The Coven

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I still think we should search the house,’ Beatrice told her. ‘I won’t be able to sleep unless I’m sure that whoever it was isn’t hiding somewhere. I know it will mean waking everybody up, but supposing there is somebody here? Or some thing?’

  Ida laid a hand on Beatrice’s shoulder. ‘You’re quite right, my dear. I still don’t believe that we’ll find anything, but of course you need reassurance. I’ll go downstairs and collect some of the girls together.’

  Beatrice went back to see if Florence had settled down. She had finished her water and fallen asleep again, her cheeks flushed and her mouth slightly open. Beatrice thought that she looked like a cherub; but then she thought, if cherubs can exist in the real world, perhaps demons can too.

  *

  Ida went from one bedroom to the next, waking everybody up, and then she assembled a search party of herself and five of the biggest and strongest girls. Anne Fettle had been a farmgirl from Essex before she came to London, and had fought in several female boxing bouts before she became a prostitute. She was at least six inches taller than Beatrice, with shoulders as broad as a heifer’s, with a huge bosom and hips so wide she hardly needed to wear panniers. Hannah Wilkes was smaller and wirier, with a pointed nose and buck-teeth, but all the other girls were careful not to put her back up. According to Ida, she could fight like a cornered cat if you riled her.

  The girls grumbled about having their sleep disturbed, but carrying their candles and dressed in their long white nightgowns like novitiate nuns they climbed up and down stairs and searched the house from the basement to the attic, looking into every cupboard and every wardrobe and behind every curtain. They even knelt down and looked under the beds.

  After nearly half an hour, Ida came back upstairs to Beatrice’s sitting room and declared that they had found nothing and nobody. No man, no beast, no demon.

  She stood by the splintery door with the candlelight dipping in the draught so that her expression appeared to be constantly changing, sympathetic one second but sarcastic the next, with her lip curled up.

  ‘Whatever it was, Beatrice, my dear, it’s gone now. Just to be doubly sure, I’ve sprinkled holy water on the front and the back doors, and said a prayer from Ephesians at each door, asking the Lord to dress us in his armour, so that we can stand firm against the schemes of the Devil.’

  ‘You seriously believe it was the Devil?’

  ‘Or one of his minions, yes. But I also believe that the Lord prevented him from breaking into your rooms and doing either of you any harm.’

  ‘It was very frightening, Ida, even if we didn’t get hurt.’

  ‘Of course. He was trying to frighten you, like the figure you saw at Ranelagh Gardens was trying to frighten you. But in spite of the Lord’s intervention, I think it would be wise for you to do what I advised you earlier. Put all your doubts about what happened to our seven girls behind you, and concentrate on saving those girls who remain.’

  It was well past two o’clock now. Beatrice said, ‘Thank you, Ida. And I shall thank Hannah and Anne and all the rest of the girls tomorrow.’

  ‘Sleep well,’ said Ida. ‘And may the Angel Gabriel spread his protective wing across you as you sleep.’

  22

  After breakfast on Monday morning, Beatrice asked Ida if she might be excused for an hour, while she went to Collin’s apothecary in Covent Garden to stock up on some of the herbs and powders that Gerald was lacking.

  She hated lying, but she wanted to protect herself and Florence and she trusted nobody at the moment, not even Ida. She was reasonably sure that Ida was thinking only of her safety, but what if Ida was being mentally influenced by the Devil in some way, although she didn’t realize it, and that was why she was warning Beatrice not to question how the seven girls had disappeared? If this were the case, and if the Devil or one of his demons really had entered the house, how could Beatrice be certain that it wasn’t Ida who had let him in? Ida, after all, was the only person in the house who had a full set of keys.

  Apart from Ida, none of the girls in St Mary Magdalene’s was an angel, no matter how much they had looked like young nuns in their nightgowns. Before they had been taken in by Ida, they had mingled with pickpockets and housebreakers and footpads and other assorted scum, and it was possible that one of them had opened a window so that one of their old chums could climb in.

