Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [499]
Until he saw a figure below in the shadows.
It was tall, wrapped in a black cloak, and it was moving towards him.
Obadiah Shockley moved silently along the river’s edge. This would be his last journey. One final sheep would die, on the day she left the farm, then no more. Such proof had already impressed Hopkins and would be devastating at the trial.
By the water’s edge, a single swan pushed out into the river, so as not to encounter him.
The sheep house lay some way up the slope and he drew level with it. Obadiah left the valley bottom and made his way swiftly towards it. How tall he seemed in the faint light.
It was while Obadiah was coming up the slope that Samuel realised what he must do. Running quickly down from his vantage point, and keeping the sheep house between them, he reached the door a hundred yards ahead of Obadiah. A slight dip in the path gave him a second when the preacher could not see the door of the sheep house and he used it to slip inside.
His heart beat wildly as he looked for a place to hide. The sheep stirred uneasily. There were three pens there and a space in the far corner where a handcart stood beside two bales of hay. In a moment he was behind them.
When Obadiah entered he was swift. Hardly bothering even to glance round, he walked straight to the nearest pen and selected a sheep at random. Then reaching to his belt, he pulled out a little pouch and poured out some small pellets into his hand. He fed them to the sheep. Whatever they were, he had prepared them well; the sheep ate pacifically from his hand. As soon as the sheep had eaten most of the pellets, he stepped back, took a last, cold look at it, and was gone.
Samuel waited as long as he could, until he reckoned Obadiah must be twenty yards away, then raced across to the sheep. He prised open its mouth. It was still half full. Reaching in, he pulled out all he could until he had half a handful. Then he waited, several minutes, until he was sure that Obadiah would be gone.
He had decided what to do.
It was an informal court, for in recent years the operations of the justices had been less well organised than in formal times. To suit himself, Sir Henry Forest had convened it in the great hall of his own manor house.
But a court it was, a petty session, with its proceedings properly recorded and forwarded to the next quarter sessions. The magistrate sat on a high-backed chair, behind an oak table, raised on a low platform, and he looked impressive.
There was a crowd of fifty standing pressed against the back wall of the hall. For there were few in Avonsford who were not curious to see the Shockley woman brought before the magistrate by her own brother.
As Margaret and her accusers came forward, Sir Henry Forest’s stern face gave nothing of his own feelings away.
In fact, his feelings were very mixed. Like many justices, who were mostly of the gentry, he did not believe in witchcraft. Still less did he believe in most of the evidence presented at witchcraft trials. On the whole by this time, local justices and the judges in the Assize courts were trying to discourage these prosecutions. But the state of popular opinion was still some way behind them. Secretly, Forest despised the proceedings from beginning to end. But wisdom taught him to give the people at least some of what they want. If they wanted to burn Margaret Shockley as a witch and her brother and Matthew Hopkins were set on it, then he supposed she would have to burn. In any case, he did not have to try the case, only send it to a higher court.
The private revelation of the Jew however made him uneasy. He looked at the parties before him warily.
Margaret’s face was pale. Its expression registered nothing except contempt. Since it was clear to her that every hand was now against her, she looked at no one, not even Samuel.
But the evidence, briefly recited by Hopkins, was devastating. Her dressing up in men’s clothes, and fighting with a strength which, he suggested, could not be natural; her conversation with animals;