Familiar Spirits

by Leonard Tourney

  He explained he had not been at Ursula’s trial, had not heard her account. Would she tell him what had transpired between them, how Ursula had bewitched her?

  She made no objection to telling her story. In a thin, uncertain voice she explained how she had become one of Ursula’s circle. She had come to work for the Waites a little over a year earlier—about Michaelmas or so, she said, computing the date in her mind with great earnestness and difficulty, as though the moment of her first employment was not only germane but crucial. The association and, ultimately, friendship of the two girls seemed inevitable. They were of the same age, both servants. They dwelt in adjacent houses of kinsmen. Comings and goings between the two families were constant. In her first month of service, Susan had been homesick beyond endurance. Her mother—a poor widow with a large brood to care for—lived in Colchester. Susan had thought of running away. Then Ursula, a quiet girl like her-

  self, had made signs of friendship, bringing her nosegays, which Ursula had found in the meadow, and once a funny black kitten, who had unfortunately died the same day. As Susan continued to describe her relationship with Ursula, it was clear the Crispins’ servant had taken the place of an older sister for Susan.

  “What of Brigit?” Matthew asked.

  “Oh, she was not yet come. Then I was the only servant. Philipa Carey had died of the fever a week before I came.”

  “So you became friends—you and Ursula Tusser.”

  “Oh, we were that!” Susan exclaimed in a little transport of happiness at the recollection. “Of nights we would walk together in the pasture behind the houses. Ursula had most wondrous ways with animals. She knew the names of herbs and plants, their powers to cure and hurt. All she had from her own mother, she said, who was a cunning woman in her town. The birds would fly to her outstretched hand. Foxes came at her beckoning. Once I saw her charm a little snake so that it coiled and uncoiled its silver sheen, coiled and uncoiled again. Oh, sir, she did indeed play most wondrously with the snake, and she showed no fear of it at all, nor it of her.”

  “Yet she bewitched you at last,” Matthew reminded her.

  The thin smile of happiness faded. Susan’s face turned gray at the memory. She was vague about just how Ursula had bewitched her and why. The bewitchment itself was murkily described. She had not been lamed or made sick; she had not been driven to do something against her will or to feel passionate longings for forbidden things; she had not been inflicted with ghastly visions or threatened by demons or specters—until now, at least. But she reaffirmed her charge, nervously yet with conviction. Bewitched she had been. Brigit Able too.

  Matthew listened, asked questions, allowed the girl to take her story where she would. At the same time, he sensed the lie. Sensed it the way a spectator at a play, viewing the imitation of life, is caught up by the tale but at the same time recognizes it as the concoction of the poet’s fancy. Susan

  Goodyear’s bewitchment was fanciful. She had lied at the trial and was lying still to protect the first lie.

  Matthew imagined the jury—their sense of Ursula’s guilt a foregone conclusion, heady with their power of life and death, and eager to get to their verdict—greedily gobbling up the lie and savoring it. Bewitchment. Why, the very word caused a tingle in the spine, a reverberation in the brain. It was all clear to Matthew now what had happened and why. Neither Susan nor Brigit was clever, but they knew well enough how to get themselves out of trouble. Representing themselves as Ursula’s victims, they had in truth been her accomplices, to what degree Matthew could not determine. The wonder was that Ursula, seeing herself betrayed by her friends, had not in turn denounced them.

  He would have liked to tell Susan that he knew she had lied and was lying still. But he knew his accusation would serve no useful purpose. A confession would do Ursula no good now. She was dead. If the truth were known, the circle of guilt would only be enlarged, increasing the gallows fodder and enriching the hangman. What concerned Matthew now was the apparition. He asked Susan why she thought the specter had appeared to her master. To revenge itself on the house? He asked her if she feared the specter would appear to her.

  The girl shuddered at the very suggestion and turned pale. It was obvious her conscience was uneasy, her fear well motivated. She had betrayed a friend, lied under oath before God. About the apparition she would say nothing. She had seen nothing, heard nothing. With her lips she denied the existence of what her expression affirmed. Matthew glimpsed the depth of her terror.

