'Good night,' he answered, and he almost said Rachel but he closed his mouth before the name could emerge. He did speak it, though, in his innermost voice.
He waited, listening. For what, he did not know. Perhaps the buzz of a luminous, witch-directed fly. Perhaps the cold laughter of a demon who had come to visit for obscene purposes; perhaps the sound of raven's wings flitting in the dark. None of those sounds occurred. There were just the furtive noises of the surviving rodents and then, a while later, the soft breathing of Rachel Howarth in sleep.
What she needs is a champion of truth, he thought.
And who in this town could be that champion but himself? But the evidence . . . the apparent evidence . . . was so damning.
Damning or not, there were so many questions. So many whys, he could scarce list them all in his mind.
One thing was certain: if the woman was not a witch, someone in Fount Royal—perhaps more than a single person—had gone to great and evil effort to paint her as one. Again the question: why?
In spite of his trepidations, his body was relaxing. He felt sleep coming nearer. He fought it by going over in his head the testimony of Jeremiah Buckner. At last, though, sleep was the victor, and he joined Rachel in the land of forgetting.
fifteen
THE POWER OF GOD was the subject of Robert Bidwell's lecture at the Anglican church on Sabbath morn, and during its second hour—as Bidwell paused to drink a cup of water and renew his vigor—the magistrate felt his eyes drooping as if drawn down by leaden weights. It was a sensitive situation, as he was seated in the front pew of the church, and thus being in the seat of honor Woodward was subject to the stares and whispers of the congregation. Such would not be worrisome to him if he were in firmer health, but as he'd slept very poorly and his throat was once more ravaged and swollen, he might have chosen a rack-and-wheel over the torture of this predicament.
Bidwell, to be so eloquent and forceful face-to-face, was a wandering wastrel at the pulpit. Between half- cooked pronouncements simmered long pauses, while the congregation steamed in the close, hot room. To add even more injury, Bidwell didn't know his Good Book very well and continually misquoted what to Woodward were passages every child had memorized by the age of baptism. Bidwell asked the congregation to join him in prayer after prayer concerning the well-being and future of Fount Royal, a task which became truly laborious by the fifth or sixth amen. Heads nodded and snores grumbled, but those who dared to sleep were slapped awake by the glove that Mr. Green—who was acting just as much gaol-keeper here as at the gaol—had fixed to a long wooden pole capable of reaching the cheek of any sinner.
At last Bidwell came to his dutiful conclusion and went to his seat. Next arose the schoolmaster, who limped up to the pulpit with his Bible beneath his arm, and asked that there be another prayer to secure the presence of God among them. It went on for perhaps ten minutes, but at least Johnstone's voice had inflection and character and so Woodward was able—with an effort of will—to avoid the glove.
Woodward had risen from his bed at first light. From his shaving mirror stared the face of a sick man, hollow-eyed and gray-fleshed. He opened his mouth wide and caught sight in the glass of the volcanic wasteland his throat had become. Again his air passages were thickened and blocked, which proved that Dr. Shields's remedy was less a cure than a curio. Woodward had asked Bidwell if he might see to Matthew before the beginning of Sabbath service, and a trip to Mr. Green's house had secured the key, which had been returned to him after its use by the ratcatcher.
Fearing the worst, Woodward discovered that his clerk had actually enjoyed a better rest in the harsh straw than he himself had endured at the mansion house. Matthew had had his tribulations, to be sure, but except for finding a drowned rodent in his waterbucket this morning he'd suffered no lasting harms. In the next cage, Rachel Howarth remained cloaked and impassive, perhaps a pointed response to Bidwell's presence. But Matthew had come through the first night without being transformed into a black cat or a basilisk, and seemed to have undergone no other entrancements, as Woodward had feared might happen. Woodward had vowed he would return again in the afternoon, and so had reluctantly left his clerk in the company of the cloaked harridan.
The magistrate had expected to smell the dust of a hundred dry sermons when the schoolmaster took the pulpit to speak, but Johnstone was at ease before the congregation and therefore earned more ears than had Bidwell before him. In fact, Johnstone was quite a good speaker. His message was faith in the mysterious ways of God, and over the course of an hour he skillfully wove that topic into a parallel with the situation faced by the citizens of Fount Royal. It was clear to Woodward that Johnstone relished public speaking, and used his hands in grand gestures to illustrate the verses of scripture that were his emphasis. Nary a head nodded nor a snore sounded while the schoolmaster held forth, and at the end of Johnstone's lesson the prayer that followed was short, concise, and the final 'Amen' delivered like an exclamation point. Bidwell rose to say a few more words—perhaps feeling a bit upstaged by the schoolmaster. Then Bidwell called upon Peter Van Gundy, proprietor of the tavern, to dismiss the service, and at long last Mr. Green rested his glove-on-a-pole in a corner as the congregation took their leave of the sweatbox.
Outside, beneath the milky sky, the air was still and damp. Beyond Fount Royal's walls mist hung low over the forest and draped the taller treetops with white shrouds. No birds sang. As Woodward followed Bidwell to the carriage where Goode waited to drive them home, the magistrate's progress was interrupted by a tug on his sleeve. He turned to find Lucretia Vaughan standing there, wearing her somber black Sabbath gown as did the other women, yet hers had a touch of lace decorating the high bodice that seemed to Woodward a bit ostentatious. Behind her stood her blonde daughter Cherise, also in black, and a slim man of short stature who wore a vacant smile and had equally vacant eyes.
'Magistrate?' the woman said. 'How goes the case?'
'It goes,' he answered, his voice little more than a raspy croak.
'Dear me! You sound in need of a salt gargle.'
'The weather,' he said. 'It disagrees with me.'
'I'm very sorry to hear that. Now: I would like—that is, my husband and I would like—to offer an invitation to our table on Thursday night.'
'Thursday? I'll have to wait and see how I'm feeling by then.'
'Oh, you misunderstand!' She flashed him a bright smile. 'I mean an invitation to your clerk. His sentence will be done by Tuesday morning, as I hear. He'll receive his lashes at that time, am I correct?'
'Yes, madam, you are.'
'Then he should be up to joining us on Thursday evening. Say at six o'clock?'
'I can't speak for Matthew, but I will pass your invitation along.'
'I would be oh so grateful,' she said, with a semblance of a curtsey. 'Good day, then.'
'Good day.'
The woman took her husband's arm and guided him along— a shocking sight, especially on the Sabbath—and the daughter followed a few paces behind. Woodward pulled himself up into the waiting carriage, lay back against the cushioned seat across from Bidwell, and Goode flicked the reins.
'You found the service of interest, Magistrate?' Bidwell asked.
'Yes, very much.'
'I'm pleased to hear it. I feared my sermon was rather on the intellectual side, and most of the citizens here are—as you know by now—charmingly rustic. It wasn't too deep for them, was it?'
'No, I think not.'
'Ah.' Bidwell nodded. His hands folded in his lap. 'The schoolmaster has an agile mind, but he does tend to speak in circles rather than to a point. Wouldn't you agree?'
'Yes,' Woodward said, realizing what Bidwell desired to hear. 'He does have an agile mind.'
'I've told him—suggested to him—that he keep his message more grounded in reality than abstract concepts, but he has his own way of presentation. I myself find him somewhat tiresome, though I do try to follow his threads.'
'Um,' Woodward said.
'You would think that, being a teacher, he might be also a better communicator. But I suspect his talents lie in other areas. Not thievery, however.' He gave a brief laugh and then attended to the straightening of his ruffled cuffs.
