The slap of a cloak on the water beside me yanked me out of my musings. It was the Widow, and close enough to spray my side with her laundering, as well she knew.
‘There’s not many would sit down next to you, girl, as things stand, but I’ve never been one to follow the crowd or to see evil till it pokes me in the eye. How is your father?’ She eyed me closely. I blushed, for I remembered the flowers in my hair and why I had threaded them there.
‘You might be brown as a beechnut, but there’s something colouring you up. What is it? You’ve no business garlanding yourself up with trash from the verges. At a time like this, with your father near to drawing his last breath on God’s earth. Oh, the shame of it, Martha. Some gypsy from the camp by the Noggin, is it?’
I said nothing. For half a minute I said nothing, but I could not bear the pursing of her lips. ‘I have not been with any gypsy, Widow Spicer, but I thank you kindly, for I would rather be thought a wanton than a witch.’
‘You won’t be laughing in the stocks, my girl. And you’ll be lucky if it’s only the stocks that pin you. That poor lad is nothing but a warm corpse in his father’s house – there’s many would like to know how you had a hand in that. Coming so soon after the baby’s death, too. If you had any idea how often I’ve had to stop folks going to the law. Richard Simons would have had you in irons ere now if he wasn’t persuaded he could make you unwitch the poor boy. Your kind aren’t good for a place. As a friend I’m telling you, it’s time you left.’
‘As a friend?’
‘Yes, girl, as a friend,’ she said. ‘You’re a plain little thing, but you’ve a fine neck and I doubt you fancy swinging. I said to my Jacob this morning – though he barely listened, he was that tired with lambing all night, and his cloak all muddied – I said to my Jacob, that girl… why do you smile?’
‘I was not smiling, Widow, please,’ I said, frightened by the colour I could feel rising in my cheeks.
‘Well. I said to my Jacob, we are not…’ and she trailed off, looking at me intently, her gaze returning to the flowers in my hair. A slow recognition rippled through her and she stood up, swung out her arm and whacked me with the dripping cloak. The droplets sprayed off in the sun and I was knocked sideways to the bank.
‘Hussy,’ she hissed, standing over me, ‘so you thought to witch my Jacob, who saved you from the snow, with your lewdness?’ She bent down and grabbed a handful of my hair; taking the knife from her girdle she sawed it off. ‘You’ll hang first.’ For a moment she looked at the knife in her hand and at me and I think she might have used it, but there came the sound of voices behind her and she stepped back.
There was no rowan at the door, only a small parcel wrapped in cloth. I opened it carefully in case it held some horror meant to fright me off, but it was kindly meant, for it held bacon and beans. Agnes, perhaps, or even Jacob? We were not altogether hated. It struck me that Miss Elizabeth could not have known of the strength of the talk against me, or surely she would have come before now. The Widow would not let things wait. Tomorrow, early, I would go to the Hall.
My father was awake when I came in, but more pale than the walls. His eyes followed me around the room as I worked. Truth be told, I could not bear to see how weak he was. The thought went through me that I had bought my life for his, but I did not entertain it. I had done with that foolishness. When the food was ready I brought him a bowl of it.
‘You have it, Martha,’ he said. ‘I am dying, I don’t need food. Sit here beside me; take my hand, there. The dark crowds round so.’
I sat down and took his hand. It was light, lighter than a sparrow. The fever had gone. ‘Perhaps if you could sleep, you’ll be stronger when you wake.’
‘No, Martha, I must talk. It’s coming; it’s not far off now. Reach under my bed for the wooden box. You know where the key is. Open it. What do you see?’
‘There’s a ring.’
‘Her wedding ring. Take it. Give it to your true love. What else?’
‘There’s a small bird: a dove, a white dove. I think you made it, Father.’
‘Yes, I made it. She was a dove, Martha. Though she came from this country sewer, she flew above it like the singing birds do. She was more air than earth.’ He began coughing and could not say any more.
I held his hand and sang,
Come over the burn, Bessie
My little pretty Bessie
Come over the burn, Bessie, to me.
