As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(24)

“Word would get round. Gossip would see to it that the villagers would stop bringing him their custom. They would begin carting their grain to Bishop’s Lacey, instead. She and Johannes would come to ruin, while others prospered.

“All of this and more ran through her mind as she lay awake, the moonbeams streaming in through the casement window as if it were broad daylight, illuminating her sleeping husband’s back—and its lurking purple pimple.

“She reached over and took the thing between thumb and forefinger—”

Jaws dropped round the circle of girls.

“It was almost too easy. With an audible pop!”—I made the sound with my finger in my cheek—“the thing broke, and the pus came out. She urged it along a little, coaxing it until there was nothing left in it but blood.

“Her husband stirred, gave a long sigh, rolled over, and began to snore.

“Next morning, he complained of a scratched back. ‘You must have rolled against the wattle,’ she told him, and he said no more about it.

“But as time went on, the pimple began to fill again, even more red and angry, if that were possible, than before.

“As she had done the first time, the miller’s wife waited until a Saturday night when he was sleeping off a second (or perhaps third) pot of ale, and then she broke it again, this time with more confidence—almost joyously.

“It surprised her that, rather than being fearful, she now actually enjoyed popping the pimple.

“As the years went by, the purple pimple bloomed, each time bigger and more livid than the time before. It was, she thought, as if Hell itself were filling the thing with foul and sulfurous matter thrown up from deep down in the inferno that was her husband, Johannes.

“The miller’s wife found herself looking forward—almost impatiently—to the next swelling of the infernal bag, which had now become a cyst. She could hardly wait, each time, for its slow and weary filling.

“And then one night the miller died. Between the beefsteak and the beer. Just like that!

“He keeled over at the table and was dead before his face hit the floor.

“The old woman was filled with mortal fear! Had she killed him with her incessant and secret tampering? Would he still be alive, eating roast beef and parsnips, if she had left well enough alone?

“Would she be taken by the high sheriff and hanged for her crime?

“And so she kept her silence and told no one about the pimple, or what she had done, and a few days later, the miller was laid to rest in the transept of St. Rumwold, under the lid of a massive slab tomb, with his name and dates carved upon the lid.

“Time passed, and the village began to forget him, as villages do with things that are always under their noses.

“But Johannes’s wife did not forget him. Oh, no—quite the contrary!

“She lay awake nights, thinking not of her husband, but of the excrescence which was quite possibly still growing between his shoulder blades—even in the grave. With no one to empty it, she thought, the thing would go on filling. She thought of it there in the darkness of his coffin, growing and growing and growing—untended. Neglected.

“She thought of it as hers.

“And to be truthful, she missed it. Missed squeezing the thing. Missed hearing it pop.

“She could hardly bear thinking about it. It was quite clear what she should do.

“And so on a moonless night, the old woman crept quietly through the sleeping village and made her way by a roundabout route along the riverbank to the church.

“Inside, she blessed herself, said a dozen Our Fathers and two-dozen Hail Marys, and, with a stout iron poker she had brought from her own hearth concealed in her shawl, pried open the lid of the tomb.”

I paused in my tale to look round me. The candle flame was perfectly smooth and still. No one was breathing.

Even Jumbo’s mouth was agape. “And …?” she whispered in a husky voice, the word rising in wisps at the end like smoke from a wooden match.

“There in his stone box lay the miller, just as she had last seen him. In fact, he appeared to have changed hardly at all. Had he been miraculously preserved, as some saints were said to remain, forever incorrupt?

“Or—and the hair on her head rose as she thought of it—was he still alive?”

Again I paused for my words to have their effect. One of the girls on the far side of the circle had quietly begun to sob.

“It was not easy, but she … rolled … him … over,” I said slowly, “and hauled up the hem of the shroud … in which all but his head had been wrapped.”

The silence was by now unbearable. I let it lengthen, watching the reaction of each of them.

“And there … there was the gigantic pimple, swollen by now to the size of a pomegranate—and much the same livid color, as if it were full of blood!

“The wife’s hands shook as she reached for the thing …

“And as she reached there came a sudden hollow groan!

“ ‘No-o-o-o-o-o-o!’

“—as if the miller’s corpse were protesting, as if he wanted to keep this treasure for himself, to take away into eternity. A ruby made of skin.

“In spite of her fear, the old woman leaned even closer. It would take only a moment and then she would be gone, her duty done. I shall leave it to the Lord, she thought, to say if I be right or wrong.”