  The only problem with this theory was that nothing appeared to have been stolen. All the intruder had done was climb the stairs to Beatrice’s door and scrape at it like a ravening beast.

  Outside, the day was dry and bright – a little chilly, but Florence was able to play with No-noh in the back yard while Beatrice went out, and Beatrice knew that Grace would keep an eye on her. She had treated No-noh last night for pinworms by pushing a suppository of chopped pork into his rectum, so that the worms would be attracted to burrow into it, and she could pull most of them out in the morning.

  She walked quickly eastwards along London Wall, past the Bethlem Hospital, and down Shoemaker Row until she reached the Minories, which was a wide street that ran north from the Tower of London to Houndsditch. Her father had brought her here once, when she was no more than eight years old, to buy the same thing that she intended to buy today.

  Halfway down, at No. 154, she reached the bow-fronted shop of Richard Wilson, the gunsmith. Although the windows were glazed, it was gloomy inside, and smelled of gun oil and varnish, and there were rows of shining muskets standing to attention along the walls on either side. Behind the counter stood a thin sallow-faced man in white shirtsleeves and a black waistcoat, who greeted her with a bow of his head.

  ‘Madam? How can I be of assistance?’

  ‘I need a pistol,’ said Beatrice. ‘A small one, which I can carry with me wherever I go.’

  ‘Has madam any acquaintance with pistols?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I lived in America for some years, and I owned a pistol there. I left it behind when I returned to England. In any event it was much too large.’

  ‘I think I have exactly what madam is looking for,’ the gunsmith smiled. He pulled open a drawer underneath the counter and lifted out a small flintlock pistol, only six inches long, and set it down in front of her. ‘This is a Queen Anne pistol, the smallest we make. We call it a Toby pistol or a muff pistol, because it can easily be concealed inside a muff or a reticule. This one costs a guinea and a half, and for that I can include both gunpowder and shot.’

  Beatrice picked it up and cocked it. She was surprised how light it was.

  ‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with Queen Anne pistols,’ said the gunsmith. ‘For a lady like yourself, the great beauty of them is that they are loaded not from the muzzle, but by unscrewing the barrel, pouring the powder directly into the breech and then fitting the ball on top of it before screwing the barrel back into place. Thus, you don’t need a ramrod.’

  Beatrice handed him the pistol and he demonstrated how the barrel could be twisted off.

  ‘The ball is slightly larger than the barrel so that it remains firmly in place until the pistol is fired. Because it is forced out, this makes it unusually accurate, especially at close range.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ said Beatrice. ‘Would you be so good as to load it for me?’

  She paid him, and once he had written her a receipt, she tucked the pistol into her embroidered drawstring purse.

  The gunsmith opened the shop door for her, and as she stepped out into the street, he said, ‘I trust your purchase will keep you safe, madam, but most of all I hope that you never have occasion to use it.’

  *

  She walked back along Shoemaker Row. She had thought long and hard about spending so much money on a pistol, but she had been badly shaken by the threats from the man with the looking-glass face, and the violent attack on her door last night had made up her mind. It was not only her own safety that worried her. Should any harm come to Florence she would never be able to forgive herself.

  If the Devil coul
d pass through locked doors, perhaps he couldn’t be stopped by a pistol ball, but in spite of what Ida had said, she still found it difficult to believe that it really was the Devil who was warning her off.

  She had nearly reached Camomile Street, and was crossing the entrance to the crooked alley that joined Shoemaker Row with Houndsditch, when she caught sight of a portly man standing in the alley about twenty yards away, swaying backwards and forwards as if he were drunk.

  She stopped, and then took a step backwards to look at him again, although she wasn’t entirely sure why. The man’s cheeks were flushed scarlet, but he appeared to be quite respectable, in an olive-green tailcoat and a tricorn hat, and he was carrying a silver-topped walking stick – not the usual type of person that she would have expected to see drunk in an alley at a quarter to twelve in the morning.

  When she stepped backwards, she saw that he was talking to a young girl who was standing in a doorway in front of him. The girl couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen. She was wearing a crumpled white bonnet over her ratty blonde curls, and her light-blue frock was grubby, but she had a little snub nose and she was reasonably pretty. She was too far away for Beatrice to be able to hear what the man was saying to her, but she kept shaking her head as if she were disagreeing with him.

