That evening, just before sunset, Major General Holyoke came to the parsonage and knocked at the door. Mary let him in and led him through to the parlour, where Beatrice was writing up the church accounts, so that she could hand them over to the Reverend Miles Bennett. She was framed in a rectangle of crimson sunlight from the window, as if she were a portrait of herself painted only in shades of red.
‘Major General Holyoke,’ she said, laying down her quill and standing up. ‘How is Henry Mendum?’
‘Not at all well,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘Doctor Merrydew fears that he may be bleeding beneath the skull which will either bring about his death or leave him permanently comatose. Even if he does regain consciousness, he will more than likely be a jingle-brains for the rest of his life.’
‘It shouldn’t have ended like this,’ said Beatrice. ‘He should have been fairly tried by the court for what he did and punished accordingly.’
‘I came to tell you that I have talked with Harriet Mendum,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘She has confessed to me that she knew of her husband’s ambition to extend his farm. He wanted it to be the most extensive and most profitable dairy farm in the whole of New Hampshire, and he had ambitions beyond that, too, such as standing for state president.
‘Two years ago he approached most of the farmers whose property abutted his and offered to buy large tracts of their land, but in almost every case he met with refusal. Mistress Mendum told me that one farmer showed some interest – John Tufnell, I think she said – but Mr Tufnell demanded twice the price for his acreage that her husband was willing to pay.’
‘So instead he decided to terrify his neighbours into giving him their land?’
‘That’s right. According to Mistress Mendum, the idea came to him when he met a ship-owner on one of his business trips to Salem, and the ship-owner introduced him to Jonathan Shooks. Mr Shooks had acquired for this ship-owner three sloops from rival shipping companies by causing all manner of hideous accidents aboard their vessels. He had persuaded these rival companies that Satan was responsible for these mishaps, as a punishment for bringing Christian missionaries to America from England. He told them that the only way in which they could save their entire fleets from disaster would be to forfeit some of their ships.’
‘Jonathan Shooks is a devil,’ said Beatrice. ‘He is clever and skilled in all manner of chymical tricks and his knowledge of herbs is extraordinary. He also has no soul and no conscience whatsoever.’
Major General Holyoke hesitated for a moment, blinking, as if he sensed that Beatrice’s hatred of Jonathan Shooks ran even deeper than her grief for the death of her husband.
Slowly, and keeping his eyes on her as he spoke, he said, ‘Mr Shooks had also extorted land on behalf of three other farmers, in Maine and Massachusetts. No news of those extortions was ever spread abroad because their victims were cautioned that they must keep silent about them or they would face even further horrors.
‘Henry Mendum offered Mr Shooks a great deal of money to come to Sutton and extort hundreds of acres of land for him.’ Here Major General Holyoke smiled and laid his hand on Beatrice’s arm. ‘What Mr Shooks clearly didn’t realize is that in Sutton he would be confronted by a woman whose knowledge of alchemy and herbs was almost as great as his own, if not greater.’
‘Oh, I think he knew it only too well,’ said Beatrice. ‘He was trained as an apothecary himself, in London, and he was aware of my dear father’s reputation, and of who I was. He told me so. No – before he started to terrorize our community, he made a careful study of everybody with any influence, and where each of us came from, and what our weaknesses were likely to be.
‘I believe he knew all about the skills my father had taught me and that right from the very beginning he regarded me as a challenge rather than a threat. He has tried with every fresh atrocity to baffle me and outwit me, and most of the time he has succeeded. I still don’t know how he killed our pigs, or what he gave to Henry Mendum’s cows to make them appear to be dying, or what he used to drug Ebenezer Rowlandson’s fish. Yet I don’t doubt now that he did it.’
‘Let me ask you this,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘Are you sufficiently certain that Jonathan Shooks was responsible for at least some of these outrages to be able to give evidence to a jury?’
Beatrice nodded. She could prove that Jonathan Shooks had purchased two hundred gallons of linseed oil and she was sure that alone would be enough to convict him, even if it meant exhuming Francis’s body to show a jury how he had been dried like wood.
‘Excellent,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘In that case I shall issue a warrant for the arrest of Mr Shooks, and perhaps we can exorcize Satan from our village for good and all. You are a brave and clever woman, Beatrice Scarlet, and I commend you for what you have done.’
All the time they had been talking the parlour had been growing increasingly shadowy, and now it was so dark that Beatrice could hardly see Major General Holyoke’s face. She felt as if they were standing in the shadows of days that had gone and would never return. Tomorrow everything would dawn new and bright and different, and she would start her life again, but just for now she felt as if Francis were standing close beside her, as well as Major General Holyoke, and the feeling was so sweet and so painful that her eyes filled with tears.
