by Ann Swinfen
Anne remembered that older John Swynfen, who had died a month before she was married, as a stern but just man, still wearing the full, stiff ruff of a gentleman of the great Elizabeth’s day. And he was, like so many of the Swynfens, a fearless and somewhat stubborn man, with a mind and a will of his own. In January 1603, less than two years after the abortive rebellion against the Queen led by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex—who lost his head for it—that same John Swynfen had christened his new baby son Deveroxe, a name whose significance was lost on no one. He had also been involved in some way in helping the widowed Countess of Essex, Walsingham’s daughter Frances, reclaim the rights and property of her young son. That son had grown up to become Parliament’s leading general at the start of the present wars—having inherited no love of the monarchy from his executed father.
Both grandfather Swynfen and Richard, his eldest son, now languishing in his bed upstairs at Swinfen, had refused to attend King James’s coronation and buy their obligatory knighthoods, choosing to pay a hefty fine instead.
‘There is no honour in a purchased knighthood,’ old John Swynfen had said, regarding the matter as closed.
That same independence of mind and refusal to bow to tyranny was what had brought her own John to his present predicament.
As for Agnes Lea, her children were all gone now, dead or away looking for work or taken to wandering the open road, but the old woman lived on in the cottage with a few beasts and a vegetable garden. For many years she had knitted stockings to earn some pennies to buy what she could not rear or grow herself. Anne had bought stockings from the old woman when she was a girl. But since she had married into the Swynfen family she had hesitated to visit Agnes Lea, for fear of the woman’s old resentment against them over the matter of the land on which her cottage stood.
The morning after her visit to Weeford Hall, Anne mentioned in the kitchen that she thought of riding out to Packington Moor to see Goody Lea. Hester and Biddy exchanged a meaning look, and the girl Margit’s hand flew to her mouth, where she sat at the quern. It took so long to grind enough of the wheat for the daily bread that one of them must always be working the grindstone. Soon, she must see to the repair of the mill and the hire of a new miller.
‘I shall buy some of her stockings,’ Anne said briskly, ‘and I want to ask her advice about cheese-making, for we must make cheese or starve. Margit, make me up a basket of last night’s leftovers, and a loaf of the new bread, and some of the oats in a bag.’
‘There wasn’t no leftovers.’ Biddy was blunt, standing with her arms akimbo, and looking at Anne defiantly. ‘And if there was, us’d as soon have given them to the sows as to that woman.’
‘Why, Biddy, you wouldn’t begrudge that poor old soul a bite of food! If times have been hard here, think how much worse it must be for her, living all alone up on the moor.’
Hester cleared her throat. Her eyes glinted with a secret excitement.
‘People say she’m a witch.’
Anne spun round. This might be idle gossip, but it was dangerous gossip. The numbers of those hunted down and killed for witches had soared since she was a little girl. In recent years, the witch-finder Matthew Hopkins had brought some two or three hundred men, women and children to their deaths in East Anglia before he was accused of being a witch himself. John’s colleague Sir Harbottle Grimston had sat as magistrate at the court when the first charges were brought, and had told Anne and John of the horror and panic of those times, one evening when he had come to dine in St Ann’s Lane.
‘If enough people believe some old woman is a witch,’ he said, ‘then every trouble that befalls them is laid at her door. This fellow Hopkins had all kinds of tests—pricking and swimming and examining for the devil’s marks—but it always seemed to me much harder to prove any accused woman wasn’t a witch than to prove that she was. Since Hopkins was suspected to be a fraud in the end, were all those people innocent, who died on his evidence? I was glad when it passed out of my hands and into a higher court, for the man died of consumption before it came to trial. Why, I’ve a mole on my leg that Hopkins would say was a devil’s mark, but I’ve had it from birth.’
‘No one would accuse you of witchcraft,’ Anne said. ‘You are rich, you are gently born, and you are a man. Those who are accused are poor old woman, friendless and unwanted.’
John had frowned at her, she recalled, for speaking so boldly and out of turn.
