Joan winced under the implied criticism of her husband and looked up sharply at Mrs. Carew. “I’m sure the town will suffer no great damage from this,” she said coolly.
The tone of Joan’s response caused a shift of topic and the women began to speak of Margaret Waite. They had all known her for years, but it was evident that none except Joan had liked her very much. She had been distant and haughty, even after her husband’s business failure. A woman with a successful husband was supposed to carry herself proudly, but one in other circumstances should at least affect humility. At any rate, that was the women’s opinion.
During this time, Betty brought a plate of cates and marchpane and distributed the sweets among the women, who continued to talk while they ate. The conversation narrowed in focus—Margaret Waite’s relationship with Ursula Tusser.
“I say Mrs. Waite was as thick as her serving girls with the witch,” affirmed the widow James, looking around the table for support for this proposition.
Mrs. Carew agreed. “Were Margaret’s body to be scrutinized, I warrant we’d find the mark,” she said with scarcely concealed relish. “Why, I tell you she was one of the circle. Twice weekly they met. In the Waite barn, that horrible rat-ridden place. It ought to be torn down.”
“Burned,” said the widow, munching.
“Destroyed completely, even to the foundation,” added Mrs. Monks.
Mrs. Carew made a disdainful face, and the image of the offending structure floated into Joan’s mind. Mrs. Carew said, “What more proof of complicity would a reasonable woman want than that? Pray, would a Christian family abide such practices under its own roof?”
The question hung in the air, and since its answer seemed obvious none of the women responded. Joan held her peace. She had her own ideas, as her husband had discovered, but she was not prepared to advance them at the moment. She felt decidedly at a disadvantage. She had not been in the street, not seen the new apparition of Ursula Tusser. Ursula’s
activities she knew by hearsay alone. Her sense of fairness precluded any snap judgments.
Mrs. Monks now stated that her scrivener husband had done some small services for the Waites. “I learned a thing or two,” she said, nodding her head judiciously.
“What did you learn?” asked Joan, looking up from her stitchery.
“Marry, that Margaret was all agog over Ursula’s arts, despite what she said at the trial. My husband said that Malcolm Waite told him he was grieved over his wife’s curiosity about these matters. He urged her to give over these preoccupations and trust in God, but she would not be schooled so.”
“Why, could the good man not impose his will, control his wife?” asked Mrs. Carew, who always made much of masculine authority in her talk with friends but ruled the roost at home.
“Not Malcolm Waite,” observed Mrs. Monks with a brittle scornful laugh. “He was a milksop, always allowing his wife her will.”
“A husband who will do that may find she’s allowed him his horns,” cackled the widow James, whereupon they all laughed.
The women went on to the subject of Ursula Tusser. Joan’s friends did not share her doubts about the young woman’s guilt. Outnumbered and disinclined at the moment to debate, Joan continued to listen as Ursula’s enormities were recounted and, she suspected, embellished. Mrs. Carew claimed Ursula had conjured regularly and kept open company with familiars and imps. Then Mrs. Monks said the girl had given her soul to the Devil, and reminded them all of the Devil’s mark that had been found beneath her right breast.
“It was the left,” said Mrs. Carew, smiling tolerantly. She had been on the jury of women examiners and had seen the mark herself. Examined it with finger and eye, she stated.
Mrs. James, not willing to be outdone by her friends, then told how the girl had caused a great swelling in her nephew’s groin, so that the surgeon had to lance it, whereupon black
pus oozed forth to the amazement of the surgeon, who declared he had never seen the like. And Mrs. Monks related a new story of how Ursula bewitched a pail and made it run downhill after her, and the widow James confessed that she had once in her girlhood been tempted to conjure that her sow might breed the more but resisted the temptation. She also admitted buying a charm of a traveling tinker, which, he assured her as he pocketed her tuppence, would enable her to find hidden treasure. The charm had not worked and she cast it away, she admitted sadly.
