by Jane Adams
‘You will not tell that man, Prescott? He sees evil in all things. Think what he should see in this.’
It was as if she had read his mind, dragged his darkest visions to the surface and displayed them before the world. And suddenly he was afraid of something else. What if this woman should seek further mischief and herself tell Prescott of what his child had done? He felt the bile rise into his throat, aware that by coming here he might have played right into the devil’s hands.
Angrily, he turned away. Then paused at the door. ‘Should any harm come to my child because of this, woman, you will rue the day that ever you were born. I will make the suffering that Prescott heaped upon you seem tame. I vow this.’
Kitty laughed. As had happened that day in the churchyard, the laughter rose unbidden and she could do nothing to prevent it. She laughed until her lungs, already made painful by the fetid air, burned and choked. She laughed until she could no longer draw breath. And Randall watched her, his eyes wide and throat tight with horror. He fled from her cell and out through the prison yard to where his horse was tethered. It had little time to rest and usually Randall was so careful of the beast, but this time, he could think of nothing but Kitty’s laughter as he had pleaded for the very soul of his child. He whipped his horse until its mouth and flanks foamed and it began to stumble, forcing him to slow down, but all the time, above the noise of hoofbeats, the woman’s laughter echoed in his head.
Part V
Chapter Sixty-five
Katherine Mary Hallam was sentenced to die on the morning of 23 September and Mim had arrived at the Southgates in Leicester at dawn that morning.
It had been a long walk, many lonely frightening hours of it and Mim wondered if it had been all for nothing. What could she do now that she was here? She had prayed that, should she be in the crowd, Kitty might know it somehow and feel less alone. Less betrayed.
People already lined the route to Gaeltree Gate. The crowd buzzing with gossip about the witch that was to die that day. Mim could not recognize Kitty in their accounts of her. She felt tears welling in her eyes and, drawing her shawl close round her face, moved to the edge of the crowd so that none might remark them.
The best that could be hoped was that death would come swiftly. She had seen folk hang and heard of many more, dancing to the hangman’s tune for minutes at a time as they slowly had the life choked out of them.
She had been hesitant about coming because it meant that she must leave Hope behind, the child still closed up in her room, with her mother still shrieking about the witch who would not leave her in peace. The decision had been made for her by Master Randall. He had returned from his errand in the town in the early hours of morning, his face white and his body shaking as though the devil himself had chased him home. Randall’s horse had been blowing and sweating and had weals across its flanks where the man had beaten it into flight. The stableman had poulticed them, but the creature had grown fey and wild with Randall’s treatment of it and it had bitten the stableman’s hand for his trouble.
That was not like Master Randall, Mim acknowledged. Something had frightened him and done so to the extent that his reason had fled almost as much as his wife’s had done.
Hope was to be dispatched that same day to join her brother at their cousins’ home and Mim had not even been permitted to say goodbye. Suddenly, she was tainted by Kitty’s friendship as never before and barred from the Randall house. Mim had packed a few belongings for her journey and she had left the village.
Now that she was here, Mim was uncertain what to do.
A sudden excited murmur rose amongst the crowd. The castle gate was open, the time had come.
* * *
For much of the day Mim had wandered, dazed and invisible on the busy streets not knowing what to do next. Nightfall found her by the castle gate, staring up at the place where Kitty had spent her last days.
A man emerged from a small side door and crossed the green towards her. He was in servant’s garb, but comfortably dressed and his step was assured as he came towards her.
‘Your name is Mim?’
She was completely taken aback. ‘What if it is?’
‘A friend to the witch.’
Mim stared at him, wondering whether to run or if he would call the guard.
‘No, mistress,’ he said, ‘have no fear of me. She told me you would come.’
Mim gaped at him. ‘I’ve done no wrong, sir. I came here simply on a whim. I did not—’
‘Please, mistress, do not deny your friend.’ He took a small leather pouch from his pocket and drew from it a small fold of cloth. ‘She bid me give you this,’ he said, ‘and told me not to feel sorrow for her. She feels that God at least will judge her rightly.’
‘Who are you, sir?’ Mim asked him.
‘Sad to say, mistress, I was her jailor. I witnessed all that was done to her and all that passed between the woman and those that set themselves to judge her. Go now, before someone sees and questions what you do here.’
Without another word, Mim left him and hurried away. Only later, when she paused in the light shed from an inn window, did she unwrap the twist of fabric that the man had given to her. Inside was a lock of hair and a brief note, scribbled on a scrap of crumpled paper.
Mim could barely read, but she made out two words. The name of Thomas Stone.
* * *
Morning found her curled asleep upon the doorstep of Matthew Jordan’s kinsman and the servant that found her was more inclined to beat her for a vagrant than allow her entry.
Finally, Mim’s cries attracted the attention of Matthew’s niece. She remembered Mim from visits to her uncle’s house.
Mim stood, watching the pair at breakfast as Thomas Stone took the note from her hand and read it, deep puzzlement in his eyes and Mim, not having eaten since dawn of the day before, stood almost fainting in the centre of the room.
