“We pulled it off, Father,” said Bill. “Myron’s spinning a pretty tale about identity theft, but he’s not dealing with gullible airheads anymore. By the time Scotland Yard, the Inland Revenue, the Charity Commission, and the rest are finished with him, his tale-spinning days will be over. He’ll spend the next ten years of his life trying to zap his cell mates with his laser-beam eyes. Something tells me he won’t have much success.”
While Bill was talking, Amelia was hugging. She embraced Lilian, Emma, Kit, Nell, and me twice over before she gave Bill a kiss on each cheek as well as a hug. Then she turned to face Willis, Sr.
“I don’t know how to thank you, William,” she said. “You’ve set me free.”
I noted with immense interest her use of his first name, but Willis, Sr., didn’t bat an eye.
“It was my civic duty to report Mr. Brocklehurst’s illicit activities to the appropriate authorities,” he said. “If you will excuse me…”
“Must you go?” Amelia gazed at him imploringly, then ducked her head and stammered, “W-we’ve found the fifth page. I-I was rather hoping you might stay to help us with the new glyph.”
Willis, Sr., must have been ready to drop after his marathon effort to nail Myron Brocklehurst. He must have been yearning for a hot bath, a warm bed, and hours of deep, dreamless sleep. He must have known that the rest of us had enough brain power to decipher the glyph without him, but none of it seemed to matter.
His chest rose and fell in a slow, silent sigh as he gazed at Amelia’s bowed head and said, “Of course I shall stay, Mrs. Thistle.”
Twenty-four
“I’m glad you’re staying, William,” said Kit, “but we may not need your help to decipher the glyph. I glanced at it before I left the kitchen and I think I know what it means.”
He drew from his shirt pocket the scroll he’d taken from Lilian and unfurled it to reveal the drawing at the end of the Latin text.
“Is it a feather?” I guessed.
“I think not,” said Willis, Sr., eyeing the drawing judiciously. “I believe it represents a fern.”
“So do I,” said Kit, “which makes perfect sense when you think about it.”
“Does it?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. He gave the scroll to Amelia, then stood back to survey Willis, Sr.’s, elegantly shod feet. “You’ll need to borrow a pair of my Wellies, William. Your leather shoes won’t serve you well where we’re going.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Into the woods,” Kit replied.
Since the woods were still dripping wet from the recent rains, Emma decided to outfit us all in Wellington boots and the long, brown slickers she kept on hand for rainy-day riding lessons. By the time we set out, we looked like a posse of gardeners, and baffled gardeners at that, because the only person who knew where Kit was leading us was Kit.
We followed him down a muddy two-rut track that skirted the north pasture and ended at the edge of the forest that stretched from the fence line all the way to the Fairworth estate.
“There’s no trail, I’m afraid,” said Kit. “We’ll have to bushwhack from here.”
“Kit,” I said patiently, “why are you taking us on a jungle safari?”
“Didn’t I say?” He scanned our blank faces, then smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s so clear to me that I stupidly thought it would be clear to you, too. I’ve been turning it over in the back of my mind ever since Lilian read her translation to us in the kitchen. Until then I didn’t know Mistress Meg was called Margaret Redfearn, so it took me a while to fit the pieces together.”
“And now that you have…?” Lilian coaxed.
“Once I saw the fern glyph, it became even more glaringly obvious,” he said. “It’s another pun, you see, like the three arrows and Guillaume des Flèches. The fern refers to Margaret Redfearn, of course, but I suspect it also refers to a place known as Redfern Meadow.”
“Redfern Meadow?” said Emma. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“You wouldn’t have heard of it unless you’d grown up playing in these woods,” Kit explained. “It’s not on any map. It’s a local name for a local spot and there’s really not much to it. But I think…” He bit his lower lip, then shook his head. “No, I know it’s the right place. Come. You’ll see.”
Nell had an elvish ability to move through the woods without apparent effort, but we mere mortals slipped, tripped, and stumbled our way through vegetation that seemed bent on our destruction. Bill uttered a number of ripe words before he remembered that ladies were present and I uttered a few more before I remembered that I was a lady. I couldn’t imagine how Willis, Sr., managed to stay upright after three sleep-deprived days, but he was second only to Kit in his bushwhacking prowess. Amelia was surprisingly sure-footed as well, but no one, of course, could compare with Nell, who seemed to float over the slippery roots, muddy holes, and snapping branches that made me wish I’d spent the day in bed.
We came at last to an opening in the trees, a glade filled with chest-high bracken that had turned from summer green to autumn red. Glittering raindrops bejeweled each flaming frond and velvety mosses glowed in the lacy shadows. The sight was so beautiful and so unexpected that I almost forgot what I’d gone through to see it.
“Redfern Meadow,” said Kit.
“It’s not really a meadow,” Emma pointed out.
“Not anymore,” said Kit. “But it used to be a lot bigger. We’re surrounded by some of the youngest trees in the wood. If you poke around, you’ll see that a swathe of forest was cleared away at one time to enlarge the glade.”
