Hiding From the Light

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘Have you got the numbers?’ Judith was heading towards the organ, which was up in the side-aisle.

  ‘Here you are. All easy ones.’ Mike smiled. ‘I took pity on you.’

  She glanced at him sharply. ‘You sound as though you hadn’t given it a thought before I rang you.’

  ‘Not quite true.’ Damn it, he didn’t need a lecture. ‘I had given the theme of my sermon a great deal of thought.’ That at least was true, even if he hadn’t got much down on paper. ‘It is not always easy to select the right subject.’

  He watched as she slid onto the seat, unlocked the lid, switched on the pump and lights. ‘I’ll leave you to it, Judith.’

  ‘I’ll drop the key in on my way home.’ She was leafing through the music.

  There was no way he could say no. All he could do was hope she would put it through the letterbox without disturbing him.

  She didn’t. Only forty minutes later there was a knock at the door. ‘Here you are, Mike.’ She was past him and in the hall before he could protest. Dropping the key on the table, she went towards his study. ‘So, is the sermon finished?’

  ‘Just about.’ He hovered in the doorway behind her. ‘In fact, I have to spend the rest of the evening working. I’ll go over it again last thing.’ He frowned. She had walked over to his desk and was staring openly at the monitor. The coloured screensaver gave nothing away.

  ‘I’ve told you before, Mike, you should let me help you with your paperwork.’ Her gaze had strayed from the computer to the heaps of letters scattered over his desk. ‘You need some secretarial assistance and I would be more than happy to give you a hand.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘That’s kind of you, Judith, but I have a system, believe it or not.’ He grinned at her. ‘No one else could possibly understand it and I’m very happy to muddle through in my own way.’ God preserve him from having her in the house any more than she was already!

  She gave a small, disappointed laugh. ‘Well, the offer is there.’

  ‘And much appreciated. If I get too behind I’ll let you know.’ He paused. ‘If there’s nothing else, Judith, I should get on – ’

  ‘You went to see Lyndsey Clark.’ She swung round to face him.

  ‘How on earth did you know that?’ Mike could feel his impatience growing.

  ‘Her neighbour told me. She saw you. I told you not to go and see her, Mike. I told you to leave her to me.’

  Mike frowned. ‘Judith, my dear, it is not for you to say who I do or do not see. I welcome your advice, but you must allow me to make my own decisions.’ He spoke firmly.

  She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, plainly irritated. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘As it happens, she was out when I called.’

  ‘So you didn’t see her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘May the Lord be praised.’ Judith was standing with her back to his desk now and she folded her arms, effectively barring his way. ‘Don’t go near her, Mike. I know the girl. When I first came across her I thought she was relatively harmless. Ineffectual. Playing at witchcraft, evil and dangerous though it is. But I was wrong. It is far worse than I feared. She is poison. And she’d never listen to you anyway. The bishop will be horrified to hear you are consorting with people like her.’

  Mike felt a surge of his customary distaste. ‘The bishop, Judith, will be relieved to hear that I am doing my job, which is trying to help sinners and bring lost souls back to the fold. If he hears about it at all, and there is no reason that he should.’

  He was beginning to think some fairly unsaintly thoughts about Judith. The woman’s smug humourless face was too confrontational as she stood before him.

  But she was smiling at him now, a thoughtful, almost calculating smile. ‘Did John Downing get in touch, Mike?’

  ‘He did. We talked it through.’

  ‘And was he helpful?’

  Mike met her gaze. He managed to return her smile. ‘Indeed he was. He is going to handle the whole thing. He told me not to worry.’

  ‘Good.’ She seemed genuinely relieved. ‘I was worried about you, Mike.’

  He nodded. ‘So he said. Now, Judith, I must get on. I’m sorry, but there’s a lot to do.’

  ‘And it’s nearly nine. Look, if you haven’t eaten yet …?’ She was masking her aggression well, but her smile did not reach her eyes.

  ‘No, Judith, I’m sorry. I won’t have time to eat now.’

  He wished he hadn’t said the ‘now’. She looked first crestfallen and then guilty. But it did the trick. ‘I’ll leave you, then. Don’t forget to change the clocks. I’ll see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow, Judith. Good night.’

