“What’s she doing?” Edna asked in a loud whisper. “Do you suppose she’s talking in tongues?”
“Praying to her heathen gods, most likely,” Gladys sniffed.
“That’s Winnebago,” I said. “Maoona is their name for the Creator and Hayninklra was his fair-skinned son who taught them wisdom and how to make medicine.”
“I’m sure that’s not one of Jehovah’s tongues,” Gladys retorted. “Lucian tells me my tongue sounds like Hebrew—God’s own language.”
“You wouldn’t know Hebrew from Winnebago,” Aunt Jenny snapped. “You don’t even know what you’re sayin’, I bet.”
“Only God knows that,” Gladys said sanctimoniously.
“Or the Devil,” the old woman shot back.
“Really, Mother!”
Dana dropped her head on her breast in an attitude of dejection. “I can’t see!” she moaned. “My powers are spent. I cannot see her.”
The world around me was breaking up into bits and pieces, like garbled film clips. Mothers were rounding up their younger children, afraid they, too, might disappear. The Redd baby was crying.
“Please!” I cried. “Somebody find my child!”
Alison’s arm encircled my waist. “They’ll find her, Mitti, I know they will,” she tried to comfort me. “Don’t you worry—good heavens, what’s she doing?”
Rowan was prancing around the stage, riding an invisible horse. “Giddy-ap, old Robin-Dobbin, Giddy-ap!” in a coarse, heavy voice that changed to a loud whinny, as though horse and rider were one. “Up wi’ ye, ye spavined nag! Horse ’n hattock!” She leaped onto one of the chairs in Lucy’s makeshift bed. The other girls crowded in close as everyone turned to watch. Rowan went through the motions of dismounting and slapping the horse on the rump to send him away, then turned slowly around to us, glassy-eyed and flushed.
A shiver ran through the crowd as her eyes riveted on something in the back of the room. I followed her gaze to yellow-green eyes. Iris made a slight movement of her hand. Rowan fell forward, her tongue protruding until she gagged. One after the other the girls joined in. Cissie Osburn was bleating like a goat; Linda beat her head upon the floor. Dorcas Redd stood aloof at first, but when Debby and Jessica pulled her down, she, too, was caught up in the frenzy. All the tricks I’d taught them were being played in deadly earnest now.
Iris nodded her head slightly. Instantly Rowan threw herself at Dana’s feet. “Remove your spell!” my daughter pleaded. “Let us be!” She reached up and caught at Dana’s outstretched hands, followed by the other girls, one by one, ceasing their cries the moment they touched her.
“Woman, what have you to say?” Lucian demanded.
“I love Cariad,” Dana protested. “I would protect her with my life.”
“Listen, everyone, please!” Alison pleaded. “Dana wouldn’t…
“Stay out of this!” Damon snapped at her.
“Don’t you tell me what to do!” she lashed out. “Dana’s cured me, which is more than you did! She laid her hands upon me and drew the poison from my body. I’m healed. Ward doesn’t believe that yet, but he will.”
As Ward tried to draw Alison away, Cissie Osburn bounded forward. “Oh, Goody Nurse, ’tis you who’ve been sitting on my bed at night!” She dug her hands into the chignon at the nape of Alison’s neck. Ward pushed Cissie away, lifted Alison and strode out.
“God help us!” Lucian cried. “The evil is upon us. Satan’s emissaries lurk among us, and we must discover them.”
“Iris knows!” Cissie cried out. “The Devil showed her his Black Book. She said so.”
Lucian turned to her. “Is that true, Iris?”
She bowed her head, the lovely penitent to all eyes but mine. “The Devil knew I was weak,” she confessed in a soft voice. “He asked me to sign his book and showed me the names of those who had already done so. I was tempted, but I stalled. Each time he returned, the list had grown, and I knew I couldn’t hold out much longer. That is when I went to you for help, Lucian. You brought me to Christ, and Satan came no more.” She sighed. “But perhaps I did wrong to shield those whose names were in the book.”
