The Ghosts of Heaven (9 page)

Tom kept shuddering, silent.

Robert took a step closer. A small step.

“What happened? Anna? What is the matter?”

Anna called to her brother, again and again, and now she managed to get his tongue free from the back of his throat. She moved the stone on which the top had spun away from him and let his arms and legs jerk free, and all the while kept talking to him, as calmly as she could, though she felt anything but.

Robert saw the boy lose himself and a puddle formed in the grass under him.

“What is the matter?”

Anna called over her shoulder.

“He does this. It will pass soon. It will pass,” she said, talking more to her brother again than to Robert, who took a step farther away again.

The three stayed that way.

Robert standing on the hot grass, Anna crouched over Tom, who shuddered still, but eventually, his movements eased and he flopped flat on his back, staring infinitely up into the sky.

“That's good, Tom,” said Anna. “That's good. You are well again.”

Robert saw how the boy seemed to sleep now, exhausted, and Anna sat beside him leaving her hand on his chest, which rose and fell gently and smoothly.

She looked up.

“He is well again,” she said. “Well enough.”

But she couldn't look away from her brother, nor did she want to see what was waiting on Robert Hamill's face.

Robert stared for a long time.

He noticed something in the grass, and stepped forward. He picked up the silver heart from where Anna had dropped it and came and knelt beside her, though the smell of her brother was unpleasant to him.

“I want you to have this,” he said, and put the chain over her head, then pulled her thick red hair from under it so the heart fell onto her black breast.

He stood, and with one final glance at the boy, he smiled at Anna and stole away.

Anna hung her head, and her hair curtained her face, shutting her in.

She knew she must go after Robert Hamill and return the gift. A piece of silver! He should not have given it, and she should not accept it, but she was tired, and needed to stay by Tom. Their mother had died but three days before; they had only just put her in the ground. She knew she should get up. But she was tired. She did nothing. So that was how Anna Tunstall came into the possession of the silver locket that had once belonged to the first Lady Hamill.

 

7
THE DEVIL IN WELDEN

By the end of suppertime, Father Escrove knew the Devil was at work in Welden. In fact, he had learned all sorts of things about the community, such as the fact that John Fuller did not own his mill but merely leased it from Sir George; a twenty-year lease that was soon ending, such as the fact that the first Lady Hamill had died giving birth to Samuel and Robert's sister Agnes, now eleven years old, and such as the fact that Jack Smith down at Gaining Water smithy beat his wife whether she needed it or not.

He knew all these things, but these were not matters that interested him greatly. Not yet, at least.

Sir George had had some short warning of the arrival of the Rural Dean, and had prepared a fit feast to welcome him that evening. Three geese and a squealing-loud piglet had passed away that morning in readiness for the Father's appetite, and yet Sir George seemed to have made a mistake.

He assumed that all men loved food as much as he did, because he had never, despite his wide travels, met a man who did not eat well when given the chance. And yet it appeared that Father Escrove was not like other men.

Sir George and the minister sat at opposite heads of the long table in the great hall, and each prepared a set of mental notes about the other. The minster's set of notes was by far the longer, while Sir George's ran out a little way past the thought that Father Escrove was skinny, hard, and dangerous. Quite what form this danger took had not yet entered Sir George's mind, whereas on the other hand, the man of God knew exactly what the danger in Welden was.

The danger was the evil of a parish that was operating without God, and yet Escrove did not blame Sir George. The old knight was feeble; he stumbled around his manor on that failing leg of his; some injury sustained in the wars. He had allowed his village to descend into the dung heap, but the minister knew that the real blame lay not at Sir George's door, but at the door of the church; St. Mary's. Whoever that vapid vicar had been (and Escrove could not now remember his name), he was undoubtedly the miscreation responsible for permitting Satan to stroll up this winding darkening valley, unchallenged.

