Toby. Sir George. The cat. Scammell. The smell of blood. Vomit rose in her throat. She moaned, but again a part of her forced her to move, to do one thing at a time, and she pulled herself up on the bed, sitting on it, and dragged the runner that was draped over the pillows toward her. She put it on like a shawl, covering her nakedness, and only then did she start to breathe more shallowly, to take stock of herself.
The room was smothered in blood. Scammell’s body, grotesque in its layered armor, was sprawled crooked by the window, one plump hand outstretched in helpless appeal. Mildred, her fur matted with blood that looked black, seemed tiny in death. The light was full outside now. Through the small leads of the window she saw the piling clouds that would have meant her salvation this coming night. James Wright, Toby, Lady Margaret. They all seemed so distant now. Her old life had flooded back in a horror that still threatened to overwhelm her. Now, just as she had endured the wrath and punishment of God at Werlatton as a child, she must simply survive. She shut her eyes, crooning to herself and heard the dread sound of the key turning in the lock.
She opened her eyes, clutching the shawl at her neck.
Ebenezer smiled at her. He spread his hands as if in welcome. “Sister Dorcas! My dear sister!” He seemed to glance casually about the room and took a dramatic backward pace when he saw Scammell’s body. He gasped.
Good wife Baggerlie was next into the room. She pushed past Ebenezer and stared at the body of Samuel Scammell. She took a deep breath. “Murder! Murder!”
“No, no! My sister!” Ebenezer came into the room properly. “No! No!”
Campion was shaking her head, rocking back and forth on the bed. “Go away! Go away!”
“Murder!” Goodwife’s shrill voice filled the room. “She killed him!”
“No!” Campion moaned.
“Don’t go near her! Don’t touch her!” A new voice cut over the clamor, a voice that touched a memory in Campion. She opened her eyes, looked around dully, and there was the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey, one hand raised, the other clutching a Bible to his black jacket.
“Harlot! Murderer! Witch!” Goodwife shouted.
Ebenezer had knelt beside Scammell’s body. “How could she have killed him? She’s only a girl! He was an armed man! She can’t have killed him!”
There was a slight pause before Goodwife remembered her cue. She stepped forward, her voice like the breath of the pit, and she raised a raw, bony finger which she stabbed toward Campion.
“She’s a witch! I saw the devil rescue her in Mister Scammell’s house. Flaming hair, he had! From hell itself. The devil! She’s a witch!”
“No!” Ebenezer protested.
“Quiet!” The Reverend Faithful Unto Death moved into the center of the room. He had studied witchcraft these last few months, seeing in demonology a ladder that would take him to the vast pinnacle of his ambitions. This was the thing he had suggested to Ebenezer on Christmas morning; that Dorcas Slythe was a witch and that he, Faithful Unto Death Hervey, would unmask her. He had not been selfish with the thought, admitting that Goodwife Baggerlie had always maintained the girl to be possessed of a devil, but now, at last, he was ready to pit his strength against the Prince of Darkness who was Dorcas Slythe’s ally. He also still wanted this girl, but now he wished to abase her, to humiliate her, to use her for his fame. He looked grandly about the room, remembering what Ebenezer had said. “Ah! A cat! Her familiar!”
Goodwife gasped, recoiled in horror.
Faithful Unto Death stepped resolutely closer to Campion. He put his Bible on the table, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down his long, pale throat. “There is a sure way to find out. A sure way!”
“Brother Hervey?” Ebenezer sounded awed.
Faithful Unto Death took another pace toward the staring, gasping girl. “I will need your help, both of you. Fear not! God is with us!” He did not need to tell them what was expected. “Now!”
Campion screamed, but the three had her on the bed, Goodwife forcing her head back, Ebenezer swinging her legs on to the mattress. Campion screamed again, fought against the hands that groped at her, but she was powerless. Faithful Unto Death tore the dress apart, pulled the shawl away and Goodwife seized Campion’s hands.
