The world had become still and silent and, at some point, as I carried Manyon’s reluctantly scrawled signature down to the gaol, the clouds had cleared. A low moon lit the way before the horse over the powdered white ground. The fields to either side went on and on, endless and empty, and above in the black, bright-starred sky, late-hunting gulls called out their searching cries as they soared towards the sea. The world might have been made this night, so clean and fresh did it smell and taste.
With Mary’s shape before me in the saddle, I felt a strange measure of peace. She had spoken little since Dillon had released her, even when I had related my own story. She seemed used to her own thoughts, her own company. Perhaps that quality had served her well in the gaol. Now she swayed steadily with the horse’s movements, her thin dress covered by my cloak. As we passed trees and ditches, all blanketed by snow, still she said nothing. I admired her seemingly endless capacity for silence.
We turned south at White Horse Common. I thought about continuing east for another mile or so and stopping at Rutherford’s property, finding out what had befallen the man, but the thought of Esther drove me on. I wished myself home already. The journey was taking twice the time because the horse carried two, and the snow was deeper now.
‘I would welcome your story,’ I said, eventually, as we followed the river’s course away from Walsham, towards the sea. ‘All has been confusion since I returned to my home, and truth would pierce the mists.’
Tension entered her back and shoulders. Then, she spoke in a low voice. ‘The tale is one I scarce believe myself. I hardly think you will credit it.’
Her mistrust was entirely fair. I had not valorised myself with my earlier conduct towards her. I said, ‘Have I not shown you otherwise, through my actions? I have been a disbelieving fool; but now is the time for credulity, I think.’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Where would you like me to begin?’ Her tone remained clipped and wary. Despite the openness of her words, she did not trust me.
‘At the beginning. Your beginning. Where are you truly from?’
‘London. My father was a freeman of the Blacksmiths’ Company. He made tower clocks. He was a skilled smith. When I was born and when I was younger, my family lived well.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Edward Moore. We lived in Southwark. I remember the bullbaiting, the dogs taking the bull by the nose and clinging on until… Well, you know how that goes. I hated that. But I don’t remember much more. We left when I was nine or so, and moved out beyond Clerkenwell, because my father feared the plague. He was right to fear it. He took ill the following year, and so did my mother. Both were gone within days. Henry was a babe in arms. I was a child. My father… well, he left little of worth; he gambled away most of his property. That sundial, the one Henry carries about with him, only escaped being sold because he had given it me for my birthday. I was ten.’
Her matter-of-fact tone hid pain. ‘How did you live?’ I asked.
For a moment, when Mary had mentioned the plague and its terrible cost, I had remembered Elizabeth. With a stab of melancholy, I realised it was as I had thought before – I could no longer bring her face to mind. What I’d believed to be love had turned out to be no more than infatuation. Nearly all had suffered under the pestilence. Not only the dead. Families were scattered, decimated, whole villages abandoned. The bonds that had glued together close kin and neighbours were disintegrated. Mary’s words brought an understanding of how she had inherited her chaotic life, not chosen it, and a rush of hot shame for having leapt to the conclusions I had.
‘I begged,’ Mary said, simply, in answer to my question. ‘I held on to Henry and I begged. For a while, that served a purpose. But he got bigger, people’s sympathy waned, the trickle of money grew thin, and suggestions as to how I should feed him became less palatable.’ She shrugged. ‘So I developed other skills.’
‘What skills?’
She was quiet for a few moments, perhaps deciding how honest to be. ‘My father taught me a great deal about iron, and balance wheels and the complex mechanisms that make them strike. I found that I was able to turn that knowledge to a different purpose.’
That was another surprise. ‘What purpose?’
‘I became a picklock.’ When I, astounded, did not reply, she laughed. ‘Yes, I was a thief. London would not do for my trade. It was too busy. I would have been caught in an instant. So, Henry and I moved about, and I sought the houses of gentry and the richer sort of farmer – houses like your own. Eventually, I came to Norwich. I looked for accommodation, but it was difficult, with Henry in tow. Then Lucy offered us a roof.
‘She wanted something from me, of course, in return, but I would not part my legs for the scurvy men she called customers. I told her what I could do, that my price for half of my income was her care of Henry, that she would keep him from harm when I was away, and when I returned that we would have bed and board there. I offered her an invented name in the hope that, one day, Henry and I could leave, and go back to our lives without the stain of her house on us.’
‘She kept to her bargain?’
