Scarlet Widow

by Graham Masterton

  *

  Four more days passed. On the fifth day, Francis was buried in the graveyard outside the meeting house. It rained steadily and quietly all day and it was unseasonably chilly. There was a feeling in the air of time passing and of the summer being almost over. Some of the trees were already beginning to turn rust-coloured or red.

  After the funeral the wake was held in the meeting house because there were too many guests to be accommodated in the parsonage. Some of the church dignitaries had come all the way from Salem, and some from Essex and Ipswich.

  Beatrice stood by the door as the guests began to file out into the rain, thanking them for coming. Little Noah stood patiently beside her in a long black linen shirt that she had made for him, with a black ribbon pinned to his pudding cap. He kept nodding his head from side to side like a pendulum and singing his favourite nursery song under his breath, ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’.

  George Gilman came over to her, noisily clearing his throat. ‘I shall miss your late husband very much, Goody Scarlet. He was a gentle man, wasn’t he? Gentlest man I ever met. But very courageous, too. I believe he could have driven the Devil out of Sutton, had he only survived. Then none of us would have had to sacrifice so much.’

  ‘I know that Ebenezer Rowlandson deeded over thirty-six acres to Jonathan Shooks, and you yourself almost as many.’

  George Gilman looked surprised.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Beatrice. ‘We were told in confidence by Thomas Norton. He was gravely concerned about what was going on.’

  ‘Well, he had no right to breach our confidence, but I think he was justified in his concern – especially since Ebenezer Rowlandson and I have not been the only victims. I’m not sure exactly how much Robert Axtell has given him, but I know that it includes two thirds of his pine forest. Then there’s James Moody out at Fiddler’s Lake and William Tucker at Billingshurst, and probably others.’

  ‘I can scarcely believe it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, By the time Satan is satisfied, we shall have lost between us nigh on five hundred acres to Mr Shooks, maybe even more.’

  ‘Could you not have refused him?’

  ‘Are you serious, Goody Scarlet? Look what happened to Nicholas Buckley when he refused him his twenty acres! Melted! Turned into soup! And as I understand it, Shooks went to visit Judith Buckley the day after her husband’s funeral and made the same demand of her that he had made of Nicholas. She showed him the door, and what was the consequence of that?’

  He shook his head and then he said, ‘I have no idea to whom the Buckleys’ property will have been bequeathed, that’s if they made a will at all, but if I were that person I would be very compliant indeed if Mr Shooks were to come a-calling on me!’

  Beatrice said, ‘Thank you, Mr Gilman. I had no idea how many farmers were involved. You’ve been exceedingly helpful.’

  ‘None of us had any choice,’ said George Gilman. A muscle in his cheek was twitching. ‘Either we sign over some of our land, or we face the prospect of our cattle dying on their feet, or our crops being blighted – or, worst of all, our wives and children being burned alive and hung up in front of us like – like—’

  He was so angry and ashamed of himself that he couldn’t find the words, but all Beatrice could think of was those three charred slaves, slowly rotating on the ends of their ropes.

  George Gilman went to join his wife and left the meeting house, leaving Beatrice so agitated that she could barely speak when Henry Mendum came up to her.

  ‘My deepest condolences, Goody Scarlet,’ he told her, taking her hand between his. She thought his face looked redder than ever, and more congested, as if it were about to burst at any moment. His wife stood behind him in the same black silk bonnet she had worn for the Buckleys’ funerals, trying her best not to look supercilious.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Mendum,’ said Beatrice, taking a deep breath. ‘You are indeed very kind.’

  ‘Harriet and I would like you to know that if there is anything we can do for you, you have only to ask.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Um, it may be premature of me to say so, but a new minister will obviously have to be appointed in due course, and at that time the church will have to ask you to vacate the parsonage and find new accommodation.’

  ‘I take no offence, Mr Mendum. I realize that.’