  Feeling her resistance strong now, Matthew decided to change the subject back to Susan’s relationship with Ursula.

  “You met with her in the barn loft?”

  “I did—along with others.”

  “I don’t care about them. I care about you. I want to know what it was you saw.”

  “I told at the trial.” She began to whimper.

  “I know you did, but I wasn’t there—remember?”

  “We were mostly Ursula’s audience. She spoke, we listened.”

  “Spoke what?” he asked, more insistently.

  “What would befall each of us,” she said.

  “What did she say would befall you?”

  “She said I would marry.”

  “Well and good. Who, did she say?”

  “She named no names.”

  “I should think not.”

  “She said I would marry a man not of this town. She said he would be mounted on a fine bay horse, have a full purse and a merry wit. She said I would be happy and bear many children. She said my mother and brother and sisters were well at home and that William, my youngest brother, would suffer a fall but not be hurt by it, which thing turned out to be the truth indeed, for the week after she told it me my mother came from Colchester to see me and said that William had fallen from the haycock and had lain without his wits for an hour’s time, then woke refreshed as though he had been asleep. By this I knew Ursula spoke the truth.”

  “How was she able to know these things?” Matthew asked. “She had a familiar.”

  “Ah, it was witchcraft, then?”

  Susan nodded. “Her familiar, she said, was an old Greek who had died long before. She said he came to her in the form of a cat and whispered things.”

  “Things about anyone?”

  “No, just about her circle—about us.”

  “What other powers did she claim by this cat, this familiar?”

  “She said that if anyone threatened us, she could protect us and cause them harm who threatened. By the cat she knew these things. She would also make images of wax or clay, sometimes of swollen radishes that, lain overlong in the ground, would grow into human shapes with bellies and limbs. These she would set over the fire until the man or woman so depicted would waste away with continual sick-

  06 •

  ness. She also claimed knowledge of uncouth poisons, which she would use to cure or cast on disease, and she knew of certain roots which, concealed beneath the bolster, could make the barren wife fertile or the husband impotent.”

  “This is all truly witchcraft,” Matthew said sternly. “Why didn’t you shun her, knowing as you did what evil she designed?”

  “Why, sir,” returned Susan with an expression of injured innocence, “she told us it was not of the Devil at all, what she did. Christ, by clay and spittle wrought together, opened the eyes of a blind man, showing that there is indeed virtue in such combinations of elements.”

  “A foolish argument, and you the more foolish for believing it,” said Matthew. “Satan is a subtle creature. That miracle of which you speak our Lord did of his own virtue, not that of the clay or spit, else that would be the common method of healing the blind and no miracle at all.”

  Susan made no answer to this; her head hung dejectedly.

  “How long did you practice these things with her?”

  “About three months.”

  “Did she ever raise spirits of the dead—either for herself or for others’ use?”

  �
�No, I don’t think so.”

  “But she did claim to have the power to do so?” said the constable, remembering what John Waite had said about his aunt’s participation in these mysteries.

  Susan admitted that Ursula claimed to have such power, but she insisted she had never seen her use it.

  “Were there others in this circle who claimed to have like power?”

  “To raise spirits?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only Ursula. None other.”

  Only Ursula. From his memory he retrieved the image of the hanged girl, the child-woman. Harmless and pitiful she had seemed to him in her predicament, diminished by the towering hangman, the hostility of the crowd, the furor of the law. And yet in her vengeful smile Matthew had sensed

  the evil of which she was possessed. He had not fully recognized the cause of his unease then, thinking it merely his doubts about the justice of her execution. But it had been more than that. Surely Susan was telling the truth about this—the images and concoctions, the familiars and the demonic prophecies. If these things were not the substance of witchcraft, what was?

