Widdershins

by Helen Steadman

  The door opened then, letting a blast of winter air in, and Reverend Foster appeared, closely followed by my mother and Meg Wetherby. Reverend Foster rubbed his hands together, reminding me again of Bible paper.

  ‘Enough tittle-tattle, Annie, I’ve a sermon to deliver. But first, let’s have some warming sustenance.’

  Meg headed straight for the hearth cracket, ‘Aye, Reverend, sometimes the Lord’s work needs hell’s furnace under it, eh?’

  Mam sniffed. ‘I’ll thank you not to compare my hearth to hell’s furnace, Meg Wetherby. But the stew is nearly ready so you’ll be staying, I take it?’

  Meg’s face cracked into a smile. ‘No harm meant. You should know my bad ways and words by now. Just take your time, Annie, take your time. Now, Jane, come and have a look in my sack.’

  I left my station at the window and went to join Meg at the fire. ‘Hello, Meg, what have you got?’

  ‘Well, since it’s the eve of Twelfth Night, I’ve brought some candles to sell for the wassailing, see.’

  Meg opened the sack and a dank smell wafted out. My nose wrinkled at the smell of the candles. These weren’t the pleasant candles that Mam loved to light in church – those candles were made of beeswax and were too precious for every day.

  Mam looked inside the sack and took a step back. ‘Meg, these candles are nasty tallow. Have you no beeswax? Even without them being lit, they give off an unsettling smell of rotting flesh, which turns my stomach.’

  I peeped into the sack. They were ugly candles, varying in shade from light brown to night black.

  Meg turned from the fire. ‘Oh, give over and don’t be so fussy, Annie. The light from these beauties is just as bright as anything from your fancy church candles.’

  Reverend Foster’s voice came from his corner. ‘Sincerely, madam, I doubt that very much. Filthy, smoking stems from that heinous butchery in the town, no doubt. Although, as is so often the case with you, Meg, it’s perhaps wiser not to ask.’

  ‘No, Reverend, you’re right, they’re from the tallower in Newcastle.’

  ‘Then a murkier provenance these lights could not have.’

  Meg ignored him and turned to me. ‘Come, hinny, help me up from this cracket before these candles melt. We’ll settle at the table and busy ourselves awhile.’

  She emptied her sack onto the table and then produced a pouch full of iron nails. ‘These are only feeble nails, Jane, useless for mending a roof or the like. But useful for keeping away evil spirits and waking people up. See, we’ll press them into the candles a little way apart from each other, like this.’

  Reverend Foster passed the table. ‘Be careful, Jane, lest your warm hands revive the fat back to something animated, albeit most foul. You’ll have the vile stink of death on your hands, as surely as if you’d plunged them into a beast’s corpse.’

  I shuddered and lifted my hands away from the candles.

  Meg turned from her work. ‘Give over, Reverend, and stop trying to work the girl into a state. The wind will change soon and you can’t bless bairns with that face.’

  Meg’s pertness made me giggle, and the Reverend’s face was twisting with the effort of not smiling.

  ‘Don’t speak to me of faces, crone.’

  I blinked. ‘Reverend Foster, you mustn’t call Meg a crone!’

  ‘Meg knows I mean her no harm. Look at you, content as a fish, having Meg and Annie at your side. Maiden. Mother. Crone. Twas ever thus. Together you form a trinity – not entirely holy and not entirely unholy – but a trinity, nonetheless.’

  It was hard to understand the Reverend’s meaning. Perhaps he’d taken too much of his special medicinal compound. Whenever he did, he got funny ideas. I rooted in Meg’s sack and pulled out another candle, crude, discoloured and misshapen. Then I pierced its length with nails, shoving them in with my thumbs.

  Reverend Foster wrinkled his nose at me. ‘It’s an effort not to vomit at the sight of such ungodly creations.’

  But I glared at him. ‘See, Reverend, this nail is for when it’s time for my bed. And this one is for Mam.’ I moved my finger along an inch to the next nail. ‘And this one is for your bed.’

