Scarlet Widow

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Who is it, Widow Belknap – I mean, Bernice? Can you tell me his name?’

  The Widow Belknap frowned at her as if she didn’t understand what she was talking about. She bent over and picked up her blanket from the ground, wrapping it around her shoulders. Then she spat emphatically, and after she had done so the spit dangled from her pointed chin.

  ‘Who is it, Bernice?’ Beatrice repeated.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ said the Widow Belknap. ‘All will suffer, I promise you! All will suffer! Goodmen, goodwives, children, babies, cattle and swine! The plagues of Egypt will be nothing to what will be visited on this community!’

  ‘But I still don’t understand why,’ said Beatrice. ‘If people in the village have been slandering you, you can always take them to court and have damages awarded against them. Don’t you remember Goody Sanderson, when Abigail Belling called her a “Jewess” and a “hobbling Joan”? She received five shillings for that.’

  ‘Goody Sanderson? Hah! She didn’t deserve it. She was never pitiful to the poor. But it isn’t money I want, Goody Scarlet. It’s a settling of scores! Call me a slut and I will be a slut, that’s vengeance for you. Call me a witch? I’ll fly down your chimney at night and choke your children!’

  ‘But who is this “brown one”, Bernice? And what has he done to offend you so grievously?’

  The Widow Belknap raised her left arm so that her blanket half covered her face, and winked at her. Then she started to laugh – a high, screaming, hysterical laugh that made Beatrice feel as if her skin were shrinking.

  She lifted her blanket high over her head and danced around in a circle, still laughing. Then, without saying anything else, she went dancing off around the side of the pond, kicking her way through the steeplebush so that their fuzzy purple flowers scattered in all directions. There was nothing that Beatrice could do except sit and watch her disappear between the trees. She could still hear her laughing when she was no longer in sight, but then there was silence again, with no birds singing.

  Beatrice had wanted to ask the Widow Belknap again if she had seen Francis, or at least if she had any idea what had happened to him, but now it was too late.

  She had been deeply disturbed by the Widow Belknap’s talk of ‘that brown one’. Had she been referring to the brown-cloaked figure who had been haunting the parsonage? Did she want her revenge on him because he had mistreated her, or slandered her? Who had inflicted those cross-hatched scratches on her breasts? Even though it may have been ‘that brown one’ who had brought Beatrice perfume and wildflowers, could he possibly be dangerous?

  Beatrice tied Uriel’s traces to a tree and then walked all the way around the pond, which took her nearly two hours. She had brought a brass-topped walking stick with her and she used it to beat at the bushes and the weeds in case Francis was lying underneath them, hidden from view.

  At last, however, tired and tearful and scratched by briars, she had to admit that she couldn’t find him. Perhaps Jubal or Caleb or one of the Barraclough boys had met with better luck. She climbed back into her seat and turned the shay back towards Sutton.

  Twenty-seven

  She was still a mile away from the village when she saw the high plume of grey smoke rising above the treetops.

  It was billowing up far too dark and dense for a bonfire, and it was coming from the wrong side of the village green for it to be another chimney fire from Rodney Bartlett’s smithy. She snapped her whip in order to coax Uriel to trot faster, and he tried to, although he was tired from taking her all the way to Johnson’s Pond and back.

  When she drove into the village she saw that the Buckleys’ house was on fire, and not just smoking. Huge orange flames were dancing out of the front parlour windows and the front door, and the whole framework of the house was blazing.

  A crowd of thirty or forty villagers were gathered around the front of the house, and at least a dozen of them had formed a chain to pass buckets of water from the horse-trough pump and empty them on to the flames. The fire was so ferocious, however, that they seemed to be having no effect at all and each bucketful simply exploded into steam as soon as it was thrown.

  Beatrice climbed down from her shay and quickly tied Uriel to the nearest picket fence. She hurried up to Thomas Varney and said, ‘My God, Mr Varney! How did this happen? Is Judith safe? And Apphia?’