* * *
The white dove sat on the castle wall;
I bend my bow and shoot her I shall;
I put her in my glove, both feathers and all.
Tears ran down his face, as the coughing stilled and he gathered his breath. ‘It’s not all, it’s not all. Look again. Your knife…’
I looked. It was a plain wood box. There seemed to be nothing in it, till I took my knife and slid the blade around the base. Sure enough the wood sprang back a little and I was able to lift it out. Beneath lay a few papers. Not many. One was a set of drawings. I held it up.
‘The drawings I made for him, Sir William, the safe places… Best burn those, Martha.’
The other was a single folded sheet, with a few lines on it. The hand was clumsy, with round letters such as one of my pupils might attempt, but my name was written on it. I looked up at my father, my heart beating in my chest so strong the paper shook in my hand.
‘Aye, that one. She wrote it for you. Wouldn’t let me scribe it. Should have handed it to you long ago, but well… No, don’t read it now. Please, keep it folded. I’ll stay strong that way. She was hanged, Martha. Did you guess at it?’
‘You told me she died of a fever when I was two years old.’
‘It was a lie!’ His voice rang out loud. The weakness seemed to have fled him and he stared at me with a bright intensity. ‘You know that by now. I killed my Bessie. After we were wed she begged me to move – somewhere, anywhere else – so long as it was away from him. But I was a freeman of the city, I knew my rights and I would not listen. My father had been an alderman; everybody said I should have been a university man. Everybody said so. All was lost: my mother, my father in a single night. Did I ever tell you, Martha, of the fire?’
‘Yes, Father, you told me. Go on. Why do you say you killed my mother?’
‘There was no going to sea. I learned how to mend wheels. There’s beauty in a wheel, every part true to the centre, and that centre a god, and not an absent god, but a block grasped and held by its circumference. I found Bessie. We were happy, three years, more. You were a fine, strong baby. I had work and money.’
He paused and stared ahead with a faint smile. I did not like to hurry him, for his breathing had grown easier and there was more colour and joy in his face than I had seen since before he froze. We sat like that awhile, with the past playing out for him. I should have liked to pay a penny and see the sights he saw.
But then he frowned and shrank back to me. ‘I was a fool. I could not let go of the grievance. The thought of that scall-headed lecher who used my Bessie like a whore tormented me. More and more I dwelled on it, till one day I found myself in his yard offering work as a wheelwright. He happened to walk down his fancy steps… They locked me up, of course, for breaking his nose and the Lord knows I could have had worse than a whipping. Bessie pleaded for me to him, and to the mistress too; showed them the bonny infant I’d leave an orphan. My fault. His lady wife had flicked Bessie away to sit on sailors’ knees at the tavern. She wasn’t about to grow merciful. She extended her ringed finger and crushed my Bessie like a flea.’
I could see how it was taxing him to talk. I rubbed his shoulders and said he should wait, there would be time enough to tell the story, but he batted me away.
‘It was early when they came for her. I was standing in the doorway watching the light fall on her hands as she plaited your hair. You fidgeted and she sang to quiet you. Then they came and took her away. There was a dolly she had made for you. It had a tear in its bodice and they said she�
�d done it a purpose to harm the mistress. They said she was the reason the mistress’ babies died.
‘Her mother, your grandmother, came from Moccas to plead for her, begged others to, but they were afraid of contagion. Accuse one, accuse all. There was a young serving girl from the house, though; one Bessie had been friendly with. They’d shared a room, giggled through the winter. Jane’d known all about the master, what he’d done. They hauled her up and swore her on the Bible. Bessie thought herself saved. Jane mumbled so low the court couldn’t hear her. Speak up, they shouted. Then she spoke up right enough. She testified Bessie had witched the master, turned the milk and made the doll to harm the mistress. That’s it, she screamed when they showed it, that very doll. Look at the rip that the nail made in the belly. Jane Wade her name was, till she married a ploughman named Reynolds out at Maisemore.’
‘Goody Reynolds!’
