“And was my name put forward there as part of some conspiracy? I’m told it was,” I ask.

“Indeed, it was,” my master says. “I thought my heart might stop from hearing it.” He sounds a little nettled. “But, Walter Thirsk, it seems you are a man my cousin has determined he can … rely upon.” He spreads his hands and ducks his chin. He means it is a mystery, and one that bothers him.

“And what occurred when Mr. Qu … when Mr. Earle returned last night?”

“He has not come back to the house, not yet,” my master says, covering his eyes with a hand as he speaks. He is embarrassed by the answer he must give. “He will have slept”—he spreads his hands in front of him again—“elsewhere. My cousin’s men are hunting for him now.”

11

HAVE FORGOTTEN MASTER JORDAN’S GROOM. I suppose I should have guessed how jealous he would be of the sidemen and the time they spent with female captives in the gallery. I am sure he will have overheard the quizzing and the probings and would have liked to creep upstairs to make his contribution. But he was not allowed. You’re just the horses man, they will have said. And so his comrades had the pleasure. He had none. He had to be the guard outside Master Kent’s bed-parlor. He was ungratified, and therefore he’ll be dangerous. Already, he has been left with too much leisure on his hands these past few days. Of all the Jordan party, he has had the least to do. Once he has fed and groomed his mounts and let them loose on the master’s edges to crop on wayside grass, the body of the day is his to waste. He wanders idly through our village lanes and makes a nuisance of himself with any pretty face he meets. He bothers livestock and scrumps our fruit. He pokes his nose through gates and doors that should be barred to him. He is the only one, as yet, who has the inclination and the time to test out rotten apples and putrid curses on Mistress Beldam’s husband at the pillory. He is the only one who’s been constant in his hunt for the woman herself. Today his efforts have been redoubled because, as he now understands from the events of last night at the manor house, in which he sadly has not played a satisfying part, there is a free-roaming sorceress to lay his hands upon and one not set aside only for those pampered sidemen to enjoy.

It is his misfortune, though, to be spotted standing and facing me, while I sit on my bench hoping for a greeting from a neighbor. He wants to know where I suppose a woman of her kind might find some secret refuge from where she can emerge at night to carry out her killings. I do not think he knows what enemies he’s made for simply being in the Jordan crew. How can he guess, in all his innocence, that I’m not popular today and that being in my company will not seem widely sociable? Certainly, he should have calculated for himself how rash it is, the morning after such occurrences, to walk into our village midst with nothing for protection except a length of rein. I must suppose he hopes to lead a chastened Mistress Beldam to his master on the knotted end of it.

On any other day but this he would be safe. We’d all be threshing, winnowing and sacking, and would shrug him off as nothing but a nuisance, as nothing worthier than chaff. But our women and our Gleaning Queen are still unaccounted for, beyond that talk of witchery. I know better than to enlighten them with Master Kent’s distressing news; they will not trust a word I say. What’s more, our three sons whose beds were cold and empty last night are still missed and missing from their homes. The master and myself are not the only ones to have despairing hearts. So we — yes, we; I still say we—are as tense and volatile as wasps. No one, not a single soul of us, has taken to their tools today. Even I, with my scarred hand, have not gone early to the manor house to labor on the thinning of the vellum square, its pumicing and chalking. I have no duty there, not even if the Chart-Maker returns. I can be of no use to him, except perhaps to find him and warn him about the welcome he’ll receive. I will hunt for him. I have a duty to the man. But since I last saw him scuttling in Mistress Beldam’s steps, I do not like to contemplate where he might be. I fear his injury. I fear that he is intimate with her. So, for the moment, I am sauntering about the lanes or loafing on my outside bench, approachable, but listless with unease.

Our village would seem leisurely to any passers-by. At least, our hands are idle. But this is not a feast day with pleasures to anticipate. We won’t be dancing to Thomas Rogers’s pipe tonight, or Mr. Quill’s fiddle, come to that. Our sluggishness is no more purposeful than our scurrying. Already our village fabric is unraveling. The harvested barley is uncared for. A sack has toppled, and spilt. No one is even seeing off the rats. There are sour cattle droppings waiting to be spread, molehills to be kicked over, cow ticks to be removed, unless we want our animals enfeebled by the theft of blood. Whoever was the gong-farmer this morning has not done his duty. The barrow is still clean and free from flies, and the latrines are not worth visiting. Our pigs have not yet received their morning scraps. That diseased bough from the Kips’ old cherry tree has fallen finally, and blocks a path, but none of the Kips has dragged it away or offered it an axe; there’s two night’s winter fuel there at least. Anyone that chances on it barely gives it a glance, but steps around the trunk with a vacant face. The cattle are protesting on the common land, heavy with milk. A gate hangs loose — the rarest sight — and cocks and hens are walking free as if they know these lanes will soon be theirs. But there are greater matters to resolve than hens. A congregation has been called, I hear, for noon. I will not go, of course. Until that time, my neighbors are as bored and puzzled as a pack of parlor cats with nothing close to scratch. With nothing close to scratch, that is, until they see me talking to the groom, not telling him where Mistress Beldam might have found her hideaway.

He is a smaller man than any of the Jordan constables, and lighter even than the steward, who, though quite short, is built of oak. That’s not to say the groom isn’t dangerous — but he’d be more dangerous to women or to the horses in his charge than to Lizzie’s father, Gervase Carr, a quietly violent man when it most counts. Where is his daughter, he wants to know, asking roughly but from a distance, at first. The groom just shrugs, but doesn’t turn. He knows enough about the weighing of the world to judge that a gentleman’s groom will tip the scales more heavily than a clodhopper. Gervase takes a step forward toward the bench where I am sitting and toward the groom’s back. Another half a dozen steps and he will be able to reach out and seize this fellow by his scruff. “It’s Lizzie Carr I’m talking of. You’ve seen her, haven’t you? She’s just a little twig of a girl. Your master has her at the house—”

“She’s owned up to all her wickedness,” the groom replies. He really ought to step away. Instead, he turns around finally. He miscalculates the situation he is in, although he can’t but be surprised to see the swelling crowd at Gervase Carr’s shoulder. He attempts a quip. “If she’s a twig, then she’ll burn very nicely with those other sorcerers,” he says, pushing out his hands as if to warm them at a fire. “We’ll have a bit of charcoal from her yet.”

It’s Lizzie’s mother who reaches him first. Gervase is slow to take the groom’s full meaning and is looking more puzzled than alarmed. But his wife is cut from quicker stock. She takes the fellow by the ear. She has two sons, and so she’s practiced at that art. She twists, and then she has him by the hair. Gervase is next. His wife has marked the way. Then all I know is, there’s a sudden rush. The others jostle in. A body hits the far end of my bench and I have tumbled backward, falling awkwardly and with no dignity into the pebbled rain ditch at the foundings of my cottage. A second blow topples me before I can get back on my feet. A booted foot has kicked me in the face. An accident, I hope. But I am wise enough to keep myself rolled up, like a hedgehog, with my back turned to the oddly quiet scrum. No one is calling or saying anything. All I hear is thud on thud, a farming sound, a livestock sound. A thousand stinging grievances are settling on the groom; a hundred angry, waspy fists are hurting him. He might still walk away with bruises and not wounds but then one of the Saxton lads decides to outdo his brothers by stepping forward with his pruning blade and widening his victim’s quipping mouth, from lip to cheek, with one efficient strike.