  He closed the door behind her and drew the bolt firmly, aware that she could probably hear it sliding into place, and took a deep breath.

  John Downing hadn’t been in touch again and Mike had no intention of ringing him. Or of confiding in his helpful lay reader. Or the bishop.

  And now he really did have a sermon to write!

  It was midnight before he printed up the last pages, clipped them together and switched off the computer. With a sigh he headed for the door. The house was in darkness and the central heating had clicked off at eleven, leaving it cold.

  Wearily he climbed the stairs and made for his bedroom, thinking about Judith. He foresaw difficulty there. She had been in the parish a long time and obviously had some powerful friends, both in the church and amongst his parishioners. It would not do to alienate her. On the other hand she represented a wing of the church he disliked intensely. Repressive. Old-fashioned and at the same time evangelical. Unforgiving. Joyless.

  Puritan. That was the word.

  He switched on his bedroom light and walked to the window. The wall of mist outside was thicker than ever now, coming up off the river, pressing against the glass, blanketing any sounds from the road. He stared at it for a moment with a shiver of distaste, then he reached for the curtains and drew them across, shutting out the night. Sally would have loved a night like this. He turned wistfully towards the bed and drew back the cover. She would have laughed and demanded music and roaring log fires and made gallons of soup and homemade bread. He shook his head sadly. She was probably still demanding all those things, but of another man. Their relationship had survived his abandonment of teaching, but not his resignation from the job in industry and his decision to train for the priesthood. She had never wanted marriage anyway, and she was not prepared to cope with his vocation. ‘I would fight another woman for you, Mike. I can’t fight God!’ she had said, clinging to him, that last day when they had talked it all through like grown-ups. ‘I can’t do it. There isn’t enough room for three of us in this relationship. I know that’s a cliché and I know it’s small-minded of me. I know it’s my fault. I’ve tried and tried. But I can’t do it. And it’ll get worse. You’ll want a wife who can make jam and dole out sympathy and attend the WI or live in an inner-city parish and pick used needles and condoms off the doorstep. I can’t do that, Mike. I never will be able to. Better quit now, before you grow to hate me.’

  It had been the right decision. Of course it had. But how he missed her. He sighed. Emma had made the same connections in her mind. The inner city or Gilbert White. He sat down on the bed miserably and he shivered again.

  Sally was a harlot. She did not believe in the sacrament of marriage. You did right to put her behind you …

  The voice in his head was so clear he looked round, expecting to see someone there. He took a deep breath. He was imagining things. He had been sitting in front of the computer for too long.

  ‘Christ be with me, Christ within me,

  Christ behind me, Christ before me …’

  The woman Judith is steadfast in the Lord. She would not suffer a witch to live, a witch like Sarah Paxman …

  ‘Stop it!’ Mike stood up. ‘Who are you?’

  His brain was whirling and he closed his eyes. Sounds. Voices. Snatches of speech played in his
ears as though he were tuning in to band after band of distant radio transmissions. He spun round, his hands to his head, and before he realised what he was doing he had fallen to his knees, clawing at his scalp as though trying to tear the sounds out of his head. ‘Christ be with me. Christ within me – dear God!’ He screwed up his eyes and raised his hands towards the ceiling. ‘In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, STOP!’

  Total silence.

  Opening his eyes, he stared round the room. It looked absolutely normal.

  Shaking, he climbed to his feet and made for the door. Walking unsteadily downstairs to his study, he went over to his desk and sat down, staring unseeing at the pile of papers in front of him, then slowly he reached for his diary. Tony and Ruth Gilchrist’s number was written firmly inside the front cover underneath that of John Downing, whom he had no intention of contacting. The couple of times he had tried to ring the Gilchrists before, hoping they were back from their trip to see the new grandchild, there had been no answer. They had presumably decided to extend their stay. Oh God, how he needed to hear Tony’s calm, reassuring voice. Please, please, let them be back, and if they were, let them not mind being rung at this hour. He picked up the phone. The bell rang on and on in their empty house and at last he replaced the receiver in despair. They had not even set the answering machine.