  Beatrice was about to walk on when she saw the girl nodding, and the man reaching into his waistcoat and taking out a coin. He handed it to her, and once she had bitten it and dropped it into her pocket, she hoisted up her frock and her soiled white petticoat underneath and exposed herself to him. Her thighs were skinny and white and blotched with bruises, but that didn’t deter the man at all. He dropped his walking stick onto the cobbles with a clatter, and then he unbuttoned his breeches and dropped down the front flap. Leaning against the door jamb, he pried out his lavender-headed penis and gave it three or four vigorous rubs to stiffen it.

  Beatrice wasn’t sure what to do. She was employed by St Mary Magdalene’s to save young women from prostitution, and she was the widow of a parson, but at the same time she was pragmatic enough to know that this young girl was probably impoverished and hungry and had no other way of making enough money to survive. There were thousands of young prostitutes in London and it would be impossible for her to rescue them all, even if they wanted to be rescued.

  She stayed beside the entrance to the alley, though, keeping close to the wall so that she wouldn’t attract the young girl’s attention, and watched as the man in the olive-green tailcoat bent his knees slightly so that he could push his penis up into her. The girl’s arms hung loosely over his shoulders while he jerked up and down, and the expression on her face was one of complete disinterest, as if she were wondering if it might rain tomorrow, which would stop her going out on the town.

  The man was still thrusting himself into her when two rough-looking men came around the dogleg at the far end of the alley. One was bald with a broken nose and the other had long, greasy hair and a scarf tied around his head like a pirate. They were both wearing filthy coats and baggy breeches. The two of them came up to the man in the olive-green tailcoat and positioned themselves on either side of him. It was clear that he was oblivious at first: he was pumping himself into the girl faster and faster, as if he were about to ejaculate, and he must have had his eyes tight shut. But then one of the men dipped into his pocket and took out his wallet and his handkerchief, while the other reached around him and tugged at his watch chain.

  ‘Hi!’ he shouted out, and tried to twist himself around, but now the girl clung on to him tight. ‘Give those back to me, you blackguards!’

  The bald man smacked the hat off his head, while the other man punched his right ear, so that he lost his balance and staggered sideways. The girl dropped her frock down to cover herself and Beatrice heard her say something like, ‘Leave him, ’Arry, for fuck’s sake! Let’s buy a brush!’

  But the bald man kicked the man in the yellow coat hard in the knee, and he fell heavily onto his back, rolling over and knocking his head against the doorstep. The bald man seized his left wrist and started to tug at the gold ring that he was wearing on his wedding finger. ‘Come on, lobcock, let’s have that glim star off of you!’

  Beatrice was aware that she should simply walk away, as fast as she could, and forget the robbery that she was witnessing. But she had a pistol, and neither of these two ruffians appeared to be armed, and Francis wouldn’t have walked away, whether he had a pistol or not.

  She took the Toby pistol out of her purse, cocked it, and approached the two men, holding it in both hands, pointing it directly at the bald man’s head.

  ‘Give him back his property!’ she snapped.

  The two men and the girl stared at her in amazement.

  ‘Give him back his wallet and his watch!’ she demanded. ‘Do it now, or I’ll shoot the first one of you who moves!’

  The bald man stopped trying to pull off the wedding ring, and stood up. The man with the long hair began to back away.

  ‘You heard me!’ said Beatrice. ‘I’ll count up to three and then I’m pulling the trigger, and don’t for a second imagine that I won’t!’

  There was a long pause. None of them spoke. All they could hear was the sound of carriages clattering and rumbling along Shoemaker Row and some street seller blowing a discordant horn.

  Suddenly, the man with the long hair said, ‘Scour!’ and he and his bald-headed companion started to run away. The girl gathered up the hem of her frock and tried to run after them, but she lost one of her shoes on a broken paving stone and stumbled.

