“It depends on your definition of torture.” Lilian’s manner changed from neutral to scholarly as she continued, “By the mid-seventeenth century, most educated Englishmen regarded extreme forms of torture as an unreliable means of extracting the truth from a suspected criminal. Techniques such as flaying, branding, the gouging out of eyes, and the breaking of bones on the rack were, therefore, no longer used to coerce confessions from alleged witches.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Henry said uncertainly.
“It was progress of a sort, I suppose,” Lilian allowed. “Unfortunately, witch-hunters resorted to less flagrant forms of torture. The three principle forms were known as swimming, pricking, and watching and walking.”
“What’s wrong with swimming?” asked Millicent.
“The swimming test was meant to prove that a woman had rejected the water of baptism and was therefore both a heretic and a witch,” said Lilian. “It involved tying a woman’s limbs together or tying her to a chair, and tossing her into a pond or a river. If the woman sank, she was released from custody. If she ‘rejected’ the water and floated, she was found guilty as charged. As you can imagine, the swimming test resulted in many drownings. On the other hand, buoyant women were sent to the gallows, so they weren’t much better off than their more leaden sisters.”
“They did that to Mistress Meg?” said Millicent, aghast. “After all the good she’d done?”
“I don’t know,” said Lilian. “The Reverend Gowland doesn’t specify the types of ordeal Mistress Meg faced.”
“What about the other thing?” said Opal. “The pricking?”
“Pricking was a way of finding a witch’s mark,” said Lilian. “It was believed that all witches had a place on their bodies that wouldn’t flinch or bleed if pricked with a needle. Sometimes a dagger like needle—a bodkin—was used for the pricking. A woman could be stabbed hundreds of times by a witch finder intent on finding a witch’s mark.”
“They stuck Mistress Meg with needles?” Opal said, her face pale. “Hundreds of times?”
“Again, I don’t know,” said Lilian. “Gamaliel doesn’t say.”
“What was the third one you mentioned?” asked Selena Buxton, almost fearfully. “The watching and walking?”
“It was, perhaps, the most wicked torture of all,” said Lilian. “I regret to say that some elements of it are still practiced in so-called civilized countries. Watching and walking combines acute sleep deprivation with starvation. A suspected witch’s clothing would be taken from her. She would be dressed in a simple shift and made to sit in a cell for hours, sometimes for many days and nights, without sleep or food, while the witch hunters watched her.”
“What did they expect to see?” asked Selena.
“They hoped the witch’s familiar—a demonic cat or dog or, in Mistress Meg’s case, a demonic goat—would turn up to feed her,” said Lilian.
“They thought a goat would appear in the cell, carrying a plate of food?” Henry said incredulously.
“You have the general idea,” said Lilian. “When no familiar appeared, they ordered the suspect to walk barefoot around her cell for hour after endless hour, while they pelted her with questions. I doubt that many women survived watching and walking without giving the witch hunters precisely the answers they sought.”
Selena bowed her head, Opal shook hers, Millicent clucked her tongue in disgust, and Elspeth shuddered. Charles and Grant looked uncharacteristically grim. Dick and Henry were clearly revolted, Amelia bit her lip, and gentle George Wetherhead looked as if he might faint. I wrapped my arms around myself, as if an icy breeze had blown through the room. I’d foreseen Mistress Meg’s tragic end, but hearing my hunch confirmed gave me no pleasure.
“Makes you sick to think of it,” Dick muttered.
“What’s sick,” snapped Lilian, in a voice that was far from neutral and no longer scholarly, “is the willingness of one human being to brutally torment another in the name of God or country or anything else. I’d hoped for something better from Reverend Gowland, but he was, after all, a man of his times. He, and others like him, stood by and did nothing while an innocent woman was taken away to be tortured and hanged. If and when we recover the memoir’s fourth page, I shall find it distasteful in the extreme to translate his description of Mistress Meg’s miserable death.”
She stepped off the dais, passed the scroll and the notepad to Amelia, and left the schoolhouse, her eyes blazing with fury. A hushed silence ensued, followed by the rustling noises of people collecting their belongings and getting quietly to their feet.
“We’d best be in church tomorrow morning,” Henry said wisely. “We don’t want Mrs. Bunting any more upset than she already is.”
“You needn’t remind me to go to church, Henry Cook,” said Millicent. “I’m sure I’ve never missed a Sunday service.”
“You missed four Sunday services in a row last March,” Selena reminded her.
“I had pneumonia,” Millicent retorted. “Missing a service doesn’t count if you’re sick.”
“I don’t recall reading anything in the Bible about sick leave,” said Opal.
“I never said it was in the Bible,” Millicent barked.
The familiar strains of Handmaidens bickering came as a welcome relief after Lilian’s harrowing lecture. I glanced at the scroll in Amelia’s hand and felt strangely guilty for finding it.
“Will you be in church tomorrow?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, gazing fixedly at the scroll. “Mrs. Bunting invited me to sit up front with her.”