‘Of course Goody Lea is no witch,’ she said now, turning on Hester angrily. ‘Never say such things again! She’s old and bent from a hard life, and she knows how to contrive foods and medicines from the fields and hedgerows better than anyone of this neighbourhood, but that makes her a woman who should be shown respect, because of her age and her wisdom.’
She turned to the girl.
‘Make up the basket anyway, Margit. Oats, bread, butter, some of those apples—though they’re sadly withered—and some of the dried fruit Mistress Pott gave me. And a few eggs. And a jug of ale. Well stoppered, mind, against the jouncing on the horse’s back.’
Margit went to do as she was bid, but as Hester and Biddy turned back to their cooking Anne heard them muttering about ‘naught to spare’.
Anne knew very well there was naught to spare, but she had not the heart to go empty-handed to the old woman’s cottage and her anger with the servants strengthened her determination.
She was still very stiff in all the muscles needed for riding, but once she was in the saddle again and had turned Brandy’s head along the edge of the fields in the direction of the moor, she felt a joyous lift of the heart. It might have been the days of her girlhood again, when she had ridden over this land with John. When she was about twelve, she had taken to stealing out in her brother’s clothes and meeting John not far from here. They would gallop over the moor, sometimes scattering the sheep carelessly, young and heedless as they were. John would let her fly his hawk and if they were lucky enough to take a pigeon, they would make a fire and cook it up there where the sky was wide and a kestrel or a bustard would ride the wind above their heads. One of the things John had most regretted about moving to London was giving up his hawks. They had gone to Thomas Pott. She should have asked Mary if he had them still, but Mary probably would not know.
The day was bright and clear, but very cold. As Anne cantered Brandy up over the rise of the moor, the mare’s breath streamed out in great frosty clouds, and the earth rang back hard frozen beneath the snow. During the summer the grass here would be studded with wild flowers and valuable herbs of every sort, which Agnes Lea used for her simples. But in winter it was a bleak and terrible place. Packmen missing their road down into Swinfen or Weeford had been known to die up here. No more than two or three miles from the nearby villages, the place was as desolate as a mountainside in Wales or Scotland.
At last she caught sight of the cottage, which was smaller than she had remembered, huddled into a cupped dell in the sloping moor side. The colour of earth and stone, and thatched with straw cut from the wild moorland grasses, it was almost invisible in summer, but now in winter it stood out against the snow. There was a thin trickle of smoke rising from the hole in the centre of the roof, for there was no chimney. Anne slowed Brandy to a walk to cool her before she must stand waiting in the cold. And, if the truth be known, to give herself time to prepare what she would say to the old woman.
When Anne tapped hesitantly on the door, there was at first no answer, only a kind of startled waiting silence, then a cracked voice called out, ‘Who be that?’
‘’Tis Mistress Anne Swynfen. Are you well, Goody Lea?’
There was no answer, but the door, which hung askew and scraped the earthen floor, was dragged open, and Anne found herself looking down into a pair of very bright eyes of a shifting hazel colour. Agnes Lea was smaller and more bent than she used to be, and her draggled grey hair was falling out in patches, clearly to be seen, for she wore no cap. As if some small vanity prompted her, she pulled her threadbare shawl
up over her head and held it clutched under her chin. She did not move aside to let Anne enter, nor did she speak.
‘I’ve brought you a few comforts,’ Anne said, holding out her basket awkwardly. The bright glance flicked down and then up again to her face. ‘Don’t you remember me, Goody Lea?’
‘I mind well enough who ye are,’ she snapped. ‘Anne Brandreth, who married that wild Swynfen boy.’
Anne smiled. It was a good many years since anyone had called John wild.
‘Aye. That I did. And he was wild once, though you’d not know him now, a sober Member of Parliament.’
The old woman gave a sniff, as though she scorned such grand titles.
‘Ye were wild enough yourself. I don’t forget how ye galloped about the moor as though the Wild Hunt was after ye. And dressed up in boy’s clothes, that your mother never wot of, I’ll be bound. Well, ye’d best come in.’
