by Hilda Lewis
I kept within doors until my wound was healed. But still they would gather about my house calling Witch, witch, come out! When I was sick of their baiting, I called upon the Master and he sent a great, black dog and they fled screaming.
And so I was saved; even when I left my house none dared lay a finger upon me—for who knew when the black dog would not spring from the ground? But it was a safety that could not last. I think I knew it that first time they stood about my house and cried out against me. And yet I would not let myself believe it. I had been about the Master’s work; he would protect me.
But the work! It was hardly begun; and how to set about it I did not know. For still I lacked the thing—the child’s small thing—to cast the spell. That thing I had not got; nor did I see how I was to come by it.
And to make bad worse, Philip was restless up at the Castle. She felt anger and hatred all about her. Oh, she was clever! There was still nothing proved against her; but there was talk aplenty—ugly talk that, day by day, grew yet more ugly. Who knew when she would be sent packing . . . and nothing of the child’s in her hand? Something I must have. I must have it.
And to add to my troubles Meg was no longer eager about the work. She had lost, so it seemed, her desire for revenge and I had to keep pricking her on. To tell truth, her life was too comfortable. Poor we might look—and were; but we lacked nothing. We ate and drank well; we had our gossips within the coven; we had our junketings at the esbats and we had our divine Sabbaths. Had Master Vavasour, for whom she had once sighed, come down from the Castle with his frenchified airs and his master’s cast-off clouts, though he looked fine enough to pass for a gentleman . . . almost, I doubt she would have looked at him. For at our own merrymakings she did not go short of lovers; and though at the Sabbath her place was among the children, there was ever a pretty boy to serve her pleasure.
She was jealous still of Philip. In spite of his displeasure, the Master delighted in the girl. She was to bear Him a child; but this, I fancy, Meg did not know; certainly she never mentioned it. And, indeed, we saw so little of Philip that Meg, so it seemed, forgot her jealousy for days on end. Only at the Sabbaths and afterwards, did she remember.
Between Meg grown lazy with content and Philip unable to lay hand on anything that belonged to the child, I grew wretched; and I grew frightened. I loved the Master; but I feared Him more.
And then, when I had all-but given myself to despair, Philip came down to the cottage. It was New Year’s Day; the snow had melted a little and frozen again. Old folk kept within doors; but the young went sliding and slipping and shouting for joy. I could hear before ever she reached the door, her small tuneless singing; it was a sound to warn her enemies. She put her hand into her pocket and brought it forth again, her long, lean witch’s hand; and on her open palm—a child’s small glove.
Without a word she flung it across the table.
‘A glove!’ I said. ‘Once more a glove. A good omen.’
‘How did you come by it?’ Meg asked, slow and sullen.
‘Master Vavasour gave it me,’ Philip smiled her wicked smile.
Meg’s pale face flushed; when the colour died she was paler even than before. However little she desired her almost-gentleman now, she was not minded for her sister to pick him up.
‘The man’s in love with me,’ Philip said, careless. ‘I might have taken him once—he’s a prettier man than poor Tom. But no man shall touch me now, nor any spirit, neither. I am for the Master.’ She stretched her arms above her head and her small breasts lifted. Margaret sent her a glance of hatred but Philip only laughed. ‘Let us not trouble our hearts about this Vavasour who is nothing to either of us. Here is the glove. And here is the time and place. We have waited long enough.’
Meg said very slow, ‘The first little lord is dead. There should be . . . pity.’ ”
“Pity?” Samuel Fleming repeated. “Does a witch know pity?”
“We are human, priest,” she told him very drily. “We know pity, yes; and remorse, too. For what is our remorse but a backsliding into goodness? It is as natural as your Christian backsliding into evil. And our compassion, also, is easy to understand. For look, priest; when you see a man tormented of God, though it be for his soul’s good, yet you pity the poor flesh. So it is, sometimes, with us. Meg was young; she knew how the first little lord had died—the pain and the fear. It was a child she had known; a dear child, merry and kind. No, it was not strange she should feel compassion—though she must fight against it.
But with Philip there was no compassion as there would be no remorse. ‘Come now!’ she said. ‘We have dallied over-long.’ And when still Meg made no move, cried out, ‘Will you wait until the next Sabbath . . . and the Master’s anger? Or do you expect Him to be patient for ever?’
At that, I brought out the basin and filled it with water and set it upon the fire.
‘This is your vengeance,’ Philip told Meg, spiteful still. ‘It must be your blood.’
Meg would have refused had she dared. She feared to draw her blood; and, indeed, she could ill afford it, being white and slow; and, besides, as I have said, her desire for vengeance was grown dim.
Philip’s lips smiled but her eyes did not smile. ‘If you will not—then I will. But be warned; the Master will not take it kindly of you.’
Meg went so pale, it was as though the blood were already drained from her but she reached out for a bodkin and pricked her arm. A drop fell into the basin; and Philip mocked, saying, ‘She is tender of herself! Let her pray the Master will be as tender of that white flesh!’
