She got up but he grasped a scrap of her skirt between his fingers.
‘Is there any hope for us?’
‘Well,’ she smiled sadly, ‘you have not confessed much, the mark is, I should say, equivocal, and no familiar has yet appeared, so . . .’
‘Shut up, Marge!’ Grace snapped.
Marjorie pressed her lips together and scuttled back to the fire.
The house ticked and creaked. Occasionally a log crashed down, jerking him from his doze. The old women murmured and burped. He developed unbearable itches that had him close to shouting that he
would confess anything Abel wanted, but eventually, through gritted teeth and strained muscles, subsided.
The sun came up and Grace opened the curtain while Marjorie slumbered.
She went back and lifted the dregs of her wine to her lips, then put the pewter cup down in a shaft of sunlight.
The bang on the window was so loud they all three cried out in fright.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs and Leech burst in.
‘What is it?’ he shouted.
‘I don’t know,’ Marjorie gasped, her hand pressed to her chest.
The three of them stood in the middle of the room staring at the window.
For some minutes there was nothing. And then a great black shape came flapping up. It balanced for a minute on the frame, and stared through the glass with glittering black eyes. Then it rapped
on the pane with its grey beak.
The women’s eyes were out on stalks.
‘Should I open the window?’ Leech whispered.
‘No!’ they cried in unison. ‘It might be Satan himself!’
‘It is my maid’s pet . . .’ Barnaby began then hung his head: he had just damned Juliet.
‘It is looking at the boy,’ Grace whispered. ‘Everyone move into the shadows.’
The three adults melted to the edges of the room. The bird remained, and now there was no getting away from the fact that its attention was fixed upon Barnaby.
‘Yah!’ he cried. ‘Begone, you pest!’
Tap, tap, tap went the cruel, hooked beak.
The cart hurtled along the rutted road to Grimston, throwing him from side to side, striking his head against the frame so that he bit his tongue and jarred his back.
When it eventually came to a halt and the driver opened the door he was momentarily blinded by the glare. But the man did not wait until he could see to walk. Hauling him out like a sack of
turnips, he dragged Barnaby to the door of the gaol, his bare toes carving runnels in the snow crust.
The gaoler did not recognise him and spent the whole descent to the cells complaining that he was not paid to look after so many and was rushed off his feet with all their unreasonable
demands.
‘Comfort yourself that they will soon be dead,’ said the driver.
Barnaby could not orientate himself in the shivering lantern light. It took him a while to realise that the icy water he was paddling in was the channel of human filth that ran down the central
aisle. The lantern stopped moving. Keys clanked, a door opened and he was flung to the ground. The door slammed shut again, the keys turned, and the lantern light retreated.
He was alone in the pitch-dark.
He spread his arms and found the wall of the cell and behind it a wooden structure that might be a pallet. Clambering up onto it he found it occupied by an ice-cold body. He got down and crawled
across to a pile of straw on the other side. This too was occupied by something half naked and rank-smelling. He crawled over to the bars of the cell, a barely perceptible gleam in the sea of
darkness.
‘Naomi?’ he called.
There was a faint rustling and then, shockingly close by, she spoke.
‘Barnaby? Oh God, not you too?’
‘Are you all right? Is Juliet better?’
A moment’s silence.
‘She came round after we saw you and I tried to get her to eat something, but she was too distraught. She said Hopkins and your brother had twisted her words and confused her and she
believed she had said something to damn you.’
‘It’s all right,’ he called. ‘Tell her it’s all right. Abel would have got me somehow. It wasn’t her fault.’
But there was no reply from Naomi.
‘Are you there?’ he called. ‘Is she still with you?’
‘Yes,’ Naomi said. ‘She is here, but . . .’
‘But what? Is she well?’
Naomi’s voice lowered to a murmur and he pressed his ear to the bars to make out her words.
‘There is a sickness here. The Widow Moone had it and now she is gone. It begins with a cough and then these strange black lumps appear and . . . and then . . .’ She paused.
‘Juliet has them in her neck.’
Her voice was a thread in the huge silence. And then he began to make out a new sound. A sound that came from the same direction as her voice: rasping, laboured breathing.
