Suffer a Witch

by Morgana Gallaway

  “Yes, Master Hopkins,” said Priscilla, yawning.

  Elspeth waited for him at the gate to the yard. As always she was not allowed inside for fear she would frighten away the imps. Still, Hopkins was happy to see her, and grateful for her protection as he held his lantern in front of him and walked down the rocky, unfamiliar footpath. “Good girl,” he told her when they reached the inn.

  No one inside was awake. The Renshaws lived in the rooms in the back, and there was a curtain dividing off the main room, behind which the other search-women slept. Hopkins made a fair amount of noise climbing the creaky stairs to the first floor. On a normal night it might have taken him several hours to fight the shadows in the corners, but not tonight. He was too exhausted.

  He’d barely taken off his boots and blown out the candle when he fell back onto the pillow, fast asleep.

  “THE DEVIL,” HOPKINS TOLD Lillibet and Pippa Wylde the next day, “has the knowledge of thousands of years. He knows mankind. He has letters and sciences in his armory of knowledge. He knows of human physiology and its weaknesses. It is thus that Satan convinces idle women, such as yourselves, that they know better than God how to heal and cure the ills of man.”

  The two accused women were still kept from sleep, being walked around their yard by Goody Brewer and the constable, with Hopkins alongside.

  He inspected his hands and removed a fleck of dirt from underneath his thumbnail. “I have proof against you. Testimony from one of your victims.”

  “Who dares?” Pippa hissed. Her voice was hoarse and her eyes bruised from lack of sleep.

  “There is a good man and his wife who have proof that you poisoned their daughter. They say she went to you for a headache and was ill for weeks afterwards, bleeding as a woman bleeds, and that she was seen drinking a toxic tea of your own brewing that made her thus.”

  “She was not ill!” Pippa said.

  “Ah! Then you admit knowing of such a woman, and that you gave her herbs!”

  “You understand not the ways of women, Master Hopkins. She —” Pippa was interrupted by a croaking noise from her mother.

  The Widow Wylde was shaking her head.

  “Conspire not!” Hopkins said. He took hold of the end of rope that was tied to Pippa’s hands and yanked on it, causing her to stumble away from her mother. “I see why you hold out. When they are tied up on their chairs again,” he said to Goody Brewer, “be sure they face away from one another. They have secret language to communicate.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Since the serpent tempted Eve,” Hopkins continued, “has it been clear that Lucifer’s knowledge is for the ultimate corruption of the soul. I am troubled … very troubled … not by your failure as midwives, but by your success. According to many interviews, this village is unusually healthy.”

  “Hardly,” said Pippa. “Else we would not be so well-off as you accuse us.”

  “Still,” said Hopkins, smiling, “I have an account of one woman who refused you, Widow Wylde, as a midwife. She later died in childbirth, and her child is believed to be a cursed one, a changeling.” He paused, waiting for the old woman to break, to admit to the act.

  Pippa spoke instead. “If you speak of Sybil Yates, ’tis true that her mother refused midwifery. But Lillibet would do no such thing as curse. ’Tis not in the power of humans. Mrs. Yates was in the hands of God.” She licked her lips and glanced with yearning for the clear brook that skipped through the field, several paces away. “Can I not have a drink of water?”

  “Grow accustomed to the thirst,” said Hopkins, “for it is the way of damnation.”

  Somehow, Pippa managed to collect enough saliva in her mouth to spit at him.

  “Inside,” Hopkins ordered quietly. He walked away from the cottage, for there were more interviews to conduct, and he had a mind for a fresh pie from the inn. Goody Renshaw was a fine cook. As he walked away, he could hear the clanging of a kitchen pot, the clamor to keep the witches awake.

  IN THE LONG HOURS of the second night, Lillibet collapsed. Pippa could not see it, for she was made to face the other way, but she could hear it and she bit her lip against crying out.

  The watchers included Mary Ford—Pippa could have thumped her for accusing them of sickening Sarah. If only she knew what immorality her own daughter had committed under her nose! Then there was Goody Brewer, who for a mid-aged woman had a sudden energy when it came to harassing her neighbors.

