NaGeira (16 page)

“And then there was an evil-smelling smoke,” says David with some hesitation.

“What colour was the smoke?” asks Simon breathlessly.

“Yellow.”

“Sulphur!” a man’s voice breaks in. There is a general gasp, half-suppressed.

“Thick yellow smoke curling before my eyes,” continues David.

“And what did she say to you?” asks Simon Rose urgently.

“She said, she said, I was no longer to be myself. I was to obey the will of her master, the devil.”

A woman shrieks and there is a hubbub—a stamping of feet and a sharp yell. For a moment I fear I will be attacked and killed from behind. My arms strain against the rope as I try to lift my hands to shield my throat from a blade. But then everything falls silent.

“Is she all right?” asks Simon.

“Just fainted,” replies a breathless man, possibly Joshua, although I cannot tell for sure.

“Now, David,” says Simon with hardly a pause. “What else do you remember?”

There is the vibration of footsteps as the woman who swooned is taken from the building. The door opens and then closes again.

“Everything afterwards was like a dream,” David says, his voice suddenly full of wonder. I would never have credited the boy with so much imagination. “I walked down to the wharf one morning as though compelled against my will. I spoke with Sara, but the words were not mine. It was as though someone else had taken hold of my tongue.”

“And then?” Simon Rose asks gravely. “What happened then?”

The door opens again and someone shuffles back in.

“And then my hands reached out,” says the boy, his voice rising to a yell. “They looked like my hands, but some other force outside myself was driving them! I tried to stop it! I screamed at my hands to stop squeezing her neck …”

“Enough!” orders Simon. “Enough of that.” There is another pause. “And how did you come to be free of it? How did you rid yourself of the devil’s influence?”

“I don’t remember clearly,” comes the reply. “I was in the forest for the day and most of the night as though sleepwalking, then I found myself coming to the town.”

“Found yourself hungry and without food,” I manage to croak. Despite the pain of the ropes, I find myself chuckling.

There is a moment’s silence. I am not sure how far my voice has carried.

“Burn, vile witch!” David yells in my ear. He is close enough for his spittle to land on my neck.

The floor creaks and it seems someone comes to restrain him.

“It’s all right, young man, we know how you feel,” says Simon. “Tell us what it was that brought you back from Satan.”

“It was when I broke into your own house, sir, intent upon I know not what …”

“Tell the people,” urges Simon patiently.

“In your home, sir, I saw by the rolling light of the moon the silver cross hanging above your hearth. Suddenly, the dreadful nightmare, the evil influence I was under seemed to disappear and I fell to my knees and wept for the blood of my Lord and Saviour.”

Simon Rose gives a long, contemplative sigh.

“So, you see,” he says at last, his voice little more than a whisper, “though it was my own dear child who perished, I forgive this simple boy.” The boards creak to a soft thread and I suspect Simon Rose is placing his comforting hand on David’s shoulder. “I can see there was an influence at work upon him, one that none of us can vanquish without God’s help.”

Simon’s audience is so quiet, so focused upon his words, that I wonder for a moment whether they have all suddenly disappeared. But then, as the floor creaks once more, I hear a few murmurs of approval. “This, my friends,” Simon continues softly, “is why I am asking that we burn this witch without delay.”

And suddenly the world stops. The silence I believed I had been hearing seems like a maelstrom of noise and distraction compared to the icy stillness that now reigns. The breeze has ceased blowing; the birds have paused in mid-flight; the men and women standing behind me have all turned to stone. Burning will be unnecessary, I feel I should tell him: save your firewood—my blood has stopped running of its own accord. I will be dead in a matter of moments anyway.

“Should we not hear what the old woman has to say, Simon?” a lone voice breaks the spell. “So we know we are doing things properly,” the dissenter adds hesitantly.

“It is an honourable thought, Joshua,” Simon replies, “but you must see the danger. This creature can turn us all towards murder and mayhem with a flicker of her eyelid. There is only one safe course for our wives and children. We must burn the evil from this village before it consumes us all in hellfire.”

“He’s right,” Seth insists. “The case is proven. We must commit her to the flames.”