‘Is that her?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead against the bars until his skull hurt.
‘How long did it take for the widow to die?’ he murmured.
‘Two days,’ Naomi breathed. ‘But she was old and weak. Juliet is—’
He staggered to his feet. ‘Jules!’ he cried. ‘Jules! Can you hear me?’
The ragged breathing caught and then there came the weakest, frailest croak of a voice he’d ever heard.
‘Barney, I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Jules! It wasn’t your fault. You must take some water, for strength.’
He had to strain to hear her reply.
‘My . . . throat . . . is too . . . sore.’
‘Please, for me!’
There was some movement, a slow rustling followed by the chink of a jug or cup.
‘That’s it,’ Naomi said. ‘Just a few sips and you’ll feel much better.’
Juliet began to cough.
Naomi spoke some words of comfort but the coughing continued and the cup clanked to the floor. Barnaby strained to try and see into their cell but could only make out splinters of the distant
lamplight in the stream of excrement. The coughing grew worse, tearing the silence into ragged shreds.
‘Can’t you do something?’ he cried.
And then there was a violent retching, followed by a splash, followed by silence.
He panted against the bars, breathless with relief.
‘Naomi? Has she been sick?’
Very quietly Naomi said, ‘It doesn’t smell like sick.’
Barnaby swallowed hard.
Then another voice threaded through the darkness: an old woman’s.
‘Tell your friend to keep away from that blood.’
Barnaby stared wildly in the direction of the voice. ‘But she might be able to help her!’
‘’Twill poison her. I kept away from the poor old dear as shared this cell, while the other tended her. They were both dead in a week. Once you have the marks of the devil’s
kiss upon you there ain’t no hope.’
Barnaby took a deep breath. ‘Get away from her, Naomi,’ he said loudly, ‘Right away. To the other end of the cell.’
‘No!’ Naomi cried. ‘I could not be so cruel.’
‘GET AWAY, NOW!’
She gave a small sob.
‘Are you away from her?’
There was a rustling and then she said, ‘Yes.’
‘What a fool I was to hide from those black kisses,’ the old woman continued. ‘By now I should have been enfolded in His warm embrace!’
‘Hush, Goodwife,’ Naomi called softly. ‘Do not let them hear you speaking that way.’
‘Oh, I care not, child! Either the fire will warm me or the rope will hug my poor empty throat. Whatever happens it will soon be over and I will be with my master.’
‘Your Lord,’ Naomi said. ‘Call him your Lord or they will think you mean Satan.’
‘Ahh, sweet girl, it is too late to care what men think of us.’
A dreadful gurgling began.
‘There,’ the woman said. ‘’Twill soon be over.’
There was a low rustling from the cell opposite.
‘Stay where you are, Naomi!’ he snapped.
‘I must go to her. I can’t let her die alone.’
Barnaby squeezed his fists, pressing the nails into his own palms. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s too late for Juliet. Please, Naomi,’ he lowered his voice,
‘please.’
Though his ears strained in the silence there were no more rustlings.
But the gurglings went on, hour after hour through the night. He sat on the wet floor and rocked backwards and forwards, pressing his palms against his ears, though it did little to help. Then,
just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, the gurgles became horrible choking grunts, like an animal trying to give birth.
He couldn’t help the prayer that rolled around in his head:
Please let it stop, please let it stop . . .
Eventually the prayer was answered. The grunts were replaced by a strange rattling sound, like a stone grinding across a washboard. Between these awful rattles he could hear Naomi weeping.
Then another voice drifted through the darkness.
‘Through his own most tender mercy may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed. May He who frees you from sin save you and raise you up to His side.’
Barnaby lifted his head. ‘Amen,’ he said.
‘Amen,’ said Naomi.
There were faint amens, from all along the corridor.
Juliet took another breath and this time the rattling exhalation seemed to go on forever: like pebbles endlessly tumbling across the seabed as the wave ebbs.
And then there was silence.
When Barnaby opened his eyes the cell was filled with a damp, grey light.
A figure was hunched in the corner of the cell opposite. On the bed was another shape, contorted and somehow inhuman.
