The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross

by Lisa Tuttle

  Reverend Ringer snorted. “Do you really believe Maria has been taken by fairies?”

  “Not taken. I think she went to them, hoping to save her child, and is now a prisoner underground, and we must negotiate for her release.” Jesperson shifted the lumpy weight of the canvas bag he carried over one shoulder. “If so doubtful, why did you volunteer your help?”

  I had been surprised but not displeased when I had arrived half an hour earlier to find Dr. Ringer waiting by the side of the road along with Mr. Jesperson. Dr. Ringer was a strong and muscular man who would be a useful ally if physical strength was required, and if supernatural forces challenged us, the vicar’s prayers might be of even greater help.

  “You are a devilish convincing speaker, sir! Last night in the hall, and then today in my study, I found myself almost believing your fairy tales.”

  “I shall not press you to stay. If you think this is a waste of time, go home. I shall manage well enough with the aid of my very capable partner, Miss Lane.”

  “Now, now, don’t go putting words in my mouth,” the vicar replied in a placating tone. “I promised you my help, and I stand by my word. No offense to Miss Lane, but if a bit of muscle is required, you may be glad of my stout stick and sturdy boots.” As he spoke, he stomped a few defenseless toadstools into the ground.

  “Yet you think we are in the wrong place?”

  The vicar shifted his stance and looked beyond the gloomy clearing, toward the shrieking pit. Wisps of fog had started to appear between the trees, and darkness was falling fast. “No…No…For as you pointed out, someone arranged Albert Cooke’s body where it was found—may even have placed half a mushroom cap in his mouth. There is the temptation to think that was his murderer—but why should he have been murdered?”

  “The police decided it was an accidental death,” Mr. Jesperson interjected. “But to accept their verdict we must believe that after he fell into the pit and struck his head, although the blow was fatal, he had enough strength left to clamber out and stagger over to the ring, then pluck a mushroom and bite into it as he arranged himself on the ground, as if for a nap, and then died.”

  The vicar interrupted. “Yes, yes, you needn’t tell me! It’s obvious someone else must have been involved, and any ordinary witness would be unlikely to have moved his body and then vanish without reporting the accident. If Mr. Cooke died in the pit, and if the pit does in fact offer access to an underground dwelling…well, here we are, to try to prove it.

  “But why not come in daylight, with tools, and dig until we uncover whatever hermit or troglodyte inhabits the lair beneath those stones?”

  I had been wondering the same thing myself.

  “We would risk frightening them into flight, and probably they would take Maria and her baby, too, and we would never be able to find them again.”

  “How should they escape us?”

  “The land around here is pocked with shrieking pits—at least, it was formerly. And if each one gave access to an underground home, what could be more likely than that they are all connected to one another by a system of underground passages? At the bottom of the pit in the field across from the Vicarage, I found a hole beneath a stone. It was not a shallow hole, but seemed the mouth of a tunnel—I could not tell how far it stretched. I left it uncovered, but the next day, after Maria’s baby went missing, I found that the stone had been replaced. I also found a scrap of blue yarn that may have come from the shawl in which the baby was wrapped.” He stopped and nodded as he saw the vicar understood.

  Dr. Ringer said, “So if they are attacked from one quarter, they will retreat to another.” He sighed. “But why should they come out at all?”

  “We must try to convince them it will be in their best interest. Come along, it is nearly dark now.” Setting down his bag, he rummaged within, extracting a lantern, which he lit. I was already equipped with my own, which Dr. Ringer lit for me. Holding up our lights, we went in procession through the woods to the edge of the shrieking pit.

  “There, look, footprints.” Mr. Jesperson stopped abruptly and bent protectively over marks in the soft earth that might have been recent footprints, only a little smaller than my own.

  I imagined Maria running to the pit and calling piteously for her baby. In my imagination, her hair was loose and disheveled, and she resembled the figure of the shrieking woman on the poster that had advertised Mr. Jesperson’s lecture. What response had she received? How long had she waited? Where was she now?

