by Mike Ashley
But burning . . .?
Eleanor stood up, shook her skirts and stared into the dark depths of the pond where Alizon Norton, bound left hand to right foot and vice-versa, would have sucked in as much breath as she could hold for her repeated ordeals beneath its weed-infested waters. Goose pimples rose on Eleanor’s skin. There would have been other tortures, too, to extract the false confession that finally sealed Alizon’s guilt. And flogging was one of the better ones.
However, small, albeit isolated signs of prosperity peppered the village, suggesting that at last the land was starting to reward men for their labours. One of the larger houses that she passed was having glass fitted to its windows. Another cottage was in the process of being thatched, and surely that was a physician dismounting with his bag outside the carpenter’s? A black foal pranced in the paddock, chickens pattered and pecked, and fat bees buzzed lazily round the fragrant wayside roses.
Late afternoon, and Sulborough Green was almost deserted in the throbbing midsummer heat. Eleanor glanced down the lane to the mill, where Bessie Nokes had given birth to a stillborn son, and she shuddered. Was the miller’s wife so wild with grief that she did not care whether the confession was genuine? That Alizon would have had her hands tied behind her back and left hanging like that for two, maybe three hours? Perhaps (God forbid) suspended from one of the beams of Bessie’s own millhouse?
The stables adjacent to the Thistle & Crown were empty, as Eleanor had timed them to be. The horses were still out to pasture, the groom making the most of the respite with an afternoon romp with the stonemason’s pretty plump wife. Inside, dust motes drifted down in the slanting rays of the sun, and from time to time a rat rustled under the straw. Up in the eaves, swallows darted back and forth to feed their ravenous broods, and the air was acid with the stench of the dung heap outside.
“Who are you?” she asked, adjusting her eyes to the gloom.
From the second stall along came a lazy movement and a tall, muscular young man eased himself slowly to his feet. “Me, miss?” His hair was dark, with a glistening shine. “Will Pike.”
“So you claim,” she replied, “but who are you really?”
“Will Pike,” he insisted, spreading his hands. “Ostler.”
“You’re good with horses, Will Pike, but you’re no more an ostler than I am. Your voice is too refined, your hands are too soft, your back is too straight, you have a manner more suited to silk stockings, leather shoes, lace cravats and silver studs. You are every bit a stranger here as my men and myself, and what’s more –” Eleanor pointed to his tell-tale blisters “– you’re a stranger to manual labour.”
“If this is how modern woman is turning out –” “he clasped his hands over his heart in a wildly theatrical gesture “– what hope is there for modern man, when his every secret is probed and exposed?”
Eleanor settled herself down on a bale of hay, drew her knees up to her chin and waited.
“If you insist, my lady,” he laughed, resting his shoulder against a timber upright, “then I will gladly tell you the story of a young nobleman who left home to become a travelling troubadour, a poet, musician, teller of tales. And who, to his chagrin, discovered that the price for such an indulgence all too often involves the digging of turnips, the picking of cherries and the minding of horses to keep the wolf from his lute.”
There was a count of perhaps thirty. “You were listening,” she said. “When I confronted Jeremy Farrell on Monday, you were underneath the window. Listening.”
“I think you’re mistaken.”
“I may have my faults, Will Pike, but being wrong isn’t one of them. You took my horse when I arrived, so you were aware the poor creature was only one step away from being turned into glue, it was that exhausted from the day’s ride. Upstairs, I heard my horse snort beneath the window. Someone calmed him, stroked him, silenced him with kindness and the only thing the groom strokes at that time of day is the thigh of the stonemason’s wife.”
When he smiled, he revealed a row of even, white teeth. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I meant, you were mistaken in that I might have been listening. My sole concern was for your horse.”
“In which case, Will Pike, you would have led him to water. Any more dehydrated and the poor beast was jerky, yet the trough is as far from that upstairs chamber window as a Jew from Christianity.” She paused, then said slowly. “I need your help, Will.”
“Mine?”
“The villagers talk to you. Me they avoid like a leper, and any whom I do manage to ambush turn mute.”