‘Aye, Martha. I didn’t know her straight off, but she knew me. She spat her filth about Bessie up and down the village. It was after she moved here, after the summer, that things began to go ill for us, that the air around us fouled.’
He fell to coughing then. It did not stop. He was racked with it, each breath catching into another bout as he tried to speak. All the colour, all the strength that had come to him, was gone.
‘Please, please, Father, no more talking. You must pray. You must try to be reconciled with God. Let me call for Father Paul. He cannot refuse you, not now.’
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No priest. No prayers.’
At last the coughing petered out. He lay back, oily and ashen. I took his hand and kneeled down beside him. ‘If you will not pray at least you must bless me. Grant me that.’
He laid his hand on my head, hacking gently as he did so. There was blood on his lips and though I dabbed it away with a cloth there was always more. His eyes were still blue, but they were clouded. I thought how they had held the promise of the sea for me, how they’d been the colour of the Virgin’s gown in the chapel before it fell. All his features were clenched with anger. Did Our Lady’s face turn angry, too, when they killed her son? In the window glass she was always smooth cheeked and gentle, her pain was soft and sorrowful like a lamenting tune, not like my father’s rages. His pain scored and twisted him like a storm-struck oak. The grain of his mind had been marred.
‘What good are prayers? They didn’t stop her swinging. Leave this muck. I have raised you to be better. To have better.’
I thought of Jacob and my cheeks burned. I do not want better, I thought, what I want is here. I swallowed and tried to find him in his eyes. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘I love Jacob, Jacob Spicer.’
He seemed to look back at me and smiled and nodded. When he spoke his voice was steadier, stronger. ‘I know you love me, child. You’re a good girl. These last months have been hard. But you are safe. Gifts at our door, it’s only right – you saved the boy. People know your worth. They’ll stand by you. The Mortimers, they are great folk and Miss Elizabeth has promised she will protect you. Hark, do you hear the knocking. Go to the door and let her in. Go, child.’
I looked towards the door, there was no sound, no knock, but his arm fluttered and pointed so I went and opened it as he bid me. He broke into a big smile and nodded, gesturing to a stool.
‘Why, Sir William – and Miss Elizabeth too – thank you.’ He turned to me. ‘You know they have come every day, Martha. Look at this embroidered quilt. Take the ham from them, take it now.’
I took the air that he handed me and as I turned to set it down I heard a little cough, like one that a man might use to clear his throat before speaking. It had loosened the catch. His lifeblood streamed out from him. So much blood. Still he struggled to speak. I bent down to make out his words.
‘Damn them all,’ he whispered, ‘plague and damnation on them, great and small.’
His head fell back and he was dead. I stayed all night by his side, hoping that if I held his hand it might stay warm in mine. Now that it could not hurt him, now he could not shout I told him everything – all that had happened and all my fears. Slowly his hand grew colder and the candle burned down, till I was speaking into the darkness.
35
The Letter and the White Dove
It was morning before I could bring myself to open my mother’s letter. I held the paper in my hand and unfolded it, but my eyes filled and I could not read the lines. For a while I brushed my fingers over the words, for the impressions left in the paper by the push of her hand as it had gripped the quill. In one place there was a large rimmed stain and the letters had run. I brought it to my lips and fancied I could taste the salt.
My dear child,
When you read this I will be watching you with not one jot less of love than I feel now. Until this last sorrow, my daughter, we had never been parted, thou and I. You are grown too big to sit on my hip hour on hour, and yet I cannot refuse you for it brings your cheek so close to mine. We walk and gabble together and when you are afraid – you must not be afraid, my darling – you bury your head in my shoulder. I think you have made a hollow for it there.
I will die tomorrow. The words are strange. I feel such strength and life in me. I could dance five hours together. How can it be that I will be dead ere sundown?
A tangle of windflowers bloom outside my cell. They might have blown here from the woods at home. How I wish I was breathing the wet oak after rain. The petals of the windflower are so delicate, they cannot abide picking. Tissue of the moon, though they grow in dark places. I will wear white when they take me tomorrow, like the windflower. Know it in your heart, Martha, I am not tainted. I am no witch. They can tie my body to the gibbet, but my heart and mind fly free, like the innocent dove.