  He told Susan to find Brigit and send her up to him. While he waited for the older girl, he went to the window on the opposite side of the attic and looked out on the back parts of the house. He knelt down on the splintery floorboards, and the barn appeared within his view. He thought of the witch’s circle. Of Susan and Brigit. Of Malcolm Waite and Margaret. Of Mrs. Byrd, who had been the first to denounce Ursula. And he thought of Ursula—pale, thin Ursula—with new respect. What power she must have possessed that such a self-willed woman as Margaret Waite would seek her counsel. It was all passing strange.

  When he heard Brigit mounting the stairs, he rose and faced the stairhead. Her head emerged. She stared at him with an expression suggesting that she knew what questions he would put to her and that her resolve was firm to answer only the questions that pleased her.

  The brief interview that followed plowed much the same furrow, only deeper and more irregularly. Like Susan, Brigit had first been drawn to Ursula’s company by the other girl’s proffers of friendship. Once the friendship had been established, Ursula had introduced Brigit to her various arts, beginning with the relatively innocent fortune-telling and then moving to the more arcane and forbidden areas of necromancy and magic. Brigit denied that she herself conjured, denied seeking familiar spirits or the employment of images on her own behalf. She claimed that it was not until she felt herself bewitched that she became aware of the satanic origin of Ursula’s powers. Like Susan, she was unable to specify just what manner of bewitchment had been visited on her. Matthew was able to determine, however, that the alleged bewitchment happened after Mrs. Byrd had complained of Ursula’s

  conjuring to the authorities. This made him even more certain that Brigit’s bewitchment, like Susan’s, was a desperate effort to divert attention from her own participation in Ursula’s craft. It was equally clear to Matthew that Brigit was as terrified of Ursula’s apparition as was Susan, and yet Brigit made no denial that the apparition was real.

  “Do you believe it was Ursula’s shape your master saw in his window?” he asked.

  “I believe it was, sir,” said Brigit with quiet conviction and a noticeable shudder.

  “What do you suppose she wanted?”

  “In coming to the window?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, to show the mistress she could not be got rid of so easily. She’ll be coming to me and Susan soon, I fear. There’ll be no stopping her. Not my mistress—not you, sir, not even the magistrate. Not the Queen herself. There’s no shackles upon the dead,” she pronounced gloomily.

  The light in the attic was bad; it came only from the tiny windows, and Brigit’s narrow, pinched face, pale with fright at her own words, seemed corpse-like. The attic was cold too, cold as though Ursula Tusser were already making her presence felt, not as a visible shape but as a draft of chilling air. Suddenly, Matthew had a great desire to get out of the attic and of the house. Had her terror infected him?

  As he descended the stairs, he took a last look at the girl. She sat transfixed in a thought There was no need for her to tell him what the thought was. If she had lied about being Ursula’s victim at the trial, her testimony had ironically become true. She was Ursula’s victim now. Brigit had seen the specter herself. Matthew was as certain of that as if he had been a party at their meeting.

  Matthew returned to the parlor, where he found the members of the family conferring quietly. “In the resurrection,” Jane Crispin was saying to her sister, “we shall see him as he was—in a body made perfect of its deformities.”

  “Yes, made perfect,” said Margaret absently. Her gray eyes were cavernous with fatigue and grief.

  Jane rose and with a glance at her husband indicated it was time for them to go. There was a short exchange of farewells, and then Matthew followed the Crispins to the door. Before he could leave, however, John Waite took him aside and whispered confidentially, “I gather you found the servants sufficiently communicative?” The nephew’s expression suggested he would have been interested in just what the two girls had told Matthew, but Matthew felt no obligation to gratify the young man’s curiosity. He confirmed only that he had spoken with both and that they had answered his questions to his satisfaction. John Waite seemed disappointed but said nothing further.

  When Matthew went into the street, he saw that Arthur had returned from his dinner and had resumed his station. He waved to him and then said good-bye to the Crispins, whose own departure from the house had been delayed by Jane Crispin’s having to run back inside. Some last word about funeral arrangements, she had said upon rejoining Matthew and her husband.

