The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XVII

  MOTHER SPURAWAY

  MASTER CLEMENT, the papers in his hand, retraced his steps until hecame to a bench set in the shadow of a yew that knotted the minister’shouse and garden to the churchyard. He sat down and spread the threeout upon the wood beside him. It was the last-found scrap upon which,naturally, he concentrated attention. ASK JOAN HERON WHO GAVE HER THERUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN. He sat with knitted brow and pursedlips, searching for a meaning. One was not there at first sight. Heweighed the words. JOAN HERON—The daughter of old Heron that had diedof the plague. He brought her before his mind’s eye—a tall, grey-eyedgirl sitting quietly in church. Save for that image she did not comeinto his mind with any force; he had, after all, no great knowledge ofher. They were outlying people, the Herons, and then they had been awayfrom Hawthorn. He was a man of the study and the pulpit and of crisisesin the parish, rather than of any minute, loving, daily intercourseand knowledge; theologian rather than pastor. JOAN HERON. He would,however, presently think together any impressions or memories. Nowlittle occurred further than that she had been away with her fatherfor years, living under the walls of the castle that was prelatical.In addition, he remembered that neither old Roger Heron nor this girlhad ever brought to him spiritual problems to be solved. Many did bringthem—cold, creeping doubts as to whether God really meant to save themor not. But the Herons had never done so. The fact, called to mind,just faintly darkened for him the name beneath his hand. He would makeenquiries.—WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN.

  Master Clement frowned. He had little taste for riddles anduncertainties and haunting suspensions of thought. Make a linedistinct; colour matters plainly; if a thing were black, paint it inblack! The words on the paper carried no meaning, or a foolish one.RUE.... Not long before he had been reading an account, set forthin a book, of a number of Satan’s machinations, and of the devices,likings, and small personal habits of his sworn servants. A bit of thistext suddenly sprang out before him, sitting there beneath the yewtree. “_For plants—hemlock, poppy, and mandrake, and, especially, thewitches love, handle, and give to such as show inclination to become oftheir company, rue_—”

  Master Clement slowly folded the three pieces of paper together, tookout his pocketbook, and laid them in it. Grace Maybank was yet stronglyin his mind, but now on the wall beside her name he put another name.

  A little later, hatted and cloaked, he stepped into Hawthorn street.As he did so he looked northward and, seeing Squire Carthew ridingin from Carthew House, stood and waited. The squire approached, gavegood-morning, and dismounted. He nodded his head; ponderously energetiche had put already his engines into motion. The constable with helperswas gone at sunrise to take into custody Mother Spuraway, have her intothe village, and thrust her into the room beneath the sexton’s housethat did for village gaol. To-morrow, after examination, and if proofof her evil-doing were forthcoming, she should be sent to town andquartered in the prison with the leech. Orders likewise had been givento the North-End Farm folk to bring into Hawthorn the afflicted boy. Toconfront the injurer with the injured, that was the best and approvedway—

  “How is Harry Carthew this morning?”

  “Very fevered still. He talks strangely and paganly—about gods andgoddesses and Love and the Furies and I know not what trash.”

  “Ah!” said Master Clement. “Were it devil or Gilbert Aderhold whostruck him that night, be sure from the dagger would have run Satan’sown venom, empoisoning the mind, bringing growth of nettles and darnelinto the soul! The godly young man! I will pray—I will wrestle withGod in prayer for Harry Carthew—”

  From beyond the church there burst a small riot of sound. “They’ve gotMother Spuraway—”

  The constable had his hand upon the old woman’s arm and draggedher along, she being lame and stumbling. Behind them marched theconstable’s helpers, a self-constituted posse. Here was the father ofthe afflicted boy, and Lukin the carter, and a ditcher whose arm waspalsied, and one or two others. A dozen boys brought up the rear. Onehad run ahead to cry to the village what was happening. Everybody wascoming to door and window, out of doors, into the street. Voices buzzedand clacked. The witch fever was mounting, mounting, hardening theheart, confusing the head!

  When Mother Spuraway saw the minister and the squire, for all shewas as old and spare and feeble as a dried reed, she broke from theconstable, and, running to them, fell upon her knees and raising herclasped hands began at once to protest her innocence and to beg formercy.

  The squire spoke to the North End farmer. “They’re bringing your sonin?”

  “Aye, sir. His mother and sister and my son that’s married and his wifeand my niece and Humphrey Tanner. He’s twisting fearful, and he seesthe dog come day and come night!”