“Hold her!” Faithful Unto Death bent over her breasts, his breath warm on her skin. She struggled, but Goodwife had an arm over her throat while Ebenezer weighed down her legs.
Faithful Unto Death’s hands were dry, almost scaly. They stroked her breasts, touching her nipples. His voice, like his hands, was dry. He might have been explaining the doctrine of the Trinity. “These, Brother Slythe, are the teats for giving suck to children. A witch will not use those when she feeds the devil, for those teats come of God.” His fingers rubbed her nipples. His hands slid down toward her belly, kneading her ribs. “We are looking for another mark, the witch mark. Ah!” He probed the mole above her navel, the mole that Toby had teased her about on Christmas Day. “Here it is! The witch mark!” His hands, even though they had found the mole, moved back to her breasts.
“Sir! Look!” Goodwife had the seal. “Is this what you looked for?”
“It is! It is!”
Faithful Unto Death was forced to help Goodwife remove the seal. Released from their grip, Campion turned away from them, curled herself up, and sobbed into the bed’s cover. She felt as if filth had been smeared on her, irrevocably smeared.
“Look!” Ebenezer had unscrewed the seal, was showing the crucifix to Faithful Unto Death.
“A Papist witch!”
Campion was past caring. She wept. She was sliding into the abyss again. She dimly heard Faithful Unto Death intoning the 23rd psalm, heard her brother call for the guards, and then, mercifully she fainted. They wrapped her in a blanket, unwilling that Colonel Fuller’s soldiers should know what they had been doing, and Campion was carried down to the travelling coach which had been prepared.
Ebenezer smiled at the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey. “You were right, brother.”
“God has been good to us.”
“He has, he has.”
Faithful Unto Death shook his head solemnly. “She must be tried, brother.”
“She must, she must.” Ebenezer smiled. He walked to the window and stared down to where Goodwife followed Campion into the coach. From now on, Ebenezer reflected, they could deal respectably with his sister. The law would be relentless, properly conducting her to either fire or scaffold. He looked at Faithful Unto Death.
“She must be a witch.”
“She is.”
Ebenezer shrugged and limped back into the long gallery. He waved a hand at the decorated pagan plasterwork, at the curtains, the rugs, the paintings and the fine, inlaid furniture. “She must have used witchcraft to come here. Why else would they welcome her?”
He did not listen to Faithful Unto Death Hervey’s reply. He stared instead at the richness of the room and he hated it. It was beautiful and that was an anathema to him. It had belonged to privileged people and that was a further cause for hatred. Ebenezer had always hated the privileged.
He was now one of them. He was, since Scammell’s death, the legal holder of the Seal of St. Matthew. He would now receive the monies of the Covenant. He would be rich. Yet, he decided as he fingered a lace tablecloth, he would use his riches toward a better end than they had been used here. He would work for an England that was disciplined under God, devout under the law, and he knew that such a country would need harsh, far-seeing masters. God’s Kingdom would come and he would be one of its regents. He had discovered, in this last year, that he had the gift of leadership, though he still feared the older men of more power and experience. Those he was careful to flatter and copy.
He turned back to Faithful Unto Death, seeing in his erstwhile minister a future follower. Ebenezer’s voice was grating and harsh, befitting a conqueror. “I believe a word of thanks might be in season, brother?”
“Indeed.”
They knelt beneath t
he pagan plasterwork and thanked Almighty God for his mercies, for this signal providence that had brought them to this great victory.
“Amen,” said Faithful Unto Death, “and amen.”
Nineteen
“‘Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.’” Lady Margaret, listening to the Reverend Perilly’s words, thought it had not been true. Sir George had not been full of misery. He had been full of worry, yet he had known much happiness.
“‘He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower.’” That, she thought was true, if a flower had ever been blasted in the face by a musketeer.
She stood on the flagstones of Lazen church’s aisle. Fittingly it was a gray day, threatening rain, and the light which came through the windows which had been stripped of their fine, stained glass was gloomy. The escutcheons of Lazen and Lazender had been hacked with pikes, while the stone effigies of Sir George’s ancestors, beneath whose gaze he was laid to rest, had been hammered with musket fire and then daubed with lime wash. They looked leprous.
