by Alys Clare
‘Yes, that seems highly likely, but you said there was something you didn’t understand?’
‘Yes, I’m just coming to that.’ She paused, and briefly the fearful look returned to her face. ‘It’s – I wondered—’ She drew a deep breath and said in a rush, ‘If she protected them, and they treasured her, valued her, why did they treat her so savagely? Why did they drive a nail through her throat?’
She was almost sobbing as she said the last words.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I too had been struck by the treatment meted out to the body, and I hadn’t begun to understand back then when I first saw it that it had been a force for good, not evil. ‘Perhaps because her power is too strong if she’s left unrestrained?’
But then I heard what I’d just said and instantly wished I could swallow the words back down again.
It was too late; my sister had heard them.
She said in a very small voice, ‘She’s unrestrained now.’
FIFTEEN
I needed to talk to Jonathan.
I was all for setting out there and then, but Celia didn’t want to be in the house without me – I couldn’t blame her – and when I suggested she could come with me, she said, quite rightly, ‘And what about Sallie? Or are you proposing to invite Samuel and Tock to bed down in the kitchen?’
So we went to bed. I didn’t sleep much – as well as everything else, the sick old man down in Plymouth was still vividly in my thoughts – and I don’t suppose Celia did either.
In the morning, however, there was no need to go down to the village to seek out Jonathan for, very early in the day, he came to find us.
Sallie showed him into the parlour even as Celia and I were beginning breakfast, pulling up a chair and offering to fill a platter for him without so much as an enquiring look at Celia or me to see if it was all right. Which didn’t matter in the least, since it was.
Jonathan waited until Sallie had gone back to the kitchen and then said, ‘I am concerned for you here at Rosewyke. There have been reports of strangers prowling around and they’ve been seen out this way.’
‘I know,’ I said.
Celia spun round to stare at me. ‘You didn’t mention it!’ she said accusingly.
‘Er – no.’ There wasn’t really anything else to say.
I turned to Jonathan and began to tell him what Black Carlotta had said to Celia, but Celia interrupted me, saying she was quite capable of speaking up for herself and proceeding, succinctly and unemotionally, to do so.
Jonathan said when she had finished, ‘It is interesting that this woman also mentions two forces, for I have sensed the same.’ He smiled at her. ‘I have not had your advantage, however, of actually seeing a manifestation of this protective spirit.’
‘I do not recommend it,’ Celia muttered.
He looked interested. ‘You felt afraid?’
She considered the question. ‘No!’ she replied, sounding faintly surprised. ‘I was … shocked, I suppose, that I’d seen her – or I thought I did – and I felt a sense of her power, and it was awesome.’
‘You thought you did?’ Jonathan repeated.
She met his intent eyes. ‘I do not believe in ghosts.’
He smiled. ‘Your brother here said the same thing.’
‘How can they exist, Jonathan?’ Celia demanded. ‘I have seen a dead body, I know that after death—’ But very abruptly she stopped.
There was a short silence. Then Jonathan said gently, ‘I agree, death does indeed appear very final. But what of the soul?’
‘Was that what I saw?’ She did not look convinced. ‘Oh, I don’t know what it was, if indeed I saw anything. Black Carlotta had – have you met her, Jonathan?’ He shook his head. ‘She is a forceful presence, and she’d just been telling me of this ancient evil, and I suppose I half-believed her—’ She paused. ‘No, that’s wrong, I did believe her, all the while she was talking anyway; no doubt I was suggestible, receptive to the idea of spirits becoming visible, so when there was a flash of light in the kitchen, or a sudden movement, I interpreted it as a phantom figure dressed in white.’ She looked at Jonathan and then at me, and there was something in her expression that suggested she longed for one of us to say oh, yes, I’m sure that’s what happened.
Neither of us did.
After a silence which was fast becoming uncomfortable I said, too brightly, ‘So, Jonathan, what of these prowlers?’
‘That is really all there is to tell,’ he replied. ‘Two people in the village say they saw a couple of strangers acting suspiciously, although there’s a dearth of good gossip at present and these reports do get exaggerated. But I’ve also heard that two or three settlements out on the moor and around the village have suffered thefts; a smoke-house broken into, fruit taken from where it had been left prior to storing it away. Never very much, and the more sensible of those reporting the matter put it down to children, or hungry vagrants unable to resist the temptation.’
‘But you were concerned enough to come and warn us?’ I asked.
‘Bearing in mind what has been happening, yes.’
‘Thank you,’ Celia said, shooting a look at me as if to reprimand me for not expressing my gratitude. ‘We—’
Too many conflicting demands and possibilities were filling my head and I could make no pattern of them all. Abruptly I stood up. ‘I have a call to make, and on the way back I’m going to talk to Theo,’ I said.
Jonathan stood up too. ‘I want to help, Gabriel,’ he said calmly. ‘I have been praying for you, but what else should I do?’
I looked at him. ‘Bearing in mind the nature of what appears to be threatening us, prayer is probably best.’
He smiled faintly. ‘For peril to the soul, of course. I am thinking, however, of these strangers.’ He paused. ‘I am not unversed in the ways of violent men.’
