Beautiful Star & Other Stories

by A D Swanston

  Seeing this old woman at the door and taking her for one of the gypsies who were camped in a field outside the village, and to whom I had been told never to speak, I stepped back and made to shut the door.

  ‘Emily?’ she croaked, before I could close the door. I nodded. ‘This is for your birthday.’ And she handed me a small cake wrapped in a chestnut leaf. Then she was gone. I took the cake into the kitchen.

  ‘Who was at the door?’ asked my mother.

  ‘An old woman. She gave me this.’

  Mother looked up sharply from her cooking. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a cake.’

  ‘Give it to me at once, Emily. It must be burnt.’

  ‘Why must it be burnt?’

  ‘Never mind why. Give it to me.’

  I handed her the cake. ‘Was she a gypsy woman?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘But she knew it’s my birthday. How did she know that?’

  Mother shook her head. ‘The gypsies are strange people. They know things. Some of them cast spells to lure children from their homes. Keep away from them. And don’t tell your father. He’d be furious if he knew you’d taken a cake from a gypsy.’

  Mother turned her back and bent over the cooking pot. There was to be no more discussion, although it did seem odd – a dirty old gypsy woman bringing me a piece of cake on my birthday.

  In our cottage sounds had an odd way of travelling around and in my bedroom, with the door open, I could hear my parents talking in the parlour. Later that evening I heard them talking about the old woman.

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ said Mother, ‘but from what Emily said, it must have been her.’

  ‘Why did she come?’ asked Father.

  ‘She brought a piece of cake for Emily’s birthday. I burnt it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘She’s an evil old woman and Emily must have nothing to do with her. And where did she get the money for cake? It must have been stolen. She’s a thief as well as everything else.’

  ‘That she is.’

  The next morning I plucked up the courage to ask my mother again about the old woman.

  ‘She’s a poor woman who lives in Walkern. She begs and steals. We want nothing to do with her.’

  ‘Not a gypsy then?’

  ‘No, not a gypsy.’

  ‘But you said she was.’

  ‘I was wrong.’

  ‘Why did she bring me cake on my birthday?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, child. It’s best you forget about her.’

  I gave up. But I knew now that an old woman who lived in the next village knew the day of my birthday. Perhaps she would visit me again.

  * * *

  At that time our village, Ardeley, was a small place with no more than two hundred inhabitants. It was unremarkable except for the church which was more than four hundred years old. We lived in one of the thatched cottages that surrounded the village green and duck pond. The cottage had two bedrooms upstairs and a parlour and kitchen downstairs. We had a fire in the parlour in front of which we each took a weekly bath in a big iron tub.

  My father had been born in the village. He was a man of few words, a ploughman and farrier who, like the fathers of most of my friends, worked on one of the farms outside the village. My mother took in washing and mending. As I was their only child, we lived comfortably enough. I attended the village school, we went each Sunday to church, and Father went on Tuesday and Friday evenings to the Ardeley Arms.

  We also went occasionally to Walkern. Until I was old enough to walk the three miles there and back, Father carried me on his shoulders. Walkern was a larger village, with perhaps twice as many inhabitants, and businesses making bricks and hats. We went there when Mother wanted a new bonnet or Father needed new tools.

  You might have thought that being the larger and more prosperous village, Walkern would have been the more likely to manage its affairs well, such as the school and relief for the poor. But that was not the way of it. The poor were better served in Ardeley, where our local squire and Justice, Sir Henry Chauncy, made sure that they were taken care of and that our school had the books and teachers it needed. Perhaps the wealthy merchants of Walkern were too busy making money to concern themselves with such matters.

  When I finished school at the age of eleven I was put to helping my mother with her cleaning and mending. Many of our customers liked to gossip when they called with their bundles of clothes. Old Miss Handforth did not even bring clothes. She came just to gossip. She enjoyed misfortune and the greater the misfortune the more she enjoyed it. The loss of a cat made her smile and the loss of a cow had her chuckling for days. It was from her that we first heard the news from Walkern.

