Dark Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  His majesty’s trial was a farce, and even though I knew my history, now living here and surrounded by the opinions of a thousand others around me, I was horrified at the absurdity and disgraceful lack of justice. Charles was accused of treason. Since he was the king, very few people of England could understand how he could be treasonous against himself.

  “Treason against his own people,” seethed Cromwell between his teeth.

  The parliament refused the undertaking at first, even the commons and then the lords balked at the idea. Finally, Cromwell forced the proceedings. His majesty was quickly tried for treason.

  Having refused to answer any question, or even to defend himself, Charles explained that since the court had no power to accuse nor try him, he would neither speak nor afford the judge the honour of answering him.

  In fact, the absurd attack of treason was made because this accusation did not involve calling a jury. A jury would never have brought in a guilty verdict. But the trial of anyone for treason demanded only the judgement of the court and judge themselves and absolved anyone who might find the accused king innocent.

  The trial was therefore utterly ridiculous and his majesty sat completely silent during those first days, nor would he plead since the charge, he insisted, could not be legally put against him. He even managed to appear unmoved.

  As the mock trial progressed, Charles spoke and remained both eloquent and convincing, but whatever he said now made not one snap of difference, for the judge had received his orders from Cromwell, and was already decided on his judgement.

  It was during this time that finally I saw Vespasian again. Dressed as a Puritan without conviction, plain dark cloth but with cuffs turned back in velvet and a cravat of white linen, lace trimmed, he barely hid his religious doubts. I, however, was as insignificant as possible. So we did not stand together when he escorted me to the site of the proposed execution of our crowned and, some shouted, divinely chosen King Charles I.

  “Alright,” I muttered when I managed to stand at Vespasian’s side, “how do they get away with it?”

  The crowd was shuffling, some shouting, some crying. These were the common people who supported Cromwell, but the murder of their king was no popular act after all.

  “Charles was – is – unfortunate,” Vespasian told me without bothering to lower his already quiet voice. He was even harder to hear over the mutterings around us. “Like Henry VIII, Charles was a second son and was not educated to be king. When the elder brother died, Henry VIII took this as God’s indication that he was the better man. Charles did not feel this way. He is desperately shy, and although a sweet and kindly man in private, he cannot relate to his subjects in public. His religious beliefs are profound and fervent, but in contrast to those of Cromwell. “

  “So,” I said, just as if I was back at school, “Charles and Cromwell are exact opposites.”

  “And yet so alike,” Vespasian answered. “Both hold their religion as the ultimate guidance. Charles believes that God has placed him in a position of immense responsibility and therefore his life must consist of his duty to his people doing exactly whatever he believes is God’s will. Cromwell follows a different God, one who demands the duty of austerity and orders Cromwell to lead the country into righteousness as he sees it. They are the same man. It is the church which varies.”

  “The same fanaticism,” I mumbled, nodding, “the same arrogance and the same conviction that they alone know the right way. But Cromwell doesn’t share the little king’s sweet nature beneath the all-knowing arrogance, and doesn’t love his people as Charles does.”

  Already he was walking away and I stood squashed within the crowd and watched as King Charles was brought out and led to the execution block. It was surrounded in black cloth, and here, at Whitehall in front of the banqueting hall, the day was freezing, being 30th January 1649 during England’s little ice age when winter meant skating on the frozen rivers across all the country, including the Thames, while the very poor were dying in their unheated cottages.

  I knew from books I’d read that Charles wore two warm shirts as he didn’t want to shiver so much that the crowd would think him trembling with fear. I thought this dreadfully sad, but I could see little of the action, and no blink of the royal’s face. I was too far back in the crowd, but I saw more than I ever wanted to remember afterwards. He knelt, bent his head to the block, stretched out his arms, and the executioner swung his axe. The stroke was clean and sudden and extremely quick. I turned away as the king’s head was raised and shown to the crowd.

  I heard cheering and clapping from some at the front. But from those around me there was a mighty gasp, followed by silence, and then by crying. The king’s habits may not have been popular amongst many of his people, but he had still been the Lord’s king. A king was a king was a king.

