C. Sansom - Dark Fire

'So should we all, Elizabeth,' Joseph said, clutching his hands together. 'So must we all.' She gave him a look I realized was pity, wincing as salt tears flowed onto her cut lip,

'What about the justice of this world?' Barak asked. 'What about punishment for murderers?'

She only glanced at him; his words did not stir her this time. 'I told you what was down there would shake your faith,' she told me. She paused, then let out a long, groaning breath. 'First Mother died, so painfully, from the great lump in her chest that wasted her to nothing. Then Father died too.' She coughed again. I offered her a bowl of water but she waved it away, looking at me fixedly.

'I sought consolation in books of prayer, sir. I entreated God to help me understand, but I seemed to be praying into a great dark silence. Then I was told our house was lost, our house where I grew up and was happy. I thought I would go to Uncle Joseph's in the country, but he said I must go to Uncle Edwin's.'

'It was for your good, Elizabeth,' Joseph said desperately. 'We thought it best for your prospects.'

'Grandam and Uncle Edwin did not want me, I knew that. They thought with my rough ways I might spoil their turning their three children into gentlefolk. But they did not know how cruel they were. They did not know how Ralph would torture any animal he could lay hands on, exploring all the different ways to inflict pain. Sabine and Avice brought him my poor Grizzy.'

'Sabine and Avice!' Joseph's voice was incredulous.

'Ralph got them to bring him animals – they thought what he did amusing, though they didn't like getting blood or fur on their clean clothes. They were glad to have me to tease and torment, to relieve their boredom. They always used to say how bored with their lives they were.'

'What about your uncle Edwin?' I asked. 'Your grand-mother? You could have appealed to them.'

'Grandam knew, but she turned her blind eyes from it. She kept everything from Uncle Edwin, what his children really were. He cared only that they should make the best show they could as young gentlefolk.'

I passed a hand across my brow. 'It sounds like madness, a madness the three of them infected each other with. Then you came-'

'I did not know about Ralph at first. I thought he was different from his sisters; he was not fine manners one minute and cruelty the next, in the beginning he was friendly in a rough boy's way. I look like him, you know. Maybe God has chosen me to suffer for all their sins – do you think so?'

'No,' I said. 'It is you that are choosing to suffer now.'

She shook her head. 'Ralph took me for a walk and showed me a fox he had caught in a trap and left until it was weakened. He had come with a needle to put its eyes out. I freed it and told him it was a wicked thing he did. That turned him against me. After that he joined with his sisters in finding ways to torment me.'

'You should have told Edwin,' Joseph said.

Elizabeth smiled then, a smile so despairing it chilled me. 'He would have believed nothing against Ralph or the girls. And Grandam cares only to see the girls well married. Sabine has a fancy for the steward Needler and Grandam used that, used him to try and keep the girls under control. She needs them to behave well on the surface until they have found rich young men.' She looked away. 'Pity any such gentleman, not to know what he has married until it is too late.'

'What about the other servants? How much do they know? There must have been – been terrible cries from the animals.' All at once I felt sick, black bile curdling in my stomach.

'Ralph did his vile deeds down the well. He had a little ladder. It was his torture cell as well as his hiding place. I think the servants heard things, but they said nothing – they wanted to keep their positions. Uncle Edwin pays well even if he makes them all go to church twice on Sundays.' Elizabeth had stopped crying now, her eyes had taken on a more focused look. 'I remember Ralph had talked of finding some beggar child to toy with, but the girls said he must be careful not to be caught. There was a little crippled boy and his sister who begged around our street.'

'And the girl was Sarah?'

'Yes. When poor Sarah was put in the Hole I remembered her. Ralph must have enticed her brother away.'

'Dear Jesu,' Joseph said. 'The coroner will have to be told.'

'Yes,' I agreed. 'But the family may try to turn the beggar boy's death against Elizabeth. Perhaps get Needler to say he did not see the beggar boy.'

'That won't be believed, surely.'

'Public feeling has been stirred against Elizabeth. Remember that pamphlet? Forbizer will not want to let her go. And who did kill Ralph? Or was it an accident, Elizabeth? Did he fall?'

She turned her face away. I wondered, for an awful moment, had she done it after all? But then why had Needler said nothing when he saw the well?

'Ralph must have been possessed,' Joseph said. 'Possessed by some demon.'

'Yes.' Elizabeth spoke to her uncle directly for the first time. 'By the devil, or perhaps by God, who is one and the same.'

He looked aghast. 'Elizabeth. That is blasphemy!'

She lifted herself on her elbows, coughing painfully. 'Don't you see? That's what I've come to understand. I know now that God is cruel and evil. He favours the wicked, as anyone who looks around the world can see. I have read the Book of Job, read the torments God inflicted on his faithful servant, I have asked God to tell me how he can do such evil, but he does not reply. Does not Luther say God chooses who will be damned and who saved, before one is even born? He has chosen me to be damned and for my damnation to start in this life!'

'Rubbish!' I turned with surprise to Barak. He glared at her. 'You should listen to your self-pity.'

Then she lost control. 'Who else has pitied me? My faith is gone, I wait for my death so I may spit in God's face for his cruelty!' She glared at Barak, then leaned back, exhausted.

The words rang round the room. Joseph waved his hands anxiously, as though he could bat them away. 'Lizzy, that is blasphemy! Do you want to be burned as a witch?' He put his hands together and began praying aloud. 'O merciful Jesu, help your daughter, strike the beam from her eye, turn her to obedience-'

'That'll do no good!' Barak shouldered past Joseph and leaned over Elizabeth. 'Listen, girl. I've seen that little boy. His death should be avenged, Ralph may be gone, but there are others who covered up his killing that beggar child as though it was a thing that mattered not at all. And his sister, Sarah, maybe they'll release her from Bedlam when they find her brother was taken and killed?'

'Release her to what?' Elizabeth asked despairingly. 'To beg again, or go for a whore?'

I put my head in my hands, full of the horror of it all; a cheerful innocent girl, visited with calamity after calamity and then the appalling, relentless cruelty of Sir Edwin's monstrous family, finally turning her fury on the God who had seemed to desert her. She had been pious once, no doubt, but the terrible blows she had suffered had turned her faith inside out. And was there not an awful logic in her belief that God had deserted her? Surely he had? I thought of the thousands of children who lay abandoned, begging in the streets.

Joseph was in a terrible state, wringing his hands. 'She could be charged with blasphemy,' he moaned. 'Atheism-' I glanced at the door, wondering whether the turnkey had been listening, for if he had Elizabeth's words were indeed enough to put her under a new charge. But undoubtedly the man would stay clear of the sick chamber.

'Calm down, Joseph, for mercy's sake,' I said. I looked at Elizabeth. She was sobbing now, a low miserable keening. 'Is it a wonder she has been driven to think as she does?'