Saxonhurst Secrets

by Justine Elyot

She tried to tug her hands out of Adam’s grip, her face suddenly scared.

  ‘Nobody. Let go of me. Nobody pulls my strings. I do what I want.’

  Her voice was defiant, but Adam saw the unease in her expression and knew he was close to the truth.

  ‘You could just tell me and it would all be over. We could leave this place together, go and live somewhere far away. You could be yourself and I could love you.’

  ‘You already do,’ she said tauntingly. ‘Or else why are you proposing to me?’

  ‘Say yes,’ he urged. ‘We could leave today. I’ll take you to France.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me to. Let me go and I promise I’ll think about it. Please?’

  Reluctantly, Adam loosened his grip on her and rose to his full height again, feeling foolish, wishing he could take back the past few minutes, or weeks, or months. In fact, if he could just avoid ever coming to Saxonhurst, that would be perfect.

  ‘I’ll write to you,’ she said softly. ‘Or something. Have you got Skype?’

  ‘No.’

  She tutted. ‘Luddite. You’ve got email, though?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll email you then. I should go. Got to pack.’

  ‘Evie,’ he put out a hand, preventing her attempt at a flit away. ‘How long will you be gone for?’

  ‘About six weeks, Kasia said.’

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Aww. I’ll miss you too, love. I won’t be gone long.’

  He couldn’t remove his hand from her shoulder. Surely now, surely she must kiss him?

  ‘Evie.’ He bent his head towards her, his heart beating faster with each inch of distance covered. ‘Let me kiss you.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t. If I do, it’ll all be too soon.’

  She snatched up the melting ice pop and shoved it into her mouth, twisting and turning under his hand until the only way he could keep her still was under duress.

  He took his hand away.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why will it be too soon?’

  ‘I’m only asking you to wait.’ Her voice was high and a little panicked now.

  Adam watched her make her escape. Once she was at the door, she softened.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Wait for me. I’m on my way to you. I just need a little time.’

  She left and he turned to the desk, where a puddle of purple juice dripped on to the carpet.

  That night, the dream returned.

  Tribulation Smith stood outside his bedroom door, turning a key in a lock. Inside the room, he heard the weeping of Evangeline.

  ‘You cannot keep me prisoner here. Let me go.’

  ‘You are my wife. You cannot leave me.’

  ‘I bear you no love. There is nothing I can give you.’

  ‘You will give me yourself.’

  A pause.

  ‘Is there nothing I can do or say to sway you?’

  Tribulation shook his head, although she couldn’t see him.

  ‘You are mine, and will ever be.’

  ‘Then I cannot fight the will of God. Come in. Come to bed.’

  Was it then so easy to gain her capitulation? Surely she sought to sweeten him for some further assault. Yet her voice, so seductive and low, beguiled him beyond reason.

  He opened the door.

  Evangeline sat on the bed in her nightgown, holding the taper that had lit her way to the chamber. As soon as she saw him, she smiled and dropped the lit candle on to the bed, where it quickly set fire to the cover.

  ‘Evangeline!’ He dashed forward in alarm, taking the pitcher from the bedside and emptying it on to the smouldering linens. In the time it took him to do this, Evangeline had gone.

  Out of the house he ran, seeking her shadow, listening for the tread of her foot. Where had she run to?

  Not to the old crooked house she had shared with her kinswomen, nor to the church, nor to any of the darkened, shuttered cottages huddled around the village green. She must have taken one of the footpaths though the fields.

  He bellowed her name, hearing it echo around the timber frames of the village. From behind a cloud, the moon appeared and with it a flood of silver light. In that light, he caught sight of something, no more than a movement, but he followed it, along the footpath that led from the northern end of the village.

  It was a lonely, little frequented path, for the southern road led to many more destinations. The grass grew high, almost obscuring the little dirt track. His legs swished through the vegetation, gaining on the figure ahead.

  Past an old well, she ran to a shack, a tumbledown, hastily constructed affair that could not have been there long. He watched her enter and slowed his pace. She had not realised he followed her. He would retrieve her with ease. But was she alone, or did this shack house someone? The lover who had taken his bride’s maidenhead?