Lady Margaret looked through her veil into the hole that had been made by lifting four flagstones. The vault of the church was damp. She could see the rotted end of an old coffin that abutted on to Sir George’s new coffin, just lowered into place. One day, she thought, she would lie in that hole, her eyes staring endlessly toward the worshippers above. Then, with the sudden realization that the world was turned upside down, she knew she might never lie beside Sir George. Even as the Reverend Simon Perilly read the obsequies, so was the County Committee for Sequestration meeting in Lazen’s great hall. Lazen was to be taken from her, from Sir Toby, the rightful heir.
It was wicked, it was unfair, yet she could do nothing. The Committee, gleeful in their victory, had picked the hour of the funeral so that the family could not be represented. John, Earl of Fleet, newly back from the Earl of Essex’s army that marched through the west, had nevertheless attended the committee. Lady Margaret doubted if he would achieve anything. On her right stood Anne, the Countess of Fleet, and on her left was Caroline. Toby was in his bedroom, and whether he would not be next beneath the earth was still in doubt.
Perilly’s voice rose. “‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.’”
Lady Margaret stood for two seconds, staring at the clean, planed wood of her husband’s coffin, then turned about. “Come.”
She stood outside, close to the charred patch of grass where the victorious Puritans had burned the altar rails, and there she thanked the villagers, tenants and servants who had crowded the church. She could give them thanks, but she could offer no hope for the future. She looked at Mr. Perilly. “Thank you, Simon. You did it well.”
The Reverend Perilly, whose theology was not to the taste of the victors, faced a future as uncertain as Lady Margaret’s. He folded his scapular on his prayer book. “He will be resurrected, Lady Margaret.”
She nodded. “I trust God will give time for revenge on the day of resurrection, Mr. Perilly.” She turned away, leading her daughters across the ravaged gardens toward the New House.
Upstairs, in Toby’s bedroom, Lady Margaret found the doctor bleeding her son. “Again?”
“It is the best course, Lady Margaret.” Dr. Sillery had taken a cupful of blood from Toby’s arm and now he pulled blankets over the patient. “The sweating will help.”
Lady Margaret suppressed a retort that nothing had helped so far. She sat beside her son and put a hand on his forehead. It was hot. He had a fever and she knew that most fevers led to the grave. She looked at Sillery. “The wounds?”
“The hand is healing well, extremely well.” He shrugged. “The shoulder…” He did not finish.
Lady Margaret looked back to Toby’s sweating, unshaven face. He had been struck in the left shoulder by a musket ball that had mangled the joint and torn itself raggedly free from his armpit. That wound had thrown him to the ground. Then a sword had chopped down and taken two fingers from his left hand. The finger stumps were healing well, the skin pink and free of smell, but the shoulder seemed to fester. Each day Sillery would sniff the wound, frown, and then draw blood to equalize Toby’s bodily humors. Each day, too, Mr. Perilly said prayers for the sick, and Lady Margaret feared they would become prayers for the dying. In another room of the New House Colonel Washington sat up in bed, his face bandaged where once he had eyes.
“Mother?” Anne looked round the door.
“I’m coming.”
In the long gallery, a room untouched by the victorious troops, the Earl of Fleet waited with a drawn, anxious face. His allegiance was torn between his convictions that looked forward to a Parliamentary victory and his duties toward his wife’s family. He nodded heavily. “Lady Margaret.”
“John? I assume from your face that the news is not good?”
“No.” He spread his hands in a quick gesture of futility. “I did my best, but we could not offer enough money. Indeed not.”
Lady Margaret’s face was as calm and stern as it had been throughout her husband’s burial service. “May I ask who did offer the most money?”
