Читать книгу The Memory Palace - Christie Dickason - Страница 18

‘Smashed his head like it was a ripe melon,’ said Fox. ‘On a rock.’

‘Speak when I ask you.’ Sir Richard flipped his coattail over a stool and sat down at the bake house table. ‘You stand there.’ He waved Fox forward. ‘Now, then.’

Given the late hour, he had decided to hold his preliminary inquiry in the Hawkridge bake house rather than shift the entire company back to his little courtroom at High House. Zeal found a half dozen precious beeswax candles to lend dignity to the background of dough bowls and ovens. The air was warm from the banked fires and fragrant with the scent of the day’s baking. Pale cloth-covered loaves sat in orderly rows on shelves behind Sir Richard’s head.

‘I’m sure we’re all grateful to be brought the news in such unparalleled haste,’ said Sir Richard. ‘But I’m still not certain why you feel the matter is so urgent it can’t wait till morning.’

‘Murder seemed urgent to us, sir,’ said Fox. ‘And Sir Harry was murdered.’

‘By his horse?’ asked Sir Richard. ‘I was told you arrived saying Sir Harry’s horse had thrown him. You’re not under oath yet, but take care.’

‘It threw him because she charmed it.’ With averted eyes, Fox tilted his head at Zeal, who had perched on a stool at the far end of the table.

Sir Richard glanced to his left at Doctor Gifford, fierce-eyed and eager to sit in judgement, even at this hour. He glanced to his right at Geoffrey Comer, who had the misfortune to be the nearest parish councillor, and sighed. ‘When I was dragged from my bed, I expected an urgent legal matter. If this case has any substance at all, the issue is witchcraft, and it should go to the church courts. Or else the whole thing might be a load of buffle.’ He regarded Fox through his eyebrows as he had studied Harry earlier. ‘I hope for your sake that you’re not wasting my time.’ He raised a hand to quell an urgent movement from Doctor Gifford, the minister. ‘You’ll get your turn, sir.’ Sir Richard turned back to Fox. ‘Are you formally accusing our young mistress here of causing Sir Harry’s death by witchcraft?’

Fox hesitated.

Herne, the constable, began to stare at Zeal with an open mouth.

‘Or by any other means?’ asked Sir Richard.

‘More like raising the possibility, sir. We thought you might…’

‘Oh, just the “possibility”…’ Sir Richard rocked back meditatively on his stool then slammed the front legs down again. ‘Why?’

‘Sir?’

‘Why rouse a magistrate, a minister and a parish councillor in order to “raise a possibility”?’

‘Justice, your honour. And also, we’ve already been away from London much longer than we contracted for. So, if we are to be witnesses at the inquest on Sir Harry…’

‘Don’t think for a moment you will be,’ said Sir Richard.

Pickford had been breathing audibly. Now he stepped forward. ‘Please, your honour. That woman threatened to kill Sir Harry. “I’ll kill you,” she said. Everyone heard her. And all the time we were here, she showed herself to be a wild and dangerous woman…’

‘Dear me.’ Sir Richard turned his head to gaze at Zeal. ‘Did you know you were dangerous, my dear?’

She shook her head dumbly. These men and their accusation were absurd. On the other hand, if you were angry enough, perhaps your rage might shape itself into an independent being, a spirit, like a ghost, and act on your behalf without your permission.

I was very angry with Harry. Is it possible that I did somehow will his death?

‘You may laugh, sir,’ said Pickford. ‘But we know she set the evil eye on us when all we did was obey Sir Harry’s orders to remove the statues. Call the others and ask them. We all felt it.’

Zeal rubbed her hand across her mouth. She had no idea that her glares had been so effective.

‘And no one can deny she threatened to shoot us, just for trying to do our job. And us with only a shovel to defend ourselves.’

‘You forget that I was present…Just one moment, Doctor Gifford, I beg you!’

‘She killed him in revenge for him taking the statues back.’ Pickford looked defiant. ‘It’s too much coincidence. Evil eye. She threatened him and then he died. Think about it.’

‘Thank you. I hadn’t planned to.’ Sir Richard scratched his earlobe and studied Zeal’s accusers in silence, until she began to fear that he was having one of his lapses.

Surely these comical men could not make real trouble for her.

‘I’m not clear on one or two points.’ Comer seized the opening, just before Gifford, who was leaning back on his stool, shaking his head in impatient dismay. ‘Was Mistress Zeal present when Sir Harry died?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Was she anywhere nearby?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did she at any time approach his horse while it was at Hawkridge in order to tamper with it?’

‘Not so far as I know.’

‘But she killed him nevertheless, at a distance, by subverting his horse?’ Sir Richard stepped in again, back in full flow.

‘Such things happen,’ said Fox defiantly. ‘Ask the minister there.’

