The Prisoner

by James Darke

  The black shook his head.

  ‘Why not, Brutus?’

  ‘I thank you, John. Your offer is kind. Kind beyond all . . . But I am not as you are. Many see me and run screaming to their houses, thinking me

  a demon from your Hell. I have been beaten and shot at for my colour.’

  Ferris sighed. ‘I am sad for that. Such lackbrain people should not flourish on this earth. To so fear a man for his colour alone. But if you are with me, then all will be well, Brutus.’

  York looked doubtful. ‘It is possible.’ With sudden decision. ‘I shall test it with you, John Ferris, and right gladly.’

  ‘Mary and Joseph, but I am happy for that. We shall go within the hour.’

  But it was not to be.

  While Brutus began to make ready for their journey, saddling the fretful Morgana, John threw back the blankets that had kept him warm and attempted to stand up — immediately measuring his length on the soft ground beneath the serried oaks. The fall didn’t hurt him, but it made him dizzy, bringing back the sickness so that he lay still for a while, finding the earth wonderfully comforting place to be.

  The black came running when he saw his new friend lying in the dirt, but John reassured him that things were not too much amiss.

  ‘I fear me that the blow to my head has done more harm than I knew, Brutus.’

  ‘Should I go for help?’

  ‘No. It is a scant few miles for me and I would not worry my parents with the threat of ill tidings. And if it was brought by. . . by someone like. . .‘ he stammered, trying to find a way round his own embarrassment. But the black did it for him.

  ‘You mean a blackamoor, John. It might make your mother think that Satan himself has come for her. Or that some dark warlock has been sent for her spirit.’

  The jest about warlocks and demons brought back to John his own fears about the local feelings against the Ferris family, but he tried to set them to one side. He was not well enough to travel and that was that.

  It was two more days before he was able to stand without swaying, and set himself once more into the mare’s high saddle. During those two days he had slept a great deal, twice waking and bending double with griping stomach pains. And his sight seemed less clear than he knew it should be. Blurred

  and occasionally blanking out in the one eye, on the same side where the stone had struck him.

  But finally, late on the next day, they were ready to go.

  ‘Methinks it is a Sunday, John,’ said Brutus. ‘I heard the bells of Hertford town a while earlier.’

  ‘Sabbath supper will be a goodly meal. If we can but reach home so that Mother has time enough to prepare something for us all.’

  ‘You are certain all will be well if you bring me with you, John?’

  ‘Indeed, you have my word on it. Now, let us be gone.’

  He had checked his pistol, making sure it had been cleaned and reloaded. And his dagger and sword had also been wiped by the negro, ‘and replaced in their respective sheaths. The two pewter tankards had suffered no damage in the skirmish, and his eyes brightened at the thought of how pleased his mother and father would be at the small gift. And how pleased he would be to see his dearest Mary once more.

  It seemed that an eternity had passed since last he set eyes on her.

  Darkness came crawling over the county as they neared Hertford. Ferris kept the bay to an easy walk, the tall negro loping comfortably alongside him. It had grown cold again and there was nobody around. Up on the town gallows, set on a hillside to the north of Hertford, Ferris noticed that there were two fresh bodies dangling there. No doubt some wretched malefactors who had paid the supreme penalty for their crimes. He must remember to ask his father about them.

  ‘Where is your house?’ asked York.

  ‘Barely two hundred paces from where we stand now.’ Seeing a neighbour standing in his garden, near to the road. ‘Good even to you, Master Waring.’

  To his surprise the man looked around as though a culverin had been discharged immediately behind him. Seeing Ferris, then registering the tall blackamoor with him. Gulping, jaw sagging. Retreating along his path, nearly stumbling over an ornamental rockery. Finally breaking and running for his house, slamming the door firmly shut behind him with a crash that echoed all along the narrow lane.

  ‘That is. . . strange,’ murmured John. ‘What ails him?’

  ‘Perhaps the sight of me,’ replied Brutus. ‘It happens right often. I am well used to it.’

