Savage Magic (12 page)

The Reverend John Leigh-Bennett soon makes an appearance in the drawing room, where Horton waits no more than three or four minutes. He is a genial fellow, dressed in the austere fashion of a country cleric but with a confident air of entitlement. He asks Horton if he’d like some tea and the butler, who comes in with him, leaves to arrange it. He sits opposite Horton in a fine old chair. The room is full of books, and a desk is covered with ledgers and loose papers.

‘So Mrs Graham remains adamant about witchcraft?’ Leigh-Bennett asks, his eyes twinkling with good humour.

‘She has spoken to you of it?’

‘Oh, of course. Mrs Graham speaks to me a great deal. And her poor daughter is rarely away from here.’

‘Miss Graham?’

‘Miss
Tempest
Graham, as I understand we should call her.’

This with a twinkle of good fellowship.

‘I have not made her acquaintance,’ says Horton. ‘She is by all accounts an interesting young woman.’

‘That she is, that she is. Very clever, very forthright. Somewhat too clever for her own good, one might say. Now, Mrs Graham did ask me to attend the house. She claimed witchcraft. I pointed out that, officially, witchcraft does not exist, as you yourself know.’

‘I do?’

‘Well, I had assumed. I am referring to the Act of the last century by which it became illegal to accuse anyone of being a witch. So, as a law-abiding servant of the Church of England in a small parish where, shall we say, superstitious beliefs endure, what was I to do?’

‘The villagers still believe in witchcraft?’

‘You do live in London, I take it, Mr Horton?’

‘I do.’

‘Do people not believe in witches in London?’

‘Well, I . . . I must admit, I have little idea if they do or they do not.’

‘Well, they do in the country. They believe in witches and fairies, in spiritualists and fortune-tellers, in cunning-folk and sorcerers. It’s a day-to-day fact of life to them. And I, needless to say, am not to approve of these beliefs.’

‘You sound as if you would be minded to believe yourself.’

The vicar sits back in his chair and, pursing his lips, looks hard and long at Horton. His eyes are clear and sharp, and do not shift from regarding him, such that Horton feels forced to look away. He remembers Abigail, and how she chides him often for staring at her, ‘as if I were a mouse about to sprout wings’.

‘A sailor, Mr Horton. That’s it. You were a sailor.’

Horton looks at him sharply.

‘There is no mystery about it, Horton. I have known a great many sailors. Captain Hardy himself lives nearby. And I know that once a man has spent more than a few months onboard a ship, it changes his appearance. And, I have observed, it changes his beliefs.’

He leans forward, and almost chuckles.

‘Sailors are a big rattle-bag of superstitions and beliefs, are they not? Albatrosses. Umbrellas and playing cards. Leaving port on a Friday. A left-handed captain. Whistling on the quarterdeck. Do you believe in any of these? No, I see you do not. But I see you twitch slightly at some of them. The memory of their power is ingrained, is it not? So it is with witchcraft.’

‘But someone is causing things to happen at Thorpe Lee House.’

‘You believe that, do you? Well, perhaps they are. Or perhaps the little incidents of the day-to-day have come all in a rush, and someone – perhaps Mrs Graham herself – has wrapped them inside a story which has caused the women of the place to become hysterical.’

‘Did Mrs Graham tell you about her mirrors?’

‘She did. She did. And let me ask you something, Mr Horton. Is Mrs Graham’s conscience as entirely snow-pure as she might wish? Does she have nothing to exercise herself about with regard to her own behaviour?’

He sits back at last.

‘If
maleficium
exists, constable, it need not be directed from one to another. Might one not direct it onto oneself?’

Horton is almost back at Thorpe Lee House when he is stopped by a middle-aged woman who is standing by the side of the road just before the inn on the corner of Sir Henry’s grounds.

She is, by Horton’s reckoning, over fifty years old. She wears clothes which once must have been respectable but which are now threadbare, although care has obviously been taken to maintain their dignity to the extent that such a thing is possible. Her grey hair is almost bald in places, and two or three ugly warts molest her face. But when she speaks out to him, her voice is warm and kind.

