Suffer a Witch

by Morgana Gallaway

  She slept and did not sleep. The hours peeled away. It was so very dark but for that candle. It did not seem to be burning down. Perhaps it was a newfangled kind of wax from Holland?

  Sybil breathed in cotton wool. With eyes of sandpaper, with eyes that were heavy spinning marbles, she traced the corners of her room, mapping them out, making them normal. Square room. Round-doll Sybil. There was the white-painted wall. There was the door, open just a little. There was the window and the curtain and the dark wood post of her bed. There were her feet, hidden under the pale covering sheet, making a little tent. There was the skeleton sitting on her bed to her left.

  The skeleton regarded her with empty eyes.

  Sybil regarded the skeleton with equal calm and wondered who had let it in the house.

  Christ rose under the hill. Hey, diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle.

  Around the skeleton’s shoulders was a wreath of snowy white flowers. Sybil tried to identify them but she couldn’t; they were not earthly flowers. They were from Heaven. A thousand tiny knives were the stems of the flowers.

  “Who let you in?” Sybil asked.

  The skeleton grinned a bleach-white smile, a smile of sharp polished moonlight.

  You’re a happy dead lady, aren’t you.

  Sybil closed her eyes. She was so very tired. It was safe to rest for a little while, but then she had a great deal of work to do. She had to save the raven. She had to finish her embroidery. She had to do her Scripture lessons.

  The cow kept jumping over the moon.

  Sybil wished it would stop doing that and let her sleep.

  Hey diddle, diddle. The cow jumped over the moon. Christ jumped over the hill.

  She tried to bolt up out of bed. If she didn’t keep a careful eye, the dish would run away with her spoon, and she couldn’t drink her medicine! But then, the skeleton was still there. It would take care of that dish.

  “Sybil? Here, take some water.”

  Sybil tried to ask Cathy if she could see the skeleton too, but the skeleton shook its head at her and raised a finger to its rows of teeth in warning.

  The shivers overtook her after she swallowed the teaspoon of water that was a river. It disappeared down the loam-black hole of her throat. Shiver. Ague. When she moved her head in the throes of that shiver, her hair plucked at her scalp. Every hair she could feel. Her hairs were a thousand tiny knives growing into her.

  Many years later, Cathy left and the candle was still burning and the skeleton was still there. Sybil’s voice had returned. In fact, she spoke out loud with ease, and wondered if she was through the worst of it.

  “I’m all better,” she told the skeleton.

  Out of the gaping black eye of the skull, something crawled. It was Ursula! She’d come to visit Sybil. Ursula had grown up—she was large, the shape and glossy black of an adult. Even in the dim light the raven’s feathers shimmered a rainbow.

  Ursula said, “Tan-a-dik.”

  “Count the sheep,” added Sybil.

  “Hey, diddle, diddle. Beware the man with the grey imp.”

  Vein to vein. Sybil wondered why the sheet had to be so heavy. Who had let that skeleton in, anyway? Her father didn’t like her to have friends over.

  “Will you do my Scripture lesson for me? Elizabeth will burn my bacon if it’s not done.”

  Instead of answering, Ursula plucked a glowing white flower off the sharp white skeleton and ate it, stem first, so that for a moment the petals erupted out of her beak.

  Tooth to tooth. Scripture! Oh, God, the lessons! An eye for an eye. Two eyes. Two empty eyes. The skeleton sat on her bed and this was important.

  “I know you,” she said to it. “I like your flowery necklace.”

  “We are all children,” Ursula told her. With her beak she tugged on the flowers until the wreath tightened past the horned clavicle, around the skeleton’s laddered bones of a throat. The jaw dropped.

  The door opened. It had been open. Elizabeth had been standing there, staring at Sybil, who was sitting straight up. Elizabeth’s jaw dropped. “Who are you talking to?” she shrieked.

  “The cow jumped over the moon!” Sybil tried to raise the alarm, but it came out as the faintest of whispers.