I recalled the tale he had told me of his past. I knew he spoke truly, and also that he was not a man to hold back when need demanded he strike.
‘I would value your presence, whenever you can spare the time,’ I said. Then, with a nod to each of them, I left.
Hal responded to my need for speed and we swiftly covered the miles to Plymouth. I left him in the ostler’s care and went on to the lodging house.
The woman greeted me with very evident relief. ‘He’s much worse, Doctor,’ she whispered. ‘Been raving, he has, and—’
‘I will try to quieten him,’ I said, patting her arm. ‘I know my way,’ I added, for she seemed on the point of coming up with me.
The sick man lay in sweat-soaked sheets and the smell in the room was awful. He was far gone in delirium, shouting at an invisible foe one moment and asking plaintively for his absent colleagues the next, sometimes speaking in English, sometimes lapsing into what I guessed must be his mother tongue. I bathed him, for all the good it did, for the instincts of all my years as a physician told me he was near death. I was holding a cup of water up to his mouth when suddenly he began to pray.
And the form of words was one that had not been heard openly in England for almost half a century.
Theo was his usual fraught, disgruntled self, but today I was in no mood to appease him.
Before he could speak I said, ‘I’ve been treating an old man in a Plymouth lodging house. He had two companions with him and they presented themselves as merchants. The others have abandoned the sick man and he’s dying. He has a high fever and amid his rantings he lapsed into prayer.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Theo demanded.
‘Because I believe the old man is a Spanish priest,’ I said.
‘He’s what? Dear Christ, Gabe, have we not enough on our hands without you—’
‘Listen!’ I said sharply.
To his credit, he did.
‘We have fugitives from the Caribbean who are running in terror, so afraid of what pursues them that they risked the perils of the voyage in the depths of the Falco. We have a delirious priest who with my own ears I have heard s
peak of putting men to the fire, men who would not reveal some secret even under the worst torture. This priest’s two companions may also be priests, and they are at large and probably hunting for the men they have pursued halfway round the world, three of whom are dead and one with his leg torn to pieces by Richard Hawkins’s dogs. I may be wrong, but if not – if there’s any danger of those men who have already suffered so much falling into the hands of the enemy they fear so much – then I want to prevent that happening.’
I only realized I’d been shouting when I stopped, and the echo of my words rang in the room.
Theo said into the silence, ‘Jarman Hodge is back and he’s found a makeshift shelter up on the moor. Whoever had been there has gone, but he followed a trail and he reckons they were heading for the river.’
‘Two men? Three?’
Theo shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘The river … the Tavy?’
‘Yes.’
He was watching me, an expression I didn’t much like on his face. ‘What is it you don’t want to tell me?’
Theo hesitated. Then: ‘He reckons they – whoever they are – have gone to ground in those woods down below your house. He found tracks leading that way.’
I turned towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Theo demanded.
‘If it’s the fugitives at Rosewyke they’ll need protecting. If it’s the priest’s companions, they’ll be armed. I’m heading home to fetch my sword and then I’m going to search my woods.’
He was calling out something as I left the house, his voice raised and alarmed, but I didn’t stop to listen.
Judyth Penwarden was hurrying for home.
She had been up all night with a farmer’s wife who was giving birth to her first child. The woman was young, scarcely more than a girl, and very frightened, and shocked to find herself in such pain. The husband – not much older than his wife – had stood in the bedroom doorway wringing his hands and looking helpless, until much to Judyth’s relief the girl’s mother had arrived, sent him out into the yard to find something useful to do, and then told her daughter in brusque but kind words to stop making such a noise, every other woman managed it and why shouldn’t she, and to listen to the midwife and get on with it.
With calm partially restored, Judyth was able to turn her full attention to the breech birth. The young woman had good cause for distress, she knew, for the buttocks-first progress of the baby was a slow process that for a long time threatened to come to a total stop. But Judyth knew – hoped she knew – what to do, and eventually, the young wife having been encouraged to adopt a crouching pose to allow the baby’s own weight to help it drop, the delivery was accomplished.
‘Me, I’m all for the old birthing stools, myself,’ the new grandmother declared, pacing slowly to and fro, her first grandson held in strong and gentle arms. ‘Had five of my own that way, I did, and you’d not have heard so much as a peep out of me.’ She shot her daughter a faintly disparaging look.
‘Yes, there is much to be said for them,’ Judyth said, busy with the afterbirth, ‘although it us up to each mother to decide for herself. Is it not?’ she added pointedly. The young mother flashed her a look of gratitude.
‘Oh, yes, yes, I suppose so,’ conceded the grandmother. The infant in her arms made a soft cooing sound, then tried out his lungs in a tentative cry. Apparently liking the sensation, he did it again, increasing the volume until the yells echoing round the small, stuffy room were almost as loud as his mother’s had been earlier.
Judyth helped the young mother to sit up straight, pushed some pillows behind her and said, ‘What that little lad needs is his mother,’ and, meek as a lamb, the grandmother handed him over to her daughter.
