Onlookers began to drift away. The danger was past. Someone remarked, in a voice loud enough to carry for some distance, that the fire had been arson plain and simple. But another voice said no, the fire was the judgment of God upon the Waites for their entertainment of the Devil. Matthew heard no third voice denying it.
• FOURTEEN •
WELL after midnight, numb with exhaustion, Matthew returned to his house and was amazed to find the lights still burning in the shop and the kitchen. He knocked twice and called out. The door opened and Joan admitted him; she was still dressed as he had last seen her, in her apron. Her face was drawn; she seemed to be in the midst of a strange waking dream, only half aware of his presence, but she clutched at his sleeve and would not let go until they had passed through the shop, he had extinguished the lamps, and they had gone into the kitchen where there was a great roaring fire to warm him.
“Thank God you’ve come home,” she said, her voice quavering.
“The Waites’ barn was set afire,” he said, embracing her. “Margaret Waite and Jane Crispin and her husband are all conveyed to the Blue Boar under arrest. Tom Crispin shot a man with that pistol of his, but the fellow will live.”
She said she had heard all that. The riot had drawn her out-of-doors—at least far enough to satisfy her curiosity about what was going on.
“You look tired,” he said. “More than tired—you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Faith, I think I have,” she said. They sat down at the table and she poured them both a hot drink. When they had drunk, Matthew waited for her to explain herself. He could
tell by her expression that she had not been joking about the ghost.
She told her tale rapidly and concluded breathless. She told him everything—her terrible dream, her sudden awakening, the dread, and then her terror as she saw the face peering in at her.
“And this visage at the window. It was—”
“Ursula Tusser, to the life,” Joan said, looking at him directly as though challenging him to deny it. “It was the face in my dream too. The serving girl. She looked familiar to me then ... in my sleep. Strange that I did not recognize her at once. My blood ran cold.”
“But how can you be certain it was she and not one of the mob—or some innocent passerby, for that matter? They were all about the back parts of the houses. Some of them might have drifted on up the street. Observing the light, they might have supposed—”
“No, husband. It was no passerby—no mobber, either. Besides, this happened before the riot. It was within an hour or so of your leaving. Later I heard the clamor of the church bell.”
“Some passerby, then, or neighbor come to beg sugar or salt or—”
“I know the girl’s face,” she insisted. “It was her very eyes, her nose, her mouth.”
Joan’s face was hard with certainty; he dared dispute with her no further, nor did he care to. He was satisfied; he believed that she had seen the face. But whose?
“What happened then?” he asked.
“When?”
“When you saw the face.”
“Nothing. For a moment the face was there, looking in at me, breathing against the glass.”
“Breathing you say?”
“Yes, it was breathing. I think I could see the breath.”
“No ghost breathes, Joan,” he said quietly.
She reflected a moment. “That’s right,” she said. “It
breathed. Therefore it was not dead, yet it was she, my life upon it.”
“A mystery, then. Tell me, when the face appeared you were startled?”
“Yes, and then the face vanished. I didn’t even have time to scream. The scream lodged in my throat. I felt I was choking.”
“So the face must have appeared to Malcolm Waite the night he died,” Matthew said. “Did you go outside to see where the apparition went?”
She looked at him incredulously. “Are you in jest? What woman or man either, seeing such a sight, would pursue it?” Since he was not sure he would have followed the spirit himself, he did not contend with her answer.
“Which window was it?”
She pointed to the window next to the postern door. It was a small rectangular window with leaded panes. He picked up the lamp that sat between them and carried it outside. Joan followed, asking him where he was going.
“You’ll see anon,” he said, lifting the lamp so it illuminated the area beneath the window. In the spring and summer the patch of earth was a bed of hollyhocks and marigolds. Now it was covered with a thin layer of moist leaves. “I’m looking for footprints,” he said, crouching for a closer inspection of the ground. He poked around in the leaves and stood up and tried to peer into the window. He was just able to see inside, but only by standing on his tiptoes. “How tall was Ursula?”
“Tall? Oh, I think of middle height.”
“Taller than you?”
“I don’t think so. About the same.”
“And her feet—were they small or great?”
“Small, I think. She seemed most daintily made in every part.” She sighed with exasperation and weariness, her arms akimbo. “Husband, what mean all these questions?”
“There are prints here—impressions in the soft moldering leaves. As though someone stood at the window.” He held the
lamp so she could see for herself. “A spirit that breathes and stands. ”
“I know it was Ursula.”
“Ursula is dead. I saw her die.”
She did not respond. They went back inside.
“Don’t you believe me?” she asked in a small voice as they climbed the stairs.
“I believe you,” he said, but his suspicions were deep and disturbing. He did not know how to explain what she had seen.
He slept until nearly six and then awoke with a start. By his side Joan moaned softly and rolled onto her back, her own repose as peaceful as a child’s. Deciding not to wake her, he dragged himself from bed, dressed hurriedly, and left the house to go at once to the Blue Boar to see how his prisoners had spent the night.