  For thirteen hours Pippa slept. After giving Sybil her potion and then going to the church with Alice to pray, she had returned home where Lillibet forcefed her a heel of fresh bread and a hearty rabbit stew. Then she’d crawled up the wooden slats to her loft where she collapsed onto the straw mattress, pulled a wool blanket over herself, and let her soul rest. She did not dream, the night passed in a blink, and it seemed that she’d no sooner closed her eyes than opened them again to lilac shadows of the pre-dawn light.

  “Psssst! Pippa!”

  Pippa’s loft was open to the rafters and the thatch roof, and the dried mud filling the cracks on the eave wall was thin. A person could whisper through it.

  “Who’s there?” she hissed back.

  “Hugh.”

  “What time is it, you daft man?”

  “An hour before dawn. Come out and talk with me!”

  All of a sudden, Pippa was wide awake.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t want to alert the rooster. Come through here. What are you about?” She unlatched the square wooden hatch in the wall where the sloping sides of the roof met in a triangle.

  Hugh stood on an awkward tower of a barrel and an upside-down bucket. He put his elbows on either side of the window and heaved himself through, landing with a soft thud on the straw. His nearness made her heart do loops in her chest. Her imagination raced, wondering what he had in mind … would he ask to court her? Had he decided that after all this time, despite his courting of other girls, it was Pippa Wylde he’d loved all along?

  Hugh grinned at her. “Hello,” he said, a little too loud.

  “Hush, lest Lillibet awake!” She was glad for her mother’s dim hearing, but Lillibet was also notorious for sleeping at odd times, and wandering about in the night.

  As a precaution, Pippa closed the thin cotton privacy curtain. She took a long drink of water from the cup she kept by her bed.

  Then Hugh grasped her around the waist and rolled her onto the mattress. Surprised, she giggled, muffling the sound on his chest.

  “I pray I did not wake you,” he said.

  “No … I’ve overslept as it is.” His face was so close to hers. His hands were warm and firm on the curve of her waist. She felt like she couldn’t breathe.

  “You must have needed a good heavy rest.”

  “What are you doing here so near to dawn, anyway? My mum will murder me if she finds us out.”

  Hugh leaned out of their embrace and propped himself up on one elbow. “I came to tell you. Sybil Yates is through the fever. I heard from a farm-hand, who heard from their house-woman Martha, who was up very early indeed to fetch her some milk.”

  Liquid relief made Pippa collapse backward. “Oh, thank God above,” she murmured. “Thank you, Lord.”

  Hugh smiled. “I thought to tell you first. I knew you’d want to know.”

  “That’s very … thoughtful of you, Hugh.”

  With her worries lifted, Pippa became even more aware that it was the quiet hour of morning, and that Hugh Felton was in her loft. With her. Alone. So far, he’d been considerate, telling her about Sybil, nothing out of the ordinary—except for the way his hands had lingered, the way he’d tackled her like a playful animal.

  As she glanced down at the way his hand rested, palm upward on the straw, she felt the air change. He must care for me, she thought, and lowered her eyes.

  Hugh reached out, tilted her face toward him, and kissed her on the lips.

  Pippa had no idea it was like this. The triumph over every other girl in the Vale who fancied Hugh was swept away into the moment when his hands caught in her tangled mess of hair. They fell back together and she kissed him in return, awkward and not quite sure what she was doing, but it didn’t take long to find a rhythm.
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br />   All kinds of new feelings bubbled up from a hidden cauldron within her. She pressed herself up against Hugh, the long length of him. His hands roved over her, feeling through the thin cloth of her nightgown. His breathing was heavy and …

  “We must stop,” he gasped. “We must … stop … ’tis not right outside the laws of God.”

  “No, keep … well …” Much as Pippa did not want to stamp out the fire inside, she thought of Sarah Ford’s recent predicament. She sighed. “You’re right.”

  Hugh kissed her on the forehead and rolled away. “Best I get home.”

  “And I’ll visit Sybil. I’m so glad.” Her words disguised her inner turmoil, still aflutter from her first kiss, still not quite believing what had just happened. Why? Why is he here?

  When Hugh had backed out of the window to stand on the bucket, and the pale orange of the sun began to peek over the horizon, he paused to seize Pippa’s hand. “You might just be my favorite person, Pippa. I want to be with you.”