  ‘No. He was frightened ‘ere he saw you. It was me calling to him that set him to terror.’

  Further along the lane Ferris noticed curtains twitching as he rode by with Brutus York. Doors opening an inch and then closing. And a little child being dragged in by its mother as if Death itself were galloping along the way.

  ‘It is as if the plague itself was in the town, and we were travellers thought to carry it,’ said John, keeping his voice low as if he were in a church. The whole atmosphere was odd, frightening.

  ‘Have soldiers been?’ asked the black.

  ‘There is no pillage. No house is harmed at all.’

  He reined in, just before the corner that would reveal his own home. A sudden chill gripped his stomach and he realised that he was sweating. The

  blurring in his one eye had become worse and he felt dizzy.

  ‘Are you ill, John?’ asked Brutus York, reaching up a hand, concerned at his friend’s pallor.

  ‘I know not, Brutus. But there is something here that is wicked and wrong. Damnably wrong.’

  He heeled Morgana on the few paces to the corner, pulling sharply on the reins to halt the mare. The negro stopped at his side, looking along the

  narrow lane to the house.

  ‘Oh, Mary and Joseph!’

  ‘John, they . . .‘ began Brutus, his voice tailing away as he saw the foolishness of saying anything further. Words were of no use.

  The Ferris cottage stood open to the elements, door swinging crookedly from a single hinge, windows smashed and staring. There were the signs of a fire.

  ‘Mary and Joseph,’ whispered John.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Concussion from the blow to his head was still lingering and John could recall little of what happened in the next hour or so. He remembered dismounting from Morgana, letting the reins dangle over her neck, walking towards his home, stumbling like a man in a dream. The front gate was broken off, the trim hedges trampled down by heavy feet. The flower beds and the herb garden that had been his mother’s pride and joy were also furrowed by countless boots, plants snapped off in what was clearly deliberate wantonness.

  ‘Brutus. . .‘ he’d said, finding that his eyes were suddenly brimming with bitter tears.

  ‘I’ll tie up the mare and follow you, John. But take care. Draw your pistol. The rogues that did this may still . . .‘

  The rest of the sentence faded behind Ferris as he pushed aside the dangling door and entered his home.

  ‘Mother! Father! Are you there?’

  The echoes came back, cold as a midnight tomb. And he knew that they were gone. Perhaps fleeing from the mob to some friendly house. Or to relations in Ipswich. His best hope was to find a note. Or Joshua Lightlantern might have word from them.

  ‘Joshua!’

  The tears stopped as he made his way around the building that had once been his home. Once. Now it was a ruined shell. Whoever had come and done this had taken a malign delight in wrecking everything. There was not a single article of furniture that hadn’t been snapped and broken. No piece of crockery unsplintered. Carpets had been torn and hacked.

  And there was the smell . . .

  He heard the negro come in behind him, pausing on the threshold and whistling in dismay.

  ‘They are gone, Brutus. At least I can thank the Almighty for that. They are fled somewhere to safety.’

  The oak dresser that had held a collection of blue plates was overturned and smashed. John went along the stone corridor, pausi
ng to look into his own room. It was perhaps less damaged than the rest of the house, but all his clothes had been torn from drawers and scattered everywhere. Someone had fired a pistol through a picture on his wall of the great cathedral in Paris. It had been a gift from his parents on his sixteenth birthday. He wondered whether he would weep again, but there were no tears left. Just an iron resolve to track down the animals who had done this to his home.

  ‘Why, John?’ asked Brutus, following him, stepping cat-footed through the debris.

  ‘I had heard word . . . Oh, but I should have listened and taken heed! There was a fear in this town that my mother was a witch and my father a warlock. The idea was so . . . so damned stupid that I could not give it credence. Yet,’ waving a hand around him, helplessly, ‘this shows it was no

  idle fear.’

  The smell was worst in the room where his parents had slept. And the damage was worse there than anywhere else.