Mary Carew wanted to know then what manner of charm she spoke of, and the widow said it was a smooth white stone about the girth of a peach pit, and Mrs. Carew declared she had a stone exactly like it and, by flinging it into the air behind her and then walking to where it lay, she had once recovered a silver spoon one of her babes had lost in the grass. She said the widow was very foolish for casting off the stone so readily, but the widow, although her face was sad enough, declared she thought the stone was a hoax.
After some additional talk about the properties of stones and charms, the women speculated that Ursula’s circle might well have encompassed more persons than those identified at the trial, and proceeded to name several elderly women of the community and at least one man who, Mrs. Carew was sure, kept female imps in his closet to satisfy his lustful pleasures.
Joan felt very uncomfortable and worried with this line of talk, realizing that once such suspicions began and were voiced, there would be no end to them. Every person with a grievance against his neighbor would find cause to accuse him of the black arts, and the same charge would be returned until no one in the town could trust another. It was a great relief to her when about noon her friends excused themselves and left her to mull over a tangle of truth and fantasy that seemed more hopelessly confused than ever. It was her feeling now that the charges against Ursula had doubtless had some foundation in fact, although whether or not the girl deserved hanging she continued to question. But what was she to make of this most recent apparition?
When the dinner hour passed and Matthew had not returned, Joan began to worry more than ever. During the long afternoon, she busied herself but could concentrate on nothing. Restless beyond endurance, she told Betty she was going out, collected her cloak and cap, and went into the street. Within minutes she was standing before the Waite house.
The crowd of gawkers was gone now and no signs of a riot remained. Shops nearby were open but doing little business. The afternoon sky was solemn and threatening, the air chill and damp. The handful of persons passing the house seemed at pains to avoid it, and those she knew made no effort to greet her or stop to talk. The only friendly face she saw was that of Arthur Wilts. He was leaning against the doorpost of the glover’s shop as though he himself were the proprietor. He wished her good day.
“Good day to you, Arthur.”
“The constable told me to question any who came,” explained Arthur when Joan inquired what business of his it was what she wanted with the occupants of the house.
“Arthur Wilts, you know me well enough,” Joan said crossly. “Make way. I want to see my friend Mrs. Waite, if you must know, and comfort her on the death of her husband. Is that so strange?”
Arthur smiled sheepishly and stepped aside.
She knocked at the door, and presently it was answered by Susan Goodyear. The girl explained that her mistress was abed and in her chamber, but invited Joan to come in and wait. Joan was shown into the parlor.
While Susan revived the fire with a few faggots, Joan took in every detail of the room with her careful housekeeper’s eye. Its furnishings told the story of prosperity fallen into adversity. The wall hangings were faded and dusty; the great sideboard was bare of pewter, doubtless sold off to pay the family’s debts. Above the hearth there had once hung the sword and breastplate of a martial ancestor. She remembered them well, but the mementos were gone now. It was all very sad, and she wondered in which of the straight-backed chairs Malcolm Waite was sitting when he died.
She waited alone in the room for what seemed an hour, pretending to read a collection of dry se
rmons she had found on the mantelpiece but hardly progressing beyond the first page. Why should she read sermons when the chamber spoke one so eloquently? Sic transit gloria mundi. Her only Latin. She contemplated the thought and grew more melancholy than ever. The dark house reeked with the odor of disappointment, failure, death. She found it overpowering.
Then Susan returned to say her mistress would be down shortly. Joan thanked the girl, and, finding the chamber no longer to be endured, she told Susan she would walk in the garden in the meantime.
Joan passed through the empty kitchen and out the back door. Emerging into the bracing air, she gave a sigh of relief. Before her lay the rectangular patch of herbs and greens that was Margaret’s garden. The patch was overgrown, and the outlines of an earlier regimen of squares and circles—an artful geometry—was now barely discernible. Beyond the garden was the ivy-enshrouded privy with its door ajar, beyond still a low stone wall and the meadow sloping to the river. To the right of the garden stood the barn.