Amelia, who’d been busy restoring order to her disheveled hair, dropped her hands and asked in a startled voice, “Could Mistress Meg have enlarged the glade?”
“It’s possible,” said Kit. “There’s evidence that a small house once stood here. I found the post holes when I was a child. I think I can find them again.” He waded into the bracken, gave a short cry, and plunged headfirst into the sea of crimson fronds.
“Kit?” I called. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, grinning ruefully as he pushed himself to his feet. “I forgot about the rock.”
“The rock?” Amelia said faintly.
“Yes,” said Kit. “There’s a big, flat rock here. When I was little, I used to stand on it and pretend I was a giant looking out over trees. It tripped me up.”
“Mistress Meg sat on a large, flat stone when the witch finder came to arrest her,” said Amelia. She gazed about the glade wonderingly. “Could we be standing where she once stood?”
“Let’s have a look at the rock,” said Bill, and waded in after Kit.
Both men disappeared in the bracken. The fronds above them rustled and swayed as they crouched to examine the stone. I heard Kit say “Let’s use my knife,” followed by a series of grunts and scraping noises. After several suspense-filled minutes, the two stood up in the bracken, red faced and wet haired but smiling.
“We found it,” Bill said. He held up an old glass bottle stoppered with a thick plug of beeswax. “Gamaliel buried it under the rock. He placed the scroll in a bottle, to keep it from disintegrating, and he marked the rock with a miniscule fern to show where the bottle was hidden.”
“Even if I’d seen the fern when I was little,” said Kit, “I couldn’t have found the bottle. I wasn’t strong enough to shift the rock.”
He and Bill pushed their way through the bracken to rejoin the rest of us.
“Shall we open it here or back at the manor?” Bill asked.
“Here, please,” said Amelia.
Kit used his knife to dig though the beeswax. Amelia extracted the scroll, removed its limp black ribbon, and unrolled three sheets of parchment with trembling hands.
“Three pages?” said Lilian, raising her eyebrows. “The rector must have been in a chatty mood.”
Amelia looked at the third page.
“No glyph,” she said. “We’ve reached the end of Gamaliel’s me
moir.” She turned to pass the scroll to Lilian. “I may be asking too much of you, Mrs. Bunting, but could you possibly translate it here and now? I’d like to hear Gamaliel’s last words here, in this place.”
“An extemporaneous translation of three full pages of Latin text?” Lilian looked doubtful. “I wouldn’t attempt it on my own, but perhaps, with William’s help…?”
“I am at your service, madam,” said Willis, Sr., but he swayed slightly as he spoke.
Amelia glanced at him anxiously and said, “I need to sit down. Scolding those young idiots, tramping through the woods—it’s all been a bit much for me. Are there any logs nearby?”
“Over here,” said Kit, and led us a short distance away from the glade to a fallen tree that had made its own clearing.
“Nature provides,” said Amelia. She lowered herself onto the log and beckoned to Willis, Sr., and Lilian to join her. “The scholars shall share my bench. Come, have a seat, you two. Save your energy for your work.”
It was a kind and clever way to give my tired father-in-law a chance to rest. I smiled at Amelia gratefully as “the scholars” accepted her invitation and sat side by side with their heads bent over the curling sheets of parchment in Lilian’s hands. Kit, Nell, Bill, and I ranged ourselves before them while they pored over the Latin text, but it took less time than I’d expected for them to complete their daunting task. Apart from a few brief pauses to consult with Willis, Sr., Lilian translated the text on the spot with remarkable fluency.
“I was sent as a youth to live and study with my uncle, a vicar in Oxford,” she began. “I seldom returned home because the journey was costly and my father’s income was modest. After my ordination, I was appointed to several parochial parishes before I became the rector of St. George’s parish church.
“Within days of my arrival in Finch, I learned of a heathen called Margaret Redfearn who lived without male protection in the forest to the south of the village. I made my way to her dwelling place, determined to save her immortal soul from damnation.
“I found her grazing her goats in a pasture not far from her house in the woods and I called to her, asking her if she had some quarrel with God.
“‘Not with God,’ she replied, ‘but with men I have quarreled mightily.’ She smiled at me and said, ‘Do you not know me, my brother?’
“I studied her face more closely and saw my sister’s eyes gazing at me.”
Amelia gasped. “Mistress Meg was Gamaliel Gowland’s sister?”
“Please let me finish,” said Lilian, and continued her flowing translation.
“I knew Margaret’s eyes, though everything else about her had changed beyond recognition. My eldest sister had been a lithe and beautiful girl when I’d last seen her, but she was now a thick-waisted woman, with arms as muscular as a man’s and a face as brown and creased as a walnut’s shell. Her blue eyes, though, were the same eyes that had watched over me and my younger siblings through many a childhood illness.
“‘Father wrote to me years ago,’ I said when I could speak. ‘He told me you had entered a convent.’
