Cunning Women

by Elizabeth Lee

  I scream his name into the din. Pull against Bett’s arms.

  After that, too many to see. Beasts, hollering and beating, each taking a turn, each calling the others on. Weapons, fists and feet. I cannot see John beneath them, cannot hear his cries over theirs. Mam is held back by village women who once were her friends. Bett keeps hold of me, arms around me, head resting against mine as she weeps.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Close your eyes, don’t look. Oh God, what’s become of us?’

  I blink and the eyes are there, glowing embers. The snarling shakes me from inside. Hackles rise. I feel it, the dog. It is me, I am it.

  Silence spreads from the centre. John’s stillness infects them. One by one they fall quiet, step back. Eyes downcast at the tangled, bloodied mass that was once my brother. Soundlessly sucking on their bleeding knuckles, wiping their stained weapons.

  ‘My son,’ Mam cries. ‘Oh, my boy. My son, my son.’

  The only sound.

  She is released and crawls over to John, cradles his head, kisses his hair.

  ‘Wake up,’ she whispers. ‘Open your eyes, lad.’ Strokes his face again, again. ‘Not so bad. Just a little hurt. Waken.’ Her hair parts at the neck and her mark shows clear for all to see.

  ‘Dear God,’ Bett says, weeping. ‘What have we done?’

  Hands fall to sides, limp. Not one can meet another’s gaze. I watch with ember eyes, claws break through my fingertips. Snarling shakes the bones of me.

  Only Gabriel looks about, eyes bright, face flushed. He stabs the pitchfork into the ground and is upon me in two steps, grabbing my arm and hauling me from Bett’s grip as she yells at him to stop.

  ‘And what of this one, that tricked and mocked us? Bewitched us into trusting her, putting her to work and homing her, and all the while she was the Devil’s own?’

  His words are met with silence, turned backs and averted eyes.

  ‘You see what she is now,’ he says. ‘No dairymaid, but the Haworth witch-whore.’

  ‘Leave be, Gabriel,’ Mr Taylor says. A web of blood drapes across his knuckles.

  ‘Enough done today.’

  I struggle but cannot free myself from the grasp of Gabriel’s meaty fingers. Cast my eyes down and see claws, run my tongue over fangs. ‘You see what I am?’ I scream. ‘Then look upon me some more, for this is nowt to what will be. I shall haunt your waking and sleeping hours all, until you see nowt but his face, hear nowt but his cries, and you shall know your own hand in the evil done here. I wed myself to any being that will make it so. And I shall spill the blood of each and every one of you while this day is done.’

  I sink my teeth into Gabriel’s hand and he lets go with a cry, releasing me to fall upon the others. Tear at skin until my nails are thick with it and warm blood tracks my fingers. Dig into eyes, rip hair out by the handful.

  ‘A curse upon you all,’ I scream. ‘Your every child shall wither and die before you.’

  They fall back as I bear down upon them, whimpering and raising their hands as though the heat of hell itself burns through me.

  ‘Pestilence shall pass from house to house until you all have suffered as he.’

  They turn, cowards, and flee to their solid walls, thinking they shall keep me out.

  ‘And at the end,’ I yell at their retreating backs, ‘the hands of my brother, pouring his own blood, shall reach up from the earth and draw you into it.’

  They are gone.

  Nothing else to see. I am forced to look upon John’s pulped and twisted body. Mam hunched over him, her tears falling on to his face as she holds him to her. Oblivious to all else.

  Bett, with her hands clasped together as though she prays, steps towards me.

  ‘Oh, Sarah.’ She reaches a hand out, slowly, as though I might break or burst into flame. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. What can I do?’

  ‘You can leave.’

  ‘I want to help.’

  I kneel by Mam, put my arm around her heaving shoulder, look upon John’s face.

  ‘Your kind have done enough,’ I say, and after a little time hear footsteps as she does my bidding.

  His skin is split, lips and cheeks swollen and misshapen. But still so much himself that I know his spirit remained his own till the end. A quiet about his closed eyes and softened mouth so that I could almost, even now, believe he is but sleeping.

