by Jane Feather
Meg was milking the goat in the little shed at the back of her kitchen garden. She looked up with a glad smile as Phoebe came into view, walking behind the cat.
“Well, and it’s glad I am to see a friendly face.” She squeezed the last of the milk from the teat into the pail and stood up, slapping the nanny on the rump with careless affection. “I haven’t seen a soul since you were here last.”
“No one’s had need of you?” Phoebe kissed her.
“No one’s come anywhere near me,” Meg replied, picking up the pail. “Either everyone around is healthy as elves, or there’s trouble still abrewing.”
“I’ve heard nothing,” Phoebe said. “Granny Spruel wasn’t in her garden when I passed just now, so I wasn’t able to get the latest gossip.”
Meg shrugged philosophically. “Well, come and have some tea. That’s a very elegant riding habit.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Phoebe said complacently. “I’m astonished you recognized me.”
“I wouldn’t have, except the hem has a water stain, and your shirt is hanging down below your jacket, you’re missing a button, and your hat brim is only half turned up,” Meg pointed out.
“Oh, well, you know what they say about silk purses and sow’s ears,” Phoebe responded dolefully, tucking her shirt back into the waistband of her skirt. “Nothing stays done up on me for more than a minute. I doubt even Brian Morse can work the necessary miracle.”
“And who’s that gentleman?”
“Oh, let me tell you all about him.”
They sat in Meg’s kitchen, drinking blackcurrant tea while Phoebe expounded her theory that Brian Morse could be put to good service. She would permit him to flirt with her, although why he would want to she couldn’t imagine, but he could do so and she would pick his brains at the same time. He would surely be able to give her some insights into Cato’s military preoccupations so that she could surprise her husband with her intelligent contributions. It could turn out rather well, she thought.
The cat had returned with them, but he was restless. He paced the kitchen, jumped onto the table, onto the shelf above the range, back to the floor. Then he stalked to the door and went off down the path.
“Going hunting,” Meg said, refilling Phoebe’s teacup.
The next instant, the cat came flying back into the kitchen, racing footsteps sounding on the path close behind him.
“Phoebe . . . Meg . . .” Olivia burst into the kitchen, her hair flying loose from its pins, her breath coming in gasps. “They’re c-coming!”
“Who are?” Phoebe had jumped to her feet, sending her cup spinning to the floor in a dark splash of blackcurrant.
“The village . . . they have the witch finder,” Olivia panted. “They’re a few minutes behind me. Meg has to hide!”
Meg drew herself up to her not inconsiderable height. “I’m not hiding from a rabble,” she said.
“But youmust!” Olivia insisted, her eyes wild, darting around the small kitchen.
And then they heard the sounds. It was the sound of feet, the soft rumble of voices. Then the cat flew out of the cottage, fur on end, his tail a thick bush. He leaped onto the roof of the cottage with a loud meow of outrage.
The crowd appeared out of the trees. It was the whole village, Phoebe thought in stunned horror. The men were in front. They carried heavy staves; behind them swarmed the women, some carrying babies, some with children clinging to their skirts.
“Olivia! For God’s sake, get out of here!” she cried before the mob had reached the gate. “You can’t be found here!” For some reason it didn’t occur to her that what was not meet for Lord Granville’s daughter might also be wrong for his wife.
“In the apple loft,” Meg said calmly. “Go quickly. Phoebe’s right. When they’ve gone, maybe you can go for help.”
Olivia hesitated, then she turned and scrambled up the ladder into the loft.
Phoebe and Meg with one mind stepped out of the cottage, side by side, presenting a united front to the incoming tide.
In the middle of the front line strode a tall man in a frieze cloak and a flat-crowned, wide-brimmed black felt hat. He carried a thick walking stick and a large leather pouch at his waist.
“Is that the witch?” He stopped and pointed at Meg with his stick.
“No!” Phoebe exclaimed, pressing her foot on Meg’s to gain her silence. “And just who might you be, sir?”
