by Betsy Tobin
I stare at her a moment. “How long was she with child?” I ask.
“Some months. Five, perhaps six. She did not know.”
“But you did.”
My mother shrugs. “Six,” she says.
“She kept it secret?” I ask a little incredulously. Dora had never before made a secret of her pregnancies. That she would do so now strikes me as strange.
“She did not want it known.”
“Why?” I demand.
My mother hesitates. “She had her reasons,” she says finally. I stare at her expectantly. She looks at me and shakes her head. “But I was not aware of them.”
I sigh and lower myself into a chair while my mother continues with her work. She takes a bowl of bread dough from near the fireplace and turns it out on the table, punching it with vigor. I watch her turn and slap it for a minute, listen to the sound of each blow bounce off the stone mantel. When she is through she shapes it with her hands, patting and rotating it in her palms until it forms a wheel. I think of Long Boy and his appetite: who will make his bread tomorrow?
“Her death does not make sense,” I say.
“It was her time,” she says brusquely.
“You cannot believe that,” I reply. My mother purses her lips, but says nothing. I rise and look her in the eye. “Why did she die?” I say. My mother stares at me a long moment.
“She met with fear,” she replies finally. “It killed her.” She starts to turn away from me but I grab her arm.
“What do you mean?”
She glances over at Long Boy, then lowers her voice.
“Two weeks ago she came to see me. I have never seen her thus,” she says. “She believed there was something wrong with the baby inside her. She claimed . . . it was the devil’s child.” For the first time I see the fear in her eyes.
“What did she mean?”
My mother shakes her head. “She would not say.”
I stare at her a moment. “Have you spoken of this to anyone?”
“No.” She pauses. “What good would come of it? She is dead.”
“Yes, but—”
She stops me with a shake of her head. “You know as well as I what would happen were I to bring the devil’s name into it,” she says, a little accusingly. Her eyes are flashing now, angry.
I look at her but the face I see is that of Goodwife Kemble, who was tried for witchcraft in our village not three years ago. She had fallen out with her former employer and was accused of casting spells over his household, resulting in the death of first his livestock, then his second son. Less than a fortnight after the altercation the boy succumbed to a mysterious fever that appeared suddenly and without warning. His cap was found buried in a dungheap behind her cottage, and this was the principal evidence used against her in court. At trial she admitted to base feelings against her former employer but swore that she had not consorted with the devil. She was an old woman, a spinster who had a reputation as a gossip and a scold, which served her poorly in the end. As a final test of her guilt, she was taken to the village pond where she was ducked repeatedly under the icy waters until she finally succumbed.
My mother picks up a rush broom and begins to sweep the floor with vigorous strokes. She is right: it would be very risky for an older woman of the village to raise the devil’s name in connection with any death. The magistrates are known to be swift in their condemnation and merciless in their sentencing of anyone connected to sorcery, and over the past decade I have heard tell of at least half a dozen women, most of them my mother’s age or older, who have come to such an end.
“She must have told you something,” I insist, leaning forward.
My mother ignores me and continues sweeping. At that moment, her mean-spirited cat appears in the window and hisses at me. Irritated, my mother waves the broom in its direction and the cat jumps clear, landing deftly beside the table where it finds a scrap of suet.
“Who fathered the child?” I ask. My mother stops and looks at me.
“What kind of nonsense question is that?!” she says dismissively. “The entire village—” She throws her hand up in a sweeping motion.
“She must have known,” I say.
“How could she?” she says, then resumes sweeping. I remain silent, watch her move about the room, then grab the broom and force her to look at me.
“What exactly did she say about the child?”
My mother purses her lips and searches the floor with her eyes. I have a sense that Dora’s secrets are somehow trapped inside her, that once again it is my mother who must bring them forth into the world. Finally she raises her head and looks me squarely in the eye.
“She said that it would kill her.”
Chapter Four
I suppose that I have always been prone to melancholy. Even as a child they called me fanciful, for the world of my imaginings often seemed more real to me than any other, and it was certainly preferable. I was small and slight for my age, and as an only child was left to my own devices, for my mother’s work often took her away for long periods of time. So from a very young age I was accustomed to solitary play, but I was not alone, for I surrounded myself with fairies, spirits, and the like.
My mother regarded my fancies as ungodly, though they did not concern her overly until I reached the age of ten. By then I had developed certain fears as well: wind, high places, and water were among them, so much so that for a time I would not wash, nor even drink, unless forced to do so. My mother feared my fluids were unbalanced, and for years she kept a close eye on all that came in and all that went out, giving me emetics, or tickling my throat with a feather, if she thought my humors were not soluble. Once she consulted a healer who was passing through on the road to London, and he told her to place a pan of urine beneath my bed at night, so that its odors should penetrate me while I slept. This we did for a time, until the stench became unbearable, or until she divined that the effect upon my humors was negligible. I never knew which but felt considerable relief when she finally abandoned the cure. In fact my health was generally better than her own, for in winter she often suffered colds, and twice when I was very young she experienced fits of the stone, which she passed after enduring many hours of agony in her bed.