  Nothing was undamaged. The bed was smashed to the floor, the mattress looking as if someone had ripped it apart with a pike. And someone had emptied their bowels among the feathers and slashed cloth.

  On the wall, daubed with pitch, were the words from the Book of Exodus: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’

  ‘What does it say?’ asked the negro.

  ‘What?’ said John, dazed by the horror of his homecoming.

  ‘I have no way with words. No lettering, John. What does that say?’

  ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ he replied, turning on his heel, walking from the carnage, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Oddly, he slept. Sat down amidst the rubble of the parlour and slept. Only waking when Brutus brought in some cheese and a part of a loaf.

  ‘It was under the table. What had once been a table. There is no other food. And there is a mouthful or two of ale in a broken crock. But no vessel to drink from.’

  John sat up, rubbing at his eyes. Blinking in the light of a candle end that the negro had stood up on the sill of the window.

  ‘I had not wished to sleep.’

  ‘It is the head, John.’

  ‘You said there was ale.’

  ‘Aye. But we needs must lap it up like dogs in the road.’

  ‘In the bags on my saddle. There are the two tankards I bought. . . I bought as gifts for my mother and father.’

  The black disappeared, and John tore off a hunk of bread, cutting a sliver of cheese with his horn hilted dagger. Gnawing at it, though there were precious little pangs of hunger at such a moment.

  The candle flickered dangerously in the wind through the broken glass. John realised that he felt very cold and he tugged his cloak about his shoulders. His eyes roamed around the room, thinking back to how it had once been. A parlour often filled with friends and laughter. Good company, sipping at mulled claret, passing round plates of mutton and bread. His father with legs spread in front of a crackling log fire, holding back the tails of his coat. Telling some medical story that would make the men chortle and some of the women protest in mock dismay. Or Ruth Ferris singing a madrigal in her fine, pure voice.

  ‘Where are they?’ he said, not even aware that he had spoken out loud.

  ‘Here is the ale, John,’ said the black.

  ‘I have need of brandy, rather than this weak stuff. But it will serve when nothing better be here. I thank you, Brutus. It is good to have company at such a bleak moment.’

  ‘On the morrow we can ask where they have gone,’ said the blackamoor. ‘Not all the good folk of Hertford can have played a hand in this sorry game.’

  ‘Truly said. And Joshua lives no great distance from here. Mayhap we should go now.’

  ‘No. The night is dark as pitch, John. And there might be folk in the blackness who would also bear you ill-will. At dawn.’

  Ferris nodded. Knowing that the negro’s words made good sense. But it was hard to sit patient with the knowledge that his parents might not be far away from him.

  Neighbours double-locked their cottages that night, sliding bolts firmly home. Shuttering windows and going fearfully to their own beds.

  A chill wind blew from the east across Hertford, cutting through the budding trees, whistling around the eaves of the houses. On the gibbet on the hillside to the north of the town the two corpses danced and swung, rattling in their cold chains.

  It was barely dawn when John Ferris started awake. ‘The gold,’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have an inheritance, friend, York. And my father had. . . There, behind that tipped-over table against the wall.’

  He stood up, unable to credit the shambles of the house, sighing and swallowing hard to recover his lost composure. Surprised that in the shock of the previous evening he had not thought of the gold, hidden safe in its strong-box. But his concern for the well-being of his mother and father had come first.

  The negro moved the oak table as though it had been made from parchment. Behind it should have been the faded oil-painting of the oysters and purple

  flowers. Concealing the iron safe, set into the lath and plaster of the wall.

  ‘Gone.’

  John Ferris had once been kicked in the groin by an angry whore in Cheapside, who had mistaken him for a fleeing customer. The pain and shock came back to him as he stared blank-eyed at the gaping hole in the parlour’s wall. There was not even any sign of the strong-box itself. Whoever had taken it had known. Must have known.

