Suffer a Witch

by Morgana Gallaway

  With a wooden fork she pushed the dead weeds into a heavy, compact pile. She frowned as something half-buried glinted in the light. She pushed aside the dirt and then gave a pained cry. A drop of blood oozed from the tip of her finger. The thing was sharp, pointed … it had pricked her.

  It was a needle. There was only one time a needle could have been dropped here. It was from the search-women who had—

  But she couldn’t finish the thought.

  Using a handkerchief from her apron pocket, Winifred wrapped up the needle and walked through the house to the front.

  “Winifred? Are you alright?” Her mother was in the parlor.

  She didn’t stop. There was but one thing to do with the offal of that time, that storm, that nonsense. She went out the front door and walked calmly toward the forest, careful that none saw her, wanting to be alone.

  Winifred craved solitude often. Family meals were a strain with her grim father, her listless mother, and Jane’s chattering as though nothing bad had ever happened. Tom’s absence was heavy upon her parents, worse every day that passed without word of him.

  A cool breeze moved through the woods and along the path Winifred took to her favorite oak. The oak was hers. It was masculine, or so she felt, and it had huge roots and soft earth beneath it. His arms were heavy and embracing. He was thick in the trunk, thin in the foliage, like an old balding gentleman with a large belly. Winifred sat upright against the base of the tree and dug her fingers straight down into the earth on either side. She cried.

  She had been crying these days, too, and that always alone.

  Sniffling, she scraped a hole in the earth, and kept scraping until her hands were black and she’d reached the soft, always-moist roots of the oak. Reaching into her pocket, she took the handkerchief and shook it. The needle tumbled out into the hole. Winifred squeezed out a last drop of blood from her finger and flung it in with the needle. Then she covered it up again. “Take it,” she implored the oak. “Take my pain. Hold my injury. You have the strength I do not.”

  Winifred flung herself onto the curve of a root and lay there until her sobs turned into deep, even breathing. It was so very peaceful here. She understood that just as the earth was bruised in the winter, and seemed to die, it was a necessary part of the cycle. The dead remains of her garden would make an excellent spread in half a year. I’m grown up, she realized. This is my cycle. And just as she buried some things, and allowed them to decay, she needed to accept what had happened to her.

  As she drank in the power of the oak, she remembered one of the Psalms of David. She whispered, “The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?”

  The leaves of a nearby ash were already tinged yellow on the tips. The earth was moving on. So must she. This was all just a summer’s fever. It would pass. Sybil had died in a fever, a disease of the spirit that turned men’s minds against the innocent. It was a force of nature.

  Still, there were people to be held to account.

  Wiping her nose, Winifred decided she would be quite all right. There was no need to wallow in self-pity. Get on with things, she thought. Start with readying that garden for the winter’s first frost. It will come in a month or two.

  She walked out of the forest with a different mind guiding her footsteps. On the way home she passed the Wylde-Wood Cottage. A plume of smoke rose from the chimney. The thatch had been repaired on the roof, but Pippa had not yet weeded the yard. Even the yew tree looked ill-kempt with decayed red berries scattered around its base and a patch of upturned earth where Lillibet had been buried.

  Pressing her lips together, Winifred marched up to the door and knocked. “Pippa!”

  It had been several days since she’d spoken with her friend. It was an odd thing, but Pippa reminded her of everything: the gaol, the terror, the hanging. She suspected Pippa felt the same way about her. There was much gravity in their friendship now. Still, thought Winifred, someone must do something about this yard. “Pippa!”

  The door swung open. “Hello, Winnie.” Pippa’s hair was tied back and her face was shiny. “I’m just finishing up. Come in.”

  The cottage smelled of herbs and vapors. On the table were three or four open books, and something was boiling over the fire. All the shutters were closed. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Lice,” said Pippa, scratching her head with great drama.

  “You didn’t seem to be itching before.”

  “I got out the live ones. Now it’s them nits come back to pester me.” She glanced into her potion. “This should kill the last of them, then I’ll comb them out.”

