Christie Dickason - The Memory Palace

Zeal rubbed her hand across her mouth. She had no idea that her glares had been so effective.

‘And no one can deny she threatened to shoot us, just for trying to do our job. And us with only a shovel to defend ourselves.’

‘You forget that I was present…Just one moment, Doctor Gifford, I beg you!’

‘She killed him in revenge for him taking the statues back.’ Pickford looked defiant. ‘It’s too much coincidence. Evil eye. She threatened him and then he died. Think about it.’

‘Thank you. I hadn’t planned to.’ Sir Richard scratched his earlobe and studied Zeal’s accusers in silence, until she began to fear that he was having one of his lapses.

Surely these comical men could not make real trouble for her.

‘I’m not clear on one or two points.’ Comer seized the opening, just before Gifford, who was leaning back on his stool, shaking his head in impatient dismay. ‘Was Mistress Zeal present when Sir Harry died?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Was she anywhere nearby?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did she at any time approach his horse while it was at Hawkridge in order to tamper with it?’

‘Not so far as I know.’

‘But she killed him nevertheless, at a distance, by subverting his horse?’ Sir Richard stepped in again, back in full flow.

‘Such things happen,’ said Fox defiantly. ‘Ask the minister there.’

‘You all are missing the true wickedness,’ said Gifford. ‘If you will but allow me…’

Sir Richard snorted. ‘There was a storm tonight? Yes? While you were on the road?’

‘An uncanny one, sir,’ agreed Fox. ‘Blue sky one minute, lightning and hail the next. Lightning filled the sky like noon. Even our own beasts gave a start and offered to bolt. Not usual lightning. It was yellowish, like sulphur. Not your usual lightning at all. If you follow me.’

‘I detect the Lord’s hand,’ said Doctor Gifford. ‘Sir Harry was struck down like the Canaanites who worshipped heathen idols.’

‘But these fellows don’t seem to be raising the pos-si-bi-li-ty…’ Sir Richard seemed to examine each syllable in turn. ‘…that He had anything to do with it. More like the other one, if anything.’ He turned to Zeal. ‘My dear, how do you plead? Care to throw yourself on the mercy of the court?’

‘I did not have anything to do with Harry’s death,’ Zeal said quietly. ‘We all speak more fiercely than we could ever act. I am sorry that he died…I don’t quite believe it yet, if you must know. And I never meant to shoot anyone. Only to keep Harry and these men from taking the law into their own hands before Sir Richard could arrive and sort things out.’

‘Hnmph!’ Sir Richard nodded with satisfaction.

Comer leaned forward again. ‘But you did threaten to shoot unarmed men? That is an offence in itself.’

‘The gun is rusted solid,’ said Wentworth suddenly from the wall where he had been leaning with crossed arms. ‘I gave it to her. It hasn’t been fired for twenty-three years.’

‘Did she know this?’ asked Comer, who struck Zeal as a reasonable man and surprisingly good-natured, given that he, like Sir Richard had been called from his bed.

‘Of course. I dare say she wouldn’t have touched it otherwise,’ said Wentworth.

Comer and Sir Richard laughed. Zeal bristled but saw the wisdom of keeping quiet.

‘Well, gentlemen.’ Once again Sir Richard looked at his two colleagues. ‘These two don’t want to make a formal accusation. I see no need to clog up the courts with “possibility”. Where are the rest of your number, by the way? They less keen to see justice done?’

‘Went on with the statues to London, sir,’ said Fox. ‘To deliver as ordered. And Sir Harry. But, if you want him back, we can always…’

Sir Richard cut across him. ‘I shall, of course, report this meeting to the inquest, wherever it’s held, but the coroner will undoubtedly conclude what seems clear to me – that Sir Harry died by misadventure – horse startled by lightning and so on. Or maybe, as Doctor Gifford says, he got a clout on the ear from God. If anything changes, I shall let you know. Good night to you all. I’m off back to my bed.’ He levered himself to his feet. ‘As for you two, if I hear of you still in the parish tomorrow morning, I’ll clap you up as vagrants.’

‘There is also the question of our wages,’ said Fox.

‘At last we come to the nub,’ said Sir Richard. He leaned on the table with exaggerated patience. ‘Speak.’

‘We did our part as contracted. Sir Harry hadn’t paid us when he died. The statues came from Hawkridge estate. And then my carts…That gentleman over there ordered them wrecked…’

‘Get out!’ bellowed Sir Richard. ‘Herne! Tuddenham! See them off the estate.’

The two men gave Zeal wide berth as they fled.

‘Londoners!’ exclaimed Sir Richard before the door had quite closed.

‘I must have my turn to speak!’

The trumpet of Gifford’s voice arrested the general surge of rising, adjusting clothes and preparing to leave. Zeal pulled back her hand from pinching out one of the candle flames.

The minister gathered them up with a penetrating gaze as he did his congregation before commencing a sermon, his fierce presence far greater than warranted by his small size. ‘No one has yet named the true wickedness in this case!’ He pointed a knobbed forefinger at Zeal while his eyes probed her soul. ‘Mistress, you may not have murdered Sir Harry, but you still must be chastised for your true crime.’

Zeal inhaled sharply and sat down on her stool again. He has sniffed out the fornication, she thought. Those eyes of his can see that I’m pregnant.

She knew without doubt that her guilt was both infinite and written clearly on her face.

‘She already knows what I will say!’ cried Gifford in triumph. ‘Look at the knowledge in her face!’

‘Knowledge of what?’ she managed to ask.

Gifford shook his head as if in pain at her mendacity. ‘I do not doubt that your former husband was struck down by a righteous God for his prime part in it, but you too must share the blame!’

He knows about the perjury! She felt she might faint.

He knows that the annulment was a fraud. He knows everything.

She gripped the sides of her stool and braced herself upright.

‘When, like Moses, madam, you see that your people worship idols, you must do as he did and take those abominations and burn them in the fire, and grind them into powder and strew that upon the water and make the people drink of it.’

Zeal stared, trying to make sense of his words. Idols? Was I spied at the Lady Tree? Does he want me to chop down the tree?

‘You know what I speak of, madam. Don’t pretend.’ The pointing finger stabbed at her across the width of the table. ‘You have tolerated abomination! As for your parson, I am dismayed that he did not counsel you like a Christian. I hold him, too, responsible.’

‘Doctor Bowler is guilty as well?’ Zeal managed to ask at last.

‘The statues, madam! Graven images! Lewd, naked, heathen idols, standing there for all to see. Sir Harry may have set them up, but I expected you to tear them down as soon as he took his authority away with him.’

‘The statues?’ Zeal swallowed and took a deep breath to hold down a belch of hysterical laughter. ‘This is all about Nereus and the nymphs?’ In spite of her effort at self-control, she hiccuped.

‘“And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever and they have no rest day nor night who worship the beast and his image.” Are heathen idols not wickedness enough for my concern?’

‘I did not think of them as idols, Doctor Gifford. Nor, I’m sure, did Sir Harry. They are works of art. Representations of abstract beauty and the wholesome ideas of nature, as given form by the Classical authorities…’