‘You all are missing the true wickedness,’ said Gifford. ‘If you will but allow me…’

Sir Richard snorted. ‘There was a storm tonight? Yes? While you were on the road?’

‘An uncanny one, sir,’ agreed Fox. ‘Blue sky one minute, lightning and hail the next. Lightning filled the sky like noon. Even our own beasts gave a start and offered to bolt. Not usual lightning. It was yellowish, like sulphur. Not your usual lightning at all. If you follow me.’

‘I detect the Lord’s hand,’ said Doctor Gifford. ‘Sir Harry was struck down like the Canaanites who worshipped heathen idols.’

‘But these fellows don’t seem to be raising the pos-si-bi-li-ty…’ Sir Richard seemed to examine each syllable in turn. ‘…that He had anything to do with it. More like the other one, if anything.’ He turned to Zeal. ‘My dear, how do you plead? Care to throw yourself on the mercy of the court?’

‘I did not have anything to do with Harry’s death,’ Zeal said quietly. ‘We all speak more fiercely than we could ever act. I am sorry that he died…I don’t quite believe it yet, if you must know. And I never meant to shoot anyone. Only to keep Harry and these men from taking the law into their own hands before Sir Richard could arrive and sort things out.’

‘Hnmph!’ Sir Richard nodded with satisfaction.

Comer leaned forward again. ‘But you did threaten to shoot unarmed men? That is an offence in itself.’

‘The gun is rusted solid,’ said Wentworth suddenly from the wall where he had been leaning with crossed arms. ‘I gave it to her. It hasn’t been fired for twenty-three years.’

‘Did she know this?’ asked Comer, who struck Zeal as a reasonable man and surprisingly good-natured, given that he, like Sir Richard had been called from his bed.

‘Of course. I dare say she wouldn’t have touched it otherwise,’ said Wentworth.

Comer and Sir Richard laughed. Zeal bristled but saw the wisdom of keeping quiet.

‘Well, gentlemen.’ Once again Sir Richard looked at his two colleagues. ‘These two don’t want to make a formal accusation. I see no need to clog up the courts with “possibility”. Where are the rest of your number, by the way? They less keen to see justice done?’

‘Went on with the statues to London, sir,’ said Fox. ‘To deliver as ordered. And Sir Harry. But, if you want him back, we can always…’

Sir Richard cut across him. ‘I shall, of course, report this meeting to the inquest, wherever it’s held, but the coroner will undoubtedly conclude what seems clear to me – that Sir Harry died by misadventure – horse startled by lightning and so on. Or maybe, as Doctor Gifford says, he got a clout on the ear from God. If anything changes, I shall let you know. Good night to you all. I’m off back to my bed.’ He levered himself to his feet. ‘As for you two, if I hear of you still in the parish tomorrow morning, I’ll clap you up as vagrants.’

‘There is also the question of our wages,’ said Fox.

‘At last we come to the nub,’ said Sir Richard. He leaned on the table with exaggerated patience. ‘Speak.’

‘We did our part as contracted. Sir Harry hadn’t paid us when he died. The statues came from Hawkridge estate. And then my carts…That gentleman over there ordered them wrecked…’

‘Get out!’ bellowed Sir Richard. ‘Herne! Tuddenham! See them off the estate.’

The two men gave Zeal wide berth as they fled.

‘Londoners!’ exclaimed Sir Richard before the door had quite closed.

‘I must have my turn to speak!’

The trumpet of Gifford’s voice arrested the general surge of rising, adjusting clothes and preparing to leave. Zeal pulled back her hand from pinching out one of the candle flames.

The minister gathered them up with a penetrating gaze as he did his congregation before commencing a sermon, his fierce presence far greater than warranted by his small size. ‘No one has yet named the true wickedness in this case!’ He pointed a knobbed forefinger at Zeal while his eyes probed her soul. ‘Mistress, you may not have murdered Sir Harry, but you still must be chastised for your true crime.’

Zeal inhaled sharply and sat down on her stool again. He has sniffed out the fornication, she thought. Those eyes of his can see that I’m pregnant.

She knew without doubt that her guilt was both infinite and written clearly on her face.

‘She already knows what I will say!’ cried Gifford in triumph. ‘Look at the knowledge in her face!’

‘Knowledge of what?’ she managed to ask.

Gifford shook his head as if in pain at her mendacity. ‘I do not doubt that your former husband was struck down by a righteous God for his prime part in it, but you too must share the blame!’

He knows about the perjury! She felt she might faint.

He knows that the annulment was a fraud. He knows everything.

She gripped the sides of her stool and braced herself upright.

‘When, like Moses, madam, you see that your people worship idols, you must do as he did and take those abominations and burn them in the fire, and grind them into powder and strew that upon the water and make the people drink of it.’