  “Oh,” said Winifred. “Well. I’ve come to tell you that I’m going to weed your garden. I cannot look at it anymore.”

  Pippa grinned at her. “It bothers you that much? I’m sorry. I haven’t time.”

  “I don’t shy from hard work, long as it be in the natural out-of-doors,” said Winifred. She glanced into one of the open books. “Midwifery?”

  Pippa nodded. “I’ll be damned if I let that Isabel Moore get the license. She couldn’t midwife a field mouse.”

  Winifred said, “She couldn’t nurse my mouse imp!” This made them laugh, something Winifred hadn’t experienced in awhile. Wiping her eyes, she said, “’Tis so mean!”

  “’Tis so true!”

  “Pippa, I’ve been thinking.” Winifred sat down on a wooden stool. “How are you? About … you know?”

  Pippa shrugged. “Well enough. Day by day. The Feltons have been a help.”

  After Hugh Felton had so forcefully spoken for Pippa at her trial, all of Suffolk knew of their betrothal. The Feltons would hear nothing against their son marrying the daughter of an honorable yeoman, even if that daughter had been accused of witchcraft. Besides, the worth of the family had been raised in compensation when young Roger joined the Roundheads, the New Model Army. Once she marries Felton, Winifred thought, she’ll be untouchable. As wealthy as we Radcliffs are, and her children will be titled, no less. Witness to Hugh and Pippa’s obvious attraction, Winifred wondered how she could have ever thought Hugh would marry Elizabeth Yates.

  “He is a good choice for you,” said Winifred. “When will you marry?”

  “In the spring,” said Pippa.

  “Then we will be the strongest families in the Vale.”

  “What are you thinking of, Winnie?”

  “I’m thinking we must do something to make sure this never happens again,” she said. “These witch-hunts. Do you believe Matthew Hopkins will stop? Already the village is in debt for our incarcerations. The parish’s common fund is gone, paid to the witch-finders! And that doesn’t account for the spiritual debt. An innocent was …” Winifred still could not quite say it. Perhaps next year she could pronounce what had happened to Sybil. “Truth be told, I suspect all of the accused are innocent.”

  “Hopkins believes there’s a list of witches,” said Pippa. “He thinks Satan has a list of all his witches and their imps. That we—the guilty—signed our names to it and made a contract.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “From his own lips.”

  “When did you speak with him?”

  Pippa looked at the ground and her hands trembled. “In Bury.”

  With a noise of disgust, Winifred said, “This is what I speak of. He will not stop. There is nothing to be done about him … but we must make a pact, you and I. Someday we will be the matriarchs of this village. We must guide its morals and make it a safe place.”

  “A pact …” said Pippa.

  “Yes! That we ourselves will maintain our good fortunes and become the guardians of the Vale. Someday we will have daughters. Someday the witch-finders will return.”

  Pippa knelt on the floor across from Winifred. “I see what you mean. But can will we make this something official? Like a rule?”

  “That’s it!” said Winifred, relieved that Pippa had given words to what she was feeling. “That’s just it! Once you’re married, and I’
m married to a powerful man—for I would take no other—then we need local parish laws that prohibit a witch hunt. As for you and me …” she fixed her jaw in a stubborn way, “We’re a different sort of sisterhood, for we are all that survive. That Baxter girl—she’s nothing to you anymore. She’s not your sister and never was. Let me have that place in your heart.”

  “You are dear to my heart, and always should have been. And as for my former sister …” Pippa spat on the dirt floor.

  “If you marry Hugh, you must stop spitting on floors,” Winifred teased.

  With a smile Pippa said, “I’m learning. So. Shall we shake hands?”

  “No,” said Winifred, glancing around and finding Lillibet’s Bible on a shelf. She took it from its place. “We swear on this.” They laid their hands across it. “We swear to God that this village shall be a place of safety for as long as we live. We swear that no superstition ever takes the place of God’s justice. We swear that no man or woman or child will be accused of witchcraft here again.”

  Pippa added, “We swear that all things pagan and Christian exist under God, and nothing shall threaten the cunning ways.”

