Havoc, in Its Third Year: A Novel

by Ronan Bennett

  At last Brigge broke the letter’s seal.

  “The watch report mysterious warlike horsemen,” Lacy continued, wiping crumbs from his lips, “whom some say are come from Ireland, and others priests and Jesuits.” Lacy left off his munching for a moment and sent Elizabeth a knowing glance. “If only there were such conspiracies— then might we be delivered from this madness,” he said. “There are such heats and animosities the whole town has lost its head in the searching out of strangers. Did you hear of the vagrant taken by the watch at Gibbet Hill?”

  Elizabeth said she had not and she filled up Lacy’s pot. Brigge listened with half an ear as he unfolded the letter.

  “He would not say who he was and so was set upon and beaten to his death,” Lacy related with relish. “Only after he was dead did they learn from his companions that the man who would not answer was as mute as a fish and had been so since birth.”

  Brigge read the single line Antrobus had written: Where is John Brigge?

  Lacy looked to see what the coroner would say about what he had read.

  “An inquiry of my wife and son,” Brigge said.

  “Ah,” Lacy said, draining his pot. He went on, “The country suffers new calamities with every day that passes. The meaner clothiers continue to manufacture their kerseys and dozens by the week but cannot sell them for the cloth merchants are ruined and have not the money to buy. Plague is reported from divers places throughout the kingdom, and lately a great fire razed Dorchester to the ground.”

  “There is no need to sound so contented, Mr. Lacy,” Elizabeth said.

  “It is a matter neither of contentment nor sorrow,” Lacy protested.

  “You give a strong impression to the contrary,” she chided him.

  “It is not chance that such mishaps have occurred in a land that has forsaken true religion and shaken off obedience to the pope,” he said. “The people are being punished for their faithlessness.”

  Brigge threw the letter into the flames and looked at his neighbor. “It seems we live in severe times,” he said, watching the paper shrivel in the fire. “Every man with whom I have conversation talks of the world as a place of havoc and discord where people must be coerced, caged and punished.”

  “I sometimes ask myself what manner of Catholic you are, Brigge.”

  “A poor one, as I am a poor man, in every respect.”

  “Then you will recant when they come for you?” Lacy said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  “I have sworn the oath of supremacy,” Brigge reminded him. “I attend their church as the law requires.”

  Lacy huffled in disapproval. “Such shows of conformity are no longer sufficient for the persecuting kind who now hold sway,” he said. “They will be satisfied only with confession and recantation.” He put down his pot and became solemn. “They will require that we betray each other. To refuse to go gadding to their drear services merits but a fine. But it is a felony to attend mass and to shelter a priest carries death. With no more than a few words a man might easily have another hanged.”

  Brigge listened to Lacy’s smacking lips and finger-sucking and searched his neighbor’s face for subtle meanings. But all he saw there was as innocent and foolish as the sounds of his contentment.

  “All the more reason for prudence in conversation,” Brigge said.

  “Indeed,” Lacy said nervously. “Quite so.”

  When their visitor was gone, Elizabeth said, “Will we be safe?”

  “If we do not meddle with them,” he said, “they shall have no reason to meddle with us.”

  The following morning a messenger brought a packet bearing the laurel seal of the town’s government. It contained a peremptory summons to attend a meeting of the Master and governors, to which Challoner had subscribed in his own hand: I trust you will allow one who loves you to say do not neglect to fulfil this letter’s command, for your own sake and mine, if for no other reason.

  BRIGGE WENT TO find his shepherd. There had been some losses during the worst of the gales and the frosts, but fewer than Brigge had feared, and with the days continuing so mild the lambs and their mothers were thriving.

  They sat together on a flat rock above the pasture. Brigge looked Star-man over. He appeared monstrous and ridiculous, a pathetic, wizened creature. The hair of his mustaches, the only hair he had that still grew, did something to hide the creeping putrefaction of his nose, but there was no mistaking the other ravages of the disease, the scabs that crusted his hands and neck, the lesions on his face.