  Hands behind his back, he leaned forward to inspect my handiwork. ‘And what of these nails, Jane? Why, then, the very long gap after my bed?’

  ‘That’s so you can wake up in the morning, Reverend. The candle burns down, the nail falls out, you hear it clatter and then you wake up.’

  ‘Very clever, but who has money to waste by leaving a light on all night? And who could bear the hellish stench from such a candle in their chamber while attempting sleep? Lying there unguarded, the dreadful miasma would surely inflict itself upon a passive soul as it lay in repose.’

  Not all of his words made sense, but a tear wavered in my eye as suddenly as if he’d cut open an onion in front of my face.

  Mam clicked her tongue. ‘Reverend, that was hateful of you. Sometimes, you’d do better to keep your own counsel. And perhaps no more to drink today.’

  I wiped my eye and looked to Mam. ‘Can we afford candles like these to wake us up?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not us. When we go out, so does the light. And we rely on Sir Jack to wake us up.’

  The Reverend laughed. ‘Yes, good old Sir Jack. The scoundrel in charge of this neck of the woods. And also impudently – perhaps dangerously – the scoundrel in charge of the hen house. Pompous old cocks both.’

  ‘Reverend, please!’ Mam was red in the face.

  I turned back to Meg. ‘Who does need these candles to wake them up?’

  ‘Well, those who don’t keep cocks, or live near one.’

  I thought about Meg’s words. ‘But that must be no one near here. Sir Jack can be heard as far as Shotley Bridge.’

  ‘Aye, hinny, but everyone needs iron nails to scare away dark spirits. So there’s my market. Now, you should always keep a handful of iron nails handy, because you never know.’

  I returned my completed candle to the pile next to Meg. Some were packed with many nails, others with only a few.

  Meg sorted the candles into two separate piles. ‘There, you see. Large families and small. All sizes provided for, providing they can bear the cost.’

  Reverend Foster winked at me. ‘Have no worries about who will bear the cost, Jane, since Meg has a certain way with words. People often find themselves charmed into parting with money, produce or belongings they can ill afford.’

  Mam placed a bowl of stew in front of the Reverend. ‘There’s no meat in it and there won’t be any, so don’t waste your breath complaining. Besides, you’re forgetting what people really want to buy from Meg.’

  The old woman grinned then. ‘Aye, for I hold something else, something desired by the high and the low alike.’

  I frowned at the riddle. ‘What do you have, Meg, aside from candles and cats?’

  ‘My old woman’s almanac for the coming year, carried about in my head, and snippets passed on for small favours and considerations crossing my palm.’

  ‘What’s an almanac, Meg?’

  Mam put a bowl of stew in front of me. ‘Jane, Meg knows just when to plant and when to reap, and all the farmers and goodwives value her advice. Eat your supper and get to sleep early, for the morrow, there’ll be wassailing to keep you from your bed.’

  11

  John

  Foul Temptress

  A hush fell over the kirk as men waited to hear Uncle James speak. I stood at the front, still and quiet. The kirk was always full when he spoke, perhaps because his speaking turned so quickly into ceaseless ranting. I wondered at the fires that must burn inside my uncle to keep him going. This public preaching man was not the same man who’d shared his hearth with me for so many years. There were scores of men here. I was of a height with many of them nowadays and it pleased me. Uncle stood up to speak, no doubt readying to aim his words at me as he so often did. He’d been kind to me over the years and had never once raised hand or foot to me. All the same, the twists an
d turns of his mind troubled me. My stomach roiled at the thought of what was coming. While Uncle James had shown his love by putting a much-needed roof over my head, he also liked to punish me for my failings. And he did not shy away from revealing them in public. Although it was sinful to think it, I looked forward to returning to my own home and my wife, and away from his jibing tongue and low opinion of me.

  ‘Today, I’ll speak of women and the dangers they bring. It will be hard for you to stomach, because you will be thinking of your own wives, daughters and mothers. But it’s important that you see them as they really are. Shaming it is that boys and girls are born in equal number. For daughters are of little use, yet still require food and shelter. Even the lowly, cloven-hooved females are more useful in the giving of their milk, their hide and their flesh.’

