Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [500]
Forest had to admire the thoroughness of the case. He looked about for anyone to contradict the charges. He did not expect anything.
But now, Samuel stepped forward and to everyone’s astonishment announced that he had testimony. Forest frowned.
“Are you sure?” What could he know?
He was sure.
His face was very pale, his back straight. Samuel Shockley stood in the middle of the great hall and told them what he knew. He told them how a passer-by had seen Obadiah in the sheep house. Obadiah shrugged, as though it meant nothing. The crowd murmured. He told them how for three mornings he had waited and watched. Obadiah said nothing but began to look uneasy.
Then he described, moment by moment, all that he had seen that morning, up to the point when Obadiah left the sheep house. And the crowd in the court fell silent.
As he went on, Obadiah’s face grew ashen. He began to tremble, not with fear but with rage. Was yet another of his family, a new generation, to ridicule him – to destroy his hard-won reputation? He began to shake with rage. He would destroy this boy.
His anger made him incautious.
“’Tis a lie,” he cried. “All a lie to save his sister who is sunk in sin.”
It was too much. Now Samuel feared neither Obadiah, nor Forest, nor the witch hunter any longer. And as he exploded, he used the Old Testament gestures and phrases which were all he knew.
Reaching into the little bag at his side, he marched to the table and poured the contents out upon it.
“Then what is this?” he shouted. “Poison! This is what I pulled, from the sheep’s mouth, after you left.” He turned to Forest. “Feed it to a sheep and see how it does. Search him and his house and you may find more.”
Obadiah’s mouth had fallen open. He almost staggered back.
“Viper!” the boy cried, raising his arm and pointing his finger at the preacher: “False witness.” His blue eyes flashed with rage. “See him grow pale, who tried to murder his sister. Abomination of desolation,” he cried, carried away with the grand Biblical words that suddenly welled up within him, “sitting in the temple where it ought not.” And then, overcome with rage at what had been done to Margaret, at how he himself had been made to doubt her, he added the words of contempt that only he, Margaret and Obadiah understood: “Biter.”
Without waiting to be told what to do, he walked to the back of the court.
Long before the boy had finished, Forest had seen what to do. After this, the Jew, too, might speak. He could see trouble ahead – it must all be stopped.
He beckoned Obadiah and Hopkins to approach him.
“Withdraw this matter.” He looked at Hopkins. “This case will not work in Sarum.”
Hopkins nodded. He had no wish to spoil his cause. There were plenty of witches elsewhere. Obadiah said nothing and was ignored.
“The complaint is withdrawn,” Forest calmly announced to the crowd, and moved swiftly on to other business.
There was a happy reunion at the farm between Samuel Shockley and Margaret that afternoon.
But to Samuel’s surprise, a week later, it was Margaret who insisted he return to the Forests.
“Come and see me here, Samuel,” she told him. “But it is time, now, that you learned to be a scholar.”
Aaron the Jew left Wilton for Southampton soon afterwards. As he took the road from Wilton, he met Sir Henry Forest, who looked at him cautiously.
Aaron was wise. He looked down and did not meet Sir Henry’s eye.
1688: DECEMBER
Doctor Samuel Shockley stepped over the watercourse in New Street, which still stank despite the cold weather, and made his way swiftly towards the close.
Today was a great day; today England was having a revolution and in a few hours he would meet the man who would soon be the new king.
“Then, thank God, we shall have seen the last of these accursed Stuarts