  He lay in bed for a long time, unable to sleep, his eyes staring up at the ceiling above his head, tracing the faint shadows from the window. The mist had retreated as quickly as it had come, to leave a cold starry night. Frost was on the way. A car drove down the road outside and for a second its headlights shone in onto the wall as it turned the corner of the lane. It drove on and the room was dark once more. Eventually he dozed.

  The woman, Sarah, had been to see him again. She had walked into his house in South Street demanding that his servants show her into his presence and she stood there haranguing him about the witch, Liza Clark. He watched her, listening with only half a mind on what she was saying. The other half was occupied with her. Sarah. Last time she had come to Mistley Thorn she had been decently dressed in black with white collar and cuffs and apron with a hood over her white linen cap. This time she was dressed like the royalist harlot she was; dressed as she so frequently appeared in his dreams. She wore an underskirt of pink poplin, trimmed in velvet ribbon and over it a dress of pale blue wool. There were pearls at her throat and in her ears, and her shoes were high heeled. Over her shoulders she wore a black cloak lined with blue silk.

  ‘You have done nothing to free her, Master Hopkins!’ She stepped nearer to him and he smelled lavender and rosewater on her skin. ‘Nothing! And after all I asked you! Liza is not a witch.’ The chatelaine at her waist chinked softly as she moved. Her hair, beneath the goffered cap, was fair and soft. A stray curl stuck to her forehead. ‘You have to let her go. You cannot accuse her!’

  ‘She is already accused, mistress.’ He managed to keep his voice steady. He was intensely aware that in her high-heeled shoes she was taller than him. He stepped back, straightening his shoulders, pleased that he had not removed his hat when he came in. The high crown gave him height and presence.

  ‘Have you tortured her? You and Mary Phillips? I have heard what you do to these women!’

  ‘We do the Lord’s work, mistress.’ He kept his voice steady with difficulty. ‘It is our duty before Him to weed out the servants of the Devil.’

  ‘She does not serve the Devil!’ Sarah took a step closer, her eyes flashing with anger, and he shrank back. ‘She is a God-fearing woman.’

  He smiled sourly. ‘I hardly think so.’ He could feel himself about to cough. He tried to suppress it, failed and turned away, his body racked by spasms of choking. There were flecks of blood on the linen kerchief he pressed to his mouth. ‘Please, go, mistress!’ There were tears of pain in his eyes he did not intend to let her see. ‘Go!’

  ‘I am not going until I have your promise, Master Hopkins!’ Her voice was immediately behind him. He could smell the salt-woman scent of her, almost feel the silken rustle of her clothes.

  He spun round. ‘I said, go! Or do you wish to face arrest yourself, as a conspirator with her in the Devil’s work!’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare arrest me.’ She was so close she had to look down to see into his eyes. ‘Your victims, Master Hopkins, are all poor defenceless women with no one to speak for them. Women who are a drain on the parish. Women who have no family or friends. I have family and friends, Master Hopkins. I have money and property, from my late husband’s estate. You would not dare to touch one hair of my head!’ Her eyes were fixed on his, unblinking. He could see the soft bloom on her cheeks, the velvet shadows on her skin where her breasts disappeared into her bodice. Her pupils were pinpoints in the hazel irises. ‘Let her go, Master Hopkins, let her go.’

  Her eyes were changing shape before his gaze. As he watched, fascinated, he realised that the strange smoky colour he found so intriguing was becoming greener. Her hair was darkening, growing straight beneath the cap. But the anger was growing, growing … and suddenly he was very afraid.

  With a shout of fear, Mike sat up in the darkness, his heart hammering under his ribs. ‘“Christ be with me, Christ within me” –’ It was the same dream. The dream in which he, Mike Sinclair, had somehow slipped into the skin of Matthew Hopkins. Hauling himself out of bed, he staggered over to the window and heaving it up he leant out, taking deep breaths of the ice-cold air. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’

  The woman in his dream had been so vivid. So close he could smell her, touch her, hear every rustle of her skirts, and in those last few seconds he realised he had recognised her. She was no longer just a shadow, a ghost from the past.