‘Mostly. She was constantly telling me how “her men”, as she called them, had made offers for me. How a “clean” girl would satisfy men like that lecherous fool Manyon, who found their desires impossible to repress but feared the pox, or the French disease. But I was not to be her plaything, or theirs. I saw the potions and tinctures forced upon the other girls, to try to cover the damage. I saw the babies born sick and dying early, and I would have none of it.’
‘You preferred, instead, to steal from others?’ I spoke mildly, trying to keep the sting of judgement from my words.
‘Preferred?’ she repeated, with a harder laugh. ‘Preferred creeping into the houses of the rich, silencing their guard dogs with meat and false affection, running from night watchmen who happened upon an open door? The risk of hanging? Yes. Yes, I preferred it to the stinking embrace of man upon man, and an early, beggarly death. Who wouldn’t? Hold your hand before you judge me. Besides, I wanted something else. A different life for Henry, and I was saving for it. I was quite willing to put down my picklock, but I needed enough to support him first.’
Even then, she had a unique ability to make me feel small, though she has used it rarely enough over the years. I coloured. ‘I apologise, Mary. Your choices are your business.’
‘No, they are also yours,’ she said. ‘It was because I planned to rob your home that I ended up living in it.’
‘Ah. This is where my father comes into the story.’ My voice broke slightly. I felt her shift in the saddle, as if aware of the keen edge of my grief.
‘Yes. He caught me.’
‘What?’
‘My usual way of going about it, so to speak, was to wait until the whole house slept. Men retire early in these times, so it was simple enough to take a position in the grounds and wait for dark. Your father had a good strong lock on the back door to the house, but one of my keys fitted well enough.’
‘You do it with different keys? I’ve always wondered how picklocks manage their tricks.’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, there is scarcely a trick to it. There are only so many designs for locks. Carry enough keys with you, it’s nearly guaranteed one of them will fit. The skill is in the stealth. Well, I entered the house and searched the downstairs, and found little of value, except a strongbox key. And many keep a strongbox beneath their beds. It was a risk. But I had come a long way. Too far to turn back.’
I remembered the keys beneath Father’s bed. I had not known at the time what they were for. Now another piece of the puzzle aligned.
I said, ‘It’s hard to believe you can enter a man’s bedroom without him noticing.’
‘It’s not hard at all. If a man snores loudly enough, he usually sleeps deeply.’
‘But you did wake my father?’
‘No. My mistake was to think him in bed to begin with. I realised as soon as I went in that he was not there, and tried to get out, but he caught me.’
‘What did he do?’
She paused. ‘This part shames me. More than the rest.’
‘Why?’
‘Your father knew I would hang if he delivered me to the constable. And so, he did not. Instead, he lit lamps, heated cider, gave me bread from his own table, and he sat down and talked to me of the goodness of God, and the place of everything in existence in His creation.’ Her voice wavered with these words, and I was hardly less affected. A hot lump rose in my throat. Pressure built, then tears came unbounded. I tried to hold them in, but she turned in the saddle to see me sniffing. I apologised again. ‘He was the kindest man I ever met,’ she said, softly. ‘Of course you miss him.’
‘What happened then?’ I said, staring ahead at the crescent moon, finding something to focus on that was not an absence, or a fear.
‘He offered me honest work, and a place to stay. I refused at first, not believing anybody could make such an offer without other motive, but again he spoke of service, service to God’s Word and will. He said God loved me. He said there was a reason he had acquired a thirst and risen from his bed that night, and found me, and if I did not stay, then perhaps I would be working against God’s plan for me. So I accepted.’
‘But you left Henry at Lucy Bennett’s?’
‘I could not presume upon your father’s kindness further. He had already been so good to me. He paid me a fair wage. He said nothing to anybody, not even your sister, of the circumstances in which he took me on. I could not ask him to take Henry as well. I sent my wage to Lucy, and saved a tiny amount, hoping, at some point, to reclaim him, and find somewhere decent together.’
Finally, I could ask, ‘And what of Esther?’
‘It’s hard to…’
‘We must have truth now,’ I said, simply.
Mary nodded. ‘Yes, I see that. She did me no wrong, not at first. I could see she was unhappy with my presence; that was natural enough, I suppose. She was worried for her father, worried I had somehow gulled him, and I think she was confused. She asked questions, and I said I’d travelled from London to look for work, which was true, in one way. But I don’t think she believed me. And your father’s regard for me made her very jealous.’
‘She was cruel to you, then?’ I thought of the monstrous voice – indeed, the thought of it had hardly left my head since hearing it – and wondered whether Mary had had to listen to it, too.
Carefully, weighing her words, Mary said, ‘I wouldn’t say that. She was quiet, very pious, exactly as your father had described her to me. But I began to feel that all was not as it should have been.’
