by Sam Thomas
The week after Elizabeth came home, a boy appeared at my door with two notes from the Castle. One came from the Court of Special Assizes, announcing that Joseph would be tried the next day and ordering my presence as a witness.
The other was from Joseph. He wanted to see me.
Chapter 24
Martha paled when I showed her Joseph’s note. “What could he want?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I asked the boy who brought it from the Castle, but he knew nothing either.”
“Will you go?” She sounded as uncertain as I felt.
I did not know why Joseph would want to see me, or what I could gain by going. But neither could I see any danger in speaking to him.
“There is little he can do to hurt us so long as he is in the Castle,” I said. “If Mark Preston were still alive I might worry, but without him, Joseph has been truly disarmed.” I paused for a moment, wondering if this were true. Joseph had not come so far both in war and in government without being prepared for all eventualities. In the end, it was this uncertainty that drove me to the Castle. For the sake of my family I had to discover whether he had one last arrow in his quiver, and the only way to find out was to see him myself.
The next morning Martha and I walked to the Castle. As we passed into the Castle yard we found the chapman Peter Newcome. He smiled and waved when he saw us, and we crossed the yard to speak with him.
“This is a remarkable turn of Fortune’s Wheel, is it not?” he cried out as we approached. “The witch-hunter Joseph Hodgson is now turned into a witch, and accused of murder to boot! The printer is having a devil of a time keeping up with the news.”
I could not help smiling at his enthusiasm. “I am grateful for your help in this affair. The book may not have found any readers, but you tried to help, which was very brave.”
“Oh, I helped you.” Newcome’s smile reminded me of a well-fed fox.
“How so?” Martha asked.
“You are not the only one to come to me for news of the town. Your nephew burned the books. But you can’t burn gossip, not when it concerns murder.”
I stared at Newcome for a moment. “You spread the rumor that Joseph killed George Breary?”
Newcome shrugged. “I only told my customers what I’d heard. And it turned out to be true, didn’t it? Else he’d not have been arrested.”
“Then I am in your debt,” I said. “You did not have to do that.”
“I wanted to help your nephew,” he replied. “That seemed the best way to go about it.”
“I am grateful as well,” Martha said. “Has there been any news about the women Mr. Hodgson imprisoned before his arrest?”
“Ah, there the Warden is in a bind,” Newcome replied. “He can’t try the women when one witness has recanted and another is accused of the same crime, can he? But if a prisoner owes him money for her keep, he can’t send her home.”
Martha stared at him in astonishment. “They are keeping women in gaol even if they have no plans to try them?”
“What choice does he have?” Newcome asked with a shrug. “Someone has to pay for their upkeep.”
Martha started to argue, but stopped when she realized that fault lay with the Warden, not the chapman. I wondered how many women would die of gaol-fever for the crime of being poor. I told Newcome why we had come to the Castle and asked if he knew which tower held Joseph.
“The easternmost,” Newcome replied, pointing across the yard. “Why would he ask to see you?”
“I wish I knew,” I replied. “And there’s only one way to find out.”
“Well, if you would care to tell me after, I’m always on watch for a good story,” Newcome called after us as we crossed the Castle yard.
We entered the tower, and after the customary haggling for fees, the jailor led us down the spiral stairs. After unlocking the door, he handed Martha a lantern and turned to go.
“You will not stay?” I called after him. “They say he is a dangerous man.”
“Not any more he ain’t,” the jailor replied. “I got him in irons.” He disappeared up the stairs without a backward look.
Martha and I glanced at each other and pushed open the door. Our breath turned to mist before us, and I could feel the cold seeping into my bones even before we crossed the threshold. The walls, which in summer glistened with water and slime, were now covered by a layer of ice and shimmered celestial silver in the flickering lamplight.
As in most of the lower cells, there was only one piece of furniture, a heavy wood bed with a rough mattress on it. Joseph sat on the bed, staring at us. He had drawn his knees to his chest, and I could see that, like the women jailed for witchcraft, he’d been shackled hand and foot. Unlike the women, however, Joseph seemed in perfect health. Indeed, so perfect was his visage that for a moment I wondered if it might not be entirely natural. Could Rebecca’s accusations of witchcraft, however false in intent, have been true?
When we entered his cell, Joseph smiled at us. It was a terrible thing to behold, for his broken teeth now seemed more like fangs.
“You never could resist a summons,” Joseph said. Even his voice bespoke his strength. If Joseph were going to die, it would not be of gaol-fever. “Have they released Will yet?”
“No,” I replied. “The Lord Mayor said that he would wait until after your trial.”
“Yes, I imagine that so cautious a man would want to do that.” Joseph smiled mirthlessly.
“What do you want with us?” Martha asked.
“I don’t really know,” Joseph sighed. “Perhaps I wanted you to see what they’d done to me. I was awake for days as they beat me. Who were your familiars? they asked, and What did the devil look like when he came to you? I suppose I should have just given them answers and been done with it. Then, at least, they would have eased my torture.”
“You never confessed?” I asked.
