by Hilda Lewis
“And yet,” he said, “she didn’t melt yours.”
“No,” Joan Flower said, “no! She turned when she’d gone a step or two and came back to me. ‘Good woman,’ she said, and again she’d forgotten my name, though afterwards she remembered it—as she’ll remember it to her dying day—‘I like you well. If you yourself should need work at any time, you will find it here.’
It was then I began to hate her—the sweetness, the innocence. No woman of full age should be so innocent. She sets herself up, a mark for the wicked.”
“So short a time for the Devil to take hold!” he sighed.
“I was never one of your good ones,” she reminded him. “I was fertile soil. I hated her because she was good; and because she made herself defenceless against evil. And most of all I hated her because she had not thought to offer me an apricot.” She was silent; then she said, soft and bitter, “My lady the Countess of Rutland, with her white hands and the jewels on her long fingers, and the richness of her gown, and the safety all about her so that she could admit whom she wished into her house and have no fear.”
“Yet, she had cause to fear,” he reminded her.
“That came afterwards. Still one may say, in the common way of speaking, she could do the thing she willed whatever it might be, and no tongue wag against her, no hand punish. Madam the Countess. There she stood as much above me as an angel from heaven and I the dirt at her feet. Surely the Devil entered into me so that I hated her goodness.
I watched her go with that lovely walk of hers and I turned about for home. As I went, I forgot for a while my anger and remembered only that my wish had come about; and come about so simply. Everything would always be simple for me now . . . until Judgment Day; and that was a long way off.
Margaret was not pleased when I told her she was for service up at the Castle; she had set her heart upon Peate and meetings would be hard to come by under the watchful eye of Madam Housekeeper. She was a heavy girl, sullen and resentful, but you would not notice it until you came to know her. That white skin of hers, those blue eyes, that light hair drew the eye. Yes, she had a proud and sullen spirit, prouder than my own. And that is strange, seeing I have good blood in my veins; the man that fathered me was a fine gentleman, my mother said. But Margaret was the child of John Flower that was a clod, a turd, a cake of dung.”
“A good man,” Samuel Fleming said, severe. He looked at her, suddenly sharp. “You were not sorry when he died.”
She shrugged. “I missed him the way you’d miss a dog or cat of which you were tired. Oh I wished him out of my way, often enough! But,” she said quickly, “I never did him any harm.”
“To wish him dead, was that not harm?”
“Who knows what lies in the secret heart?” she shrugged again.
“He knew. And he had no mind to get well. Nor did you grieve for him overlong. He was not cold before you found your comfort.”
“I was too hot to grieve for a cold man. But we talk not of me but of Margaret. She would not go to slave in the Castle, not she! She swore it. But Philip skipped like a little sheep, a little black sheep. It was fine in the Castle, she said; warm and food in plenty; plenty of men, too. Meg tried to prick her with thoughts of Tom Simpson—any wench would get him and Philip away! But Philip twirled about and laughed. She had but to crook her little finger she said, to bring him running.
I remember the day we set out. Meg and Philip carried their bundles on their shoulders; such small bundles—we were very poor.”
“You soon learned to increase your possessions—all of you,” he said.
“Why not?” She pretended she did not take his meaning. “They were to earn good money up at the Castle. Well, there we were, trudging along, kicking up the dust of the road when William Berry came along in his cart. He was going up to Belvoir with a dozen of hare and he gave us a lift. So there we were riding high above the dirt of the road; and again I found myself thinking how these days everything turned out so easy and so fine. And then I wondered how things would go with me if, after all, I refused the pact. It was like a cold wind blowing at my back, so I put it out of my mind. I thought instead how, when I got home again, the house would be mine . . . mine as it had never been; empty—a quiet and blessed peace; and how I need not look this way and that to see did Peate come lusting after Meg, nor where my little black sheep went frisking. The day would be never too long. I could lie abed when I chose; and for company there was Rutterkin that was a child to me—a better child, more obedient than either of my girls. He was like a baby to me.”
“You . . . suckled him?” And again his face was drawn with his disgust.
“Not then. He was not my familiar; I had not made the pact. I fed him with buttermilk; and with cream when I could come by it.”
“Cats have large appetites for such small creatures,” he smiled, remembering how Hester had complained more than once, lately, that the cream had dwindled.
“I had enough and to spare! Oh but they were good days. In the daytime the quiet and the peace; and at night . . . at night . . .”
At the lust in her eyes he covered his own.
“It was then the tales began to go about, the new tales, the dark tales,” he said.
She nodded. “Nothing too bad for them to lay tongue to. And yet I had done no evil; not then. Had I wanted to I had no power. But I did not want to. I was happy. I did good . . . until I learned sense. Brownlow’s brat fell sick; the brat that’s alive and well now, that pelted me with stones, that cried filthy names after me—that was the child I saved. And not by witchcraft, neither; but by the use of simples—a wisdom I had of my mother. I put the right charms about his neck, gathered in the right place and at the right time—precious herbs some of them, hard to come by. Night after night I sat with him. I cleaned his eyes and his ears. I drove the sickness away with my own strength. But it was Nan Brownlow began the muttering about me; the muttering that brought me to my death.”