“God bless you, Sister,” Lucian soothed her. “He would want you to unmask those who covenant with Satan.”
We were balanced on two spheres of time—the seventeenth century and the twentieth. How could these people revert to the error of Salem when their own ancestors had died of it? These weren’t the people I’d known—even their speech was unnatural.
“The names!” Lucian prodded.
“Must I?” Iris seemed near fainting.
“For the sake of the innocent,” he urged.
She swayed dizzily. “Dana,” she murmured. “She was the first.”
“I knew it! I knew it!” Homer bawled. “Her and her fancy potions. Now the doc says Esther can’t have any more kids, so I won’t ever have a son, and I know Dana had a hand in that somehow.”
“Hush, Homer!” his wife tried to quiet him.
“Shut up, woman! Or are you in league with her?”
“And there was old Mrs. Pudeator.”
Aunt Jenny! Impossible! I could see their astonishment. Gladys paled. “I begged you not to take that Indian woman’s medicines, Mother.”
“Goodness knows what was in them,” Muriel put in.
“You’re cowards, both of you,” the old woman wailed. “Only afraid for your own skins. Wish I’d aborted the both o’ you.” Her face puckered and tears began running down her cheeks, as she thumped with her cane toward the door.
“Stop that woman! Arrest her!” Good shouted to Jim, who had returned with the radios.
“On what charge?” Jim asked simply.
“He won’t help, Irv,” Iris cried. “He’s one, too.”
A shudder ran through the crowd. Gentle Jim Willard! Jessica confronted her father. “Is that why you wouldn’t let me go to the Patch this week, Daddy? Were you afraid Iris would tell on you?”
Jim’s face went gray. Irv Good ripped the deputy badge from his coat, then motioned to another deputy to guard him and Aunt Jenny, who had already been taken into custody by her son-in-law.
“And Darcy is another.” Iris had warmed to her mission. “She sacrifices her cats to her gods. That’s why she has so few left.”
“You goddam, lying bitch!” Darcy raged.
“You heard her curse me,” Iris said meekly.
“Anyone else?” Lucian asked.
“I didn’t see all the names. And one is too embarrassing for me to mention.”
“God will defend you,” Lucian assured her gently.
“He tried to rape me.”
“Who was he?” Elspeth echoed a universal curiosity.
Iris bit her lip. “Quentin Jackson,” she whispered. The sheriff’s eyes lit.
“Anyone else?” Lucian asked.
“No—yes, I almost forgot! He pretends to be holy, but he conjures up demons in caves—Dr. Martin Brun!”
She waited for the sensation her last announcement had made to die down. “And there was yet another—she who caused her cousin to drown…
“I knew it all the time! She killed my Junior!” Elspeth Osburn came menacingly toward me. “And maybe she killed her baby,” she screeched. “After all, she can have plenty more by screwing the Devil.”
“Elspeth!” Melvin remonstrated. “My wife hasn’t been herself,” he apologized, trying to draw her away.
They closed in on me, their excitement mounting. I put my arm around Dana, as much for support as to help her. They’re not going to find Cariad, I despaired. They’re going to stay here and hunt witches! I plucked at Greg’s sleeve. “You’re a newspaperman, Greg—you can’t believe these wild accusations. They’ve gone crazy. They don’t even care about my
baby!”
He didn’t answer—merely stood with his hands gripping the lectern, tortured eyes staring off into space.
“Greg?” I asked uncertainly. Then, “Will?”
He saw me for the first time. “You are right for once, Mary Esty. We must be certain justice is done.” The room hushed as his gavel crashed down on the stand.
“Let the Indian woman be examined in private for the devil’s mark,” he declared.
“Why in private?” Iris asked contemptuously.
Her question triggered a response in Rowan, who sprang at Dana and ripped the blouse from her shoulders. A shock wave ran through the hall. Just above Dana’s left breast was a black mole.
“The devil’s tit!” Elspeth shrieked. Immediately the girls screamed that Dana was tormenting them again, and one by one they touched her. Cissie raked her nails across the mole, leaving angry red welts on either side. Drops of blood slowly gathered on Dana’s breast. So this was the price of Alison’s cure!