Joseph barked with laughter. “Everyone confesses, Aunt Bridget. Everyone. I know not what I said, but they would not have let me alone if I’d stood mute.”
“And you want me to feel pity for you?” I asked. I could not believe his audacity.
“No, of course not,” Joseph said. “You are not so tender as that. But tell me, will you have a hand in sending me to the gallows? Or will you let Rebecca Hooke do that?”
“The court has called me to testify, and I will do so,” I said. “But Rebecca Hooke will do her part as well.”
“I oughtn’t have put my trust in such a harpy,” Joseph said.
“No,” I replied. “That was a mistake.”
“And you’ll join her in sending an innocent man to his death?” Joseph asked. “You know I’m no witch. You know James Hooke is the one who killed George Breary.”
“You might not be guilty of those crimes, but you are far from innocent.” I wondered if he would remember speaking those very words about Will.
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Joseph said with a slight and terrible smile. “But if you do this, Aunt Bridget, it will change who you are. You will be an outlaw in all but name.”
My mind turned to the guards who had died during Will’s escape from Ouse Bridge gaol. I glanced at my hands, still surprised that they were not stained crimson. “That will be no new thing,” I murmured.
“If you testify, you will become Rebecca Hooke’s maidservant,” Joseph said. “And you can see from my poor example where such a joining will get you.” His manacles clinked softly when he held up his hands.
He was right, of course. For months, York had talked of nothing at all except the women who had fallen into the devil’s snare when they traded their souls for power over their neighbors. Yet here I was, doing the very same thing, only my devil would be named Rebecca Hooke. Once Joseph was hanged, Rebecca and I would be comrades of a sort, partners in his murder. The problem for me, of course, was that her ruthlessness would give her the upper hand in all our future dealings. I could no more escape her than a witch could escape Satan.
; “Join me,” Joseph said.
I looked at him in shock. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell them I have more to say. If I accuse her, and you testify with me, we can see her hanged in my place. You can tell the jury that she bewitched you and demand to search her for the Witch’s Mark. I’m sure you could find it if you looked. We both know that there is no more dangerous a woman in York.”
“In England,” I corrected him. And for a moment I considered his proposal. But I knew such a scheme was unlikely to work, and even if we were successful Joseph would be no less deadly a foe than Rebecca. One of them had to die, and I chose Joseph. Without another word I turned to the door.
“I’ll find a way through this,” Joseph called after us as Martha pulled the door shut. “And when I do, I’ll hunt you and I’ll kill you.” His voice, with its terrifying mix of panic and fury, echoed up the stairs.
“He means it,” Martha said as we hurried across the Castle yard.
“I know.” My mind raced as we passed through the Castle gate toward the city.
“Do you think it’s possible? With Mark Preston dead, Joseph seems as good as hanged, but if he somehow escapes the noose…” she trailed off.
“If he doesn’t hang, we’ll pay with our lives,” I said.
“Then what can we do?” Martha asked.
I did not answer. What could we do?
* * *
In a coincidence that struck all who were present, Joseph’s trial for witchcraft was to take place in the same hall that Hester Jackson’s had. Fortune’s Wheel turned round indeed, and we’d come back to where we started. The location, however, was where the similarities stopped, for the trial of a poor old woman could hardly compare to one in which the accused was among the city’s most powerful men. The hall was packed with scores of men and women, and others braved the cold outside, just to be near the spectacle. The Lord Mayor had dispensed with the aged fool who had tried Mother Lee, and the new judge, whom I knew not, took his duties seriously.
Joseph stood to one side of the bench, his eyes searching the courtroom. His hands were shackled, but they’d removed the fetters from his feet. He had also convinced (or paid) the guard to bring him clean clothes, and he’d washed himself well. He looked far better than he had any right to, and except for his broken teeth he seemed little different than he had before his arrest. I asked the bailiff how things would proceed, and he told me that there were just two witnesses against Joseph: Rebecca Hooke and me. I felt a pang of dismay at this, for I’d hoped to spread the burden of convicting Joseph a bit more widely, but there was little to be done now.
The judge demanded quiet, and the crowd complied. The charges against Joseph were announced, and the bailiff summoned Rebecca and asked her name. I should have known that something was amiss as soon as she began to speak, for she’d abandoned the stentorian voice she’d used to address the Aldermen and now sounded meek and compliant. I pushed my worries aside, but they returned in force as soon the prosecutor asked her about the book containing the names of all York’s witches.
“I thought I saw it, and that’s what I told the Council,” she said softly. “But I may have been wrong. It may have just been a bead-roll of the Town Watch or the garrison.”
I heard Martha gasp, and I am quite sure that the surprise on my face was a match for the prosecutor’s. The crowd began to murmur as well—this was not what they expected.
The prosecutor did his best to recover himself before returning to his questions. “You told the Lord Mayor himself that you’d seen a list of witches’ names, a list written in the devil’s own hand,” he insisted. “You told the entire Council that Mr. Hodgson had bewitched you!”
“That is what I believed,” Rebecca sighed. “But I am no longer so sure. The book might have been something else. And it might not have been Mr. Hodgson who bewitched me, for he is known to love the Lord above all else. Someone else may have bewitched me. I cannot say if I was bewitched at all. I am but a poor widow, and easily misled.”