  All over a birch wine recipe.

  In the many hours that Pippa had been awake, her mind had raced along endless circular corridors, always ending in the same place again: disbelief. Co-mingling with denial was an increasing sense of worry for Lillibet, who would not speak, and whose lips were cracked and starting to bleed with thirst.

  She, Pippa, had strength left. She clung to it, and recited rhymes and charms in her head to keep herself alert. The ways of these witch-finders were to weaken her and make her delirious. She wondered if it was possible to take tiny naps unnoticed. Yan. Tan. Tethera. Pethera. Pip. Sethera. Lethera. Hovera. Dovera. Dik. Count the sheep to fall asleep.

  Mid-afternoon and the smell of the stew over the fire was driving her mad. Drool gathered in the corners of her mouth. It had been so many hours since she’d eaten that her stomach had contracted into a hard fist inside her, but the smell of chicken stew made it hope. Had they killed one of the hens? The rooster? She tried to raise an objection, but she was too tired. Too tired.

  She closed her eyes and it was an eternity, and then she was startled awake again by a pair of clapping hands.

  “No sleeping,” said John Stearne. He glared at her, a whirlwind of energy in this peaceful cottage. His high voice was loud, strident, as he gave what sounded like a sermon, recounting his experiences with other witches. Pippa only half-listened. He’s putting notions in your head, girl, said a voice in her head. Listen not.

  She thought about her friends, and where they might be.

  She wondered why Hugh did not come to rescue her from these old women, these old dragons who watched her as prey.

  Her head fell forward. She would not, would not succumb to the sandpaper on her tongue, the ache in her stomach, the spinning of her head and the fuzzy eyes of exhaustion.

  It was midnight on the third consecutive night when Lillibet began to murmur things to herself.

  Pippa and Lillibet had been given water beginning on the second day of the watching, but it was unnoticed against the deeper desire to sleep. That need went unquenched. Pippa could not remember how long she’d been awake, or even why, or who these people were.

  Human shapes, and animal shapes, and the edges of tables and chairs and bed and door, all swam in her vision, upside-down. None had any real meaning.

  Do not give in, said a voice. She had been listening to that voice for some time now, and doing what it told her. Say nothing.

  But then Lillibet began to speak.

  Hopkins leapt at her. “Speak up, woman, tell us what you’ve done.”

  “High on the hog, yarn in the bog.”

  “Did you bewitch the Reverend Yates’s wife when she refused your help as a midwife?”

  “Sator rotas,” Pippa whispered. It was a mere scratch in her throat, nothing audible to the witch-finder. For some reason it was all she could think of for her mother. For Lillibet.

  “Did you bewitch Mrs. Yates?”

  “Yes,” Lillibet whispered. “I bewitch. I be a witch.”

  The significance of this was lost on Pippa. She wanted to sleep … or was she already asleep? She could be dreaming. In fact, she suspected that she was.

  “What else have you done? Is the strange child Sybil Yates a changeling? Did you steal the real babe and give it to the Devil?”

  “Devil, he lived. Live, evil.”

  “You admit you are evil? That you have had relations with the Devil?”

  “Yes. I know ’im well.” Lillibet’s speech was slurred and low.

  “In what form does he come to you?
” Hopkins’s pencil was active on paper. He licked his lips, tasted the words.

  “In me dreams. A dream.”

  “At night,” said Hopkins.

  “A man in the house. He visits me Pippa.”

  Rounding on Pippa, Hopkins loomed over her. “Be this true? That the Devil came to you? Seduced you? Did you copulate with Satan?”

  Since there was no difference between the men in her dreams—her carnal dreams, of which she never spoke—and Hugh who’d visited her in the hours before dawn, she nodded her head.

  Hopkins huffed. “Say yes or no to the question!”

  But Pippa just nodded.

  “Yes or no!”

  A nod. Her head bobbed and nodded. Her neck was a limp stem supporting a wilting flower.

  “You must say it!”