‘Constable Horton?’

He stops in the road, surprised by the intervention. It is late afternoon, and the fog has lifted, leaving behind an oppressively grey day. The September sky is low over the flat fields north of Thorpe village. A solitary crow squawks from a tree which is grimly holding on to its summer leaves as the temperature falls and the moisture adheres in the air.

‘Who is it who asks?’ he replies, carefully.

‘My name is Hook, sir. Elizabeth Hook. I was formerly the cook at Thorpe Lee House.’

And so, Charles Horton, you find yourself on a country lane face-to-face with a witch. What does one say in such a situation?

‘I have been waiting some time for you to pass. I went up to the house and they told me you was in the village. Tell me, sir. Is Miss Ellen any better?’

‘Who told you I was in the village?’

‘Why . . . the cook. My replacement.’

‘And are you accustomed to wondering in and out of Thorpe Lee House? I’m surprised they do not run you out.’

‘I choose my times carefully. I watch the place.’

‘That would, no doubt, be of concern to Mrs Graham. Your watching her house so carefully.

‘I am full of concern for the child.’

‘Why so?’

Elizabeth Hook sighs. Her face is as grey as the daylight, and moisture has attached itself to the scruffy ends of her hair. Horton notices her hands – rough, dirty, disfigured.

‘Please, sir, do tell me – is she yet unwell?’

Her hands lift towards him, as if she might pray.

‘That is what I have heard.’

‘Ah, now. I had hoped she might have recovered somewhat since my departure, but it seems it was not to be.’

‘I am pleased to have met you, Mrs Hook.’

‘Miss Hook, sir.’

‘Miss Hook, then. You know my name, and so I assume you know why I am attending Thorpe Lee House.’

‘You’re investigating the events of August, sir.’

‘Yes. Events for which you have been blamed.’

‘Indeed so, sir. The village takes me for a witch. The accusations started in the house, and now they follow me wherever I go. Look.’

She pulls up the sleeve of her dress, and Horton feels a queasy rush when he sees the deep scratches on her arms, embedded inside purple-flowered bruises.

‘I was mobbed, sir. By villagers. Scratching’s a way of fending off a witch. So’s beating with wood about the arms and the head. They laid off my head, sir. But they might not next time.’

‘And how do you fare now?’

She looks at him, as if surprised by his concern. One dirty rough hand goes to her hair and pulls its moist weight away from her face. She is ugly, Horton sees, as ugly as any woman he has ever seen, but her eyes are sharp. There is a good deal of warmth in them.

‘I am getting by. It is hard, but it was already hard. I must try and find work with those who have been successful, but there are so few of them and they are already supplied with cooks. I may have to leave for London, if my fortunes do not change.’

Horton doesn’t know what to say to that. One such as her would struggle to find a job in service in London, and she is too old and too ugly to take to whoring. He sees that the woman has something to say to him, and waits for it to come out. He is quite comfortable doing so; he has noticed on many previous occasions that saying nothing can unlock confidences as swiftly as posing questions. Something about this woman’s approach, her determination to be heard, makes him trust her.

Perhaps I am bewitched, already
.

She looks away from him and up towards the house, the roof of which can just be seen down the road. Men’s voices can be heard from the inn. Horton had been intending to stop in there on the way back from the village, to see if anyone has anything much to say about what ails the inhabitants of the estate. He sees three men walking down the road. Elizabeth Hook sees them at the same time, and a new urgency comes into her. She takes a step towards him, as if to create a smaller circle of confidences.

‘Whatever you may hear of me, sir, know this: I am a good woman, a good Christian.’

Horton is not surprised by this assertion.

‘What am I likely to hear?’

‘Whatever stalks Thorpe Lee House is nothing to do with me, sir.’

‘And what stalks the house?’

‘Something evil, sir. There is terrible evil in that house.’