“You would say that,” says another, possibly Jack Power. “It’s your own nephew who did the killing.”

Suddenly, a number of voices are raised and I can hear none distinctly. Seth’s harsh tones bark above the rest, his words unclear but his indignation vivid enough. Seven or eight people argue at once. Then, quite unexpectedly, the voices trail away.

I hear Simon sigh. “My friends!” The room becomes hushed again. “My friends!” There is a shuffling of feet. “Don’t you know that Satan feeds off discord?”

A few people mutter, but others hiss at them to be silent.

“We will leave the witch under guard and repair to my home. There, as good neighbours in Christian goodwill, we will plan some trial by which we can all satisfy ourselves of the witch’s guilt.”

“Who shall guard?” asks Seth, as the door opens. There is a great rumble of footfalls as people begin to leave.

“Who will volunteer?” calls Simon.

“David cannot,” says Seth. “He may fall under her influence again.”

“So may any of us,” grumbles Jack Power.

“Father,” comes a soft voice I do not recognize, “I’m afraid!”

“Afraid, my chuck!” Simon replies fondly. “But the witch is bound. Her face is to the wall, and she cannot harm us.”

“But Father,” the girl persists—and now I know it is Emma’s voice. Its quality has been altered so effectively by feigned innocence as to be almost unrecognizable—“she may overcome any guard you may leave with her. They may free her and then, in turn, they may bewitch others.”

Simon makes a distracted sound, somewhere between fond dismissal and a faint realization.

“The safest thing to do, dear Father, is surely to leave her bound and on her own.”

“She’s right,” mumbles Seth.

“Of course!” exclaims Simon, delighted. “Of course! My clever girl! We must leave her alone. Come on!”

I hear Emma skip on ahead. The men follow more heavily. In a moment the door swings to and closes with a bang. I am left in semi-darkness again.

———

The smell of burning brings me to. I have been dreaming of meadows and butterflies, of forests and the scent of sweet pine. My arms feel quite dead and, when I raise my head, I am facing the worm-eaten wall that my dreams had so joyfully blown away.

I hear a clunk from the door behind me and my heart stirs. Are my executioners approaching? There is another noise and the door creaks open. No voices. No footsteps. My dead arms pull against the rope, but then my whole body seems to collapse into defeat. The door creaks again, slowly, like the bending of an aged tree, then shuts. Soft footfalls approach.

“They’ve set fire to your house, you know,” comes the carefree, confident voice of Emma Rose. “I suppose they had to burn something, poor things, while they’re waiting for the main event.”

“My house!”

“Yes.” She crouches down to the side of my chair and I turn my head to see her grinning face. “It was Father’s idea. He likes to keep people happy, and he’s very clever at it.”

I turn my head away and moan.

“I don’t know why you should be worried about your house,” she says. “You’ll be next, after all, and no one else will want to live there.”

I sigh, keeping my head stretched as far away from the girl as possible.

“Do you know what they’re going to do with you?” she asks.

“No,” I groan.

“That’ll be fire too, I know it,” she says. “Father loves fire. It’s part of his … I don’t know what you’d call it … part of his mystery. He always picks out Bible passages that talk about fire. It’s his thing. The men who found him drifting in a boat when he was a baby—you know, my grandfather, and his people—were supposed to have set the boat alight as a kind of
offering
.” She says the last word in a deep, portentous voice, then laughs.

A vision comes into my head of scorched driftwood bobbing on the surface of the tide and I feel a curious tug of coincidence somewhere. I shake the feeling from me as I would dry leaves when walking through the woods in autumn.

“No one is supposed to talk about Father being found,” continues Emma. “We’re not even supposed to know, although everyone does. But when it comes to fire, Father can never resist. You know, I think he feels rather frustrated merely following a religion. I think he’d really rather start one and be the next Moses or Jesus or whatever.”

I look away again and Emma pauses. I sense her looking me over closely.

