Havoc, in Its Third Year: A Novel Page 15

  “I have done no wrong, your worship,” Hewison pleaded.

  “Then touch the body if you dare,” Brigge said. “The devices of men cannot be concealed from Almighty God.”

  Brigge gestured for the jurymen to come up. They and the witnesses gathered in a great crowd around the body.

  “This is trickery and fraud,” Hewison protested. He cried out and proclaimed his innocency and cringed wretchedly.

  Brigge took hold of Hewison’s right hand, which Hewison snatched back. But then, summoning his courage, he thrust his hand forward toward the corpse. It hovered above the right shoulder, trembling visibly.

  “Touch your wife,” Brigge said. Still Hewison could not move his hand to her. “Do as I say,” Brigge ordered him.

  Slowly, Hewison lowered his shaking hand.

  “Keep your hand there,” Brigge said when Hewison was about to withdraw his fingers after the merest brush with the stained sheet covering his wife.

  Hewison looked at the coroner beseechingly. Eventually, Brigge signaled him he could take away his hand, which he did slowly and deliberately, in spite of his dread and revulsion, to show he had nothing to fear. A fly moved across Mary’s lower lip.

  The excited crowd surged around the body calling for more light, pressing right up to the table in such anticipation and excitement that the body was in danger of being toppled over to the floor. The coroner pushed through the crowd to lean by the door so that he might have clean air. He and Adam exchanged a glance, Adam’s uncertainty about the proceedings evident from his expression.

  “Blood!” Hannah suddenly exclaimed. “I see blood!”

  The jurymen, one after the other, hesitantly at first but then with greater stoutness, affirmed they too saw blood flowing anew from the cadaver.

  “Where? There is no blood!” Hewison screamed. “This is nothing but a trick! A papish conjurer’s trick!”

  The crowd contradicted him loudly and even his friends grew reluctant to support him. The jury found that Hewison had murdered his wife. Brigge ordered him sent prisoner to the town, where he would wait until produced for trial.

  As Brigge put his signature to the inquisition, a bird flew into the house, causing great anxiety among those who saw it, for birds only enter human habitations to foretell a death.

  AS THEY JOURNEYED home, Adam asked if the coroner had seen blood come forth from the corpse.

  “The jury saw blood,” Brigge replied. “That is the only thing of con-sequence.”

  “But did they see it?”

  “They swear they did—did you not hear them?”

  “I think they wanted justice done so saw what they wanted to see.” Brigge shrugged.

  “You would make justice the servant of such poor vision?” Adam said.

  “You are conjectural, Adam, where I am merely peremptory.” Brigge paused, as though unwilling to engage himself in such abstractions; then, not wishing his argument to appear insufficient and wanting to vindicate himself before his clerk, continued, “You and I agree on one thing at least: justice is poorly served by law.” “I would rather put it that justice is poorly served by weak law timidly applied,” Adam retorted. “It is well served by sharp law rigorously enforced.”

  “You believe the deficiency can be made good with more and sharper law?”

  “If law cannot make justice, who can?”

  “Men,” Brigge said.

  “Men are capricious and passionate.”

  “And apprehend the world better because of it,” Brigge said. “We see, as it were, around corners and in shadows. How do we do this? Because we do not depend only on our eyes. Consider Hewison. Apart from his alehouse friends, Hewison is a man not well thought of. The neighbors knew him to beat his wife. If they who knew him so well believed him guilty, should the law be a more exact judge?”

  “Your argument surprises me.”

  “How so?”

  “When what men feel becomes what is true are you not afraid that justice becomes very hard? Men are revengeful.”

  “What you say is true, but men also feel pity and so mitigate harshness where the law allows only severity. I once held an inquisition near Kip-pax— it was before you came to be my clerk. It was on the body of a child about the age of five years. The child’s mother was utterly distraught in heart. She confessed in very plain terms, saying that her youngest son came to her and asked some victuals to eat and she, having nothing to give him at that time, casting her eye about, saw a knife on the table, which she took up and cut the boy’s throat. She said she had no other quarrel with her son than that she had no food to give him. She said she was sorry and wished with all her heart her deed were undone.”