  Jesperson held out his lantern over the pit. There was no one in it, and little to be seen: Bits of quartz glinted where they caught the light, but otherwise it was a mass of stones and dirt, clumps of vegetation, a litter of dead leaves. “Hold this,” he said, handing me his lantern, and then, as he had done before, he jumped down, reaching up to reclaim his light once he was standing within.

  He made a closer inspection of the sides and floor of the pit, making no comment as he moved around from place to place, touching certain places, moving aside clumps of weeds, staring, and then moving on with nearly agonizing slowness.

  Clearly, he did not wish to be disturbed, and to keep Dr. Ringer from erupting with more questions, I distracted his attention with an inquiry about the strange noises that gave the pits their name: Had he ever heard them?

  “Only once, a few years ago, from the road. Perhaps it was only the wind. It was an altogether uncanny sound, I do confess, and I had never heard the like before. I should not myself have described it as being like a woman’s wailing, but I could think of nothing else that it was like, either. Most unpleasant, to be sure, and no wonder that the common people might take it as a warning to stay well away from this spot at night!”

  “You never heard the same sound issuing from the field across the road from the Vicarage?”

  “Never. Nor anywhere else.” He shifted and frowned, and made a slight movement toward the pit where my friend was still at his incomprehensible detecting work.

  I spoke quickly: “Have you no idea what might cause such a sound? Is there really no explanation?”

  “No one knows. However, I have my own theory,” he said, leaning toward me confidentially. “I think it might be caused by certain atmospheric conditions, when the wind blows from the right quarter, and striking the stones that litter the bottom of the pit, perhaps whistling through them, there might be—”

  “Aha! It has been moved!”

  As one, we turned our attention downward. “What has?”

  Mr. Jesperson straightened and stepped back, holding out his lantern. “There. See that stone slab? It appears immovable, and, indeed, I found it impossible to shift. My attention was drawn to it because of the pattern of vegetation around it…nothing sprouts from the side or below, but it is half hidden from the casual eye by these draperies.” With his free hand, he gently lifted a mass of dropping grasses, revealing that all were embedded in the earth more than an inch above the top of this particular stone. “Such a pattern might suggest that the rock is moved on occasion, possibly covering an access point very like the one I discovered in the other pit.”

  “A theory your efforts would seem to disprove,” said Dr. Ringer.

  Jesperson took another step backward. “No; I have only proved that it is not easy to open from this side.”

  “So what do you propose? Shall we dig it out? We should have brought shovels. I can go back—I’ll bring the boy to help.”

  Jesperson smiled slightly, holding up a cautionary hand. “Not just yet.” He spoke, I thought, with unnecessary force and volume if he was aiming his words solely at us. “First, I propose we try a little diplomacy. If someone—it may be Maria, or it may be whoever is keeping her prisoner—will come out and speak with us, we may be able to clear up our little problem without hard labor—no destructive digging. All we ask is the chance to speak with Maria, face-to-face.”

  “I ask a bit more than that,” muttered Dr. Ringer as Jesperson handed him up his lantern, then quickly hoisted himsel
f out of the pit.

  Dusting himself off, Jesperson leaned over the pit to call out his terms: “Otherwise, we will bring men and shovels and dig until we find Maria and her baby. But if they emerge now—we may come to mutually agreeable terms.”

  We waited, but nothing happened; there was not a sound to be heard, and no movement except for the faint flickering of our lanterns as the darkness around us gradually deepened.

  I looked at Mr. Jesperson, wondering how long we were to wait, but his attention remained fixed on shadowed recess of the pit. After the passage of another minute he called out sternly, “Send her out—send out the girl—and we will leave you in peace. Send her out—or prepare to be destroyed.”

  Still nothing happened.

  “Perhaps a prayer would be in order,” said Dr. Ringer, taking a small book from his pocket. He began to leaf through it, until Mr. Jesperson lifted his head, looking alert, and murmured, “Did you hear that?”