He stepped forward. “I, my good woman, am the witch finder. And I am here to find a witch.” His voice boomed through the quiet, and the villagers at his back shifted and murmured in agreement.
“I am not your good woman!” Phoebe declared, incensed. Her only hope of prevailing was to intimidate this man and his rabble with her own status. “I am Lady Granville, and my husband is the representative of the law in this country.”
“Aye, ’tis true,” one of the leading men said.
“Indeed it is. And you should know better than to have truck with this nonsense, Bill Watson!” Phoebe jabbed a finger at him.
“Be silent!” boomed the witch finder. “I have the authority to seek out witches across the land. And I fear no one in the exercise of my holy work.”
“Where’s the vicar?” Phoebe demanded. “He’s the one supposed to be concerned with holy work.”
“The vicar has given his blessing. The devil is among us and must be cast out,” the witch finder droned. “You will stand aside, woman, and let me do my work.”
“I mostly certainly will not!” Phoebe planted herself in front of Meg, arms akimbo. Meg was silent, seeming to accept Phoebe’s tactics. Phoebe had no idea whether the natural authority of her own position as Cato’s wife would carry any weight in the face of this muttering crowd. But it was all she had if they refused to remember her as a friend.
The witch finder suddenly drew something from his leather pouch. It was a long, thin needle. “I smell not one witch but two,” he said. “You did well to send for me, good folk.”
“May the devil take you and damn you to hell!” Phoebe cried, not sure whether anger or terror was holding sway. She couldn’t believe this was happening, and yet she knew it was a nightmare lived all too often across the land.
The witch finder spun around to face the crowd. “You heard her curse me. You heard her call upon the devil. Seize them both. We’ll prick ’em and find the mark of the devil.”
“You touch me and you will answer to Lord Granville.” Phoebe raised her hands as if she could thus ward off the throng who had begun to move towards the two women.
There was an unmistakable hesitation and she had a moment of hope. But the witch finder knew how to command a crowd.
“If there be no mark, then they have nothing to fear. Only the guilty would resist the test. Will you go on with the devil in your midst and watch your children die, your crops fail, your cattle fall where they stand?”
“No . . . no . . . no devil!” a woman cried at the back. It was the woman whose child had died. She pushed forward, her face contorted with hatred, her eyes crazy with grief. “She killed my child.” She pointed at Meg. “She put a curse upon him and my baby died.” She spat directly into Meg’s face.
It was the signal for the rest. They surged forward and Phoebe and Meg were both surrounded. Hands grabbed at Phoebe, wrenched her arms behind her back, tied her wrists with rope. She cursed them, using every expression she had ever heard in barnyard and stables.
And yet rough as they were with Phoebe, they manhandled Meg with a savage brutality, scratching and punching her as they trussed her. A yowling shriek that truly sounded like the devil shivered through the air, and a black bundle, hissing, spitting, claws tearing, flew through the air to land on the back of one of Meg’s captors.
He screamed as the cat’s claws dug into his back, and the witch finder gave a bellow of satisfaction. “The familiar!” he cried. “I have no need of pins. We’ll swim the witch.”
“Aye, swim the witch . . . swim the witch.” They took up the ch
ant, and Meg’s cat loosed his hold and leaped back up onto the roof again. For a second he was visible on the gable, and then he was gone in a black streak.
Phoebe struggled for breath. “You cannot swim for a witch without finding a mark,” she said desperately. “It is not permitted. You cannot do that. You know you cannot.”
She could think now only of buying time. If it meant they had to endure the ordeal of the pricking, then so be it. Once Meg was trussed, wrists to ankles, and thrown into the freezing river, she would drown. If she held her breath and came up again, seeming to float, then they would burn her for a witch. There was no salvation, short of a miracle. But while there was time, there was time for a miracle.
“Aye, she’s right,” Bill Watson said slowly. “We’ve to do this accordin’ to law an’ custom. ’Tain’t right otherwise.”