  Everything was on the edge of her tongue. The magic she’d done, the theft from Joan Buckett, everything she’d done wrong. The cave in the forest. If she confessed, she could sleep, and all she wanted was to sleep …

  “Where is the book?” Hopkins bent down so they were face to face. “Where is the book of witches? The list! The Register of your names! I know that you know!”

  “Book … what book …”

  He seized her by the shoulders. “The book of your secrets!”

  Book of Secrets, she thought. Pippa knew where that was … the cave in the forest, just tell him where it is and he’ll leave you be … but no. She was not supposed to tell. The secret was an iron weight on her shoulders, or was it the witch-finder’s hands? In the haze, Pippa was frightened of saying the wrong thing, of betraying the part of herself that held back, that stayed silent … She opened her mouth.

  “Master Hopkins, I believe the widow is trying to speak again.”

  In a voice so clear, so rational, that even Pippa was roused out of her stupor, Lillibet said, “I be a witch. I fornicate with the Devil every Friday night. He gives me unnatural energy and power for a woman of me age. He wanted me daughter, me Pippa, but I tell him no, not until she’s of age. In exchange I did do his evil work. Here comes me imp now.”

  Lillibet must have looked toward something outside, because all the watchers were on their feet, clustering at the front door.

  “I knew there was something unnatural about that pig!” said Goody Brewer. “I heard ’er talking to it like it was human. She calls it Eli Pilly.”

  “Is this true?” Hopkins asked.

  “Illy Pilly, willy nilly. He’s me imp. Eli Pilly and Yewberry.”

  “And what are the names of Pippa’s imps?” Hopkins asked Lillibet.

  “I tell you, she have no imps. She not be one of us witches … yet.”

  In the sudden blank space of her mind, within this temporary sanity, Pippa understood what her mother was doing. “No, Lillibet,” she said, beginning to cry. “No …”

  “Yes, hide no more,” sang Lillibet. “I confess. I confess!”

  “And you,” Hopkins said, hovering again in front of Pippa, his pale face with heavy eyebrows and brown beard on the chin. “What have you to say? Do you admit to the names of your imps?”

  “No … imps …” she said. All the world was fuzzy again. No imps, repeated the voice in her head. What madness had come into her home? Even the flames in the hearth looked unknown.

  “No imps does not make her innocent,” said one of the Vale search-women. Pippa had forgotten their names.

  “Yes … that is true … there is one more test,” said Hopkins. The look on his face was one of frustration, or at least it seemed to Pippa, before she fell asleep, eyes wide open, for a few seconds. She snapped awake, confused.

  HOPKINS’S EYES WERE TRAINED on the rickety shed where a witch awaited him. This was the girl he’d thought pious, Alice Baxter, and she had been watched through the night by the search-women. The Baxter home was crowded with children and chores, and so Alice, their eldest, had been placed in the shed for the investigation. Behind the shed was the green rise of a hill and a cloud-like scattering of sheep.

  Hopkins had received a message this morning that a biting fly had landed on her dry lip, and she’d bled from it, and admitted that the imp was hers.

  “Be warned,” his search-woman had told him, “she has a frightening disability in her speech. There is a devil inside her.”

  Cracking his knuckles to set his mind aright—he was disturbed by deformities and wondered if her tongue was misshapen—he knocked once on the door and opened it to find the desolate girl tied up and staring at him. Her soft brown eyes were huge and she reminded him of a trapped rabbit. A tender part of his heart squirmed in pity for her; these uncomfortable feelings sometimes arose when the witch in question did not live up to his picture of evil. He remembered how Alice had quoted the Bible in the forest. She hadn’t had a stutter then. Hmm.

  Elspeth panted in the sweltering heat of the wooden shed. Hopkins loosened his collar. He would try to make this quick. Alice was ready to break, he could tell, and he took out his notebook to be ready for her confession. His boots thudded on the packed earth as he walked towards her.

  The girl flinched.

  Hopkins turned over an empty barrel and sat down. Elspeth curled at his feet, her sharp eyes staring at Alice.

  “Alice Baxter.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Alice,” he said more gently. “You are a witch. The evidence against you is strong. Have you a confession?”

