Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch

by Nancy Atherton

  He descended the pulpit to a chorus of polite chuckles and gave the benediction, but instead of processing down the center aisle while Elspeth played the recessional, he walked only as far as the front pew and stayed there to speak with Bree. I avoided the main torrent of departing parishioners by darting up the north aisle to the front of the church, where a few others had lingered to chat with Bree and the Buntings.

  “I sense a plot,” I said, when I reached them. “Did you revamp the liturgy to confound the Bowenists?”

  “It was Bree’s idea,” said Charles Bellingham. “She thought it was awfully quiet on the Bowenist front yesterday, so she predicted that they would make a push today.”

  “Since the church would be a likely target,” said Lilian, “we put together a reaction plan. Teddy explained it before the service and the entire congregation agreed to play along, if necessary.”

  “If the Bowenists showed up,” Bree went on, “Mr. Bunting would call for a hymn and we’d stand to sing it. That way, we could mask the sight and the sound of Mr. Barlow smuggling Amelia into the crypt.”

  “Amelia’s in the crypt?” I said. “I’ve never been in the crypt. I didn’t know we had a crypt.”

  “It’s dark and damp and musty,” said Millicent Scroggins, with a delicate shudder.

  “Mr. Barlow’s the only one who ever goes down there,” said Elspeth Binney, “and he does so only to make sure the sump pump is still working.”

  “The entrance is in the sacristy,” said Henry, pointing at the door to the left of the chancel. “Barlow reckoned it would take him no more than a couple of minutes to get Mrs. Thistle from the front pew, through the sacristy, and down into the crypt. By then the hymn would be finished and we could be seated.”

  “Next came the question of how to get rid of the Bowenists,” said Charles.

  “For reasons beyond my comprehension,” said the vicar, “Bree gave me the job of boring them into submission.” He smiled at her. “I hope I lived down to your expectations.”

  “You outdid yourself,” said Bree. “No offense, Mr. Bunting, but your second sermon made me want to tear my own ears off. I’m surprised the Bowenists lasted as long as they did.”

  “I’m surprised any of us lasted as long as we did,” said Lilian. “You were brilliant, Teddy.”

  “Mr. Bunting had to keep talking until I gave him the signal to stop,” said Bree, making the throat-slashing motion again. “Which I did, after I sneaked outside and watched the Bowenists drive away.”

  “I am impressed,” I acknowledged, making a deep bow to the triumphant conspirators. “I am bowled over. I am in awe of your devious minds as well as your capacity to organize and motivate a crowd.”

  “They didn’t need us to motivate them,” said the vicar. “My parishioners don’t approve of persecution and they don’t care to see a woman bullied. Once I described Mrs. Thistle’s dilemma, they were quite willing to help her. Besides, they thought it would be rather good fun. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as raising the roof with a rousing rendition of ‘Jerusalem.’”

  “It’s a pity William missed the service,” Millicent said, giving Amelia a sly, sidelong look. “He has a wonderful singing voice.”

  “As I told you before, Millicent,” said Elspeth, with an air of all-knowing superiority, “William is engaged in an important project at the moment. I’m sure he’ll be back in church next Sunday.”

  “Let’s hope the Bowenists won’t be,” said the vicar.

  “Let them come,” Lilian said defiantly. “With Bree on our side, we cannot fail.”

  “Before my head gets any bigger,” said Bree, “I’ll pop down to the crypt and let the fugitives know it’s safe to come up.”

  “There’s no need,” I said. “They’re here.”

  Mr. Barlow and Amelia had emerged from the sacristy with cobwebs in their hair, mud on their shoes, and looks of barely suppressed excitement on their faces.

  “You’ll never guess what happened in the crypt,” Amelia said breathlessly. “Never in a million years. It simply defies belief.”

  “You’d better tell us, then,” I said, half expecting her to announce her engagement to Mr. Barlow.

  Instead, Amelia thrust out her clenched fist and cried, “We found the fourth page!”

  Twenty-one

  Protruding from either side of Amelia’s fist were the ends of yet another scroll of parchment.

  “Good grief,” I said, stunned.

  “I haven’t opened it yet,” said Amelia. “The crypt was rather dirty.”

  “Millicent,” Elspeth said bossily, “fetch Selena and Opal. They won’t want to miss this.”

  “Why must I fetch them?” Millicent protested. “Your legs appear to be working.”

  “A bit of hush, if you please, ladies,” Lilian scolded. “Mrs. Thistle is about to reveal how she and Mr. Barlow made their miraculous discovery.”

  “Shall we be seated?” the vicar suggested.

  He promptly took his own advice and lowered himself onto the front pew. The rest of us followed his example, but Amelia blocked Mr. Barlow’s bid to join us and tugged him over to stand with her before the altar rail.

  “You must be the one to explain,” she told him. “It was your stroke of genius, not mine.” She gave him a gentle shove, then stepped back, to give him center stage.