“Conscience,” the ostler said. “They’re ashamed of what happened, they want to forget it –”
“Forget it?” Eleanor couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Alizon Norton was burned alive on their own village green, after being tortured to confess to a crime she didn’t commit! Her screams would have carried for quarter of a mile, how can they possibly forget something like that?”
“They can’t. That’s why there’s a hayrick standing where the fire burned the grass, instead of being stacked in the field. Their shame won’t permit them to talk about it, not even to one another. They’re trying to, but they can’t forget. Eleanor, these folk can’t look their own parson in the eye, much less their victim’s sister.”
When the man calling himself Will Pike placed his hands on her shoulders, Eleanor inhaled his heady juniper scent.
“What happened in Sulborough Green is by no means unusual,” he said softly. “When mass hysteria takes hold, it invariably ends in a tragedy and I know you find it hard to believe, Eleanor, but these people are deeply sorry and they are ashamed of what happened.”
She shook his hands off her shoulders and turned away.
“Nothing can bring Alizon back,” he said, “but the quicker everyone gets on with their lives, the better. Eleanor, I’m not advising forgiveness, but we all have to live with the consequences of our actions. Simply by living in the village, constantly reminded of this terrible deed, will be punishment to last them a lifetime. But you. You mustn’t allow yourself to become bitter in the process.”
“Oh, no?” she said thickly. “Convicta et combusta, Will Pike. That was how it stands in the official record. Convicta et combusta, and that bastard Jeremy Farrell is responsible.”
“He signed the papers, yes. But before that could happen there was a proper trial by jury –”
“Which he rigged.” Eleanor turned round and looked deep into the ostler’s chestnut eyes. “You still don’t get it, do you, Will Pike?”
“Get what?” he asked, frowning.
“Jeremy Farrell murdered my sister.”
“I’m sorry, Eleanor, but the notion is utterly preposterous.”
Night had fallen, and they were standing beneath a large beech, its smooth bark reflected white in the moonlight. The rush of the millrace could be heard in the distance, and close at hand an owl hooted.
“You can’t murder a woman simply by accusing her of being a witch.”
“So you won’t help me bring Farrell to justice?”
Will Pike ran a hand over his mouth. “The trouble lies more with the law, I fear, than the man who administered it. So long as there are only four pleas acceptable to the Crown – murder, robbery, arson and rape – everything else falls to the local landowner. Farrell’s job as a local JP is more about appeasing peasants and settling grudges than dispensing justice to villains. It’s for his constable to nab thieves and lug them off to the Assizes.”
“Do you think I’m so stupid as to not understand that?” Eleanor fumed. “That I’m so fired up with anger that I can’t be objective? Will Pike, the people of Sulborough Green are living so close to the bread line, they’ve almost fallen over the edge. Blaming Alizon Norton for their aches and pains, their sick cattle, their stillborn babies is unacceptable, but at least it’s partway understandable. Half the scolds and gossips in England have been accused of witchcraft as payback by their local community! The difference is, th
ey weren’t roasted like chestnuts.”
“ ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’. Exodus. Check with Parson Hardwicke, if you don’t believe me. The Bible is left open at that very page in St Jude’s.”
“Sucking in his thick lips as though he’s permanently biting on a sour cherry, how else would you expect that sanctimonious creep to justify his actions? Have you seen him? Striding through the village, his skirts flapping like batwings and a prayer book tight in his hand, you’d think he was the epitome of goodness and love. The hell he is. You watch. Next week, it will be ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord’ and he’ll honestly believe that excuses his conscience. Will, that man has flints for eyes.”
“Am I right in concluding that Parson Hardwicke was the prosecuting counsel at the trial?”
“All right, so I’m prejudiced,” Eleanor admitted. “But a year in the jailhouse interspersed with the occasional outing to the pillory tends to settle most witchcraft allegations. Alizon Norton was burned at the stake.”
“Standard lynch mob behaviour,” Will said sadly. “Act first, think later.”