  “You were best to look out for your sister-in-law,” Matthew advised Crispin. “It’s quiet enough now, but I can’t promise it will remain so.”

  “Never fear, Mr. Stock. My wife and I will keep a faithful watch on Margaret and her house. We can depend on your help too, can’t we?”

  Matthew assured both of them he would do what he could. “Over there stands Arthur Wilts,” Matthew said, pointing to his deputy watching them from the opposite side of the street. Now that things were quiet again, Arthur was obviously suffering from the tedium of his assignment. “If there’s trouble, he’ll come to fetch me. I’ll be at my shop.”

  No sooner had Matthew said this than he saw two of the town’s aldermen approaching. They cast unpleasant looks at the Crispins and then informed Matthew that the magistrate, who had been away from home when the morning’s trouble started, had now returned and been apprised of it. Matthew was to come with them to the manor house at once to make a full report.

  •SIX-

  JOAN’S husband had been gone nearly an hour when the women descended upon her in a flutter of excited talk. They were her friends—her gossips, as Matthew was fond of terming them in his droll humor: Alisoun Monks, the scrivener’s wife; Elizabeth James, a plump loquacious person who had persisted in her widowed state for such a long time that hardly anyone in town could now remember her husband; and tall, stately Mary Carew, who put on airs and whose husband, like Matthew, was a clothier.

  The women brought the news. They had been hurrying on their way to visit Joan when they were attracted by the crowd outside the Waite house. Curious, the women had mingled long enough to be witnesses to the extraordinary manifestation of Satanic power that was now the talk of Chelmsford. In fact, as their subsequent accounts to Joan revealed, none of the women had seen the apparition that was said to have shown itself in the upstairs window. What Mrs. Carew had seen was the terrified expression of a poor woman’s face who had seen it, and that was sufficient testimony for her.

  The other two women fell into agreement, the way in a team of three horses running abreast all stumble if one does.

  “Oh, it was a dreadful sight,” exclaimed the widow James, pressing a plump white hand to her ample bosom. “A most awful and portentous visage.”

  She
made a face to emphasize her horror and the other women looked on sympathetically. “Just imagine it,” she

  said, “in broad daylight with a hundred or more Christian souls looking on.”

  “One poor wretch fainted dead away,” added Mrs. Carew, and made a clucking noise of disapproval. “The grocer’s wife and her child were nearly trampled by the crowd.”

  The women had seated themselves at the long trestle table in the kitchen and were being served hot caudle to take the chill from their bones, but by the flush on their faces it was evident that their excitement had warmed them enough. When had such a sight been seen in the town?

  While her friends gave their reports, adding or correcting as they saw fit, each vying with the others for the most horrendous version of the scene, Joan listened, applying her hands to her stitchery, pausing only long enough to sip her drink. The spicy caudle was pleasant on her tongue, but she thought the women’s news very bad indeed. Of this strange supernatural occurrence she trusted Matthew would tell her upon his return, but she did not like the sound of riotous trampling of women and children, and she was concerned for her friend Margaret Waite. What a state the poor widow must be in with a husband to bury, a riot at her door, and a ghost in her attic!

  “Did any of you see my husband?” she thought to ask.

  “Marry, he was there in the flesh,” said Mrs. Carew, who had always been a little jealous that it was Joan’s husband and not her own who had been repeatedly elected by the freemen of the town to the important office of constable. “But he could do little good, given the size of the press and him but one man.”

  “Strangers have flocked to the town to see the wonder,” remarked Mrs. Monks with a satisfied expression on her face. “On High Street it is like market day for the throng. The alehouses and taverns will do a great business.”

  “Yes, but the honest merchants of the neighborhood must close up shop for fear of invasion of these riotous wonder-mongers,” said Mrs. Carew disapprovingly. “Let us pray the authorities can keep order and protect the decent and Godfearing from these enormities.”