“New parishioners usually do.” I hesitated, then asked, “Are you all right, Amelia?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she replied absently, turning the scroll to look at it from different angles. “It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it? The way the past can haunt the present?”
“You don’t have to go on with the search, you know,” I said. “If it’s too disturbing for you, we can stop it right here, right now.”
“The search?” she said, as if coming out of a trance. “Must we go on with the search? Of course we must. Alfie would have seen it through to the end, regardless of the outcome, and so will I.” She stowed the scroll and the notepad in her carpet bag, stood, and walked up the center aisle, saying, “Thank you for finding page three, Lori. I’ll see you at church tomorrow.”
I watched my new friend leave the schoolhouse, feeling as though I’d missed something important.
Twenty
The three-arrow glyph stumped Aunt Dimity, but she thought she knew what I’d missed in my unsettling exchange with Amelia.
Night had fallen. Will and Rob were upstairs, asleep, and dreaming, no doubt, of winning the Grand National on Thunder and Storm. Bill was stretched out on the couch in the living room, reading the newspaper he’d abandoned to work on Monsieur Delacroix’s will, Stanley was sleeping on Bill’s chest, and I was in the study, curled comfortably in a leather armchair before a crackling fire, with the blue journal open in my lap.
“Enlighten me,” I said. “Tell me what Amelia meant when she said that the past haunted the present.”
I stretched my feet toward the fire as the familiar copperplate scrolled confidently across the page.
You’ve evidently forgotten that Amelia is related by blood to Gamaliel Gowland. If she feels a personal connection to him, his words are bound to affect her more strongly than they would someone whose interest in Gamaliel is purely academic.
“She’s depressed because her distant ancestor was a rat?” I shook my head. “I don’t buy it, Dimity. If I looked hard enough, I’m sure I could find a rat or two dangling from my family tree, but it wouldn’t send me into a tailspin. Amelia didn’t even know Gamaliel was her multi-great-granduncle until she read Alfred’s papers. Why would she care so much about him now?”
Because the memoir has brought Gamaliel Gowland to life, made him real to her, in a way a family tree never could.
“The memoir’s made him real for al
l of us,” I said. “And in that sense, I agree with you. I felt pretty haunted by the past after Lilian’s talk about witch hunts. It made me think of how tempting it is, even today, to look the other way while terrible things are done to innocent people. I’d like to believe I’d rush to their defense, but maybe I’m not so different from Gamaliel.”
You? Look the other way? With your sharp tongue and quick temper? Ha! You would have chased the witch-hunters off with a pitchfork.
I chuckled ruefully. “Thanks, Dimity. I think.”
At any rate, I’m not convinced that the rector was a rat. His sermons weren’t aimed at finding scapegoats for the drought. They were stories of endurance in the face of catastrophe. Furthermore, he seems to have ignored Jenna Penner’s initial rant about Mistress Meg, and it was a visiting cleric, not Gamaliel, who used Jenna’s second tirade as an excuse to bring the witch finder to Finch. Perhaps Gamaliel was in love with Meg after all.
“If he loved her,” I said flatly, “he would have protected her.”
How? Remember the times, Lori. Superstition was rife, witch-hunting was legal, and rectors who refused to toe the line could be accused of advocating witchcraft. If Gamaliel had spoken out—
“‘He could have lost his livelihood and quite possibly his life,’” I said quickly. “I’m quoting you, by the way.”
I know you are and I stand by my words. It’s a lot to ask of a man, even a man in love. Speaking of which, is William pining away?
“No,” I said. “He’s coping with the situation by throwing himself into his work.”
Bully for him. I told you he was a sensible sort of chap. Was Bill of any help with the latest glyph?
“None at all,” I replied. “He doesn’t know what it means.”
Don’t lose sleep over it. Something will turn up.
“Something did turn up this morning,” I said. “Not about the glyph, but about Mad Maggie. Kit heard about her from his stepfather. In his version, Mad Maggie roamed the woods on the Anscombe Manor estate. She also had goat’s horns growing out of her head.”
Goat’s horns and an affinity for the woods? How interesting. It seems that Mistress Meg and Mad Maggie have more in common than the name Margaret.
“I knew you’d make the connection,” I said. “I suppose, if I were a little kid playing in the woods, the sight of a strange woman cutting firewood might scare the wits out of me.”
I believe you’ve put your finger on the origins of Mistress Meg’s transformation from a healer into the hideous hag of my childhood.
“I’d like to put my finger on where she lived,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to discover the remains of her house?”
There wouldn’t be much left of it after three hundred years.
“Even so,” I said, “I’d love to find it.”
You’ve grown fond of Mistress Meg, haven’t you?
“Yes, I have,” I said.
I can understand why. She was independent, bullheaded, energetic…Hmmm…Who does she remind me of?
“Good night, Dimity,” I said with a wry smile.
Good night, my dear.
