Scarlet Widow by Graham Masterton Page A

you that?’ asked Beatrice. She came out of the pen again and fastened the gate. She was trying to keep calm but her heart was beating fast beneath her stays and she was feeling very hot and breathless.
    ‘The pastor himself told me,’ said Mary.
    ‘You mean the Reverend Scarlet? My husband?’
    ‘Yes, Goody Scarlet. When I was much younger. He said that it was to teach me not to be too proud of my appearance.’
    A ruffed grouse suddenly burst out of the orchard, off to their left, squittering in panic as if it had been disturbed by Satan himself, loping away through the apple trees.

Eleven
    Francis was much later than she had expected in returning home, and the clock in the parlour had chimed eight before Beatrice heard his shay rattling and squeaking down the rutted drive. The sky had turned mauve and it was still very warm, although over to the west an ominous bank of black cloud was building up. Scores of brown bats were flying around the house to catch the insects that were rising up into the evening air.
    She came out with a lantern. Francis was backing Kingdom into the carriage-house so that he could unfasten his harness and lead him into the paddock beside the orchard. It had been a long journey from Bedford, twenty-two miles, and both Francis and Kingdom were covered in a fine whitish dust, like ghosts.
    ‘Thank the Lord you’re back,’ she told him.
    He looked at her quizzically.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.
    ‘You’ll have to come and see for yourself, my darling.’
    ‘No, tell me. Noah’s not sick, is he?’
    ‘Noah’s quite well. It’s the pigs. Mary went to feed them this morning and found every one of them dead.’
    ‘ Dead ? How? What’s happened to them? How can they all be dead?’
    He led Kingdom to the paddock and then accompanied Beatrice around the back of the house to the pig-pen. He stood staring at the dead pigs for a few seconds without saying a word. Then he said, ‘Please, my dear,’ and held out his hand for the lantern. He swung open the gate and went inside, shining the light over each of the animals in turn.
    ‘They don’t have any injuries, or at least none that I can see,’ said Beatrice. ‘But every one of them has a piece of broken looking-glass on its tongue. Mary said that when she was younger you told her a story about such a thing. The Devil’s Communion, that’s what she said.’
    ‘Did you remove them?’
    ‘I took out just the one piece, for you to see.’
    ‘You didn’t take it into the house, I hope?’
    ‘Yes, why? Did I do wrong?’
    ‘You weren’t to know, my dearest. But we must remove it from the house at once. It is a piece of Satan’s mirror, through which the Devil can see us as clearly as we can see ourselves.’
    He looked around at the pigs and shook his head. ‘This is plainly the work of some witch.’
    ‘A witch ? You really think so?’
    ‘Believe me, Bea, Satan is still doing everything he can to prevent us from establishing our faith in this country, and as usual he is using weak and immoral people as his instruments. We were discussing it only today, at the parish meeting, and trying to decide what steps we could take to defend ourselves.’
    ‘But why would anybody kill our pigs? What would be the point of it?’
    ‘I really don’t know, my dearest. Perhaps it’s because I’m a pastor. Shake the roots, Satan surmises, and the whole tree will tremble and all of its fruit fall to the ground and spoil.’
    ‘You don’t really think it could have been a witch?’ asked Beatrice. ‘I mean, look what happened in Salem. So many poor women were hanged for witchery but every one of them was shown in the end to be innocent.’
    ‘I know, yes,’ said Francis. ‘But this is quite different. What happened in Salem was common hysteria. There was no material evidence, only hearsay.
    ‘But here, look, we have the material evidence lying before us, and nothing could be more material than five dead pigs. They have no marks