Three days later, when Beatrice was weeding the garden, Major General Holyoke came around the side of the house.
‘Beatrice!’ he called out. ‘Good morning to you!’
Jeremy was sitting on a kitchen chair by the side of the vegetable patch, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat that used to belong to Francis, and one of Francis’s shirts and a pair of his pale blue britches. He had shaved off his beard and Beatrice had cut his hair, and although he was still pale he looked at least human, not like the wild beast in the brown cloak who had rescued Beatrice from Jonathan Shooks.
Beatrice had been applying goldenseal tincture and garlic to his wound and had dressed it freshly twice a day, and it seemed to be healing well, although he still complained of a pain in his chest.
‘Major General Holyoke,’ Beatrice greeted him. ‘You haven’t met my cousin Jeremy. He was the hero who saved us when Jonathan Shooks came here to murder us.’
Major General Holyoke shook Jeremy’s hand. ‘You did this community a great service, sir. I thank you. How are you, Beatrice? Are you well?’
Beatrice laid down her hoe. ‘I am quite well, thank you. Can I offer you tea, or cider?’
‘I thank you, but no. This is not really a social visit. I have come to show you two things. If you would be kind enough to follow me back to my carriage?’
Beatrice wiped her hands on her apron and followed Major General Holyoke around to the front of the house. His shiny maroon chaise was standing there, with his coachman standing beside it talking to Mary. Sitting in the chaise, wrapped in a shawl, was the Widow Belknap. When she saw Beatrice she smiled and weakly raised her hand.
‘Widow Belknap!’ said Beatrice. ‘I am so delighted they found you! How are you?’
‘My mind is still full of fancies,’ said the Widow Belknap hoarsely. ‘I still believe that I can see people who are not really there, and hear voices in my head. I still believe sometimes that I can fly, or walk on water. But Doctor Merrydew says that will pass in time.’
‘Where did they find her?’ Beatrice asked Major General Holyoke.
‘Not far from the lake where you said that you had seen her. She was quite naked and chewing tree bark. I doubt if she would have survived very much longer. Thank the Lord you sent us out looking for her.’
‘There is no way that I can thank you, Goody Scarlet,’ said the Widow Belknap.
‘I am a relict now, as you are,’ said Beatrice. ‘You should call me Widow Scarlet.’
The Widow Belknap nodded. ‘Yes... yes, they told me that the Reverend Scarlet had passed away. I am very sad for you. I know what grief is like. It is a kind of madness. In some ways it is even worse than the madness that I am suffering now. At least I know that my sanity will soon return to me, but not my dear dead husband.’
She paused, and then she said, ‘I have to confess to poisoning your horse, Goody Scarlet. I fed him with yew leaves even as you and the Reverend Scarlet spoke to me. I was angry with you for suggesting that I would cast such wicked spells on my neighbours. I meant only to make the animal sick and cause you to have to walk home. I did not think for a moment that it would die. I apologize, from the bottom of my heart.’
‘It’s forgotten,’ said Beatrice. ‘Just as so much else should be forgotten, and forgiven, too.’
She turned to Major General Holyoke. ‘Did you not say that you had two things to show me?’
‘Aha!’ said Major General Holyoke. He went round to the trunk at the rear of his chaise and opened it up. ‘This contraption we discovered in Mr Shooks’s calash. I would say that this is all the evidence we require for a posthumous conviction, wouldn’t you?’
He lifted out a two long rods made of oak, which were joined together by a short crossbar, like a pair of legs. On the end of each rod was a cloven hoof, which looked as if it had been cut from a goat. Each hoof was stained with a dark, sticky-looking substance. Beatrice didn’t have to smell it to recognize what it was.
‘The Devil’s hoof prints,’ said Major General Holyoke. ‘A very simple device indeed, but one that very successfully played on our fears.’
Beatrice heard Noah calling out. She looked around and saw Jeremy walking around the house, holding Noah’s hand.
We came here to make a new life, she thought. We wanted to leave behind all the myths and superstitions of the Old World. But we brought our fears of devils and demons along with us.
She promised herself then that she would bring Noah up to fear nobody and nothing.
*
Six weeks passed. Jeremy grew stronger every day and was soon able to help in the garden, and with feeding the pigs, and with painting the parsonage ready for winter. Beatrice, on the other hand, began to feel increasingly tired, and her breasts and her ankles were swollen. She hadn’t had a period since the week before Francis was killed.
She had no way of proving it, but she was sure that she was pregnant. She stood looking at herself in the mirror in the parlour and because of the distortion in the glass she was unsure if she was expressionless or if she was secretly smiling to herself.
If she was pregnant, she couldn’t be sure whose child she was carrying. With Francis, she hadn’t conceived since Noah, and Jonathan Shooks had taken her in such a way that conception seemed remote.
She looked out of the parlour window and she could see that the leaves of the oaks along the driveway were already turning yellow. Even with Noah and Jeremy and all her friends in the congregation, she had never felt so alone in her life.
~
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