  He stole up, as quietly as he could, keeping low out of the moonlight.

  Soon he heard voices, Evangeline’s shrill and weepy, blending with a male voice that rose in anger.

  By the time he reached the shack, the voices had stilled. The place had no windows to peer into; all he could do was creep around to the entrance and try to fit his eye to the many gaps.

  Inside, there was low light from a candle. A bed of rags in the corner was occupied by Evangeline, who lay in the arms of a man.

  ‘We shall leave for Taunton as soon as you are ready,’ he said. ‘Now that you have come to me, nothing holds me in Saxonhurst. Besides, the witchfinder will be back, and this time he will take you too.’

  ‘What of my husband?’

  ‘Call him not your husband.’ The man spat on the floor. ‘The preacher, you mean? What can he do? He is already a laughing stock for marrying a witch. He will be too proud to pursue you.’

  ‘I do not know that you are right. He is close to madness, John.’

  ‘You are enough to drive any man to it.’

  He kissed her. Smith’s fists clenched.

  ‘He will seek us out. I shall never feel safe.’

  Smith carried a blade in his belt, the legacy of the civil war when no man was safe from sudden assault. He took it now and unsheathed it, holding it up to the moonlight. This, beyond doubt, was the man who had deflowered his Evangeline. This was John Calderwood, coven master and fugitive.

  Before he had considered the consequences, Smith forced open the door. Evangeline screamed and hid behind Calderwood, who rose to his feet.

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ he sneered.

  ‘It is you! You who are the devil,’ blustered Smith, beside himself. ‘You are the evil influence on this village and you must be flushed out.’

  Calderwood swaggered up to him until their faces almost touched.

  ‘Say you? Evil? It was not I who caused innocent women to swing. It was not I who forced a maid to wed against her wishes.’

  ‘It was not against her wishes. She consented.’

  ‘In fear of her life, yes.’

  ‘She is my wife.’

  ‘No, Preacher, she is mine. We are wed, perhaps not in a ceremony you would recognise, but a true knot was sealed, some months ago.’

  ‘You have not wed her, you have simply violated her. That is not a marriage in the eyes of God.’

  ‘You have no claim on her.’

  ‘She is mine.’

  ‘Shall we let her choose? Shall we make that Evangeline’s decision?’

  ‘It is God’s will that she be mine.’

  ‘Who do you choose, Evangeline?’ Calderwood tossed the question over his shoulder. ‘Only you can end this quarrel.’

  ‘You know I choose you. I choose John Calderwood.’

  Smith made an incoherent sound of mingled rage and pain. The blade he clutched recalled itself to him and he drew back his hand.

  Calderwood saw it too late.

  ‘Now this is not –’ he said, but he never finished the sentence. For the blade plunged deep into his heart, putting an end to all words.


  It seemed to Smith that he took a long time to die. Evangeline rushed to him, screaming and sobbing, putting her hand over the wound, trying to stop the blood that pumped everywhere, including all over Smith.

  All he could do was watch. The world had slowed down. Perhaps it might even stop and there would be Calderwood, suspended between life and death forever while he, Tribulation Smith, experienced an eternity of the knowledge of his mortal sin.

  After an age of mourning and wailing and blood, Calderwood hit the dirt floor, all the light out of his eyes, the shell of the man who had stood there seconds before.

  I have killed a man.

  Evangeline looked up at him once and he shrank from the anguish and hatred in her eyes.

  ‘You have killed the father of my child,’ she said.

  Smith, unable to bear the implications of her words, took flight.

  His hands stained with blood, his limbs moving only mechanically, as if beyond his own agency, he threw a rope over the strongest limb of the yew tree …

  Adam woke up, shouting words he didn’t understand.

  The dream was more horrible than he could process at first. He needed to get out of bed, to pace up and down, to go to the kitchen and make tea, before he could settle his thoughts.

  The clock read 3.47. He couldn’t go back to sleep. He was afraid to go back to sleep.

