‘I didna kill my husband, my lord.’
‘But... but you confessed to it. Yesterday. You stood in front of me and you said you did it.’
Scrope was leaning forward, half-standing, forgetting himself in his outrage. Mr Aglionby had been very patient with him but now leaned towards him and whispered something sharp in his ear. Scrope coughed and sat down again. Carey was starting to like Mr Aglionby.
‘Please, Mrs Atkinson,’ the Coroner was saying to her. ‘Address yourself to the Court.’
‘Ay sir,’ said Mrs Atkinson, quailing at his annoyance. ‘My lord, I did say so. I’m very sorry. But I wasna on my Bible oath then, and I dare not put my soul at risk wi’ perjury.’
‘What’s your story now?’
‘’Tisn’t a story, your honour,’ said Mrs Atkinson, two hot spots of colour starting in her cheeks. ‘I lied to my lord Warden before, because I’m a poor weak-willed woman and I was frightened. But I’ve had time to think and pray to God and what I’m saying now is God’s own truth, your honour.’
Scrope sniffed eloquently but said nothing.
With the Coroner pumping her with questions, Kate Atkinson told the tale in a stronger voice now Scrope had made her angry. She told the sequence of the morning’s events, how she had left her husband sleeping in the dark before dawn and gone down to milk the cow and how Julia had come and finally brought herself to the moment when she took a tray up to her husband and found him dead in his bed.
‘Your honour,’ said Carey, stepping forward again. ‘May I?’
‘Yes, Sir Robert.’
‘Mrs Atkinson, what did the bedroom look like?’
‘Och, it was terrible, sir. It was all covered wi’ blood, like a butcher’s shambles. It was on the sheets and the blankets and the hangings and the rushes... It made me stomach turn to see.’
‘And your husband?’
‘He was lying on the bed... with... with...’
‘With his throat slit.’
She swallowed hard. Her knuckles were like ivory. ‘Ay sir,’ she said.
‘Tell me, when you got up that morning, did you open the shutters?’
She frowned at this sudden swoop away from the awful sight of her husband’s corpse. ‘I didna,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t usually; Mr Atkinson likes to sleep a little longer and it would wake him.’
‘Did you open them on this day?’
‘Nay sir, I didna.’
‘When you came up to see your husband dead, how did you see him? Was there a candle lit in the room?’
‘Nay, sir, it had burned down. I saw by the daylight... Oh.’
‘Were the shutters open by that time, then, Mrs Atkinson?’
She nodded at him. ‘Ay,’ she said in a surprised tone of voice. ‘Ay, they were, and swinging free, what’s more, not hooked back.’
‘Now tell me what happened after you saw your husband.’
She looked at the floor again and mumbled something.
‘Please speak up, Mistress,’ said Aglionby.
‘I said, I fainted, your honour. Then I couldna think what to do, so I went downstairs again and I sent my little girl Mary to fetch... to fetch my friend, Mr Andrew Nixon.’
Her brow was wrinkled now. ‘When he came, what did he look like?’ Carey asked.
‘Oh, he was not well,’ said Mrs Atkinson. ‘He’d been in a fight, and lost it by the looks of him, and his right hand was in a sling and at first he said he didna want to meet my husband because he was angry.’
‘Quite so,’ said Carey hurriedly. ‘What did you decide to do?’
‘Neither of us could think of anything, sir, so Andy... er... Mr Nixon went to his master, Mr Pennycook, to ask his advice, and he took two pieces of silver plate from my chest wi’ him, for a present.’
‘And what did Mr Pennycook advise?’
‘Well, he said we should borrow his handcart and put m-my husband’s body in a wynd and he’d see to it that ye and yer London servant got the blame, not us.’
‘How?’
‘He said he could get hold of one of Barnabus Cooke’s knives wi’ a bit of luck, for the week before he’d left it in pledge at Madam Hetherington’s, which is a house with a lease he owns. He sent Michael Kerr to Andy with it, as well as the handcart. I was busy at washing the sheets and blankets—it took all day—but I sent Mary out and Julia Coldale too and that’s when we brought his body down from the bedroom and into Clover’s byre. Clover’s my cow,’ she added, in case there was any mistake. ‘Andy got the glove.’
This recital was causing immense excitement in the crowd and Aglionby banged with his gavel. The noise died down gradually. Carey saw with interest that Michael Kerr had his face in his hands. Mrs Atkinson had fallen silent.
‘And then?’ he prompted.
‘Well, I kept the children from looking out the window by telling them a story while Andy put the body on the cart under some hay and left it in the back so I could milk Clover before sunset, and then when it was dark, Andy took the cart away.’