  An old woman, unpopular in the village for her begging and stealing and for her sharp tongue, had accused a young man of calling her ‘a witch and a bitch’ and had tried to persuade Sir Henry Chauncy to bring an action against him. Sir Henry, protesting that he had more important matters to attend to, had sent both of them off to the vicar of Walkern, Mr Gardiner. The vicar had fined the young man a shilling and told them both to stop arguing and live peacefully. The old woman, furious at getting only a shilling for the slander, had gone off muttering about ‘having justice elsewhere’. That might have been an end to it but for what happened next.

  The day after the old woman had come before the vicar, his young servant, Anne Thorn, started behaving strangely. The vicar and his wife found her partially undressed and shouting wildly that ‘she was ruined and undone’. Despite having a painful knee, she had rushed about gathering twigs, had climbed over a fence and fallen into a ditch and had set upon the old woman, accusing her of being a witch. Then the young man who had called her ‘a witch and a bitch’ claimed that she had compelled him to collect straw from a dung heap and that several horses and cattle in his care had mysteriously died.

  When the news got round, the old woman was dragged from her home and arrested. She was being held in the Walkern lock-up and was to be questioned by Sir Henry and examined for signs of being a witch. The woman’s name was Jane Wenham.

  At the mention of the woman’s name, the colour drained from my mother’s face and she leant against the wall to steady herself. I fetched her a chair and a cup of water. Miss Handforth did not appear to notice and prattled on about the woman and what she had done. Eventually I told her that my mother was feeling unwell and suggested that she return another day.

  When she had gone, I asked Mother what had so upset her. She took a sip of water and looked down at her hands. ‘Jane Wenham is my mother, Emily. She’s a shameful woman, a beggar and a thief and we haven’t spoken for years. I had hoped you would never find out. Now you have.’

  I remembered the dirty old woman who had called on my birthday. ‘It was her who once came here with a cake for me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Is it true what they’re saying, that she’s a witch?’

  ‘Some people say so. She’s a thief, to be sure, and perhaps she’s a witch. Still, it’s a terrible thing to say about anyone.’

  ‘Then why would they say it?’

  ‘Wait until your father comes home, Emily, and then I’ll tell you about your grandmother.’

  * * *

  When Father came back from the farm and had eaten his dinner, we sat in the kitchen. Mother told him about the news from Walkern and that she was going to tell me about my grandmother. Father nodded and said, ‘It’s better that Emily knows the truth. She’s old enough now.’

  This is what my mother told me.

  ‘I do not know exactly how old your grandmother is, nor where she was born, except that she was not born in Walkern. She never spoke of her family. When she arrived in Walkern, she was about eighteen years old. She had no money, no learning and no trade. She could not find regular work and survived by begging and stealing.

  ‘Then a man named Phillip Cooke asked her to marry him. He was my father. I don’t know why he married
her. My father was a kind man, hard-working and honest. That’s when the talk began. Some folk said that she’d put a spell on him to make him marry her. Despite that, they lived together happily enough until he died. That was fourteen years ago.

  ‘I loved my father and took his death hard. One day he suddenly started coughing and retching as if he had eaten something rotten and within a few hours he was dead. I couldn’t understand it. We had all eaten the same food, yet my mother and I were quite well. Tongues in the village started wagging again and some said that she had poisoned him. Remember that she had no friends.

  ‘She had always been harsh with me. Once, when I was three or four, I fell into a patch of nettles. She told me that if I didn’t stop crying, she’d make me sleep in a nettle bed. I was eight when she beat me for breaking an egg, and ten when she said I was too plain ever to find a husband. I was teased by the other children for having a witch as a mother and often went home in tears. She just laughed and said that if she was a witch, they’d better mind their tongues or she’d turn them into toads. I remember these things because they were painful. When my father died, I grieved for myself but I could not grieve for her. She had made me hate her.

