Sacrilege: A Novel

by S. J. Parris

  “It is true that my uncle taught me plenty of remedies when I helped him in the shop,” she was saying, and I brought my attention back to the stream of her chatter. “But my mother will not let me practice them, for fear. She says a woman who knows how to heal is judged a witch.”

  “Only by the ignorant. But perhaps your mother is afraid that you would have to work with dangerous ingredients. Your uncle must have kept many in his shop—poisons, even?”

  “Only the dose makes the poison,” she said importantly, and the hairs on my arm prickled. “Uncle William always used to say that.”

  “Surely not!” I affected to laugh. “A poison is a poison, is it not so? I mean, something like belladonna, for instance—what good remedy could you make from that?”

  “You would be surprised,” she said, her face earnest. “People think it dangerous because of the berries, but I’ll wager you did not know that a tincture of belladonna is the only antidote to laudanum poisoning?”

  I stopped dead in the street and stared at her. The horse snorted in protest at my sudden halt.

  “Laudanum, did you say?”

  She nodded, pleased to show off her store of knowledge.

  “You can give a person laudanum to dull pain or help them sleep, as everyone knows, but if you give too much by mistake, the person passes into a state almost between life and death, where you cannot even tell that he breathes, and he will never wake unless he be given belladonna. Come—we must talk and walk at the same time, or I shall be in trouble.”

  She giggled again and I resumed my pace, fighting to keep my face steady.

  “So, you are saying—if you give a man a heavy dose of laudanum, he will pass into a sleep that looks almost like death, but if he is given belladonna, he will wake again?”

  “So my uncle claimed, though I never saw it done. But he said the method had been tried.”

  “What if you give too great a dose of belladonna by mistake?”

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I suppose the person would die then as well. I will tell you another curious fact about belladonna, though,” she said, brightening. “Children can tolerate a dose of it that would kill a grown man. Is that not strange? You would think, being smaller, they would die quicker. But up to the age of twelve or thirteen it is the opposite, my uncle said.”

  “How did he know this?” I asked, too sharply; I saw a flicker of concern cross her face.

  “I suppose he read of it somewhere. He had a great curiosity for new ideas in physic, though he would not speak of it when there were customers in the shop. People have no spirit of adventure when it comes to remedies, he used to say. They want you to give them what they have always had, no matter whether it works or not. Try something new and they will accuse you of alchemy or witchcraft, he said.”

  “That is sometimes said of Doctor Sykes, is it not?”

  “Huh. Uncle William was a great admirer of Doctor Sykes for that.” The curl of her lip as she spoke made her own feelings clear. “He said Sykes was not afraid to experiment.”

  “What did he mean by that, do you think?”

  She gave an impatient little shake of the head, as if the subject was no longer of interest to her, holding on to her coif with her free hand against the chafing wind.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Uncle William was always in awe of those he thought his betters. Fawning, my aunt used to call it. He liked to say he could have been a physician if he’d been born a gentleman’s son and had the leisure to study. I never liked Doctor Sykes, though perhaps that’s unkind of me, on account of his looks. Puts me in mind of a great toad, with all his chins. And the way he fixes you with those cold eyes—like he’s picturing cutting you open on a slab to see how your insides work.”

  “I would not put it past him.”

  I had only seen Sykes on that one fateful occasion in Fitch’s shop, but she was exactly right about his cold eyes. So Sykes liked to experiment. Something nagged at the corner of my thoughts. I took a deep breath and deliberately focused my mind inward to the theatre of memory. Yes—Langworth and Samuel had talked of experiments that day I had hidden under Langworth’s bed. Langworth had said they should wait, there had been too many deaths in the town; had he meant that further experiments would lead to more deaths? Was that what the dead boys had been—subjects of experimentation? Sykes and Fitch shared an interest in medicine, but what was Langworth’s motive in such business?

  “Is Sykes married?” I asked Rebecca. She grimaced.

  “Not he. What woman would choose to marry that foul toad-face?”

  “Is there any gossip in the town that he inclines another way?”