  ‘Um, I understand that you have title to some of the land beyond the parsonage, and I presume you may be thinking of building yourself a new home on it, in due course. In the meanwhile if you have any difficulty in finding yourself a place to, um, rest your head, as it were, then you and your young boy are more than welcome to come stay with us, for as long as is necessary.’

  ‘That’s very considerate of you both, thank you.’

  ‘A great evil has come among us,’ said Henry Mendum, his jowls wobbling dramatically. ‘A great, great evil! However, I believe, as indeed your dear husband believed, that our faith is strong enough to carry us through these times of tribulation and everything will soon be settled again. One we have given Satan all he demands, I am sure that he will leave us be and we will all prosper as before.’

  ‘I hope so, Mr Mendum. I sincerely hope so.’

  *

  When they returned home Mary suggested that Beatrice should rest for the remainder of the day. If she wanted to sit in the parlour and think about her life with Francis, and pray for his soul, Mary would bring her a cup of tea and look after Noah for her.

  Beatrice said no. She didn’t want to sit alone in the gloom of this rainy afternoon and grieve. She wanted to get on with all the chores she had to finish, and while she was doing them she could churn over in her mind everything that she had learned today about Jonathan Shooks and his land-hungry demon. She was deeply disturbed that he had taken so much acreage. For the people of Sutton, the land that they owned was everything. It not only fed them, it also represented their status in the community and the heritage they would pass on to their children and grandchildren. Even more fundamentally, it was having settled here in New Hampshire and having been able to buy their own land that had made it possible for them to live according to their strict and simple religious beliefs. They had made this into God’s country. Yet now they had been terrified by Jonathan Shooks into surrendering acres of it to Satan.

  She changed into a simple grey cotton bed-gown and apron and went outside into the vegetable garden. It was still drizzling, although the sky was beginning to clear, and now and then an anaemic sun showed its face behind the clouds, like an elderly relative peering hopefully through the curtains. She began to dig up parsnips with a trowel and drop them into a trug.

  She had only dug up eight or nine when she stood up straight and closed her eyes and felt the drizzle prickling against her face. She couldn’t believe that if she called out ‘Francis!’ he wouldn’t answer her now, or ever again. She slowly sank to her knees in the mud and opened and closed her mouth in a silent howl of anguish, the tears streaming down her face to mingle with the rain.

  *

  The next day was warm and sunny and she baked bread in the morning and fed the pigs and scoured all her cooking pots. Goody Rust and Goody Mayhew came to call on her during the afternoon and they had tea together in the parlour. They talked about Jonathan Shooks for a while, and the tragic deaths of the Buckleys, and then about Francis, but Beatrice found it impossible to speak when they started talking about Francis, her throat simply closed up. They changed the subject to young Goody Woodward, who had been encouraged by her parents to marry a prosperous fisherman eleven years older than herself, but who had been seen in the company of a much younger man when her husband was away at sea. It could well be a matter for the courts.

  That night she lay alone again in bed and found it difficult to sleep. She whispered ‘Francis’ and reached across the quilt, but there was nobody there.

  *

  ‘Noah!’ she called. She knew where he was hiding, behind the pantry door, but she pretended that she couldn’
t find him. ‘Noah! Where are you! I shall go to the village without you!’

  He burst out of the pantry, giggling. Beatrice hoisted him up and carried him through to the parlour to put on his smock. She was going to take him to play with Goody Willowby’s two little boys, so that she could have some time to do some shopping. She was fastening his laces when she heard horses’ hooves and the grinding of carriage wheels on the driveway. She knew who it was even before she looked out of the window.

  She opened the front door and Jonathan Shooks was already standing in the porch with his hat under his arm. There were dark crescent-shaped sweat stains under the arms of his pale grey coat.

  ‘Good day to you, Widow Scarlet,’ he said and gave her a bow.

  She didn’t answer, so he cocked his head to one side as if to say, Why aren’t you speaking to me? Have I done something to offend you?