  “With me?” she breathed. She was aroused by his words, but troubled, too. What did he mean? Was he aiming to use her? Would he ever ask her for marriage? He kissed her, and now he was ready to leave. He said this, but in what way did he want her? Suddenly Pippa wondered if she knew Hugh at all.

  “Yes,” said Hugh, sounding absolutely certain of himself. “You.” He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose.

  A dozen questions hovered in her mind. She wanted to know why, if he wanted to be with her, he walked with Elizabeth Yates and spoke to Winifred Radcliff after church and mentioned merchants’ pretty daughters in Lavenham. Perhaps Lillibet was right. Perhaps Hugh was fickle and she should abandon hope of a commitment from him.

  Clasping Hugh’s hands in the gloom, Pippa knew one thing for certain. If she didn’t use whatever power she had over Hugh now, in this moment, her dream of him as a husband would vanish. With a yearning that burned through her blood, she leaned over and kissed him, her tongue grazing over his. Her throat burned with the beginning of a strong bout of crying. Ask me, please ask me to marry you, she thought, the pleading in her kiss.

  But Hugh didn’t. Instead he gave her a brilliant smile to match the sun rising behind him and he clambered down from the loft.

  Disappointment flashed through Pippa and tears moved up to tickle behind her eyes. The worst of it was the pain of knowing she wasn’t cunning like Lillibet. All her life, her spells had never worked … not even the heartfelt enchantment of a pretend marriage, cast when she was six years old and had no idea what she was doing. Perhaps this was the only cause and effect she would see: the light in Hugh’s eyes when he looked at her. Perhaps this was the only weak magic she was ever meant to work.

  If she couldn’t make a living as a cunning-woman, she would have to do something, and she wanted to live as Hugh’s wife and secure her future and be kissed every day. There was nothing else for her. But the unfortunate fact was that her wish to the yew tree, the red ribbon spell, had not worked. The weeks had passed as a blank. Pippa had no hand in healing Sybil except caring. Her magic was defunct. Hugh might kiss her, but would never marry her. She, the failed folk magician and daughter of a dead father, stood no chance against wealthy, proper, well-dressed girls like Elizabeth Yates.

  As she watched him retreat into the shadows cast by the newborn sun, she knew that she did love him … she just wished it might bring a measure of happiness, not the twinge of loss.

  ANOTHER TOWN, ANOTHER ROAD, another inn. Matthew Hopkins was not weary, however. He’d scoured the eastern part of Suffolk for weeks, interrogating as he went, and giving evidence for a string of indictments. The guilty women—and, in a few rare cases, men—were taken to the larger gaols at Ipswich and Bury St. Edmunds. There would be an assizes, a court day, in August and the cases would be tried and, he prayed, convicted.

  The list of names in his pocket grew ever longer. Every time he found a witch, he felt the joy of hard work, a job well done, a tilting of the balance toward his salvation.

  On the walls and beams and bedposts of the inns where he stayed, he left a trail of crooked crosses, etched with his bodkin. One for every name. He never forgot to leave his mark.

  It was a hot day and the wind fought against him from the south. It threatened to knock his hat straight off his head.

  “Bugger this,” he finally said under his breath, and carried his hat in front of him. But then, the sun high above beat him down and made his eyes sting. There was no way around the discomfort in one form or another.

  The way of the road, he thought to himself, the way of God’s lawyer. I should not complain, even in thought, about what He hath created. My resolve remains true.

  Hopkins threw his head back and pretended to welcome the sun’s harsh rays.

  Behind him, the cart carrying the Essex search-women and their supplies plodded along the road, raising a cloud of dust. All were matrons or widows, respectable as they came. They brought a case full of sharp instruments with them, used for pricking witches: needles, pins, knives, and wooden-handled bodkins, filed down to glinting points.

  It was deep countryside through which they moved. He’d taken a south turn from Bury and, according to his maps, there were several small farming settlements along this route. Old places full of old hatreds, people who were ignorant of the laws that could protect them from the supernatural. Hopkins looked forward to educating them.