She looks to her right, towards the men who are coming down the road. One of them shouts, suddenly, a harsh ‘oi!’ which sends the watching crow shuddering into the sky.

‘Watch Miss Ellen, sir. Watch her close.’

‘What is it that you are—’

‘Oi! You! Step away from ’im!’

‘And watch yourself, sir. Watch yourself carefully. And do not believe what they say of me.’

She turns to walk back towards the village. The three men come up to Horton. One of them, he sees, is Peter Gowing, the footman at Thorpe Lee House. He is not the one shouting; that is a fat labourer who smells of beer and tobacco and cooked meat, and who approaches Horton as if ready to do violence.

‘What’s up, eh? Why you speakin’ to that witch?’ His hard voice reminds Horton of the street accents of Wapping, its sinews tight and full of suppressed violence.

‘Witch? Why do you say so?’

Gowing puts a warning hand on the fat man’s shoulder.

‘Easy, Hob, easy. It’s all right. This is Constable Horton, from the docks. Staying at the house, he is. Guest of Mrs Graham’s.’

‘
Constable
, is it?’ Hob does not seem mollified by Gowing’s words. ‘What’s Thorpe need with a London constable, now?’

Gowing makes a helpless gesture towards him. Horton turns to face Hob directly. The third man, dressed in the same labouring clothes, stands to one side, as if embarrassed like Gowing.

‘Witch, you reported,’ Horton says. He draws on the authority his office confers, an authority which he has stood behind on dozens of occasions, and which never fails to make him vigorous but at the same time disturbed, as if it were a power guiltily acquired and sheepishly used. ‘There’s no such thing as witches, lad.’ He remembers what Leigh-Bennett said to him.

‘
Lad
, is it?’ The fat man is close enough to breathe rancid breath on him. ‘This be no
lad
. Visitors from London should take some care over—’

Horton steps right into his face, despite the odour. The fat man’s face shows a sudden uncertainty, and Horton pounces on it like a dog.

‘No such thing as witches. Declaring someone a witch is an offence, and has been for years, laddie. Want me to put you on a charge? Bring you up before the magistrate? I might come from London, but the magistrate who sent me has a commission for the peace in Surrey as much as he does in London. So shut your mouth, and answer me this: what makes you call Elizabeth Hook a witch?’

Horton’s use of the woman’s name shakes all three of them, as if it is evidence of local knowledge he is not supposed to have. The fat man steps backwards, submissively. He looks at Gowing for help, and the footman provides it.

‘Hob means nothin’ by it, constable,’ he says, quickly and nervously. ‘He is only voicin’ the view of many in the village, and you’ve heard what the servants say.’

Horton looks back down the road to the village, expecting to see the retreating figure of Miss Elizabeth Hook. But the old woman is gone.

BROOKE HOUSE

The matron, who is named Delilah, unlocks the door and shows Abigail into Maria’s cell. Abigail stops up short against the word:
cell
. She has not thought of these rooms as such until now, but Maria’s situation makes it clear. These rooms are cells, and this is a prison.

The smell inside the cell is terrible. Abigail has managed to keep herself clean and fresh during her time at Brooke House, but it has not been particularly easy, and she can tell as soon as the door opens that no such effort has been made by the woman next door. Then she looks into the room and sees why.

Maria Cranfield sits on the bed, the weight of her body leaning forward over the stone floor, her long black hair drooping down such that it obscures her face completely. She is held to the wall by a chain, itself secured to a thick iron loop in the wall behind her. This chain is affixed to what looks to Abigail like a thick coat made of ticking, only this coat’s arms are tied at the back, securing Maria’s arms in a cross in front of her. Her hands are invisible, somewhere inside the long sleeves.

So this is what a strait waistcoat looks like. Abigail feels a nauseous anger. It is impossible not to imagine being secured inside that awful thing, strung together like a piece of rancid meat, secured at the back by a single chain, the only way out of it a backwards whip of the head to smash the skull on the metal loop in the wall.