Havoc, in Its Third Year Read online

  “I had renounced my office in any case,” Brigge said. “I want nothing more than to remain here at the Winters and, with God’s grace, live quietly with my wife and family.”

  “I doubt that will be possible,” Antrobus said.

  Seeing how this was upsetting to Elizabeth, Brigge asked the doctor to leave off his conversation and concentrate himself on the cure of his son.

  “Forgive me, Brigge, if I appear heated,” Antrobus said. “But they have marked me down for destruction, which is a thing I find myself unable to contemplate quietly.”

  Antrobus said nothing more and set about his medicines, adding some sugar to his concoction, and began to stir the elements with a little silver spoon. “I will need help,” he said.

  Elizabeth took hold of her son. Antrobus instructed her in how to hold the baby so he might get down his lincture. He did so very ably, without fluster or mishap. He waited a moment to see the medicine was not brought up again, and then, satisfied Samuel would keep it down, began to explain to Elizabeth how to care for her son.

  “Will he live?” Elizabeth asked.

  “If he can be cured of his phlegm and made to feed, he should live,” Antrobus replied, and seeing Elizabeth was not much comforted by what he said, he put his hand on her arm and smiled soothingly. “He has already shown himself in surviving so testing a birth to be strong and well made. He will live so long as you follow the course I lay out for his cure.”

  “I will follow it strictly,” Elizabeth said.

  Brigge squeezed her shoulder as he left with Antrobus and went outside to sit at the backside of the house. The kitchen maids brought them their refreshment.

  “Next month Challoner and Doliffe will hold the special assize,” Antrobus said, “at which will be hanged not only the usual rogues and delinquents of all kinds but men of good name and good principles like Fourness and Lister.”

  “You are convinced Fourness has committed no crime?”

  “I am sure of it,” Antrobus said, “and likewise I am certain of Lister’s innocence.”

  “You may yet be surprised,” Brigge said.

  “And when I am arrested, Brigge, will I also learn to my surprise that I am guilty of some thing of which, though I search my conscience from top to bottom, I know nothing? Why do you refuse to see what is afoot? It is plain to a blind man that Challoner and his friends mean to tear down our liberties and construct a tyranny over us.”

  “I may be blind, as you say, but you, I fear, are dazzled by too bright a light,” Brigge said.

  Antrobus let out an exasperated sigh.

  Brigge asked if he knew anything of Susana Horton. Antrobus frowned, trying to recall the name. “She was the serving girl at the Painted Hand who discovered the Irish vagrant’s murdered child,” Brigge explained.

  “What of her?” Antrobus asked.

  “She had, so her master alleged, gone to Burnsall to be with her sister and so was not present to give evidence. Without her I was unable to complete the inquisition.”

  “I know that Doliffe is most anxious to hang the Irishwoman.”

  “He cannot do that until the inquisition is done.”

  “Then he will find your witness so you may finish your good work, you may be assured of it.”

  “I requested of the constable that he have the girl brought back. However, when he showed no liking for the task, I went myself to Burnsall to fetch her.”

  Antrobus, now made curious, looked to Brigge to continue his story.

  “She was not there,” Brigge said, “nor, according to the neighbors, had she ever been in Burnsall.”

  “So the alehouse-keeper lied. Have him questioned again.”

  “I think it goes beyond the alehouse-keeper. I suspect Doliffe to be involved in the lie.”

  “In what way?” Antrobus asked, his eyes narrowing, his conspirator’s mind searching for the possible advantages lurking in Brigge’s story.

  “I do not yet know,” Brigge said.

  Antrobus had plainly been hoping for more. His face, frozen in expectation of hearing something to Doliffe’s detriment, relaxed again. Disappointment came into his eyes.

  “It is my strong suspicion,” Brigge said, “that there is something Doliffe wishes to conceal in this affair and that if I were able to uncover it the constable would be disadvantaged.”

  “To such great extent that he might fall from his power?”