  “What became of her?”

  “She went free from the inquisition.”

  “How so? She confessed to murder.”

  “She was a widow with four children. She had had no relief from the overseers of the poor for many weeks, she had no food. The people of Kip-pax knew all this. The jurymen from the town knew it. They found the child had died by visitation of God.”

  “Men are not always so merciful.”

  “We are imperfect and often susceptible to those who would stamp hate into our hearts,” Brigge conceded. “But I would rather face men’s heat than the law’s bitter chill.”

  They were on the mountain in sight of the Winters when Brigge told Adam of his intention to renounce his coronership and write to the high sheriff to commend his clerk to the office. Adam professed himself amazed.

  “I no longer have any taste for the work,” Brigge said, “whereas you, I perceive, are hungry for it.”

  “I am eager to see justice done,” Adam corrected him.

  Nineteen

  ELIZABETH CAME RUNNING OUT OF THE HOUSE AND TOOK her husband by the hand and led him urgently to where Samuel lay in his cradle. The wet nurse sat by, despondent and quiet.

  “He has stopped feeding again and now will hardly suck at all,” Elizabeth cried.

  Samuel’s eyes were large and distressed. Brigge cooed and made faces.

  He thought he glimpsed a smile, and the kitchen maids said they saw it too and Samuel would prosper now his father was home again. But the child began to cry, a weak, hoarse, pitiful sound. Brigge gave him to the wet nurse and watched as she attempted to put him to the breast. Samuel struggled against her, squealing and making his body rigid and unyielding before consenting to suck. He did not feed long, however, but seemed to have his fill very quickly.

  “So little,” Elizabeth said gloomily.

  “Better little than none at all,” Brigge said.

  But then the child vomited up what he had taken down. The little head sank back, the eyes closed, one hand up near the face, the fingers closing as delicately and gracefully as the petals of a flower when the sun goes down.

  “He has turned against my milk, sir,” the wet nurse said; she was close to tears.

  “No,” Brigge said. “He will feed from you again, I am sure of it.”

  He led Elizabeth, who was plainly worn out, to their bedroom and made her lie down. He had much trouble to persuade her, and she would only consent to it if Samuel were brought in. At last she and the child fell asleep.

  Brigge remained still in the darkness, listening to the breathing of his son and his wife. He felt a great tender rise in his heart. He had fallen, he had sinned, but in this moment he did not feel overwhelmed by shame.

  Love God,

  Fear God.

  Falling down, despair not.

  He looked at Elizabeth’s hands resting palm down and motionless on the coverlet. He knew her by those hands. He put a fingertip to her wrist and traced a vein down to where it disappeared at the knuckle, then along the length of the long finger to the broken nail. He thought of the bird that had flown into the tippler’s house.

  Near midnight the kitchen maids crept in with the wet nurse behind them and asked if they might take the baby to see if he would feed, but Brigge said he still slept and bade
them go to bed. The sleeping child’s breath was shallow and fast, his color high.

  During the night Elizabeth stirred and cried out, confused and afraid.

  “Dear heart, dear heart,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  “Such good words,” she answered, reassured she was safe. “Do not stop your mouth up in the saying of them.”

  “I will not,” Brigge said.

  “I have sent for Father Edward,” she told him. “Samuel must be baptized in case he is taken from us.”

  Brigge nodded; he was suddenly afraid for his wife, as one is for those who are so open to good and defenseless against evil. He wanted only to make her safe. He prayed that God would not take Samuel from them, that He would not submit them to that test. He doubted Elizabeth would survive his loss.

  Antrobus had asked: Where is John Brigge? Brigge’s reply was that he was here, in this room, in this house. Where he was loved. Where he loved. He would not move from here.