  Mam is wrapped in grief, and no use at all. I drag John back to the house, a long and painful process that smashes him against roots and stones. I know he’s past reach, yet I fear to hurt him. Twice he slips from my grip and his head falls to the ground. Mam follows, wringing her hands and weeping.

  I wash him as best I can and lay him behind the house, where the earth is soft and looked upon by the empty windows of our home. Mam kneels at his side, resting her cheek against his and whispering a mother’s love into his deafened ear.

  Later I shall bury him. If it takes all night to scratch a grave with my bare fingers.

  His Own Hand

  Annie’s tears had stopped. She sat on the riverbank next to him, pulling her hair over her face and whispering. He could not hear what she said. Did not know what to do.

  ‘Shall we look for moon fish?’ he asked. Hoping she could not hear the strain in his voice.

  She spread her fingers and yanked them through her hair, tugging at the tangles until clumps broke off and gathered in her hand. Whispered.

  He opened his mouth to tell her all would be well, but could not bring himself to. All he thought he knew of the world was lost and he could not grasp his place in it, much less offer Annie a comforting account. He should have kept Sarah away, protected the brother. Spoken out and spoken louder. Yet here he hid on the riverbank, grateful for Annie as his justification and ashamed of his gratitude.

  The whispering slid from her mouth, entwined itself around him and slithered through his blood. She was but a child, an innocent surely that was caught in terror. Still, he had the sense that some incantation fell from her lips. He wished and feared to hear the words. Could no longer tell what was real, the life he had built with Sarah or the stories of the family. The image of Sarah, so unlike the girl he knew, so filled with power, cursing Molly, stuck in his mind.

  Gabriel’s question was one he could not answer – who else, but the devil-brother, would kill a man of God? And now even the child whispered words that were surely laden with sinister magic.

  ‘Have you stolen a waif?’

  The voice, unexpected, stunned him. Molly flopped down next to him and peered at Annie with undisguised disgust. A thin red mark, almost healed, scored her forehead. The little girl whispered and added to the pile of hair that gathered at her bare feet.

  ‘She looks infested,’ Molly said.

  He was thrown back for a moment to the day he helped Sarah wash Annie’s hair. Were you stealing her? she’d asked. Assailed by grief, he could only look silently at Molly. Her face was drawn and red around the eyes.

  ‘Where on earth did you find her?’ she asked.

  ‘Have you not heard?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve heard no village tattle, for I was here searching for stones to weight me down and sink me to the bottom of the water.’

  Clouds gathered heavy and low, rolling in a mist from the water. ‘There’s been a terrible – wait, what? You were looking for what?’

  She glanced at him and then away, tears welling in the green pools of her eyes. ‘I was too faint-hearted. Filled my hands with stones and stood at the edge of the river until I gave up and threw them all in the water instead. I will find an easier way.’

  She gave an odd, hiccupping laugh and wiped her eyes but the tears kept coming.

  ‘But – why?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m too shamed to say.’

  Quiet then, just the wash of the river, the first splashes of rain on the ground and the incessant slip of Annie’s whispered words. He heard them now, though they made no sense. ‘He’s been. He’s been. I have the mark.’ R
epeated over and over.

  ‘Whatever it is, it cannot be so bad,’ he said.

  ‘You’re kind. It should have been you, if it had been you then all would be well, but you chose another. And I was angry and he said he loved me, though I knew he spoke false, but I wanted it to be, just wanted someone to and – it was only once. But now he will not—’

  She lay her head on her arms and sobbed. Daniel worked on the riddle of her words and saw the labour of his own hand in the hopelessness she now found herself in. How could he, so feeble that he walked the earth without leaving a print upon it, make such an impact as to cause this much pain? He had made a wrong choice at every turn; abandoning Molly, failing to come to Phyllis’s aid. His weakness all that left a mark on those he touched.

  ‘I even tried a brew, but it didn’t work,’ Molly said. ‘Did she put an enchantment on you, the witch-girl? To make you love her?’

  She looked to him, wiping the tears from her cheeks, sniffing.

