The Darkest Shore

by Karen Brooks

  Burne, the greedy fool, kept the meals Brown’s daughter brought to the Tolbooth for himself, gulping them down within hearing of the prisoners. Patrick shook his head. He should have had Burne removed. Should have him whipped. Patrick could scarce believe the emaciated corpse was Brown, the man they’d interned. Not man. Witch. He must remember that. They may not have extracted a confession from Thomas before he died, but would have done eventually.

  Anyway, what did it really matter? Brown had enjoyed three score years and ten or more. Testimony to his hardiness that he lasted so long. His death was inconvenient rather than a tragedy.

  Running fingers through his thinning hair, the reverend stared out the window of his drawing room. Beyond the gravestones in the neighbouring kirkyard, the grey sea roiled. Wisps of mist hovered over the water. In the spaces between the stones he caught glimpses of the fishermen’s boats bobbing, their nets flung wide, their lines unspooled. Gulls hovered above them, cawing and shrieking as the men hauled in their catch. Closer to shore, he could see figures walking along the sands. Some he recognised, more were unfamiliar. That had been an unexpected boon of this witch hunt. The number of strangers who, learning what was afoot, flocked to the Weem to see for themselves.

  As word spread across Fife that Pittenweem had imprisoned witches, eight of them — well, seven now — folk travelled to town. These incomers brought much-needed coin. Already he’d heard how the tavern was selling more ale than it had since the war began. Local farms could scarce keep up with the demand for eggs, poultry, milk and cheese. Even the paltry catch was being sold before it landed. The inns were full for the first time in years, so full locals had taken to billeting people — even Anster and St Monan’s were benefiting from the influx. If nothing else, witchcraft was good for business.

  The thought aroused a real smile.

  But he was wasting time and there was still work to do before the witches were brought to trial. He left the drawing room, almost bowling over a maid waiting to sweep the hearth, and went to his study, where he began to shuffle some papers, anything to take his mind off Thomas Brown, the women in the Tolbooth, the silent, glowering one in St Fillan’s Cave. In the rooms beyond, he could hear his children talking. The low voice of his housekeeper urged them to be quiet because their father was working. They paid her no attention. Who could blame them? What a weak, mousy woman she was. Still, she was a Covenanter like him, godly, even if bedding her was like pounding a half-full sack of grain. He frowned. He shouldn’t think about that. He shouldn’t think about women at all and yet, if he were truthful, over the past couple of months he’d been obsessed by them.

  Images of creamy breasts and thighs flowing with blood leapt into his mind. Dried mouths opening in hoarse screams, wet eyelashes stuck together against shiny cheeks, wide, fearful eyes. He felt his prick stir beneath his cassock. He reached down to staunch its hardening. When his fingers touched it through the coarse fabric it sprang to life. Gripping it through the cloth, he enjoyed the roughness against his flesh, how firm he felt. How manly. He began to think of Sorcha McIntyre, those wide lips, those full breasts with their rosy pointed nipples. He’d never seen skin like that on anyone before; anyone except that foreign mother of hers. Dear God, but there was one. A siren brought to land to tempt men to ruin. His wife, God bless her, had been possessed of red, scaly flesh that was abrasive to touch, prone to itching and patches of rawness. The housekeeper’s was much the same. Sorcha’s was perfect, like the cream of cow’s milk. And as for her cunny, so pink and plump without its hair. He began to imagine pounding that…

  When he’d finished, he sat in his chair. His cheeks were hot, his chest rose and fell in rapid pants, but his body was replete. No longer could he imagine Sorcha or the others, Nettie Horseburgh, Nicolas Lawson or young Isobel Adam as they’d been when they were first stripped by the pricker. Punishing him for the act he’d just committed, God reminded him why they were in the Tolbooth by placing pictures of what they looked like now before his mind’s eye. Stinking, wretched creatures with tatty short hair, grey teeth, dirty faces and fingers. They weren’t imprisoned so he could look upon them when he chose and assuage his lust with the memory of their lovely bodies, but so he could rid them of the devil that lurked inside each and every one of them.