  ‘I must apologize for visiting unannounced,’ he told her. ‘Usually, well, I would leave my card. But this is a matter of some urgency, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you, Mr Shooks.’

  ‘Then you are placing yourself in considerable jeopardy, Widow Scarlet, as I said to you before. The demon with whom I am dealing will stop at absolutely nothing to get what he desires. And as you have already witnessed, he is horribly inventive in his means of persuasion.’

  ‘You can leave this property now, sir, and I do not wish you to set foot on it again.’

  ‘Of course, I quite understand your animosity towards me. But please don’t blame the messenger for the message. I need to know for certain that you are prepared to make over that acreage of yours that we discussed at the Penacook Inn. That is all. As soon as you have agreed to that, I will depart instanter and leave you in peace and you need never set eyes on me again.’

  ‘No,’ said Beatrice. ‘I will not make over so much as a single square inch. Now, if you would kindly go?’

  Jonathan Shooks sighed and shook his head. ‘You do understand that you are making a very grave mistake? Ask yourself, which is more important, life or land?’

  ‘So, if I don’t agree to deed you my land, you will kill me? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘My dear Widow Scarlet, I would not touch one hair of your very becoming head.’

  ‘But your demon will?’

  ‘Your late-lamented husband was a man of the church. You should know better than most what demons are capable of doing.’

  ‘I also know what men disguised as demons are capable of doing. I have come across more than a few of those in my time as a pastor’s wife. Drunks, thieves, wife-beaters.’

  ‘Oh, now then. Every wife needs a thrashing now and again. Otherwise, think how disobedient they might become! You know what they say about women and asses and walnut trees.’

  ‘Go,’ said Beatrice.

  Jonathan Shooks had been smiling at her, but now his smile dropped from his face as if he were never going to smile again.

  ‘Widow Scarlet, I myself would never dream of harming you, and I have not harmed a single soul in Sutton since I have been here. You have witnessed me swear to that on the Holy Bible. But I caution you now that if you refuse to deed me those acres that I have requested, then you will suffer for it as surely as the night follows the day.’

  ‘Go,’ Beatrice repeated.

  ‘Are you sure you mean that? I am giving you a last chance here.’

  Beatrice said nothing this time, but folded her arms across her breasts and waited.

  ‘Very well,’ said Jonathan Shooks. ‘But I am very saddened that you are so obstinate.’

  He walked back to his calash and said something to Samuel, who nodded and made an odd whooping sound. Beatrice closed the front door, but after she had done so she stood with her back to it, hyperventilating.

  Noah appeared in the kitchen doorway and frowned at her. ‘Mama?’ he asked her. ‘Mama?’

  Thirty-one

  Just after the moon had risen that night she opened her eyes and was abruptly wide awake.

  The moonlight was so bright that it could almost have been daytime, except that everything in the bedchamber had the colour bleached out of it. Beatrice turned over, and the oval framed portrait of Francis beside the bed was smiling at her, as if he were saying, You clever girl, Beatrice.

  She had asked herself again and again what Satan would do with all the acres that he had extorted from the farmers around Sutton. She had confronted Jonathan Shooks about it directly but his answers had been either mocking or unbelievable. Satan wants the land back so that his demons can dance on it again. Satan doesn’t want the air in this virgin country to be polluted with prayers and thick with Bible dust.

  It’s all nonsense, she thought, as she lay there in the moonlight. It has to be. Demon or human, whoever acquired that land wasn’t going to leave it to grow wild again. It was much too valuable and there was too much profit to be made out of it. It had taken years of back-breaking labour to clear it of rocks and trees and shrubs, and irrigate it and plant it for crops. Not only that, it was almost harvest time now. The Indian corn and barley and alfalfa were all ripe for harvesting, as well as sweet potatoes and pumpkins and gourds, and the trees in the orchards were heavy with walnuts and hazelnuts and apples and plums.

  Whether Satan was really behind it or not, she could see now that what was happening around Sutton was robbery on an unbelievable scale. Its people were not financially wealthy. They had very little in the way of gold or jewellery to be stolen. But they did have land and all the riches that the land could produce.