  I frowned, aware of some slight, distant sound—but surely it was only the wind?

  The sound increased, becoming a high, eerie wailing. Although my skin prickled uneasily, I said, “Could that be the baby?”

  But as I spoke the noise grew louder and more intense, a howling shriek. Impossible to mistake for a baby’s cry, it was inhuman, like the sound of a gale-force wind in a ship’s rigging, or storms attacking the roof of a cottage on a lonely moor. And yet the night around us was utterly still; the bare limbs of the trees above us hung motionless. Only the wraith-like forms of the mist rising from the ground moved around us.

  My skin crawled with goosebumps. It was easy to imagine a terrifying, ghostly figure of a wailing woman rushing through the landscape, and if I had not been in some measure prepared for this, I would have been tempted to run away myself. But we stood fast, and waited, and watched, while Dr. Ringer recited “Deliver me from mine enemies, O God; defend me from those that rise up against me.”

  The shrieking died away, and through the words of the Psalm 59 we heard the faint crunch and slip of gravel instead. Then a pair of hands appeared over the top of the pit, and Jesperson hastened to lean down and help the small figure scramble out, as the vicar ceased his now inappropriate recitation.

  I seized her hands. “Maria, are you well?”

  Remarkably cool and collected, she pulled her hands away and made it clear that she did not wish to be embraced by either me or the vicar. “I am quite well, and I don’t need no help from any of you, thank you very much. You shouldn’t have come.”

  “You had us worried,” her employer chided gently. “Indeed, we feared for your life.”

  “There was no need. Now you see me well and I may tell you I am very happy in my new position.”

  Dr. Ringer’s eyes bulged slightly. “New position? Whatever can you mean?”

  Suspicious of her calm, I held my lantern to cast light on her face. She looked as cool as her words and showed no signs of fear or damage. Her clothes were dirty yet, on the whole, surprisingly clean for someone who had crawled out of the earth.

  “You don’t know nothing about it,” she said sharply in reply to the vicar, and then turned on Mr. Jesperson. “But you know better! How could you be so cruel, to speak of digging up and destroying our home?”

  With what a feeling of disbelief did I register that single word.

  “It was only a ruse,” he replied. “After all, we did not know if you were free or held against your will; I could think of no better way to ensure you would be allowed to come out, so that we could see for ourselves. Are you free to go?”

  She still stared at him distrustfully. “You do not mean to harm them?”

  “I promise you, we mean no harm. But under the circumstances, threats seemed more likely to work than pleading. If, instead of yourself, one of them had come out—then I would have offered them a trade.” He touched his breast. “I have something I believe they want.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “What do you mean, ‘trade’? What could they give you? They have no treasure, whatever you may think.”

  “They have you and your baby.”

  Her lip curled. “Are we chattel, to be bought and sold?”

  I was baffled by Maria’s response, and saw, too, that she had wrong-footed Mr. Jesperson. But he was faster to seize upon the cause of her recalcitrance than I, dropping his voice to ask softly, “Are you afraid for your baby?”

  She raised her chin. “Not anymore. I was, when I came, of course. I couldn’t think how I was to get her back; I only knew that somehow I must. But they let me see her right away. They were worried, too. They tried their best, but they couldn’t manage to feed her. Lucky I came in time.” She nodded, and her shoulders relaxed as a faint smile appeared on her face. “My poor wee Annie! But now that I’m here, she’s thriving again.”

  “And for that, you would stay?”

  “Why not?”

  I broke in, shocked by her acceptance. “Maria, you cannot. Have you forgotten—these people stole your child.”

  She turned on me sharply. “No. They rescued her—as they thought. Who would leave a wanted baby alone in a barn? They thought she had been abandoned. And as they had always longed for a child of their own—he took her back to his wife.”

  She paused and moved closer to me to confide: “They love her, see? And because she needs me, I think they love me, too—or they will—for her sake.”

