by Ann Swinfen
‘Agnes, my dear,’ said Anne, shocked at her appearance, ‘what have they been doing to you? And where are your shoes?’
For the old woman’s feet were naked and bleeding.
‘They have been walking me,’ Agnes said, in little more than a whisper. ‘And they took off my shoes to do it. After ye left me yesterday, they walked me here in the gaol all night, up and down, up and down. Then this morning they took me to the town hall and questioned me.’
‘Wait!’ said Anne, ‘before you tell me any more.’
She went to the door and called for water and bandages. They were a long time coming, but they came at last. She knelt on the dirty floor beside the old woman and bathed her bloody feet, then bound them in the clean cloths. The injuries would have fared better with salving, but she had not brought any, for she had not expected the Lichfield magistrates to break the law.
‘Now,’ said Anne, unpacking the basket of food. ‘Tell me the rest while you eat, and then I’ll make them light you a fire. Have you been without warmth all this time?’
Agnes nodded. She did not want to eat, but little by little Anne fed her scraps of bread and cold meat, as she told the rest.
‘After they’d questioned me a while, they sent for a pricker. Oh, child, that an old woman should be stripped naked before men, and pins stuck in her flesh, to prove her a witch! Still, it did them no good, for I felt the pins, every one. After that, they walked me again, up and down and up and down, till I was like to fall to the ground.’
She gave a feeble smile.
‘But they’ve not defeated me yet. I will not confess to it, for I prayed to God to give me strength to withstand them, and He has been my shield and sword.’
Anne felt herself flush with relief. The squirming little doubts she had had withered and died. Of course Agnes Lea was no witch, but had she herself needed the torturer’s hand to convince her? She was shamed.
After the old woman had eaten, Anne tucked the blankets around her, and waited until a fire had been lit, with much grumbling. The gaolers were not accustomed to their prisoners having such powerful friends, and they did not quite know how to gainsay her. Once she was sure that Agnes was sleeping, Anne left the gaol to return to Mathew Moreton’s house. This time she was not made so welcome, for she was kept standing in the chilly hallway, where she could hear the sound of men’s voices in the parlour. She had time to work herself up into a mighty rage before she was invited to enter.
Seated around the table where she had recently drunk the exotic tay were three men: Moreton himself, Richard Floyer and William Jolley. The magistrates who were to try Agnes. There was a fourth man, whom she assumed to be some sort of legal clerk, who left the room as she entered. Before any of the men could speak, Anne determined she would attack.
‘Gentlemen,’ she said, giving them so slight a nod of the head as to be insulting, ‘I have come even now from seeing Agnes Lea in the gaol. It will shock you, I am certain, to learn that illegal methods of torture have been used in questioning her.’
The men stirred uneasily and glanced at each other.
‘Good day, Mistress Swynfen,’ said Richard Floyer smoothly. ‘I’m glad to see you in good health. You need not concern yourself with these matters. Everything is well in hand in the examination of the accused.’
Anne regarded him thoughtfully. Richard Floyer had once been married to her beloved cousin, Elizabeth Weston, who had died in childbirth at the age of twenty, the year that Anne was married. She no longer regarded him as a kinsman, although he was now married to one of the Babingtons, who were distant kin to the Swinfens.
‘No, Master Floyer, everything is not well in hand. Everything is very ill. Everything is being carried out by unlawful means. Three illegal means of torture have been used on her.’
She counted them off on her fingers.
‘She has been deprived of sleep. She has been walked. And she has been pricked. All of these practices are found to be contrary to English law.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Jolley in surprise. He was a stout old man, flushed with good living and said to have made rather greater profits in his business than he should have.
‘My husband,’ said Anne, fixing him with a cold glance, ‘is a Member of Parliament. He was also trained in the law at Grey’s Inn. He takes a great interest in laws that affect the treatment of the poor and helpless. As I do.’