If only the bloody weakling priest were not in the ground, Escrove would have taken great care and pleasure to put him there; he had been the one who should have stood with a shining sword ready to lop off the head of the Monster; yet had instead seen fit to do nothing while that beast grew in every festering corner of this sordid little place.

Escrove pushed a piece of pork across his pewter plate, and estimated Lady Hamill, halfway along the long side of the table. What was she? Twenty-five years the junior of her husband? Thirty?
Forty?
It was a wonder the old dog had been able to put a baby into her, but that he had evidently done, as Escrove had had to be shown the damn thing before supper, brandished at him by some fat serving girl with an inappropriate name.

The sons, Samuel and Robert sat either side of their stepmother, mute as mud. Their sister, Agnes, did not eat with the grown-ups, but had been fed and put to bed much earlier on.

“And how long will you abide here, Father?”

It was the lame-legged old dog, speaking to him from the length of the table.

Escrove didn't hesitate with his reply.

“As long as the Lord wills it.”

“Yes,” said Sir George, his fork hovering in midair. “Very good.

“And what is it you intend to do here, Father?”

“The Lord's will.”

“Yes.”

The fork, hovering.

“And—?”

“Yes?”

“What is the Lord's will?”

Now Escrove didn't reply, and his silence was more dreadful than any words. Samuel and Robert studied their empty plates; Lady Hamill, barely a year older than Samuel, found herself unable to look away from the minister's eyes. A piece of pork fell from Sir George's fork, onto the floor.

“There has been no priest in St. Mary's,” whispered Father Escrove, “for nigh three months. Whether the sinfulness I have already witnessed, merely from my carriage ride here, had been allowed to flourish before that time, or merely since he departed, I do not know, and I do not care. But before I leave this parish not only will there be a vicar in the pulpit once more, but every man, dog, and worm in this place will know the fear of the Lord.”

He rose from the table.

Sir George rose, too, wincing as the weight went onto his leg.

“Very good, Father.”

Escrove clicked his fingers at an old servant who stood by the door.

“Show me to my rooms.”

With that, he was gone, and the air behind him trembled.

 

8
GRACE

The old servant, whose given name was Edward and who had no second name, had seen many things in his years, so he flustered little at the manner of the minister.

But he had stood and listened to everything that had passed up and down the table over supper, and as he made his way to sit in a cool corner of the kitchens, he enjoyed himself a great deal by telling everyone there what had escaped from the minister's lips. He told how the Father had presided over the trial of, by his own modest accounts, at least thirty women, and how pleased he was to say that he had put every one of them at the end of a rope.

Further, he claimed to have unmasked the Devil working in several men, too, though that work was by far less satisfying, he explained, than the purification of the weaker sex. With his own eyes, Edward went on to recount, Father Escrove had witnessed a woman turn into a bundle of writhing snakes, and seen the Devil hovering over the shoulder of a woman accused, even while in the courtroom that was trying her. Finally, Edward finished with a whisper, Father Escrove had uncovered a hideous coven in which babes were fed from women giving not milk, but blood.

Such things being so, Father Escrove knew just what to do in the face of evil: exterminate it.

The kitchen listened with some glee to these tales, Cook even pausing awhile to hear the stories, and in the corner sat Grace, with her ladyship's son at her breast, sucking away.

A dozen times Cook had told Grace not to bring the child into the servant's part of the house.

“If they catch you, girl, you'll be out on your arse,” she'd said, a dozen times or more. But Grace got bored feeding the boy up in the nursery, all by herself. She liked to come to the company of the kitchen to hear the gossip.

It didn't cease to amaze her how this noble little gentleman kept growing off nothing more than her milk, day by day, when the feeble boy that had come out of
her
hadn't gained so much as a fleck of fat in his short time on Earth.

Anyway, the fattening baby was now sucking in his sleep, so she pulled him off, put herself away, and hastened from the kitchen, along the passage, up the back stairs and to the nursery. There, she put the baby down in its crib, and turned her mind to more interesting matters.

