by Hilda Lewis
It was not long before she was home again. I was alone when she came in, her face all blotched with rage and her eyes bitter beneath slitted lids.
She said nothing. But from her bosom she brought out a glove; a child’s glove; and threw it across the table.”
Joan Flower heard the old man groan where he lay white upon the pillow. “You may well groan,” she said, “for now the story quickens. It needed no witchcraft to guess that Tom Simpson had been weighing matters. The fool was not such a fool after all. The scandal that had blackened Meg was now rising against Philip. Two sisters; birds of one feather! His mother, no doubt, had helped his dull wits to that end. He had loved my girl . . . in a way; the way the rabbit loves the weasel. Now he was finished with her. There would be no snug farm for her now; no, nor any other betrothal in the Vale of Belvoir.
‘This!’ Philip’s mouth worked as though she worried the little glove between her teeth. ‘Yes, and all you ask . . . sweetheart or none.’ And she looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
‘Certainly there is one,’ I said. ‘And He is a prince; nay, He is a King.’
‘You talk in riddles,’ she said, impatient, and looked about the room. ‘Where shall I find me a prince, let alone a king in this place?’
‘I will show you!’ I said.
I drew the bolt across the door and hung a cloth upon the window; and, in the darkness I had made, I saw her wondering eyes gleam like a rat’s. I spoke no word, but with my finger drew a circle about us in the dust of the floor. I pricked my arm and let the blood flow within the circle; and in the blood I wrote the Name. I stood then, eyes closed, hands across my breast and whispered the words I must not tell. Then I stepped outside the circle and looked to see that she, to the last hair, was safe within.”
“Safe? That is a strange word, surely. Did you fear so loving a master?”
“Not more than you fear your god. Yet it was not fear for myself; I was his obedient servant but Philip—there was another matter. She had a mind not to be moved and a pride to match it. And, if she angered the Master, He might tear her in pieces. But not while she stood within the circle. There she was safe. It was the first and only time I set my will against Him.
Then I went round and about the circle widdershins; and all the time I cried softly, Sathan. Sathan. Hail, Lord. Sathan come!
I could see Philip’s face green where the blood had ebbed beneath the tan. I felt her shiver before anything happened. She was a harp whose strings the light breath stirs.
In the darkness the door swung open for all it was bolted; and the coldness came in. And cold in the heart of the cold—the Master.
I fell upon my knees; but within the circle Philip stood upright.
I raised my head at last and, save for the cold that streamed from Him, it was hard to believe this was the Master, for he stood there smiling—a pretty boy in green.
And his voice was gentle, too, when He spoke to her. ‘Will you become my servant to do my commands?’ He asked her.
‘You are overyoung to take a woman’s will,’ she said quickly.
He bent his head towards her then. His eyes were old as time; and in them all the wickedness since time began.
She dropped on her knees within the circle. ‘Lord, I will be your servant,’ she said and held out her arm that he might take her blood.
‘Come forth then from the circle,’ He commanded.
So she came from the circle and He bent and wounded her arm, not with a knife or with his hand; but He nipped her with his teeth, which is a thing I had never heard before. When the blood streamed out over her thin, brown arm, He brought out the covenant and she made her mark.
Then He said, ‘If you have a prayer I will grant it.’ And still upon her knees she answered straight, ‘Lord, you are comely above all men; but still it is in the fashion of men. And if my lord stoops to his servant, then let it not be in the fashion of a man but in the fashion of the God.’
He asked, ‘Do you know what it is you ask?’ And she, ‘Yes, Lord. At the Castle there is a picture. A woman holds a swan to her breast. He is her lover; that is well-seen. And he is a god; that, too, is well-seen. And the woman desires the strange mating. So it is with me. I have heard that the Master is tall as a tree and black as night; or that He is a great ram or a goat or a bull. Lord, if I find favour in your sight, let me know I am beloved of the God.’
‘I hope you are of the same mind when we meet again!’ He said. ‘But if I come to you in the likeness of the God, shall you not be afraid?’
‘I have not feared for my soul,’ she said. ‘Why should I fear for my body?’
‘Then let us drink to our next meeting,’ He said. And I brought out the wine she had taken from the Castle and they drank together. Then He set down the cup and turned to me, and there was no kindness in him. ‘Never again set your will against me,’ He said. ‘This one time I forgive you since this girl was stiff with pride. It would have been a thousand pities to tear such sweet flesh to pieces.’ And so he was gone.
Philip stood very still, smiling beneath half-closed eyes while I took the cloth from the window and the daylight came in again. She shook a fretful head as though it disturbed her after the secret darkness. I offered her some food, for she had eaten nothing since she came but she shook her head and turned on her heel and went back to the Castle.
I rubbed out the circle and opened the window and called for Meg. She would not come at first, such was her sullen way; and when she came, at last, she was wearing her spiteful look.
I lifted the little glove from the table and I remember how I stroked it with my finger-tip, it was so fine and soft and worked with gay, bright silks. I was sorry so fine a thing must be destroyed.”
When Samuel Fleming spoke she started; for she was back again in the past—she, for whom all earthly things were past—back again in her little room, a child’s glove upon her palm and Margaret staring from her to the glove with untrusting eyes.