  Beatrice could have shot at one of the men, but they were both weaving and feinting from side to side and she probably would have missed. Instead, she hurried up to the girl and caught her skinny wrist and held her tight.

  ‘Let me go, you scab!’ the girl screamed at her, trying to wrench herself free. ‘’Oo told you to stick your fuckin’ nozzle in? Let me go!’

  By now the man in the olive-green tailcoat had climbed to his feet and was buttoning up his breeches. His wig was tilted to one side and a red bruise was swelling across his forehead.

  ‘You young shlut!’ he slurred, spitting as he spoke. ‘That wash what you were up to, washnit? Robbery! And I’ll thank you to give me my guinea back!’

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ the girl retorted. ‘You ’ad your fun, didn’t you, you old buck fitch?’

  ‘I losht my wallet and my watch, you young doxy. If it hadn’t been for thish gallant lady here, I would have losht my ring, too. Madam – I have to thank you mosht shincerely. Let me go and find a conshtable and have thish shlut arreshted.’

  The girl tried even harder to tug herself away, but Beatrice held on to her. She was underfed and weak, and her wrist was thinner than a broom handle, while Beatrice still had the strength of a well-nourished woman who had been digging her garden and rubbing down her horse and chopping wood for the oven.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself finding a constable, sir,’ she told the man in the olive-green tailcoat.

  ‘Why? Why not?’

  ‘Sir – if this young madam were to be arrested, you would be obliged to appear in court as a witness and explain how she came to entrap you. You don’t really wish to suffer that embarrassment, do you? Leave her to me.’

  ‘What about my watch? What about my wallet? I had three poundsh in my wallet. Three poundsh, three shillingsh and shixpenshe!’

  ‘I’ll see if I can persuade her to tell me who those two friends of hers are.’

  ‘Oh, you think I’m a fuckin’ nose, do you?’ said the girl. ‘I’ll swear on the Bible I never ever seen those two cullies in my life!’

  The man in the olive-green tailcoat picked up his hat and his walking stick. He came unsteadily up to Beatrice and said, ‘If you do happen to elishit any information from thish young shlut, dear lady, my name ish William Newbolt, and I reshide at five Green Arbour Court, by the Old Bailey. I shall be eternally in your debt if you do.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Beatrice. S
he waited until he had teetered away and disappeared around the corner into Shoemaker Row. Then she turned to the girl and said, ‘Tell me your name.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Tell me your name or I’ll take you directly to a runner and give evidence of what you were doing.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘You don’t think so? I’d have shot one of your friends if I’d thought that either of them was worth the price of the powder.’

  The girl remained silent and sulky. After a few moments, Beatrice eased forward the hammer of her pistol and dropped it back into her purse. ‘All right, then,’ she said, ‘if that’s how you want it. You realize that you could be hanged for this, or at the very least transported.’

  ‘I didn’t do nothing. And like I said, I’ll swear that I never knew either of them cullies.’

  ‘Oh, that’s how you knew that one of them was called Harry? I could give evidence to that effect, and who do you think the judge would believe?’

  The girl said nothing for a few moments more, but then she coughed and Beatrice could hear the phlegm rattling in her lungs. She lowered her eyes and when she spoke again she sounded defeated.

  ‘Eliza,’ she said, and coughed again. ‘Eliza White.’

  ‘How old are you, Eliza?’

  ‘Fourteen. Fourteen and a half.’

  ‘And where do you live?’

  ‘Black ’Orse Yard.’

  ‘Who with? Your parents?’

  Eliza shook her head. ‘I never knew my dad and my mum died ’avin’ a baby. I live with my aunt and ’er three daughters and some nocky boy called Dick. You ain’t goin’ to ’and me in, are you?’

  ‘That depends entirely on you, Eliza. I work with some kind and generous people who help girls like you to get off the streets and live very much happier lives. Perhaps you’ve heard of St Mary Magdalene’s Refuge.’

  Eliza shook her head again.

  ‘You could come back with me now and join us,’ said Beatrice. ‘We’d teach you to read and write, if you don’t know already, and train you for some useful occupation, like sewing, or music, or cookery.’