Anne had to duck through the low doorway, and once inside it was a minute or two before her eyes accustomed themselves to the dim cottage. There were no windows and the only light came from the doorway and the smokehole, with a faint glow from the small fire. It was cold in the cottage, and she could see that the old woman had been wrapped in a blanket as she sat in a chair by the fire. A large tabby cat was curled up at the edge of the hearthstone; as Anne moved towards the fire, rubbing her cold hands together, it sat up and regarded her thoughtfully.
‘Is that Peterkin?’ she asked. ‘He must be full of years by now.’
‘Seventeen.’ The old woman bent down and rubbed the cat behind the ears, so that he closed his eyes and rolled over contentedly.
‘Let me make up the fire for you, Agnes,’ said Anne, reaching out for a log from the small pile beside the hearth.
Agnes caught at her sleeve with a claw-like hand.
‘Ye’ll do no such thing. That store there must last me these three days. I’ve no forest to burn in my hearth like the great Swynfens, only the bits and pieces I find about the common.’
She slid her eyes sideways at Anne, to see how she would take this sly reference to the old dispute, but Anne would not play her game.
‘I’ll send the boy over with a load of logs for you,’ she said. ‘There’s no call for you to go cold.’
She began to unpack the basket of provisions, and the old woman had the grace to look slightly ashamed. She hobbled over to a small food cupboard that hung on the wall, high out of the reach of mice, and brought down a small round of the goat’s cheese she made herself. Anne poured some of the ale into a blackened pan on the hearth, and brought cloves and a stick of cinnamon out of her pocket to flavour it, then she added the log to the fire, without asking Agnes Lea’s permission. The scent of the spiced ale soon filled the cottage.
‘Now,’ said Anne, ‘here’s bread and butter and hot ale, and your good cheese. A feast fit for a king.’
She spoke the words without thinking, then heard them echoing in her head. No news had reached them of the king’s fate. He might still be fretting at Hurst Castle, or on trial at this very moment, or even dead. Agnes Lea fixed her with those sharp eyes as she lifted the steaming wooden beaker to her lips.
‘He’s dead,’ she said.
Anne shivered. How had the old woman known what she was thinking? Perhaps she was a witch.
‘I saw it,’ said Agnes Lea, in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘Saw it?’ Anne’s throat constricted and she looked at the woman with something like horror.
‘Sometimes, I see things. I was dozing here at the hearthside yesterday, and I saw him lay his head on the block. ’Twas a foolish and sinful man, but those that did it will pay the like price before their days are ended.’
‘Better if you don’t say such things to people,’ Anne cautioned nervously. ‘They might think—’
‘They might think I’m a witch,’ the old woman interrupted. ‘Well, that’s a black lie. I’m a God-fearing woman, and have been all my days. I can’t make my way to service now on Sundays, all that road down to Weeford, but I say my prayers on my knees as heartfelt as any Christian in this land. I’ll have no truck with the devil and his evil ways. But I do see things. I have done all my life, and ’tis nothing I can either call up or put a stop to. And I’ve studied herbs and simples from my girlhood. I learned them from my grandmother, who was the greatest wise woman these parts have ever seen. She would make a love potion sometimes for a silly girl, but nothing else of the magic sort. And I’ve never done even that, though there’s been many who’ve pleaded with me to do it, and gone away angry with me when I wouldn’t. All I’ve done is cure the sick, man and beast alike, and helped women in labour, when I was the best midwife round about.’
She bit into her bread and goat’s cheese, and Anne noticed that, despite her age, she had a fine set of teeth, much better than many a row of black stumps she had seen belonging to the London gentry. The cheese was excellent, all the better for her cold ride across the moor, and it reminded her why she had come.
‘I’m back from London to find Swinfen Hall poorly provided for the winter,’ she said. ‘Much of our store has been looted by the soldiers, and most of the meat gone. We have some eggs, and one cheese that was spared, but I need to make more cheese so the children will have good food in their stomachs to keep them through the cold weather. There’s no rennet to be had, of course, at this time of year. Can you tell what herb will curdle the milk to make cheese? What do you use for your own cheese-making?’
‘Lady’s bedstraw,’ said the old woman promptly. ‘That will set your cheese as well as any rennet. Warm the milk a little at the fire—not too much, mind—and then throw in your lady’s bedstraw. When it begins to curdle, ye may take out your herb, and then ye strain off the whey and put it to your press.’