‘You say that she knew that you would come?’
‘So her jailer told me, sir.’
‘And yet, from what you tell me, you decided to travel here only on the morning of her hanging?’
‘The feeling grew upon me, sir, and after the master returned in such a state, I had to come.’
Thomas Stone looked anxiously at his wife.
‘You have read this note?’ he asked Mim.
She shook her head. ‘I could make out your name, sir, but nothing more. Mistress Hallam did try to teach me, but I was not apt.’
Thomas Stone fell silent. He did not speak for so long that Mim thought he must have quite forgotten her. Then he said, ‘You were a good and faithful servant to my uncle, and I do not believe that you are tainted with evil because of your friendship with our unfortunate cousin.’ He paused. ‘She asks that we care for you and give you work in our house. What do you understand by that? When she left you were in full employ and in no need of help.’
Mim shook her head. ‘I do not know.’
He sighed. ‘It is true that since we moved within the town many of our servants have left to meet the call of war. You could be useful to us.’
‘I would be faithful, sir. As I was to Master Jordan.’
And so it was arranged. Mim kept house and ruled the kitchen and Thomas Stone kept secret the second message in the note, as Kitty had requested, until the time that she had asked it to be told. And it crossed his mind more than once in coming years, that although he could not see the punishment as just, the charges against Katherine Mary Hallam might have been seen to be true.
* * *
James Eton stood at the back of the church and listened to Randall preach. He was already dressed for the journey that would take him to join the King’s men, a decision taken less from conviction that Charles was right in what he did and more from fear of what pass a land left to the likes of Randall might come to.
He had arranged for his house to be closed down and given his duties as a tithingman over to Thomas Stone, suggesting that he and his wife come and manage the es
tate for him and live in the dower house, an establishment it would be easy enough to run with the few servants they had left, those that the war had not claimed.
Thomas Stone had accepted readily, and taken on the obligation to collect the tithes. He had been eager to leave a town he saw would be drawn further into the conflict and it was no difficulty for him to take over for his business the stables and coach houses on the Eton estate. Boots and saddles could be made anywhere and in such a backwater as Oscombe, his skilled men and apprentices were less likely to be commandeered.
Eton himself had no wish for a swift return. His inability to be of real help to Kitty played upon his mind and he had made a will to the effect that the Stones were granted the dower house in perpetuity if he should die. They were his last link to Kitty and to Matthew, who had been his dearest friend. Eton had few kin and none close. He had no children of his own, though he would have been content if in time that could have been rectified by his marriage to Kitty. He had hesitated too long, knowing Matthew’s fondness for her. As his wife he could have given her protection from the likes of Randall and he knew that he would spend an entire lifetime blaming himself for this fault.
From the pulpit, Randall met his eyes. ‘God has meted out justice to this evil doer, this child of Satan,’ he pronounced, ‘and we must pray to the Lord that no others among us have been contaminated by such depravity.’
Eton waited to hear no more. He left the church and rode away at a gallop, never even looking back at Oscombe vale.
The war claimed him and he never returned.
Chapter Sixty-six
The days after Walters and Enwright were arrested passed uneventfully and Ray had to admit that he was bored. The house sale would be going through, so at least there would be money in the bank. George had assured him that his retirement package would still be offered, but Ray was determined not to count on anything before it happened.
He felt as though he was just waiting for something to happen and it was frustrating in the extreme. He messed about in the garden, saw as much of Sarah as he could, made plans with George, but was painfully aware of the one last thread waiting to be tied. The little box containing Kitty’s locket.
Then, John called with the news they had waited for. He had found Matthew Jordan’s grave.
‘I was looking in the wrong place,’ he said. ‘I assumed he’d been buried in Leicester, but I’d drawn a total blank. Then I began looking at the villages. Matthew was taken back to the place he was born and buried there, away from the fighting. The stone fell down years ago, but the parish records are complete and there was an inventory made in about 1820 marking all the graves.’
They chose a Monday morning to go to Foston, assuming that it would be quiet then, following the single-track road and parking on the muddy frontage of the church.
Matthew’s grave was right at the back of the churchyard and they took the locket there, Ray and Sarah, John and his family, and John cut a square of turf with his penknife, scooped out the earth beneath until he had a hole about a foot deep. Then they placed the little box inside.
Once the turf had been replaced nothing could be seen. John said the prayers for the dead over the grave and Beth placed a posy of flowers cut from Mathilda’s garden close by, though not too close to the hole that they had made. ‘Flowers for Katherine,’ Maggie said. She smiled at Ray.
‘We still don’t know how she died,’ Sarah reminded them.
‘I’m not sure that it matters now. We know that she was innocent and Matthew knew that too. I think that was all she cared about.’
‘Unless she escaped?’ Ray said. The others looked at him. ‘There was a war on. There might have been an opportunity.’ He looked vaguely embarrassed. ‘I don’t know. I just want to think she did.’