  “Your worship, your worship!” cried the old woman on her knees. “Inever could abide dogs—Is it likely I’d trouble a child?—Oh, MasterClement—”

  The squire was speaking with the constable and the farmer, the wholecompany of witch-takers hearkening to him rather than to MotherSpuraway. Had she not kept up a like babble clean from her own hut toHawthorn? But the witch and straightening out the two walls were MasterClement’s concern. Not always subtle, he was subtle when it came toplaying the inquisitor. When the rôle fell to him, it was as though hehad suddenly endued himself with a mantle that fitted. Had he livedin a Catholic country, had he been born and baptized there into anunquerying group, it is not unlikely that sooner or later he would havefound employment in the Holy Office, unlikelier yet that he would nothave served with zeal and a consciousness of high devoir done that Kingin heaven. In a vast range of relations starkly literal, he was capablewhen it came to theological detection, of keen and imaginative work.The churchyard yews somewhat cut off the village street; the smallpresent crowd were attending to the squire. Master Clement put somequestions. Mother Spuraway, who was now moaning and rocking herself,roused as best she could to answer. Associates? She had no associates.What, in God’s name, should she have associates for? The leech? Well,the leech had taken her trade, that was all the association there—

  “Ha!” said Master Clement. “The same trade! She hath said that far!”

  Mother Spuraway looked at him and shrank affrighted. “My trade was togather good herbs and make sick folk well. I meant that I was a leechas well as he.”

  “Leechcraft is not for women,” answered Master Clement. “But leechcraftwas not his main trade. His trade is in souls to Satan, his own souland others. I fear me that thou art indentured to that same master andmay well speak of this atheist and sorcerer as thy fellow trafficker!Tell me what others thou art concerned with—”

  Mother Spuraway had an inward sturdiness, though age and weakness, fearand pain might yet betray it. “Concerned neither with him nor withothers. Oh me! oh me! I’ve always stood on my own feet and harmed noone—”

  “They that stand on their own feet and by their own strength,” said theminister, “are naught. So they lean not upon Scripture and know thatthey are naught in themselves, but only by grace of another, they arealready lost and have reached their hand to Satan.—Tell me if GraceMaybank be of thy company?”

  “Grace Maybank!” Mother Spuraway’s voice quavered and her frame seemedto shake. Perhaps there rose a memory of a love philtre or charm, orof Grace in trouble, coming secretly for counsel. But Mother Spurawaynever took life. The child was born, was it not?—as merry and pretty achild as if it were not set apart and branded for life. Grace? It hadbeen little that she had done for Grace! The charm had not worked; theman would not offer marriage, and so save Grace from what came uponher. Grace herself had come to the hut and bitterly reviled her fora useless wise woman. Grace Maybank! She began to stammer and protestthat she and Grace were strangers.—But Master Clement thought the mostand the worst and the impossible. “Ha!” he said. “That window hath alight in it!” In his mind Grace’s name left the one wall and came overto the other.

  The squire ma
de a movement from the constable, the constable a movementtoward his prisoner. “Tell me,” said Master Clement in a tense and lowvoice,—“tell me why you gave a bush of rue to Joan Heron?”

  He had not known that she had done it. It had flashed upon him to makethat move. Made, he saw that it was correct.

  Mother Spuraway, dazed and shaken, put up her two hands as though toward off blows that she knew not why were coming. “What harm,” queriedher thin old frightened voice, “in giving a body a sprig of rue? Shehad none in her garden.”

  “How did the rue come to you?”

  “It was growing about the burned cot.” For all her terror and miseryMother Spuraway felt a gust of anger. “O Jesus! What questions MasterClement asks!”

  The constable came and took her by the arms. “On with you! Don’t saythat you can’t walk, when we know that you can dance and fly!”

  She broke again into a pitiful clamour. “I am no witch!—Satan’s nofriend nor master nor king of mine—I know naught of the leech—I’veput no spell on any one—Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen, think on the motherthat bore you—” The constable and his helpers dragged her away. Hervoice came back—“Think—think! How could I—”

  In a little while the North-End Farm folk came into Hawthorn—Hawthornquivering now with excitement. Every loss of a twelvemonth, everyundeserved grief, every untoward happening, every petty mystery wasawake and growing monstrous. The air was changing, the yew trees, thelook of the houses, the loom to the west of Hawthorn Forest.... To-day,to an observer, the church might look not greatly different from apalm-thatched or cedar roof over some sacred stone or carven god. Outof the deep veins, out of the elder world, old and gross superstitionhad been whistled up. It had not far to come; the elder world was closeof kin. On the climbing road of the human mind the scenery of the lowerslopes began to glow.