With those words it seemed as if a riot had broken out in the hall. Some dashed from the room to tell those outside what had happened, and everyone present seemed compelled to discuss the matter with his neighbor.
I grasped Martha’s hand as I tried to control the panic that welled up within me. What in God’s name was Rebecca doing? I looked at Joseph and found him staring at me. When our eyes met, an infernal smile crossed his face. His mouth seemed to form the words I told you so, but with all the noise I could not hope to hear him.
With a wave of his hand, the prosecutor dismissed Rebecca from her testimony.
“What the Christ has happened?” Martha hissed in my ear. “Has he joined with Rebecca? What are we going to do? If he goes free, all is lost.”
She did not have to elaborate. If Joseph escaped the noose and returned to power, my family would be destroyed. I would lose Elizabeth, both Will and Tree would hang, and the trials of witches would begin once again. And with Rebecca’s hint that someone other than Joseph had bewitched her, I could not be sure that Martha and I were safe. Within weeks, we could all be dead.
The prosecutor came to me, panic clear in his face. “What has happened here?” he demanded. “The two of you are making a fool of me!”
Rebecca had disappeared into the crowd, and Joseph stood tall, his shoulders thrown back, every inch the cavalry officer he’d been a few years before. A handful of Alderman had crossed the room to speak with him, a sure sign that they thought he might go free. I considered the choice of paths that lay before me, and the toll that each would demand. But in the end the decision was not a hard one.
“Call me as a witness, and I will see this through,” I replied, and told him what I needed him to do. After I explained my plan, I glanced at Martha, who nodded in approval.
“Your scheme had better work,” the prosecutor said. “Or we’ll both suffer.”
“I know that far better than you,” I breathed.
As the Judge and bailiffs tried to return the hall to some semblance of order, I closed my eyes and said a prayer. I did not know if God would aid perjurers in their work, but if He did not I would lose all that I held dear.
* * *
“Lady Hodgson,” the prosecutor began. “You have known Joseph Hodgson for many years, have you not?”
“Yes I have,” I replied. “I came to York when he was a youth, and I was married to his uncle.” All the jurymen knew this, of course, but the customs of law must be obeyed. I found it curious that for the first time in my life the truth felt strange on my tongue. No doubt it was because I knew the lies that would soon follow.
“When did you begin to suspect he was a witch?”
“In truth, it was soon after he began to hunt for witches within the city. He had never done such a thing before—what could he know of witches?—yet he discovered them wherever he looked. I wondered how that could be.” As I spoke, I looked from the prosecutor, to the judge, to the jurymen. I had no desire to see Joseph’s reaction to my lies.
“My work as a midwife brought me to the Castle,” I continued. “Here I talked to women who would soon hang for their witchery. When they heard his name, they quailed in fear, and I wanted to know why.”
“Did they tell you?”
“Aye. It took some doing, but I convinced a few of them to tell me the truth. They did not deny their crimes, but they claimed that my nephew, Joseph Hodgson, had tricked and enticed them into witchcraft with false promises and feigned affection. I then realized that he was their imp, sent by Satan himself to lure them into damnation.” The jurymen glanced nervously from my face to Joseph’s. I knew they would be torn: They would not want to hear that a man such as Joseph had fallen into the Devil’s hands, but they would believe my words because I was a gentlewoman and a midwife.
“And more than one woman told you this?”
“Half a dozen,” I replied. I sounded so sure of myself, I could almost believe my own lies. “They came from differ
ent cells in the Castle, but they told similar tales, so I believed it to be true.”
“Are these women still living?”
“No,” I said. “Joseph saw to it that they were hanged before they could expose him for his crimes.”
“If you believed that Joseph was a witch, why did you not accuse him?”
I laughed at this in the same way I imagined Rebecca would. “Because I saw what happened to those who opposed him.”
“What do you mean?”
I turned to address the jurymen directly. “When George Breary tried to stop the witch-hunts, Joseph murdered him.”
As I’d hoped and expected, the jurymen stared at me in amazement. A great hubbub broke out within the hall, and I heard a strangled cry from my left. I took this to be Joseph’s objection, but I kept my eyes on the jury. The prosecutor waited until the judge had quieted the room before he continued.
“Joseph Hodgson murdered George Breary?” he asked in amazement. His surprise was feigned, of course, but nobody who heard him would have known. “How do you know?”
“Because George told me this before he died.”
Once again the crowd began to murmur, and Joseph tried to object, but the judge demanded silence.
“Tell me what happened.”
I told the jury the story of George’s death. I omitted his awkward marriage proposal, of course, but when I told how Will, Martha, and I had found his body, my lies began in earnest.
“When we discovered him, he had been beaten most terribly,” I said. “We carried him to my home and comforted him as best we could. It was then that he told us what happened. He said that he had been in his home when Joseph Hodgson came to his door and asked to speak to him outside. George thought it strange given the late hour and the cold, but never suspected Joseph might kill him.