  After weeks in the Tolbooth, no longer were their bodies desirable with their differently shaped breasts, curves, marks and lines. They were bruised, beaten, torn, broken and befouled — and all at his command.

  How had it come to this? How had he come to this? It was the witches. It was Sorcha McIntyre, the temptress, the devil’s own bride. This — he stared at the damp stain on his cassock — was her fault.

  Resting his elbows on his desk, he lowered his face into his hands. Sorrow for what he had to endure welled in his chest. Why did God ask so much of him, a mere man? Why did he have to suffer so?

  A sob escaped, catching him unawares. At first, he tried to stifle it, but it wouldn’t be stopped. Left with no choice, he let it come forth, a great howl, like a wild animal, it filled his ears, his head, the room. Grabbing the edge of his gown, he stuffed it into his mouth and unleashed his torment.

  Forgive me, God, for my weakness, he prayed. You called me to Your service and here I am baulking at what You ask of me. I must gird my weak body, my weak mind and heart and continue. Do whatever it is You ask of me.

  There was a timid knock at the door. ‘Are you all right in there, sir?’

  It was the housekeeper.

  Patrick pulled the edges of his robe out of his mouth, swiped the tears from his face, cleared his throat and sat up. His mind was clearer now.

  ‘I’m fine.’ His voice was loud and firm. ‘Leave me be.’

  Moments later, he heard her shuffle away. He let out the breath he was holding. She couldn’t see him like this. No one could. Only God knew the doubts that sometimes racked him, the demons that cavorted through his dreams whispering lewd things, placing salacious images in his mind. Daily, guilt flooded his body before he forced it to recede, and not just because Satan tempted him — the witches tempted him. Weren’t they one and the same?

  The sounds from outside intruded as incomers walked towards the kirk and manse, up Cove Wynd, commenting loudly on what they saw. Stopping beneath his window, people pointed at the Tolbooth. He could hear them, hear the glorious fear and elation in their voices as they discussed the witches.

  He knew then what he’d tell the men to do with Brown’s body.

  As a witch, Brown didn’t deserve a Christian burial. Witches must be denied the everlasting peace of the hallowed soil of the kirk. Burying Brown in the cemetery would undermine everything he was doing, everything he was achieving. He and the Morton boy. He thought briefly of Peter. He was a good lad. A loyal one, too. To the curious, he was as much an attraction as the witches. Why, the incomers had been weaving their way through Pittenweem lanes and wynds like ants to their hills, begging admittance to the Morton house, even leaving coin just to set eyes upon him. Like the Shaw girl, Peter was a victim of possession, malfeasance, a wonder to behold. For his sake, Patrick had to make a lesson of Brown; for the sake of all that was yet to be done. To do otherwise would be to admit he was wrong, that God was wrong.

  Finding the relevant piece of paper, Patrick dipped a quill in the ink. He wrote an addendum to Brown’s death certificate and then signed his name under the doctor’s with a flourish. Reading over his orders, he was satisfied.

  The witch, Thomas Brown, would be flung upon the western braes and left for the corbies, scavengers, and the elements to consume. And if the incomers wanted to remain, to see what a rotting witch looked like and spend more money in town while they did it, then who was he to deprive them?

  TWENTY-SIX

  The curse of the first-footer.

  14 June 1704

  With a heavy heart, Sorcha watched Nettie being escorted out of their cell. Days earlier they’d learned that Captain Ross, along with bailies Bell and Cleiland, had
ridden to Edinburgh to obtain a commission from the Privy Council to try them. Confused as to what this meant, why Captain Ross was with the councilmen, it was Sorcha who reassured the women that this latest development worked in their favour — if for no other reason than that if Captain Ross was with the delegation, he would ensure their interests were represented.

  Yet, instead of officials from Edinburgh arriving (surely they would have heard by now?) or the captain returning, it was a group of dour-looking men from the presbytery of St Andrew’s who answered the summons. Declaring they wished to see the accused witches for themselves and then report back to Edinburgh, they were brought to the Tolbooth.

  Confused and exhausted, the women were now soul-sick and desperate. The news last week about Thomas Brown’s death had been a blow from which Sorcha doubted they’d recover. It changed the terms of their imprisonment. It was no longer a case of if they’d ever be free again, but whether incarceration and torture would kill them first.