  Winifred felt better. If they could not take lessons from all of this, then it truly was in vain. But her friendship with Pippa had been tested and found worthy. Now they might use it for good.

  “Besides,” said Winifred, shaking her head, “there really is no such thing as witchcraft.”

  Pippa’s eyes slid over to her and her coy smile was pure Lillibet.

  THE LIGHT ARRIVED AND Pippa’s eyes opened on the morning of a very important day. She was on her back in her loft. It was cold, and a heavy woolen blanket wrapped her from head to toe. Although Lillibet’s bed was more comfortable, she could not occupy it just yet. She felt unworthy. Pippa sat up, shivering with the cold air that invaded her sleep’s cocoon.

  The coals in the hearth were prodded into life and a kettle of water set over the new fire. Pippa drew her cloak over her nightclothes and went outside to use the privy. Although it was not comfortable, there was something clean about the chilly countryside air. She never took it for granted anymore, not after the time in the gaol. She was still slimmer than was healthy but she was eating properly.

  Mist clung to the ground and swirled around Pippa’s feet. It was thick as custard. It reminded her that things were not always as they appeared.

  She drew a full bucket of water from the brook and carried it inside. She planned on bathing later. It was too cold now to take full dips in the swimming-hole or the tub. Winter lurked—the time of sponge baths, or no baths.

  Her breakfast was simple porridge with milk and a touch of honey. Routine was a weak remedy for the hole in Pippa’s life. She had lost herself. She could not walk past the church without becoming nauseated. The pond gave her tingles of panic. Even this cottage was a challenge; half an ear was always listening for Lillibet’s instructions or for Sybil’s song-like greeting.

  She had not seen Hugh for a week. They did not have as much to speak about as they once had. She had changed while he had not.

  From across the valley, Pippa could hear the first messy task of the morning. It was the slaughter. It was the time of screaming and of sacrifice. A cow was being killed on one of the farms and there was its last hollow cry. Its hooves would be ground into powder. The best meat would be sold, or served at the table. Tougher meats would be torn into strips and dried in an oven. The hide would be sold as leather.

  Something was dying inside her, too. This summer had been the end of her girlhood. Now it was time to step up to her own messy tasks.

  She opened the shutters on the kitchen window that looked to the forest. The clinging fog was clearing away to reveal the tangle of trees. The leaves were aflame: red, brown, gold, orange. Lillibet had always told her, “The October harvest is the most important. In the old days it was a fire festival. The people would throw a dummy man made of straw onto the bonfires and they would eat the meat from their herds.”

  The meat was still eaten, but fires were civilized and contained in stone hearths, minded by goodwives and servants. There was no dancing in this land now except at the end of a rope.

  Children still threw the effigy in the fire, though. They dressed him up as a Catholic. The Reverend always gave a sermon about how God had saved Parliament from the evil demon Guy Fawkes forty years ago. Pippa recounted how Fawkes had danced, too, and wondered if he was to be the new god of chaos, set afire when the air turned cold.

  Truth be told, she didn’t know what she was doing today. All she knew was that it was All Soul’s—another Catholic festival—and she must go to the cave. She must come to terms with death. She would pray, or speak, or light her own tiny fire.

  She poured the wooden bucket of water into the cauldron so it would heat up. Despite her general sense of numbness, was no way she was taking a cold bath.

  “Tan-a-dik!” said Ursula from her perch in the corner.

  Pippa had taken custody of the bird, and Ursula spent her days on a wooden rail, speaking up on occasion and eating the remnants of Pippa’s meals. Pippa wished she had the courage to take Ursula on her shoulder for walks but the bird was identified as an imp. Widow Moore, or Goody Brewer—whom Pippa refused to acknowledge, even though she was her nearest neighbor—or Goody Ford would say something. All pleasures were forced underground.

  Ursula spoke in Sybil’s voice, a near-perfect mimicry that always caught Pippa off her guard.

  The water was warm, almost hot. Her bare skin puckered in the chilly air. “Brrr,” she said.