“Precisely what Farrell was banking on,” she said. “He’s in the perfect position to set the ball rolling, then whip up mass hysteria to such a pitch he could rush through the accusations, the confession, the trial, the execution. And another thing. Why didn’t he call for the witchfinder?”
A sudden cold gripped her bones. Witchfinder. Witchpricker. Jobber. Brodder. Call him what you will, his task was to prove or disprove allegations of witchcraft. For which purpose he carried a special bodkin with which to probe the woman’s flesh to find a place where it didn’t bleed. To discover the mark of the Devil . . .
“You’re shivering Eleanor. What’s wrong?”
Will drew her towards him, wrapping his strong arms round her body. In the moonlight, her auburn curls shone like molten metal, and she smelled of chamomile and thyme.
“Nothing,” she said, but made no move to disengage herself from his embrace. “It’s just the idea of the tortures –”
He placed one finger over her lips. “Try not to think about that.”
“Easy for you to say, Will. Did you actually read the list of crimes that Alizon eventually confessed to? It wasn’t just the odd sick cow or someone’s back pains, by the time those bastards had finished, she’d admitted to everything from night flying to fornicating with the Devil. But that still didn’t give them the right to cheer Alizon’s screams as living flesh blistered and fell off her bones.”
“There were grounds for execution,” Will pointed out, gently brushing a wayward strand of hair away from her eyes. “Tom Shaw was found headfirst in a vat of his own boiling dye and since no one else was around at the time and since he could not have just toppled in, it was argued that he had been pushed by the Devil. Just one day earlier, the whole village had heard Alizon curse him. It was their natural conclusion.”
“Pacts with the Devil! This is nothing but propaganda, Will, put about by the church. An inversion of Christianity designed to feed off elemental human fears and make the people dependent upon the King and the clergy.”
“For God’s sake, Eleanor,” he hissed. “Such talk is heresy and that is a burning offence. You know the King’s obsession with demonology! He studies the subject, considers himself an authority. For your own safety, keep those views to yourself!”
“The only way I’d be in trouble would be if one of the King’s agents happened to be around to report me,” she said quietly. There was a beat of perhaps ten. “Is he?”
Will Pike stiffened. Licked his lips. “No one can hear you out here,” he said tightly. “We’re too far from the village, and in any case everyone there is asleep. They need all the rest they can get, before they rise for the fields at dawn.”
Eleanor breathed out.
“However, while we’re on the subject of executions,” he said, looping his thumb in one of her curls, “the Witchcraft Act of 1604 states that it is a ‘hanging offence for the devilish act of witchcraft and, by the force of the same, killing or laming their neighbours or harming their cattle.’ Unanimously, the jury found Alizon Norton guilty of killing Tom Shaw.”
“Then why didn’t Farrell have her choke on the gallows?” His earthy, juniper scent prickled her nostrils.
“Guessing,” Will said, “I would imagine it was because he didn’t want the news to go beyond the parish. Hanging a witch is not as common as people make out. As you said yourself, public humiliation usually suffices, but Farrell was in a difficult position. As far as the jury was concerned, and forgetting this business of incubi, succubi and midnight flights with the Devil, what it boiled down to was that Alizon Norton killed Tom Shaw with sorcery.”
“Balls.”
In the darkness, Will Pike smiled. “As their landowner as well as their JP, I suspect Farrell found the quickest way to settle the unrest was to give the villagers what they asked for. The life of a stranger. Which is not to say he wanted a reputation for dispensing that kind of justice bandied about. He knew the people would be sick with contrition once it was over. Burning Alizon at the stake almost guaranteed it would be confined to the parish.”
“Wrong. Farrell had her burned at the stake because it was personal. This is a mean and vicious way to kill someone by anybody’s standards, but the worst thing of all is that Alizon’s was a murder planned in cold blood. Jeremy Farrell will not get away with it, I assure you. So I’ll ask you again, Will Pike. Are you going to help me?”
