“I cannot swear on my oath it was her doing, Sire.” Black John twists restlessly in his seat. It is a fine wooden seat, almost like a throne, that elevates him above the common people. “Tell it to me again, your history,” he orders the witness. Cerridwen, her wrists bound before her and legs tied likewise, squats with her back to a pillar behind him, out of his eye. The witness repeats his story as he faces her, avoiding her gaze.
Long, London, to Browne: There was also a genuine Jear of “Sathan” and his works including sorcery, heresy, and what the writer Perkins described later as “the damned Art of Witchcraft.” Witchcraft was tolerated through much of Christendom until Rome linked it to heresy for internal, political reasons at about the time this trial took place.
Browne to Long, London: Or even earlier in some places. Remember the “Canon Episcopy”? All that stuff about “some wicked women are perverted by the Devil so they believe they ride out at night on beasts with Diana, the pagan goddess and a horde of women.” That was A.D. 900.
ON THE FOURTH DAY, the Ecclesiastical Court hears the testimony of one Symonds, wheelwright, red of hair and quick of temper. Symonds for years past has sought to bed Cerridwen, and always did she stifle his lust with laughter. Now comes his revenge.
“I have heard the woman say to others of her persuasion, ”May the injured Lucifer greet thee.“ I have seen her at full moon trip naked and consort with things not of this world.”
Consort? How, “consort”?—“In her body. Couple with Sathan in the form of a black dog, sire.”
A sigh of horror mixed with satisfaction—a catharsis—overcomes those present. They cross themselves piously even as they revel in its sinfulness. Black John’s “Hah!” breaks the silence that follows. Then, turning to face Cerridwen, he puts the Question:
“Art thou a witch?”
She, looking him in the eye, replies, “I am thy mother’s childe, John.”
What’s this? A buzz of interest fills the room like the drone of a blowfly on the King’s meat before it be covered with tansy.
Black John touches the crucifix that rests upon his chest. “You talk in riddles, woman. The demon within you it is that speaks. You are possessed of the Evil One.”
Why yes, of course… The congregation nods its assent. Only the Prince, watching from a high place, out of sight of them all, does not nod. His grip tightens on the dagger at his waist, the knuckles white with sudden anger.
“Put her down,” Black John says. “Let her see the instruments. Return her to us tomorrow, and we shall examine her body for the customary marks.” With that, he sweeps out of the room, almost invisible behind his screen of armed men.
THAT NIGHT, UNDER A waning moon, three figures in the habit of the Brown Monks, their faces in the obscurity of their cowls, unlock the door and enter her cell. Without ado, two of them suppress her struggles whilst the third opens a leathern vessel, enters his hand therein, and, like unto a boy taking eggs from a plover’s nest, plucks forth a small sponge. She feels the finger enter her privy parts. Her last, living experience on this plane is a spreading warmth from her arse, from where the sponge passeth its deadly, drowsing benison into her very vitals.
Browne, Honolulu, to Long, London: The record is unclear at this point. The woman they called “Cerridwen” is found dead on the fifth day of her trial, her body unmarked. There is no sign of violence, no evidence of poisoning. She leaves a long, written confession in good Latin, although it seems unlikely she was literate in any language, including her own.
“THE CONFESSION IS QUITE clear, Sire,” says Black John.
The Prince, whittling a cross-stave with his knife, spits.
“How do I know that? Am I a Clerk? Am I to spend my time learning letters? I script my name. That is enough. But show me the document.”
The Prince touches the manuscript with his fingers as if willing the symbols to obey his will and answer to him, yet they remain inert on the page like the closed eyes of Cerridwen.
“I will read it again, Sire,” Black John says.
“ ‘I, Cerridwen, natural-born daughter of Jenny Blackthorn of Crabtree Hill within the Forest of Dean in the County of Gloucester, doe declare on my dying breath and in the full knowledge I am about to face my maker the Lord God Jesus Christ, and doe confess as follows:
“This night the Angel of Death appeared unto me and called upon me to repent my life of wicked apostasy, to renounce Satan and all his works and that I did. I die a Christian.