  “I think it possible.”

  “Do you know where this Horton is?”

  “No. But I have sent Adam to discover her whereabouts.”

  “You trust your clerk to carry out your wishes?”

  “Yes,” Brigge answered.

  Antrobus considered what he had been told. “I hope you will keep me informed of whatever he finds.”

  They dined alone together in the parlor. When they finished their meal, Antrobus administered more of his lincture to Samuel. Brigge saw no improvement in his son’s condition. Elizabeth looked gaunt; there were dark crescents below her eyes.

  Brigge led his guest to Adam’s room, where a bed had been made up for the doctor.

  “Where is Adam?” Antrobus asked.

  “Gone to town to see Favour.”

  Antrobus became suspicious. “Be careful with Adam,” he said. “He has lately become much enthralled by Favour.”

  “He has gone to discuss the matter of his marriage to Dorcas,” Brigge said, “that is all.”

  “You may be sure Favour will have more interesting things to talk of,” Antrobus said.

  IN THE MORNING Antrobus announced Samuel’s breathing to be somewhat eased and that the wet nurse should persist no matter how the child might struggle in getting him to feed. Elizabeth appeared in no measure reassured or certain of any improvement and was haggard through want of sleep.

  Antrobus was anxious to return to the town, but Brigge detained him with a request. “Would you do me the kindness of examining my shep-herd,” he said, leading him to the looker’s cabin. “If you were able to relieve his suffering in any way, I would be most grateful.”

  Starman submitted to the doctor’s scrutiny with a childish, uncomprehending, stricken look. Antrobus was fascinated by his afflictions and asked about both the great disease of his skin and the wound in his leg, how each had come about, what sensation he had there, what pain there was, what remedies had been prescribed, what cures he had tried.

  Brigge left the doctor with his patient and went back to the house to see how Samuel fared. Elizabeth sat with him by the hearth, the firedogs and tongs at her feet. Still the child hardly sucked, but struggled and cried as had been his habit before.

  Antrobus came to the house again, and Brigge took him to the parlor where they drank boiled milk and raisins.

  “Your shepherd’s flesh is badly corrupted,” Antrobus said. “The scab you see on him, the beginnings of decay in his nose and palate, also the ringworms, the filthy odors, the corrosive ulcers—these are all manifestations of the same loathsome malady. In time the disease will invade his body further, corrupting his flesh yet more, eating his brain.”

  “Can nothing be done then to relieve him at least of his pains?” Brigge asked.

  “There are treatments, but they are difficult and severe.”

  “Are you competent in them?”

  “I have treated many suffering from this disorder. They are also costly.”

  “I cannot pay you now,” Brigge said, “but if you would agree to take Starman as your patient, I will find the means to do so as soon as I am able.”

  “Why should you go to the expense of helping this man?” Antrobus asked. “He is a stranger, he is nothing to you.”

  “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

  “You think Starman an angel?”

  “I think it unlikely,” Brigge said with a smile. “Nevertheless, were you to take him under your care, I would account it a very great favor to me.”

 
“Out of regard for you I would be content to perform whatever service I could,” Antrobus said with finality. “But it is not possible. As soon as Doliffe has what he needs, he will have me arrested. I must look first to my own cure.”

  Brigge saw him off at the stables. When he was gone, he went to where Starman was watching his flock. They said nothing to each other of the doctor but sat in silence watching the lambs and the ewes.

  At length Starman spoke. “It sometimes falls out a child that does not like the milk of one nurse will accept that of another,” he said. “Perhaps if the women brought him another to suckle from, he would take the teat.”

  Brigge nodded but said nothing. He and his shepherd sat together on the flat rock until the sun went down.

  Twenty

  THREE DAYS LATER A STRANGE RAGGED WOMAN CAME TO THE house and asked to speak to Brigge. The kitchen maids were for turning her away, but she denied them vehemently and would not move from the door, alleging she had come for a purpose but what purpose she would reveal not to them but to the master alone.