Another hot, blistering day dawned in the village of Sulborough Green. Blacksmith Wilkes, with his beetle brows and arms like barrels, had stopped to inquire about the health of the carpenter’s wife. Inside, no doubt, the stiff-backed physician would be letting blood till the poor woman fainted, while outside his horse whinnied softly and nibbled the grass. The thatchers were making good progress on the new roof next to the Magpie and glass now shone proudly in four of the windows of the house being glazed, the remainder in place by tomorrow. Bessie Nokes, small and slender, was exchanging commiserations with Tom Shaw’s widow, Jennet, both women sniffling into kerchiefs with the pain of their losses.
All these things Eleanor observed from the richly embroidered window seat in her chamber at the Thistle & Crown.
Parson Hardwicke, his long, spider’s legs eating up the ground as he made his morning rounds. Children playing leap-frog on the green, chasing pigeons, chalking out squares for games of hopscotch. The constable, squat and dour, kicking Martin Pepper the resident drunk who lay spreadeagled under the stocks, snoring. That was the old man who spoke up for Alizon, yet even he would not talk to Eleanor about the execution, clamming up just like the rest, despite the guineas she offered. Getting no response from the drunkard, the constable wasted no further time and moved on.
Now there was an unpopular job, mused Eleanor. Appointed by the local JP, the office was both obligatory and unpaid. It was the constable’s role to evict tramps and vagabonds, for which the parish was grateful. But equally it was his duty to report misdemeanours, in other words spy on his own, for which the parish was anything but! Generally, the post rotated annually between the various tradesmen of the parish, but were a particular individual to show aptitude for his duties, in all likelihood he would be reappointed the following Michaelmas. In cases like these, when the annual appointment becomes permanent, power invariably corrupts, especially in tight-knit communities. More than one rural constable had been found in a ditch with the back of his head caved in and the blame laid on vagrants who had never been caught . . .
As the sun began to peep over the soft rolling downs, the first of the harvesters trudged off to their labours, scythes slung over their shoulder, hot loaves of rye in their pack. Bully for them, Eleanor thought, stretching. With a cat-like yawn, she pattered back to her own comfy, four-poster bed.
“What do you think Sir Geoffrey would say if he knew I had bedded his wife?” a sleepy voice asked.
She rolled her eyes. “All ri
ght. How did you know who I was?”
“For the simple reason that last year, Ellie, my love, I played at Dearborn Hall. You were so beautiful, with your rich auburn curls, that I composed a ballad in your honour. Milady, of course,” he chuckled, “didn’t even spare me a glance.”
“Perhaps this,” she whispered, walking her fingers slowly down his breastbone, lower, lower, lower, “will compensate for milady’s omission?”
Was that the best he could come up with, she wondered. Because had “Will Pike” played at Dearborn Hall, milady would have spared him more than a glance. In seven years with that doddery old fart, Geoffrey had not once succeeded in getting it up. A succession of grooms, footmen and handsome troubadours more than compensated, however. And milady would definitely not have let this one slip through the net!
“Do you believe in witchcraft, Will Pike?” she asked later, when they were both lying, panting, on their backs from exertion.
“Convinced of it,” he said. “You?”
“Definitely.” God, that was good. The best yet. “But Alizon Norton, I assure you, was no witch. Frankly, Will, she wasn’t bright enough. So why accuse her of something like that?”
“Why, for that matter, not lure her away from the village and kill her where the crime would have passed unnoticed? She was a stranger, newly arrived in Sulborough Green a matter of weeks previously. No one here would have given a second thought to her leaving suddenly.”
Eleanor said nothing. She just lay, staring up at the scarlet curtains above her.
“The idea of Jeremy Farrell killing Alizon through accusations of witchcraft is ridiculous, Ellie.” Will rolled on to his side, propping himself up on one elbow and began to trace circles over her breast. “Think about it. Farrell couldn’t be sure he could carry it off, and anyway you haven’t told me his motive for getting Alizon out of the way.”
“I don’t know it.”
“Ellie!”
“Well, I don’t,” she said honestly, warming to the arousal of his touch. “Alizon left home at the age of sixteen and I haven’t seen much of her since. Can’t imagine what brought her to this dreary little backwater!”