“Margaret laughed and said, ‘Sit, my brother Gamaliel, and I will tell you the truth.’
“We sat at the edge of the meadow, with the goats grazing peacefully before us, and she told me a marvelous tale.
“She said: ‘Our father wished me to marry. When I refused, the priest advised him to send me forthwith to a convent. They would have caged me in marriage or within the walls of a nunnery, but I took to the woods in the night and set out to live a life of my own choosing.
“‘A kindly cook at a manor house gave me a meal one day and told the lord of the manor I was skilled in the healing arts. He asked me to tend to his mother, who had lost all faith in surgeons. I eased the old woman’s chest pains and the lord was grateful. He gave me a place in his wood for my house as well as a pair of goats and grazing rights in his pasture. My goats and I have lived here ever since. The villagers do nothing to hinder me and I do my best for them when they are ill. I have no desire to go elsewhere.’
“I asked why our father had lied to me. She laughed again and ruffled my hair, as she had done when I was a child, and told me I would die as innocent as the day I was born.
“‘Father had to save face,” she explained. ‘He could not admit that his daughter was beyond his control.’
“I asked why she was called Margaret Redfearn rather than Margaret Gowland.
“‘I left our father’s name behind when I left his house,’ she said. ‘The villagers rechristened me, naming me after the glade that is my true home.’
“I asked why she came not to church, as she had attended services faithfully when we were children.
“‘I am not fond of stone walls built by men,’ she replied. ‘I speak to God in the church He created. I hear His voice in the wind and the birdsong and the silence. I serve Him by using the gift He gave me to heal. I have no need of your church.’
“She then made me promise to tell no one of our close kinship. She knew the perils of the life she had chosen. She foresaw a time when she would be accused of witchcraft. She did not want me to be tainted by her misfortune should the witch finder knock on her door. I kept my promise.
“On the night Margaret came to me in the churchyard, fire lit the sky above the Tolliver farmstead. My sister had cleansed their lifeless bodies and their dwelling place by setting them alight. After she left me, fire lit the sky above Redfearn Meadow. I ran to the glade still clad in my nightshirt, but I was too late. The wooden house she had built with her own hands was ablaze and”—Lilian’s voice quavered—“Margaret was inside it.
“I do not believe Margaret’s death was an accident. The signs of the Black Death were upon her. I believe she cleansed herself and her home with fire to keep her affliction from spreading to the village. In the eyes of the Church, suicide is a mortal sin. In my eyes, Margaret committed a virtuous act to save those who had saved her from the gallows. God alone knows the truth, but in my heart I know that she is with Him.
“I have told no one of my close kinship with Margaret Redfearn. I acknowledge it now, in secret, because I do not want her story to die with me. May you who read these words remember my congregation and my sister in your prayers. Take from my tale what lessons you will. I leave for Exeter in a fortnight. May God give me the strength to live a life of tolerance, service, and self-sacrifice in Margaret’s honor. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
Lilian slowly rolled the three pages of parchment into a scroll and inserted it into the bottle. She placed the bottle on the ground and leaned forward, with her elbows resting on her knees.
“It’s true that the persecution of witches slowed to a standstill in the late seventeenth century,” she said. “Perhaps Gamaliel used his influence as an archdeacon to teach the lessons in tolerance he’d learned from the villagers. When enough people raise their voices to speak out against superstition and prejudice, change can happen.”
“He was telling the truth when he told the witch finder he’d seen Mistress Meg in church on many occasions,” I said. “According to him, she’d attended services faithfully when they were children.”
“I’ve always wondered why the post holes I found were black inside,” said Kit. “Now I know why. The house posts must have been charred by the fire.”
I turned to look at the glade and saw in my mind’s eye a small wooden house engulfed in flames redder than the bracken. I shivered and turned away.
“What a horrible way to die,” I said.
“To die of bubonic plague would have been worse,” said Lilian. “Margaret Redfearn spared the village unspeakable suffering. She may even have saved Finch. Many small villages simply ceased to exist after the Black Death took its toll, but Finch flourishes to this day. Was Margaret right to stop the contagion by taking her own life?” Lilian shook her head. “I’ll leave it to God to decide whether she committed a mortal sin or a virtuous act of self-sacrifice
.”
“Mrs. Thistle,” Willis, Sr., said suddenly, “what is wrong?”
I looked at Amelia and realized with a start that she was crying. Nell was already standing behind her, stroking her back, but I hadn’t even noticed her tears. Nor had Lilian, Kit, or Bill, to judge by their startled expressions. Willis, Sr., pulled a pristine linen handkerchief from his pocket and presented it to Amelia, who buried her face in it.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Thistle,” said Lilian, looking mortified. “I’ve been chuntering on about witch hunts and bubonic plague when the story is much more personal for you. As the Reverend Gowland’s sister, Margaret Redfearn would have been your ancestor. It must have been dreadfully upsetting to hear about the manner of her passing.”
Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch Page 23