‘Your husband was a Member of Parliament,’ said Jolley, with a knowing smile. ‘I think he is one no longer.’
‘No legal action has deprived him of that position,’ said Anne, whose anger was growing more icy by the moment. ‘But that is not the matter in question. You—or those employed by you—have acted contrary to the law. I still have powerful friends. I think you might not care to have it known what you have done.’
She was bluffing, of course, and they might guess as much, but they might be reluctant to expose themselves to personal danger for the sake of a village witch hunt. No one knew how the new Puritan state would regard their actions. Witch hunts and torture might be in favour. They might not. A prudent man would take care to guard himself.
Mathew Moreton rose and came to her, and took both her hands in his.
‘Mistress Anne, let us not quarrel over this matter. John is too old a friend of mine, as you are. I would not become your enemy. I swear to you that no more illegal methods of questioning will be used on the accused.’
‘And will you bring the matter to trial quickly, so that she may be freed and allowed to come home?’
He smiled. ‘You are very certain that she will be freed.’
‘I am.’
‘Very well. We have been discussing a date for the preliminary hearing.’ He glanced at the other two men. ‘I think we may fix on the twentieth day of this month.’
‘May I take her home until then?’
‘No, you may not.’
Anne realised she had accomplished more than she could have hoped. Had the times been normal, these men would have treated her with polite contempt, considering interference by a woman to be not only unseemly but scandalous. But in this strange new world, landowning men of wealth were less certain of their position, while women found themselves thrust into those unseemly roles, willy-nilly. Indeed, she could hardly imagine herself a mere twelvemonth ago behaving in such a brazen manner.
When she went to collect Brandy from the inn, she found a letter awaiting her, from that other John Swinfen, of Sutton Cheney, John’s cousin. He wrote that, after many enquiries, he had found an aunt of Penelope Digby, living not far from Market Harborough, in Easton Magna. She had believed that all her sister’s family had been killed, and had wept bitterly on hearing of her niece’s sad end nearly a year later. Having dearly loved young Penelope, she was willing to take in the bastard child and rear him with her own. When Easter came, with the better weather, and the child able to be weaned, she would send for him.
Anne rode home slowly through a light shower of snow. She felt tired from her efforts at arguing with the magistrates, but glad that at least there would be some kind of future for John Digby, who was growing into such a beautiful, strong boy. A sense of melancholy settled upon her, in keeping with the lowering sky and the icy wind, thinking of that young girl’s death in her arms, and the old woman, confused, frightened and alone, whose escape from the noose and the pyre depended on Anne’s own uncertain strength.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dafydd Williams’s illness grew suddenly worse. He was seized with severe headaches, and with pains in his limbs which at times left them rigid, in a kind of paralysis. In the evenings and during the night he raged with fever and delirium, crying out strangely sometimes in Welsh, sometimes in English—pleas for pity on the poor and dying, raging against injustice and cruelty. John knelt beside his bed, bathing his burning face and restraining him when he was like to hurt himself as he thrashed about.
When the fever abated a little in the morning, he would lie quiet and
biddable, saying that in his unconscious ravings he had thought himself wrestling with devils.
‘I fear I’ve taken gaol fever,’ he said quietly one morning. He was lying slack on his bed, his body a vast wreck like a stricken ship under the blankets. ‘There were many sick of it in Monmouth, where we were crowded together, and all the air was foetid with the stink of it.’
He seemed to doze a little, then resumed speaking as though no time had passed.
‘It’s strange that it’s taken so long to seize hold of me, but perhaps it had a stronger fortress than usual to overcome in this great body of mine. I’m weak now, but I was a strong man once, with muscles in my arms, from beating the iron, that looked like the knotty limbs of old oak trees.’
He gave a weak laugh.
‘Not the arms to hold a maid or cradle a child, but serviceable to dig and to plough.’
‘You will regain your strength,’ said John. ‘You must use that great body of yours to fight the sickness, and you will surely overcome it.’
