The village green was already crowded when they arrived, but hushed. As Peter Duston drove Beatrice towards the meeting house, the crowd stepped back and several of the men took off their hats. Beatrice was filled with a terrible sense of dread because she couldn’t even begin to imagine what must have happened to bring most of the village here this morning, so early, when almost all of them should have been working at their businesses or in their houses or on their farms.
Peter Duston stopped his wagon about thirty yards short of the meeting-house fence. He helped Beatrice down and as he did so Major General Holyoke came forward. He took her right hand between both of his and said, ‘My dear Goody Scarlet. Beatrice, my dear. I am really so sorry.’
‘Where is he?’ Beatrice asked him. ‘What’s happened? Mr Duston wouldn’t say.’
‘We debated among ourselves whether to bring him down before you saw him,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘In the end, it was my decision to leave him where he was. I believe you have the right to see exactly what has been done to him, and I know you to be a woman of considerable strength and character.’
‘Bring him down? What do you mean, general, “bring him down”?’
‘You can blame me if you want to, my dear. As I say, it was my decision and if I have in any way exacerbated your grief, then I can only beg for your forgiveness.’
He took Beatrice gently by the arm and led her round the front of the meeting house. When they reached the opposite end of the fence, where the graveyard was, he turned her round and pointed upwards, towards the roof.
Beatrice opened and closed her mouth, but she couldn’t speak. She felt her knees weaken and her head fill with darkness, but she was determined not to faint. In spite of that, she held on tight to Major General Holyoke’s arm and took six or seven very deep breaths.
Twenty-five feet above her, Francis was standing upright on the ridge of the roof with his arms stretched out wide, as if he were just about to dive off it. He was completely naked, white-skinned apart from his sunburned face and hands, with a crucifix of dark hair across his narrow chest. His head was crowned with wilting red roses, their thorny stalks twisted tightly around his temples.
Beatrice stared up at him in disbelief. When she spoke, she thought she sounded like somebody with phlegm in the back of their throat. ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ she said. ‘How can he be dead? He’s standing up by himself, there’s nothing to support him!’
Major General Holyoke said, ‘I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet. Two of my men have been up on the roof already and he is quite dead. His ankles are tied to two stakes that have been fastened to the roof, but that is all the support he needs. His body is as hard as wood, they tell me. In fact, he could be carved out of wood, except that he is unmistakably formed of flesh and he is unmistakably your husband, the Reverend Francis Scarlet.’
Beatrice turned to stare at him. ‘Wood?’ she asked. ‘You say that he feels like wood?’
‘Now we know for sure that it’s witchcraft!’ put in Goody Rust, who was standing nearby. ‘One man turned to soup and another turned into timber! That’s witchcraft, no mistaking it!’
Beatrice raised her eyes again. Francis was still standing there, utterly motionless, his arms spread wide. Everything that has happened has been a travesty of Christian belief, that’s what he had told her. And there he was, as if his arms were held out to welcome his flock, or as if he had been nailed to an invisible cross.
After a few moments she turned away. She could no longer bear to look up at that naked body beside which she had lain so many nights in bed. He had been her lover and her husband and her closest friend, and yet here was all that intimacy exposed in front of the whole village, for anybody to gawp at. Whoever had taken his life had taken her life, too.
‘We will bring him down now,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘Believe me, I will have it done with all due reverence. I deeply apologize if this exhibition has caused you pain.’
‘No, no, you were right to let me see him like that. I also want to see him after you have brought him down. Please have him taken to the parsonage as soon as you can.’
Major General Holyoke looked uncomfortable. ‘The coffin may be problematical.’ He paused, and then stretched out his arms. ‘How can I put it? He is not at all flexible, and it is more than rigor mortis.’
‘Then, please, have him covered with a shroud, or a sheet if no shrouds are available. We can decide later what we can do about a coffin.’
Major General Holyoke escorted her further along the green towards his own house. Most of the crowd nodded to her, and some called out their condolences, but they were making no move to disperse. The naked figure of their minister was about to be manhandled down from the roof of the meeting house, like Christ being taken down from the cross, and that was a sight they did not want to miss. They would be telling their grandchildren about it for years to come.
‘Come in for a glass of sherry-wine, or perhaps some tea,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘I must say that you have shown enormous fortitude. I will, of course, have my coachman drive you home afterwards.’
Beatrice gave him the weakest of smiles. ‘I will come in, yes. I think I need to sit down for a moment.’
He opened the door and Beatrice stepped into the hallway where Marjorie Holyoke was coming forward with open arms to greet her.