Major General Holyoke must have seen her tears glittering in the gloom because he reached out and took her hand and squeezed it, and said softly, ‘Beatrice, my dear. Beatrice, my poor, poor dear.’
*
The following day did start bright, although a chilly breeze was blowing from the north-west. The tall pines swayed like dancers and the air smelled of autumn.
Beatrice woke early and started her morning by mixing dough. When Mary arrived she would enlist her help in killing one of the pigs and butchering it ready for the winter. She had seen signs already that this winter was going to be exceptionally cold: the corn husks were thicker than usual, and the raccoons had much bushier fur and brighter bands than last year. The cows, too, had thicker hair on the napes of their necks.
She kneaded the dough for four large loaves and then covered them with cloths and left them to prove. She was washing the flour from her hands when she heard Noah crying upstairs. She went out into the hallway and there, standing in front of her, was Jonathan Shooks. She jolted in shock.
This was not the smart, suave Jonathan Shooks who had first visited the parsonage. This Jonathan Shooks had lost his silver wig and one of the sleeves of his tailcoat was hanging down in shreds. His face was smudged with dirt and he hadn’t shaved. He had even lost one of his silver-buckled shoes. He stood staring at her and he was wild-eyed with rage.
‘You trull!’ he spat at her. ‘You whore!’
‘Get out of my house at once!’ said Beatrice. ‘There is a warrant out for your arrest and if you much as breathe on me again I shall happily make sure that you are hanged!’
‘You betrayed me, Widow Scarlet. You, the widow of a pastor! They came for me at the Penacook Inn and Samuel and I were lucky to escape with our lives! As it is, I have lost my calash and my horses and all of my possessions! Everything!’
‘You killed my husband, Mr Shooks. You kidnapped my child and you took me by force. What on earth led you to suppose that I would keep my word to you?’
‘I fondly imagined that you would keep your word to me because you were afraid of me, and of what I might do to you if you did not.’
‘I am not afraid of you,’ she said, even though her voice was shaking. ‘There is nothing that you can take from me now that you have not already taken. You disgust me. Apothecaries are supposed to use their knowledge to cure people and to ease their suffering, not to terrify them and steal their property and murder them. You are not even worthy of being called a demon. You are a slug.’
Jonathan Shooks sniffed loudly in his right nostril, then wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘You think that I can’t take any more from you, you whore? You think that you have nothing more to give me? I’ll tell you what you can give me. You can give me my revenge.’
With that, he strode towards her and seized hold of her arm, whirling her around so that she lost her balance and throwing her on to the kitchen floor. Her left shoulder was jarred by one of the table legs and she knocked her forehead against the rung of a chair. She twisted herself around, making a grab for the back of the chair so that she could pull herself up, but Jonathan Shooks kicked the chair over and then kicked her hard in the hip. When she tried again to sit up, he kicked her again, in the thigh this time.
‘Did you really think that you could outsmart Jonathan Shooks? Did you really believe that some mousy minister’s wife could prove herself to be cleverer than me? So your father was Clement Bannister and he taught you some of his tricks and how to brew up some of his possets. But your father never travelled like I did. He never got to know half of what I know.’
‘Let me up,’ said Beatrice. ‘My son is crying. Can’t you hear him? I must go up to comfort him.’
‘You are going nowhere at all, Widow Scarlet, ever again. Where you lie now is where your life will come to its well-deserved conclusion.’
Noah was screaming now and between each scream he could hardly catch his breath.
‘Please,’ begged Beatrice. ‘It will make him sick if he cries any more.’
‘Isn’t life tragic? I thought you would have learned that much – you, an apothecary’s daughter. Life is nothing but sickness and worry and pain and cruelty, and then we die. Do you want to know how I made those little Buckley twins sick? I gave them each a spoonful of boar’s taint to clog their lungs. But the effects of boar’s taint can be cured with sulphur dissolved in water, which is why I gave them a drink made from Chinese fire-sticks.
‘And poor Ebenezer Rowlandson’s trout! All it needed was some soap-root in the water and they were stupefied. The Indians use it in the west. Too lazy to catch their fish with spears.’
‘You killed our poor horse, Kingdom, with yew leaves,’ said Beatrice. ‘Why did you have to do that?’
Jonathan Shooks shook his head. ‘I did nothing to your horse! Your horse? Why would I? Did I not do enough to show your late husband how ineffectual he was by poisoning your pigs, and all that needed was fiddleneck seeds. Did you not guess that from their symptoms?’
