Page 142

The dream did not keep the days between that door and the next one. He was walking beneath an arch with a folded paper in his hand, and the air smelled of damp stone. The date upon the paper belonged to October, in the year 1555. Below it stood his wife’s name.

She had been examined again. She would not retract what she had said of the consecrated bread. The Church had pronounced its sentence and delivered her to the secular officers. Nicholas had read the words until they ceased to look like words, but he had not ceased to understand them.

He had thought fear would make her yield.

The keeper let him into a small room. Elspeth sat upon a bench beneath the window. Her gown was creased where she had slept in it, and one cuff hung loose. She did not rise.

“They will hear you still,” he said.

She looked at the paper.

“What must I say?”

The question filled him with relief. He stepped nearer.

“That you were in error. That you submit yourself to the Church.”

“And afterwards?”

“You may come home.”

“To a locked chamber?”

“Elspeth.”

“To a husband who keeps my words until he needs a weapon?”

He heard a movement beyond the door and lowered his voice. “Do you wish the keeper to hear?”

“Will you send him in if I do not speak more softly?”

He wanted to shake her. He wanted to kneel beside her and put his face against her knees. Both desires shamed him, and he stood holding the paper between them.

“Only say it,” he begged.

She pressed her lips together. Her eyes filled. He had expected the stubbornness of their quarrels; the sight of her fear was much worse.

“I have tried to pray it true,” she said. “It does not become true because I am afraid.”

He looked away.

“Nicholas. Look at me.”

He could not.

The dream brought him out into daylight.

The public common sloped above the road to Pember Lee. People stood upon the wet grass, leaving a cleared space about a stake and the bundles stacked beside it. Officers kept the way open. A priest held a book against his breast. Beyond the crowd Nicholas could see his own roofs and the wall which enclosed the house and its service buildings.

He had once brought Elspeth up this slope to show her how far the land extended. She had caught his hand, more interested in walking beside him than in the fields he meant her to admire.

Now a woman pulled her child behind her skirts when Elspeth passed.

“Witch,” somebody whispered.

The officer who heard it ordered silence. The sentence read aloud concerned heresy. Nicholas heard the two accusations mingling behind him nevertheless. A woman who worked with red thread, a woman who spoke against the sacrament: the people upon the common had made one frightful creature of them.

Elspeth stumbled at the rough wood. A man steadied her and fastened the rope about her waist. Another passed a chain round the stake. She looked into their faces as they worked, as though one might yet decide to help her differently.