He pulled himself to his feet and Naomi raised her head at the sound, gazing at him with hollow eyes.
‘Gaoler!’ he shouted. ‘Get this corpse out of here.’
A few minutes later the gaoler’s slow footsteps came splashing down the aisle.
He reached Naomi’s cell and peered in.
‘Get the corpse out,’ Barnaby said, ‘before it putrefies and infects us all.’
The man turned on him with a sneer. ‘I don’t have to answer to the likes of you.’
‘You do if you want to keep getting generously paid for my keep,’ Barnaby said.
The gaoler went off grumbling and returned with a wheelbarrow.
Barnaby flinched as Juliet’s body hit the ground and the gaoler began dragging it out. He knew he should not look at her but he couldn’t stop himself.
Her face was like a clumsy wax impression made by fairies to be left in place of the real thing: grey of flesh with sunken, malformed features. Her chin was covered in blood and black lumps
clustered around her throat. Her nose was black, as were the tips of her fingers, screwed into claws at the ends of her stiff arms. Only her hair was the same. He remembered the smell of it,
brushing his face as she bent to plump his pillow or fasten his collar. The man heaved her into the barrow like a rotten tree trunk.
The wheel of the barrow squeaked under the weight of her and her protruding feet rattled against the bars of the other cells as he pushed her away.
‘Oh, Barnaby,’ Naomi whispered when she had gone. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He gripped the bars between numb fingers.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said thickly. ‘Her suffering is over.’
Then he sat heavily on the ground and covered his head with his hands.
Things began to happen. During the course of the day there were various visitors, muttered conversations with the gaoler: people were taken up and didn’t return. From
outside came the rhythmic thud of a hammer against wood. A little later feet jostled about the window as a crowd formed in the square above. They were hushed at first, but exploded into life at the
crack of a rope. The remaining prisoners prayed and moaned. The man on the mattress died and his body was removed as unceremoniously as Juliet’s. Barnaby developed a cough and phantom twinges
in his arms and neck. He kept feeling for lumps, but his fingers could not be trusted and beneath them his flesh seemed to creep as if insects burrowed through it. The cough became worse and,
trying to clear his chest, he hacked a few drops of blood into his hand.
Please let it be quick
, he thought.
While he was devouring the congealed pottage that would be that day’s only meal his parents came.
He heard rapid footsteps and raised his head to see Frances running through the stream, heedless of the filth splashing up her dress. Henry came tip-toeing along behind with his handkerchief
pressed to his nose.
‘I have spoken to my father,’ she said, breathlessly, pressing herself against the bars. ‘And he believes he can get an audience with Cromwell himself!’
‘What’s the point?’ Barnaby said. ‘Cromwell approves of what Hopkins is doing.’ He went back to his pottage.
‘Yes, but you are just a boy! And from a respectable family!’
‘And what of Naomi?’ he snapped. ‘And the other poor wretches rotting down here?’
His father lifted the handkerchief from his nose. ‘We cannot hope to save everyone. Good God, what is that you’re eating?’
Barnaby stared at him, then shovelled another handful of the lukewarm slop into his mouth. ‘It tastes pretty good to me.’
‘Something must be done. I’m going to speak to the gaoler.’
Barnaby called after him: ‘Lobster cocktail followed by spitted lark!’
His bitter laugh died as his gaze met his mother’s. She looked old and ill. Without Juliet to do the linen her dress was grubby and creased. But there was something else: an air of defeat,
less fitted to a merchant’s pampered wife than a broken old drudge in an almshouse.
‘I’m sorry I failed you,’ she whispered.
His breath caught in his throat. All that stuff about Cromwell had been for his father’s benefit. She was saying goodbye.
He laid the bowl down on the floor and wiped his hands on his shirt. He could not catch her eye when he spoke. ‘You didn’t fail me. I wanted for nothing.’
‘Except love.’
He swallowed hard. ‘I had my father’s.’
‘You deserved your mother’s.’
‘Then why . . .’ He had to pause and begin again. ‘Then why was I not worthy of it?’
Her voice became almost inaudible. ‘There was another child, Barnaby.’
‘The changeling.’