  He meant to answer no, meant to tell her Sarah was not as they all thought. But the child’s whispered words still swirled around him. The evidence of the brother’s vicious temper and black heart, the demon he summoned to carry out his ill deeds, still confronting Daniel each time he closed his eyes and saw Parson Walsh’s body. And was the scar that Molly bore testament after all to Sarah using her power to move the branch and trip her?

  His own words spun through his head. If I am bewitched, then let it be so.

  Even when he was lost in love for her, he knew it. She had preyed upon his fragile soul, used sinister forces to conjure his affections, and he had allowed her to.

  The scream came from behind, and he and Molly both jumped up. Only Annie remained oblivious, whispering and gathering a soft pile of hair at her feet.

  ‘You,’ Sarah yelled.

  She bore down upon them, a black mass of blazing fury against the rain. Molly turned and fled, but Sarah soon pounced upon her, shook her like an animal does its prey. Molly fell to her knees.

  ‘Stop,’ she said, weeping. ‘Please, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You.’ Sarah’s voice a low growl. ‘You told Gabriel. Didn’t you?’ She grasped Molly’s hair and shook her again. ‘Didn’t you?’

  Molly sobbed. ‘You took them both,’ she said. ‘You didn’t even want Gabriel, but you still bewitched him just to take him from me. I’m sorry, please don’t curse me.’

  Sarah pulled Molly’s face close to her own, hissed the words. ‘You told Gabriel and he killed Seth. And John was blamed and now he is dead, do you understand? He is dead, because you told.’

  Daniel reached out, to stay Sarah’s anger, to protect Molly. To grasp the meaning. John was dead, and he felt the horror that was Sarah’s, but a part of him breathed deeper, surer, because the Devil-boy could no longer reach him.

  ‘I do curse you,’ Sarah said. ‘I curse the babe in your belly to split you open and send you to hell on its way out, curse it to a life that carries all the pain caused by both its father and mother.’

  Molly wailed and begged to be spared. Sarah released her grip, and Molly stumbled to her feet, staggered away.

  Daniel stood, watched her go. Turned back to Sarah. Both soaked now. Could think of nothing to say. Nothing to do. How could she know of Molly’s plight? He was afraid of this unearthly ability to see what was hidden.

  ‘John is dead,’ she said, her voice flat now after the fury it had been filled with.

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you for taking Annie.’

  ‘She’s—’ He gestured to show the state of the child, still pulling her hair, though the whispering had stopped.

  Sarah nodded. ‘I’ll bring her now.’

  She did not move.

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘When you visited your family yesterday, was he there? Your brother?’

  She gave him a look dark with loathing. ‘No. But it was Gabriel killed Seth, not John.’

  ‘Gabriel? He’s a brute, but even he wouldn’t kill a man of God. And in such a way—’

  ‘It was Gabriel.’

  She walked to Annie, crouched and gently pushed the hair from her face, kissed her cheek and gathered her into her arms.

  He watched, torn by grief for the life they had planned, for the person he had thought she was. Even now, he would choose to let her bewitch him and believe in that life. ‘We should have been wed tonight,’ he said.

  Sarah lifted Annie on to her hip and stepped past him. Her hair had fallen loose and the petticoat Bett had given her was ripped and stained, clinging wet to her legs as she walked. She looked like Sarah as he had first seen her, but more – a deadened form of herself, the storm she carried slowed and cold.

  ‘Aye,’ she said, as she walked away.

  Take Any Day

  Annie does not speak. She does not let me go, clinging with arms around my shoulders and legs around my waist, and I’m grateful for her warmth. With her held against me, the snarling subsides. Her face is buried against my neck, no tears now.

  She does not ask of John, and I do not tell her.

  The house is in shadow and Mam at last left John’s side, but lies curled in his bed, his blanket held to her face.

  ‘Do you remember,’ Mam says, ‘when he fell from one of the Taylors’ apple trees? Clean white his face went, and his ankle turned black, but he still ran all the way home. Loved apples so much, he didn’t drop a single one. And when he was younger and his father still alive, he couldn’t reach to climb the gate to the lamb field. He’d wriggle underneath and I’d scold for the stains on his breeches. I’ll have that day.’