“You grieved,” he said, “for the bright, soft thing you must destroy. But of the other thing—the bright, soft thing, the thing without price you were about to destroy—you did not think.”
“Yes,” she said, “I thought. And I was glad. Like you, priest, I served my Master.
‘The child’s glove!’ Margaret said. ‘So it was my sister that left just now.’
I nodded.
‘When my sister is here,’ she cried out and beat her hands together, ‘then the window is hooded, the door is barred.’
‘Would you have the whole world spy upon us?’ I asked. ‘Come now, set a pan upon the fire. And leave fretting at the glove; we need it to work the spell.’
I mended the fire and she set the pan upon it; when the water boiled we let out our blood and we cast it into the water together with the glove. And, as we stirred together, I said the words.
Glove shall go
To earth below,
From out this pot,
There to rot.
Little lord,
Hear the Word,
Brew thicken,
Lordling sicken,
Peak and die,
In churchyard lie.
I took the glove from the brew and, with a skewer, I pricked it full of holes; and I called upon my familiar, Go upwards, upwards, and he flew up the chimney. I knew then that the Master had hallowed the spell. So I took the glove all sodden and ruined and stained and I digged a little hole and I put the glove into its little grave.”
“Woman,” Samuel Fleming groaned from the bed, “such wickedness—were you not afraid?”
“Priest, that is a thing you must stop asking. For each time I must answer, Are you afraid when you go about your master’s business?”
“Your soul is firmly lodged with the Devil,” he said. “How may I pry it loose for God? But the end is not yet, and I shall win.”
&
nbsp; Chapter Nine
He was lying in a cushioned chair, his face turned to the summer garden. Because of the fire burning in the grate and because of the sun streaming in through the open window, he was comfortable. But he was weary, so that although Hester had put the tobacco jar and the long pipe on the stool by his side, they stood untouched.
Joan Flower came in from the summer heat and the cold came with her, so that he coughed and pulled the rug higher above his knees.
But all the same he was forced to smile seeing her there, a wild rose thrust through the dark of her curls. But—and he stopped his smiling—for all her sweet shape she was a lost soul . . . unless he could win her for God.
“In the end,” he told her, “God will win.”
She shook her head so that the dark curls flew. “No, priest, I am for my Master, now and for always.”
“In the end you will come to the mercy of God.”
“I did what I did; and even now I cannot repent.”
“Yet you will repent,” he promised her.
“Priest, have you forgotten what it was I did?”
“How could I forget?” And he remembered little Henry beginning to peak and pine, and the way he would push the food from him or let the spoon drop from his hand. But the terrible fits had not begun yet and they were hopeful, all of them—Francis and Cecilia and the physician, and Hester and himself.
But for all that the child had grown worse—fear deepening to terror in the young eyes; sharp, nervous turn of the head this way or that. And even that had not been the worst of it.
When he remembered how the child had suffered—the sickness, the convulsions, the pain—he could hardly endure to look upon Joan Flower, not though she was dead and suffering for her wickedness. Yet, if under God, he was to be a good shepherd, he must be patient, watching his every opportunity . . .
“. . . we had done what had to be done to the glory of the Master . . .”
He came back from his thoughts with a start. If he wanted to win her he must listen; listen to every word, watch for every sign.
“Now we were free,” Joan Flower said. “Now we were happy. With this deed, so it seemed, Meg had wiped out the memory of her dead child. And we were the more glad since it was drawing near to All Hallows and our autumn meeting. You know—for I have told you—that at each Sabbath we stand up to tell what we have done to enlarge the name of the Master. When a witch has done no evil, or little evil, then she is pelted with stones or beaten with rods and some have died of it. But when she has done much evil then she is acclaimed in full coven; and she is seated near the Master and He loves and caresses her. So you can understand how Margaret and I longed for the meeting and counted the days.
Last day in October; a clear autumn day all gold and glowing; and we longing for the Feast and restless for the Feast. Oh priest, priest, still they dance and they drink and give their bodies to love. And I—I have no body.” He was shocked by the naked longing in her eyes.
She sighed deeply, taking up her tale.
“Meg stood combing out the tangles of her hair. She went about like a slut when there was none to see, but for the Sabbath she must be beautiful. Last time the Master had chosen her above all; this time, surely, it would be so again.
Suddenly she stopped, comb in her lifted hand. ‘Philip does not go with us?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. And then, I added, warning, ‘Philip is not our concern. The Master will send for her.’
Meg’s pale eyes clouded. ‘Will she be laid out upon the altar stone?’ she asked with the soft silliness of hers. ‘And will they say the mass over her body?’ She began to giggle. ‘A pretty sight, Philip, with her brown skin and her flat chest and the ribs thrusting through her lean sides!’
‘The Master looks upon the inward heart——’ I began.
‘But He likes the body, too!’ she interrupted and, with mock modesty, folded her hands between her thighs.