“In my infancy a Great Ladie visited my mother and brought with her a baby she must conceal because of some great shame. The baby died of a fever and was buried eftsoons in unconsecrated ground in the deepest part of the Forest. The grave was uncovered by hogges and the body eaten by the said hogges and other carnivorous beasts. Jenny Blackthorn, fearful of the Great Ladies wrath and hoping for preferment, adopted a male child of the same age, her sister’s tenth-born, her sister now being out of her wits. The Great Ladie did visit us once and was persuaded that the son of my mother’s sister was in truth her own beloved infant. She sent us many a groat to keep us fed, and may she be blessed for her Christian charity.
“I was seduced by Satan when young and was his bride ‘til taken by the Clerk they call ”Black John.“ The son of my mother’s sister I called ”Jack,“ that some also say is known to be ”John.“ I know not what was his fate after he sailed to France from the port of Gloucester with John of Salisbury, but ’twas malice and the Anti-Christ that spoke when I told to the congregation here at Hereford that we were kin, Black John the Clerk and I.
“Signed in her own blood… Cerridwen, daughter of Jenny Blackthorn. The sixth day of June 1290.” “
The Prince, a very Apollo, shines upon Black John and embraces him. “So ends our search for the Bastard. You did well, coz.” Yet his eye, over the shoulder of his Clerk, meets the eye of Bishop Gerald and things unsaid pass between them.
“How shall we end this business, dear heart?” the Prince asks Black John. “Shall we bury the witch and have done? What says our good Bishop?”
“Sire, if she be truly a disciple of Satan, she may not be laid in consecrated earth for ‘twould be blasphemy. Nor if she be a suicide, for ’twould be the only sin without release, it being the sin of despair and therefore renunciation of Our Lord’s grace.”
“Why then, Bishop, do you and your physicians and herbals examine the woman’s body forthwith for the usual blemishes, the teats, the suckling-marks, the strawberries and hirsute moles, and the rest? Now to horse! The deer run and my hounds have need of exercise and I be no Acteon for turning from hunter into hunted stag even by the sorcery of a dead Diana.”
Roaring with laughter at his own wit, he exits the castle.
Long, London, to Browne, Honolulu: Yet it is clear that something happened as a result of this woman’s death that had considerable implications for the main players in the drama. What is your theory?
Browne, Honolulu, to Long, London: I believe she knew too much. But who was at risk from the knowledge she concealed?
IN AN UNCONSECRATED BELL tower that stands alongside but detached from the Church of Saint Dubricius at Pembridge, beyond the spite-filled eyes of the Forest and the wagging tongues of Hereford City, they bare the corpse of Cerridwen and seek signs of the incubus… without success. The skin upon this form is so white as to be transparent,- the body hairless as a childe’s. Black John, ordered to attend the hunt, is not present. Gerald, his hirsute hands and arms bare, still wears his ecclesiastical ring and Holy Cross for his soul’s sake. His eyes seek heaven but see only the oaken beams above and the bell they call Big Tom… and perched upon one of the beams, a goshawk with loose jesses about its legs, an unnatural bird that gazes contumaciously upon him with human intelligence through lambent yellow eye.
“The privy parts,” he says. His assistants, heads covered, open the legs. And turn their backs. Gerald’s fingers delve and probe as they have done many times before to uncover the signs, the guilty
teats and warts but always ‘til this day upon a still-living body. He reflects that he must write a careful treatise concerning this matter for the scholars of the Holy See… But what is this? Inside the rear orifice, like a fledgling within the nest, a sponge which, when removed from its place of concealment, exudes an essence the herbalist knows is not Self-heal nor Saint John’s Wort but tincture of mandrake, hemlock, and poppy contained within that tiny angel of oblivion favored by midwives and called by some “the soporific sponge.” And there is something more: monkshood, that seductive blue-and-white flower shaped exactly like its sacerdotal namesake. It is a delight to behold on a fine summer’s day in the hedgerow yet, like wolfbane, the most perfect poison.