  She told Brigge she came from the encampment at the new bridge and had undertaken the journey to the Winters at the urging of Thomas Star-man. Brigge became suspicious. What business had Starman led her to believe she would have here? The woman, who gave her name as Deborah, answered that she had abundance of good milk. Brigge, not knowing anything of her character, told her to be gone, but Elizabeth, who overheard their conversation from the house, hurried up and begged her husband to have the woman enter. Seeing his wife so distraught, Brigge relented and consented to have her come into the house.

  The wet nurse sat at her usual place by the fire, a nipple between the fingers of one hand and Samuel’s head in the other. The child, so weak and wasted, still found strength to resist and the poor woman was plainly dispirited. Yet when she saw her rival—for she understood with a glance what this new woman was—she became jealous and spiteful, and Elizabeth had to coax her to release Samuel from her grasp. She fled the room in tears.

  “There, mother,” Elizabeth said to Deborah as she put the child in her arms. “Let him feed from you, if God wills it.”

  Deborah took out her right breast and offered the child to feed, but Samuel refused her and, in dissipation of the little strength he had left, made himself angry, stretching rigidly and twisting his head violently from side to side so it was all Deborah could do to keep him in her arms. The kitchen maids needed no further proof, but Elizabeth was prepared to be patient.

  THAT AFTERNOON Antrobus returned unexpectedly, bringing with him a chest containing rare medicines and secret remedies. The doctor spoke little. His humor was unusually somber and became more so when he saw Samuel, who still would not feed. He examined his stools, which were wet and foul, and Elizabeth plagued him with questions. Antrobus had no answers. He said only that he had done what he could and that they should wait to see if the child would take Deborah’s milk.

  Then, with no explanation of his change of heart, he told Brigge that he would treat Starman. Brigge thanked him most gratefully and had the shepherd brought to the house to take his cure.

  For the foul scabs on Starman’s head and in his nose and mouth, the doctor purged his body with pills and, after, used a decoction of guaiac, to which he added white copper and camphor. For the canker in his leg, he cleaned and cauterized it and made a lead plaster of the thickness of a thumb and ordered it worn for the space of twelve days, during which time Starman was to remain in a heated room and not be exposed to the noxious vapors of the air outside, already as heavy as it might be in August, corrupted with ill odors arising from the ditches and becks.

  Antrobus refused dinner when he was done, saying he had business elsewhere, and asked if Brigge would accompany him some part of the way so they might speak together privately. He said nothing of any note until they were ascending the high pass.

  “I have been dismissed as a governor,” he said. “Scaife has been put in in my stead.”

  Brigge was astounded. “Scaife is an ignorant fool,” he exclaimed.

  “It is not his brains that commend him, but his fidelity to Doliffe and Favour. Likewise those who have taken the place of Fourness and Lister are men of no independence or judgment. They are told what to do and they do it—this is their real and only worth.”

  “We are better out of these entanglements,” Brigge said. “We have no place among such dark politicians.”

  “I am a dark politician,” Antrobus said, smiling for the first time since his arrival. It was a moment’s levity only, a brief glimpse of the old Antrobus, cunning and calculating, the lover of intrigue. He quickly became again morose and inward.

  “Did your clerk discover anything of Susana Horton?” he asked.

  “He has not yet returned from town.”

  Antrobus shot Brigge a look. “He has been gone some time, has he not?”

  “He will return soon enough.”

  The doctor’s mind was always suspicious, but Brigge too had expected Adam before now and his own thoughts had already been turning distrustful and apprehensive. “If you should come upon Adam in the town,” he said, “I would be obliged if you would send him home to me with all speed.”

  “I do not go to my house,” Antrobus said. “I dare not. I am to be arrested today.”

  “On what complaint?”

  “Why do you even ask, Brigge?” Antrobus said sharply. “No complaint was necessary against Fourness or Lister. Why should one be necessary for me?”

