The Witch and the Priest (epub)

by Hilda Lewis

  Samuel Fleming let his head drop again upon his hands; but Joan Flower continued undisturbed. “Then the Master looked at Margaret all drooping in the moonlight. Pretty she looked, white and delicate; but for all that she was a poor thing. He turned his back upon her. He looked at me instead. ‘I am your Master and you are my servant,’ he said. ‘But I am not the Master of this girl. It is a request I cannot grant. As for the sacrifice, I thank her; but, save at the hand of my own servant, I cannot accept it.’

  Margaret began to cry standing there, the dead child held outwards upon her hands. Then the Master grew angry, and all the company murmured that her tears would bring ill-luck. For witches cannot cry, priest, as you know. Since we have denied baptism, water will have none of us. And that is a thing you know also—witches have been swum often enough. But what you do not know is this—the tears of a Christian, how­ever evil, if he has not forsworn baptism, can bring the power of the Master to naught.

  So they muttered louder and louder, crying out to tear her in pieces and pour out her blood for sacrifice. But the Master only commanded me to take my fool away. Then the Captain blew upon his horn and the Master cried out in a great voice, Do ye my will or die the death. And his voice was so great with his anger that the earth shook. Thus He broke up the Sabbath and there was neither fasting nor dancing nor any love-play. And when I would have risen through the air and carried my girl with me, the Master’s anger lay so heavy upon me that I could not fly.

  So we trudged the long way home. Margaret had her gown but I had only the shawl to cover my nakedness and beneath it I carried the child. The coldness that came from it set my teeth achatter and our feet were cut on the stones. All the way Meg wept and would not be comforted. The sun came up and folk began to stir. A thrifty housewife had already set her washing on a line; and when her back was turned, I helped myself to a shift and a petticoat. And now the sun was hot and we walked in the heat of it; but still the dead child lay cold against my heart. And, as we went, we begged here and there. Sometimes we got a crust but more often they set the dogs on us. In the evening we came into our own country and we knocked upon Ellen Greene’s door over at Stathorne. When she saw us she would have shut the door again but in the end she threw us a piece of dry bread though she would not suffer us indoors, nor yet even to lie within her barn.”

  Samuel Fleming raised his startled head. “And we thought her of your company! We hanged her.” And he beat his breast.

  “Leave knocking upon your breast,” Joan Flower laughed. “It was not for love of your god she denied us but for love of mine that was also hers. We had offended the Master.

  So we set off again, going slowly upon our rubbed feet; and still Meg wept as she went, and always to the same tune. I have murdered my child. I am a murderer.

  ‘Yes,’ I told her at last. ‘The one that does not adore the Master and takes away life, is a murderer. But the one that adores Him and offers a child for sacrifice is no murderer; he is a worshipper of the old faith that is older and truer than their Christianity——’ ”

  “It is better to do murder,” Samuel Fleming cut her short. “With tears and with prayers a man may repent. But to abjure God—there is damnation, eternal torment.”

  “Eternal torment is our delight; for it is not we that shall suffer but the enemies of the Master. For us—eternal Sabbath in the wide fields of hell.

  Priest, we walked through the dark night now resting a little, now walking again as well as we could for our blistered feet. It was dawn when we came at last to our own house; a skim-milk dawn, no light to it. I took the dead child from Meg and she made no sound. I think she knew not where she was nor what she did. I hid the child beneath a cloth and we went to our bed.

  We went to our bed but we did not sleep. Meg lay staring at the ceiling and wept. At last I said, ‘You do well to weep, for the child is uselessly dead. It might have been much profit to you; it could have brought you the love of the Master.’ But I think she did not hear, for even while I was speaking, Dead, she said, dead . . . dead . . .

  ‘Listen!’ I told her and I nipped her hard in the fleshy part of the arm to bring back the wandering mind. ‘This night you have offended two Masters that between them rule this world and the next. Between angry God and angry Devil how shall you fare? One or other you must choose; and you must choose now. You cannot live one night forsaken by God and Devil alike.’