  In that brave assertion, I felt all the sadness of her lonely, narrow little life.

  Mr. Jesperson spoke: “So they will not try to stop you taking her away?”

  “What? No!” She took a step back, and from the corner of my eye I saw Dr. Ringer tense, and I was afraid he meant to lunge at her and grab her. “No—they would not stop me, if I wished to, but I will not take her away.”

  Jesperson dropped his voice. “If you are fearful, forced against your will, give us a sign. We can help. I told you, I have something to trade—”

  She drew herself up haughtily. “I have told you what I think of your trading. Annie is my child. I have made my choice. This is the best place for both of us.”

  Reverend Ringer gave a cry of protest. “Maria! You cannot mean to stay—here!”

  “Oh, yes I can. And I will.”

  “They are forcing you—using your natural maternal feelings to make you their prisoner. You do not know what you are doing.”

  Seeing that the vicar’s argument was having the opposite of its desired effect, Mr. Jesperson intervened. “Maria, truly, we want what is best for you. But how can we know if those…others…are your captors, holding the child hostage, or if they have your best interests at heart?”

  “I have told you: They are my friends. I wish to stay.”

  Looking at her small, dignified form, I believed her. If she had been speaking only for the sake of the unseen listeners, I was certain she could easily have indicated that she lied.

  But the men were not so ready to believe she knew what she was talking about.

  “Bring out your baby, Maria, so we may see for ourselves that she is well,” said the vicar coaxingly.

  “And give you the chance to take her from me?” She gave a short, scornful laugh. “She is better off where she is, with my friends.”

  “Friends?” The word was like a bullet shot from the vicar’s mouth. “Have you forgotten those creatures stole your child—the anguish that they caused you?”

  She squared her shoulders and turned on him. “No, master, I have not forgotten—but I have forgiven—as you preach in your sermons. They never meant her any harm, and I understand why they thought she was unwanted. They did their best to care for her. It was not their fault they could not—now I am there, all is well.”

  “Come home with me now,” he said. “Take the baby—if they are your friends as you say, they will not stop you. Come back—your room is waiting, your same position—no one will reproach you; it will be as if you have never been away.”

  She stared back him. “Annie could stay in my r
oom with me?”

  He smiled. “Of course.”

  “And your good lady would not mind? With my own baby to tend, I could not be so quick about all my tasks.”

  “I am sure she will understand. And it will only be for a little while.”

  “How so? When she is older, she will need me still more—unless you think your wife would help, and then perhaps Miss Flowerdew will teach my Annie her letters, and she would be raised up as good as one of your own?”

  He frowned. “Come now, Maria. You know that it is impossible. You will wean her by three months, when we shall have found her a good home.”

  “Her home is with me, and mine with her.”

  “Be a good girl, Maria. Be sensible.”

  “I am.”

  He shook his head, grim-faced. “Was it good or sensible of you to have a child without a father?”

  “Nobody gave me a choice, did they?” she snapped back. More gently, she went on, “But as soon as I saw her, I loved her. She was a gift. When I thought I’d lost her, I wanted to die. I’ve never felt like this about anyone. I’d rather live in a dark, smelly hole in the ground with my Annie than in the finest bedroom in your Vicarage without her.”

  Suddenly, almost shockingly, she broke into a huge grin, the likes of which I’d never seen on that wan little face. “Only, it’s not dark or cold or smelly. It’s lovely—oh, you don’t know how nice it is, really.”

  The smile died away as she turned to gaze on Mr. Jesperson, and implored, “Please, don’t hurt us! No more talk of digging. They are good people.”

  “How many of them are there?” he asked.

  “Two. They are the last in Norfolk—that’s what they told me.”

  He stared in fascination. “Can you speak with them? You understand their language?”

  “Oh!” She shook her head. “No, but they can speak mine. Now—please, leave us be. I want your word that you will leave us in peace.”