‘It must have been the Widow Belknap who fed him those leaves,’ said Beatrice. At that moment she didn’t really care who had poisoned Kingdom, but Noah was still screaming and she was trying to keep Jonathan Shooks talking in order to give herself time to think how she could get away from him.
‘The Widow Belknap! Well, it’s possible, I suppose! In fact, it’s not only possible, it’s very likely. She’s a very vengeful woman, that Widow Belknap. I’m surprised her parents didn’t christen her “Resentment”. Still, it’s a pity she witnessed what we did to Mr Buckley.’
‘She saw you?’
‘Regrettably, yes. We didn’t expect anybody to be walking around the village green at that ungodly hour, but there she was, watching us. What choice did we have? We force-fed her wormwood to make her lose her mind, and then we took her away and left her in the woods. Whether she lived or died, we assumed that everybody in the village would blame her for every misfortune that had blighted their pathetic, obstinate lives – especially since most of them blamed her already. And they did!’
‘Please, let me go. I promise that I will tell no one that you have been here.’
‘How can I believe anything you say, Widow Scarlet? You betrayed me once and you will betray me again. Because of you, I now have to flee from Sutton as a fugitive, without my calash or my horses or any of my possessions, and more importantly, without any of the money that Henry Mendum was going to pay me for acquiring so much land for him. Samuel will probably have to go back to sea and start hoisting up sails again.’
‘Better to be hoisting up sails than slaves,’ Beatrice challenged him.
‘Aren’t you the sharp one, Widow Scarlet! No mistake about that! But now I’m going to show you how sharp I can be.’ He reached across the kitchen table and picked up Beatrice’s boning knife. Its blade was eighteen inches long and she had taken it out to sharpen it in readiness for killing one of the pigs.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ asked Beatrice. ‘Whatever it is, please don’t let it hurt. And don’t harm Noah, I beg you.’
Jonathan Shooks ran the ball of his thumb down the blade of the boning knife and a thin trickle of blood ran down the inside of his wrist. ‘I intend to do something demonic to you, Widow Scarlet, since you don’t seem to think that I am worthy of being called a demon. I could cut your throat, but that would be altogether too humane. I could stab you in the heart, but that would be much too quick. For what you have done to me, I am going to suffer for years, so I believe that you should suffer, too – not for years, of course, but for as long as possible.’
Beatrice closed her eyes. She tried to imagine that she wasn’t there at all, lying on the kitchen floor, listening to Jonathan Shooks talking to her in that low, measured voice. Although he was threatening her, he sounded as if he were trying to seduce her, and that made his words even more chilling.
‘I am going to slice through your Achilles tendons, so that you are unable to walk. Then I am going to fetch down your little son and dangle him up in front of you and cut open his belly so that his bowels drop into your lap. Then I shall cut open your belly, too, and force him back inside you, so that mother and child can again be as one, joined as you were at the start of his life and now reunited at the end.’
Beatrice seized the edge of the table top and again tried to pull herself to her feet, but this time Jonathan Shooks kicked her in the ribs – so hard that she was winded and couldn’t speak. He pushed her on to her back and then forced her over on to her face. He grasped her right foot and raised her leg, lifting the boning knife to cut through the tendon at the back of her ankle.
‘Please God, no!’ she screamed, kicking and struggling and trying to twist herself on to her back again. ‘Dear God, don’t do this! I’ll give you anything! You can have all of my land! All of my money! Anything!’
‘What good to me now is your land or your money? You have made me a hunted man, Widow Scarlet! You can pay me now only with your miserable life – that and the life of your miserable squawking son!’
Beatrice made a last effort to pull herself free, but Jonathan Shooks was gripping her foot with such ferocity that the bones in her toes crackled. He wrenched her leg up even higher, but as he did so she heard the front door bang open and footsteps rushing along the hallway and somebody collided with Jonathan Shooks so hard that he was sent sprawling across the kitchen floor, thumping his back against the iron stove.
Beatrice turned around and with a thrill of alarm she saw that the brown-cloaked figure was standing over her. Inside the kitchen he seemed even taller than he had when he was lurking at the end of the driveway under the trees. His hood had dropped back, revealing a man with wild brown hair and staring brown eyes and a bushy brown beard.
‘What? Who are you?’ was all that Beatrice could manage to gasp out before Jonathan Shooks had heaved himself up from the floor. Jonathan Shooks obviously didn’t care who the man was, only that he had violently pushed him over, and without saying a word he came stalking across the kitchen, his face contorted with anger. He was holding up the boning knife, stabbing it upwards into the air, stab, stab, stab, as if he were daring the brown-cloaked man to come any closer.