  “Rrrr,” agreed Ursula.

  Using an absorbent towel-cloth and the lavender soap, she cleansed herself from head to toe. The bruises were gone. Her hair was at last returning to its former gloss and volume. The lice were long-gone, and so was the grime, but still Pippa never felt clean.

  She hoped tonight would change all that. There must be an answer in Lillibet’s books.

  At noon she took a thin meal of broth. That was all she would eat for the rest of the day; her plan included a small fast. Aloud she said,

  “The fire bites, the fire bites, the fire bites.

  Hogs turn over it, hogs turn over it, hogs turn over it.

  The Father with thee, the Son with me, Holy Ghost between us both to be.”

  Then she spat over her left shoulder into the hearth fire, and again over her right shoulder, and then faced forward to spit a third time. Her saliva created a hissing steam. Pippa wasn’t sure what the charm would do, except that Lillibet used to say it before she took one of her half-day cleansing fasts.

  What do I do with myself? she wondered as she sat beneath the yew tree that afternoon. She was sewing a pair of house slippers of leather lined with rabbit’s fur to last her through the winter. The yard felt empty, for it was silent of animals and Winifred had cleared it of weeds.

  From where she sat, she could see down the way to the village common. There was the sharp ridgepole of a roof, the Green Man—The Charter Inn, she reminded herself—where she would never again see Old Man Ashley nursing a pint and talking about the war. The innkeeper’s son, Will Renshaw, was engaged to Susan, the girl who’d come to Lillibet for a husband charm. Lillibet’s magic was still doing its work in the world.

  Moving on, Pippa could see the plain cross on top of the church, where the Reverend Yates preached every Sunday, and next to the church his house. The curtains of Sybil’s window hung straight and untouched, guarding an empty bedroom.

  The reverie was a lump in her throat.

  A figure was moving toward the Yateses’ front door: Elizabeth Yates, judging from the humble cloth, the prissy walk, the sneering angle of the head with its plain cap. She was living fine and proper and attended church and Bible study. So did her sister Catherine, betrothed to a Bible printer.

  There was the Moores’ house, and Widow Moore had been a watcher.

  There was the very edge of a field belonging to Goodman Ford, who’d testified against her,
and where his wife must think on the glory days of pricking witches.

  There was the Radcliffs’ house, the place of secrets, the unexpected friend.

  Pye’s hill, and it seemed like forever ago that she’d raced up that hill, trying to reverse a hex, trying to impress Lillibet.

  Her eyes trailed along the opposite ridge that cradled the Vale and she noticed an empty field, where Baxter’s herd of sheep ought to have been. Pippa had successfully avoided seeing Alice since the—betrayal, her mind offered—the trial and she was in no mood to be taken unawares, like she had been in Bury when she ran into Matthew Hopkins and he’d chased her down the alley.

  She pricked herself with the thick needle and jumped.

  A-feared of me own shadow! Once, she had made a wish on this very tree behind her, in the days when she was bold and green. She glanced up at the tattered remnants of the red ribbon she’d tied on the branch on that summer’s full moon. It looked faded, like she was.

  Delicate firebrand-darling. That was what Hopkins had called her. The sour clench of fear turned her stomach every time she thought of him, thought of her powerlessness on that day. She was flat on the ground and could take no more.

  The woods were a presence at her back. The yew tree groaned once when a crisp breeze moved.

  The sun was setting and the slippers were finished. She put her needle safely away and felt the inside of the shoes—soft, warm. They would keep her feet toasty. She wiggled her toes inside her old shoes and tapped them on the ground.

  Something tapped back.

  Pippa jumped up and peered at the ground beneath her. She’d been sitting near the tree’s ropy trunk. Lillibet’s grave was a few yards away, marked with a cross of pebbles. Pippa knelt and swept her hands over the ground. She brushed something with her hand, something smooth and round just beneath the surface, like a stone or a root.

  A white-yellow root.

  It couldn’t be. Pippa scrabbled at the dirt and uncovered the thing, the blood rushing in her ears, because this was important. This was a sign.