  “Not much to explain,” he said gruffly, thrusting his hands into his pockets and hanging his head, like a schoolboy forced to perform a recitation. “Everything went according to plan. Got Mrs. Thistle down to the crypt, lit the lantern, parked ourselves on the camp chairs I’d set up, and that was that.” He raised his head and cocked it to one side. “Thing is, we had a lot of time to kill down there, thanks to Mr. Bunting.”

  The vicar bowed good-naturedly in response to a short round of applause.

  “We didn’t have to sit there like a pair of scared rabbits, though,” Mr. Barlow continued. “The crypt’s near enough soundproof as makes no difference, so we got to talking. Mrs. Thistle told me about Lori finding the third page and Mrs. Bunting translating it.” Mr. Barlow pursed his lips, as if the translation’s disturbing contents had crossed his mind, but he forbore to comment. “Then she told me about the little drawing the rector had made, the one with the three arrows.”

  Amelia came forward, as though she could contain herself no longer.

  “Then Mr. Barlow said, ‘Must be the coat of arms’ and I said, ‘What coat of arms?’ and he said, ‘The old knight’s coat of arms’ and I said, ‘Which old knight?’ and he said, ‘Sir Guillaume—’”

  “—des Flèches!” Lilian interrupted, sitting bolt upright on the pew. “Sir Guillaume des Flèches, the Norman nobleman who built St. George’s. Good gracious, how stupid I’ve been.” She shook her head, looking chagrined.

  “How stupid have you been?” asked Charles.

  “Extremely stupid,” Lilian replied. “I’ve been so busy studying Latin that I’ve forgotten my French.”

  “Nonsense,” said Amelia. “I speak French fluently, but I missed the clue as well. It’s not a word that comes up often in everyday conversation.”

  “Which word would that be?” Henry inquired.

  “Flèches, of course,” said Lilian. “It’s the French word for arrows. Sir Guillaume des Flèches, in English, is Sir William of the Arrows.”

  There was a general murmur of pleased comprehension and much nodding of heads.

  “And he had a coat of arms, did he, this knight of the arrows?” Henry asked.

  “He most certainly did,” said Amelia, resuming the thread of her story. “And Mr. Barlow knew just where it was.”

  “Goodness knows I’ve bumped my head against it often enough,” grumbled Mr. Barlow, rubbing his abused pate.

  “Sir Guillaume had it carved into the crypt’s ceiling as a bas relief,” Amelia explained. “All we had to do was to look up—and there it was!” She raised her arm dramatically and tilted her head back, as if she could see t
he coat of arms hovering above her. “A shield surmounted by a plumed helm and emblazoned with three arrows bound together by a slender banner bearing the motto: Toujours honnête.” She lowered her arm and explained more matter-of-factly, “The motto means always honest as well as always straight. It’s a pun, you see.”

  “Our knight was a straight arrow, was he?” said Henry. “Good on him.”

  “I scratched around the coat of arms with my pocketknife to see if I could find a hole behind it,” said Mr. Barlow, “but I didn’t have any luck there.”

  Amelia motioned toward the wall painting in the north aisle. “Then I remembered how Sir George’s cross pointed us in different directions in the church.”

  “And sure enough,” said Mr. Barlow, “the center arrow pointed us to a fake stone, like the one Bree found in the bell tower. I used my pocketknife to dig it out and—”

  “—he found page four!” Amelia concluded, holding the scroll aloft.

  I stood with the others to congratulate her and to marvel at the strange chain of events that had led her to the scroll’s hiding place.

  “If Mr. Barlow had been in the schoolhouse yesterday,” she said, “he would have recognized the arrows and taken us to the crypt without delay. As it is, I suppose I must feel some sense of gratitude toward Mr. Brocklehurst’s herd of damp cows.”

  “Damp cows?” said Millicent.

  “My unwanted acolytes,” Amelia clarified. “They’re distressingly bovine, but without them I would have had no reason to enter the crypt today.”

  “If I might have the scroll, Mrs. Thistle?” Lilian requested. “I’d like to get started on it.”

  Amelia’s joy in finding the fourth page seemed to drain away as she remembered what it might contain. I felt the same way and my neighbors’ faces indicated that they, too, understood the difficult nature of the task Lilian was about to undertake.

  “I suggest that you return to your homes for a midday meal,” Lilian said, as Amelia passed the scroll to her. “I’ll bring my translation to the schoolhouse in one hour.” She hesitated, then said, “On second thought, make it two hours. It may take me a little longer to translate page four.”

  Since Fairworth House was out of bounds, Bill decided to take our sons to the Cotswold Farm Park after lunch. Will and Rob were enthralled by the prospect of a boys-only adventure and Bill claimed that he’d rather pet a polka-dotted pig than listen to Gamaliel’s account of Mistress Meg’s demise. I sympathized with him, but felt an overriding need to follow the story through to its end.

  I waved them off as they sped away in the Rover, then backed my ancient Morris Mini out of the garage and drove slowly to Finch. There was no other way to drive the Mini, but its sluggish pace suited my mood. I felt as if I were on my way to an execution.

  I parked the Mini in front of Bill’s office and joined the steady stream of people entering the schoolhouse. It looked as though the only locals who weren’t there were those who had livestock to feed or businesses to manage. When I commented on the large turnout, Selena Buxton informed me that the vicar had mentioned Amelia’s scroll hunt in passing when he’d spoken to his parishioners before the morning service.