“She’s the woman who made me wreck my car!” Lester Jacobs exclaimed. “And I saw her fly right off into the trees!”
“Yeah, and she stopped my tractor dead!” Homer declared.
Lucian was kneeling center stage. His hands were clasped, his eyes on the ceiling, his lips moving in prayer.
“He’s a saint!” someone whispered.
“The Lord has spoken to me,” he cried out suddenly. “While the search goes on, the rest of us must seek Him in a high place to pray for the safety of the child and for those lost souls. We’ll light a bonfire on Bishop’s Bluff to be a beacon for the searchers. There we will wait until the child is found. We will take the accused with us and pray for their deliverance from Satan.”
At least he got them going, I thought thankfully, as the hall cleared. The small children and the elderly were whisked home. I grabbed my cape from its hook and wrapped it high around my chin, hoping to join the hunt, but Damon caught my arm.
“You, too, Submit,” he said.
I looked back. Greg still stood by the lectern, staring at the gavel in his hand. Slowly he laid it down and went for his coat. Then, as if in afterthought, he returned to the lectern, picked up the gavel, and stuffed it in his coat pocket. As Damon steered me through the door with the others, Greg—or was it Will?—followed us out into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Shadowed eye sockets in the firelight made masks of the faces of those gathered on Bishop’s Bluff. Only the hardiest, angriest, and most curious had reached the top, some having given up on the rugged cowpath and gone home to their television sets. Firewood ripped from the dilapidated shack was now a blazing beacon for miles around, for night had clamped its lid down over the landscape. Our numbers had thinned, but one by one those hunting for Cariad were arriving, either to report or to give up and stay. Lanterns and flashlights flickered like fireflies here and there among the hills. In the distance a sleepless coyote howled his woes to a jagged sickle of moon and a screech owl somewhere in the night warned of impending disaster.
The drop in temperature had turned the mud-furrowed slopes into a frozen corduroy that twisted ankles and tripped up our feet. Dana stumbled along near the head of the column. Jim Willard, the Jacksons, and the Zagrodniks, under Caleb’s hawk-like eye, took turns making chairs with their hands to carry Aunt Jenny up the steep incline. About halfway up I saw Dana falter and almost go down. Someone had thrust a gallon jug of liquid—liquor, I supposed—into her hands and the weight of it had thrown her off balance. I scrambled forward and took the bottle away from her just as she slipped to her knees again. She was breathing hard and her lameness was more pronounced. Tyler Bishop caught up with us. “What’s going on here?”
“She lost her balance.”
“Come here, Mel,” he called to the undertaker. “Take this gasoline on up ahead so they can start the bonfire.” Again Dana staggered and I slipped my arm into hers to support her. She shivered and tried to pull away. “I don’t deserve your help,” she panted, but she leaned on me heavily, seeming to draw strength from me, for her steps quickened, her weight on my arm decreased and she regained the breath to speak.
“The stars do not decree our fate,” she said. “We sow our fate in the stars and when they come round again we must reap according to what we have sown. Once I betrayed a friend—not deliberately—but I helped cause her death and I was unable to save her—or,” her voice fell, “too cowardly. She and her mother had been good to me and my people, had saved some of us from the spotted disease, but other white people had been bad. We wanted to frighten the white man so he would go away from Naumkeag, so we danced with the slaves at their sabbats. They drank of our magic and we of theirs until we brewed a strong poison for our enemies. The Obayah Man instructed us. We drove their cattle into the sea, weakened their axles so their wheels fell off, threw stones at their houses, and planted toads and snakes and strange animals in their beds and in the meeting house, while the slaves hid poppets where they would be found and spread evil rumors about those whom the Obayah Man chose. I did not think my poison could hurt my friend because she didn’t belong to the Obayah Man’s church and owned no slave, but it did. Vengeance is not justice; it is a stone thrown into the waters and makes no distinction between innocent and guilty. You will need to remember that tonight, Mitti.”