  “You are wrong,” Brigge said. “Fourness is accused.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of sodomy and corruption.”

  “Never!”

  “Challoner himself told me so.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I saw the informations with my own eyes.”

  “Perjured evidence!”

  “They were credible witnesses,” Brigge said. “Several accomplices have also already confessed.” Antrobus was silent, not knowing what to believe. “Lister too, I believe, is implicated in the same horrible crime,” Brigge said.

  The horses snorted. The sky above was clear and blue, and though the sun shone, there was little warmth at this elevation in the mountain. Brigge pulled his coat around him and rubbed his thighs.

  At last the doctor came out of his thoughts. “I do not know if any of what they say against Fourness and Lister is true,” he said. “But if this is to be their pretext against me, I hope you know I am innocent of any such detestable thing.”

  Brigge said that he knew it well. “Where will you go?” he asked.

  Antrobus seemed reluctant to answer; then he confessed, “To Lord Savile at Methley.”

  Had he said to the Devil himself Brigge would hardly have been less amazed.

  “Savile has asked to see you too,” Antrobus said; and seeing Brigge’s astonishment, he continued, “He holds you in the highest esteem and is most desirous of making your acquaintance.”

  “You would combine with one who has committed so many outrages against justice and liberty as Savile?”

  “To end the present greater outrages against the same principles?” Antrobus asked. “Why, yes.” Brigge gave a dismissive laugh. “Savile has promised that should he come again into power he will put an end to the despicable oppressions of this unholy trinity of Challoner, Doliffe and Favour,” Antrobus said. “He swore an oath in front of me that he will deal fairly and justly with every man. It is the only opportunity we will have to save the town, and ourselves. What do you say, Brigge? Will you come with me? Savile knows how to reward his friends.”

  Brigge looked at the doctor as if he were a feeble, deluded madman, but then understood that he was seeing Antrobus in his true light. He was only ever a conspirator, an ambitious plotter. It was Brigge’s error to have forgotten this.

  Below in the distance, Brigge could see the smoke of squatters’ fires. “I will stay at the Winters,” he answered.

  “They will come for you soon
, Brigge,” Antrobus said. “You are to be arrested and brought to the bar and put on trial for your life.”

  Brigge laughed.

  “You do not believe me?” the doctor said, keeping his voice peaceful. “Challoner has already instructed Doliffe to make an indictment of you. The constable has been taking informations from those who have much to say about you.”

  “Do you know who these pretended informants are?” he asked.

  “The informations are being taken in secret. Doliffe has a very lively interest in uncovering conspiracies. Did you know there are five thousand papists in the town? Every one of them armed with daggers and ready at the command of the pope to slit the throats of honest Protestants.”

  “There are not a dozen Catholics in these parts,” Brigge said with a dismissive laugh, “and the only conspiracy they are in is how best to stay at liberty.”

  “There are five thousand. Dr. Favour himself announced it. You may imagine how the godly people of the town are unsettled by the prospect of their imminent murder. They demand of Doliffe that he take all necessary measures to save them, which perfectly suits Doliffe’s purpose.”

  “Men have more sense than to see devils where there are only shadows,” Brigge said; he tried to sound confident, but he could hear the anxious pitch of his own voice.

  “Do not rely on what you hope to discover about Susana Horton to save yourself, particularly now you have entrusted the task to Adam. The boy has new friends and they are no friends of yours.”

  Brigge thanked the doctor for his concern for him and for all he had done for his wife and child. He was polite and cold. Antrobus embraced and kissed him, then spurred his horse on without another word.

  THE KITCHEN MAIDS hurried out to meet him, their eyes filled with tears. Brigge, his mood already dark, feared the worst, that Samuel was dead, and he leaped from his horse. The women could not get words to say anything but took him by the hand. From their manner as they went, Brigge began to understand that it was not grief but joy that was stopping up their mouths. Did they not say that all would be well? Praise God, their prayers had been answered!