  A pubic execution, I muttered to myself, was an aberration and a denial of humanity, whoever the dead might be. Even the worst criminal should have his privacy in which to die. This was a Roman massacre in the Colosseum – making pain and bloodshed into comic theatre.

  I’d lost Vespasian and stumbled away alone. It was Agnes I bumped into.

  “Well, ‘tis done.” She seemed content.

  “Few of the people approved,” I added. I realised I was crying too. After knowing of this death taking place 400 years ago, seeing the actual procedure felt worse than I’d expected. I couldn’t stop crying.

  My thoughts calmed and I called myself a fool. Centuries before I had seen mass slaughter and thought it right. Now I felt more like Sarah, disgusted at the open and bloody death of a simple and innocent man.

  Then Agnes spat in my face. “And you a righteous follower? Or is you a king’s whore after all, stupid bitch.”

  I wiped her disgusting spit from my cheek. “I’m not the only one crying. Half the crowd seems appalled,” I said, turned away and walked off. How I was supposed to be her friend, I had no idea, but it was the only reason I was stuck at this school pretending to be a Puritan. I had always disliked Agnes since our first meeting. Now I loathed her. She was a bitch. Yet although she approved of bloodshed, all I had seen her do was mistreat her nephew and talk rubbish.

  I walked home alone, trotted up to the attic dormitory, climbed fully dressed onto my bed, wiped my eyes and tried to think. Back to work, forget the king’s execution, attempt to follow the teachings of the new church, make no complaints, and wait for Vespasian to reappear.

  The children of titled royalists gradually faded from our dormitories, but we retained a good many boys between the ages of eight and twelve, including Tom who was now permitted a free education because of Agnes’s presence, and since her wages were virtually a blink and a handshake, even the half fees Tom had once had to pay, were now dissolved. I slouched, slept, woke, ate meagre nothings and spent my days teaching the simple basics of reading and writing. My own problems writing with a quill pen, slopping ink and blotting paper was my only difficulty, and something which some of the boys managed better than I did.

  Sleeping was no problem since I was tired enough each day to close my eyes at night and blink immediately into dreams. But the dreams, over which I had no control, were nightmares of eyes amongst the trees, shifting shapes howling and the malicious threats which haunted me day and night. I had escaped my own garden. Yet it had followed me.

  Shadows, ice, the whine of the wind and the tumultuous rain all made me shiver. But there was also bird song, the patter of badger paws, the big golden eyes of the hungry fox and the sudden sighting of a deer between the far trees. And so I concentrated on the sweet and the beautiful, yet could not ignore the doomed pulse of the ugly and the threatening.

  Worse came. The well had clogged up. Not an unusual problem at that time. Water was frozen, or at least so frosted that it could not flow even underground. Dead birds fell into the pits, even dead foxes and rats. Sometimes it was just the pump that had frozen.

  It certainly wasn’t my job to discover the reason nor tr
y to clear the blockage, but Agnes had been sent to fill a bucket, and said a straight no, since it was impossible. “Dig another damned well,” she said. Having shocked Henry Bloom with her language, she stalked off and he went to find Simon.

  Simon found me. “I’ll not ask you to dig, mistress,” he muttered, somewhat insulted at having been ordered to do such a job. “But I’d be much obliged if you’d stand by me to hold the bucket and such.”

  I agreed. Simon was no hulking great brute and I thought he was a bit of a weakling. So was I, as it happened, but two weaklings can make one strong man.

  He bent over the edge of the well’s lip, hanging onto the pump so as not to fall, and peered down into the deep shadows. I asked him if he could see anything. He said he could see a blockage, although not clearly, so didn’t know what it was. “I’ll help you haul it out,” I offered as he rolled over, clutching his nose. As he staggered up, he was gagging.

  “A stink down there,” he pointed. “Reckon ‘tis a dead dog.”