  “They’ve come to find out what it’s all about,” she said. “No one wants to be the last to know.”

  Especially not in Finch, I thought, but I kept the thought to myself.

  Amelia had again saved a seat for me in the front row, but hers was empty when I arrived because she was on the dais, asking for quiet. When she had the crowd’s attention, she repeated the general introduction Lilian had made the previous day, presumably to save Lilian the trouble of repeating it.

  Amelia had just finished adding the chapter about the crypt when Lilian entered the schoolroom, carrying the scroll Mr. Barlow had found and a notepad. Amelia exchanged a few quiet words with Lilian, then stepped down from the dais and sat beside me, looking at once expectant and resigned.

  I couldn’t tell what was going on in Lilian’s mind. Her face, which had seemed troubled prior to her reading of the third page, was now an inscrutable mask. I wondered if she was holding her emotions in check to avoid being overwhelmed by them.

  “Since Mrs. Thistle has brought you up to date on the memoir’s history,” she said, “I’ll read my translation without preamble. I would ask you again to hold your comments until I’ve finished.” She cleared her throat, gazed down at the notepad, and began to read.

  “When the witch finder arrived at the house in the woods, thirty of us stood waiting for him, with Mistress Meg seated before us on a large, flat stone. He ordered her to confess her crimes. She said she would not, for she had committed no crimes. He repeated Jenna Penner’s accusations and called for more witnesses to come forward.

  “Mistress Brown came forward. She said: ‘There is no harm in talking to goats. I am no witch, but I talk to my cow and sing to her, too. The biggest simpleton in the parish knows that singing calms a fussing creature and helps the milk flow.’

  “Mistress Tolliver came forward. She said: ‘There is no black magic in Mistress Meg’s potions. She makes them from the herbs God grows in the woods and in the fields and along the riverbanks. The biggest fool in Finch knows how to use herbs to soothe a sore throat or to reduce a fever.’

  “Master Hooper came forward. He said: ‘Jenna Penner’s pig died because Jenna would not go to the well to fetch water for it. Jenna has always been too lazy to look after her animals.’

  “Mistress Cobb came forward. She said: ‘Jenna as a young girl would always blame others for her troubles, and she would tell lies to make herself appear blameless. She has not changed.’

  “Master Malvern came forward: He said: ‘Jenna covets Mistress Meg’s goats. To have them, she would let Mistress Meg hang.’

  “Others came forward to give further instances of Jenna Penner’s guile and greed. Jenna said they were all witches in a coven meant to ruin her, but the witch finder told her to be silent. He asked me if Mistress Meg attended church. I answered that I had seen Mistress Meg attend church on many occasions. Jenna Penner called me a liar, but again the witch finder told her to be silent.

  “The witch finder weighed the testimony of the one against the testimony of the many. He weighed Jenna’s bitter, resentful words against Mistress Meg’s dignified silence. After much deliberation, he declared Mistress Meg’s innocence.

  “He ordered Jenna Penner to be placed in the stocks for three days. But for her children, he said, he would have placed her in the stocks for thirty. If she dared ever again to bear false witness against anyone, he warned, he would not be so lenient.

  “The witch finder and his men departed. My flock and I departed. Master Tolliver and Master Cobb took Jenna Penner to the stocks.”

  Lilian looked up from her notepad. “There the text ends.”

  For a moment nobody moved or said anything. Then whispers ran through the room like a summer breeze.

  “Innocent?”

  “Not hanged?”

  “Not tortured?”

  “They spoke up for her.”

  “He lied.”

  “He was a priest and he lied.”

  “Jenna lied, too.”

  “Doesn’t make it right.”

  “Innocent?”

  Lilian coughed peremtorily and the whispering ceased.

  “I’m as surprised as you are by the verdict,” she said, smiling, “and I’m ashamed to say that I was stunned by the villagers’ testimony. I expected them to jeer at Mistress Meg as she was taken away. Instead, they defended her and discredited her attacker. I wish I could apologize to them for underestimating their intelligence, their courage, and their loyalty.”

  “What about the rector?” Millicent said primly. “He fibbed, didn’t he? In page two, he said Mistress Meg never went to church, but he told the witch finder she did. It can’t be right for a man of God to be telling lies.”

  “It’s not right,” Lilian acknowledged. “The rector should have told the tr
uth and trusted in God’s grace. It’s possible that the witch finder would have been open-minded enough to overlook Mistress Meg’s repeated violations of church law. It’s also possible that he would have condemned her as a witch for those violations alone. Before we judge the rector too harshly, I suppose we all must ask ourselves: Would I tell a lie to save a cherished member of my community from incarceration, torture, and execution?”

  I knew what I’d do, but many of my neighbors appeared ready to debate the issue loudly and enthusiastically until nightfall. Before they could work up a full head of steam, however, Amelia spoke.

  “Is it finished, then?” she asked, peering anxiously at Lilian. “Is the memoir complete? Have we found the last page?”