  His horse crested a rise and spread before him was a crinkle in the landscape that cradled a village and a thick wood. Hopkins eyed the wood with suspicion: forests were wild and wanton places that concealed evil doings. But then, there was also strong cultivation happening here, and he looked with approval on the ordered squares of field, cow pasture, and the fluffy white dots of distant sheep.

  Reaching backward, he fumbled around his map case for the rolled paper that would tell him the name of this place.

  The lines of the map were heavy in some places, weak in others, as though the ink itself was inconsistent. The name of this village was cramped alongside its road. Hopkins read it aloud. “Another Vale.” From here it looked a quiet, sullen place. This could go one way or another, he thought. Either the villagers were devoted to worship, or their isolation had driven them to less civilized ways. Even here in East Anglia there were pockets of Royalist sympathy and of Catholicism. Satan’s workers, he thought. He would keep an eye out for them, too.

  As he descended into this unknown territory, a familiar knot formed in his stomach. It was like a fist of power inside him. His gut was his supernatural nose in detecting witches.

  Elspeth panted hard and raised her elegant narrow snout to sniff the air.

  “Smell them, do you?” Hopkins said. “Yes, as do I. There’s at least one witch here.”

  From the south he could see another dust cloud approaching and he wondered who he was about to meet.

  THE CROPS WERE THICK AND healthy at midsummer, a relief to the people of the Vale, for the margins were thin with the burden of wartime taxes. It looked to be a fine harvest if there were no unexpected storms. The animals went about their forest business and many a goodwife swept bold rabbits away from the fenced rows of lettuce and cabbage. The cats hunted the mice, the dogs guarded the sheep, the leaves were thick and green on the trees. All was in order, and Pippa stood with Sybil next to the duck pond on the village common.

  Sybil was pale still, but the fever’s grip was two weeks in the past, and with diminishing doses of Lillibet’s opiate she regained her strength and color every day.

  On Sybil’s shoulder sat Ursula the raven, who had thrived under Alice’s care and lost her baby feathers. The bird now had a thick glossy black crown and glinting eyes that carried a sharp intelligence. Ursula’s wing would hobble her from flying, but she was well-fed by the girls.

  Pippa wore her severe black church dress. She would be attending the women’s Bible study at the Yates house, but had arrived early to take recuperating Sybil for a short walk outside.

>   “I wonder who approaches,” said Pippa, spotting a dust cloud in the distance on the road from Lavenham.

  Sybil whispered, “The imp.”

  “What?”

  “I said nothing,” said Sybil, but she looked suddenly pale.

  “Let us go inside,” said Pippa, though still curious about the approaching visitors. “Bible study is about to begin, anyway.” Pippa took Sybil’s arm and they walked inside, letting Ursula off in the back garden.

  Bible study was not Pippa’s normal mug of ale, but Lady Felton was there, and Pippa wanted to present herself as a fine good Christian. With the career of the cunning-woman falling away, Pippa had to make herself respectable so that she might secure a good marriage. When she saw Hugh’s elegant mother in Reverend Yates’s sitting room, she felt the desperate tug of hope that she might be granted a miracle. That Lady Felton would like her, that Hugh Felton would marry her instead of a more suitable girl.

  She hadn’t been alone with Hugh since that morning, weeks ago. He was of the right age to marry, and everyone said he would make a proposal soon, and it made Pippa sick with anxiety to think about it.

  The Bible study began and Pippa swallowed her distaste at keeping company with so many women who’d never liked her.

  Elizabeth Yates asked her to read aloud a passage from Galatians and Pippa, whose letters were of a more practical bent—herbs and inventory and numbers—struggled with it.

  She could hear the low muttering of the other women, felt their impatient expressions, and flushed with shame and irritation.

  Winifred Radcliff in particular looked at Pippa with hostile speculation, her eyes pausing on the berry stain on Pippa’s cuff. Whatever goodwill had formed between them over Sybil’s illness had since vanished.

  However, when the Bible study was done, Lady Felton said to Pippa, “I like your spirited voice, Philippa Wylde. Study your letters more diligently and I’m certain you would be a fine reader.”