  “Men, you mean?”

  “Or boys.”

  She considered this for a moment before a decisive shake of the head.

  “I have never heard it said. And Mistress Blunt knows every scrap of gossip in Canterbury, she prides herself on it. Goodwives come to her stall for the tales as much as for the bread. If there were rumours like that about Doctor Sykes, she would be the first to know of it. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” I smiled. “Only that it is sometimes said of men who are not married.”

  “Are you married?” she asked, with a coy sideways glance.

  “I? No.”

  “And is it said of you?”

  I laughed. “Not to my face.”

  She still looked a little concerned; I winked to reassure her and she blushed pleasingly. “We turn down here,” she said, indicating a narrow unpaved street that ran parallel to the city wall, whose squat flint towers rose over the roofs of the cottages ahead of us.

  These were poorer dwellings, few of them more than one storey and many badly needed their plaster and thatch to be restored. There was a strong smell of refuse and human waste here; the horse seemed reluctant to be led this way. I tugged gently on his bridle, whispering encouragement, and as I did a large brown rat scurried between my feet and disappeared. So this was where Tom Garth lived with his mother. Small wonder he had such a grievance about the soft lives of youths like Nicholas Kingsley.

  Rebecca’s pace slowed as we progressed along the street, as if dragging out the moments before she was obliged to face Mother Garth. I wondered how frightening one old woman could be.

  “This one,” she whispered, stopping at a run-down cottage with a crooked roof. One pane of glass in the front casement was broken and the gap was stopped by a sheet of canvas, which the wind had loosened to slap against the frame. Rebecca looked at me expectantly, so I stepped forward and knocked smartly three times on the door. The wood was not sturdy and I felt it bend even under the force of my knuckles. We waited for a few moments, Rebecca nervously twining the strings of her coif around her fingers. Eventually it seemed clear that no one was going to answer. I knocked again and leaned close to the door to listen out for some movement inside, but there was only silence and the crying of the gulls above us.

  “No one is home,” I said, after a few moments more. The horse was growing restless and I was also impatient to be gone. “Perhaps you could leave the basket with a neighbour—”

  Rebecca shook her head.

  “She is there. She never leaves the house. We will have to go in.” She bit her lip at the prospect.

  “I cannot leave the horse alone in a street like this,” I said. “He is valuable and I have paid good money as a surety for him in London.”

  “I will wait and hold him,” she said, eagerly holding out a hand for his bridle. “It won’t take you a moment.” She shone a hopeful smile at me and I rolled my eyes indulgently, reaching for the basket. It ought to prove easier to question Tom Garth’s mother alone and I could not refuse the chance.

  I pushed at the flimsy door and it opened easily into one small, low room with a fire in the centre and a hole above in the blackened thatch to let the smoke escape. In one corner was an ancient-looking wooden settle and beside the fire two rough stools. Over the fire stood an iron frame for hanging a cooking
pot. In a far corner, a straw pallet was stacked neatly against the wall. I wondered if that was where Tom slept. The room was empty of life.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Mistress Garth? I bring your bread.”

  There was no reply. I glanced over my shoulder to see Rebecca’s anxious face peering in the crack of the front door. Nodding to her, I pushed it closed behind me. Opposite this door was another that looked as if it might lead to a back room. I crossed and opened it to find a dim chamber dominated by a large bed and smelling thickly of stale clothes and unwashed bodies. The one small casement was hung with a ragged dark cloth to keep out the daylight. I could hear a fly buzzing persistently against the glass in the stillness. To one side of the bed a wooden ladder rose up to what might have been a kind of loft or storage area built with planks over the rafters under the eaves.

  “Mistress Garth?” I called again and this time thought I heard a scratch of movement from above, so slight it might have been a mouse in the thatch. I placed the bread basket on the floor and put my foot on the first step of the ladder. It creaked loudly. There was no further sound from overhead, but I continued up the rungs to the space at the top cut into the planks that had been nailed across the roof beams. Just as my head emerged through the gap, a bony hand shot out and gripped me by the collar; involuntarily I cried out and the creature holding me did the same, though with a note of triumph.