The herbalist has a sad mien, like a dog that be kicked daily or the oft-whipped Ass that Apuleius became when bewitched. His nose affrighted, the herbalist says: “Your Grace, this poor creature did not die naturally nor of her own hand, but incontinently at the hand of another. Never have I seen the sponge thus used against a mortal body. This be the Devil’s work.”
Long, London, to Browne, Honolulu: The end of Black John was equally enigmatic. One fragment attributed to John Dee quotes an earlier source, now lost, to suggest that in this case the body was discovered in a gown that had been worn by Cerridwen and that so dressed, he was her very double.
Browne, Honolulu, to Long, London: This fragment I had not traced. Could it be that there are still some significant manuscripts to be found in England rather than more safely in the air-conditioned libraries of Texas? It is an interesting anecdote. We know for sure only that Dark John disappeared from the history at this point.
THE HUNT RETURNS, SPATTERED with gore but not yet sated with blood. Bishop Gerald waits at the Keep. He has a secret for the Prince’s ear alone that cannot wait the morrow. The Prince’s eyes darken at the disclosure. That night, they banquet on venison and nightingale, the Prince and his bosom companion Black John. Also here present are the Bishop, the hunt, the Master of Hounds, and sundry others. Last to enter is the bearded Penhebogyd, Master of the Hawks, for whom even the Prince must needs rise to welcome, by ancient custom, as he takes his place at table, the fourth in precedence. But not even Penhebogyd observes the jessed goshawk that perches patiently upon a windowsill high above the room.
The feast nears its end. The lutenists make musicke, and the Prince murmurs to Black John, “I would entertain Lady Katherine in my bedchamber this night, when the last candle be out.”
Black John makes his preparations: doth paint his face like a girl’s,- color his lips cherry,- adorn his head with a wig of rich hair that touches his shoulders,- his body with sweet oils and a gown that transforms him from man to woman as if Circe herself were his wardrobe mistress. The Court well knows of Lady Katherine but speaks not of the matter. This night, for the last time, though she wit it not, she walks the long, silent gallery to the Prince’s bedchamber, lifting her skirts delicately as she steps daintily over the Irish wolfhound that guards the door.
Next morning she is discovered facedown in the castle moat, still gowned, a green ribbon that was in her hair now about her neck, her eyes and tongue protuberant. The court jester capers. Others do likewise. But only he dare lampoon that Black John was privily impaled even before they removed the head for treason. “Forsooth!” he rejoices. “Treason in the head without doubt but otherwise, and otherwhere, faithful unto death, ah-hah!”
The head of Black John upon its pole faces down the rebellious West from the city walls of Hereford through a long, dry summer but no carrion molest it, for it is guarded night and day by a goshawk. The skull shrinks, desiccates, and when the wind blows it shifts and moves on its pole, and the lower jaw snaps open and shut as if to speak. Undevout, superstitious country folk say it has a secret message for them that the Prince would keep from their ears as he increases their tithes most cruelly.
Browne, Honolulu, to Long, London: We do know, however, that some six months after the death, the Forest of Dean rebelled.
Long, London, to Browne, Honolulu: That was a pathetic protest by a rag-tag rabble. According to Giraldus, the Prince suspected that his Clerk was financially corrupt. So, arbitrarily, he doubled local taxes to generate the income he believed was on tap already. That was a serious mistake.