  “You told me, did you not, that you were once a soldier?” Brigge said.

  “Not by choice, your honor. I was pressed and taken to Boston and then to London in the army of Count Mansfeld.”

  “You were part of the expedition to the Palatinate?”

  “I went to Frankenthal in the count’s army to rescue the poor Protestants of Bohemia from the papish armies of the Spaniards and the House of Austria.”

  “You fought in a very exalted cause.”

  Starman heard the sarcasm with which Brigge had recklessly clothed his comment. “The cause, I have heard, was noble, as you say, your wor-ship,” he replied carefully. “As for my fighting, I did all I could to the best of my capacity, and all my comrades and tent-fellows did the same. But calamity overtook us. The half part were killed, among them many captains and gentlemen, and of the half that were left living the greater number were cruelly afflicted with hurts and hunger and other sufferings. I was one of the many tormented with diseases, and had part of my leg shot off besides, as you see, which has left me lame and impotent so that I am hardly able to maintain myself.”

  “Why did you not go home to the fens on your return?”

  “I made my way there as best I could, your worship, begging carters and carriers to take me, and some bore me small portions of the way, but arriving at last at the house of my half-brother Exley, I found him, like all the poor commoners of the fens and marshes, much oppressed by the great landlords and undertakers who were draining the land. They indicted Exley in Star Chamber for tearing down enclosures and fined him five hundred marks, the which sum he never saw in his life, and never will see. With his wife and family he was put out of his cottage with no choice but to seek settlement elsewhere in the company of other dispossessed men of the fens.”

  “Many would have been glad of the opportunity to escape the fens.”

  “Indeed, sir. Many have it that the air of the fens is notorious and unclean, and the life there so uncivil that people say, to describe a fall in the world, that a man goes from the farm to the fen and from the fen to Ireland.”

  “What happened to the boy you said you would bring to look after my sheep?”

  “Are you not content with my work, sir?” Starman asked, suddenly made uneasy.

  “You have worked well,” Brigge said. “I am curious about the boy, that is all.”

  “The boy is dead, sir. He died in his sleep.”

  Brigge would have doubted the truth of this but for Starman’s strange air of probity. He said, “I should have been notified.”

  “To what end, sir?”

  “To the end of holding an inquest on view of the body,” Brigge said sharply. “To the end of summoning a jury to determine the cause of death. This is the law, and in failing to notify a coroner you have broken the law.”

  “May I ask, sir, what your honor and his jury think they would have discovered?” Starman asked.

  Brigge considered the inconvenience of the journey to the squatters’ encampment, the summoning of a jury, the disinterment of the body. To what purpose? To find that a vagrant boy died hunger-starved? The law had nothing to say about the death of a boy by hunger and neglect. That was the business of men’s conscience and charity.

  As Brigge was about to return to the house, Starman, with much hesitation and great courtesy, asked if his honor would be kind enough to let him have a book to pass the time with.

  “Do you know how to read?” Brigge asked,
surprised.

  “My father, who was a glover, sir, and is now dead, was most careful about the education of his children. Even my sister had some instruction, while I and my brothers were sent to the free school and there learned to read and write and had some education in Latin, Greek and mathematics besides.”

  Later, Brigge had James Jagger bring Starman Mr. Dalton’s The Countrey Justice and a treatise on mortal wounds and injuries and how they might be recognized.

  Seventeen

  BRIGGE WROTE BUT DID NOT SEND HIS LET TER TO THE HIGH sheriff. His reluctance to do so was because of Katherine Shay; he could not rid himself of his doubts. Quirke had lied to him about Susana Horton, and Doliffe’s conduct suggested the constable had something to hide. Brigge was torn between his resolution to withdraw from the snares and tricks of the world and his desire to uncover a truth that might discomfit his enemies, a truth he might yet have need of if he was to keep himself and his family safe.