Three things happened at once. Marjorie Holyoke said, ‘My dear, dear Beatrice,’ the long-case clock in the hallway began to strike seven, and Beatrice blacked out and collapsed, knocking her forehead against the floor.
*
The Holyokes begged her to stay. They would even send their coachman to fetch Noah if she wanted them to. But she needed to return home, where Francis had already been taken. She needed to be close to him, even if he was dead.
She arrived home to find, unusually, that the parlour door was closed. She didn’t open it, but went through to the kitchen where Mary was feeding Noah his supper. Noah reached up his hands and flexed his fingers and said, ‘Mama! Mama!’
Beatrice picked him up and kissed him and cuddled him. He looked up at her and there was a question in his pale blue eyes, even though he wouldn’t have understood her if she had told him what was wrong.
Mary said tearfully, ‘They didn’t know what to do with the reverend when they brought him back. They couldn’t carry him upstairs on account of his arms held out stiff like that, so they laid him on the floor in the parlour.’
‘I thought so,’ said Beatrice. ‘If you could just finish feeding Noah for me, and put him to bed.’
‘Of course, Goody Scarlet. I’ll stay with you again tonight if you need me.’
Beatrice shook her head. ‘No, Mary. You’d be better off going home. Besides, I think I want to be alone for a while. I have to say my goodbyes.’
She returned Noah to his high-chair. He protested with a wail and said, ‘Mama! Cuddah!’ but she smiled at him sadly and said, ‘Ssshh, Noah. You can have another cuddle before you go to bed.’
She took off her shawl and hung it up in the hall. She stood outside the parlour door for a few seconds with her hands clasped together and pressed to her lips. She didn’t know if she really wanted to see Francis’s body or not, especially if it had been hardened like wood. After a few moments, though, she turned the door handle and opened the door and went inside.
The smell was unmistakable as soon as she walked in. Linseed oil. From that alone, she knew what had happened to Francis, even if she didn’t know who had done it to him, or why.
He was lying on the carpet in between the chairs, covered with a white bed sheet. His arms were still outstretched and his left hand was showing. She saw with a terrible shrinking feeling that there was a deep hole in the centre of the palm, a stigma, where Christ would have been nailed to the cross.
She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering her strength. This is why you became a minister, Francis, to fight the forces of evil, and even if you have become a martyr in your battle against Satan, your sacrifice will not be in vain, I promise you, I promise you, I swear to you, my dearest one.
She bent forward, took hold of the edge of the sheet, and drew it back. Francis was staring up at her blindly. His eyes were open but as white as poached eggs. His hair was stuck flat to his head and there were scratches on his forehead where the crown of roses had been removed, although there was no blood.
A nail had made a hole through the palm of his right hand, too, and when she lifted the sheet away from his feet she could see that he had stigmata in both of his arches. This certainly looked like the work of Satan, or one of his demons – but then it was obviously meant to.
Beatrice looked down at Francis for a long time. When he was alive he had looked serious most of the time, even when she knew that he was very happy, but now he looked melancholy rather than serious, as if he had come to accept that his life was over but was saddened that there were so many days that he was never going to see.
She drew the sheet down further, down to his waist. It took all of her nerve to reach down and touch his chest, and when she did she gave a little reactive sniff. Major General Holyoke had been right: although he was still flesh-coloured, his body was as hard as oak.
She slowly stroked his chest. Even the hair between his nipples was crisp and it crackled when she touched it. She tapped his breastbone with her knuckle and it made a sound like a hollow wooden keg.
She knelt down beside him and held her face very close to his and inhaled. There was no question at all. He smelled strongly of linseed. His body must have been treated in the same way as the rat that her father had turned into a wooden toy all those years ago.
She could hear him now, as he sharpened his carving-knife for their Christmas dinner. I wonder if it would ever be possible to preserve your loved ones when they passed away, exactly as they were when they were alive?
She stood up. She couldn’t decide if this was a coincidence, Francis’s body being hardened like this, or if somebody somehow had discovered what her father had done and used it to mock her. But whatever the reason, she couldn’t even begin to understand why.
Of one thing, though, she was certain. Whoever had done this was neither witch nor demon. Francis’s solidified body had finally convinced her of that. A witch or a demon would have used magic to do it, some spell or incantation, not days of painstaking simmering in linseed oil.
She was also convinced that all the terrible events that had been happening in and around Sutton over the past two weeks had been caused by the same malevolent person. But they were more than simply malevolent. They were well acquainted with the elements, and with chemical compounds, and with what extraordinary reactions those compounds could produce. They also had a comprehensive knowledge of poisonous herbs and other plants, and perhaps of their antidotes, too. Ebenezer Rowlandson’s trout had recovered almost miraculously, and so had Henry Mendum’s Devon cattle.