‘There’s no record of her being hanged,’ Sarah mused.
‘No, and I like the idea that she got away.’ He nodded to himself and walked away from the little group, determined to believe that, no matter what the odds, it was the way it should have been for Kitty Hallam.
Chapter Sixty-seven
It was nine years since Kitty’s arrest and much in Mim’s world had changed.
King Charles had been tried and executed in the January of 1649 and a month later his son had been proclaimed King in Scotland, though the leaders of the Commonwealth had declared this illegal and of no consequence. The proclamation had been followed the next year by the young Charles being crowned at Scone and the Scots marching south to restore him to the English throne.
Only a few days previously, the Scottish army had been defeated at Worcester and their men scattered and pursued. Mim pitied any that might be captured by Cromwell’s men. Death would not be swift in coming. There had been rumours of torture and brutality.
The worst news brought out of this time, Mim thought, was Master Eton’s death. He had followed his King and then his King’s son, but Worcester had ended it for him.
Mim had been amazed that he had survived that long, knowing the privations that the army had suffered and the troubles of exile. Much of Eton’s land had been sold and only the fact that it had been under the protection of Master Stone (whose skill at changing his coat with fortune left Mim amazed) meant that the rest had not been seized. Thomas Stone was clever in his dealings with others and even Master Randall had no ill word to say.
And now this new turn of events. That morning Master Stone had called her to his chamber. He had Kitty’s final letter on the table at his side and he spoke to her gravely.
‘She left these words for you and I must confess, I have been in two minds about speaking them. She bid you go to her old home on this morning and to take with you the lock of her hair. She claimed in her letter that Mistress Hope Randall would return today and would come to you.’ He shook his head. ‘I would not speak ill of Kitty, Mim, but sometimes I do wonder about her. Hope has not visited her family these many years and I did not look for her to come . . .’
‘And now the summer fever took her mother. You believe that Kitty knew. That she foretold these things.’
Thomas Stone rose and took the letter in his hand. ‘Mim, you should go because this was the last of your friend’s wishes and, for Matthew’s sake, I feel we should respect them. But if this should come into the wrong hands, the whole vile business could begin again.’
Mim nodded. ‘You should burn the letter, sir,’ she said. She took a wooden splint from the jar above the fire and lit it. She had wondered at his insistence upon a fire on a day that was not really cold, but he had pleaded a touch of the ague and his wife had said to humour him, as indeed they always did. She lit the taper from the fire and touched it to the letter that he held in his hand. Together they watched the flame eat the last of Kitty’s words and then he dropped the final fragments into the fire and used the poker to break them into dust.
‘I have arranged errands for the Farrants that will take them from home most of the day,’ he said, speaking of the family that now lived in Kitty’s house. ‘Go now, Mim, but I do not wish to know what passes.’
* * *
Mim had not seen Hope Randall since she had left her father’s house, but there was no mistaking the young woman who stood uncertainly at the gate to Kitty’s garden.
‘There’s no one home, Master Stone has made certain of that.’
‘Mim!’ The girl sprang forward to hug her. She looked pale in her mourning clothes but she had grown beautiful and her eyes were bright and kind. ‘How did you know that I was here?’
‘What would have kept you away? You have not changed that much, for all you’ve grown.’
‘I wanted to bring her something,’ Hope said softly. ‘Stupid, I know, after such a time. I wanted to bring flowers, but someone would have seen.’
‘She had all the flowers in life that she could ever need.’
‘But I brought this. It was my mother’s, but I know that I could never wear it and that my father would not notice whether I did or no.’r />
She held out her hand. In her palm lay a silver locket, heavily engraved with twining columbine and wild roses.
Silently, Mim took it from her and placed the lock of hair inside.
‘Is that hers? Oh, Mim, could I . . . ?’
‘No, my sweeting, you should know the dangers in keeping remembrances.’
They buried the locket in the little box that Hope’s mother had kept it in. She rarely wore such things, seeing them as frippery. It was easy to decide where the hiding place should be. A stone slab lay outside the kitchen door and it was easy to scrape away the earth beneath and excavate a hole big enough to hide the box and then pack the earth back with little sign that anything had been disturbed.
And then Mim hugged her and they parted for the final time.
Epilogue
The morning of 23 September was bright and clear and as Kitty was led from her cell the light almost blinded her. She had been moved in secret the night before, from her cell beneath the castle, and brought to the makeshift prison where she and the others had been forced to make grenades. Kitty guessed this place must be closer to the gallows.
Outside, beyond the courtyard gate, stood a cart. On this they would take her to the gallows. They had tied her hands behind her back and a cloth over her mouth to prevent her cursing them. She was still dressed in the clothes that she had worn when they arrested her and Kitty knew she must stink. The prison filth scabbed her skin and her hair was stiff with dirt and full of lice.
She went peacefully enough through the prison gate, escorted by a single guard. A musketeer stood beside the gate, another already in the cart. Further along the route there would be waiting crowds. God-fearing men and women waiting to see the witch hang.