When it was full dark and the stars pricking in the cold, black sky, we went rejoicing to the Sabbath. Meg rode upon her rat and found no pleasure in it. She could not endure the feel of the creature between her legs; yet for cowardice she must clutch at the greasy skin; and, when we came to a bank of cloud and her mount dropped sharply, she cried out and pressed herself still closer to the thing she loathed.
All about us the air shook with the rush of the flight; with the noise of our mounts and with our wild cries as we threw ourselves forward, all impatient for the Sabbath. Joan Willimott urging herself forward upon her straw rushed by me. Ellen Greene steadied herself and we flew on together.
We were flying now over the field of the Sabbath. Below us lay the wild heath; I could make out the clearing where we danced and the great stone that is the Master’s seat white in the moonlight. I heard the sound of beasts and human bodies grounding and we stood upon the sacred place.
It was then I saw my younger daughter streaking naked through the air. She did not so much fly as dart. And when she fell, it was straight and sudden as a falling star. It was as though your god himself reached out a hand to cast her away. She stood upright in the moonlight. Her black hair streamed backward beneath the poison berries of her crown—fine glassy beads of briony with heart-shaped leaves and wicked, purple flowers. And about her little neck she had set a necklace of the same and about her brown thighs also; and the nipple of each small breast she had pointed with a green heart.
There was a wildness about her, a wickedness. I thought, If you should prick a vein there would flow not warm, red blood but cold, green poison. It was hard to believe that this was the child I had once clouted and then stuffed with bread and a smear of honey to stop her noise!
We went softly to our places; for until the Kiss is given we have no desire to speak with another but wait in quiet until our sacred rites admit us to the Master’s glory.
Philip dropped lightly into her place, and leaning across her neighbour—for remember we sit man by woman—she whispered, ‘Will the God keep his word? If He comes in the shape He has promised, then I will adore Him; I will serve Him with my body.’ ”
“Spare me,” Samuel Fleming said, his face shadowed by his hand.
“If you are to save me, should you not hear all?” she asked, a little sly. He sighed knowing that she dwelt on these things because she lusted still for the unspeakable rites.
“They were sweet and sacred to me,” she said. “And still are . . . and still are. When I lifted my head I saw the Master standing upon the stone. And that is a strange thing; we never saw Him come and we never saw Him go. We lifted our eyes and He was there . . . or He was not there. He had kept his promise; He stood there in the likeness of a great black ram.
I looked sideways at Margaret. Did she still desire the God? Her white face swung towards me between the pale gold of her hair; the fear in her eyes gave me the answer. From my other side I caught a deep long sigh of ecstasy—such ecstasy only your true witch knows. ‘And is my sister frightened?’ Philip whispered, mocking, ‘frightened of this great and noble beast, of this magnificent God of ours? Let her not fear; she will not be called upon.’ She said no more but sat; eyes unmoving upon the Master.
And now the trumpet sounded; it is a sound to freeze the words on your tongue and the blood in your veins. We rose up in our places and we made a circle about the God that stood in the shape of a great ram upon the high stone. For the first thing at the Sabbath is to pay our reverence. That is a fine sight, priest! We stand in our circle bending outwards straight as a rod; and we lift a foot forward in the air. And we cry out, Hail Lord, Hail Sathan. Hail, hail! And the leaves shiver on the trees with the sound of our crying; and there is a rolling as of thunder between heaven and earth.
Then the Captain sets a great white candle between the horns of the Master and the children go about . . .”
“The children?” he asked as though unbelieving.
Yet he believed it, for the sigh that burst upward seemed to break his heart.
“Yes, priest, I have told you. Have you forgotten? If I could have won the little lord to my Master he need never have died. The children went about and gave us each our candle of black. Then once again the circle swung and, as we stood before the Master, we reached up and kindled our black candles from the white candle that flamed between his horns. And when our flames were steady-burning we broke the circle at that point where the most honoured stands by the least honoured—that is where the newest witch stands by the children—for it is always thus we stand, each one in his place. We moved slowly in our line, the most worshipful at the head and the children at the tail, to give the Kiss of homage.”
Samuel Fleming lifted his face, grimacing with disgust; she laughed at that. “The God is not like any man nor any beast. For beneath the tail He wears a face; and it is that face we kiss upon the lips.
At last we three stood before the Master, and, one after another, we knelt to give the Kiss. I saluted Him, and Margaret after me. But when Philip knelt He bade her stand; and He turned about so that she kissed Him upon the face between the horns.
The children stopped moving not knowing what to do—until the Captain stepped forward and flicked them on. The Kiss between the horns. Such a thing we had never seen, no, not even the oldest in all the covens, though we had heard that the Master will sometimes so honour the great—the Kings and the Queens and your fine churchmen that are his servants.”
“Then your master is not above the vanities of the world?” Samuel Fleming said quickly.
“He is not such a fool!” She was just as quick. “The vanities of the world—that is his winning card. And now the last kiss given we came again to our places, shielding our candles with our hands; we sat upon the ground crescent-wise facing the Master—and each one with his candle burning blue by his side. You should see it, priest! The dark night and the blue flames burning upward towards the stars.
And again the trumpet sounded. And now it was the time; time for the Master to bid us tell how we had enlarged his kingdom upon earth since the last Sabbath.