The Widow Belknap undoubtedly knew all about toxic herbs and was probably well versed in chymistry. But how, without assistance, could she have bound and set fire to George Gilman’s slaves and hoisted them up to the rafters of his barn, and how could she have lifted Francis up to the roof of the meeting house and fastened him there?
Jonathan Shooks claimed to be dealing with a demon, and he blamed this demon for every misfortune, including the death of Nicholas Buckley. But if there were no demon, if Satan were not involved at all, in whatever guise, the only person responsible must be Jonathan Shooks.
She thought of the Chinese fire inch-sticks that he had doused in water and given to the Buckley twins. There was no doubt that the infusion had helped them to recover, although Beatrice didn’t understand how. It had shown, though, that Jonathan Shooks knew his chymistry, too.
‘Oh, Francis,’ she said. She thought of how he had stared at her every Sunday morning in Birmingham when she was walking home from church, and how he had pushed over cousin Jeremy when he had been bothering her. She thought of their wedding night, and of their journey across the Atlantic, when she had been seasick for days.
She thought of the day they had first come to Sutton and reached the village green. The sun had been shining through the clouds so that the day brightened and faded, brightened and faded, and she thought they had arrived in paradise.
She covered Francis with the sheet. She would have to call on Peter Duston tomorrow and ask him to make a coffin. She would also have to ask him to sever Francis’s arms.
She left the parlour and closed the door behind her. She didn’t want little Noah toddling in there and discovering his dead father on the floor. Not only that, the smell of linseed was making her feel queasy.
She went to the front door and opened it so that she could breathe some fresh air. It was almost dark now and the insects seemed to be singing louder and more insistently than ever. As she stood there, she thought she saw a movement at the end of the driveway. She peered harder, and as she did so the brown-cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows and stood in the middle of the driveway, holding its staff.
Maybe you are the Angel of Death, she thought. If so, you certainly know when to pay us a visit.
‘You!’ she called out, although her voice was weak from strain and tiredness. ‘You – who are you? What do you want?’
The figure didn’t answer. Beatrice didn’t know if she should be frightened of it or not. After two or three minutes it turned around and walked back into the darkness and was gone.
She knelt beside her bed that night and said a prayer for Francis. She hoped so much that he was in heaven, walking with Jesus, and that he was happy. More than anything else, she wanted him to be happy.
She knew that Francis would have disapproved of her trying to take revenge on his murderer. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. But she was determined that the Lord should know who to punish, and then punish them with the utmost severity.
*
The next day she took the shay and drove to the village. The morning was warm but strangely foggy, so that Beatrice felt as if she were driving through some kind of ghostly dream. She called on Rodney Bartlett first, because he tended to so many horses and probably used more linseed oil than anybody else in the village. Linseed oil kept horses calm and made their coats and manes glossy and relieved them of the sweet itch, especially at this time of the year when the air was filled with midges.
‘I still find it hard to believe what happened yesterday, Goody Scarlet,’ said Rodney Bartlett. ‘You know that the whole of Sutton is mourning, and feels for you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Bartlett, you’re very kind,’ Beatrice told him. She looked around the gloomy, smoke-filled smithy. The furnace had just been lit and there were five or six horses tethered in the lean-to at the back, who were beginning to grow restless, as if they knew they were soon to be shoed. ‘Has anybody bought any linseed oil from you lately?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ frowned Rodney Bartlett, as if she had asked him a question in a foreign language.
‘Linseed oil, Mr Bartlett. I’m looking for somebody who might have purchased quite a large quantity of it – about a week ago, possibly, I’m not exactly sure. Or they might have taken it without you knowing.’
Rodney Bartlett slowly shook his head. ‘I’ve sold none of mine, Goody Scarlet, and there’s none missing that I’m aware of. You might ask Matthew Blackett. He uses linseed oil on his gunstocks. Or James Fuller, he uses it, too, when he’s making his furniture. But, of course, I get all of mine from Robert Norton, over at Billington’s Corners.’
‘Robert Norton, the paint-maker?’
‘That’s right. We do an exchange. He brings over forty gallons of linseed oil to feed my horses and I give him forty gallons of horse piss to make his paint.’
‘He makes his paint with—?’
‘Horse piss, that’s right. White lead and horse piss. The green paint anyhow, that’s what goes into it. God knows what he uses for his Spanish brown.’