“Those that leave the common path of men are hated.”
“I had not left it yet.”
“You left it when you accepted Rutterkin; when you fed him—though it was with buttermilk and not with blood. It was then the pact was made, though not yet signed. It is the way of the Devil to undo human foolishness with the cunning of the serpent. You had left the common path and so you were feared. And where there is fear, there is the desire to punish.”
“Yes, there was the desire to punish!” she sighed. “And yet I had done no ill. I had taken no maid’s sweetheart nor any woman’s true husband.” She stopped his protest. “Peate had long been faithless—before ever he met me. It was his nature. Believe me, priest, I had injured no woman nor harmed any child; nor any cattle nor crops. Indeed, I helped where I might; and when I might not, sat within my house, my cat for company.”
“Was that all you had for company? There were tales of strange creatures—toads that were not toads, weasels that were not weasels, dogs that were not dogs.”
“I always loved creatures. They had no fear of me. Rutterkin was a spirit; the others, common creatures and my pensioners. But the stories went about . . . they went about. One by one my men forsook me with lying words, false excuses, smooth promises—lest the witch be angered. But soon I didn’t care. What were they, after all, but common dung, even Peate? Give me the name, I’ll play the game! It’s an old saying. They’d given me the name witch; and soon I had but to choose from such delights as you, priest, cannot begin to imagine.”
“God forbid I should!” He crossed himself. “And soon you did choose?”
“And soon I did choose. Quiet by day; but at night . . . at night there were lights in my house; and you could hear the singing and the stamping of feet and the clapping of hands.”
“We could hear it,” he assured her, drily, remembering how this one and that had come to him with complaints; and how, in the dark of the
morning, he had often enough lifted his head from his books, seduced by that faint lewd singing and the troubling rhythm of their hands and feet.
“If the men I had known no longer came,” Joan Flower said, “I had better company—witches foregathering. And though all Bottesford and beyond hated me . . .”
“With good reason,” he said.
“With no reason . . . at the first; I have told you, priest. Still, I was content. What did I want with country clods? Bread without salt. And so I lived content and harmed no-one. I had what I wanted.”
“What you wanted was evil. That was harm enough.”
“I wanted it only for myself.”
“It could not rest there. Evil calls to evil.”
“Should not good call to good? I had not spared myself to help my neighbours. I’d physicked their cattle and delivered their lambs when the ewes could not drop them. Yet in the end they stoned me from their doors.”
“Good can never come from out of evil,” he said. “You cannot run both with God and the Devil.”
“A sick child cured? A beast eased of its pain? Good grows side by side with evil, priest. And, given a chance, it may conquer evil. You should know that.”
“It is true,” he said. “Does Satan lend you his serpent’s wisdom?”
“It is God’s wisdom,” she said, grave.
He lifted startled eyes; and even while he stared, saw her outline soften and blur; and then her whole body tremble and disperse and be lost upon the air.
Chapter Four
She was waiting for him when he came out of Goody Mayhew’s cottage. He had not set eyes upon her since she had said the name of God, and, saying it, had vanished. That was all of two weeks ago. He had been glad to be troubled no more; yet he’d been a little sorry, too. Let her be a ghost, let her be some fancy of his troubled mind, he might have fitted the story together, come at last to the truth.
He could no longer comfort himself with assurance of her guilt; no longer wholly believe she had cried upon God to witness her innocence and He had struck her down so that like a dumb beast she had died. Might he not have misread God’s answer? The thought had troubled him incessantly these last two weeks. Instead of a punishment might it not have been a grace? Had not God saved her from fear and shame and the last agony of the rope? Had He not taken her from the cruelty of men? But, could it be called a grace to die without making one’s peace with God? And, if indeed she wandered now in endless space, she had answered that question herself.
As he battled against the wind—for the mild spring had turned bitter—he could feel the cold pierce through the good wool of his cloak and strike to the very bone. Or perhaps it was the cold that streamed from her as she stood against the gate regarding him. For all the windblown curls and the gay scarlet ribbon, there was little gaiety about her. She wore a bitter look.
“The old woman’s gone!” she said and there was satisfaction in her eyes.
He nodded. “God rest her soul. She made a hard end.”
“I saw to that!” Joan Flower said. “I stood by her bed.”
“Could you not let her die in peace? She cried out your name as she gave up the ghost.”
“She had need. She was one who tormented me.”
“I had thought it was t’other way about. You had tormented her bones with pains; you had bewitched her cow . . .”
“Old woman’s bones! They are always full of aches and pains. As for the cow!” She laughed outright. “No need to waste good spells on such rubbish. The cow came to its natural end—old and dry and fit for nothing but the pot. Not but what she didn’t deserve it!” She nodded towards the cottage where the dead woman lay. “She was one of the first to name me witch, she and Nan Brownlow together, before ever I’d set eyes on the Master. But I never harmed her. I never harmed anyone . . . until my first Sabbath.”
He shivered less with the cold than at the look in her eyes, the voluptuous look.