  WHEN SAMUEL BEGAN to stir, Brigge crept out of their chamber to bring him to the wet nurse. Again the child protested when put to the breast. Again he sucked for some small space of time only, and then became angry and pushed the breast away and could not be comforted. Brigge, unable to bear more of the sight, went to the parlor.

  There he found a letter with the laurel seal. The terse lines were to inform him that he, by order of the Master and governors meeting together under the powers conferred on them by royal patent letters, was hereby deprived in perpetuity of all manner of authority, powers and privileges pertaining to the office of governor.

  So they had not allowed him to renounce his office but put him out of it. Brigge let out a bitter laugh and read on. The letter concluded with an ominous summons: Brigge was to present himself without fail before the Master and governors to answer questions relating to his person and conduct.

  When the Master had first urged Brigge to join with him in the remaking of the town and the reforming of the manners and lives of its inhabitants, Elizabeth had pleaded with her husband to consent to it though he had neither inclination for such a project nor ambition for the prizes or honors of office. But Elizabeth, ever a good guardian of his interests, prevailed against his doubts, saying he would have greater safety in among the governors than outside them. Now he was at odds with his friend and patron.

  Brigge wrote some lines in reply, courteous enough, saying that press of business prevented him from coming to the town, though he would answer the summons as soon as he was able. He also wrote to the high sheriff to surrender his coronership and to commend his clerk Adam, a young man of excellent parts and learning, diligent, upright and of good religion, as one in every way suited to replace him.

  Going to the kitchen to take his breakfast, Brigge gave the letters to James Jagger and told him to take the gray nag and go to the town for Dr. Antrobus. Then he asked for Dorcas to be brought to the parlor that he might speak to her privately.

  Dorcas came in looking downcast and troubled. “How does Samuel this morning?” she asked.

  “Neither better nor worse,” Brigge said. “I have sent for Antrobus. God willing he will cure Samuel as he delivered him.” Brigge placed his elbows on the table and clasped his hands before his mouth. “I promised Adam I would speak to you again.”

  “There is no need to speak to me,” Dorcas said restlessly.

  “Dorcas, please listen to me. Adam is ambitious and able. He will soon take my place as coroner. He is, I now perceive, a young man well suited to these times and he will prosper for that reason. He has a great affection for you.”

  “I have said there is no need for this,” she repeated.

  Brigge sighed deeply and rubbed his hands over his face, thinking how he might yet persuade her.

  Then she said, “I have already decided I will marry Adam.”

  Brigge looked up sharply.

  “Tell him he may come to talk to me,” she said.

  “What brought you to change your mind?” Brigge asked.

  “I cannot stay here and have nowhere else to go.”

  “Do you feel no tenderness toward him?”

  “I feel a great tenderness for Adam. We have been here in this house as though brother and sister. But that is what I feel, as a sister feels for her brother.”

  “You may yet grow to love him.”

  “I may,” she said. “But I will never love him as I have loved you.”

  She waited to see how Brigge would respond. When he said nothing, she got up from the table and left the room.

  Brigge summoned Adam and gave him his permission to speak to Dorcas. Adam thanked him with great profusion and declarations of love and gratitude.

  That afternoon Adam announced to the household that he and Dorcas were to be married. Samuel’s condition notwithstanding, Elizabeth and the kitchen maids baked cakes and puddings, and that night they drank beer and sack and toasted the pair.

  Before they went to bed, Adam took Brigge aside to ask his permission so that he and Dorcas might go to Dr. Favour in the morning and arrange to have the banns read and a day for the wedding set.

  “Of course you may go,” Brigge said.

  Adam looked around the room. “I shall miss this house,” he said, “and all in it.” He smiled at Brigge, then added, “I will never reveal anything of what I have seen here.”

  Perhaps Adam merely wanted to put Brigge’s mind at ease, but Brigge thought the promise unnecessary and suspicious.

  Adam was already on the stairs when Brigge called to him.

