The Coven by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd.

27

Before she went upstairs, Beatrice went into the kitchen to see what Florence was doing. She found her kneeling on a chair with a large apron tied around her and her cheeks smudged with flour, rolling out pastry. Martha the cook was standing by the hearth, stirring porridge, and she gave Beatrice a quick, beady look when she came in, but then immediately turned her back.

You served up that goat’s head, Martha, thought Beatrice. And it was you who cremated the pig’s head in the fire to try and hide what you’d done.

‘Did you find out where Grace is?’ asked Florence.

‘Not yet. I have to give Eliza her medicine first.’

‘She probably went to buy some bacon. Martha said she’s used up all the bacon because the girls are so greedy. She said they’re greedy pigs!’

‘Yes... perhaps Grace did go shopping,’ said Beatrice, and again she thought, I’m telling another white lie. What is it about St Mary Magdalene’s that has made me so devious?

She kissed Florence on top of the head and then she climbed the stairs to Eliza’s small room at the back of the house. She knocked at the door but there was no reply, so she guessed that Eliza must still be asleep. When she went inside, though, she found that Eliza’s bed was empty. The sheets were twisted like a rope, and the room smelled of stale sweat, but there was no sign of Eliza.

Beatrice went back out onto the landing. As she did so, three girls came down the stairs, giggling.

‘Good morning, Widow Scarlet!’ they chorused.

‘Good morning to you, too,’ said Beatrice. ‘You haven’t seen Eliza, have you?’

‘’Oo’s Eliza?’ asked Hettie, a short bosomy girl with a mass of blonde hair who had already made friends with Florence by teaching her to dance a very bouncy version of the gigue.

‘That girl I brought her here yesterday. She had a bad cough so we put here in this room, in case any of you caught it.’

All three girls shook their curls. ‘No,’ said Hettie. ‘Ain’t seen her. But she ain’t upstairs, I can tell you that for nothin’.’

The girls carried on downstairs and Beatrice was left on the landing, wondering where in the world Eliza could have gone to. Perhaps she had decided that she wanted to return to her life of prostitution, and sneaked out of St Mary Magdalene’s when nobody was looking. Beatrice wouldn’t have been surprised if she had. Even if she followed a pious and moral life, she would probably die before she was thirty-five, as most women did, so why not enjoy the years she had left?

Beatrice was about to go downstairs herself when she heard coughing from inside Eliza’s bedroom. She went back inside, stood perfectly still, and listened; and then she heard two more spluttering coughs, and a wheezing sound. She picked up her skirts and knelt down beside the bed. Eliza was lying underneath, staring at her wide-eyed like a cornered rabbit.

‘Eliza,’ she said. ‘What in the Lord’s name are you doing under your bed?’

‘I don’t want ’im to take me.

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