  ‘It was in there?’ asked Brutus. Seeing the faint nod of the head in reply. ‘Then it must be time that we go and seek answers, friend John.’

  The lane was totally deserted. On a Monday, after seven of the clock, there would usually be folk bustling about their business. Children playing before being sent off to the dame school. There wasn’t even a stray dog to be seen.

  John and Brutus stood together at the entrance to the garden, looking both ways. Morgana was tethered at the rear of the house.

  ‘There,’ hissed the black, pointing to a clump of sycamores. ‘A man stands there, in the shadows.’

  As John looked, the figure disappeared, moving back among the trees. But he was sure he recognised him. ‘Joshua.’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘Servant. Perchance he fears being seen talking to us. Let us follow him, Brutus. But keep at a distance from him.’

  He eased the pistol in its holster, not looking to left or right. But feeling dozens of eyes drilling into him

  from the houses on either side of the lane.

  ‘He goes north,’ said the negro.

  ‘There is open land there, towards the hill. Joshua took me ferreting after conies when I was a strippling. He will wait there, I think.’

  They walked away from the centre of Hertford, leaving the last of the cottages behind them. They could hear a chained cur barking from inside, and a man’s voice shouting at it. The lane disappeared at a thick hedge with a stile set in its centre. It was easy work to vault it, leaping a water-filled ditch on the further side.

  ‘It is Joshua Lightlantern.’ John could see the old man now, wearing his moleskin breeches, and a velveteen jacket, his broad-brimmed hat pulled well down over his grey hair. He turned once to make sure that he was being followed, starting visibly when he glimpsed the giant negro at John’s side.

  ‘He carries a knife,’ hissed Brutus.

  ‘No. I think ‘tis a billhook. Keep a distance from him, friend.’

  The path wound through a copse of willows, then over a tumbledown bridge. The recent rain had swelled the water so that it nibbled at the roots of the trees. There was a gate to their right that led into a broad meadow. John recalled how there had once been an archery butts, but it was long abandoned.

  At the foot of the final slope, on the hillside that was dotted with rabbit warrens, Joshua paused once more. Hesitating as if he were unsure of which direction to take. Finally deciding and darting with unusual haste into the cover of some stunted trees.

  ‘We have him,�
�� grinned the negro, pressing on as if he were on some hunt.

  ‘Harm him not. He has come. to tell us where my parents are. I am sure of it.’

  The light was dappled among the trees, throwing a changing pattern of sun and shadows. Joshua had stopped on the furthest side of the copse, at the high point of the slope, where it opened Out towards the crown of the hill and the gibbet with its macabre fruit moving gently in the morning wind.

  ‘Master John,’ he said, voice tight, showing his fear.

  ‘Joshua. I am rightly glad to see you safe and hale.’

  ‘What be. . .?‘ pointing at Brutus York, who had paused a few paces behind Ferris.

  ‘A friend. Though his skin be black, his heart be true as any white Christian. He saved my life when I was set upon by footpads on the Cambridge road.’

  ‘Ah. That be why ye be tardy.’

  ‘Yes. I came home and found. . . found what had been done. Who was it? When did they come? Over the trumpery talk of witchcraft, was it? And where are my mother and father?’ He had raised his voice with each question, until he was shouting at the old man. Who cringed as though he had been slapped in the face.

  ‘Master John . . .? he began, then he folded his head down into his wrinkled hands and began to sob. Ferris stepped closer, patting him on the shoulder. Gripping his arms to steady him.

  ‘I beg you pardon, Joshua. But I am half maddened with worry.’

  ‘One question not a hundred, John,’ said Brutus.

  ‘There is time for all.’

  John nodded. ‘You speak truly, my friend. One question it shall be.’

  The old man sniffed, wiping his streaming nose on the sleeve of his jacket. John noticed then that there a purple bruise the size of a large apple on the old man’s cheek.

  ‘Ask away, Master John, and I will tell all the sorry tale.’

  ‘First, my mother and father. They were not in the house. Where have they gone?’