  “While you are in town, would you perform a service for me?” he asked.

  “I should be honored.”

  “Seek out Quirke—”

  “The alehouse-keeper?”

  “The same,” Brigge said. “Discover the whereabouts of Susana Horton. Do so either by direct questioning of Quirke himself, or by the information of his friends and neighbors. Will you do this for me?”

  “I will not fail you.”

  Brigge thanked his clerk and wished him goodnight. He found Dorcas in the kitchen.

  “You are going to town tomorrow, I understand,” Brigge said. Dorcas nodded. Brigge drew a deep breath before he spoke. “Dorcas, if this is not what you want—”

  “It is not what I want.”

  “Then do not do it.”

  “May I ask you a question?” she said.

  “Any question you want.”

  “Do you promise to answer truthfully?”

  Brigge hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Do you want me in this house?”

  “I want what is best for you.”

  Dorcas looked him directly in the eye. “Thank you,” she said, and turned her back on him, pretending to be about some kitchen stuff.

  “What, Dorcas?” Brigge said, exasperated.

  “Nothing,” she replied. “I asked you to answer me truthfully and you did. You do not want me in this house.”

  “I did not say any such thing.”

  “You did, John,” she said quietly. “But I knew it already. When I enter the room, you shift like a thief. When I sit to eat at the table, you bolt your food like a dog.”

  “It is not true.”

  “It is time for me to go,” she said. “We both know it.”

  Her gaze lingered on him a moment. Her eye was pleading and piercing. She pressed her lips together and stepped past him.

  He saw them off in the morning. They would return together in three days, Adam said, as soon as they had spoken to Favour. Elizabeth and Dorcas embraced, Elizabeth smiling for the younger woman’s happiness. Dorcas came to kiss Brigge. She squeezed his hand but said nothing.

  Later that day Brigge found Elizabeth at her spinning.

  “I pray Adam will be kind to Dorcas,” she said, “and give her the love she had here.”

  She did not look at him but pretended to be intent on her work.

  “The love she had here would not have sustained her long,” Brigge said. “As Adam’s wife she wil
l have the comforts an ambitious husband can bring.”

  “You will miss her,” she said. “There was always such great tenderness between you.”

  She gathered up a bundle of yarn.

  “It was never so great as you think,” he said at last.

  He stayed while she worked. She said nothing more. When he came to bed that night, he could tell from her breathing she was awake. His heart was low and heavy. They heard Samuel cough and cry.

  IT WAS LATE in the afternoon of the following day when Antrobus arrived. Brigge led him straight to Samuel. Elizabeth described for the doctor how the child had been and what symptoms there were. She told him how that although the child had been slow to take the teat he had learned to suck well but now refused as he had before and also was hot and coughed and complained day and night.

  “He is almost suffocated with phlegm,” the doctor said on examining Samuel. “I will give him a lincture to relieve it.”

  Antrobus set out an array of bottles. He poured some drops of yellowgreen tinted liquor into a bowl and added a pinch of powder. Brigge recognized among the medicines nutmeg, fennel, scurvy grass, sugar, brooklime, and what he thought to be sage water; there were other things, both linctures, confections and syrups.

  “Have you heard that Lister is now arrested?” Antrobus said.

  Brigge answered that he had not.

  “You seem unperturbed by the news,” the doctor said, with a sidelong glance.

  “My thoughts are presently elsewhere,” Brigge said, glancing at Elizabeth. “Forgive me.”

  “As with Fourness, they have said nothing of Lister’s supposed crime.”

  “That does not necessarily mean he has committed no crime,” Brigge said.

  Antrobus looked up accusingly. “What has Challoner promised you?” he said tersely.

  “The only promise I have had from him is to expel me from the government of the town.” Brigge saw that his answer had plainly taken Antrobus aback. “I thought you would have known,” he said.

  “No,” Antrobus said. “Every decision has been taken into the hands of the Master’s inner circle, from which I have been excluded. What will you do?”