My mind slipped gears between past and present. She knew nothing of my dreams, yet this might have been Yawataw walking beside me. Her fingers tightened on my wrist.
“The world is full of demons,” she continued, “material and immaterial, but for every demon there are a thousand good spirits—angels you call them—if we only make use of them. One of these is Forgiveness, who is only a little less strong than Love.”
“But we must have discipline and punishment,” I argued.
“To forgive doesn’t require us to condone,” she said. “As for discipline and punishment—they are the responsibility of the law and society. I speak of the individual spirit—our responsibility is to seek after angels, not demons. They’re all about us and it is up to us to choose. Because I chose wrongly, my friend, her sister and others died. I have paid my debt to the sister, but I have other debts to pay tonight.”
Was she out of her head or was I dreaming this, too? The wind sang around us and the air was filled with voices. When we reached the top of the bluff Dana was separated from me and herded to one side where the accused were assembled under a large oak on the smoke-laden side of the fire. She mounted a small, wobbly platform, her face muffled in the hood of her cloak. Caleb leaned on his shotgun beside her, the blue veins in his nose glistening in the firelight. At his order, his charges seated themselves on the ground. Darcy and Marion huddled together in silence. Aunt Jenny lay with her head in Rhoda Jackson’s lap, shivering under the blanket someone had thrown over her, while Jim Willard and Darrell Jackson sat to one side.
They were the goats. I was kept among the sheep on the leeward side of the fire, possibly because they hadn’t made up their minds about me in spite of Iris’ denunciation. It was my child who was missing and they were torn between pity and vengeance.
Though I was close to the fire, its warmth failed to drive the chill from my heart. How could I remain here in this madness when my child was lost somewhere out there? But Damon kept a firm grip on me and I was as much a prisoner as those on the other side of the fire.
Rowan, too, had tried to join the hunt, but had been ordered back, for which I was grateful. Now she remained silent, among the gibbering girls, her head downcast. Iris stood next to her, eyes riveted on the fire, her mouth curved in a slight smile. Esther had left her baby with Mrs. Soames and now was trying to calm Mrs. Willard. Greg was nowhere to be seen. Was his one of those lights out there in the dark?
Lucian stood with his back so close to the flames he seemed almost to have risen out of them. He he
ld his bible in his hands, its pages bristling with white reference cards. After a moment of silent prayer, he opened to one of the selections.
“Brothers and Sisters,” his voice rose above the wind and the crackling wood, “we have come to a difficult moment in the history of this community. We who have loathed witch-hunters are forced to face the reality that traffickers with Satan do exist and must be ferreted out and either made to turn from their sinful ways or be cast out. Even so did Lucifer attack Salem. There his weapons were superstition and fear. Do not think because we gather to cast Satan out of our society that we have become witchhunters as they did three centuries ago. The Evil One uses stratagems to confuse our thinking. Where our ancestors were too strict, we have been too liberal. We define evil as a mental disease. Satan would crow with delight if we were to liken the sufferings of these girls to the vicious behavior of those maids in Salem. The Puritans believed in Satan and feared him. We, all too often, neither believe in him nor fear him, and thus are all the more vulnerable to his delusions. Now witches can brazenly parade their blasphemy before us and all we do is say, ‘How quaint!’”
A prolonged nervous titter formed a descant over mutterings around the fire. Someone started to clap, then stopped.
“Strange things,” Lucian continued when they had quieted, “have been going on in Peacehaven, from trivial incidents to murder. You have tolerated the presence of pagans and atheists. Saint John wrote of a similar situation in Revelation: ‘I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience… Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel,’” turning his head slowly toward Dana, “‘which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.’
“Now you are asking, ‘Lucian, when have we committed fornication with her?—eaten things sacrificed unto idols?’ I say to hold commerce with her is mental fornication and to drink of her potions is to eat meat sacrificed unto idols.” He pointed to Aunt Jenny. “Who knows what poisons she’s been given?”
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 35