Another time, when he was not feverish but seemed to be wandering in some other country of the mind, he said, ‘We sought to build the Kingdom of God on earth, a Christian utopia, and for that pride and blasphemy were we punished. For how could our enemies have prevailed against us, unless the hand of God Himself aided them?’
Before John could find an answer, he had slipped away into unconsciousness again.
John pleaded and argued and demanded that a physician should be sent for. Most of the guards were indifferent. The young lad promised to do what he could. After nearly a week, Sergeant Conway came himself. He stood surveying the sick man and John, who was again trying to give Dafydd relief by bathing his face, for there was little else he could do.
‘You had best keep your distance from him,’ said the sergeant, ‘for if it is the gaol fever, it’s easily caught. You’ll be laid low yourself.’
‘Will you send for a physician?’ John said. ‘You must have an army doctor in the garrison. For pity’s sake, sergeant, it’s little enough to do for a fellow creature.’
The sergeant grunted, and left without giving any undertaking, but the next day the army physician did come. He examined the patient and shook his head.
‘You see this rash on his body? The clusters like ripe mulberries? And the swellings in the groin and armpits? It’s the gaol fever, right enough. There’s little I can do except bleed him, to relieve the excess of the choleric humour in the body. I’ll require your assistance to hold the bleeding bowl.’
So John held the bowl, with its bite out of the rim to accommodate the patient’s arm, while the physician rolled up Dafydd’s shirt sleeve, selected a vein, and cut into it with a quick neat movement. At least he seemed skilled at his business. The red blood spurted out, splashing John but not the physician, who had moved aside with the swiftness of long practice. When about a pint of blood had flowed into the bowl, the physician stopped the flow with pressure from his thumb.
‘Set that bowl aside now and place your thumb here while I bind him up.’
John did as he was told. It brought back to him painful memories of his little son George being bled thus, and all to no avail, though they had called in the best physician in the county.
‘I’ll visit him again tomorrow, to see how he fares.’
He lifted one of Dafydd’s eyelids by the lashes and peered into his eye. He shrugged.
‘I have no great hopes for him.’
As he was about to leave the cell, he turned back.
‘You’re John Swynfen, are you not?’
Surprised, John agreed that he was.
‘I once heard you speak in Parliament, when I attended a debate there. We’re come to a pretty pass, are we not? That you should languish a prisoner in Denbigh. Though I understand not for much longer.’
‘You’ve heard some news?’ John took a step forward and laid his hand on the man’s arm to stay him.
‘Only that the governor received a letter from the governor of Stafford. A Captain Stone was on his way here with a document securing your release. Since then, nothing further has been heard of the man.’
With that he left, carrying his bag of instruments and the bowl of Dafydd’s blood with him.
This unexpected news made John so restless he could not keep still, but paced about the room. Could the man have been sent to say this merely to torment him? Yet he had an honest face, and had spoken as though the news were nothing very remarkable. And the mention of Henry Stone’s name gave the tale credibility. How could this man—or the governor of Denbigh, for that matter—have known of John’s friendship with Stone? But if Danvers had sent his letter to the governor here at the same time as Stone set out on his journey, why had Stone not reached Denbigh by now? John thought of the terrible countryside he had travelled through on the way into Wales, and shuddered. What if Henry Stone should not survive the journey? It would be an end to both of them.
His thoughts of himself and his own concerns were interrupted by a cry from Dafydd, who was writhing about on his mattress, and, even as John hurried over to him, rolled over and crashed to the floor. It was almost more than John could do, on his own, to raise the big man back on to his bed. Had Dafydd been still in his prime, he would not had succeeded, but the blacksmith had grown thin before ever he came to Denbigh, and since the fever had struck him down he had visibly wasted away. Now he was like the skeleton of a great tree, stripped of living growth but clinging to life by the last dregs of willpower.