There was a murmur of agreement, and the witch finder, after a moment when he seemed to assess the mood of the crowd, said, “ ’Tis all the same to me. I smell witches, but if you want proof, then you shall have it. Bring them.”
He strode through the crowd, who parted before his staff like the Red Sea before Moses’. They surged around Meg and Phoebe and drove them after the tall figure of the witch finder.
Phoebe stumbled along, conscious not of her own ills but of Meg’s. Meg’s face was scratched and bruised. Her gown had been torn and her breast was exposed, but her expression was grimly determined. She would show this rabble not the faintest sign of fear.
In the apple loft, Olivia stared out of the small round window as the procession surged away. Then she half jumped, half fell down the ladder to the kitchen. Meg’s carving knife lay on the breadboard on the table, and Olivia grabbed it up. She had no idea what she could use it for, but just possessing a weapon made her feel better.
She pulled the hood of her cloak close about her face as she set off after the mob, running through the woods parallel to the path until she came up with the stragglers. In their heated excitement they paid no attention to the tightly cloaked new arrival slipping into their midst.
14
They were borne in savage triumph to the village and onto the green where the stocks and the whipping post stood.
“Where’s the beadle?” Phoebe demanded in a last-ditch attempt to avert this horror. “You cannot conduct this business without the beadle.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “And you cannot conduct it without the Justice of the Peace,” she continued on a rush of ascendancy. “Send for the Justice.”
“The Justice has no say in the matter of witches,” the witch finder declared in stentorian tones. “Strip her and seize her to the whipping post.”
He advanced on Meg and was about to rend the collar of her already torn gown when he gave a shout of triumph.
“Aha! She carries a serpent’s tooth at her neck.” He grabbed the thin string that held the tooth Phoebe had drawn, and snapped it. He held it up for the crowd. “See, the serpent’s tooth.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd!” Phoebe cried. “It’s her own tooth. I pulled it for her myself.”
“It takes a witch to defend a witch,” the finder said in triumph. The crowd’s murmur became full throated and Phoebe felt the terror she had so far held at bay begin to overwhelm her.
Two men rushed at Meg to seize her to the whipping post, and Phoebe closed her eyes under a wash of despair. Once the witch finder began his poking at Meg’s naked flesh with his long pins, looking for the devil’s mark, he would find it. Not an inch of her skin would be left untouched; the most intimate crannies would be prodded. Every tiny blemish he would prick and they would bleed, but eventually he would find one that didn’t bleed. This witch finder would ensure that he found his witch, but he would give the crowd a good show before he did so.
Phoebe knew as Meg did that there were witch finders who would use a pin with a retractable point. At some point, when the crowd was sufficiently worked up, they would apply that pin and it would draw no blood. Their fanatical love of their profession, if thus it could be called, permitted any subterfuge. And Phoebe knew that they had here such a witch finder.
And soon it would be her turn.
But for the moment she was standing ignored, her hands bound behind her, all her senses straining towards Meg, who was lost to view in the crowd.
Olivia glided away from the throng. Phoebe’s heart jumped as she saw her. Olivia seemed to stroll away, casually, as if the scene no longer interested her. A couple of heads turned in her direction, but then the witch finder gave a cry and the mob surged forward jostling for a view.
Olivia stepped behind Phoebe. She knelt so that she was obscured by Phoebe’s body and began to saw at the bonds with the awkward carving knife, terrified she would cut Phoebe’s wrists. Phoebe held her breath and let her head droop as if in defeat, surreptitiously spreading her legs to give Olivia more of a shield.
The last strand broke. “Run!” Olivia hissed. “Before they finish with Meg.”
“I can’t leave her.” Phoebe knew they were wasting precious time, but her feet seemed planted in the ground.
“You c-can’t do her any good here!”
Phoebe saw her point. She turned and raced with her, across the green to the tangle of narrow lanes running off the main street. Every minute she expected to hear someone cry the alarm, but the interest in Meg and the witch finder was at fever pitch, and all eyes were riveted to the finder’s long pins as they slid into Meg’s flesh.