  Her breath shudders.

  ‘I’ll have those days. Oh, I will live those days, any of those days, over and again. I’ll take any, with him thieving and cursing, lazing in his bed, I will take any day but this, not this, I don’t want this, I cannot live this day.’

  Her pain fills the house. I close my eyes against it, stop my ears to it. I don’t have room for my own grief. The village will turn upon us now, and I don’t know how to protect Annie. If we run our troubles will follow, for there’s no place that will see a bedraggled group of desperate women and not cry witch.

  I hold her in my arms, little lass. Wild creature that grips tree bark with her toes to climb all the faster, watches and learns about any small animal she can find. Clenches her fists and growls in anger. Brings flowers as a gift and wishes to grow into a man.

  I pull her close to me. Shall never let go.

  The finding of Annie comes to me now, as if I lived it yesterday. A cold, clear memory as sharp as a knife edge.

  In the years when the men came. I lay in the same place I lie now, watched as Mam winced and groaned and clutched her swollen belly. She bent down, brushed hair from my cheek.

  ‘Don’t fret, lass,’ she said. ‘I swallowed a stone, is all. I must bury it in the woods. Stay here and watch your brother. I’ll be back while morning.’

  It was not the first stone she had swallowed and buried.

  I waited through the night, peering through the lashes of half-closed eyes when she crept back in at dawn. Footprint of blood on the floor as she passed me.

  ‘Get back to sleep,’ she said, and crawled to her bed.

  I went to look for the stone.

  The sound was thin, a desperate bleating, wrapped like a ribbon through the trees, leading me to the place I found her. Scrawny little babe, kicking her tiny feet and reaching her tiny arms from under the tree where she lay.

  I could not leave her.

  ‘Look, Mammy,’ I called when I brought her home. ‘Look what I found growing in the woods.’

  Mam wrapped her in a cloth and held her to her breast. Smiled and wept. Cradled her and whispered of love.

  That was the day she showed me my mark, told me what it meant. No men came after that.

  When all is quiet I creep from bed and out to the moonlit night. Fury and fear burn through me as I dig down again a
nd again, the snarling strengthening my bones, driving me on. I’ve been grateful today to have this creature conjured from the blackest parts of me, giving me strength, doing my bidding. It is tamed now, tethered to my will. On and on I work. The pain in my exhausted arms and broken skin on my hands cannot stop me.

  His is a shallow resting place, unmarked and less than he deserves, but he sleeps in it as sunlight breaks across the sky.

  I lay myself down over his blanket of earth, nourish it with my tears.

  Darkening

  Milk threatened to slop out as Daniel walked, bucket pulling on his arm. Gabriel, on his way to the house, whistled and chuckled as he passed.

  ‘Back in your rightful place, Danny. No little witch-whore shall take the women’s work from you.’

  Words like a pitchfork to the chest. Daniel walked on. In the two days since Parson Walsh was killed, Gabriel’s mood had soared. He laughed, told jokes and stories of women that Daniel hoped were not true, slapped him on the back. There was an edge to his good humour, a constant flicker to the eye and twitch of the hand.

  No one had spoken of the parson. Or Sarah. Until now. It was as though she were dead, and all he had felt gone with her. The love they shared, the life they dreamed, all a figment she had conjured and planted in him.

  When she tried in vain to protect her brother and then unleashed her fury upon the villagers, everyone knew that their dairymaid had been none other than the Haworth girl. Including Father. Daniel had expected to find himself banished for bringing her under their roof, but there had been no mention of her. It was well, though, that Sarah stayed away. Gabriel’s blood still burned for revenge, and Father’s pity would not extend to the cunning woman’s daughter. And Daniel feared what punishment she would call down upon those that murdered her brother.

  Each night he dreamed of the storm in her eyes.

  There was a held-breath silence in the kitchen as he entered. Magistrate Wright walked the edges of the room as Father, Gabriel and Bett sat awkwardly at the table. Father glanced his way. The first time he had met Daniel’s eye in two days, and his pain and shame were clear to see.