On the following day, the physician came to them again, as he had promised, and pronounced Dafydd to be somewhat better. John could see little sign of it himself, weary with sitting up all night again while his companion raved. It seemed that the physician came only when Dafydd was at his least feverish and most calm. John’s own mind was fevered with thoughts of his possible release and with concern at Henry Stone’s disappearance. Was there indeed a chance that he might go free, when he had given up all hope for the future? He felt ill himself, and had difficulty eating his dinner when it was brought, but set it down to lack of sleep.
He had persuaded the physician to prescribe broth for Dafydd, for he could not stomach meat. The blacksmith was awake and fully conscious now, though too weak to hold a spoon. John ladled soup into him in the intervals of eating his own meal.
‘So you’re like to leave me,’ said Dafydd, between mouthfuls.
John turned to him, astonished, for he thought the other had been unconscious when the physician had spoken to him the previous day.
‘You heard?’
‘Aye. I heard. I was half awake. I could hear you speaking, though whether I could have spoken in my turn is another matter.’
He swallowed another spoonful with difficulty.
‘You think your friend has gone astray?’
‘I fear so. If he was travelling alone . . . Perhaps he was set upon and robbed.’
‘Certainly likely. But if the governor knows you are meant to be freed, why doesn’t he release you?’
‘You know such people as well as I. If they don’t receive the proper document, nothing on earth will move them.’
‘John, will you look at my right boot?’
Thinking his companion was raving again, John picked up the right boot and held it out to him.
‘Nay, I’m as weak as a newborn rabbit. You’ll see that there’s an extra inner sole to the boot?’
John peered into the boot, whose smell was none too pleasant. There was indeed an extra layer of thin leather fitted into the sole of the boot.
‘Pull it up. It’s glued in place, but only lightly.’
John did as he was told. Beneath this inner sole, the heel of the boot was hollowed out, and concealed inside was a purse.
‘Take it out.’
John pulled the purse out, and it jingled faintly.
‘There’s little enough in it, but I want you to take it. However you escape from here, with or without your friend, you’ll have need of money
to help you on your way. It’s all I have to give you, a few silver shillings and some pennies, but take it, in remembrance of a wild sectary who wished you well.’
‘I cannot take it, Dafydd. You will need it yourself.’
‘I shall not leave this place alive, as well you know. Be honest, man. I’m sick unto death and all I can do is wait in patience for God’s summons. It was kind of you to fetch the physician to me, but he can do no more than delay me a little on the road.’
John tried again to refuse the money, but Dafydd became so agitated that he thought it best to comply. He took off his own boots; inside one, folded and grubby, was a sheet of paper, written small. With a stab of remembrance, he read the words:
I, John Swynfen, being of sound mind, though troubled by melancholy—nay, I lie, for my mind is anything but sound— and of body sick and weakened, but not like to die, save at the hands of mine enemies . . .
He hesitated, thinking he would toss the wretched document on the fire, then replaced it. It marked, after all, a stage on this unknowable journey he had been compelled to take. Under Dafydd’s instructions, he set to, hollowing out the heel of his other boot with the point of his knife, to make a hiding place for the purse, then cutting down the false sole of Dafydd’s boot to fit inside his own smaller one. He tried walking about the cell in his modified boot and found that, if he gave it his attention, the right boot did weigh a little heavier than the left, yet he soon ceased to be aware of it.
Dafydd sank back on his bed, exhausted by the effort of forcing his will on John, but it seemed he had not finished.
‘You told me of the way you came here when you were brought by the soldiers from Stafford. That’s not the shortest way, and I don’t know why they came by that route.’
‘I know they wanted to stay on the Roman road as long as possible, for they said it was the easier for the coach.’
‘Aye, perhaps. But a man on foot or horseback would not come by Cerrig-y-Druidion. Nay, to make your way home you should go up the valley here, south-eastwards into the mountains, not south-west. You’ll pass through a place called Ruthin, and so up along the river Clwyd. The tracks are very poor and broken, not easy for a carriage, I grant you.’