  Instead, he dressed and walked into the churchyard, shivering with horror as he passed the yew tree.

  At Julia’s flat, all the lights were off, unsurprisingly, but he rang the doorbell all the same.

  There was no reply, so he rang again. Still nothing.

  Perhaps she was afraid to answer her door at this time of night. He took out his phone and rang her, standing on the doorstep with the mobile to his ear, marvelling at how profoundly dark the village was at night.

  The call went to voicemail. He shrugged, sighed, and made his way down the path, back towards the village green. Perhaps a walk … But nowhere near Palmers Barn, which appeared to occupy the very site of that shack in his dream.

  It was as if the whole village had switched itself off. Not even a cat prowled, or a fox menaced a chicken coop. The night was so still he thought he could hear the snores of the sleeping villagers behind the curtained windows. All dreaming, all except for him.

  Memories of his nightmare occluded his thoughts, turning the tranquillity of the village into something more sinister. His skin prickled and every corner seemed to turn to John Calderwood’s shack.

  He stopped at the manor house gates and looked bleakly through them, thinking of the earlier building and what had taken place there. Witch trials, abductions, torture. He shuddered and turned away, but his attention was caught for a moment by light in one of the upstairs windows.

  He looked harder and detected a shadow of somebody in the room.

  But they had all gone to France, hadn’t they? Taking Evie with them.

  Maybe a housesitter, he thought. But he was uneasy. He had spoken to Sebastian before they left, just a light conversational exchange outside the shop, and he had mentioned that the house would be empty.

  Here was something to chase the dream away. An investigation. Taking a deep breath, he walked on to the spot where the wall curved round into the woodland and followed it round, knowing where to find the little broken-down section that could be climbed. The thicket was intensely dark and eerily quiet. Adam felt something ancient and primitive in the air, something he would almost describe as evil. It was if unseen eyes watched him. Once or twice, he almost called out in bravado, but he persuaded himself that the dream had put him in a strange frame of mind and he should ignore his errant thoughts.

  He blundered his way through, snapping twigs and tripping on roots, until he found that part of the wall he had climbed over before. He was quick, weaving through the trees until he arrived at the moonlit back lawn. The pool was empty, its cover spread over it, and the tennis court had no net. The gardens were still fragrant, though, and the swinging chairs lazed on the veranda, waiting to be occupied by lascivious bodies.

  All the curtains were drawn across the French doors, so he couldn’t see inside, but he walked slowly around the perimeter of the house, trying to find a window he might peer into.

  It appeared to be a fruitless task. Even at the front, great wooden shutters were drawn against the outside world.

  He looked up again at that lit window. The light was still on. Had he imagined the figure? Perhaps it was just for security.

  He marched up to the front door and rang the bell. If it was thieves, he could disturb them, at least. He imagined them haring over the back lawn, arms full of computers and film equipment.

  The lit window opened but by the time he’d looked up, the face had gone and the window was shut again.

  His heart thundered. He was close to solving a mystery. He hoped the solution would be a benign one. He stood on the step, looking out into the night, until he heard footsteps behind the door and he turned back. The noise of locks carried on for some time, but eventually the door swung open.

  ‘Julia!’

  She smiled delightedly. ‘Adam, it is you. Do come in.’

  ‘But what are you doing here?’

  ‘At four o’clock in the morning, I could ask you the same question.’

  She stood, grinning from ear to ear, in a silk bathrobe and satin slippers.

  He looked around to make sure nobody was watching, and followed Julia into the entrance hall.

  ‘Couldn’t you sleep either?’ she asked in a conversational tone. ‘I meant to go to bed, but I found all this stuff in one of the spare rooms and I couldn’t resist a look. I’m afraid I’ve been in there all night.’

  ‘Stuff?’ said Adam vaguely, walking into the main reception room after her.

  ‘You know. Sex toys and equipment and all sorts. Fascinating. I’ll show you.’

  ‘Oh, you needn’t bother,’ he said, suddenly aware of how tired he was. ‘Look, what are you doing here? Did Seb and Kasia invite you to housesit?’