“Priest,” she said, as once before, “you should be within doors. You are frail beyond your years; and if you should die this week or next, how shall you save my soul?”
It was true, though she had spoken, mocking. Without a word he turned his face towards home . . . and all the time she followed him.
They had come now to the Rectory and he went within, she following. Hester came to meet him, shivering in the gust from the open door.
“It is colder than ever,” she said. “I am chilled to the bone. I would say it will turn to snow except . . .” she looked, a little puzzled, at the high, crystalline sky. “And you, brother, look cold as death. Come into the study; Jennet has built you a good fire and I will bring you a posset. Yes,” and she nodded to the white cat that brushed against her skirts, “and for you a pannikin of milk, if you are a good little cat.” She put out a hand to take up the little creature but it shrank, spitting. “So small and so fierce,” Hester said fondly. And he smiled seeing how quickly she had forgotten her rancour against the cat; so do we cherish those things to which we have shown a kindness. “Yet it is a good little cat,” she said, “the best I have had. He keeps the house free of vermin, yes, of rats bigger than himself. And for that he shall have both thanks and milk.”
But still the cat backed, eyes red as the Rector’s pipe when he drew upon it. Behind him he heard Joan Flower whisper, “Make do with the sweet milk; you will get nothing else from that one. There will be no pact with the Master in this house.”
Hester turned sharply and went out. Joan Flower said, and her laughter had a wicked sound, “What would she say, good mistress Davenport, the white sheep, the silly sheep, if she knew I was here again in this room; this room where you questioned me doing your bitter duty and where I came to my death?”
Hester came in brisk, tutting still against the cold. She bent to stir the logs, set the mug with its pointed foot in the red of the fire and laid a clean cloth by him so that he might handle his posset when he thought fit. “Do not leave it too long,” she warned, sweeping the hearth neat. And when he thanked her for her care of him, answered with that loving scolding of hers, “How can a body care for you that will not care for yourself.” She shook her head and went softly from the room.
Joan Flower moved across to the window; he could see clean through her to the high spring sky, water-green through the leaded panes. “Sometimes,” she said, her back to him, “I could wish . . . almost, I had made no pact. But when I remember the Sabbath I am shaken.” There was an ecstasy about her, a wild and dreadful longing.
Weary he sat down in his chair. He would listen no longer; he would exorcize this unclean spirit. Why should he risk his own soul? Because he might save hers. He had his answer even before the question was asked; her poor soul that wandered homeless. As for his own—it was a risk a priest must take.
“The Sabbath!” she said. “I would tremble all day waiting for the night. I would bathe myself and comb my hair; and I would put paint upon my cheeks and on my lips . . .”
He said nothing, remembering how there had been days when she had gone about hair and eyes wild; and her red lips smiling so that he had thought her a little crazed. Had those been the days when she had trembled waiting for the night?
“The days of the Sabbaths,” she said all soft with longing. “Candlemas and Roodmas and All Hallows’ Eve; Lammas Day and Christmas tide . . .”
“You were not afraid,” he interrupted, stern, “to take our holy festivals, to degrade them?”
“You were not afraid, priest, to take our festivals—festivals of the Old Religion, older by far than your Christ. For what is Lammas but Beltane; and Christmas but Yule? and Roodmas is Mayday—the wickedest day in all the year. One might say, priest, that you keep our heathen festivals!” And she laughed. “Ah the Sabbath! How slowly daylight passes till the sun goes down at last and the stars prick in the sky. And within the house the darkness is pricked by
rushlight. And it is time. And your fingers shake holding the pot . . . the precious ointment, the flying ointment——”
“Come now,” and he was smiling a little. “None can fly but birds and angels.”
“Priest, being dead, I can speak no other than truth. I flew. I flew. Oh the wild, free flying. Washed and clean and naked to the skin—the clean, white skin. Anoint yourself with ointment, lie upon your bed. Say the words of power, say them, say them, say them . . . till your eyes begin to close and you feel yourself falling . . . falling.
And then you rise; and you look down upon the houses, the little stinking houses, and you know within them men and women lie together like animals. But you are free . . . flying above the church steeple, higher than the hilltops, higher than the Castle even on its high, high hill . . . higher, higher, until you feel the stars pricking with chill fire and the cold face of the moon.
And the air is full of movement, full of sound—rushing of wings and sound of flights; witches hastening to the Sabbath; witches carried by spirits, by familiars, by lovers; witches on bespelled humans, on bespelled animals, witches on broomsticks, on wisps of straw; or, flying as a bird flies, wild and free in the dark air.
And it is all a sweetness and a wildness, so that you forget to breathe until there is a pain like a knife thrust through your ribs and you must stop to take in air again. And all the time you are coming nearer to the Sabbath, nearer to the worship, nearer to the dancing and the feasting and the wild, wild love-making.”
“Stop!” he cried out, and thrust a finger into each ear.
She smiled at him. “How shall you help me—or any other if you will not listen?” And when still his fingers were at his ears, she added, sly, “Without your understanding I cannot be forgiven.”