The brown-cloaked man feinted to the left and Jonathan Shooks caught his sleeve with the point of the knife. The brown-cloaked man tried to snatch at his wrist, but Jonathan Shooks was too quick for him and stabbed him in the back of his right hand. Blood flew in a red fan pattern across the floor, but the brown-cloaked man was undeterred and tried to grab the knife again.
Jonathan Shooks swept the knife from side to side, cutting at the brown-cloaked man’s fingers again and again, and when at last the brown-cloaked man took a step back, holding up both of his bloodied hands, Jonathan Shooks lunged forward with a hog-like grunt and stabbed him in the side. The blade must have lodged between his ribs, because at first Jonathan Shooks couldn’t pull it out.
As Jonathan Shooks tried to tug the boning knife out of him, the brown-cloaked man seized his moment and grasped his wrist with both hands. Grunting and struggling together, they pulled out the knife, but now the brown-cloaked man twisted Jonathan Shooks’s wrist backwards and upwards and forced him to stab himself twice in the side of his neck. Blood abruptly sprayed over both of them, and as they wrestled and danced around the kitchen they began to look like life-size marionettes with their faces varnished scarlet.
Jonathan Shooks swayed violently from side to side, trying to break the brown-cloaked man’s grip on his wrist, but the brown-cloaked man was taller and bigger and younger. He forced Jonathan Shooks to stab himself in the face again and again. The boning knife sliced his right cheek open, and then cut his upper lip apart so that it looked like a harelip, and then stuck right up his nostril.
Both men were grunting, but neither of them spoke. Beatrice climbed unsteadily to her feet. She could still hear Noah crying, but the two men were lurching from side to side in front of the kitchen doorway and she couldn’t get past them. They crashed together into the hutch, so that half a dozen china plates fell to the floor and smashed. Then they stumbled into the stack of copper saucepans beside the stove, with a clatter like the bells of hell. All the time droplets of blood were flying in all directions, and the kitchen floor was becoming dahlia-patterned with bloody footprints.
At last the brown-cloaked man pushed Jonathan Shooks up against the open kitchen door. Very gradually he levered Jonathan Shooks’s arm upwards until the point of the boning knife was only a half-inch away from his right eyeball.
There was a long quivering moment when both men were straining their utmost. Jonathan Shooks was already wearing a beard of blood and whenever he grunted he sprayed blood into the brown-cloaked man’s beard.
Beatrice wanted to shout out, ‘No!’ but she could only watch them in horror. She didn’t even know who the brown-cloaked man was. He could be a madman. If he were to kill Jonathan Shooks, he might very well come for her next.
The moment of impasse seemed to go on and on. But Jonathan Shooks was losing so much blood that his knees were starting to sag and his head was dropping forward. With a last grunt the brown-cloaked man pushed the point of the boning knife deep into his eye. His eyeball popped, but the brown-cloaked man didn’t stop pushing. The blade slid in at least four inches and must have pierced his brain.
Now, however, the brown-cloaked man released his grip. He took two steps back, his chest rising and falling with exhaustion. Jonathan Shooks feebly raised his left hand, pawing at the air, but he was too weak now to reach the knife handle that was protruding from his eye socket. He slid sideways on to the floor, leaving a semicircular smear of blood on the pinewood door. He twitched once, and then again, but then he lay still and his left eye misted over.
The brown-cloaked man turned to Beatrice, showing her his bloodstained hands.
‘I should wash this off,’ he told her, in a voice that was little more than a croak.
‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘You’re not going to hurt me, are you?’
‘Hurt you?’ said the brown-cloaked man. ‘I thought I had just saved your life.’
He limped to the sink, holding his side. He stared at the pump but he didn’t seem to have the strength to draw himself any water.
Beatrice approached him cautiously. ‘I have seen you again and again, among the trees,’ she told him.
‘Among the trees, yes. That’s where I’ve been living most of the time.’
‘But who are you? What have you been doing here? Was it you who left me that perfume, and those wild flowers, and that message?’
The brown-cloaked man nodded.
‘You’re hurt,’ said Beatrice. ‘I’d best take a look at it. Take off your cloak.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll live.’
‘No, I insist. Take off your cloak.’
Wincing, the brown-cloaked man lifted his cloak over his head. Beatrice helped him to pull it over his head and then she dropped it on the floor. Underneath, the man was thin and white-skinned, and he smelled as if he hadn’t washed in a very long time. All he was wearing beneath his cloak was a pair of stained white cotton britches and sandals.
The knife wound between his ribs was oozing blood. Beatrice wiped it and then handed him the rag and said, ‘Keep that pressed against it. I’m going to go upstairs and fetch a sheet to bind it with. Also, I have to rescue my son. He must think that I have deserted him forever.’