  “You!” she shrieked, and I found myself staring into a face that would have terrified children. Wasted by age and hunger so that the skin was stretched across the bones, making the wild blue eyes seem larger and brighter, she bore on her cheeks the marks of childhood pox and a broad scar ran through her left brow. Most of her teeth were missing and her thin lips curled back over the bare gums as she fixed me with her strange, unfocused gaze. A mass of wiry curls stood out around her head, still dark in places though streaked through with silver like the pelt of a badger; with each movement of her head these ringlets seemed to quiver with life of their own and I thought instantly of Medusa and her hair of writhing snakes. I started back and almost lost my footing on the ladder; her grip tightened and she coughed out a hoarse laugh into my face.

  “Are you come from the mayor?”

  “I am come from the bread stall.”

  She took no notice of this.

  “I told my Tom to send someone from the law. Thieves! They are taking her things. For what, I don’t know. To sell? You tell me. Are you a constable?”

  “No,” I said, keeping my voice steady. She was touched in her wits, that much was clear, but I felt there was some sense in it, if I could only tune my ears. “I have brought you bread.”

  The feverish eyes raked my face again, though this time there was uncertainty in them.

  “They are taking her things,” she repeated, though more quietly, and her grip slackened on my collar. “Why? It is all I have left of her.”

  “Sarah’s things?” I asked. Her eyes flashed with fury and she pulled my face closer. Her breath stank of sour milk.

  “What do you know of it? You know something! Is it not enough that they took her from me, now they must come here in the dead of night like foxes and carry off her clothes?”

  “What did they take?” I could not lean back for fear of toppling off the ladder; her face was as close as if she meant to kiss me.

  “Her best gloves.” Finally she let go of me, as if to concede defeat, and gave a dry laugh. “Her only gloves, I should say. I keep all her things in a chest up here, you see.” She pointed to a rough wooden box in the corner of the loft. “I take them out and remember her. Sometimes I fancy they still smell of her, though my Tom says ’tis only mould and moths. He says I should have sold the good cloth years ago and burned the rest, but we have different ways of mourning. A mother doesn’t let go, you know.” I thought I saw the shine of tears in her eyes then, but it might only have been the fever of madness. She seemed to focus on me again and her face hardened. “So I keep vigil up here now, in case they come back for the rest. I won’t sleep neither. That’s when they’ll come, won’t they? In the night.” She raised her chin as if daring me to contradict her.

  “Who do you think stole Sarah’s gloves?”

  “The ones who killed her,” she hissed, through her remaining stumps of teeth.

  “And who are they?”

  “You know,” she said, and spat into the straw to show her contempt. “All the fucking town knows, but they will not bring him to justice. Ah, but one fine day justice will come to him, when he least expects it.”

  She broke into a lunatic cackle and I was moved by pity for her state, though her words were sending my thoughts spinning, so similar were they to Tom’s. A missing pair of gloves. And a pair of women’s gloves found bloodied at the place of Sir Edward Kingsley’s murder. I needed to speak to Tom Garth again.

  “You know Edward Kingsley is dead?” I said. The old woman stopped laughing abruptly and stared at me.

  “Of course I know, you insolent fucking boy—I am not simple. My Tom told me. He should have been brought to public trial for what he did, but something is better than nothing. I hope the whoremongering devil suffered. I hope he suffers in Hell even now. But there are others must be punished for my Sarah.”

  “Which others?” I asked, but her face closed up like a shutter and she gave only a low laugh, knowing and wicked.

  “They will learn when their judgement day comes,” she muttered. Her eyes narrowed and she looked at me as if noticing me for the first time. “Bread, you say?”

  “It is downstairs.”

  “I suppose you want money?”

  It had not occurred to me to ask Rebecca if the bread was already paid for. But the old woman settled the question with a wave of her claw-like hand.