  Thomas Varney’s face was reddened and sweaty and there was a smudge of soot on his forehead. ‘They’re both of them still inside! Me and William Rolfe tried to get in to save them, but it was like trying to go in through the gates of hell!’

  He was passed another bucket of water, which he swung back and emptied into the parlour window, but there was a crackle and a hiss and a fleeting cloud of steam and it was gone.

  At that moment the upstairs window directly above the parlour was flung open and thick black smoke came pouring out of it, and a shower of sparks. Judith Buckley appeared, holding Apphia in her arms. Her face was blackened with smoke and Beatrice could see that the backs of her hands were scorched scarlet. Apphia was crying in a thin, high whine.

  ‘Oh God, help us!’ screamed Judith. ‘Oh God, we are burning in here!’

  Beatrice said to Thomas Varney, ‘Ladders! Has anybody sent for ladders?’

  Thomas Varney turned and pointed up towards the meeting house. Sure enough, Peter Duston and his apprentice, John, were hurrying down the slope carrying a long ladder between them.

  Beatrice looked back to the upstairs window. ‘Oh God, save us!’ Judith screamed, but as she did so there was a flare of flames right behind her as her petticoats caught alight. Within a few seconds she was blazing from head to foot, still screaming, and Apphia’s nightgown caught fire, too. Apphia shrieked and struggled in her mother’s arms as the flames engulfed them both.

  Beatrice took two or three steps forward, but Thomas Varney caught hold of her arm. There was nothing anybody could do to save them. Peter Duston arrived with the ladder, gasping for breath, but he was seconds too late.

  ‘Oh Lord God,’ he said, and pressed his hand over his mouth.

  As they watched in helpless horror, Judith threw Apphia out of the window. Apphia was already ablaze, so it looked as if Judith were throwing out a fiery effigy rather than a real child. To Beatrice, it seemed as if time slowed down and Apphia took minutes to fall rather than seconds. She somersaulted over and over, her arms and her legs waving, the flames making the softest of blurting noises as she dropped to the ground. Then she hit the grass in front of the house with a thump, and two men ran up to her and threw buckets of water over her.

  Apphia lay on her back, shuddering for a moment, and then lay still. Beatrice looked up to the window, but Judith had disappeared now and flames were lasciviously licking out of it, like dragons’ tongues.

  Beatrice knelt down beside Apphia but she was clearly dead. Her hair was burned into clumps, her face was bubbled with blisters, and her nightgown was charred into brownish rags.

  ‘You poor, poor girl,’ Beatrice whispered.

  ‘She’s sleeping with Jesus now,’ said Thomas Varney. Beatrice didn’t turn around but she could tell by his voice that he was crying.

  She stood up. ‘How did this fire begin? Does anybody know?’

  Judith’s serving girl, Meg, was sobbing. ‘Goody Buckley sent me to the dairy for milk and when I came back the house was already afire. I can’t think how. There was only the fire in the kitchen, and that never caused us no trouble.’

  The entire house was now in flames and with a loud lurch the interior collapsed. The upper floor dropped into the parlour, bringing down with it the loom that Judith had kept upstairs, and the staircase itself fell sideways. The fire was so intense that within less than twenty more minutes the whole building was nothing but the blackened skeleton of a house, with choking black smoke pouring from it.

  There was nothing that any of them could do but stand and watch while the fire burned itself out. Goody Rust brought a grey blanket to cover Apphia
, and two men lifted her on to a small barrow and wheeled her back to Goody Rust’s house.

  As the timbers continued to smoulder Beatrice went over to Peter Duston. His face was drained of colour and he was so upset that he could barely speak.

  ‘I went for the ladder as fast as I could,’ he wept. ‘Fast as I could, I promise.’

  ‘I know you did, Peter. But I have never seen a fire consume a house so quickly.’

  ‘I reckon it was set deliberate. How else could it have taken hold so fast?’

  ‘I can’t think why anybody would have wanted to burn down Judith’s home. I would have thought that she had been punished quite enough of late.’