Zeal stared, trying to make sense of his words. Idols? Was I spied at the Lady Tree? Does he want me to chop down the tree?

‘You know what I speak of, madam. Don’t pretend.’ The pointing finger stabbed at her across the width of the table. ‘You have tolerated abomination! As for your parson, I am dismayed that he did not counsel you like a Christian. I hold him, too, responsible.’

‘Doctor Bowler is guilty as well?’ Zeal managed to ask at last.

‘The statues, madam! Graven images! Lewd, naked, heathen idols, standing there for all to see. Sir Harry may have set them up, but I expected you to tear them down as soon as he took his authority away with him.’

‘The statues?’ Zeal swallowed and took a deep breath to hold down a belch of hysterical laughter. ‘This is all about Nereus and the nymphs?’ In spite of her effort at self-control, she hiccuped.

‘“And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever and they have no rest day nor night who worship the beast and his image.” Are heathen idols not wickedness enough for my concern?’

‘I did not think of them as idols, Doctor Gifford. Nor, I’m sure, did Sir Harry. They are works of art. Representations of abstract beauty and the wholesome ideas of nature, as given form by the Classical authorities…’

‘“Woe unto them who call evil good, and good evil.”’

Zeal sighed with frustration and looked about for assistance. Sir Richard was studying the ceiling.

‘The only authority you must study is God’s Holy Word,’ added Gifford.

‘Doctor Bowler says that Man creates beauty only to glorify God. He will quote you scripture to prove that God delights in…’

‘Bowler!’ Gifford said in a surge of fury. ‘That false man of God who pollutes your worship with music! And flowers! And all the other vain deceptions of the world! He is not a man of God, merely an obscene…fiddler!’

‘“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,”’ replied Zeal.

‘I hold Bowler responsible for this young woman’s sins,’ Gifford told Sir Richard and Comer. ‘She is still young and ignorant while he is…’

‘I’ll be responsible for my own sins,’ Zeal interrupted.

‘Madam.’ Gifford collected himself. ‘A masterless woman is always at risk in this wicked world. Under no man’s rod, who knows how she may err? Your own words prove my case. I must keep you under my eye from now on. I shall impose no penance this time, but you and all your people must henceforward attend my church at Bedgebury.’

‘We worship very well here.’

‘I think not. I shall expect you for all services. And all the estate workers.’

‘But that’s impossible! We’re over-busy here, with winter coming, and the house…Your church is half an hour’s walk away. We will do nothing else but traipse back and…’

‘All of you, at all services, including morning prayers.’ Gifford began to button his coat. ‘I won’t let you continue to risk your eternal soul, nor the souls of those who look to you for example. You have no husband or father to guide you. I must therefore take their place.’

‘That’s most decent of you.’ Wentworth spoke for a second time. He sounded entirely sincere. His dusty black coat rustled as he stepped away from the wall. ‘Perhaps a compromise might be found, which would allow for the pressure of work.’

Zeal thought that perhaps the surprise and interest that had greeted his earlier demonstrations of speech were now touched by irritation that the man was putting himself forward out of turn.

‘Have we met?’ Gifford asked coldly. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you in church.’

‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Sir Richard, who had listened to Gifford with open mouth and raised brows. ‘That’s Master Philip Wentworth, the Hawkridge sojourner. Been in the parish twice as long as you. Full of ingenious ideas. You can thank him for getting rid of those heathen idols we didn’t know enough to grind up into powder.’

‘What is your compromise, Master Wentworth?’ Gifford’s tone softened by a degree.

‘If you abate the schedule of attendance, I will undertake to be this woman’s guide.’ Wentworth crossed to stand behind Zeal’s stool and laid his large square hands on her shoulders. ‘I can vouchsafe for her future behaviour. The ship no longer lacks a rudder. She is to be my wife.’

Zeal sat frozen with the weight of his hands on her shoulders and the heat of his belly against her back.

Sir Richard broke the silence with a violent coughing fit. When Comer had thumped him on the back and offered a handkerchief to mop his eyes, words began to emerge between the splutters. ‘…old dog. Lucky old bastard!’ He straightened. ‘My congratulations!’ He blew his nose. ‘Suppose I’ll have to arrange a bridal chamber at High House then. Can’t have your wedding night in a barn!’

Graciously, if tentatively, Gifford offered his own congratulations. ‘I shall marry you in Bedgebury, it goes without saying.’

Wentworth gave Zeal a warning look. She kept silent while Wentworth and Gifford at last agreed that the Hawkridge attendance at his services in Bedgebury could be limited to one Sunday a month.

‘I would have touched the gun!’ Zeal said tightly to Wentworth when Gifford, Comer and Sir Richard had gone. ‘I would have fired it if I could!’

‘Of course.’ He gave her a conspiratorial smile. ‘But never confess anything in the presence of a judge.’