Chapter Nine #4
Tristan had taken to resting his head against the carriage, stooped low so that wild hair obscured his features, the shock of the wheels against the road having freed a strand or two.
He stared blearily ahead, appearing like a wisp of his former self, skin so pale as to put him back in the mind of Aubrey.
With tenderness, his heart ached at the memory of that tower.
Now the third Stanley brother was imprisoned like a prince, locked away with so many guards surrounding as to make up a dragon.
But no fairytale would have a mere scullion as its noble protagonist, nor turn the sky to smoke with innocents burnt.
‘Are you coming, Dermot? Mr Weston is expecting you,’ Robert said.
Knees failing him, at once weak and shaking as he was summoned, he glimpsed the men and women lining the street and then, finally, the town square itself.
The benches were filled by men who sat fat and happy, wives by their side with a gaggle of well-dressed, laughing children.
Grey houses were to their left, columns holding up balconies with shuddering knuckles made of stone.
Fumbling towards Weston, he heard a young girl ask her mother what manner of man he was, only for the woman to reply that he was some sort of beast. Curling his fists, he despised the people looking on.
They all thought he was doing some dastardly deed while they sat in anticipation of it.
Only then did it occur to him, belatedly, that their ride had gone on for longer than usual.
Heart battering through hot flesh, he came to stand next to Weston with tears in his eyes. Hands lurching forward as if to grab hold of the witchfinder, he at once steadied himself and put both firmly at his side, shivering.
‘I see you are well. The day is upon us at last. Thank God, as Mr Thorne would say. Both witches are already tied to the pyre, as you’ve no doubt observed, by some of the men just before you arrived.
Now all we require is a man such as yourself to light the thing.
I’ll be off just to the side, should you require my assistance,’ Weston said, clapping a hand over Dermot’s shoulder.
A country gentleman, he called himself, so there was no need to earn money through these schemes. It seemed he simply enjoyed it.
Refusal on his tongue, he wondered where he might flee. Aubrey was a prisoner, Maldred an absolute unknown, and his childhood village doubtless to be a hunting ground soon enough. There was nowhere.
He brought the torch Weston passed him, a piece of wood already lit, to the sad pile that would be the undoing of aunt and nephew.
They were both tied to a makeshift log that looked to have been felled for the purpose.
It occurred to him the carriage must’ve been driven around town, for how else could such a thing be accomplished so quickly.
The blaze fluttered at him, a myriad of red and orange. Dermot jerked back, astonished, flinging it into the wood pile out of instinct. Chest heaving, he did not know whether to curse Maldred or pray to him. The crowd began hollering, Weston shouting instructions he could not discern.
Enduring servitude in his twenties brought about an absolute disdain for religion. It gave men like Robert leave to lord over him without consequence. Yet, as fire spluttered and simmered, embers bounding up at him with a hiss, his lips murmured the first prayer he’d ever uttered.
‘She burns!’ Weston shouted. As if it were not patently obvious.
‘Not my nephew, no!’ the aunt screamed.
Dermot twitched and cast his eyes to the wood. They had not spared enough coin for another pyre, and being peasants they were deemed unworthy of dignity. The nephew was tied to the other side, their forms bound so closely that their hands, if permitted another inch, would’ve been able to touch.
At the woman’s cries, a few in the crowd began imitating her earnest pleas for help. This only shamed Dermot more, for some of them were islanders themselves.
‘And have you, Dermot, perhaps considered finding a witchfinder and apprenticing yourself?’ Weston asked, startling Dermot from his thoughts.
Stomach turning to bile, Dermot strove to look elsewhere and made his first mistake.
He glimpsed the aunt. She was not high up like he imagined, though her head had reeled back in anguish so all he could perceive was her heaving chest. The smoke was too pervasive, smell pungent and totally unlike the kitchen, scented as it was with human flesh.
The crowd behaved as though possessed. Some jumped in anticipation, others mimicked the screams of the accused.
A few small children began to cry, though this was swiftly remedied by their mothers.
The laughter did not abate. With each small cruelty, the people grew bolder, so when the screams reached their crescendo, they were matched by screeching thrill.
‘Maldred, why do you not…’ Dermot started, cursing himself when he observed Weston peering over his shoulder.