  All the same, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking: I wonder if this was the Widow Belknap’s doing. She wasn’t here when it started, but then she wouldn’t have needed to be. She remembered her father showing her how to set fire to cotton rags simply by soaking them in purple water and then pouring some thin yellow oil on them. The rags didn’t always catch fire immediately, so he was always careful to throw them away before he left his laboratory in case they burst into flames later. Maybe the Widow Belknap knew how to do that, too, or had her own way of starting a fire.

  ‘Early on, I saw that fellow with the black and grey horses outside Goody Buckley’s,’ said Peter Duston, wiping his eyes and sniffing.

  ‘Jonathan Shooks?’

  ‘I don’t know what his name is, but he has a black calash and a nocky for a coachman.’

  ‘Yes, Jonathan Shooks. What time was this?’

  ‘Early, seven I’d say.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Beatrice. She looked at the smoking framework of the Buckley house. A few small fires were still burning inside it and it was still too hot for Judith Buckley’s body to be retrieved, whatever was left of it. ‘You’ll make coffins for them, won’t you – Goody Buckley and Apphia?’

  ‘Of course I will, and I won’t charge for it, neither. I fetched the ladder as fast as I could, I swear to you.’

  ‘I’m sure you ran as fast as you could, Peter. It wasn’t your fault, but it still looks as if we’ll be holding two more funerals.’

  ‘Oh – I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet,’ said Peter Duston, collecting himself. ‘I should have asked you. Is there any sign yet of the pastor?’

  ‘No, not yet. I went searching for him myself this morning, but I could find no trace of him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet. I’m truly sorry. Pray God he comes home safe. It seems to me like this whole village is cursed at the moment Cursed! – though what we’ve done to deserve it, I simply can’t think.’

  *

  Beatrice stayed in the village until mid-afternoon, doing her duty as the pastor’s wife. All of the women and children who had seen Judith Buckley and Apphia burn to death were in shock, and she comforted them, and fetched a Bible from the meeting house to lead them in prayers, although she was equally shocked herself and her voice shook when she quoted from Job: ‘After my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, for I know that my Redeemer liveth.’

  She stood on the edge of the green and watched as three men lifted Judith’s body out of the ashes. She was completely black, with her arms and legs bent double like those of a clockwork monkey.

  While she was standing there, Constable Jewkes came clopping up, his big horse snorting and snuffling and shaking its head. He dismounted and came over to join her.

  ‘God’s blood, Goody Scarlet, what’s happened here? I saw the smoke all the way from Allen’s Corners.’

  ‘What does it look like, constable? The Buckleys’ house has burned down and both Judith and Apphia are dead.’

  ‘God’s blood! If you’ll forgive my language.’

  Constable Jewkes high-stepped his way through the smoking timbers until he reached Judith’s body. He bent over and peered at it closely and then he came high-stepping back again.

  ‘How was the fire set? Was it deliberate? Does anybody know?’

  Beatrice shook her head. ‘It could have been an accident, although no candles would have been lit, not in daytime, and young Meg told me that the kitchen fire was never troublesome.’

  ‘I can’t arrest anybody for arson if I can’t be sure that it was arson.’

  ‘Even if you knew for sure that it was arson, constable, you still couldn’t arrest anybody until you knew for certain who the arsonist was.’

  ‘Let me tell you something, Goody Scarlet, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. I know everybody for twenty miles around and what mischief they’re capable of, so you don’t need to tell me my business, with all respect.’

  He paused, and unexpectedly sneezed, because the smoke had irritated his nostrils. ‘Let me tell you this, too. I’ve been out this morning since first light searching for your husband, the minister, and that’s why I wasn’t here to attend this con – this conflagration. But no luck so far. I rode as far as Musquash in one direction and the Litchfield Bridge in the other, so you can’t accuse me of shirking my duties.’

  Beatrice didn’t know what to say. She stood watching as Judith’s cremated body was carried out of her house and it seemed incongruous that the sun should be shining so warmly and the sky so blue and the birds whistling so cheerfully.