  ‘No more than a year after Father’s death, she married again. His name was Edward Wenham, one of the Wenhams who had owned the smithy in Walkern before they had to sell it. He was younger than her, he drank too much and I didn’t care for him. We were living in my father’s cottage and when Edward moved in, I left and came to Ardeley. That same year, your father and I were married.

  ‘It wasn’t long before Edward Wenham left too. My mother had been borrowing money on the promise that he would pay it back, and buying food on credit. When he found out he had the town crier announce publicly that he disowned his wife and would not be responsible for her debts. Thank God we were living here and few people knew that Sarah Porter, who had been Sarah Cooke, was the daughter of Jane Wenham. It would have been too shaming if we’d been in Walkern. I haven’t spoken to her since I left and I never shall again. She may be my mother and your grandmother but she’s a nasty old woman with a vicious tongue and a thieving eye.’

  ‘But is she a witch?’

  ‘I fear she may be,’ said my mother, sadly. ‘It wasn’t so long ago that witches were common in the county. When people saw a cat with a woman’s face or children taking fits or animals dying for no reason, they looked for a witch. When they found her, those things stopped.’

  ‘Some folk don’t believe in witches any more,’ said my father. ‘But I say if there were witches then, why wouldn’t there be witches now?’

  ‘How do you know if someone’s a witch?’ I asked.

  ‘Witches talk with the devil and suckle his creatures. They’re called familiars. Witches have teats where the familiars suckle.’

  ‘And if you scratch a witch’s face, you won’t see blood,’ added Father.

  ‘There’s another thing,’ said Mother. ‘Churchmen say there are witches because the Bible speaks of them.’

  ‘If she is a witch, what will happen to her?’

  ‘She’ll be examined for the signs. If there is evidence against her, she’ll go for trial at the Assizes. If she’s found guilty, she’ll be hanged.’

  ‘They used to burn witches,’ said Father. ‘I even heard of two who were half-hanged, then burnt while still alive. I don’t think that’s necessary. Hang them and be done with it. When the witch is dead, she’s dead.’

  ‘So my grandmother might be hanged?’

  ‘It’s years since the last witch hanging. There hasn’t even been a witch trial in the county for a long time. But if she’s found to be a witch, she will be hanged. It’s the law.’

  My mother must have guessed what I was thinking. ‘It’s not in the blood, Emily,’ she said gently. ‘I’m not a witch and neither are you.’

  ‘Can I visit her?’ I asked. She was my grandmother, she had brought me a cake on my seventh birthday and I wanted to meet her.

  ‘I don’t think it would be wise,’ said my mother.

  ‘Why not? I’m her granddaughter. Even if she is a witch, she won’t harm me and I want to speak to her. She may tell me things I should know.’

  ‘You’re not yet thirteen, Emily. There’s no reason for you to know such things.’

  ‘Better I should know the truth for myself than hear lies from others.’

  ‘We’re not well known in Walkern and your grandmother is not known in Ardeley. It would be best to keep it that way. We don’t want tongues wagging and fingers pointing.’

  Disappointed, I went to bed. Later, however, I heard my parents arguing. I could not hear exactly what was being said but I knew it was about my grandmother. The thought of her being dragged into a court and accused of being a witch kept me awake for hours.

  Next morning, before he went off to work, Father told me that he would take me to Walkern on Saturday. I could visit my grandmother once and that would be an end to it. We would not talk about her again.

  * * *

  The lock-up in Walkern was known as the ‘White House’, on account of its white walls. When Father and I arrived there on Saturday afternoon, we were let in by the officer in charge and shown into a small guard room to which two cells were attached. One was empty and the officer was astonished that anyone would want to visit the filthy old woman in the other.

  ‘Have a care, mind, or she’ll give you the fits.’

  Father went off to the market. The officer let me into the cell and locked the door. ‘Knock on the door when you’re done,’ he told me, ‘and I’ll let you out. And no flying away on broomsticks.’ He went off chuckling.