  Not that Mr Bollard had attended them since they signed their confessions. They’d been told he’d returned home — wherever that was. Hell, said Nettie, and Sorcha was inclined to believe her. That at least was one small mercy. Now they’d only to endure the infection that set into the wounds and which their living conditions did nothing to aid. Even the guards, initially remote but now guilty about Thomas’s death, changed towards them. Isobel said it was because they felt sorry for them. Not sorry enough to give them the food brought by friends and family every other day. But they did at least tell them when Thomas’s body, which had been tossed on the braes ‘like muck from a water closet’ as one guard put it, disappeared.

  ‘It had been pecked, you understand, pecked and partly eaten,’ said Camron, the new Tolbooth keeper, a simple farmhand from Crail way who was perpetually hungry and in awe of the reverend, so unlikely to question his orders. What the reverend didn’t see, but the women did, was the kind heart beneath the blank face and the loneliness that had made him accept the repellent position in the first place.

  ‘And it stunk worse than me brother’s shit. Not that it stopped people going to gawk at it or blathering ’bout his missing eye, the colour of his skin — blue and purple in case you be interested, especially ’long his arms and back.’ Camron rubbed his belly. ‘Och, you should have seen the marks on his body and the way his bones poked out like they were ’bout to puncture his skin.’ That those he was telling bore the same marks, if not worse, escaped Camron altogether. Nor was he the type of man able to sense when his comments weren’t appreciated and shut up. Unaware of the effect of his lurid descriptions, Camron stood in the centre of their cell, ignoring the stench and bleak conditions and blethered on. Sorcha was too scared to stop him lest he cease giving them any information, and forced herself to listen to his terrible tale. No one knew who had removed Thomas’s body, but it wouldn’t be too hard to guess. She hoped his family were not only careful, but that wherever they did inter Thomas, they offered prayers from her as well.

  According to Camron, the sightseers who’d come to Pittenweem in droves from all over the country to see the witches were bitterly disappointed when Thomas’s corpse vanished. Some attributed it to evidence of more witches (an idea that made Sorcha’s heart plummet), or to Satan himself retrieving the body of a disciple. She could imagine them exchanging more vivid and outlandish ideas over ale in the tavern, the locals feeding the imaginations of the incomers. Camron said there were so many now, farmers were charging them rent to camp in their fields behind the village.

  Sorcha and Nettie had thought there were more strangers clustering in the High Street outside the Tolbooth each day to await news or to catch a glimpse of the Weem Witches. That is what they’d become. A lurid novelty to attract tourists. Nicolas told them they were imagining things, but Camron’s words and other whispers that came their way proved they were not. Nevertheless, the women ceased to oblige the people by appearing at the window. If it hadn’t been so macabre and frightening, Sorcha thought it would be funny. She knew crowds gathered outside Holyrood and the great palaces in London to see the Queen or any member of the royal family, but to see her? She gazed across at Nettie, knowing she looked the same if not worse. Nettie’s hair now covered her scalp, growing in uneven patches, much the way it had been shaved. Her teeth were foul, her skin so grimy it was streaked in shades of grey, her clothes were rags. Examining her fingers, Sorcha couldn’t bear the thought of biting her long nails, so encrusted with dirt were they. Dirt and dried blood.

  They all scratched ceaselessly because of lice and fleas, and the wounds from the pricking and the beatings never seemed to heal. Whereas they would once pace the cell and take it in turns at the window, describing what they saw, inventing tales, singing on occasion, or bathing each other’s wounds and trying to care for them, they now mostly lolled on the hard floor, the straw too repellent to lie upon.

  At least with summer arriving it was marginally warmer.

  They’d been reduced to a grotesque spectacle. They were living versions of poor Thomas — something for folk to gawp at, judge, and ghoulishly revel in. They’d also heard their reputation was bringing much needed money into the town — something Cowper would be gloating over.

  The thought of Cowper was almost more than Sorcha could bear. But bear it she must and use the idea of his triumph — a victory based on the cruel extraction of lies — to give her the strength to survive. That would be her greatest revenge, outlasting this. Whereas she honoured her family by living when they could not, she would have vengeance upon Cowper by doing the same. They all would, damn the man’s soul.