Walter says I must hurry. There is no time in heaven. In the blink of an angel’s eye you will be with me, though you die an old woman and we will hold hands and laugh together at your children’s children’s children.
I will not say goodbye, daughter.
Your loving mother,
Elizabeth Dynely
I read the letter over and over. Why had he not given it to me before, years before? There was so much unsaid. In the morning light his face was grey, but a peace had come to it, which, God forgive me, at that moment I did not think that he deserved. He had protected himself, not me, in keeping the letter. I folded it up and placed it carefully in my bosom, just as a loud knocking called me to the day.
Most of the parish turned out for the funeral, but they were not mourners. Tom stood with me, and Aggie and Jacob stood together, behind. Next to them the Tranters. I was grateful for them. I stood by the grave and felt nothing; relief, perhaps, that it was the Putley vicar, not Father Paul. I held the small dove my father had carved and I smoothed my fingers along its feathered wings. I had gathered flowers and we threw them in the grave, but when I tried to throw my father’s adze the Widow stepped forward and grabbed my arm.
‘That’s not yours to throw, girl. There’s debts your father owes must be settled.’
I pictured the blade in her scrawny neck and said nothing. Jacob turned to her. ‘Mother,’ he said.
‘Don’t you mother me. She is practising upon you, boy, even now, with that good innocent girl beside you.’ Aggie pretended to hear nothing, but I could see her colour rising. ‘She’s a charm in her hand even now she’s a rubbing on. She suckles her familiars in her sleep.’ And I saw Jacob glance at my hand and I, without thinking, hid the dove in my pocket.
Father David gave her a curt look to quiet her, though unlike half the village, he had not heard her words. I looked down at the grave, where my father’s coffin lay. I could not grieve. It was wicked, but I could not do it. Soon, I promised him, when all of this was done with.
Father Paul was in Hereford with Bishop John, Tom told me as he drove me back from Putley church. I glanced back. The crowd was gone, even the Widow and Goody Reynolds, but Aggie and Jacob were standing talking to each other. She was leaning in, waving her arms. As we tur
ned from the grave I had clasped her hand and asked her to come to see me, but though she quickly nodded I could see the Widow’s words working in her eyes and her embrace was stiff and awkward.
‘I thought Sir William and Miss Elizabeth would come,’ I said. ‘Perhaps they had not heard.’
Tom snorted softly. ‘Happen they are caught up in the bishop’s business. Matters over Hoar Wood have come to a head. Bishop John and Sir William are at loggerheads and the bishop talks of plots and papists. Word is, the bishop needs a scandal. Folks in the Court have him on the rack. Sir William’s head might save his own.’
‘How is Father Paul part of it?’
‘Him? Chance of advancement, see; get his long weaselling fingers into a bit more pie. He don’t want to be stuck out here with the likes of us, not if there’s a chance of rising. He’ll be thinking how he can be useful, what the bishop might like to hear. And he’s too low for Sir William, as you know yourself. He wanted the glass out of the chapel windows long before the Wonder came.’
He was silent awhile, then shot me a sharp glance. ‘Martha,’ he said, ‘I don’t hold no truck with all this talk of your witching poor young Owen, but you’ve not done yourself any favours, carrying on with your herbs and potions like a cunning woman, cursing the folks out at the Underhill the night your father fell in the hole. And now there’s gossip you drew Jacob Spicer under the crooked moon when he’s all but promised to young Aggie.’
I glanced across at him. ‘Has he said this?’
‘No, you fool, it’s his aunt and his mother. I’m telling you this as a friend, and you’ve precious few of those just now. Tomorrow’s Sunday, they’ll leave you alone on the Lord’s day, with your father fresh in the ground, but Monday you need to be gone. As it happens, I think I might be better somewhere else when the bishop comes calling on Sir William. I’ve said a few things myself that might be remembered if they are looking round for necks. I’m going to my sister for a week or two in Worcester. You should come with me. It might not be for ever, girl. You could come back when things were safe.’
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