His own sleep had been restless, full of vague disturbing shapes and noises, eerie wails, and the terrified stomping and shrieking of the Waites’ mare suffocating in its stall. Now as he walked briskly down the street, the short night’s disquiet remained with him, mocking the distinction between sleep and wake and discoloring the images of the day.
At the inn he found his prisoners secure but agitated. Their sleep had been no longer or sounder than his own; they were disheveled in dress and their faces bore the pallor of the infirm. Crispin paced the floor nervously and answered curtly when Matthew asked him how he did. Margaret wailed like a child. She wanted to go home, she said, and looked pleadingly at Matthew as though permission were fully within his power. Matthew assured them that their safest course was to remain where they were. Breakfast was served, but they ate little and the boy who brought breakfast looked at the prisoners with a mixture of fear and loathing, although a few days earlier he would have tipped his hat respectfully as the tanner passed.
“So we are secure here,” said the tanner with a scowl on his
face. He leaned against the windowsill. “Some security it is when we are treated no better than common felons. Come, tell us, what are the new charges to which the magistrate referred?”
“They will be determined this morning,” Matthew replied not unsympathetically, for he too felt that new and more serious charges had not been part of the tanner’s reckoning when he agreed to lay down his weapons and submit to arrest. Matthew couldn’t help feeling himself a participant in the betrayal.
“This is a fine mess,” Crispin said. He turned to look out the window. “See now,” he said, his voice breaking, “I can almost see my shop.” The tanner’s muscular shoulders shuddered, betraying his silent grief. Matthew, finding Crispin’s sorrow difficult to look upon, turned to the two women, who were seated on the bed. They too aroused pity in his heart. He was doing his duty as h
e saw it, yet if it was his duty he did, why did he now feel a persecutor of the innocent rather than a friend of justice? For a while it was very quiet in the room. Crispin had regained his composure but remained staring into the street. The women waited, and Matthew watched them. He thought about Joan’s terrible vision and remembered that Margaret too had seen it. What did it mean? The question assumed a center place in his consciousness. The apparition had been real, and the evidence was that it was mortal still—a corporeal spirit, then. He was sure it had been real. And Joan had said so. But what did it want? Why had it come to his house?
He returned home in a gloom of dark thoughts. Joan was in the kitchen, the breakfast on the table. His uneasiness persisted. He felt like a man wandering in a thicket; whichever direction he took he was cut and scratched. Was he victim or victimizer? Were the sisters innocent or conjurers? He could not hide his gloom from Joan.
“How are the sisters?” she asked.
“Tired, confused. They want to go home. Even Jane now. They still don’t understand the danger they face—from the law and from their neighbors.”
“Poor Margaret, poor Jane. So dreadfully wronged.”
Her expression of sympathy surprised him, given what had happened the night before. Did she hold the women blameless even though she was convinced the apparition had pressed its face against her window? He asked her about it, wanting to know how she had clarified in her mind what was in his a muddle of conflicting facts and agonizing doubts.
There were dark circles of fatigue beneath her eyes, and he realized at that moment that he was seeing her as she would appear to him in—say—ten or fifteen years. But she spoke in a plain sensible tone. “I saw the shape of Ursula Tusser, just as Malcolm and Margaret Waite saw her. I cannot deny it, I will not—no, not if put upon the rack. Yet whether the apparition manifested itself at the Devil’s behest or came of its own accord, I cannot say. It does not follow in my mind that either Margaret or her sister beckoned that awful spirit from the grave, if that is the doubt in your heart. It could have been someone else who conjured.”
“Who else?” he asked dubiously.
“The Devil never wants for helpers,” Joan answered. “Keep an open mind, husband. Don’t condemn the poor women out of hand. There may yet be an explanation for these strange occurrences.”
“Which explanation I pray soon comes to light,” he said, “for them and for us all.”
He stroked her cheek affectionately. She grasped his hand. “God keep you, Joan,” he said.
“And you,” she answered.
Matthew felt the blessing was much needed.
• FIFTEEN •
AT THE MANOR HOUSE, MATTHEW FOUND HIMSELF IN AN IMPRESSIVE GATHERING OF GENTRY AND PUBLIC OFFICIALS. THERE WERE SEVERAL KNIGHTS OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD, THE ALDERMEN OF THE TOWN, THE BAILIFF MOREAU, VARIOUS CLERKS AND SECRETARIES OF THE ASSIZE COURT, PETTY CONSTABLES FROM SURROUNDING VILLAGES, PARSON DAVIS, AND TWO GENTLEMEN FROM LONDON WHO HAD COME AT THE BEHEST OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL TO OBSERVE THE PROCEEDINGS. THE MAGISTRATE WASTED NO TIME IN GETTING TO THE BUSINESS AT HAND. HE QUICKLY SUMMARIZED THE STRANGE AND DANGEROUS EVENTS THAT HAD OCCASIONED THE MEETING, ALTHOUGH FEW PRESENT HAD NOT HEARD OF THEM. WHEN HE WAS FINISHED, HE ANNOUNCED THAT HE HAD DECIDED TO CHARGE BOTH MARGARET WAITE AND HER SISTER WITH WITCHCRAFT.