  She was sitting on a low stool in the corner of the cell, a small hunched figure, huddled under her shawl. The shawl was so dirty and ragged that it could have been the same one she had been wearing when she had brought me the cake six years before. She looked up sharply when I came in. She was even more pinched and wrinkled than I remembered, her hair and face were streaked with dirt and she had a livid scar on her cheek.

  ‘Who are you?’ she croaked. It was an ugly voice, rough and suspicious.

  ‘I’m Emily, your granddaughter.’

  She peered at me. ‘You don’t favour your mother. You’ve got blue eyes and brown hair. You’re pretty too. Tell you to come, did she?’

  ‘No. I wanted to come.’

  ‘Told you stories about me, has she?’

  ‘She’s told me a little about you. Not much. I wanted to meet you. You brought me a cake on my birthday.’

  She nodded. ‘I remember. Did you eat it?’

  ‘Yes. It was good. I’ve brought one for you.’ I handed her a small cake I had made that morning. She took it and ate it without a word.

  ‘Why have you come?’ she asked, wiping crumbs from her mouth with her hand.

  ‘I said. I wanted to.’

  ‘Well, now you have.’

  ‘Yes, I have. Can I sit down?’

  ‘You’ll have to sit on the floor.’

  The floor was cold but I was uncomfortable standing. I was too far above her. ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

  ‘Must be a week since.’ She scratched at her head with a filthy finger.

  ‘My mother says you’re a thief.’

  ‘Does she? Well, could be she’s right. I took turnips from a field and straw to sell to the hatmakers. And so would she with an empty pocket and an aching belly.’

  ‘Why did they put you here?’

  ‘They say I am a witch.’

  ‘Are you a witch?’

  ‘Too many questions, child,’ she hissed. ‘If they want to hang me, they will. An old woman on her own, they’ll find reasons enough if they choose.’

  ‘What will happen to you now?’

  ‘If the Justice decides it, they’ll send me to the Assizes.’

  ‘Would you like me to come?’

  ‘To the Assizes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you want. Won’t make no d
ifference, though. Go now, child. I’ve talked enough.’

  Father was waiting outside the lock-up. He did not ask me about my grandmother and I did not ask him about the market. We walked home with barely a word exchanged. And when we got home, my mother asked me nothing about my visit or about her mother. As far as both my parents were concerned, from then on the case of Jane Wenham was nothing to do with us and we would not talk about her again.

  * * *

  I am not sure how the thought came to me or when, but it must have been within a day or two of my visit to Walkern. I went to call on Mr Strutt, the vicar of Ardeley. As we were regular worshippers at his church, he knew me well enough and did not seem surprised to see me. I thought he must be used to young girls seeking advice at the rectory. He ushered me into his study, where we sat by the fire, an enormous Bible on the low table between us, and asked me what he could do for me.

  ‘Jane Wenham is my grandmother,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes. It is not commonly known but I have known for some time,’ he said. ‘It cannot be easy for you.’

  ‘I don’t understand why she has been arrested.’

  ‘There were complaints. Mr Gardiner and I have questioned her. There is evidence of witchcraft.’

  ‘Do you believe she’s a witch, sir?’

  For a minute, Mr Strutt stared into the fire. Then he said quietly, ‘I have discussed this at length with Mr Gardiner. We were both present when Jane Wenham failed correctly to say the Lord’s Prayer and then confessed that she had been a witch for more than sixteen years, using curses and imprecations against any who vexed her. I witnessed Mr Gardiner’s servant, Anne Thorn, behaving as if such a curse had been put on her and have since heard of cats with Jane Wenham’s face being seen in the village, children falling ill and animals dying without apparent cause. It is hard not to believe that your grandmother is a witch.’

  ‘Why would God allow witches?’

  ‘God moves in mysterious ways. The answer lies in his wish to test us and for us to show our faith in him. He permits witches because they are proof of the devil’s existence and therefore of his own. He wishes us to reject one and rejoice in the other.’