by Julie Hearn
A log shifts and settles in the hearth. Nell prods it with a poker, to make it flare again. She knows her birth story by heart, but likes to be reminded of it once in a while.
The cunning woman’s hands flutter like crippled spiders as she sifts her memory for the right connection. Then a smile crinkles her face as she discovers what there is to remember—events as fresh and real as if they were happening right here, right now. All over again.
Her voice, when she speaks, sounds almost young:
“It never mattered, in the circle, what your earthly ties were—or even who you were. Once we were all gathered together—like-minded souls holding hands in a ring—we were between the worlds, beyond the bounds of time. She came from over the border to celebrate the summer solstice. I could tell at once that she was one of us. I could see it in her eyes. She brought flowers for the Corn King and cakes and wine to share. She had her own goblet, as we all did, with a rim of jeweled stars. And a silver box of salt for protection against evil. And the cord around her robe had forty knots—long enough to mark out a nine-step circle.”
She pauses for breath and for the pleasure of her own remembering.
“And then,” Nell prompts. “She came again … for Yule.”
“Yes. To the Standing Stones this time. Your father, for all he was no longer a lad, had been chosen to play the young god—he who fights and triumphs over the old one, that light may return to the earth. As I watched him leaping like a stag, I knew full well that it was not just in honor of the ritual that he pranced and preened so. It was for her. And when, as victor, he tore off his mask and shook the sweat from his brow, a look passed between them that none could mistake.”
“A look of love,” murmurs Nell.
“A look of longing, girl. No need to pretty it up.”
Nell lifts the dun chicken onto her lap and buries her face in its feathers. Love, she tells herself. It was love that sparked between my mother and father that winter’s night, while a great fire warmed the ancient stones and the other man—the old god—played dead on the ground, his antlers ripped off and his face chalked and sooted, to resemble a skeleton.
Love …
“I said nothing afterward to your father—my son,” the cunning woman continues. “For whatever is set in motion once a circle has been cast and the Powers summoned is meant to be. It cannot be stopped any more than a wave poised to crash can be sent rearing back on itself as if it never started. As winter turned to spring and we prepared for the May Eve ritual, I knew that your coming was inevitable. And so it was.”
The next part of the story is vague and sad. Yet it is the part Nell likes best, since it surely proves that her father truly loved the mysterious woman from over the border and that she loved him back. For her father, like Sam Towser, could have denied all responsibility for his frolicking. He could have run away. As for the woman …
“Did you really never know her name, Granny? Did my father never tell you?”
“No, girl. ’Twas best I never knew, for then if anyone had asked me, I would not have had to lie. All I learned—all your father ever said—was that no one in her family was aware that she followed the Old Ways. To them, it would have been unforgivable—even worse, perhaps, than her getting with child, the way she was.”
“She could have got rid me, Granny, couldn’t she? She had the Knowledge.”
“Ah, yes. But you were a Merrybegot. Natures own. She understood what that meant. She knew how special it made you.”
“So why didn’t she pretend that I was her husband’s?”
It is a new question, one she has never thought to ask until now.
“I don’t know, girl. Perhaps they had not lain together in a long time, so he knew it could not be.”
That made sense.
“So she got sent away?”
“Yes.”
“And my father went to her?”
“Yes.”
“He should have brought her here. You could have delivered me, Granny. I would have liked that. And you might have saved my mother. She might have known more of her life, and Father would not have pined so, and then gone away to sea. We could have lived here all together and been happy. Couldn’t we?”
The cunning woman’s eyelids are beginning to droop. She is losing the thread of her story. It doesn’t really matter. For Nell already knows that the ending in her head is not the one that would have come to pass had her mother survived her birthing.
“Bryony roots, saffron, and syrup of wormwood …” The cunning woman’s head is nodding sleepily. “… helps bring away what a careless midwife has left behind … Might have saved her. Might not. Who’s to say?”
This tale is unraveling now, like a piece of bright knitting. In the maze of the cunning woman’s mind, the enchanting visitor from over the border is fading fast. Running away. Had she lived, she would have disappeared just the same—back to her husband as if Nell had never been. It was all arranged. The husband, whoever he was, had been prepared to forgive her for lying with another man. Perhaps he was spellbound … she was so beautiful. Perhaps there were other younglings to consider. Who’s to say?
Nell is rocking the chicken in her arms. “But she held me, didn’t she?” she half asks, half remembers. “Before she died? She knew me for a little while?”
“Mmm? A newborn … safely delivered. Dance it daily, to keep it from the rickets, and lullaby it often … and suffer it to howl, for howling be good for its brain and lungs.”
“Granny?”
It is too late. The cunning woman is exhausted. Both the fire and her tale have flickered briefly, then gone out. The last bit of the story—the bit about Nell’s father struggling through snowdrifts to bring his Merrybegot home—will have to go unsaid.
Unrecalled.
The Confession of Patience Madden
THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1692
The cunning woman’s granddaughter came on the fourth day. She burst into our bedchamber as if someone—something—had spat her in, and it fair scared the breath out of me to see her there.
