She raised her sunken face. “If I may sleep,” she mouthed.
“Indeed, indeed. Thou shalt have every peace that nature craves, and thy body will heal with thy spirit, when once this venom has drained out of thee. Hearken—sleep not yet; hearken, I say! I’ll take thy Bible oath that the testimony thou givest is true and complete, free of any least evasion or falsehood. Dost understand? By thy hope of salvation must thou swear.”
“I understand.… I think.… I know not what I think,” she whispered harshly. “Oh, bring the Book, uncle, I’ll swear on it a hundred times over, if I may but afterward make it my pillow.”
It was a large and somber-paneled room, full of heavy furniture. Folios, quartos, excellent pictures, a bust of Cato the Elder, a hearthfire did not much relieve the austerity. Windows stood open to blue dusk and a sound of crickets.
The owner sat at his desk, writing with one of the new steel pens by the glow of one of the new glass-chimneyed lamps. A knock brought up his high, gleaming head. “Come in,” he called.
The butler entered to announce: “The Reverend Nobah Barker, sir, assistant pastor of our church in Leeds.”
“I know him,” Shelgrave said dryly. “We would fain be closeted. Let no man interrupt ere supper-time, though it were General Cromwell’s very self.”
He stood to shake his visitor’s hand. “Welcome, my friend.’Twas good of thee to come.”
“Thy note held intimation of a duty,” was the nasal reply. While Barker was a comparatively young man, stooped shoulders, round paunch, and shuffling gait would have fitted an older one. In a long, lantern-jawed face, his eyes were twin hail-stones beneath the flat brown hair. Against his garb, which was otherwise black, the clerical cravat showed more grubby than white.
“Affection has its duties, has it not, as does that fellowship we share in Christ?” the host said. “I could have asked the help of many else; but thee I know and trust. Sit down, sit down. Here’s coffee newly shipped from Genoa, within this pot above its spirit flame—a fresh invention of our wondrous age. Thou takest cream and sugar, I recall.”
“Let us not chat too much of worldly things,” said Barker, accepting the edge of a chair.
Shelgrave pinched lips together. “It helps me keep the Devil off my mind. He’s prowling near, and I must battle him whilst unwise rivals seek to shackle me. How few I dare rely on! Mine own kin—”
“Who? Jennifer? I saw her not in church this Sunday past. They told me she’s been ill.”
“A loathsome cancer I’ve no certainty that e’en the sharpest razor may excise. And yet my duty is to essay it. A duty still more powerful than this—to God and country and our holy cause—drives me the selfsame way. But meanwhile, Nobah, discretion’s of the essence. I’ll explain.”
Having filled the cups which waited on an end table, he sat down opposite his guest.
“Thou’st shown me favor and hast aided me, as elder of our humble congregation, since first thou heard’st me preach,” Barker said. “I am right grateful that thou hast been the instrument whereby God’s grace has helped unworthy me to rise.”
“The merest step, from deacon to assistant. I’d see thee go much further if I can. But now I stand in direst need of help.”
“Thou’lt have it, godly Malachi. Thou’lt have it.”
Shelgrave’s knuckles whitened over the frail cup handle. He stared past the other. “Let me speak blunt,” he said. “A man in great pain or a man in great danger has no wit for honing words on; he can but drive them into the target by what might is left him; and I am both those men.
“Hark’ee. I told thee in confidence how Rupert, prince of bandits, was held captive here till they could fetch him to London.” (Barker jerked a nod.) “That’s a sigil of my faith in thee, Nobah. I knew thou couldst be an influence over my household folk should any of them show signs of blabbering; for we dared not risk somebody like his madcap brother learning where he was and mounting a raid of rescue… Well, he’s escaped.”
“God’s mercy smite that Assyrian—like this!” Barker shouted. The great gesture of his hand would have been more dramatic had it not held a cup. Coffee billowed across his face.
Shelgrave hardly noticed. “And worse,” he groaned, “ ’twas by seduction of my ward—aye, Jennifer Alayne. She aided him.”
Barker, who had pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve, stopped mopping himself. “Indeed? Oh, horror!…
Yet say on, poor man. Lay forth the shame in full, each word, each stroke, that I may know how Satan worked through him and counsel thee. How did his wiles prevail? In what wise did he deal with her? How often?”
“Would it had been simple fornication! But nay, she’s a maiden still.”
“Ah-ha! Italian ways? Go on, go on!”
“I tell thee,’twas no common fleshly lust. She swears on the Book, by every oath I can compose, Rupert and she have never touched more than lip to lip.”
“Oh.” Barker resumed his scrubbing.
“And I’m assured, now those willful lips are finally unbarred, she speaks truth. I’ve come to know her. She’s pious in her half-Popish fashion, would never perjure herself—might indeed have escaped suffering, had she sworn at once to some plausible demi-truth which I do believe she’d’ve had the wit to devise on the spot. Besides, what broke her will was prolonged sleeplessness enforced, a tool wherewith I’ve had experience. I wish the good men pursuing witches on the Continent knew more about this means.’Tis better than rack or wheel, if used aright.”
“And hale, she’ll feel more fear at execution.”
“Hold!” Shelgrave snapped. “They’ll not hang her… Well.” He hunched himself in self-possession. “Let me be brief; later thou canst hear the full account. It seems a man of Rupert’s, slinking after him like a dog, lured Jennifer into setting him free; and this man had been put to it by those heathen sprites which haunt our wilds and ruins.” At Barker’s shock, he nodded. “Aye, she named none less than Oberon and Titania; and sure it is, chasing him, my men and I were pestered by phantoms. That was after I caught Jennifer trying to slip back into this house… Though I’ve wrenched the story from her, Rupert remains at large. No word of him, either recaptured or rejoining the enemy. But’twould be rash to postulate the crows have picked his bones.”
“What then about him and his midnight legions?” Barker asked. His shivering congealed into resolution.
“Nay; righteousness is fearlessness. More coffee?”
Shelgrave let him pour, while rising to unlock and open a drawer in his desk. “The demons counseled him to seek magical aid in Mediterranean lands or waters,” he continued. “She can’t recall details, being but poorly read. However, I think we’d best suppose he’s off in that direction. The danger of his success is as worth freetting over as a possible outbreak of plague. To guide him, he got a ring, whose stone shines brighter as he comes close to what may help him: bottled hellfire, no doubt. She was given one too, which has the same property.” He made a smile. “Behold how God can work also through the instruments of evil!
This was the clue which led me to her guilt. Here.”
He held it forth.
Baker dropped his cup into his lap. “Eeh!” he wailed. “Cast it away, that fearful thing, away!”
“I took thee for a man of courage, Nobah,” Shelgrave said.