  In the week before Easter he held three inquisitions, one falling on the other in quick succession. The first two were uncomplicated: a man from Bradford who died with great suffering eleven days after a kick from a horse, and a nine-year-old boy who fell from a dovecote in Northowram while climbing with his friends. Lives extinguished in a moment that was not in any way extraordinary. Brigge felt intensely the fragility of being.

  The third inquisition was a matter of greater intricacy. One Thornton, the constable of Padside, a place of no great moment beyond Wharfdale, came to Northowram, interrupting the inquisition there, in search of a coroner. He informed Brigge of the death two weeks before of a woman who had already been buried, it being held that she died naturally. But, certain informations coming to light, the story had gotten vent that she had been killed by a beating from her husband, and now the people were very desirous of a coroner coming. Brigge, who had hoped to return to the Winters after concluding the inquisition on the fallen boy, reluctantly followed the constable on the long road to Padside.

  As they traveled on their way, Adam attempted to engage Brigge in talk of Dorcas and asked directly whether his master had fulfilled the promise he had made that he would press Adam’s suit.

  “I will speak to her when the time is right,” Brigge answered brusquely.

  Adam was silent for some moments. “When will that be?” he asked at last, his voice eager and intolerant. “She threatens to go, to leave the Winters and seek work elsewhere.”

  “She has nowhere to go, Adam,” Brigge said. “Be patient and you will have what you want.”

  “Perhaps you do not want her to marry me,” Adam said.

  Brigge’s heart skipped a beat. “I cannot think why you should say so,” he said. He gave Adam a look to challenge him if he dared, to utter any suspicion he had of his master. The boy said nothing.

  “I have given you my word,” Brigge said to reassure him. “I will speak to her when the time is right.”

  IT TOOK NEAR the whole day to arrive at the place, which was very remote and obscure. There was a small, melancholy chapel, half of wood and half of stone, a half-ruin in whole, and some poor tumbled cottages standing at the crossways of foul and unregarded streets where rubbish, ashes, filth and excrements lay.

  Brigge went first to the cottage of the husband whose wife was dead but, it being but a shanty of earth and timber like all the other habitations and too small and noisome to accommodate the jury and witnesses, he moved them to the tippling-house at the far end of the town, a low, mean laborer’s dwelling with the sign of the Lion but at least with room enough for their purpose. He ordered the parlor cleared, and the drinkers that were there went out to the garden where they were content enough to sit on the benches, discoursing loudly and smoking their clay pipes.

  When all was ready, Brigge ordered the husband brought forward along with those who accused him. He was a handsome, well-shaped young man with dark hair and dark brown eyes, very clear and tender, with a humble and sober demeanor.

  On his oath he said his name was Robert Hewison of Padside, hus-bandman; his age was twenty-nine. He was born in Kendal and had come to Padside three years before to marry Mary, his wife, who was now dead. They had lived very happily and peaceably together, as his neighbors would swear, and his wife had never complained against him but said what a fine husband she had and no woman was better cared for. As to her health, she was sickly and always delicate and suffered swellings to the legs and feet, and lately these pains had tormented her so grievously she was hindered from walking and sometimes fell down for the pain and more than once hurt herself in her falling.

  As Hewison spoke, Brigge began to perceive that his pleasantness and humility were a fourbe, that he was in truth boastful and spoiled.

  “How did you come to find your wife dead?” the coroner asked.

  “Returning from my labors on Saturday,” Hewison answered, “where I was scouring the water courses, I found my wife in bed sore afflicted with grievous pains to the head. The following morning, being Sunday, she was not able to go to divine service but stayed in her bed and suffered much from vomiting of ugly stuff.”

  “Did you call any of the neighbors to the house when your wife lay in this condition?”

  “She wanted only to rest undisturbed and not have the meddling of others, saying she would recover her health if left alone.”

  “No one saw her in that time?”

  “When she did not improve, I went to fetch her sister Hannah, your honor, who came on Wednesday a short time before my beloved wife died.”

  The coroner noticed a woman in a white coif and blue petticoat standing next to the constable. She burned with the desire to speak out and be heard. Brigge assumed her to be the said Hannah.