Grace had convinced me, yon see, convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this girl was in league with Satan. That she had fixed Grace already with her evil eye and that I was to be next. She carried a cloth bag with something in it, and her hair, which was red and cat short, like a lad’s, was sticking from her head in hedgehog spikes.
I wanted to yell for help, but a whole morning’s shouting had left me barely able to whisper.
So much shouting. My throat was raw from it, and my tongue all pricked and cut about by the pins I had been squirrelling away, at Grace’s insistence, to sputter out at visitors.
The villagers had been easily fooled. They came in twos and threes, once word got around. The housekeeper let them in through the kitchen. So far Ta done exactly what Grace had told me to, and Td done it well—so well that I was beginning to wonder whether my soul was half wheedled after all.
My behavior, though, was nothing compared to my sister’s. The lowest sailor would have blushed to hear the language that came spewing from her lips. Her mouth frothed as she heaved up pins, fingernails—little bits of coal, even—and her limbs arched to such shapes and degrees that they really should have snapped.
Faced with such terrible strangeness, most of the villagers had backed away, crossing themselves as they went. Only some older women—great ugly people, with faces like slabs of lard—had come closer, to stare. They would have pulled up a bench, those women, had there been one in the room.
“Grace,” I’d whimpered once they had finally gone. “Speak to me. Speak to me properly. You frighten me when you behave so, for it is as if you are truly possessed.”
“Perhaps I am,” she had rasped, her voice as spent as mine. “Yet trust me. For Satan and his witch cannot get a proper hold of me while I rest here with you. Your pretense confuses them, Patience, and weakens their grip on my senses. Trust me. It will not be for much longer.”
We had not yet f
aced my father. He had been summoned on the second day but had only just got home, traveling as fast as humanly possible from wherever the Lord’s business had taken him. He had come straight to our bedchamber, but since Grace had seemed to be dozing, I, too, had feigned sleep, so he had looked briefly upon us and gone away.
I was not looking forward to spitting pins at my father—even if it was to save Grace’s soul. I was not looking forward to that at all.
When the door to our chamber crashed open, I assumed it was Father, come back to check on us. I was relieved to see it wasn’t, but Grace’s agitation knew no bounds when she realized it was the cunning woman’s granddaughter standing there. Some words were exchanged over the bed—nothing of any great consequence, but enough to set my sister weeping and howling at such a pitch that my father came flying up the stairs just in time to catch the cunning woman’s granddaughter throwing something on the coverlet.
A frog. A dead frog.
Of all the things she could have tossed through the air, with good intent or bad, she threw a frog.
And in my alarm and confusion I was sure I felt the other frog—my mother’s jeweled clasp—shift beneath the mattress, like a living thing.
How I screamed then, at what seemed to me beyond mere coincidence and too frightening for words. She could have thrown anything, anything at all, yet she threw a frog….
Father tried to grab her, but she was too quick for him. Down the stairs she ran and out of the house, leaving Grace and me shrieking and Father in a whirl.
Grace was the first to fall silent. Her mouth snapped shut like a trap, and she began to tremble. I looked at Father and he looked at me, and the sounds I was making stopped at once.
I could tell from his face that he was trying—and failing— to understand what was happening. For the first time in my life I felt akin to him. I wanted to cry out: Father, I don’t understand either. I don’t know if it is Grace, or Satan, or the cunning woman’s granddaughter making me behave this way. Father, I’m scared.
But beside me Grace was shivering like a beggar in winter, and it was to her that he turned, his face as stern as Judgment Day.
I waited for her to do something. To spit pebbles or say dreadful words. For then I would have known for certain that Satan had her against her will, for she would never in her right mind have dared so much as scowl in Father’s presence.
I waited a long time. And so did Father.
And eventually, after many moments, my sister opened her mouth.
“Take it away,” she whispered. “Take it off me. For it burns … it burns. And I feel … I feel … He is here! Satan is here! She brought him to me! The witch brought him to me! He’s right here, right here! He’s with me, Father! Stop him! Please stop him! Nooooooooo!”
Appalled I cringed away from her. And for an instant I saw the dried-up frog perched on her belly before Father, with a great yell, snatched it up like a burning coal, flung it onto the floor, and began stamping and stamping and stamping.
Outside the door our housekeeper was making a din of her own, crying, “Let me fetch someone! Let me call someone!”
And then the dried-up frog was nothing but a scatter of dust-colored fragments—not even enough to filian ashpan. And Grace was lying beside me as if in a swoon. And Father had dragged the housekeeper into the room and was speaking in his harshest voice to all of us.
“Not a word! Not a word of this to anyone, do you hear me? Do you hear me?”
We did, we all said. We heard him. Not a word. Not to anyone. Not a single word.
And then we prayed. All four of us—Grace and I, rigid where we lay, and Father and our housekeeper, down on their knees, getting specks of frog on themselves. Father led us, his voice growing stronger and more sure of itself by the second.
Our housekeeper was all of a shudder, but Grace and I lay good as gold, while Father begged the Lord to deliver us from evil, to give us the strength to keep witchcraft at bay.