  ‘Are you all right, Goody Scarlet?’ asked Constable Jewkes.

  ‘Not really,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Is there anything that I can do for you? Apart from finding the pastor, of course?’

  ‘No – no, thank you, but it is kind of you to ask. If you have any news for me, I shall be at home.’

  Constable Jewkes said, ‘I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet – I didn’t mean to—’

  But Beatrice shook her head and lifted both her hands to show him that it didn’t matter. Everybody in the village was distressed and feeling helpless and afraid. As Thomas Varney had said to her, ‘I feel as if God has abandoned us. I really do.’

  *

  The rest of the afternoon seemed to last forever. Usually she would have spent it cooking and making preserves, but she had plenty of mending to do. She sat in the parlour stitching one of Francis’s shirts where the sleeve was ripped and she couldn’t help wondering if there was any point to her doing it – if he would ever wear it again. She had to stop for a moment with her sewing in her lap, her head lifted, trying hard to swallow the lump in her throat.

  Eventually it grew dark and when she had put Noah down to sleep she went to bed herself. She took her father’s notebooks with her and leafed through them to see if she could find any reference to chemicals that could start fires. What was so frustrating about her father’s notes was that he had written them in no particular order, and there was no index, so every time she wanted to look up some experiment that he might have conducted, or some discovery that he might have made, she had to look through every one of his notebooks, page by page.

  Still, with nobody to cook for, or talk to, she had the whole night to herself.

  *

  After almost an hour, when her bedside candle was beginning to flicker and burn low, she came across a reference to ‘Spontaneous Fire Mixture’.

  First, dissolve in water the crystals of permanganate of potash, according to the preparation by the German alchemist Johann Rudolf Glauber in 1659 (and described in his Opera Chymica). Soak cotton rags in the purple liquid that results and when saturated pour on the sweet oil residue from candle-making. Almost always, the result will be instant combustion, although be cautious if this does not occur and dispose of the rags carefully since they might ignite later when unattended.

  That was the experiment she remembered, but she could find no other references to starting fires, although there was a warning about oily rags bursting spontaneously into flames in very hot weather.

  Her candle had started to gutter when another entry caught her eye. ‘Madness and Delusions Caused by Wormwood Oil’.

  Wormwood oil is extracted from the herb Artemisia absinthium and I have prescribed it in diluted for
m for several digestive complaints as well as tapeworms. I suspect also that some of my female customers have purchased it for the express purpose of aborting an unwanted foetus. In strong doses, however, it is highly toxic and can bring on madness and delusions, accompanied by convulsions which sometimes take the form of fitful dancing.

  That was all Clement Bannister had written about wormwood oil, but Beatrice thought about the Widow Belknap dancing in the woods around Johnson’s Pond.

  She finished reading just as her candle went out. At first, she laid the notebook beside her on the bed, where Francis should have been lying, but then she leaned over and dropped it down on the floor in case it was bad luck to assume that he wouldn’t be coming back tonight.

  In the first few hours the night seemed darker and more stifling than ever, but just after midnight the moon rose and shone through the pines and the bedchamber was filled with a cold, inhuman light. She hadn’t been able to sleep in any case. Whether her eyes were open or closed, she hadn’t been able to blot out the pictures in her mind of Judith Buckley screaming for help at her upstairs window and Apphia whirling down to the ground in flames.

  Beatrice lay on her back with her fists clenched and her mouth tightly pursed and tears streaming from her eyes, in physical pain for the pity of it all.

  *

  Three more days went by and still there was no sign of Francis. Major General Holyoke sent out messages to all of the nearby communities and at the same time organized a search by more than fifty of the local men and boys. They covered all the surrounding area for three miles in every direction, but found no trace of Francis. In the woods to the south-east of Sutton they came across a makeshift camp, where a fire had only recently been burning and there were signs that somebody had been sleeping, but whoever had occupied it must have moved on.

  In any event, Francis wouldn’t have been camping in the woods, not unless he had lost his reason and forgotten who he was and where he lived.