  Jonathan Shooks had used the very religious fervour that had brought the colonists to Sutton to frighten them into handing over their only valuable asset. The more Beatrice thought about it, the more convinced she was that there was no demon, that his demon was simply him. He had sworn on the Bible that he wasn’t, but what was that worth? For a man who could rob a whole village of its livelihood, and horribly kill all those who wouldn’t give him what he wanted, lying on oath was hardly likely to leave him tossing and turning at night wondering how God was going to punish him.

  She sat up. What she needed to do was to talk to all those farmers and landowners who had made over their acres to Jonathan Shooks and find out exactly which areas of land they had given away. A map of those areas might show her a pattern and give this robbery some meaning. Pieces of material were just pieces of material until a pattern made them into a petticoat.

  She could almost hear her father saying to her: Nothing in God’s universe is random, Bea. There is logic and order and reason behind everything, even if you can’t see it – and even if you can see it, but can’t understand it.

  For the rest of the night she was unable to sleep, and as soon as the sun came up she dressed and went downstairs. Jonathan Shooks had frightened her yesterday with his threat that she would suffer. This morning, though, she felt that she had the strength to stand up to him.

  *

  The first farmer she visited was George Gilman. He was standing beside a gently sloping field with his hands in his pockets watching five of his slaves and two of his sons scything down timothy grass and heaping it on to a wagon. Beatrice went over to join him. The smell of the newly cut grass made her sneeze. George Gilman turned around when he heard her.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I think I know what you’re after.’

  She came and stood beside him. The morning was hot and hushed, with only the swish of the scythes and the chipping call of blackbirds from the nearby trees. Blackbirds always gathered when the crops were cut.

  ‘I need to know which particular acres you gave to Jonathan Shooks,’ she told him.

  ‘What you need to do is steer wide of that man.’

  ‘How can I? He is stealing land from my husband’s communicants right, left and centre. He’s taking their property from right beneath their feet. My husband can no longer do anything to stop him, God rest his soul, but I can.’

  George Gilman wiped the sweat from
his forehead with his shirt-sleeve. ‘You know me well enough. As a rule, I never concede nothing to nobody, not for nothing. But that Shooks is different. You can call me a coward if you like, but I don’t intend to wind up as Gilman soup in some horse-trough. There’s cowardice and then there’s common sense.’

  ‘Just give me a rough idea of what you gave him.’

  George Gilman sniffed and then pointed over to the far side of the timothy grass field. ‘You see them pines? Beyond them pines is a cornfield, and he’s taken that, and off to the side of that there’s a pumpkin patch, and he’s taken that, too, right up to the boundary line on the top of that ridge. See those white oaks? There.’

  Beatrice tried to draw a map of the fields in her mind’s eye. They were almost hatchet-shaped, with a long handle and a large triangular head.

  ‘Couldn’t you just have told him no?’ asked Beatrice. ‘Surely you and some of your fellow farmers could have banded together and made it clear to him that you weren’t going to give in to him. He’s only one man, after all.’

  ‘It’s not him I’m afraid of. It’s that demon he’s doing business with. And that demon is the procurator of Satan himself.’

  ‘Supposing there is no demon?’

  ‘Well, try telling that to Prince and Cumby and Isum. There’s nobody human who could have set fire to them and hung them up that high.’

  Beatrice didn’t argue with him, or try to explain that there had to be a way in which his slaves had been hoisted up to the rafters and cremated. She had got what she had come here for, and that was an approximate idea of the size and shape of the land that he had given to Jonathan Shooks.

  *

  She drove out next to Fiddler’s Lake, which lay to the north and the east of Henry Mendum’s property. The lake itself lay in a deep, forested valley, noisy with the plaintive squeaking of sapsuckers, but beyond the valley the land was high and undulating and it was there that James Moody grew Indian corn and alfalfa and grazed his cattle.