The fine weather was still with us when we left for church the following morning. As usual, we were running late. Bill had forgotten his handkerchief, the boys had tried to sneak out of the house in their riding boots, and I’d had to run back into the cottage for my purse. By the time we reached St. George’s, Elspeth was playing the last chords of the voluntary and Mr. Barlow, whose many roles included that of church usher, was standing at his post to the left of the chancel, armed with the collection plate. We slid into the very last pew on the center aisle, trying but failing spectacularly to be inconspicuous.
Henry Cook’s advice to attend the service had apparently been heeded because the church was packed. Amelia gave me a friendly wave from her place of honor next to Lilian in the front pew and Mr. Barlow favored me with a wink, but the Handmaidens sniffed disapprovingly while I tried to settle the boys, and Peggy Taxman emitted a loud, disparaging grunt. Thankfully, the rest of the congregation was too intent on private meditation to pay much attention to us.
The vicar began to pray and I bowed my head reverently, but my mind was on other matters. Deirdre had telephoned the cottage at half past seven to inform us that Willis, Sr., was too wrapped up in his work to attend church or to host our regular Sunday brunch at Fairworth House. While I shared Aunt Dimity’s belief that Willis, Sr., was better off working than pining, there was a limit to everything. What kind of work, I asked myself, would require him to cancel a visit from his grandsons?
Aunt Dimity had once told me that retired attorneys never really retired, so I had to assume that an elderly client—perhaps one on his deathbed—had, like Monsieur Delacroix, changed his mind about his will and asked Willis, Sr., to rewrite it before the grim reaper’s arrival. As the vicar mounted the pulpit to give his sermon, I found myself wondering if more homeless cats were about to benefit from a niece’s disinheritance.
I could tell that Lilian had influenced the vicar’s choice of subjects because the crux of his sermon seemed to be that we each had a responsibility to protect the weak from the strong, the individual from the mob. Sadly, I was too preoccupied with my own thoughts to listen closely to his wise and heartfelt words. I was so self-absorbed that I didn’t even bother to look around when the west door opened and a group of latecomers shuffled furtively into the church.
“Mummy?” Will asked, craning his neck to look behind us. “Who are those people?”
I turned to follow his gaze and felt a thrill of shock and horror when I saw Daffodil Deeproots and at least twenty-five of her colorfully dressed cronies filing in to range themselves across the entire west end of the church. The smell of patchouli hit me like a pie in the face.
The vicar shocked me further when he stopped preaching in mid-sentence and bellowed, “All rise! Hymn 294, Mrs. Binney! Let us sing!”
As Elspeth leaned on the opening chords of “Jerusalem” and the parishioners bounced to their feet to belt out the lyrics, I tried frantically to locate Amelia. I leaned sideways to peer past the broad back of the farmer in front of me, but the singing, swaying congregation had created a human wall that blocked my view as effectively as an old-growth forest. I caught a brief glimpse of Mr. Barlow’s elbow as he disappeared into the sacristy before the song came to an end and the vicar asked us all to be seated.
I remained on my feet to scan the front pew, but Amelia wasn’t there. Instead, Bree was sitting in the place of honor beside Lilian, her face turned attentively toward the vicar.
“Sit,” Bill hissed, tugging on my trench coat.
I sank onto the pew, bewildered.
“Is it a circus, Mummy?” Rob asked, squirming around to gaze curiously at Daffodil and her motley companions.
“Something like that,” I said. “Eyes forward, please. It’s impolite to stare.”
In the meantime, the vicar had begun preaching an entirely different sermon. It was one of his classics, a dry, drawn-out, desperately dull analysis of an Aramaic word, the derivations of which were crucial to the understanding of an obscure commentary on a passage in Leviticus. Knowing what was to come, mothers with infants or toddlers immediately carried or led their progeny out of church.
After the first ten minutes of the vicar’s sermon, I gave the boys crayons and paper to keep them from fidgeting. After forty, Bill took them home. By the time the vicar had spoken for a solid hour, nearly every head in the church had drooped, and when he hit the ninety-minute mark, the snores of the sleeping could be heard in our land.
I was two blinks away from a coma when the west door opened again and I regained consciousness. The Bowenists wanted out. I suspected that some of them had finally realized that their prey had flown the coop while others had simply had their fill of Aramaic derivations, because their departure was accompanied by mingled mutterings of “Mother Mae isn’t here” and “I think my brain’s gone numb.” Wherever Amelia was, I hoped
she would have the sense to lie low until her followers left the village. With most of her neighbors napping in church, she was well and truly on her own.
The vicar droned on, as did the snoring, but Bree was alert and watching the retreat intently over her shoulder. When the last Bowenist closed the west door with a thud that roused the sleepers, Bree dashed into the south porch. She returned ten minutes later, grinning broadly and making a slashing movement across her throat.
The vicar stopped talking, leaned on his pulpit, and beamed at his flock.
“Thank you,” he said. “You were marvelous. I will, of course, administer the Eucharist to any who desire it. May I see a show of hands?”
Not a single hand was raised.
“I understand,” said the vicar. “We shall attempt a full service next Sunday—with a much shorter sermon, I promise you.”
Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch Page 19