This now infamous structure caught her attention and for a few moments she stood regarding it. The rough-timbered barn was much weathered and tottering, with a high-pitched roof of rotting thatch and with gaping front doors loose on their hinges. At one side of the building was an empty swine pen in which weeds and thistles grew wantonly; at the other an enclosure for ducks, geese, and hens. The fowls cackled and honked, but the familiar notes of their discourse soon passed from her awareness. The sight of such disrepair and neglect renewed her melancholy, but the infamous barn aroused her curiosity as well. She did not mean to snoop, and yet, with no one around to tell her stay, she felt the urge to explore.
She followed the path that led around the garden and then fanned out before the barn doors. She was halfway to her destination when she paused. Suddenly she felt she was being watched. She surveyed the garden, then turned to look back
at the house, half expecting to see Margaret or one of her servants or perhaps the nephew observing her progress, critical of its intent, preparing to call her back. But she saw no one, either at the door or at the windows. The house might have been deserted for all the signs of life she could see. A dead house. She cast a quick nervous glance beyond the garden to the meadow, then looked toward the neighboring houses and their similar complement of gardens and outbuildings. There was nothing. Under the glowering sky a vast stillness had fallen, and she felt unaccountably afraid.
But she was not inclined to go back. The barn beckoned to her. She continued along the path and was nearly to the doors of the barn when she saw the cat.
Lithely it came from out of the dark interior, as though to meet her, and took up a position of watchfulness, mewing plaintively. It was a large brindled cat with a flat face, bristling fur, and eye slits that opened to reveal hard gemlike eyes. Since she was fond of cats, she greeted it pleasantly, but as she did the cat arched its back and hissed.
“Now there’s a good gentle cat,” she said, extending a hand to stroke it, bending over. The creature struck at her with its paw and made a hostile snarling noise.
She recoiled, her heart thumping. “Inhospitable devil to use me so ill,” she said in a quaking voice.
The cat ignored the rebuke and continued to glare menacingly. She told herself the cat was but an ordinary cat, probably a capable mouser and—if a male, as its size seemed to suggest—a patriarch of some eminence in the neighborhood. And yet it blocked her way and threatened with an uncanny purposefulness.
Then it occurred to her that the cat may have been Ursula Tusser’s familiar, and the thought triggered another spasm of apprehension. It was almost as strong as a premonition. For what seemed a long time, she stood in a quandary, uncertain whether to proceed or to return to the house. She had almost decided to return when the cat unaccountably forsook its position and bounded off into the weeds.
Now that her way was open again, she began to breathe
more easily. Slowly her courage returned. With an effort of will she reasoned that the gaping doors of the barn presented an opportunity. The Waite house returned to normal might not permit such unsupervised investigation as she intended. Having convinced herself, she resolved to go on, if only to spite the impudent cat, who, she concluded in her more confident frame of mind, was a mere cat, after all.
She stepped across the threshold into the barn, bending her head for the low lintel and leaving the doors ajar. The chamber was without windows, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. The air was moist and rank with the odor of horse dung, and presently she could see the originator of this stench: the Waites’ mare, standing in the first of a line of stalls. The horse shook its head and whinnied, and at this friendly greeting Joan’s apprehension began to fade. She approached and stroked the mare’s nose and withers. The mare nudged at her ear affectionately. “Poor creature,” she said softly, in a deliberate undertone as though she expected her conversation with the animal to be overheard. “To endure such filth. Do those lazy louts never clean your stall or let you graze in the meadow?”
The horse wheezed and stamped to share Joan’s complaint. Her desire to explore revived. At the end of the stalls she could see a ladder she knew would lead to the loft. She walked toward it, glancing as she did at the dark empty stalls, filled with trash. She came to the ladder and looked upward at the rectangular opening in the ceiling, dimly perceiving, beyond the underside of the roof, the gaps of light in the rotting thatch. Testing the rungs of the ladder and finding them sturdy, she began to climb.