  She was Emma Dickson.

  39

  Sunday October 25th

  END OF BRITISH SUMMER TIME

  Emma woke with a start. For a moment she lay disorientated, staring into the darkness. Cautiously she put out a hand and felt the solid warm pressure of Piers next to her. She sighed with relief. She had been afraid after their quarrel that he would somehow disappear in the night. Carefully she wriggled closer, snuggling up against his back, aware of a sudden purr coming from the bedclothes at the foot of the bed. Max or Min was in bed with them. With a happy smile she closed her eyes and in minutes she was asleep again. The dream returned at once.

  Sarah had ridden straight back to Liza’s cottage. No one had been near it since the old woman had been arrested. She had crept back late in the evening the day after Liza had been taken and laid the two dead cats side by side in the flower bed, covering their bodies with earth and flowers. She gazed down at the tell-tale mound, then sadly she turned aside to pull a few branches from the rosemary bush by the path. She laid them gently over it, then went on into the house. The old lady’s possessions had not been touched; no one in the village had dared come in. The pestle and mortar, the jugs, all lay where they had fallen. The herbs had wilted and died, the fire had long been cold ashes; the water in the cauldron had a skim of dust. Sarah’s eyes filled with tears as she moved towards the table and trailed her fingers through the crumpled leaves and petals.

  ‘No!’ She banged her fists on the table. ‘No, I won’t let him do it.’ She groaned out loud, shaking her fists at the ceiling. ‘This cannot be happening. This cannot be allowed to happen!’ As she walked round the table her angrily swishing skirts raised a dusty smell of meadowsweet and lavender from the dried strewn herbs on the floor.

  ‘Help me, Liza!’ she demanded angrily of the dark corner near the hearth. ‘Where are you? Help me!’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Liza! Tell me what to do!’ She walked over and stared down at the scattering of cold ash. Liza always kept the hearth immaculately swept but now the broom lay on the floor. Near it was Liza’s old woven bag. It looked as though it had been trampled deliberately into the dust. She stopped and picked it up, hugging it for a moment to her, careless of the dirt on her gown.

  ‘Mistre
ss, I’ve been looking for you.’

  She jumped as a shadow darkened the door. ‘Is that you, John Pepper?’

  ‘Your father bids you return to the house, mistress. He does not think it safe for you to come here.’ The man’s eyes were everywhere, darting, inquisitive, fearful.

  Sarah felt a wave of irritation. ‘I have no need of an escort, John.’

  ‘No, Mistress Sarah, but your father thinks it best. There are soldiers abroad everywhere and all sorts with them. Nowhere is safe while this war rages round the land and no one knows who is friend and who is foe.’ He scowled as he gave the cottage one further distasteful glance. ‘I shall wait outside, mistress, if you must spend further time in here.’ She felt a moment of guilt. Since her brother’s death she was her father’s only child. His anguish when he had heard that news had been so painful she had found it hard to watch, her own terrible grief somehow subordinated to his.

  As John Pepper moved away from the door and disappeared from view the sunlight flooded back into the house. She frowned. His loyalty to her and to her father was beyond question but there had been an undertone in his voice she did not care for. Thoughtfully she moved back to the table, staring down at the tools of Liza’s trade as herb wife and she shook her head. She had forgotten the war and was thinking back to the days of her childhood when Liza, in a clean neat cap and gown and white apron had helped in the nursery of the Bennett home. ‘Listen carefully, my duck.’ She could hear Liza’s voice now, in her head. ‘You’re the eldest girl,’ the only girl as it turned out, ‘and so there are things you should know. Secret things.’

  Things she had forgotten. Or had she? When she had set her heart on handsome young Robert Paxman as a husband, she had remembered them then. Liza’s husky, seductive whisper in her ear: ‘If you want something, my duck, you can have it. Remember that; you can have anything in the whole world if you want it enough and you know the way.’ Secretly, half afraid, half excited at the sense of power it gave her, she had risen from her bed as the light of the full moon flooded in at the window and making sure Agnes was still asleep, she had crept out into the garden.