  And still she moaned and wept and had not courage to say one thing or the other. And, suddenly, like a child she was fast asleep; but in her sleep she wept and moaned.

  I dragged myself out of bed, all weary as I was, and summoned Rutterkin. He would not so much as open his mouth until I had paid him—a sure sign of the Master’s dis­pleasure; else he had not dared to ask his payment first. When he had licked himself clean of blood, he said, ‘You did wrong to bring the unbeliever to the Sabbath. One who hovers between good and evil may yet become the pale god’s spy to work us all great damage. That is why the Master refused the sacrifice of the child to his glory. But a child’s body is still a child’s body. . . .’ And when I did not understand he said, ‘It has fat for unguents, bones for powders.’

  I cried out at that. Such a thing I had never done. I had killed quick and clean for the sacrifice; but I had never laid hands upon a body to tear it in pieces.

  ‘It is the Master’s wish,’ Rutterkin said. ‘But you must keep the girl out of it, lest she run mad and betray us all.’

  I left Margaret in uneasy sleep and under my shawl I hid the body of the child. And I never once thought This is the child born of my child; flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. I thought only, The child is dead and nothing can restore it to life. Is it worse that its body work the Master’s will than rot in the earth?

  But for all that I was glad that Margaret still slept.

  The sun was up when I came to the house of Joan Willimott over at Goodby . . .”

  Again he lifted an anguished face, remembering how for all her denials, all her beseeching, Joan Willimott had hanged—she and one other of whom he did not like to think.

  “Leave your soul-searching,” Joan Flower said. “Joan Willimott came to a just end. Her house stood low among trees and it was still dark down there in the coppice when I knocked upon her door.

  She was not pleased when she thrust her face through the lattice and saw me standing there; at the Sabbath she had been one of those that cried loudest against us.

  ‘Come down!’ I called softly. ‘Come down in the Devil’s name.’ But she would not stir until she had consulted with her familiar which was a little tiny woman that stood upon the floor no higher than my hand.”

  Samuel Fleming nodded, remembering how, at the last, Joan Willimott had confessed that this spirit was breathed into her mouth by William Berry of Langhorne. These Flower women had brought others down with them to the grave.

  “I knew she had agreed,” Joan Flower said, “for Pretty came flying down to me and her mouth was wet with blood. She lighted upon my arm as it were a bird—the arm that carried the child beneath the shawl.

  I heard the bolts dragged backwards and I went inside. We did our work with no-one to hinder or to frighten us; for she was a widow and childless and there was no-one besides ourselves within the house.

  It was not pleasant work . . . but it was the Master’s will. We did not stay to eat; nor, indeed, could I have stomached food; but now and again we would stop to quench our thirst or my companion would tear at a piece of bread with bloody hands.”

  “Bread?” Samuel Fleming said all amazed. “A witch cannot keep it within her body. So they say; and so—as you well know—I have seen for myself.”

  “That is nonsense, priest. How else should we live? Bread we do eat—when we have blessed it first in the Devil’s name. And water we may drink in the same fashion. But bread that has not been so blessed, and water that has not been so blessed, we tak
e at our peril.

  And so I trudged homeward sick and weary and, as I went, I plucked a straw from the hedge and I said, unthinking,

  Horse and bridle away we go,

  Horse and Pellatis, ho, ho, ho!

  And, before I knew it, there I stood at my own door. I was happy then because I knew the Master had forgiven me.”

  Samuel Fleming lifted unbelieving eyes. “Do you truly believe so great a nonsense can work so great a miracle?”

  “Priest, does your god need help to work his miracles? Your master and my Master can manage very well without our help. But the saying of those words is a token—the token of believing. Without the token of faith both your god and mine are powerless.”

  “You are right,” he said and bowed his head.

  “Priest, I am right in this—and in other matters, as you will come to find. I went into my house and Margaret lay there on the bed as I had left her. She was candlewhite and her hair spread upon the pillow dank and dark with sweat. From his place among the ashes Rutterkin stared with eyes of living coal.