  I had already smelled the putrid stench. Holding my breath, I shoved down the long narrow spade and dug up a bulge of wet muck, tipping it out on the side of the pump. I looked but not too closely. “It’s a dead something,” I agreed. And it was about the size of a stray dog. I certainly felt the sympathy, but the smell was too strong to get closer.

  “That all?” Simon asked.

  So I shoved the spade down again and managed to drag up a few more small clumps of gunge. “It’s got a bit solid,” I explained, “or too big. I need a pitchfork or a rake if I’m to bring out anymore.”

  “Well, we needs to clear it,” muttered Simon, “nor we ain’t got no water, nor clean nor dirty,” and he stomped off to find a rake.

  I stood there, waiting, and gazing with extreme distaste at the dead dog. The whole stench seemed to be getting stronger now some of the thing was up in fresh air, rising almost like a cloud or a mist around the pile I’d unearthed, and I took another step away. And then I saw the finger.

  From the mulch, the top of a finger, its nail black and the skin below lined in decay. So amazed that I didn’t even retch, I stared and then from a distance, poked the pile with my spade. Bits fell separate. There was a cloth, a sheet perhaps, though so filthy it was difficult to recognise. It was easier to recognise what had been wrapped within. There was a hand, then another hand. One tumbled, bones cracked, from a long naked arm.

  That was when I was sick, gagging until my throat was raw and my eyes streaming.

  Simon came back carrying the long-handled rake and stared to where I was pointing. With a grunt of horror, he hurried to the well and thrust in the rake. Within moments he had hooked up a pile of the stinking mush, and immediately tried again. It was sometime before he was sure to have hoisted it all, and left the well running free. Not clean, perhaps. But human remains now lay scattered on the mud and frost around us.

  This seemed even worse than my dreams, perhaps my dreams becoming truth. I had vomited almost continuously until nothing was left to bring back. So reluctantly, and holding my stomach as if it might fall out, I walked back to the muck from the well. It was badly decayed, and much was still indistinguishable from simple slime and jelly, but the rest was obvious enough.

  Now having completed his task, Simon had marched in the opposite direction and was filling another bush with his vomit. I was left alone to study the stuff spread at my feet. One human arm still supporting a hand, was unattached to a body, but the torso, naked, lay on its back with half an arm attached on one side. Another hand was knotted into a fist but lay alone. The lower half of the body was mutilated, the stomach gaping open and the pelvis sliced down the middle. The body was clearly masculine, and a small part of the genitals remained. Three chopped off fingers clutched at those miserable remains.

  His legs and two feet lay in several hacked pieces. Where the body parts had been bundled together, they remained decayed but visible. Other parts were just smashed bone, lumps of sodden flesh, and scraps of hair.

  There was no head, no face, however unrecognisable, and no clear sign of what had happened.

  When Simon crawled back, he was as miserable as I was. “Someone fell down this damned well,” he said, swearing for the first time since I’d known him, “and couldn’t climb out, poor fellow. He died here, screaming for help but was never heard.”

  “Then where’s his clothes?” I demanded.

  “Obvious, ain’t it?” Simon said, shaking his head. “Naked in bed. Came out for fresh air, or some bad dream. Fell in the hole without seeing it.”

  “Then,” I asked softly, “where’s his head?”

  “Stuck further down,” Simon suggested with a gulp. “Fell headfirst.”

  I said that didn’t make sense. “You mean he drowned, his head under water, and when the neck rotted through, the head’s weight took it down to the bottom of the well.” I suppose it might be possible although I doubted it. “But with his hand around his mutilated bits?” I continued, unable to say the word. “And the sheet?”

  “He were naked so wrapped the sheet around hisself like a cloak. Simple.”

  “I think I recognise those hands.” Both were blackened and partly decayed but the thick fingered and wide palmed hands, one hanging on a narrow wrist too small seemingly for the solid and stumpy hand it supported, were what I had seen and disliked many times. “I know who it is.”

  Shaking his head, Simon gagged again. “It ain’t him. Not a good man maybe, but no man deserves a wicked death like this.”

  So he recognised it too. “This is William Prestwich,” I said softly, “and he’s been murdered.”