  “I have no money here. Tell them to ask my Tom, he takes care of matters. Besides, I cannot leave Sarah’s clothes unattended.” With this, she scuttled on her hands and knees back across the straw to the corner where the chest stood and laid a protective hand over it. “Now get out of my house,” she added, though without malice.

  I bade her good day and retreated to the ground with some relief. Poor Tom, I thought, glancing at the straw pallet in the main room. To live like this, with her, might drive any man to violence. I had been so distracted by the discovery of Sir Edward’s underground tomb, his tangled relationships with Langworth, Sykes, and Samuel, and the implications of his will that I had all but dismissed Tom Garth’s motive for murdering his sister’s former employer. Could it be that Fitch’s murder and Sir Edward’s were unconnected, and Sophia’s husband had been killed in a simple act of revenge, an act imagined and brooded over for years in this squalid room?

  Rebecca, relieved of her onerous task, seemed lighter in spirit as we made our way back towards the market, chattering freely and swinging the empty basket at her side, walking a little too close to me and touching my arm often to accompany whatever point she was making. I heard but one word in twenty, my thoughts all caught up in what I had learned this past half hour. But as we neared the street corner that led to the marketplace, I came back to myself and brought the horse to a halt while we were still out of sight, conscious of how our appearance together would look to the busy goodwives.

  “You should go on ahead,” I said, motioning briskly with my head. “It would not do for you to be seen with a suspected murderer.”

  She twisted her fingers together and giggled. I was beginning to find this girlish simpering tiresome and grew impatient for her to be gone; once again I appreciated Sophia’s self-contained dignity and her disdain for such wiles as girls commonly use. The prospect of seeing her that night took on a sharper thrill as I remembered the graceful curve of her neck, the way she would turn her head and fix her silent steady gaze on me.

  “You have done me a great service, sir,” Rebecca murmured, looking up at me from under her lashes. “I wish I could think of some reward.” This time she deliberately met my eyes and did not look away.
r />   “Oh, I have had reward enough,” I said, pretending to be innocent of her meaning, and thinking of the two new nuggets of information I had gained from this detour. “The pleasure of meeting Mistress Garth, for instance. And your fascinating discourse on remedies,” I added hastily, seeing the girl’s face fall.

  “Perhaps I shall see you again tomorrow?” she said, a hopeful note in her voice.

  “Perhaps. It is a small town.” I smiled with what I hoped was polite detachment. Evidently this did not register, because she leaned forward on her tiptoes and planted a wet kiss full on my lips. Before I had time to react, she clapped a hand to her mouth as if scandalised by her own boldness, gathered up her skirts in both hands, and fled in the direction of the market. Left alone in the empty street, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and leaned back against the horse’s shoulder, smiling.

  “Never the one you want, eh? Why is that, old friend?”

  He snorted and shook his mane.

  “You’re right. Human nature.” I slapped him gently on the side of his neck and led him onwards.

  TOM GARTH CAME out to greet me at the Christ Church gate, surprise etched on his face.

  “I heard you were arrested for murder,” he whispered, approaching and patting the horse on the shoulder. “Is it true you must stay here with Harry until the assizes?”

  “Don’t worry, there is no case to answer,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “Where do I take this fellow?”

  “All the way around the corona and past the guesthouses at the end, you will see the stable block.” He hesitated, wiping his hands on his tunic, and there was a nervousness in his demeanour. I noticed he had not asked me to surrender my weapon this time. “Are you not afraid? Will you send for a lawyer from London?”

  “I will defend myself by showing the court the real murderer. But you are right, Tom—it is a fearful thing to be accused of murder.”

  He looked at me for a moment without speaking, and it seemed that he blanched; he licked his lips and swallowed, as if his mouth had dried and I thought he was going to speak, but he merely nodded in agreement. I noticed his fingers plucking at the bandage he wore around his hand. I turned away; there were questions to be answered about his sister’s gloves and his own movements on the night of Sir Edward’s murder, but now was not the time. For now all I wanted was to get Samuel on the road and unburden myself to Harry.