10

HAVE PERSUADED NEIGHBOR CARR to talk today. He’d rather not. But I have him cornered at his door. He’s too embarrassed and too profoundly kind to rebuff me entirely. Still, he is not comfortable in my company and will not join me on the outside bench where it is cool and shaded. For once, against our custom, he prefers to duck into my stuffy, cluttered home and find a place out of the door light where he can’t be spotted from the lane. I touch his elbow as he squeezes by, but there is no response. I think he even pulls away. When he feels secure enough to speak, I can hardly hear his voice. He won’t be overheard by other cottagers. I suspect he also would prefer not to be heard by me. His story is “a spiky one,” he says. No one has yet laid eyes on either of the captive women or on Lizzie Carr, his niece. Indeed, the treatment of the crowd of supplicants at the manor house last night was “not considerate.” He’s being cautious with his words. He’s testing my allegiances. We know each other well enough to judge such things from how we sit and fidget, how we breathe.

“John Carr,” I say to him. “Let’s put an end to this.” I reach out for his knee and rather than grasping it as I might have done a day ago, I drop my closed fist on it, two gentle almost weightless beats, the softest of rebukes.

“I know,” he says. And that’s enough. He straightens up, takes steady breaths, leans forward with his elbows on his knees, so that his face is looking into mine. “Lord help you, Walt, if you’re deceiving us.”

“Lord help you, John, if you believe I would.” I’m glad he cannot see my flushing face in this half-light.

He settles back, deciding what to do. He’s caught between a nettle and a thorn. “And so …?” he says. He’s waiting for a prompt.

“And so, how was it ‘not considerate’?”

“Here’s how. Those serving fellows kept us waiting at the porch like dogs and horses,” he says, a mite less guarded than before. Master Kent was “not available,” it seems: “He’s always been available. I’ve never known him not available.” John Carr shakes his straw-gray head, warming — heating — to his tale. “And as for this new gentleman? He is a Jordan, so we’re told. And some devilry has given him our land.”

I cannot tell if I’m included in the our.

This latest Master Jordan was also “not available” last night, John tells me. The villagers could smile their smiles and doff their caps until the end of time, but still he would not meet them at the door. At last, his steward, Baynham, showed his face. “Matters are in hand,” he told the villagers, so gravely it was worrying. His only answer to their questions was a shrug. It was as if their worries were of no account. “I hear that there is witchery about,” the steward offered finally.

“What witchery? No one has ever thought there’s witchery,” I say to John. I overheard the mention of a “sorceress” just yesterday, but that’s less burdensome a word. We can be tempted by a sorceress, beguiled by her even — but witches? No, their crafts are uglier and heavier. I am concerned and genuinely surprised by John’s report. A formal accusation such as that brings turmoil every time. The very mention of it is bad luck. It is a charge we tell our children not to make, not even as a tease. Say “witch,” we warn them, and Master Havoc will come with Lady Pandemonium to keep their crone bad company. “There’s never any witchery,” I repeat.

“That’s what we told the man,” says John Carr. “But he replied that he knew better. They already had three of our she-devils in custody. He said we’d better go away and start collecting faggots for their fire. That’s when our tempers flew apart …” He stops. I hear his humiliated sigh. Now he’s the one that’s flushing and ashamed. Again, he’s forward, elbows on his knees. “Or should I say that’s when our tongues got loose. We did ourselves no favors, Walt. We didn’t do you any favors either. Sad to have to tell you that, but it is best you know. We had to take care of our own.”

It’s no surprise. I’m not included in “our own.”

As far as I can tell from John Carr’s brief, discomfited account of what then took place last evening at the manor house’s porch, Mr. Quill and I are said to be part of some conspiracy. For reasons of our own that are too dark for telling, we have teamed up with the three dove-burners who arrived so recently and so coincidentally at the same time as the Chart-Maker. My neighbors will not call him Mr. Quill again, it seems. That name does not sound devious enough or tie in with the excessive colors of their newly woven tale. If that fine shawl belonged to his departed wife, as Master Kent has claimed and they are now no longer determined to doubt, who was better placed to steal it from the manor house and wrap it round that woman’s shoulders than the master’s guest, the Chart-Maker? It was the Chart-Maker who offered his hand to the woman on the morning of the fire when her den was being leveled to the ground; it was the Chart-Maker who made her welcome at the dance; it was the Chart-Maker who was discovered only yesterday evening at the pillory with his arm round the younger vagabond’s shoulder. They evidently were old friends. Perhaps they were related in some way. Blood brothers, probably.

As for Walter Thirsk? Well, according to the blurtings of last night, I am not the same man they have known and trusted for so long. I now spend my hours only with the Chart-Maker. I no longer see the need to work at the shoulders of my neighbors, or to stand with them outside the manor, even when my own “sweeting” is inside. Master Kent, to whom I should be grateful till I die, is neglected by me, his onetime loyal man. I am, it seems, to be suspected. That is the benefit of accusing me. In the spreading shadow of my guilt, Anne Rogers, the widow Gosse and little Lizzie Carr must be considered innocent of … well, innocent of anything this younger Jordan could accuse them of, but which should be laid more properly at other doors, including mine.

“I’ll repeat you to the master, word for word,” Mr. Baynham promised them, according to John Carr, whose word, I must believe, is trustworthy. Equally innocent, by the way, my neighbors added for good measure — and to the increasing amusement of the steward, who by then was nodding with a knowing smile but with the door half closed — are the three good young men who thought it wise to keep away from these conspiracies and have already packed their few possessions in a cloth and gone but who knows where.

“I think you would be wise to do the same, Walt,” says neighbor Carr, already standing up to flee my cottage. “Follow Brooker and the Derby boys, and save yourself. Go back …” He stops. He will not say, Go back where you belong.

I am alarmed, to tell the truth. Our snug and tiresome village has burst apart these last few days. Master Havoc and Lady Pandemonium have already set to work. We are a moonball that’s been kicked, just for the devilry, by some vexatious foot. Our spores are scattering. And it seems I ought to scatter too. Perhaps at once. It’s always better to turn your back on the gale than press your face against it. Indeed, I am already looking at my possessions and wondering which few of them I ought to bag across my shoulders and by which path I might best secure my liberty.

ACTUALLY, I AM THE ONLY ONE who may safely stay. For the first time since the day I found my mottle-throated Cecily cold and lifeless on the bed, Master Kent has come into my cottage room. He is sitting in the place so recently warmed and dented by John Carr. He seems in shock. At least his hand is trembling, and his breath is evidently being ladled from a shallow pool. But he has news that is reassuring for me, though not for anybody else.