  I signed the familiar he should go. I said nothing to my girl but I blew up the fire and heated a pannikin of milk and I broke off a piece of bread and set them down beside her. She would look at neither; and when, at last, hunger drove her, you might have thought that what you Christians say is true. For, indeed, the bread choked her; she could not swallow and put it down again. Then I took a flagon of wine she herself had brought down from the Castle and we drank together. Soon she was a little more cheerful and, while the wine was within her, I spoke.

  I said only what I had said before. With such as Meg you cannot say a thing too often. Since her sacrifice had not been accepted, I told her, she was nothing but a common murderer; and, save for the Master, she would hang. But He, in his infinite pity—though she was not his servant—had carried the body to a secret place and so she was safe.

  When I talked of the child her tears began once more to flow. I told her then that, a child untimely dead, any mother’s heart must burst with grief; but that same heart must lift with joy, knowing that child a blessed sacrifice to our Lord who is the Ancient God.

  But still she was not ready to come to the Master; nor did she come for many a night. But in the end I caught her in the same net that had taken me—the vanity of women and the lusts of the body.

  It was when she had a little recovered from the death of her child and was coming again to the appetites of women, that I asked her what man would take her now her lover had cast her off and the Castle forever closed against her? ‘But,’ I said, ‘at the esbat you may taste again the sweetness of being desired and the fullness of desire satisfied. And at the Sabbath you shall give your body to a spirit who will know how to play upon it better than any mortal man. When you have felt a spirit lie with you, you will never again suffer the touch of any man’s flesh—unless he be of our coven; for that is your duty. But you will not endure any other man, be he prince or peasant; be it the earl himself or that clot of dung Vavasour.’

  ‘And there is one more thing,’ I said. ‘Women grow old. What man, though his own hair be grey and his gums empty, will take a hag to his bed? But the witch is forever young.’ She looked at me then with the cruel eyes of youth. ‘You are well enough for your years,’ she said. ‘But still you have lost a tooth and will lose more. And still you have a wrinkle or two and will have more. As for Joan Willimott and Ellen Greene—their breasts are withered as empty sacks and their hair is grey and thin.’

  ‘So it is by common daylight,’ I said. ‘But did you not see them at the Sabbath? Their breasts were full and their hair was dark and their bodies eager. The Master keeps his promises and we shall never grow old. As for you, girl, you are scarce eighteen but still tears have done their work upon your face. Were you as virtuous as that Virgin in whom, no doubt, you are childish enough to believe, yet you would no longer get you a man.’

  And that was the end of the battle; for Meg was both lonely and lusting.”

  “You took her in the net of her lust—your own daughter!”

  “How do you bring souls to your god but through their desires? Desire is a prettier word; but it means the same!”

  He did not answer and she chuckled. “You must be quicker with your arguments, priest, if you would trip me.”

  “I have no wish to trip you.” He looked her full in the face. “I wish only to bring your soul to God.”

  “I had rather it were brought to the Master. I would it were one way or the other; it is cold where I wander alone.”

  “Who would trust your Master? To serve him—that was the condition. Yet still he shuts you out.”

  “Faithfulness was the condition. I was not faithful. But I forget my tale. I had won my girl’s consent but it was a grud­ging consent. Useless. Unless she came with her whole heart the Master would not accept her. So I set about to win her—heart and soul.”

  Samuel Fleming stared at her as if, even now, he could not make sense of her words. “Your daughter,” he said. “Your own child; flesh of your flesh. To snare her soul that it might go down to the Pit for ever. Do you not grieve for it now?”

  “Priest, do you grieve when you have won a soul to your god?”

  He rose and walked about the room. Through the window he could see the great forms of trees black against a sky all pricked with stars. But the quiet night did not quiet him. On the contrary. As he stared the great shapes seemed to move nearer, as though they were dark spirits come to mock him; or worse. He crossed himself. And now they were nothing but trees in a quiet garden, familiar trees beneath whose kind branches he had so often walked.