I said nothing; I had no wish to bring upon myself Philip’s ill-will. I took up a knife and stabbed the little glove, the pretty, tender glove; I stabbed it again and again and when I held it before the fire the light came pricking through. Steam was rising from the basin and I flung the glove into the boiling water. It twisted and turned and rolled about like a small thing in pain.”
“A small thing in pain . . . a child . . . a little child,” Samuel Fleming said low and slow.
Joan Flower nodded, smiling. “Meg stood and trembled. I saw her catch hold of the table; she leaned there, dumb, while together with Philip I said, first the Words of Power, the secret Words, and then the Spell.
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.
And I called upon the familiar. ‘Rutterkin, go upwards.’ But he crouched among the cinders and did not stir.
‘The spell is hard to cast today,’ Philip said and fixed unsmiling eyes upon her sister. She stood, head bent a little as though she listened. ‘Hard; but not too hard!’
Suddenly she turned about and stretched her arm towards the basin. Her eyes were closed and her voice came out strong and strange; as though some other—the Master, perhaps—used her as his mouthpiece.
Glove defiled,
Destroy the child,
Choke breath,
Till death,
Springtime sleet,
His winding-sheet.
I call upon the Devil’s Name,
Master, bring me not to shame.
And when the voice that was not the voice of Philip had done speaking, Rutterkin, with no word from me, flew upwards through the chimney. Philip opened her eyes and looked about her, as though she had come a long way.
‘The spell is cast; the time is set,’ she said. She looked full at Meg. ‘Nothing can alter it—not though you run blabbing. All you can do is bring yourself to the gallows.’
Meg licked her dry lips. ‘I?’ she said. And again, ‘I.’ And when she would have gone on speaking, Philip turned her back. Then I took up
the shrunk and riddled thing that had been a child’s gay glove and we went out together to bury it. And, as I went, I was shaken in spite of myself. It was a tender little child. Priest, it is hard never to backslide into goodness.
Now it was growing towards dusk and time Philip should be moving but she gave no sign; she sat there yawning delicately as though sleep buttoned her eyes. Meg went about restless, touching this and that; at last she said, ‘Should you not be going, sister?’ Philip’s narrow eyes flew open in surprise. ‘Did I not tell you? I am not going back.’
‘But you must go!’ I said at once. ‘There is your bond of service. They will send after you. I doubt you will relish the whip!’
‘There shall be neither sending nor whipping. My lady has sickened of me this long while; but there is nothing against me save talk. She is a fool, that one! She will never punish without proof. Punish first, say I; let proof come later!’
Meg said nothing. She was staring in such dismay at the thought of her sister’s company that Philip’s laugh was almost good-natured. ‘Have no fear,’ she said, ‘your nose shall never be twisted for me! Not here, nor at the Castle, nor yet at the Sabbath do I take any woman’s lover—man or spirit. I am for the God!’
Meg’s dismayed look turned to anger. Philip had pricked true and deep. Wantoning with a pretty boy might suit Meg well; but her pride bled that she had no choice.
I looked from one to the other. If those two came to open quarrel, there was danger for us all. Philip must go back at once. It could not be for long—soon enough my lady must see her condition; but long enough to give my dull Meg time to understand that things were on the change.
‘You must go back at once!’ I said again. She looked as though to defy me but I went on, ‘Little lord Francis is sturdier than his brother that is dead. That one wasted like a candle; this one, little though he is, will make a fight. The spell we have cast is strong; but the child may be stronger . . . and the Master helps those that help themselves. Take this. He gave it to me to use at need; and need, I fancy, there may be!’
She opened the packet and stirred the green powder with a long, lean finger. ‘Pretty!’ she said.
‘Poison?’ Meg said and took in her breath.
‘I do not question what the Master gives,’ I told her.
Philip went on stirring the green powder.
‘Go now!’ I said but she looked stubborn still. ‘The Master, need I remind you, is just! He rewards . . . and punishes. When this work is done He will make you Coven Maiden, and will set you above the Captain even.’ Her eyes gleamed at that. ‘But, if you disobey, though He is your lover and you carry his child—you would do well not to count upon it.’
She grimaced, and swallowed in her throat. ‘I will go then. But not for long. My lady will see my burden soon enough. Yes, my chaste lady shall send me away herself.’
She bade us goodbye; but Meg looked away and would not answer.”
Chapter Twelve
Samuel Fleming raised his head; his skin was yellow as parchment, stretched across the bones. His lips moved.
“Springtime sleet,
His winding sheet . . .
Francis died in the springtime,” he said. “And sleet fell the day we buried him. That was a strange thing; it had been so lovely a spring. The day and the weather—could you foresee it?”
“The day; not the weather. We could hasten his death or delay it. We could take up the glove and prick it again; we could prick many holes or few. As the glove perished, so the child perished. We could, with luck, calculate the day; and, if aught went wrong, we could put it right!” She smiled into his face. “Poison,” she said it quite gently.
“May God forgive you!” Samuel Fleming said.
“No need—if you talk of the poison. It was not used. Your true witch will not use it unless she must. To cast the spell, to see it work—that is a witch’s joy. Then she knows power; then herself she is a god. But poison! Any fool can give it—if there be a chance. And, if she cannot come at her victim, then the best of witches is hindered; and so it was with Philip. She could not give him the poison; but as for the spell—everything went as we desired. We had set not only the day but the hour. As for the weather, the Master added it for grace.”