The great door of the loft was closed but light came in through the chinks in the wallboards. On a summer day the loft would have been an oven, unbearable. Now the layer of matted hay, turned into compost by moisture from the leaking roof, exuded a warm, earthy smell. It was not unpleasant, and while she remained on her guard, her heart beating like a drum, she admitted to herself the loft was not the chamber of horrors she had expected. There was little to be
seen—certainly little evidence of secret ceremonies or incantations that had given it its local reputation. A mouse watched her with its beady little eyes, then scampered off. In dark corners she could make out the skulls and bones of birds who had found their way into the loft but not out again. Spiders and their webby habitations. A few rusting tools. The pendent shapes of bats in their black cloaks waiting for the true dark. Now that she was here, what was she to do? There remained an edge to her curiosity as though she had not seen all there was to see.
She noticed a pitchfork standing against the wall, and without a definite sense of what she was looking for she began to poke around in the matted hay. It came up in clumps, sticking to the prongs, revealing dark moldering underlayers. At length her explorations were rewarded. She found a piece of red ribbon, the nub of candle (what mischief had it illuminated?), a fragment of yellowing paper upon which she could just make out the word “whereas” written in a fine, secretary’s hand. Heartened by these small discoveries, she persisted in her labors and was ready to give over her task when her tool struck a hard object. Kneeling down, she extracted the thing with her hands, then took it to the wall and a ray of light the better to inspect it. She saw, cleaning it off with her hands, that it was a carved figure of human shape, with eyes, nose, and mouth carefully etched in soft wood. The figure was armless, but two legs had been crudely represented. In the groin was an obscene parody of a male member, raised and bloated.
She cried out in disgust and cast the image into the corner. She knew what it was, the image. She knew its purpose—the laming of an enemy or his cow or his horse, the spoiling of crops. At its most innocent, causing love, or lust, to flourish in an obdurate heart. But even that was witchcraft, were it possible. And even if it was not possible, was not the intent equally malign?
Through the long cracks in the walls she could see outside, down into the garden, if she pressed her face against the wood. She did, and saw Susan Goodyear walking down the
path in the direction of the privy. Joan watched the girl. Sus
an was carrying a chamber pot and walking listlessly, in no hurry. As she passed the barn, she looked up and Joan drew back, fearful of being seen. But she was not seen. The girl walked on, went inside the privy, came out a few minutes later, walked back to the house. Joan watched, waiting. She was ready to leave now, more than ready. She had found what she had come for. She realized there had been something more than gossip behind the charges against Ursula Tusser. She was not convinced yet it was all true, but now she believed it was partly so. She shuddered, imagining the scene. The conjurers with their images, their incantations and spells. The awful consequences—loss of valuables, sickness of man and beast, impotency, death. Poor Malcolm Waite. She moved toward the ladder and had her foot on the top rung when she froze.
Whispers. She could hear them, coming from below, male or female she could not tell. She hardly dared to breathe, wondering at the same time why she should be so terrified of discovery. It wasn’t as though she were a thief or ordinary intruder. She was a friend of the family. All she had to do was to call out, Hello, is anyone there? But she dared not speak. The whispering stopped. She heard footsteps, the creak of a hinge, a dull thud. Then nothing.
She continued to listen. From time to time she could hear the stirring of the mare. She focused her mind, realizing that she could not remain where she was indefinitely. She peered into the murky darkness below her and saw nothing but an empty stall. Slowly she descended.
All the way down she held her breath, almost afraid to look about her for fear of seeing someone waiting. Worse was the thought of someone grabbing her by the ankle or calf. She could almost feel the iron grip. She stood on the barn floor and stared into the dimness. Nothing but what was there before. She moved quickly toward the doors, noticing that they were closed now although she had deliberately left
them open. More evidence that she had not been alone in the barn. She paused to look at the mare. The sad equine face regarded her with its great round glistening eyes. “Who was here?” she whispered, as though the dumb beast would tell.
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