‘Maldred, is it?’ Weston said. ‘A pretty name. Unusual, yes, but perhaps quite fetching on the right sort of young man.’
A stray tear lingered above his lip, his nose twitching involuntarily as the full stench reached him. It was too much like a pig on the roast. Clutching his collar tighter, he stepped back and fell into Weston. The man’s bumbling hands hardly stopped him, the stronger man, from hitting the ground.
‘Dear me. Perhaps you are too excited. This is, after all, your first burning,’ Weston said, steadying him before moving swiftly to the side, ensuring he could not in good conscience offer any further assistance.
Helplessly putting one foot forward as to not fall head first onto the floor, Dermot’s eyes opened as if to a theatre, the curtains drawn back at last. The aunt no longer moved, her body limp and stooped over as far as the rope would permit, spittle oozing from her mouth.
The nephew he could not discern, the boy being on the opposite side of the pyre, and for that at least he was thankful as he leaned over and retched.
The bile that spewed out of him and onto the pavement’s fissures made him heave again.
All that stopped him from collapsing was the stark reminder Robert watched, and no doubt his keen, reptilian gaze would find Dermot on the floor.
‘Are you feeling alright, man? Is it the smell? Here, take my handkerchief. I’m more than used to it by now,’ Weston chatted, coolly grasping Dermot’s hand and laying down the fabric. ‘I scent it every day with Matth… that is, Mr Thorne’s, fragrance.’
Utterly at a loss, Dermot breathed deep.
Mr Thorne, that loathsome devil, veiled in his mist of divine deception.
He tore himself away at once, eyes burning as he again glimpsed the pyre, now shrouded by smoke so black he had to inch away in fear for his own life.
He could only hope aunt and nephew, either gone from this world or left insensible, were finally at peace.
‘Thorne is the witch,’ Dermot murmured, incensed.
With pleasure, he watched Weston’s brows raise as the man coloured and choked out a few words. He was unable to offer any rebuttal, for it was true.
‘Condemned to the fire where they belong. It cannot do to have my people suffer,’ Robert said. Dermot knew him at once. That great declaration, the booming voice that at once set him to terror.
Weston fixed his hands on Dermot’s shoulders and firmly steered him towards Robert. He was shaking and could not feign indifference as a stronger man might. When his eyes met Robert’s, he flinched away.
‘Masterfully done, Lord Robert. Indeed, I have never before seen such an efficient burning, and many have I attended,’ Weston said.
His benign, inoffensive little voice wore at Dermot like thread.
‘And I will be able to take the bodies for my own investigations, as we have discussed? You mustn’t think me peculiar, Dermot.
I have a great interest in the sciences, as you well know. ’
That aunt and nephew would be desecrated even in death made his mask slip. Closing his eyes, he knew he would weep that night. When the consequences of serving Robert were worse than leaving him, he could not rightly remain. There was no justification for committing the same sin twice.
‘Oh? I had forgotten,’ Robert said. ‘It spares my men the trouble of burying them. Why debase the land with such people, after all.’
In Dermot’s nightmares, both aunt and nephew ceased to exist after the fire.
He thought they would simply turn to cinders.
But, on listening to Weston continue, Dermot’s eyes bulged and he whirled around, heaving a second time.
What came out of him was little more than water, but it was the act itself that horrified.
The crowd shrieked. His body had come undone on Robert’s gleaming black boots.
‘Dear me,’ Weston said again.
‘Dermot,’ Robert hissed. His teeth ground together like a wolf straining to bite. ‘I dare say I am no longer hungry!’
That, at least, was a relief. Even the crowd might’ve turned against Robert if they’d seen him eating next to the pyre.
But Dermot clutched his stomach all the harder at the realisation he’d be confined in the carriage.
Body curling in on itself as he tried to appear smaller, he watched Robert’s dark eyes for some sign and found nothing.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Robert said, stepping away from Dermot’s vomit.
‘Two vile witches felled with the help of our infamous witchfinders. A round of applause for Mr Weston.’ He held out his hand and shook Weston’s for but a moment.
‘As I depart, recall that you must keep a watchful eye over your own communities. If such evil can reach our peaceful island, we must remain vigilant, lest it happen again.’ He strode back to the carriage to cheers from the braying mob.