  There were times she wished she really was a witch and could cast a spell upon him. She would wish him to suffer all she and the others had endured tenfold. Nae, a hundredfold, for all eternity.

  But when Nettie was taken out of the cell one day, just when they’d begun to believe all the separations and punishments were a thing of the past, all thoughts of revenge upon Cowper were replaced by dread.

  What did the men want now? What more could they do to them? And why Nettie?

  It wasn’t only Nettie the men from the presbytery wanted to speak to, but all of them, one by one. Nettie wasn’t even the first. That honour was given to Janet Cornfoot from the cell below. But Sorcha only discovered this when it was her turn.

  Escorted into the room on the top floor of the Tolbooth, she was sat on a chair in its centre that was covered in dried blood and other stains she couldn’t bear to think about. It was the same chair she’d been tied and pricked in. Sorcha eyed the grim-faced men seated in a semicircle around her. Strangers, their backs were to the window, which had been pushed wide open. She could see the grey, lumbering clouds, feel the breeze coming in. Inhaling the fresh air, she wished she was outside to enjoy the overcast day. Despite being closer to the window, many of the men turned away from her, wrinkling their noses, pushing kerchiefs into their faces. It took her a moment to realise it was because of her odour. Instead of being embarrassed, she relished that it caused them such obvious discomfort and silently wished they’d choke. Unable to prevent it, a smile formed. One of the men saw it and his eyes narrowed.

  ‘Find this amusing, do you… What’s her name?’ he asked. His voice was booming; accustomed to whispers and quiet, it hurt Sorcha’s ears.

  ‘Sorcha McIntyre, sir,’ said Reverend Cowper. She hadn’t noticed him. Installed at the end of the semicircle, behind a table, his black robes folded around him like broken wings. Suddenly she understood who these men were and her heart sank. They were known to Cowper through his role as a temporary moderator at St Andrew’s. They were friends, no doubt. ‘She’s the daughter of Charles McIntyre, and his Norwegian wife, Astrid Grimmsdatter.’ There was some muttering, as always, at the fact her father had taken an outsider to wife. ‘She’s also, since her older brother, Robert McIntyre, is a prisoner of war, believed dead, the owner of the Mistral and in possession of a fine cottage in Marygate.’

  There were
raised brows and nods.

  ‘She owns a boat?’ asked another, his incredulity barely contained.

  ‘Aye, that she does. A sturdy vessel,’ said the reverend. ‘Large enough to do longer voyages and currently in the North Sea.’

  ‘She won’t for much longer if these charges be proved,’ said Mr Booming Voice.

  Sorcha raised her chin. At least she’d learned where her boat was. She prayed the men stayed away until this was over lest their cargo be seized and they miss out on their percentages.

  Papers with what she assumed were her details and earlier confession were passed among the men. With one exception, they conversed in low voices.

  She could hear the muffled conversation of the women below. The holes in the floor enabled snatches of their words to enter the room and buzz about like summer flies. As they did when Nettie and Nicolas were being questioned, a hush would fall when her interrogation began. At least she knew from Nettie what to expect. The intention was she would not only repeat what was in the confession she made a couple of weeks earlier, but admit to even more wrongdoing.

  What the Pittenweem councillors and the reverend hadn’t anticipated was that, faced with a new audience, the women would retract their statements. Nettie told Sorcha this was what she’d done, because she’d learned from Camron as he escorted her upstairs that this was what brave and bold Janet Cornfoot had dared to do. Sorcha could scare believe her ears. Nor could Isobel or Nicolas. Hugging Nettie close, in awe of her courage, of Janet’s, Sorcha felt something akin to joy, a lightening of her spirit for the first time in weeks.

  ‘After all, hen, what have we got to lose?’ whispered Nettie, returning the tight hold. ‘Good auld Janet, hey?’

  As she regarded the men and watched the scrivener prepare his quill and paper, Sorcha feared it was more than they could even begin to imagine. She determined then and there to refuse to let her anxiety show. They’d put words in her mouth once, but never again.