For a time in my youth I had visions in my sleep, and my mother sought advice from both a cunning woman and a clergyman. The cunning woman lived in a neighboring village and was known for miles around for her charms and prayers.
She lived alone, her husband having died of smallpox, and people sought her out for all kinds of ailments, both physical and spiritual. I did not know her real name, but they called her Mother Hare, for she kept a rabbit’s foot around her neck at all times, along with a sacred cross, to bring her luck and ward off evil. Mother Hare was old but not crooked as so many are, and though her face was lined, her eyes were clear and bright, and her smile winning. She lived in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of the village, and existed on the gifts of those who came to her for help. My mother and I traveled by foot to see her, leaving early in the morning and arriving at midday, and carried two loaves of bread, some boiled fowl, and tallow candles as payment. I was anxious at the prospect of the visit, and walked slowly, my mother urging me on. But once inside her cottage I was instantly relieved, for she had an air of calm and quietude about her, the like of which I had not met before. I did not understand the prayers she spoke over me, for her words were intermixed with Latin, but I remember clearly the lay of her hand against my brow, smooth and cool like a cloth of fine white linen. Even my mother seemed affected by her presence, and when she was through my mother clasped both her hands and appeared, for a moment, unable to speak. On the journey home I felt at peace, and that night I slept easily for the first time in many weeks. But after a fortnight of relative calm, the dreams returned.
This time she took me to a clergyman. Reverend Wickley presided over services at the Great House chapel, which served as church for our small parish. He hailed from the north and spoke with a s
trange accent, and had traveled the length and breadth of the kingdom before taking orders. It was said he’d been a peddler in his previous life, and that he’d been married more than once, though these were only rumors. He married a yeoman’s daughter soon after settling in our village, but his unfortunate wife died in childbirth within a twelvemonth. Shortly afterward, he retained a young serving woman from a neighboring village, who some said was more than generous in her provision, but as she rarely went out and had no family to speak of, the matter was soon forgotten. I saw her briefly in the yard the day we went to visit him, but when I asked my mother about her afterward, she shrugged and said the girl was in God’s service. Some years after, the girl in question disappeared and was never heard of again; it was rumored she was with child and had run away to London.
I was twelve when my mother took me to see Reverend Wickley, and although I had often heard him preach, I always found his presence menacing. He was tall and dark and of an unusually good complexion, having evaded scarring by the pox, and was robust in his bearing, though his teeth were black and broken. It was clear that many of those in the congregation found his visage pleasing, and I was not very advanced in age before I perceived that women outnumbered men in attendance at holy service by several number. My mother, as always, was immune to such considerations, and was reverent without being devout.
It was nearly midsummer when we went to see him, and our days and nights had been overtaken by the heat. I had slept badly for a fortnight, waking often in a sweat and crying out while I slept, and my mother was growing increasingly uneasy. For my own part, the dreams did not trouble me overly: although I often woke during the night in an agitated state, by dawn I had usually fallen into the deepest of slumbers, so much so that my mother had to rouse me vigorously in the mornings. Rather than agitated I was somewhat enervated by day, but even this my mother took to be a sign that something was amiss, either in my body or my soul.
So it was we found ourselves on Reverend Wickley’s threshold one blistering day. His look on seeing us was one of mild surprise: my mother was not overly religious, and I do not think she had ever undertaken a private consultation with him before, outside of her official capacity as midwife. And although she’d been determined to seek his advice, once again overcoming my objections, when we finally stood face-to-face with him, she appeared decidedly uncomfortable. Sensing her unease, the reverend ushered us inside and led her to a chair.
“My good woman, pray be seated,” he said, taking her by the hand and leading her to a chair. “Your color is not well.”
Indeed her color was not well, for it was the first time I could ever recall seeing her touch, or be touched, by a male personage, be he peasant or parson. And though he took her hand but momentarily, I perceived her recoil slightly, and it was clear to me (though not to him) that this had unsettled her more than the original purpose of our visit. I remained still until he turned to me and extended his hand, whereupon I bolted for the only other chair in the room, thus avoiding unsettling her any further. After a moment she regained her color and began to address him haltingly, telling him of my dreams, or visions as she called them, and of my inability to rouse at dawn, and of my general lethargy by day.
He listened to her most attentively and when she was through he turned to me and subjected me to such intense scrutiny that I did blush beyond my control. He asked her my age, and questioned her as to my general health and humors as a child, and then, to my great embarrassment, asked her whether my menses had arrived, to which she replied with a curt, tight-lipped shake of the head.
He then turned to me and addressed me directly.
“These visions, of what do they consist?” he asked. They both looked at me, and at once the room felt suffused with heat; I felt that at any moment my head might detach and float to the ceiling.
“Of demons and the like,” said my mother, after a moment’s hesitation. He turned to me again, his eyes narrowing slightly, and I perceived that his interest in me had suddenly heightened, as if I were no longer the same girl who sat before him moments before.