The Earl of Fleet frowned, twisted his body uncomfortably and then walked toward the nearest window. “Money was not offered.” He held up a hand to ward off a question. “It seems that the estate will be awarded as compensation in repayment for a loan to Parliament. The amount was unstated.”
“To whom is my house compensation?”
The Earl of Fleet faced her. His hands rubbed uneasily together. “Sir Grenville Cony.”
“Ah.” Lady Margaret stiffened her back. “I trust that unspeakable piece of slime is not in the castle now?”
“No.”
“And I assume, too, that the property is confiscated? Not sold?”
Fleet nodded unhappily. “Confiscated.”
“So I am penniless?”
“No, mother!” Anne protested.
The Earl of Fleet paced uneasily back toward the fireplace. “Sir George’s other properties were not discussed. The Shropshire land.” He stopped, knowing he was giving no comfort.
Lady Margaret sniffed. “The Shropshire land will have to be sold, and I’ve no doubt at a laughable price. I suppose I can have no hopes of selling the London house?”
He shook his head. “The London Committee will doubtless award that.”
“Doubtless. And to Cony, no doubt.”
The Earl put his hands behind his back. “There is the plate, Lady Margaret. I notice it is all gone, yet I assume Sir George took pains to make it safe?”
Lady Margaret shook her head. The treasures of Lazen were still within the castle, walled up in the cellars, and it had been a small satisfaction to her that the victors had neither found it, nor had they been told where it was by one of the few servants who knew of the treasure’s existence. She looked at her son-in-law. “There is no plate.”
“No plate!” The Earl looked shocked.
“John!” Anne looked at her mother. “What did father do with it?”
“That is no business of the King’s enemies.”
There was an awkward silence, broken by the Earl of Fleet. “It will be some time before the transaction is completed. You won’t have to leave immediately.” He smiled. “You are, of course, welcome to use our house. We shall be honored.”
“Thank you, John.” Lady Margaret smiled at her daughter. “And thank you, Anne. There is one other thing you can do for me.”
“Yes?” The Earl sounded eager, glad to be moving on from the bad news he had delivered.
“There was a girl here, a Dorcas Slythe, who has disappeared. I want to know where she is.”
“Mother!” Anne, who had been longer in the castle since its fall than her husband, frowned. It was Anne’s belief that Campion’s presence had brought this ruin on her parents, and she had tried to persuade Lady Margaret, from the evidence of the blood in the bedroom, that the girl was wounde
d and probably dead by now.
Lady Margaret quietened her daughter. “I want news of the girl. The soldiers say she was taken to London. Can I rely on you, John?”
He nodded. “Yes, of course.” Then he glanced at his wife. “I think Anne is right, Lady Margaret. The girl has caused endless trouble.”
Lady Margaret’s voice was cold. “Would you like to explain that to Sir Toby when he recovers?”
The Countess of Fleet frowned. “Toby will get over it, mother.”
Lady Margaret sniffed. “I hope not. If Lazen’s downfall was brought about so that my enemies could destroy that girl, then I wish to save her. I wish to deny them that victory.”
The Earl of Fleet stood beside his wife. “Even if we find her, Lady Margaret, I doubt if there is a thing we can do now.”
“You mean your influence in the councils of my enemies is declining?”
Fleet frowned. “It was never great.”
Lady Margaret turned back toward her son’s sick room. She feared, if he should come out of the fever, telling him of Campion’s unknown fate. “Find her, John! Let me know, and then we shall see how helpless we are. I want the girl found!”
Campion was in the place of the ravens; the Tower.
The river swept its southern wall, while a moat, as filthy and stinking as the sewer it was, guarded its other three sides. On the hill to the northwest London’s crowds gathered for public executions.
The Tower of London was a royal palace, an armory, a garrison, a zoo, and the strongest prison in the city. In its cells were priests and noblemen, soldiers and civilians, all of them deemed to be enemies of the Lord’s anointed. The prisoners here were not the common prisoners, not the murderers and thieves, but the enemies of the revolution. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, upholder of the Divine Right of Kings, was the most notorious.
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