  “Do you regret souls won to your god?” she asked her question again.

  He turned about. “I am not quick enough to battle with you tonight. I am old; and I am not well. Give me a little space. Leave me now.”

  She shook her smiling head. “You cannot drive me away since your god permits me to stay.”

  “Then leave me of your charity. I can bear with wickedness—natural, human wickedness. But you! Your child, your own child! To lure her by her lusts and by her loneliness, to catch her in the snare of her misery! Can you not see I can bear no more?”

  And when still smiling, she stood her ground, he said, “If I die too soon, you will wander between heaven and hell for all eternity.”

  He had touched her there. “You are clever, priest; and I will go. But you are not zealous enough for your master.”

  He sat there, eyes closed against the sight of her. When he opened them again, she was gone. It was so cold now in the room that he shivered, yet lacked strength to make up the fire, or, indeed, to move at all.

  When Hester came in later, all triumphant, the spoon brandished in her hand, she found him, head fallen sideways, in his chair. He was so white, so cold that, the spoon clattering to the floor, she cried out and fell to shaking him. When she had roused him at last, she went to the fire and raked it, all noisy with her fear, she that was a quiet woman; and went away to fetch him a hot drink.

  “We must have a physician,” she said. “Yes, I shall ask Cecilia to send Master John Atkins.”

  “Pish and tush,” he said; but for all that he was weary to the bone. But since he must not die yet—for he had still to win a soul—he agreed to see the physician tomorrow. He had been wrong to forbid Joan Flower from further speaking—he saw that now. He was not sufficiently zealous—she was right in that. Her master had sent her as a challenge. And God had allowed it. God had allowed it since she, even she who had thrown away her baptism and the treasure of Christ’s spilt blood, had still a soul to save. Saving it, he knocked a nail into the Devil’s coffin.

  He asked but one question as he sat sipping the hot drink fresh with lemons that Cecilia had sent down from the Castle—she was forever sending down some delicacy he must other­wise go without.

  “The cat? Th
e little white cat?” he asked.

  “A queer little thing,” Hester said. “He drinks the sweet milk I put out for him but he does not enjoy it; and that is odd in a cat. And—what is odder still—I scratched my arm this morning and he came and would have licked the place. I had to drive him away.”

  “Drive him away altogether,” he advised. And then, more strongly, “Hester, drive him away.”

  She looked at him, surprised at such unkindness in this gentlest of men.

  “He would not go,” she said. “Nor would I send him. If I put him out he would come back and mew at my door; and mew upon my heart. And every day his mew would grow fainter—but it would sound louder upon my heart—until I found him dead at my door. That is not charity; it is not even commonsense, for he is a grand mouser.” She took up the beaker and left him to his thoughts.

  Chapter Seven

  “Are you strong enough yet, oh valiant soldier of God, to hear more of my tale?” She mocked at him where he lay high upon the white pillows of his bed; yet he thought he surprised a gentleness in her eyes.

  “Yes, I am strong enough.” He moved, weary, in the bed. “Tomorrow or the next day I shall be about again.”

  “I doubt it. It is not your body they should look to, but your spirit—the thing you call conscience. Still, if you must lie abed you are not ill-done by.” She looked about at the flower-sprinkled curtains of his tester; at the quilt Hester had stitched from gay pieces; at the bright fire in the grate—though it was summer the room was cold for a sick man. Light came dim through the curtains of the casement; she went across and pulled them apart. Sunlight leaped in like a sword and she smiled into his dazzled eyes. “Your fire looks pale now, and cold. Yet it would burn me had I a body to burn. But it cannot warm me where neither the light of heaven shines nor the flames of hell.”

  She sat down unasked upon the edge of his bed, her skirts spread about her like a flower. She had a bright, proud look; she was as comely as any woman he had seen. Had this Joan Flower been born to a high place, he thought, she had not come, maybe, to her bitter end.