“The evidence is more than sufficient,” remarked Aider-man Trent, flushed with pleasure at finding himself in such distinguished company. Words rolled off his tongue in a fluent baritone. “A hundred witnesses will testify if need be to their conjurings, their intimacy with familiars and like spirits, their practice of necromancy, as evidenced by the hideous and dreadful apparition of Ursula Tusser.”
When Trent had given this opinion, Matthew was asked for his views. Intimidated by the size and importance of his audience, Matthew struggled with his own contradictory impulses and what proceeded from his mouth was a testimony to how far he was from settling his doubts about the two women. “I have known both sisters for years,” he said quietly
1 5 8 •
but firmly. “I am reluctant to think of them as anything other than decent Christian women who have been much abused by gossip and the malice of their enemies.” As he spoke, Matthew noticed the scorn on Trent’s face, the disapproval on the magistrate’s. “Yet this past night, while I was away, my own wife saw the apparition of which Alderman Trent has told us.”
That Matthew had spoken the truth gave him no satisfaction now that he had said it. Across the room he could feel the approval of Trent and the magistrate, and he flushed because he was disgusted with himself. He could not abide Trent, but suddenly he had joined his camp, or had seemed to. He had conveyed to the persons present more evidence to condemn the women, his friends.
“What did this apparition say or do?” asked the magistrate when Matthew made no effort to elaborate on his wife’s experience.
“Nothing was said. The shape appeared at the window. It only peered at my wife.”
“It was by such seeming innocent eavesdropping that the witch Margaret Waite murdered her husband,” declared Trent. “Perhaps that was her intent in sending this horrible shape to your wife, Mr. Stock, to scare her to death.” Offering his suggestion, Trent smiled mockingly and moistened his thick lips with his tongue. Anger raged in Matthew’s heart; gladly would he have killed the butcher-alderman at that moment, but he held his peace. Nor did he say anything to deny Trent’s suggestion, which others in the room were evidently taking with some seriousness. He could not deny what might be true, but he hated Trent for being the one to utter it and he understood the insidious pleasure the aider-man was taking in Matthew’s confusion and fear.
Then one of the London gentlemen remarked that the shire seemed to be cursed with witches. A local knight admitted this was so, and recalled several earlier trials that had achieved widespread notoriety. There followed a discussion of witches and their methods, during which the parson described a learned book on witchcraft he had recently read,
written by the Scottish King, wherein the royal scholar confounded the damnable opinion of a certain Englishman that there was no such thing as witches.
“He who would deny that witches be must needs be of the Devil’s party,” asserted the knight hotly. This knight esteemed himself a theologian and had accumulated a considerable library of books and tracts relating to the occult. His position was generally approved, and the London gentleman pointed out that the resolution of these matters was essential, since witchcraft was a kind of treason.
Then the magistrate announced that he had heard enough and thanked all those assembled for their very good counsel. The women, he said, would be charged as he had indicated.
“With what specific charge, sir?” asked the clerk of the court, preparing to draft the warrant.
“According to the Act of 1563,” the magistrate answered solemnly, “against conjurations, enchantments, and witchcrafts. Margaret Waite will also be charged with the murder of her husband, for it now seems it was to that end that she conjured Ursula Tusser’s spirit.”
Peter Trent wanted to know what was to be done about Thomas Crispin, whom he characterized as a notorious ruffian and seditionist, as his violence on the previous night made plain. But several of those present spoke up on the tanner’s behalf, including Matthew, pointing out that the man had acted in self-defense, and who could be blamed for that? Besides, the man he shot had only been slightly wounded and was one of the leaders of the riot as well. The magistrate considered the various arguments and then decided that he would bind the tanner over to the next quarter sessions on a charge of breach of peace—a charge that, were the tanner found guilty, would occasion only a small fine.
“The trial of the witches must take place as soon as possible,” the magistrate went on. “At a special session.” He looked in the direction of the clerk of the court, and the clerk nodded indicating that he had understood. “We cannot wait until the next assizes, not with the fear that exists in the hearts of t
he town.”
One of the London gentlemen suggested a certain famous witch-hunter as prosecutor.
“Who is this man?” asked the magistrate.
“His name is Roger Malvern,” said the gentleman. “He is a lawyer of note, much practiced in these matters.”
Moreau said he had heard of Malvern, and others in the room said they had too. All the gentry then approved the motion, and the magistrate said it was as good as done. “We shall send for the man, lay the facts out before him, and see what he shall make of them. An expert is what is needed here, no novice. In the meantime the women will remain confined under the watchful eye of our good constable. Until this business is concluded, I order every man to keep the peace and render whatever assistance might be needed to maintain order in the town. Be these women witches indeed, or merely victims of calumny, we shall have no more riots.” And on that note the company said their farewells and went about their business.
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