip. ‘I found myself hoping that the Buckley children would not survive, so that it would prove to the whole village that Jonathan Shooks is nothing but a charlatan. Can you believe that I allowed such a thought to enter my head?’
‘Oh, Francis. You shouldn’t let him trouble you so! He is very much travelled, very experienced, and he has a very bold way about him. But you are just as strong as he is, and you are true to your beliefs. If he is nothing but a boaster, then God will eventually reveal him for what he is.’
‘I don’t know. What disturbs me about him most of all is that he might be much more skilled at dealing with the Devil than I am. He hasn’t shaken my belief in God, Bea, but he has shaken my belief in myself.’
Beatrice pulled down his nightshirt to cover him up and then drew the sheets over him, up to his neck, and kissed him.
‘It’s still very early,’ she said. ‘Hold me in your arms and let us sleep a little more. Try not to think any more about Jonathan Shooks. I know you think that his presence belittles you, but perhaps he will prove himself to be your ally rather than your enemy.’
*
Beatrice slept for another half-hour. A little after five o’clock she gently disengaged herself from Francis’s arms and eased herself out of bed. He was deeply asleep now and softly snoring. She went to the window and drew back the crewel-work drapes, which she had embroidered herself. The morning sun was casting long shadows across the paddock where Kingdom had grazed, until yesterday.
She felt sad, but this new day also made her feel more determined. If she could find the time, she had the dried-out traces of Kingdom’s illness to examine, as well as the tarry samples from Henry Mendum’s field. Her father had often analysed his customers’ vomit, or their urine or their stools, to discover what they might have eaten or drunk to make them fall ill, and she was fairly confident that she could do the same from the evidence that she had collected.
She took off her mob cap and shook her dark hair loose. She crossed her arms in front of her, grasping her nightgown, and she was just about to lift it off when she saw one of the long shadows in the paddock detach itself, amoeba-like, from the rest of the shadows and move across the grass.
She could see now that it wasn’t a shadow at all but the figure in the long brown cloak that she had seen yesterday, standing at the end of the driveway. It paused for a moment, as if it were staring up at her window. Then, using its staff as if it were poling a flat-bottomed boat, it quickly walked away and disappeared underneath the trees. As it did so, she heard a bird screeching.
Beatrice stayed by the window for over half a minute, wondering who the figure was and if it would reappear. She turned around and looked at Francis. She considered waking him up, but now that the figure had gone there was really no point to it, and he needed his sleep.
She turned back to the window but all she could see was Mary, walking up the driveway in her apron and flappy yellow bonnet. She could hear Noah singing in his crib, as he almost always did when he first opened his eyes in the morning. It was time to get dressed and go downstairs and set her dough for baking today’s bread.
*
By the time she came down to the kitchen Mary had already taken Noah from his crib and changed him, and was feeding him bread soaked in milk. He bounced up and down in his baby chair when he saw her and cried, ‘Mama!’ so that a wet lump of bread dropped out of his mouth and on to his smock.
‘Come on, Noah!’ Beatrice chided him. ‘Don’t be such a messy puppy !’ She went over to the hutch to fetch a mixing bowl. She usually had her own breakfast much later, about ten o’clock, after she had finished her baking and any other early chores that had to be attended to, such as mending and scouring the pewter and preserving the pears that she and Mary had collected from the orchard.
On the hutch beside her mixing bowls she saw a small brown paper package, tightly tied with hairy string and sealed with blobs of green wax.
‘Mary?’ she asked, holding it up. ‘Where did this come from?’
Mary wiped Noah’s mouth and turned around. ‘Oh, that – I don’t know, Goody Scarlet. I found it on the front step when I came in. I don’t know who could have left it, but you’ll see that it has your name on it.’
Beatrice turned the package over. On one side of it Beatrice Scarlet was written in a scrawly copperplate hand. That in itself was very unusual, since most of the letters and packages she received were addressed to The Reverend Francis Scarlet, His Wife. She shook it. It made a dull rattling sound, but she couldn’t begin to guess what was in it, so she took a knife out of the cutlery drawer and cut the string.
Inside the brown paper wrapping there was a plain cardboard box, and when she opened it she found a teardrop-shaped glass bottle with a triangular glass stopper.
She lifted the bottle up to the light. There was no label on it, but it was filled with an amber-coloured liquid.
‘What is it?’ asked Mary. ‘It looks like perfume, doesn’t it?’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ said Beatrice. The stopper was fastened with thin silk thread, like a clarinet reed. She cut through it and tugged out the stopper with a glassy squeak.
‘Well?’ said Mary.
Beatrice was cautious about smelling the contents of the bottle. She knew that there were several poisons that could cause unconsciousness, and even death, if they were inhaled, such as camphor and spirits of hartshorn, and if this package had been left on the doorstep by somebody who wished her harm then she needed to be very careful. Why anybody should wish to poison her, she couldn’t imagine – but then she couldn’t imagine why anybody would want give her a gift of perfume, either.
She sniffed, and then sniffed again. The bottle definitely contained perfume, and it was a perfume she recognized because it was very popular among the wealthier women around the village. Henry Mendum’s wife, Harriet, wore it – and very liberally, too. It was a strong blend of musk, amber and jasmine, and it was called Queen Margot’s Perfume, after the queen of France who had first blended it. Beatrice never bought perfume herself, but she knew that this one was very expensive, more than ten shillings a bottle.
She passed it across to Mary and let her smell it.
‘It’s wonderful,’ said Mary. ‘But who would have bought it for you?’
Beatrice replaced the stopper and put the bottle back in its box. She didn’t want Francis to come down and smell it because she could think of only one man who had looked at her flirtatiously of late, and who appeared to have enough money to buy her perfume, and that was Jonathan Shooks.
It also occurred to her who the mysterious figure in the brown hooded cloak might have been. She had heard a bird-like screech as it had vanished into the trees, but perhaps that screech had not been a bird at all. Perhaps it had been Jonathan Shooks’s mute carriage-driver, Samuel.