One floor down and at the end of the corridor lay Robert Hamill's bedroom. There was no time to waste. Supper was done and he'd be in bed soon, if not already. This was an opportunity for which she had waited. She tiptoed down a floor and then along to the door, where she tilted her head and listened through the wood. She could hear movements inside; a jug and a basin of water, the soft sound of a window being opened. She knew she had attraction for men; both Michael and Steven Byatt had proved that point. Several times. She pulled the waist of her dress down, a tug, to expose an inch or two more flesh. Then, without knocking, she opened the door, and strode in to find Robert Hamill in his britches, washing at his basin.

He stood up straight, his eyes wide, and then, as his stepmother's wet nurse came in, shut the door behind her, with the top half of her dress way down from her shoulders, his eyes grew wider still.

He stared at her.

She said, “Hello, Master Robert,” and smiled what she supposed was an invitation.

Then he screamed, “How dare you!” at her, closely followed by “Get out at once!” when she was too stunned to move the first time.

Blood rushed to Grace's face as she understood that Sir George's second son was not the least bit interested in her. She hurriedly pulled her dress back into place and ran from the room to her own tiny bunk in the attic, where she lay sobbing until the stars faded from view.

 

9
THE GIVING GROUND

Monday was hard on Anna Tunstall.

She took Tom with her to Fuller's Mill while she worked, because they no longer had a mother to look after him. Anna wasn't sure that John Fuller would allow Tom to loiter about the mill all day, and on the way down just after dawn she lectured him on that issue.

“You must be good, Tom, and not get into trouble, Tom. Or John Fuller will send you packing, and then what will you do all day while I work? Tom? D'you hear me, Tom?”

In fact, that at least had been fine.

Tom sat in the shade of the trees that were the edge of Callis Wood, and played all morning with the spinning top that Robert Hamill had given him. Whenever Anna came outside she checked on him, and worried. She watched him staring at the ever-decreasing spiral that the top made as it spun, and worried that that was what made him have the fit the day before. She had never worked out why they came, nor had her mother, but they seemed to be set about by all sorts of odd things. And some nothings, too. But Tom seemed well today, although he stared at the spiral endlessly. Whenever the time came to take a load of cloth up to the tentergrounds, she got Tom to walk up with her, and worried that he seemed weak after his attack, weaker than he usually was.

But when work was done, Tom was fine and had become no bother and furthermore, as they were leaving, Helen Fuller had come out of the mill house and pushed a large wedge of cheese wrapped in nettle leaves into Anna's hands.

“Don't tell John,” she whispered, smiling, and sent them home.

But on top of a day's work, when Anna got home she found Ma Birch sitting in the sun on the step of Tunstall Cottage, wanting the poultice that Joan used to make for her knees.

So Anna set to making that, with some old flour, some dried mugwort, and a little yeast to give it warmth. When she was gone, there was a knock at the door and there were the Smith twins sent by their mother to ask what was good for bruises, and just as she got rid of the twins there was another knock.

“Please God, what?” snapped Anna, and flung the door open.

There was Robert Hamill with a face like a lovesick sheep.

Anna did her best to smile.

“Yes, sir?”

“Don't call me sir, Anna,” said Robert Hamill, second son of Sir George to Anna Tunstall, the laborman's daughter.

Not knowing what to say to that, she said nothing.

He looked through the door, beyond Anna's beauty, and saw Tom playing with the top on the hard earth floor.

“Come for a walk with me,” he said.

Anna hesitated.

First jewelery, now walks. But he was the squire's son.

“I'll give you this back,” said Anna, and from the neck of her dress pulled out the silver heart.

She held it out, but with consternation she could see that Robert was already shaking his head. He took it from her, but then slipped it straight back over her head again, and as it sat about her neck she felt a shortness of breath come into her.

Her arms hung limp by her side; she could not lift a hand. This was Sir George's son who commanded her.