  ‘God, no. They wouldn’t be so stupid. They know that they’d never get me out, once I was in.’

  ‘Julia, please tell me you didn’t break and enter.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. I kept back a set of keys.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it legal.’

  ‘It’s not right that this house is theirs,’ she said, eyes narrowing as she sat down on a cream leather sofa, beside Adam. ‘It’s not right that they’ve filled it with all this awful furniture. It looks like some stupid soap opera set now. I want all my dark wood back, my antiques, my beautiful ormolu clock and my Victorian escritoire.’

  ‘Julia,’ he said gently, ‘you don’t own this house any more.’

  ‘Morally I do.’

  ‘No,’ he said, more firmly. ‘Morally you don’t.’

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ she said. ‘Never. This is the seat of the Shields. They’ll have to kill me and carry my body out in a coffin.’

  ‘Julia, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘I mean it. Don’t try and talk me out of it. I won’t listen. Anyway,’ she said, turning to him, ‘why are you here?’

  ‘I saw the light.’

  ‘Marvellous! But I thought you vicars all saw the light long ago. Sorry. I shouldn’t tease you, even if you are so beautifully teasable. So you were out for a walk in the dead of night, were you?’

  ‘Actually,’ he confessed, ‘I was looking for you.’

  The way her face brightened at his words was both wonderful and mystifying to Adam.

  ‘You were? Darling, I know you’ve been confused but now, with Evie gone –’

  ‘I had a dream. I think you can explain it to me.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘Tribulation Smith killed John Calderwood and then committed suicide. Am I right?’

  Julia nodded.

  ‘Just my luck,’ she drawled. ‘Dream lover comes to me in the middle of the night and wants to talk about 17th centu
ry history.’

  ‘Yes. It’s history,’ he said fiercely. ‘But why am I dreaming about it? Why is it happening to me? And so vividly. Every detail … And the girl is Evie. And Smith – well, Smith is apparently me. Why is it happening, Julia?’

  ‘How should I know? That book of Lydford’s. Vivid imagination.’ She shrugged, but her eyes were guarded.

  ‘Where is the book of Lydford’s? I want to read it to the end.’

  ‘You can’t. He never finished it.’

  ‘I still want to read it.’

  ‘I don’t have it. Look,’ she said, speaking over Adam’s increasingly frustrated expostulations. ‘I can tell you all about it. Are you sitting comfortably?’

  He grimaced, but leant back in the sofa as if ready for story time.

  ‘Then I’ll begin. Saxonhurst has always had its rituals. The one you saw, for Robin Goodfellow, is one of the earliest. Nobody knows how far it goes back, but it certainly pre-dates the Civil War. For centuries, people left Saxonhursters alone to our funny little ways. There was, I believe, always an “Evie” – a village girl at the heart of the rituals.’

  ‘Why did it all start?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Nobody knows. Presumably it used to be more widespread, but gradually died out everywhere else. Now it’s only us carrying it on. I don’t know if it’s behind our amazing harvests, but I don’t think anyone wants to test it.’

  ‘It’s ludicrous.’ Adam shook his head but Julia shushed him.

  ‘So it seems, to a modern mind set. But we’re not big on modernity here in Saxonhurst. And neither are you, are you, darling? But your archaic attitudes are different to ours – that’s all.’

  ‘Mine are from God.’

  ‘You keep on telling yourself that. Anyway, this was Saxonhurst, carrying on in its merry little way until the Civil War happened and we had Puritans and witchfinders crawling everywhere. You know how that affected us. Saxonhurst was deemed a village of witches and heathens. Tribulation Smith was sent to clean it up, but he couldn’t do it alone and the witchfinder was called in.’

  ‘Who was John Calderwood?’

  ‘An ancestor of mine.’

  ‘Of yours?’

  ‘Yes. He should have been lord of the manor, but his father disinherited him after some scandal or disgrace. He set himself up as a coven master and tried to start a cult of some sort. Obviously the Cromwellians took a dim view.’