  “M-m-m-m …”

  So she did have a stutter! It sounded as though the forces of good and evil battled for her soul, and her tongue was caught in the struggle. He’d never encountered this before. “Speak to me, girl. Tell me the truth and there may be mercy for you.”

  “M-m-mercy?”

  Hopkins took off his hat and sopped up the sweat on his brow with a handkerchief. “There is a coven of witches in this village. I have proof of it. I know what happens when you meet. Satan comes to you, does he not?”

  She looked confused but said, “Y-Y-Yes. He d-does.”

  Hopkins stared at a place above Alice’s head, tilting this way and that as he listened to the voice that directed him. She is a weak witch. Turn her, and discover the others. She will lead you to them. Elspeth sniffed the air as though investigating the scent of Alice’s fear.

  “Do you know what happens to witches?” Hopkins asked.

  She shook her head, appearing on the brink of tears.

  “You will be taken to the gaol and thrown down a stinking pit with the other witches. There you will languish with the fallen, and then you will be brought before the magistrates. Do you know what happens when you are hanged?”

  Her spine seemed to melt as she panicked and flung herself down on the ground, sobbing. “P-P-please! N-No! D-don’t let it happen to m-me!”

  “You will be taken to the gallows and a cloth is tied around your eyes so you cannot see. The last thing you will feel is the roughness of rope about your throat. The last thing you hear is a crowd of godly people cheering for your death. But that is not the worst of it. For you are a witch, and to Hell you will go. There will be no burial for you, no lifting of your spirit on the day of Judgment …”

  The pitiful creature was his to mold. Switching his voice into quiet, calm authority, he said, “There is a way out.”

  “W-W-What?”

  “If you confess to me, and if you give me the names of your coven, I might overlook your guilt.”

  “M-my coven?”

  “The group of witches with whom you consort. Tell me who, tell me where, when, and tell me about the magic you’ve worked.”

  “I-I-I cannot.” Yet Alice’s voice wavered.

  “You can. If you confess on behalf of others and agree to testify at their trials, I will grant you safety from prosecution.” Hopkins peered at her, waiting with patience. This was how he’d turned that girl in Colchester against her own mother. “Perhaps you are … innocent … in all of this. Perhaps you have fallen under evil influence and can still be saved. If you coope
rate.”

  “S-Saved?”

  “Tell me,” Hopkins crooned. “Testify. Testify and I will say no more against you. You might be saved from the gallows, and you might spend the rest of your days in prayer to make up for this youthful mistake. Tell me.”

  Some internal wall seemed to break inside of Alice. When she raised her eyes to meet his, Hopkins could see their surrender, and their guilt, and their complete belief that she had done evil. Again he felt sorry for this hapless girl; he suspected she’d had no idea how she’d sinned, and now wanted to repent. It was further proof that Biblical education was the best defense against Satan in these backwards country villages. If Alice worshipped more, she would not find herself in this situation.

  “We-we meet in the w-w-woods,” Alice began. Hopkins sat back and listened around her stutter. “It b-b-be myself and Pippa Wylde and … Sybil Y-Yates.”

  Hopkins’s pencil scratched across his notebook, familiar names on his master list.

  Alice, in starts and stumbles, told him about Pippa and her knowledge of the old ways and her cunning mother. About how Sybil liked to dance in the forest and make up songs and rhymes. The way the girls tied ribbons and charms beneath their petticoats. About their learning of herbs from Lillibet, and their dance to change the seasons, and most of all about the face of the man in the woods. The Green Man. Apparently, he was a god older than God to whom Pippa in particular liked to pray.

  Hopkins shuddered when he thought of his foray into the woods, and remembered Pippa’s pink tongue, held out in a tease, and how she’d said that the “Green Man” watched her.

  Green Man. Face of thorns. Face with demon’s horns.

  Alice’s creeping secrets were unveiled for Hopkins. His pencil had stopped moving and he could but stare, aghast. Never had he imagined such degradation. This place was turned over to Satan, and he was glad to have Stearne and the search-women with him, for he could not do it alone. Not when the Devil had such a strong hold.