“And these demons, what sort of appearance do they take?” he asked intently. This time my mother was unable to reply, for I had never spoken to her in any detail of my dreams, and indeed, did not always remember them myself in the morning. Often I recalled only fragments, hung like pictures in my mind. It was true enough that my sleep was haunted by demons. These were always in the shape of men, some I knew and some I didn’t, whose natural appearance had been somehow altered in my dreams. Sometimes they were taller, sometimes shorter, sometimes with horns, sometimes with extra limbs and such. Reverend Wickley himself had appeared on more than one occasion, once with teeth so large they hung below his lips. I hesitated a moment, unsure how to reply.
“They are a little like yourself, sir,” I said at last.
He exchanged a look of surprise with my mother. “Are you saying that your demons appear with my likeness?” His voice had risen slightly and his eyes flashed with anger. My mother looked from me to him and back at me again, her eyes imploring.
“No, sir,” I stammered. “It is only to say . . . that they are male. Like you. That is all.”
The reverend instantly relaxed, the anger ebbing from his face, and leaned back. “I see,” he said after a moment. I lowered my head and listened to my mother’s labored breathing. “Do they . . . harm you in any way?” he said slowly.
“They . . . hold my ankles,” I replied.
He raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Your ankles? That is all?”
“Sometimes they pull on my head. From above,” I continued. My mother looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“They pull at you from both ends?” he asked, a note of alarm creeping into his voice.
“No, sir. Just one end. Or the other.”
“And then?” he asked.
“And then I wake,” I said. “And they are gone.”
“I see,” he said flatly, leaning back in his chair. In truth I could not help but feel I’d somehow disappointed him. My mother seemed relieved, however, and gave a loud sigh, and then there was silence in the room. The sun broke through the clouds just then, and a beam of light came through the window, lighting up the wooden floor beneath my feet. My leather shoes glowed momentarily, then just as quickly the light vanished, and they looked dull and of no consequence.
“God has many tools available to him for our chastisement,” said the Reverend finally. “Visions are just one of them,” he continued. “Illness is another. You are very fortunate that in your case he has chosen the former and not the latter.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, keeping my head well down.
“Praise the Lord,” murmured my mother.
“Praise Him indeed,” said the reverend sternly. “For He is worthy, and He has given you fair warning of His power.” He turned to my mother, who nodded her assent, then looked back at me. “I recommend that you increase your attendance at holy service. And in addition, that you read and dwell upon the Holy Scriptures.”
I raised my head and looked quickly at my mother, who blinked several times and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She hesitated, then spoke haltingly.
“If you please, Reverend, we have not the learning for such things.”
“My lady at the Great House would be delighted to assist,” he said. “She reads Scripture daily to the maids and other folk under her service, and I have no doubt that she would be happy to number you among them.” He looked from me to my mother, who nodded.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “And our thanks be with you.”
“The Lord forgives,” he said, turning his iron gaze upon me, and for a split second I felt sure he knew of my deceit, and that he had willed me into some conspiracy of silence. Our eyes locked together and in an instant he again altered to the visage from my dreams, fangs and all. Then I felt my mother’s hand upon my arm, and as she pulled me out the door, I tore my gaze from his.
Once outside
my senses returned. My mother chastised me for my behavior, but it was clear that she was relieved that the business was over and done with. And she resolved from thenceforth that we should attend mass every evening, instead of thrice weekly as we had previously, and that she would take me the very next day to meet the lady he had spoken of, who gave Scripture to the poor.
And that is how I first came to the Great House.
My dreams eventually subsided in their frequency, though they did not cease altogether. But I kept them to myself, as the experience with Reverend Wickley taught me to be more circumspect. I know now that the world outside is an uneasy one, where fear and suspicion are as likely to prevail as tolerance and understanding.
The night I left my mother tending Long Boy my dreams returned. I dreamed that it was I who’d given birth to the devil, not Dora, and that my mother had delivered me. The devil himself was not an infant, but a boy child of eight or nine years, with horns and teeth and eyes like blazing embers. He snarled like an animal, and fought and clawed his way out of my body. My mother gritted her teeth and grabbed him by the throat, and before I knew it she had stuffed him in a sack of hempcloth and thrown it on the fire. The flames leapt and the bag burned with a vengeance. My mother smoothed her skirts and picked up a broom and began to sweep the floor, while I lay speechless with shock on the bed. When she was finished she took up the iron poker and jabbed at the still-glowing remains. Satisfied, she planted herself in a chair by the fire, the iron poker clutched tightly in her hand.
In all my life I had never experienced a dream of such vividness, nor one so complete in its conclusion of events. I woke in a cold sweat with a great, pitted feeling in my stomach, as if my insides had been torn from me in sleep. And I wondered what went through Dora’s mind as she plunged toward the ice.
Was it fear she felt, or relief?
Chapter Five