  Brigge gave Hewison a straight, hard look. “Did you beat Mary with your fists or feet, causing her to die?”

  “I swear I did not. I loved my wife and cherished her and did never strike her,” Hewison replied, his brown eyes full of gentle reproof for the injustice of the question.

  “It is not difficult to see he is a liar,” Adam whispered when the coroner left off his questioning of Hewison.

  “No,” Brigge said. “The difficulty will be in hanging him.”

  BRIGGECALLED FORTH Hannah Smith of Padside, twenty-eight years of age, spinster, to give her evidence. She was small and plump, quite unlike the description the coroner had had of her dead sister.

  “When did Robert Hewison come to fetch you to see his wife?”

  “There never was a day when Robin Hewison ever fetched me,” she replied, casting a hard glance at her brother-in-law. “I went without invitation to speak with my sister, having not seen her at prayers. Robert Hewison would not have me enter the house and threatened me that if I did not go away he would see that I should suffer for it, but I, persisting, got inside.”

  Brigge looked to Hewison. “What do you say to this?” he asked.

  “It is not true, your honor,” Hewison protested.

  “Mary told me that Robin Hewison, her husband, had killed her,” Hannah shouted out. The people in the room murmured and hawked.

  “She told me he had returned from his work much distempered in drink,” she continued, “and had beaten her to pieces as he had never beaten her before in her life and that she feared he would be the cause of her death.”

  “This is a lie!” Hewison shouted out.

  “Did you see any bruises on your sister’s person?” Brigge asked Hannah.

  “She showed me marks on her stomach and legs where he struck her,” Hannah replied, “and put her hand to the back of her head saying the blow she had had from him there would kill her.”

  Hewison again called out that she was lying, that she had always harbored him ill will because he had married Mary and not her.

  “Robin Hewison knows the truth of what I say,” Hannah shouted back. “He offered me five shillings that I would have at Michaelmas if I should hold my peace and say nothing.”

  “Did you accept his promise of
money?”

  “I accepted nothing from him.”

  “Why then did you not go to the constable?”

  When Hannah hesitated in her answer, Brigge asked again, his voice severe and impatient.

  “I did so at the request of my sister.”

  “How so?”

  Again Hannah hesitated and again Brigge reprimanded her for her evasion.

  “When Mary was on her deathbed,” she began falteringly, “she said that she forgave her husband for she loved him and that when she died I was not to meddle or have any coroner, for God was able to reward them according to their dealings.”

  “By concealing this you have committed a crime,” Brigge said. “Are you aware of that?”

  “I pleaded with her and told her she must have justice, but she made me swear, saying if I forgive not him, how shall I be forgiven of God?”

  Hannah turned to her brother-in-law, and when she pointed at him, her finger shook and her voice trembled. “Robin Hewison has always been heady, rash and fierce. He is a despiser of others, conceited and arrogant. He is a common alehouse-haunter and a bastard-getting rascal.”

  She broke off to sob. When she found her voice again, both it and her anger were colder. “Since his wife’s death,” she said, the words bitter in her mouth, “he has neither mourned nor even given show of grief but has been with his friends drinking and playing at cards and boasting that now the shrew is in her proper place let her scold the devil for she cannot nag at him.”

  Darkness had fallen. The constable, jurors and witnesses were anxious to get to their homes. But the coroner would not adjourn the inquisition, allowing them time only to have their supper.

  THE ALEHOUSE-KEEPER brought small beer to drink and halfpenny loaves of buckwheat and barley. The man would have loitered so that his fat lips might carry gossip to nourish the prating mouths outside, where it seemed the whole township had gathered, but Brigge bade him be gone with angry hard words and so he went, very quick his step and dismayed his look. The bread was stale and coarse and the butter near rancid. Brigge ordered the door of the parlor left open for air, but all that entered was the fuddled gaze of the drinkers, their pots in their fists, their clay pipes in their stained lips.