She dragged out a kitchen chair for him and said, ‘There. Sit down. The less you exert yourself the better.’
She stepped past the body of Jonathan Shooks and then hurried upstairs. Noah had been crying so much that his face was red and smothered in tears. Beatrice picked him up and then went to the linen chest at the end of her bed and took out one of her older sheets. She carried Noah back down to the kitchen. The man was still sitting at the kitchen table but he was looking glassy-eyed now and leaning on his elbow as if he were close to collapse.
Beatrice put Noah in his high-chair and gave him a biscuit to keep him quiet for a few minutes. Noah turned his head and looked in bewilderment at the bloodied body of Jonathan Shooks lying sideways on the floor, and then at the skinny, grubby, half-naked man with his long brown hair and his big brown beard. Beatrice tore strips off the sheet and bandaged the man’s chest as tightly as she could. While she did so, he stared at her but said nothing.
At last, when she had pinned the bandage together, she stood back and said, ‘There. Once the bleeding has stopped, I’ll apply some goldenseal tincture to it and that will guard against any infection.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I knew that you would know how to treat me.’
‘You know me?’
He nodded and then squeezed his eyes tight shut as he felt a stab of pain in his side.
‘So how is it that you know me? Who are you? Do I know you?’
‘It was all a long time ago, Beatrice. You probably never thought that I was worthy of being remembered.’
‘Should I remember you? From where?’
‘ I was very foolish then, and reckless, but in my own way I fell in love with you the moment I first saw you, and I have always loved you, ever since.’
‘You know my name,’ said Beatrice. She sat down in the chair next to him and stared intently at his face. It was then that he looked up and sideways and she recognized who he was.
‘Jeremy! Dear Lord, you’re Jeremy!’
He tried to laugh, but all he could do was cough and nod his head again.
‘But I don’t understand! What are you doing here in New Hampshire? I thought you were in Manchester, working with your brothers! Why are you dressed like that? Why didn’t you come to the house sooner? Have you been living in the woods? You’re so thin!’
Jeremy gave her a regretful smile. ‘You know what I used to be like. Always drunk, always thieving, never caring for anything or anybody. The only person I ever really cared for was you, and what a mess I made of that. Francis was much your better choice for a husband.’
‘But what happened, Jeremy? How did you get here, for goodness’ sake?’
‘I fell out with my brothers because I was always drunk and never did any work. In the end I decided to follow your example and come to the colonies to make a fresh start. I used my inheritance to start up a trading company in Ipswich with a fellow I knew from Birmingham. We didn’t do too badly until my partner skipped off with all of my money and left me high and dry.’
‘Why didn’t you come and ask us for help? We would have helped you!’
‘I love you, Bea! But look at me! Look at my condition! This cloak is all I have in the world. How could I approach you like this, like some cadge-gloak? I nearly came to your door but each time I lost my nerve, and in any case Francis wouldn’t have been happy about it, would he?’
‘You could afford to give me perfume.’
‘I stole it, what do you think? That’s how low I am.’
‘But you came here today and you saved my life, and little Noah’s life, too.’
Jeremy looked across at Noah playing with the crumbs of his broken biscuit. ‘Is that his name? Noah? That’s a good name. Noah, who saved whatever he could when his whole world was drowned.’
Beatrice stood up. ‘I’m going to call my labourers and have them take away this – this—’ she nodded her head towards Jonathan Shooks, but she couldn’t bring herself to say his name. ‘I’ll send to the village, too, to the magistrate, and let him know what’s happened. I will testify that you saved my life, Jeremy, don’t worry. In any event, he was wanted for murder and extortion and they will thank you rather than condemn you.’
‘Thank you, Bea.’
‘Our first priority must be for your wound to heal. We must feed you properly and make sure that you rest, and clothe you properly, too. I am sure that Francis would not have begrudged you some of his shirts and britches, even if he were still alive.’
‘Bea, you owe me nothing. Everything that has happened to me has been of my own making. I was a drunk and a fool. Had I not been so blind I would have seen that my partner was cheating me, right left and centre. I am simply glad that I was close by when I saw that man approaching your house. Ever since Francis passed away, I have been keeping a watch on you. I know – that sounds as if I am obsessed with you, doesn’t it? Perhaps I am. But I will not be a burden to you, nor an embarrassment. I love you too much for that.’
Beatrice said, ‘Jeremy, you are my cousin and you are going to stay here and get well, and only after that will we decide what you can do next.’
She lifted Noah out of his high-chair and said, ‘Noah, I want you to meet your Uncle Jeremy. Can you say “Uncle Jeremy”?’