When Judyth finally emerged, leaving the brand-new parents exclaiming in delight over their little son and the grandmother making porridge in the kitchen, it was to discover, with faint surprise, that night was long over and the sun climbing rapidly up the sky.
She set off to walk home. It was not far: she took the track that bent round to the south of Gabriel Taverner’s house, then branched off it to go down to the little path that ran along beside the river. It was a short cut, and she longed to be home. It was also likely to be deserted, and she knew that to stride along beside the fast-moving water, alone with the sights, sounds and smells of late autumn, was almost as effective a restorative as the good, long sleep she anticipated.
She was past the woods that hid Rosewyke from sight and on the steep path down to the river when she first suspected she wasn’t alone. She heard a faint rustling behind her, as if somebody was treading softly on the dead leaves that covered the woodland floor. She looked round. Not a sound, not a movement.
An animal, then. A deer, a fox, standing still and out of sight until she had headed off and it was safe to proceed.
She walked on, faster now, and presently jumped down the last few feet of the slope and joined the waterside path. She rounded a bend and then heard the distinct sound of someone else doing exactly what she had just done: the ground was muddy at the bottom of the slope and her feet had made a squelching noise.
Somebody is following me, she thought, not particularly alarmed. Well, more than a few people know of this short cut, so why should I be surprised? But she found that she had increased her pace.
She looked over her shoulder once or twice, but the track frequently ran beneath overhanging branches and it twisted and turned, affording far too many places for concealment.
At one point Judyth thought she heard someone panting with effort.
She walked faster, faster.
The end of the path came in sight. She saw the little settlement of Blaxton up ahead, and the jetty where the ferry ran across the river. She hurried on, emerging from the little path and joining the wider track that went the long way round. She came to the place where the path up to her little cottage branched off, running now, her bag on its strap over her shoulder banging against her thighs.
She thought someone called out. She ignored it.
She unlocked her door, threw herself inside, banged it behind her and rammed home the bolts. Safe now, she waited until the shakiness eased – fatigue, it’s just fatigue, she told herself – then went through into her living area to stoke up the fire, put water on to boil and make herself a hot, restorative drink.
She was sitting in her usual chair beside the hearth, the ingredients she had mixed already doing their job, when she heard the back door slowly opening.
She sat as if frozen.
But I secured it, she thought frantically. I remember doing it, before I left last night, I—
But then she also remembered how she’d found herself out of comfrey and made a quick dash out to her still-room to fetch more.
And – the door was creaking open now, and making that noise it always made when it caught against the flagstone that stood up slightly proud – she didn’t remember locking up again …
She tried to turn round but she could not find the courage.
Then a husky male voice said behind her, ‘I do not wish to harm you but I will if I must.’
She took a breath. Two breaths.
Then slowly she turned to face him.
He was thirty or so, tall, very thin, although he had the air of a man who was once much bigger, before starvation took effect. His hair was dark, tight-curled, his skin was tawny, his eyes were blue. His clothes were little more than rags, and one leg was bare. No, not bare – she looked more closely – for it had been bandaged.
‘You are hurt,’ Judyth said. She was surprised how calm she sounded.
He glanced down. ‘Yes. But it’s not why I—’
Judyth was already on her feet. ‘Sit,’ she commanded, pointing to the settle set against the wall. ‘That bandage looks filthy and it is starting to unwind. I have water heating and I shall fetch ointments.’ She gave him a glare. ‘If you permit, of course?’
He looked briefly shamefaced. He seemed to be t
hinking hard, calculating. Then he nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you. But be quick. You must be quick.’
He is on the run, Judyth thought as she worked. Having her hands busy calmed her and she found she could consider her situation rationally. He fears that those who pursue him are close, but this wound on his leg slows him down.
‘How did you know I would be able to help you?’ she asked as she removed the bandage. It was stuck in places to the wounds beneath and she had to use hot water, and even then he winced and she sensed he was biting down to stop himself crying out.
‘I’ve seen you. I know you’re a midwife, and just now I saw you near the doctor’s house.’
‘But I hadn’t—’ She stopped. I hadn’t been to the doctor’s house, I was merely passing, she’d been about to say. But why tell him this?
She removed the last piece of the dressing, closest to the skin, and this time he did cry out.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She was horrified by what she had just revealed: a series of dog bites, some deep, some quite shallow, and the worst of them neatly stitched. It was no surprise he was in pain, and the wounds definitely required fresh, clean dressings. But there was good news too: very good news.
‘I see no signs of infection,’ she said quietly. ‘Whoever tended you did a good job.’
This time when he spoke he sounded almost friendly. ‘It was the coroner’s wife first, and she bathed and bathed with water so hot it hurt worse than the original bites. Then the doctor came and helped.’ Amazement in his voice, he added, ‘He put garlic in the deepest wounds!’
Then she knew for sure that what she suspected was right. It had been Gabriel Taverner who stitched this man up. Amid every other emotion currently flooding through her there was a moment of happiness: she’d told him about the use of garlic, he’d been sceptical and made a joke about roast lamb, and she’d been hurt, thinking he’d written her methods off as riddled with country superstitions and no better than hedge remedies.
She was wrong, for he had taken it in and now used it himself.
