own wife to take away his children, but she wouldn’t go.’
I frowned. ‘The Reverend is married?’
I stepped left and she stepped right, carefully maintaining the distance between us. ‘Yes, he is married. Catherine is kindly. Since the plague, though, she has been sickly and weak. I think she mourns her children.’ She read our faces, quickly. ‘They are not dead. The Reverend sent them away before the quarantine.’
‘He sent away his children and ruled no one else could leave,’ I snorted.
She shook her head. ‘He didn’t rule it. He spoke to us in church one Sunday. He had already consulted with the Mayor of Colchester, who agreed to provide us with supplies if we pledged to remain within the village boundaries. He persuaded us it was our Christian duty, told us God would look kindly upon us.’ She bowed her head again in sadness.
‘Who then hath forsaken him?’ Dowling asked, bemused. ‘For doth he not smite ye all down?’
‘Not all of us,’ she snapped back, eyes wide and white. Her lip trembled and her body shook. Tears flowed like streams. ‘My family remains faithful to our Lord. We pray to him morn and night. We came here to Robert’s grave. We have been to the grave of every person who died in Shyam.’
‘Edward Cooper died more than a year ago,’ I said softly, willing her to be calm.
As she nodded, I saw in her eyes the extent to which the last twelve months wore at her spirit. ‘It changed the day the Reverend closed the church,’ she spoke at last. ‘More than twenty died in October. Reverend Mompesson said we should no longer congregate in the church. He said we should come together once a week, out in the
open air where we can maintain distance between us, where the wind blows through us. He said the graveyard was full and we should bury our own on our own land, and should mourn our own, on our own.’
And so the community began to die.
‘The Reverend stayed in his house,’ she said. ‘No one knew what was going on in the village, for Thomas Elks told everyone to stay at home. I went to Town Head one day, when I heard a rumour John Smythe had died. Thomas Elks stopped me before Fiddler’s Bridge and made me turn around. Said he would put me in the cage if he saw me again so far from home.’
An apple hit the ground, making me jump. The little boy forgot his fear and ran over to pick up the fruit. He bit into it before anyone could stop him. His face lit up and juice dripped from the side of his mouth. My soul cried out, though I knew not why. The boy gazed towards us, stood by himself apart from his mother.
‘Edward Thornley was afraid,’ she exclaimed. ‘It was his only sin. His wife and seven children all died and he buried them himself. All he had left was his daughter.’ She looked up at Dowling. ‘Didn’t he deserve compassion?’
Dowling nodded, solemn.
‘Mompesson said he must go in the cage. The day they imprisoned him, six others tried to escape, the Thorpes and the Talbots. The sight of Edward, sat squashed inside those iron bars, like some dreadful criminal. That was when we knew the evil was entirely upon us, that God had indeed forsaken us.’
‘What reason did Mompesson give?’ I asked.
‘He said nothing,’ she said. ‘We see him only once a week when he delivers the service at the Delf. Catherine sits at the front and never takes her eyes off him. He speaks, but not to us.’
‘He speaks to God, then.’ Dowling nodded. ‘Afraid to ask what sin he committed, for fear of the Lord’s vengeance.’
She reached for her son, who finished the apple. ‘You are right, sir. He fears God has forsaken him, so do we all. More than forty people have died this month already, twenty this week. At this rate we shall all be dead by the middle of October.’ She gripped her apron in her hands, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I have six children.’
‘What is your name?’ I asked.
‘Mary Hancock,’ she replied. ‘My son, John. My daughter, Elizabeth.’
‘Where is your husband?’ Dowling asked.
‘At home,’ she replied, lifting her chin. ‘He is a gentle man, a good man. He is strong and will lead us through this.’
Eight of them, I calculated, of a hundred who still lived.
Tears filled her eyes and she fell to her knees, head in her hands. The two children knelt down next to her and stroked her arms. Dowling crouched on his haunches and tried to catch her attention.
She looked up at him, eyes shining. ‘Katherine Talbot was my sister. I saw her in the cage this morning, dead.’
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. The mists rolled down the slope. The sun shone yellow through the canopy. I saw a shadow next to a tree, twenty yards away, a man watching.
‘Someone else arrived here two weeks ago,’ I said quickly. ‘James Josselin?’
She didn’t reply, just wept, shoulders heaving. The figure sidled forwards into the light.
‘Mary!’ a reedy voice shrilled. Not the voice of a man, nor the voice of a woman.
As he drew closer we saw his body, crooked, twisted and bent. His
eyes boggled, wild and darting, rimmed thick red. His mouth hung half open and his shoulders twitched. Black hair hung lank in the cold, moist air, shapeless and uneven. He approached Mary Hancock in a long arc, avoiding our presence.
‘Mary,’ he whispered, stepping forwards and backwards, dancing upon a small spot of ground. Her husband, I supposed. A gentle man indeed, but what strength he once possessed departed long ago.
I looked away, discomfited by their awkward intimacy.
Mary Hancock looked up from the ground, eyes bright. ‘Why do you ask of James Josselin?’
‘We heard he came here,’ I replied, noticing something protruding from the dirt.
‘James Josselin has not been here for ten years,’ she replied, accepting the dishevelled fellow’s assistance in climbing back to her feet. ‘You say he is returned?’ She seemed to grow afore us, body unwinding from the cramped strictures with which she bound herself.
‘So it is rumoured,’ I answered, afraid I might raise new expectation.
‘Then we are saved,’ she exclaimed, clutching at the man’s shirt. ‘James Josselin is a saint. He saved Colchester from Cromwell, and will save us from Thomas Elks.’
‘Shh!’ The man tugged at her sleeve, scanning the trees with frightened eyes.
‘Hush to you,’ she retorted, pulling herself free of his grasping hands. ‘Thomas Elks will frighten us no more. We must make ready to leave.’
I thought to clarify that mine was a question, not a promise, but she bustled and twitched with a mad hope that would not be satisfied by cold reason. She dragged her family back towards the thick brume.
‘Where does Elks live?’ I called after her.
‘At his brother’s house, past the church, by Fiddler’s Bridge.’
She turned and disappeared into the white wall, dragging her family with her. The last I saw of them were the two little children, legs pumping as they struggled to keep up.
Dowling grunted, poking in the dirt of the grave with his finger. Then he exclaimed a short growl of quiet satisfaction. ‘This is what distracted you.’ He held forth the battered petals of a red rose, tied to a short wooden cross. ‘The cross is the crucifixion,’ he said. ‘The rose signifies the five wounds of Christ.’
I trawled my memory. ‘A Roman thing.’
‘Rome come to Shyam,’ Dowling mused, prodding at the velvet petals with monstrous finger. ‘The evil unto Eden.’
Chapter Fifteen
The figure of the Sun giveth warning both of external and internal plots.
Within an hour the fog lifted, revealing the full splendour of the imposing forest surrounds. Buxton’s house nestled at the top of a small green field above an orchard below. Further down the hill ran another field before a bank of forest. It appeared Robert Buxton had owned just the one cow, for the field stood empty, save for a wide bare trough.