‘Lady’s bedstraw!’ said Anne. ‘Thank you, Agnes. I couldn’t call it to mind. But I fear we may have none dried for winter. Bridget has not been at home, and there are few herbs laid by.’
The woman got up and reached above her head to the low roof beam, which was hung all about with large bunches of dried herbs.
‘I can spare ye two bunches,’ she said.
‘Nay, nay,’ said Anne, ‘you’ll have need of them yourself.’
‘I wouldn’t offer it if I couldn’t spare it,’ Agnes said sharply. ‘I always put extra by, in case one of my neighbours has need of some, but few visit me now. Perhaps they all take me for a witch, though that didn’t stop them coming for simples before.’
‘I’d take it kindly if you can spare the herbs,’ said Anne. ‘But don’t speak of witchcraft, even in jest, for it’s no jest when the hue and cry is up.’
‘Oh, they’ll not bother their heads with me, out here on the moor.’
‘I pray God you may be right. Now, tell me, what do you lack besides firewood?’
‘I’m well enough. I have my stores set by as usual. My beans did poorly this year, for the weevils had them, but all else did well.’
‘You fared luckier than most, then, for the rain spoiled much at Swinfen.’
‘Aye, well, ’tis bleak and bare up here on the moor, but ’twill never flood till Noah’s time comes again.’
‘Your hay wasn’t lost?’
The old woman pursed her lips.
‘Well, to be sure, the rain did flatten much of the common grass. I cut and dried what I could, but I may have to kill one of my goats before spring. ’Tis pity, for they’re all in kid.’
In her determination to overwinter as much of her own stock as possible, Anne did not like the thought of even one of Agnes Lea’s nannies falling victim to the lack of hay.
‘I’ve managed to buy some hay from the bishop’s lands. I’ll send some with the logs, so your goat may live to bear her kid.’
The old woman smiled and nodded her thanks, but she did not humble herself. She was the same sturdy, independent and cussed woman she had been in Anne’s childhood, and none the worse for it. When Anne untied Brandy from the fence to ride back to Swin
fen, her basket contained two pairs of stockings knitted in fine wool to the old clock pattern, the bunches of lady’s bedstraw, three small goat’s cheeses for the children, and a pot of honey from Agnes Lea’s bees.
‘I’m very glad of the honey,’ said Anne. ‘We brought a little sugar from London with us, but it’s costly to use. I never thought there would be any need to bring provision from the city to the country, and the children crave a little sweetness in their food. The honey will help them eat the porridge more happily. Josiah says the Swinfen bees took ill and died last summer.’
‘Mayhap they knew Master Swynfen would be struck down. Bees are strange creatures. Their lives reflect the lives of their folk. Tell your Josiah or his boy to go looking in the beech copse near the stewpond, come the spring. He may be lucky and find a swarm. He’d best be sure he makes new skeps before then, and sets them to warm by the fire three days and three nights before he goes seeking.’
Anne was about to mount, when she turned and kissed the old woman on the cheek. It was an odd thing to do, she being a gentlewoman, and Agnes Lea little better than a landless peasant, but she was drawn to the old woman, as she had been when a child, however sharp her manner and strange her ways. As for the old woman, she looked startled at the kiss, then laid her gnarled hand briefly on Anne’s cheek.
‘Be off with ye!’ she said brusquely. ‘That babe of yours is crying so loud for her milk I can hear her from here.’ Then she turned abruptly and went into the cottage, heaving the rotten door closed behind her.
Whether Agnes Lea had heard the baby through some magic of her own, or whether her predictions were based on sensible guesses, the child was indeed crying when Anne reached home, and so occupied was she for the rest of the day that it was not until after supper in the evening that she was able to retire to the little parlour, where Bridget and Patience sat beside the fire with their sewing. Peter had caught his first rabbit that day and Hester had made a stew for their supper. One rabbit between eighteen people was poor fare, but the meat had given flavour to the watery dish with a few pieces of vegetable floating in it. Curiously, this first hint of fresh meat had left her feeling hungrier than she had been before the meal, and the thought of food, which would not leave her, made her dizzy.