After a good long while he fell silent and simply stood with his eyes closed and his arms raised. Listening. The rest of us stayed quiet and respectful while he communed thus. For the Lord, if He had any answers, would hardly have shared them with a lowly housekeeper or two troublesome girls.
By the time Father opened his eyes, he had answers writ all over his face. First, he sent the housekeeper away, with instructions to continue preparing supper as if nothing were amiss. Then he turned to my sister and me, leaning so close over the bed that I thought he might kiss us.
“You must get up now,” he commanded. “Both of you.”
I felt Grace stiffen beside me. She was as tense as a doe that hears a strange noise and realizes it might have to run for its life. I thought she might speak, but she didn’t.
I looked up at my father’s face, daring to hope it would turn to me. But his mind, I realized, was full of whatever the Lord had imparted to him. And it was directly to Grace that he spoke.
“You must act as usual,” he told her. “You must go about your chores and attend to your prayers as if none of this had been. As for she who does the Devil’s work … the one who brought evil here this day … Vengeance will be mine, saith the Lord, and so it will come to pass. But Satan is a cunning foe, and only guile of the sharpest order will see him vanquished and his witch with him. You must leave this matter to me now, daughter. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Grace murmured.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Grace repeated, more loudly.
“Then get up!”
And he swept from the room without another word to either of us, banging the door behind him.
For a moment I continued to lie there, fretting over my own fears—all of them still unanswered, in the darkness of my head. I should have felt relief. Father was going to take care of everything. I could get up now and act as usual.
And yet …
My thoughts returned to the jeweled frog. I had stolen it. And that was a sin. Not as bad as being a witch and throwing evil charms, but still enough to set you on the path to Hell. Father did not know I was a thief. But the Lord, who sees every thing, probably did. And Satan too. May be the dried-up frog had been a warning to me—a sign that Satan could claim my wicked soul at any time. Maybe it had landed on Grace by mistake.
And so I confessed to my sister. I withdrew the clasp from its hiding place, and I showed it to her.
“Should I tell Father?” I whispered, close to tears.“Or shall I just put it back in the chest?”
I had placed the precious thing on the coverlet. It sparkled there, all glinty and green, while Grace looked from it to me, the dullness in her eyes sharpening into something else.
“Don’t tell Father, and don’t put it back,” she said eventually.
“Bat I must. I can’t keep it. It was our mother’s, and I stole it.”
She reached out one finger and began thoughtfully stroking the ridge of emeralds along the frog’s back.
“I believe you, were meant to take it,” she said softly. “I believe the Lord guided your hand, Patience, so that you and I would have something … some object with enough power to keep that witch away.”
I didn’t understand her. I didn’t understand her at all.
“So what shall I do with it? What are you saying?” I said.
She picked the clasp up then and handed it back to me.
“Let me think about it later,” she said. “I feel too strange still to think about it now. Strange … and somehow altered. The cunning woman’s granddaughter has sullied me with her charm and the terrible things she said. I need to compose myself. I need to pray. I will think more on this by and by.”
And so I slid our mother’s clasp back under the mattress. And we got out of bed, on weak and tottering legs. And we washed and dressed ourselves and tied each other’s bonnet strings. And we ate our suppers and did our chores, like good, obedient girls. And the only things to fall from our mouths all evening were words of prayer and a “
please” and a “thank you” for the passing of a jug of cream.
And that night, after returning to our bed, Grace told me what she believed I was meant to do with our mother’s clasp.
At first I would not hear of it.
“I can’t,” I said. “What if the Devil is waiting for me again out there on his horrible horse?”
“The Lord will protect you,” she replied. “For you will be doing His work—helping Him to rid our village of a filthy witch.”
“And Father? What if he catches me? What if I’m seen and someone tells him?”
“Then we will say that you were drawn from this house against your will. By the witch. After everything he witnessed here today, he surely will not doubt it.”
It needed more consideration than that. I should have known better than to follow my sister’s lead. I should not have trusted her. But I was tired. And anyway, it all seemed to fit. The cunning woman’s granddaughter had thrown us a nasty dead frog, so it seemed entirely sensible to use a charm of our own to keep her malevolence at bay.
“It must be planted in secret, after dark,” Grace told me. “Or it won’t work. Hide it in their garden, in a place only you and I will know of. You were meant to do this, Patience. You know you were. For you are not a thief. You stole mother’s clasp for a reason, and this is surely it.”
“All right,” I said. “But not tonight. Later. When the moon is full, and I can see where I’m going. I’ll do it then.”
And so I did.
SEPTEMBER 1645
On the second Sunday in September the cunning woman gets out of bed, climbs down the ladder, and promptly forgets where she is. Nell finds her huddled beside the cauldron, mouthing a garbled spell of protection and glaring at the chicken.
“Go back to bed, Granny,” she coaxes her. “Go on, and I’ll bring you up a cordial.”
“Who are you?” the old woman replies. “And where are my scarlet slippers?”
It is forty years, at least, since the cunning woman has worn anything on her feet except clogs or broken boots.
It takes a great deal of persuading to get her up the ladder and back under the coverlet, and still she isn’t sure whether Nell is her sister, a neighbor, or some daft maid come from miles away for a love potion.