  Uncle paused, but only for effect, and he soon continued.

  ‘God wishes mankind to multiply and so the lower sex is necessary to his future survival. It’s a conundrum, and I’m not one to question God’s judgement. But these daughters of Eve are formed from sin, there to tempt decent men from God and labour. And however foul their temptations, we allow them to move freely amongst us, to work and even to worship. Beyond their usefulness in procreation, their purpose confounds me.’

  Uncle James wagged his finger at the assembled men and paced before them. The very word ‘procreation’ made my heart sink, since it was plain to me what direction his words would take.

  ‘Being such physical creatures, women are much closer to the earthly world and to the devil. Women’s small brains mean they can’t be blamed for obeying their nature, as they are little more than beasts of burden. But I warn every man here to be on his guard against the dread darkness inside every woman. They will create a fire in your loins that should rightly be used only to create God’s children.’

  Uncle’s eye rested on me. Against my will, I looked down. This was akin to a confession of using my wife without creating any children. If only Uncle wouldn’t put so much emphasis on women just being there to make children. I felt he was judging me, as I’d not yet managed to get a child on my wife. Uncle would often comment on Lucy’s flat belly, and it slighted my manhood every time he raised the matter. Was Lucy filled with darkness? Was she not, after all, the respectable and plain blessing from God that I deserved? Soon, I would have a child of my own, and Uncle James might then shift his sermons away from the difficult subject of procreation and childbirth. Finally, he shifted his gaze to another unfortunate member of the congregation.

  ‘First of all, let me clarify women’s role on earth. A woman is here to serve a man as his helpmeet, to act as the receptacle to receive his sacred seed and to nurture his child until it is ready to enter the world of men.’

  It pained me to think of my own mother described only as a receptacle for seed, sacred or otherwise. But men around me were nodding and grunting assent. And then I thought again of Lucy, who had failed to provide me with an heir. Whose fault was that? It certainly could not be mine, as I feared God and did my Christian duty. Perhaps it would do to examine Lucy’s habits more closely, to be certain that she was not interfering in God’s will. It was hard not to feel a grain of resentment towards her, whether she was thwarting my efforts deliberately, or just through lack of care. If Uncle said that it was her role in life to receive my seed and grow a child, then I must do everything in my power to make sure she fulfilled her duty to God. And it would perhaps persuade Uncle to focus his sermonising elsewhere.

  ‘Since women are only here to deal with the more carnal aspects of extending God’s family, they are connected to the hidden, the sinful and the maligned. It pleases me, as it pleases the Lord, to hear the creatures’ guttural screams in the pain of childbirth. Through this pain, each daughter of Eve comes to know that she was born in sin, and that she will pay for that sin in perpetuity. Yet, this pain is still not enough to punish that foul temptress whose fault it is that mankind was turned out of paradise to live meanly outside of Eden.’

  Uncle’s words troubled me when I held them up against the memory of my mother. He couldn’t mean my mother, who was his own sister. He must mean other women – unworthy women. I reached for the milk teeth in my pouch and rubbed them. If I held his words up against unworthy women like Kirstie Slater, then they seemed more fitting. The justice said Kirstie was not guilty of being a witch. But certainly, that hussy once lured an honest man into coupling outside of wedlock. Did all women have this power in them, handed down from Eve, to tempt innocent men into evil? Arthur Murray paid dearly for a weakness of the flesh, which had been excited by Kirstie Slater. Did all women have something of the witch about them? I was certain there was no badness in my mother. I was less certain when it came to Lucy, whose inability to get a child was the bane of my life of late. After all, my mother had managed to give birth to a child, and she had fulfilled her duty, even though it cost her life. A shaft of light came in through a high window and distracted me from my thoughts. The light must have dazzled Uncle, but he didn’t shield his eyes or turn his head, and still the words tumbled from him.