  Staring, Simon’s mouth dropped open. “No way, mistress, murder? Not possible.”

  I had very little forensic knowledge, but I’d watched relevant programmes on TV. I said, “It’s two weeks since William disappeared. I think this sort of decay is about right for that. What was it? Twelve days, that’s right. But having no head just isn’t possible unless someone cut his throat. The whole neck couldn’t have decayed away faster than any other part. And the legs have been chopped up. That’s not natural disintegration. The belly all ragged. And the bits in his hand – that’s a straight cut. And where’s his ring? He always wore that thin little silver band, didn’t he. He said it was a gift from his mother.”

  Discarding both rake and spade, Simon turned and raced back to the kitchens within the school, yelling about what we’d found. Agnes glared and yelled back that this was nonsense. The other two maids, eyes glazed and cheeks white, came rushing to hear what the noise was all about, and Henry Bloom marched in to complain. The children, forbidden to enter the kitchen at all times, clustered outside the doorway, fascinated by the chaos.

  “Murder,” screeched Simon.

  “Absolute rubbish,” growled Henry.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said, coming up behind. “It’s the truth. We did our best to unblock the well, but it can’t be used again Not now. We found the dead and mangled body parts of a man. I’m fairly sure it’s William Prestwich.”

  One maid fainted into Henry’s arms and the other became hysterical, screaming at me without words.

  I looked at Agnes. She glared at me, but there was a slight twist to her mouth, and a dimple at each corner. That was when I realised that she’d done it. This woman who had lately adopted a more deeply Puritan religion, had slaughtered a man in cold blood. A disgusting man of course, but only a disgusting woman could kill and mutilate, chopping into the legs and amputating the entire head. Then to sling the parts down the well, which might have poisoned our water supply. And, remembering a recent gown bought new, I guessed she’d stolen and then sold that silver ring.

  I had no proof against her, but I wasn’t surprised. She fostered a demon, and this was the first time I’d really seen its work.

  I approached her that evening in our tiny dark dormitory. The two maids hadn’t come upstairs yet, since the doctor had been called. Agnes sat on her own bed and looked back at me. �
�You knows, don’t you?” she said with that little twisted smile. I nodded.

  “Did you catch that pig hurting Tom?” That seemed the most likely motive. “Or did he try and rape you again?”

  She didn’t bother explaining. “Reckon I’ll tell yer one day,” she said. “But first you gotta swear never to tell no one. When the sheriff gets called, and there’ll be all sorts o’ regulators and churchy fellows surging all around reckoning they ought to know who to blame afore the school gets closed down. And there ain’t no one ‘cept you what knows it were me.”

  “I won’t tell.” This was surely going to be my own opportunity to catch the demon and do what I had seen Vespasian do in our garden. He said he would do it again with my help, but he hadn’t told me not to try. I wanted to see what I might manage.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cromwell pronounced himself Lord Protector and might as well have called himself king. In a way, he was. But there was unrest in every part of the country not only amongst those who were appalled at the murder of the rightful king, whether they had thought him a good king or not, but also amongst those who wanted Cromwell to alter his ideas and intentions.

  I was still hobbling around and avoiding Agnes as the sheriff and his men came to investigate. More than half the pupils were quickly taken from the school by their horrified parents, and once again the place withered, fell bankrupt and left everyone miserable. Except Agnes.

  The victim of her malice hadn’t even been one of the figures carrying a demon, even though he had been utterly vile, and I bet a dozen demons had been having a party inside the wretched man.

  Now life was changing in other ways. No singing and no dancing, no feasting and no colour, no joy and no love. A couple of little boys playing football were snatched up and whipped. A woman wearing make-up was grabbed in the street and her face scrubbed. Those working on a Sunday would be fined and anything which suggested happiness was banned. Work hard for six days, and rest on Sunday after church. Otherwise, said the new doctrine, you’ll never get to heaven. Christmas frivolity was banned. No decorations, no feasts and no music. Church first and then prayer, concentrating only on the birth of the Lord.