THE REBEL ARMY HAS straw for armor and a few Welsh mountain cobs for cavalry,- bows and slings for skirmishing,- pikes, sickles, and even scythes for the combat. The Prince laughs, his visor raised carelessly, battle-ax honed to a glittering niceness. The first head he will take is the rebel leader’s. The leader is an inconsequential, moonstruck baker. The Prince spurs his horse forward, without waiting for his escort, into the narrow forest trail, where the uncommitted spectators mock him with arses exposed and turned in his way. His ax swings in his right hand and in rhythm to the canter of the horse as he closes on his opponent. The baker, riding a cob, flinches and endeavors to turn away, but he is no horseman and gives the wrong aid. His animal swings into the Prince’s thundering path,- rears up in fright, hurling him to the ground where he lies gasping for breath. The Prince turns back, comes in for the kill, still smiling as a pair of goshawk talons lash his face, blinding him with his own blood.
The hawk, shrieking vengeance like a banshee forewarning of death, flies off a short way, returns, and attacks again. Now its beak removes first one eye, then a second. The newly blind Prince spurs his horse, holding his seat, but crashes into an overhanging branch in his sightlessness. The peasants with their pikes finish what the bird has miraculously begun, then melt like kernes or sprites into the green gloom among mocking crickets as the Prince’s men carry home the corpse of their leader.
Browne, Honolulu, to Long, London: Did the Prince die as Gerald suggests, pursued by some demon or familiar owing its allegiance to Cerridwen?
Long, London: I think not, unless you count his own folly as something that was supernaturally inspired. If that be so, we are all bewitched at some point in our lives. But dare we admit that?
The Reiving of Bonville Keep
Kathy Lynn Emerson
Bonville Keep lay two days’ ride from Edinburgh. Driven by his desire for revenge, Sir Gavin Dunnett and his men made the journey in one. Only the temporary truce between England and Scotland prevented them from laying siege to the castle. An act of war against an English baron would have angered the king of Scots, to whom Gavin now owed allegiance. He was obliged to employ more devious means to gain entry.
At dusk, he donned the full, black gown of a Benedictine and entered enemy territory alone. What he found inside the curtain wall astonished him. The place was ripe for reiving. Guards lazed at their posts. Half the servants were far gone in drink. Even the steward seemed lax in his duties. New to the Borders, Gavin decided. From the bleary look in his watery blue eyes, the fellow had also imbibed a considerable quantity of ale.
“We are about to sup,” the steward said. “Will you join us, brother?”
Careful to keep his hood raised to hide his lack of a tonsure, since a full head of black hair on a monk would raise far too many questions, Gavin accepted the invitation.
“A pity monks cannot perform marriage ceremonies.”
“You wish to wed?” Gavin asked as they entered the great hall. “Who is the lucky woman?”
The steward gestured toward the raised dais at the far end of the room. “Lady Bonville is a new-made widow and ripe for the plucking.”
It was as well the steward did not have all his wits about him, for Gavin could not control his start of surprise. Lord Bonville was dead? Then who had sent him word of Isabella’s death?
The logical answer to his question sat in regal splendor at the table on the dais. Beatrice Bonville, Gavin’s old nemesis. His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. Seven years had passed since he’d last seen her, but she still possessed an exotic beauty. Sleek, glossy, raven locks contrasted with milk-white skin. For a woman whose husband had recently died, she seemed most merry. In spite of losing him? Or because he
was no longer alive?
As Gavin watched from a place at a lower table, Lady Bonville smiled and flirted with her flaxen-haired steward and with the black-avised man who seemed to be the husband of one of her stepdaughters. Three of them shared the dais. With their distinctive Bonville hair, its color so pale a shade of yellow that it was nearly white, Gavin had no difficulty picking them out. Two of them looked enough alike to be twins.
A waiting gentlewoman, small of stature with a plain face and drab brown tresses, stood just behind Lady Bonville. Without warning, her mistress turned and boxed her ears. She had been too slow to refill a goblet with wine. The pockmarked servant lad, who stumbled and sloshed the sauce as he set a platter full of steaming food on the table, received a hard pinch on the forearm for his carelessness.
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