‘Why not?’
‘Little things. She spied on me. I often felt that she was watching me at my rest. She was vigilant; yet, sometimes, when I spoke with her, she would seem to be elsewhere, miles and miles away. I would ask a question about the day’s work and she would appear not to have heard me. When I entered her room to clean, there was a smell, like you get inside a shell. I could find no source for it. And the dog would go nowhere near her, nor the horses. Joan avoided her, too, if she could.’
‘Did Joan tell you why?’
‘Not straight away. She was very shy. But eventually, she told me Esther – though she had not always felt this way about her – made her feel cold. That she made her think about all the bad things she had done. She told me to visit her at night, when she slept, and I would see things.’
‘What things?’
‘She would say no more. She only told me to watch her. And so I did. I could move about the house without being heard, you see, so I opened her door and… Excuse me, I…’
‘And what?’
She took a deep breath. ‘You must have the truth now. Too much has passed… I opened her door, and found her in the grip of some sort of fit. Words escaped her that I did not understand, in a language I do not know. And noises as if from the pit of Hell itself.’
I’d heard such sounds, had denied them to myself, preferring to believe my sister only dreamt. ‘Did you go to my father?’
‘How could I?’ she asked, with gentle scorn.
‘I understand.’ Mary had been taken in out of Richard Treadwater’s charity. She could not begin throwing accusations at his daughter. ‘Still, I would have thought Joan would have told her mother, or someone. Or my father. Surely, someone could have…’
‘She was that afraid. We both were. It’s perhaps a hard thing for you to appreciate: the difference between someone making a claim against women like me, or Joan – poor women, who can’t defend themselves – and when the person is of your station in life. Nobody would have believed us.’
‘I can’t argue with that,’ I said, grimly.
‘We knew we had to make our own defences. So we buried blessings in the four corners of the orchard. We carved daisy chains at the bottoms of the doorframes, where they might not be noticed.’
‘Charms against witches?’
‘Yes.’
I sighed. ‘I fear they were useless. She is no witch. The malignancy that possesses her has some other origin. But go on.’
‘I wanted to protect your father, as he had protected me. I started to spend more time with him. I admit I played on his fondness for me, allowing him to see me almost as another daughter. I stayed by his side always, to ensure nothing of her evil could affect him. But I think I erred. Esther’s feelings began to turn to hatred.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She began to shadow me about the house, always in my wake. She accused me of taking little trinkets she kept in her room. One day, she called me “witch”, and I knew trouble was coming. I told Joan to play along, pretend to believe the claims against me. Joan could not afford to lose her position. She was a simple girl – it would be easier for her to make out that I had led her astray.’
‘And then they came for you,’ I said. She nodded. ‘Was my father still well?’
‘Yes. When they came to take me, he argued with Esther. He said her accusations were made from spite, that she must withdraw them, or he would hold her to have shamed him before the whole community. She was devastated. I honestly believe…’ Mary paused, as if trying to work out exactly what she thought. ‘I honestly believe she had no idea that what she was saying was not true.’
‘Did you tell this story to Manyon, at the gaol?’
‘No,’ she said, definitely. ‘Nothing good could come of telling people what I had seen, or what I had done. They would say we were all witches together. And I could not afford for anyone to scrutinise my past. My hope was to outlast Esther’s claim, that it would come apart through lack of proof.’
‘As it did, in the end. But not before you had to suffer through Manyon’s duplicity. I’m sorry for it.’ Thinking of her bruised skin and tortured feet, I had to resist the temptation to tighten my arms around her.
Her voice throbbed with disdain as she said, ‘Him? He’s a purse-bothering little thorough-cough.’
Then I was laughing, suddenly, inappropriately. Realising how long it had been since I had felt mirth, I said, ‘I suspect you didn’t use such wealthy language in front of my father!’
She giggled, quietly. ‘No – no, I did not.’ Then she said, more seriously, ‘But I don’t think Manyon will be our main problem, now.’
‘We might have to fear his vengeance,’ I said, forgetting levity. ‘And besides, the problems of my family are not yours. Where will you go?’
Her shoulders sagged. ‘I don’t know.’
I hesitated before speaking, not daring to hope she would agree. ‘If you can bear it, you and Henry, you may stay on as long as you have a mind to.’
‘Let us get there first,’ she said. ‘And then we will see.’
But what would we see? As we forded the river, the elusive peace that had arrived in Mary’s presence took wing again and fled. Each yard we covered took us further from one defeated menace, but nearer another, one much greater, with everything about it veiled in uncertainty.