“For grace!” Samuel Fleming repeated. “Do you talk of grace . . . and the child lying within the dark chamber and none to help him? At the end he was deaf and blind—did you know that? But of course you knew it! And I said to myself, It is spring; and he does not see the primroses, nor will again. And he does not hear the cuckoo call, nor will again.”
“And you prayed, no doubt, to your god but he did not answer you. Well, what matter?” she shrugged. “Had the child died in the summer you would have grieved that he did not see the roses; or, in the autumn, that he did not see the ripening fruits; or, in the winter, that he did not see the snow which is all a child’s delight—if,” she added drily, “he have stout shoes upon his feet. But—” and she was a little sly, “why break your heart because the child flew straight to heaven?”
“You are right, witch. But so it is. When a child dies—to us untimely so it seems—we, fools that we are, wish for a little longer and still a little longer, seeing no further than the end of our nose.” He nodded mournful. “The day I heard the child was dead I went up to the Castle to comfort them; but it was they that comforted me.” He spoke as if to himself, remembering Cecilia with her wasted look, Francis his eyes drawn back, dark within the sockets.
“They took it as God’s will,” he told Joan Flower. “They said they must submit themselves, bearing their grief so that all might see they acknowledged the mercy of God.”
She laughed now as she had laughed then.
“But who can help laughing?” She smiled into his sick face. “They should have had the wit to revile their god. And it was our God they should have besought with their prayers. And so the child died!”
“The death of this little one,” Samuel Fleming said, “was more bitter than the death of the first. For now there was no heir born of their bodies. Nor—” and he looked at her steadily, “nor was one ever born.”
“We willed that also.” She held his look with her smiling eyes. “As for the child, you held a service, here, in your church; but they took the body away for burial. Why did they do that?”
“The earl was in attendance upon the King in Whitehall, which is near London. But though he made little show of grief he could not bring himself to part with the child; not yet. So they carried the child with them and they buried him within the great Abbey at Westminster.”
“An honour!” She quirked her brows. “Well, honour is balm to staunch the direst wound.”
“This wound never healed. But though his heart was broken within him, the earl scanted nothing of his duty towards the King.”
“The King, the King!” she broke in, angry. “A black pox upon the King with his hangings and his persecutions of us witches. As if that were not enough, enough! But what must he do now but turn himself about, denying witches and their works. It is better, priest, as you well know, to die for one’s faith though the pain be bitter; for martyrs strengthen faith. But to question it, as the King does, to deny it, ridicule it—that is the way to kill it.”
“He has never denied the existence of witches,” Samuel Fleming said. “He urges care lest the innocent suffer along with the guilty—and that should please you. Martyrs make faith strong; but you were not so ready to proclaim yours when the time came.”
“I denied the Master and in the very act was struck down and died. You might say, priest, that denying, still I testified. But for all that you are right. I was not ready. As we grow old, we grow more cowardly, it seems. Yet you are no coward . . . and I am ashamed. But if I lacked courage, my daughters spoke the truth, each in her way; Margaret who, like me, was not brave; and Philip in whom passion for the God cast out
fear.
So we died; and our name will be remembered as long as Belvoir stands.”
“But—how will it be remembered?”
“What matter? As long as we are remembered we serve the Master.”
Samuel Fleming sighed deeply. “So long we have struggled, we two, pitting word against word; but you have not shifted one hairsbreadth from your wickedness.”
“Nor you from your goodness. Surely, one way or another, we must make an end—for until then you cannot die. You would like to die, would you not, priest? The burden of the body is heavy.”
“The burden of the soul is heavier,” he said and cast about in his mind how he might soften her hard heart.
“So sad a house, Belvoir . . .” he began but she took him up sharply.
“Say you so? So gay a house with the King himself avisiting and the fine gentlemen with him. And the music and the dancing and the fine, fat foods. Oh I make no doubt that the lady smiled and often; yes, and the lord, too. And did we not see them hunting and hawking? And there was kissing and wenching and laughter above stairs as well as below—I wager my soul against yours; but it is a bet you would be wise not to take. For human nature does not change for the death of a child; nor yet for the death of a hundred children.”
“If witches know pity—and you say they do—then where was yours? For think, think! A house where there were children; and then—no children.”
“There was the little lady . . . though she was hardly a child for all her few years. She knew more than many a grown woman. Yes, Philip, even, might have learned of her.”
“Let us leave the lady Catharine out of this matter,” he told her, stern. “All wickedness in you and yours is to be praised! But let another, however young, take one false step . . .”
“It was no false step the little lady took when she ran from home to creep into the bed of my lord of Buckingham, whose manner of life she knew well. She saw the thing she wanted; and she took it. She had strength and she had courage; and because of it, I desired her for the Master. But I could not win her. It is a strange thing, priest. She was no less wanton than my girls. Yet they were sent away in disgrace but she—the little lady—was hung about with gold; what she had done might easily be forgiven . . . gold is your true fuller’s earth.”