  ‘But do women seek redemption through their necessary suffering? No, they do not! These sin-ridden creatures seek only to reduce the richly deserved agonies of childbirth. Their midwives ply them with unguents and charms to lessen their pain. It’s nothing short of evil to deprive women of the vital lesson of their birthing pains. And even more evil is afoot when these haggish midwives intervene to prevent the Lord from taking His chosen ones to Him.’

  There was so little air, it was hard to remain upright and I shifted my weight. Others in the room were also restless, so my uncle must cease before long. The lack of air made it even harder to work out the rights and wrongs of what my uncle was saying. Dora Shaw hadn’t managed to prevent my own mother being taken to the Lord. Of course, it pleased me that God had chosen her, but I still felt sad that she was taken from me, leaving me to face the world alone. It worried me that the Lord might also take Lucy. My wife was not yet with child, but it must happen soon and when it did, I’d secretly pray that she not be taken from me, for I would need her to raise the child. My selfishness made me feel ashamed, but a glance around the room didn’t reveal any other men looking ashamed. Many were nodding in agreement.

  As if reading my thoughts, Uncle James turned his gaze on me.

  ‘So, women in childbirth are not the worst grade of sinner by any means, for they are but weak of flesh and will. These weak vessels only seek to reduce their natural God-given pains. No, the finger of suspicion must point at those wicked hags, the midwives, who attend them with promises of removing the pain that God has decreed.’

  Uncle paused. Had he finally worn out his inner frenzy? But he started shaking his head slowly. A faint sheen of sweat coated his face, and he jabbed the air with his finger, directing his ire into the crowd. What drove the man?

  ‘These hags, not content with spiriting away the pains of childbirth, also traverse the countryside, offering to take away God-given ailments and sickness. There is no greater disobedience to God than interfering with His will. It is whispered that these midwives ease the pain of menses in maids. God clearly intended that Eve and her descendants should be reminded of their sin with every turn of the moon. Instead of accepting this reminder of their sin, maids visit the hags for powders to abate the pain.’

  At this, he looked straight at me. I rubbed at my chin. He must be referring to my time with Dora. Perhaps he even accused my own mother. Nowadays, I felt Dora’s presence in my life like a stain on my soul. On the odd occasions when she haled me, heeding my uncle’s instruction, I turned my face from her. I had cause to wonder at her seeming kindness towards me. Had she really cared for me? Or was she – as my Uncle was fond of saying – merely trying to make good her bargain with Satan? After all, my mother had died at her hand, and there was still suspicion over my father’s death. I myself only lived because of Dora Shaw’s hellish intervention. I dropped my gaze, and my uncle looked
away from me and continued.

  ‘Do they not realise that God has created this punishment for their own betterment? For He removes the cause of this pain as long as a woman is carrying a new soul or feeding one. Thus, a woman who is with child or suckling a child is in a temporary state of grace, free of the filthy curse and its concomitant pain.’

  I considered the pains I’d borne during my life. Did Uncle expect men and boys to bear their pains? And were gentlemen’s physicians included in his scolding? And barber-surgeons, too? Perhaps not, since he seemed to believe that only women should suffer, in light of Eve’s transgression.

  ‘When these hags anoint women during their travails, it’s a hideous parody of God’s servants using holy oil to bring His protection. These denizens of the night smear innocent flesh with unguents tainted by the devil’s kiss so that they can spirit away pain. All of which allows the passage of the child into the world without its mother accepting her rightful allotment of suffering.’

  Uncle leaned closer to the men at the front and rested his gaze on each of us, lowering his voice.

  ‘We must have fear in our hearts for the souls of babes born so easily, since the devil must surely find their tender souls already primed for the taking. We must look to our own hearths to root out this evil. We must rid the world of these fiendish midwives who would take away the righteous pains of birth decreed by God.’

  Several of the men in the front row stepped back at this pronouncement, as if wishing to dissolve into the rows behind, but the rest of the room broke out into ringing cheers. Uncle folded his hands, looking as pleased as I’d ever seen him.