‘All right,’ said Beatrice. ‘Thank you.’
*
She drove out to Billington’s Corners, which was more of a small scruffy crossroads ‘in back of no place at all’, as Caleb would have put it, rather than a village. It was here, however, that Robert Norton and his brother Abel ran their paint shop, which mixed and supplied paints for most of the county. Their factory was a large grey barn set back from the Bedford road, with several wagons outside, and stacks of wooden barrels, as well as countless glass carboys with wickerwork casings.
The morning was growing hotter now and out of the paint shop’s open doors came a pungent smell of linseed oil and a sour metallic tang of colouring mixtures. Beatrice tied up Uriel to a ring at the side of the building and walked inside. Several young men and girls in long aprons were grinding and sieving soil or scraping metal flakes from tall earthenware jars.
She found Abel Norton sitting at a desk in a small office on the left-hand side, in his shirt-sleeves, filling in account books. He was a plump little man, like a character out of a nursery rhyme. His pate was bald, but the rest of his hair was almost shoulder-length, and very white. He was wearing tiny eyeglasses, which he took off his nose as Beatrice came in.
‘Goody Scarlet!’ he greeted her, and stood up to clasp her hand. ‘What brings you here? Are you thinking of painting the parsonage? I have a new taupe mixture which has just arrived from Europe, very fashionable if I may say so, but discreet, and uplifting at the same time. Just right for a minister’s house!’
‘You clearly haven’t heard,’ said Beatrice. Although the Nortons were members of their congregation they rarely came into the village on any day except Sundays for communion. She told him how Francis had been murdered and turned rigid and displayed on the roof of the meeting house, and he listened in shocked silence, chewing his lip.
‘I don’t know what to say to you, Goody Scarlet, except to give you my heartfelt condolences. What terrible, terrible news! But... you haven’t come here only to tell me that?’
‘No, Mr Norton, I haven’t. I’ve come here to ask you if you happen to have sold a large quantity of linseed oil in the past few days. It would have been an unusually large quantity.’
Abel Norton looked at her oddly and clipped his eyeglasses back on to the bridge of his nose.
‘Linseed oil? A large quantity, you say? An unusually large quantity?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Ah... well, the problem is that my business transactions are always strictly confidential. I have to keep them that way for many reasons, but mostly because my customers wouldn’t be at all happy if I were to divulge their financial affairs to others.’
‘You have, though, haven’t you?’
Abel Norton gave her an almost imperceptible nod, as if he were afraid that somebody might see him or overhear him.
‘Please, Mr Norton, you must tell me to whom.’
‘Goody Scarlet, I’m really not sure – well, to be honest with you, I’m really not sure what the consequences might be.’
‘It’s a matter of life and death, Mr Norton. I can put it no plainer than that.’
Abel Norton looked around. He even leaned sideways a little so that he could see over Beatrice’s shoulder to the yard outside. Then he said, in a very low voice, ‘I was out of my office when you first arrived. By chance I had left on my desk a bill of trade that referred to a certain unusual quantity of linseed oil. If by chance you happened to see it, then it was certainly not with my knowledge or permission.’
With that, he sat down and opened his left-hand desk drawer. He took out a bill of sale and laid it on top of his ledger. Then he turned his head away and stared up at the little window high above his desk, as if he had developed a sudden fascination for cloud formations.
Beatrice went over and picked up the bill of sale. It was for two hundred gallons of best-quality linseed oil, to be delivered to Rutger’s Farm near Penacook. The price was twopence halfpenny the gallon, making a total of two pounds ought and eightpence, with a carriage cost of fourpence.
The bill was addressed to ‘J. Shooks, Esq.’
‘I thank you, Mr Norton,’ said Beatrice. Her hand was shaking as she put the bill back on his ledger. ‘I have seen all I need to. You have been most accommodating.’
Abel Norton folded the bill and returned it to his desk drawer. ‘I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet?’
As she left his office, however, he said, ‘Was he responsible for what happened to your husband? That fellow Shooks? I thought him queer, I have to admit, him and that coachman of his.’
‘I’m not entirely sure yet, Mr Norton. But I believe him to be implicated at the very least.’
‘But what use would he have for such a quantity of linseed oil?’
‘What is the principal quality of linseed oil, Mr Norton? Why do you mix into paint and into putty?’
‘Oh, my dear Lord, Goody Scarlet. You don’t mean—? Dear Lord, and I was the provider of it! Oh, I am mortified, I really am! If my knees were not so stiff I would get down on them and beg for your forgiveness!’