They reached the corner of Church Lane and stopped, panting for breath.
“What can we do?” Phoebe demanded on a gasp as she bent double trying to catch her breath. “We have to rescue Meg.” She looked desperately towards the village green. “Dear God! What can we do?”
“If they swim her, she’ll drown!” Olivia said, agonized. “Should we go for help? C-call my father?”
“There’s no time,” Phoebe said. She felt sick and exhausted and stupid.
A great shout went up from the rabble, and Phoebe and Olivia shivered at the surging triumph of the sound. And then the calls of “She has the mark . . . the devil’s mark. Swim the witch . . . swim the witch . . .” went up.
The crowd parted as the witch finder came through, brandishing his long needle. And only then did they notice the absence of their other victim. “Where’s the other witch?” he demanded in ringing tones.
A murmur grew from the crowd and it became clear to the pair in the lane that Lord Granville’s tenants were having second thoughts about pursuing his wife.
The witch finder tried to arouse them once more, but now that Lady Phoebe was no longer in front of them, they had no stomach for a second round of pins. They had their witch, they didn’t need two, and particularly one of Lady Phoebe’s standing.
They turned back to Meg, who lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, and “Swim the witch” rang out anew.
“We have to get to the river first.” It was all Phoebe could think of. Once at the riverbank maybe inspiration would come. “We’ll move much more quickly than the mob.” She turned and darted down Church Lane, leading the way through the lychgate and across the churchyard into the field beyond.
The field sloped down to the riverbank where Brian Morse was sitting his horse, his gun raised as he sighted on a flock of mallards that had broken cover under an onslaught from Cato’s hounds.
Brian fired and a duck tumbled from the sky, its blue-green breast luminous as it fell through sunlight. The dogs shot into the rushes to retrieve the bird, and it was then that Brian saw the two figures racing across the field towards him.
“Well, well, what have we here?” he murmured, sliding his gun into the loop on his saddle. Something was awry.
“Oh, you have a horse!” Phoebe exclaimed as she reached him a few paces ahead of Olivia. “Thank God for that! We can do nothing without one.”
“Yes, you have to help!” Olivia stated with a ferocious glare.
“They’re bringing our friend to the river t
o swim her for a witch,” Phoebe explained in a tumble of words. “You have to ride them down, pull her onto your horse, and ride with her to safety.”
“I have to do what?” Brian stared at her in disbelief. “What in the name of the devil are you talking about, Phoebe?”
“Don’t bring the devil into this!” Phoebe snapped. “We’ve had more than enough of him already. Oh, listen, they’re coming.” She grabbed his mount’s bridle, completely forgetting her fear of horses. “You have to do it. Ride them down, particularly the witch finder, and get Meg. Do you understand?”
“Not really.”
“Oh, don’t be obtuse!” Olivia exclaimed, stamping her foot in exasperation.
The sound of the mob grew closer. Brian glanced down at Phoebe again and there was calculation in his eye now. Would it benefit him to help her in whatever this craziness was?
Probably, he decided. Banked favors had their uses. He turned his horse to face the crowd seething towards them along the bank.
Immediately he saw the woman they were dragging along behind the tall figure of the witch finder, who strode out in front. Brian recognized in his eyes the glitter of the fanatic. He’d met his like before. They too had their uses.
“Where should I take her when I have her?” He shifted in the saddle, gathering up the reins. The horse sidled beneath him, sensing the preparation for action.
“To the manor,” Phoebe said. She and Olivia had moved behind Brian so that they were not immediately visible to the mob. “God knows what those bastards have done to her. She will need physicking. Hurry!”
“You’ll need to take Phoebe too,” Olivia stated. “They’ve lost her once. If they lose Meg, they may well lay hands on Phoebe again.”
“They’ve taken you . . . taken Lady Granville . . . up for a witch!” Brian whistled through his teeth. He could almost find it in him to feel sorry for Cato.