“Do you
mind
about what’s going to happen to you?” I turn as much as I can to catch her keen eyes and the ghost of a furrow on her brow. “It probably seems like a stupid question, but if I were
you, all old and horrible-looking, I’m not sure I would.” She shuffles a little closer and I feel her breath as she speaks. “I mean, it’s not really as though you’re living for very much, is it? If you were to carry on the way you are, you’ll just get older and older and die anyway. This way at least it will be over quickly.” I glare at her, not answering. She looks to the floor for a moment. “Tell you what,” she begins again, in cheerful tones, “I’ll ask you two questions, and if you get the answers right—by right I mean the same answers that I have in my head—I’ll cut you loose. How’s that?”

She’s smiling, her clear green eyes expectant. In her white hand is a small, sharp fish knife.

“Why? Why should I?”

She tilts her head to the side knowingly. “Because, old woman, you’re terrified, and you don’t want to die.”

My eyes lock on hers for a moment and I realize with some surprise that she is right. Despite my weariness, my suffering, and a thousand layers of disillusionment, I mean to live. There are mysteries still to unravel, relationships to understand. There are people—many people—Gilbert, my children, my neighbours, Thomas Ridley, the playwright, my father, even my mother—whose memory I cannot allow to burn.

“Ask your questions.”

“Here’s the first,” she says, then pauses. “If I let you go, would you—old and feeble that you are—be able to survive in the forest without shelter?”

I moan and almost tell her to leave me. Terrified or not, this is more than my final strands of dignity can bear; she is surely only playing with me as a child tortures an insect. But as I catch her eye again I see an intensity in her expression.

“Yes,” I say defiantly. “I will survive.”

“Correct,” says Emma.

She smacks her lips and braces herself. “Now the second question. Listen closely.”

I sigh and wait.

“If you did survive in the woods, would you remain in a place where I could find you, and in return for food, render me services as I ask them of you?”

“Yes,” I reply quickly, before I have had a chance to think about it.

“Also correct!”

Emma springs forward and slips the knife under the rope holding my left arm. She works with it quickly and the hemp gives way, releasing little clouds of dust as the sheathes burst apart. Suddenly my left side is released and my body sags forward as the coil around my chest loosens. Emma scuttles to the other side and cuts through the rope holding my right shoulder. Both my arms throb, but I stand quickly.

“Hold on!” Emma whispers and runs to the door. She turns the handle and presses her head to the widening crack. “They’re still on the hill. I can hear them.”

She turns to me and beckons. I hobble towards her, a knot of aches and soreness. She opens the door. “Now, you can escape if you go down between those houses, then along the beach.” She points the way. “You can gain the forest from the northern cove. But you must move quickly.” She steps out of the way, then grabs my arm. I gasp from the pain; she has touched my rope-chafed skin.

She eases her hand away and almost—I think—apologizes. She just stops herself in time.

“You must tell me where you will be,” she whispers.

“There is a beaver pond,” I reply, “not far within the forest. Your father used to hunt there.”

“He took us there once, yes.”

“There is a clearing to the east, and a narrow path leading from it. Take the path and I will listen out for you.”

Emma backs away from the door. I slowly ease myself from the stairs onto the turf.

I tramp through the deserted settlement to the beach. Voices of celebration waft down from the hill—yells, the odd shriek, and children singing. The noises are carried upon a wave of softly crackling wood. The afternoon sunshine is dulled by the haze of smoke as I crunch my breathless way along the beach to the northern cove and towards a dark wing of the forest which descends to the shoreline.

H
ow long will you have to wait?” asked the playwright. He looked over to the window and frowned at the dying sun.

“Just until they can arrange a passage to France,” I answered. “I think they want to make sure that when I leave this prison my journey will be swift and without pause. They want to be certain I’ll have no time to change my mind.”

My cellmate looked to the floor. “So,” he said distractedly. “It won’t be long … not long. There is constant shipping to France.” He picked up a straw and stared off at the window again.

“Maybe I could persuade them to give you a quill and some paper so you can write,” I said with a brightness I did not feel. “I’ll tell the governor some nonsense about how it helps you exorcise evil thoughts.”

The playwright continued to stare at the window and I was about to repeat the offer, when he turned to me. “What?” he said.

Then, “No, there’s no need. I’ll soon be out myself. The guard passed me a letter earlier.”