  The sexton’s house giving upon the green, Hawthorn could find pretextenough for gathering there in humming clusters. The sexton had aclean, bare room where at times charges were heard and prisonersbrought up for examination from a cellar-like apartment below. On thewhole, Justice Carthew preferred it to having poachers and vagrants,quarrelers, swearers and breakers of various commandments, pettyofficers, complainants, and witnesses trampling into Carthew House. Nowas the warm midday drew on, he entered, marshalled by the constable;with him, besides a young man half his son’s tutor, half his own clerk,Master Clement, and a neighbour or two of fair consequence in thevillage and in Hawthorn Church. In the room already were the North-EndFarm folk. The crowd pressed in behind, or, when no more were admitted,stood as close as might be without the door, left open for the air.Outside the one crazy window boys stood on heaped stones, their eyesa-row above the sill. The air seemed to beat and sound and pulse. Noother kind of lawbreaking could so raise, so universalize, emotion.Other kinds were particular, affecting a few. But where sorcery andwitchcraft, blasphemy and heresy, were arraigned, even though it werein a poor room and village like to this, there the universal enemy,there the personal foe of God Almighty, came into court! The personalfoe of God was naturally the would-be murderer of every baptized soulalive—the unbaptized were his already. Nor did he stop at attemptsagainst their souls; he did not hesitate to direct his engines againsttheir bodies and their goods, to burn their ricks and barns, blasttheir fields, palsy their arms, lame their beasts, make their childrenpeak and pine, wither the strength of men within them—If he hadnot yet harmed them to-day, he but waited for the chance to do soto-morrow! No man, woman, or child was safe, and the thing to be donewas to destroy his instruments as fast as they were found.

  The North-End Farm boy—an observer from the platform of a further agemight have conjectured that it was partly a nervous disorder marked byhysteria, partly an impish satisfaction in the commotion produced andthe attention received, partly an actual rejoicing in the workings ofhis own imagination together with a far past, early-man unawarenessof any reason for forbearance—the North-End Farm boy cried out andwrithed tormentedly.

  They brought Mother Spuraway up the steep stair from the cellar andinto the room, and making a clear space stood her before the boy forwhat should be judgement and doom. “The dog! the dog!” he cried, andwrithed in the arms of the men behind him—“The dog!”

  The room quivered and sucked in its breath. Now the magistrate, andnow, at the magistrate’s nod, the minister, questioned him. “You seethe dog?—Where do you see it?—There? But something else is standingthere! A woman is standing there.... Ha! Only the dog there, showinghis teeth at you? Do you see no woman?... He sees no woman. He seesonly the dog.”

  “The dog! the dog!” cried the boy. “The constable brought the dogin with him.... Oh, it wants to get at me! It’s trying to shake theconstable off! Oh, oh, don’t let it!” And he writhed and twisted, halfterrified and persuaded by the vividness of his own creation, deep downenjoying himself.

  Commotion and hard breathing held in the room and outside about thedoor and window. “He sees her as she is when she’s running withSatan!... Witch!... Witch!...”

  Mother Spuraway fell again upon her knees, beat her hands together withpassion. “It’s not true—he’s lying!—Oh, sirs, are you going to hangme for what a sick child says?”

  North-End Farm raised an answering clamour. “Thou witch! ’Tis thouthat liest! Take thy spells off him!” The greater part of the roombecame vocal, “’Tis not only that boy!—A many and a many thingshappening!—My arm, thou witch! I dug all day, and passed thee inthe twilight, and next day ’twas like this!—The corn so thin andburned!—The old witch! She made a sign above my wife’s drink and shedied and the babe died!—The witch! the witch! But she’s not alone....She and the leech.... Yes, but others than the leech.... There are folkhere who can tell.... The plague—she brought the plague—she and theDevil and her fellows.... The pond!—Tie her thumb and toe and try herin the water—”

  There came a surge forward. Mother Spuraway cowered and screamed. Thesquire might not object to the water trial in itself, but he objectedand that strongly to any unruliness before Justice Carthew. The peoplewere used to being cowed; his voice, bursting out against them, drovethem back to a silence broken only by murmurs and intakes of thebreath. The North-End Farm boy continuing noisy, and crying out, hisfather and mother had leave to take him from the sexton’s room andacross to the ale-house. There was curiosity to see if the dog that wasvisible to him alone could follow. But no! At the door he cried outthat it tried to spring after him, but could not pass the minister’schair. From the ale-house itself presently came back word that he wasmuch comforted and quiet and said that Master Clement was keeping thedog from him.

  Mother Spuraway sat on a bench, somewhat cut off from the rest of theroom by the heavy chairs of the Law and the Church. She sat crouchedtogether, for the most part silent, her white hair straggling frombeneath her cap, her lip fallen, her meagre, bloodless hands withhigh-raised veins plucking at the stuff of her old worn kirtle. The daywas warm. The squire, heated and thirsty, sent across for a tankard ofale. When it was brought, he drank, set the vessel down, and wiped hismouth. “And now,” he said, “‘tis to find if, in getting two, we get allthe vipers in the nest—”

  He did not think so himself; nor did Master Clement, nor did the throngof Hawthorn in the sexton’s room and without, pressing about door andwindow. The whispers had been continuous. It was much to have put anarresting hand upon one witch, and beyond doubt she was a witch anda _vera causa_! But for more years than a few Hawthorn had lookedsomewhat askance at Mother Spuraway. She had been among them for along time, and these blackest happenings had not happened. Not in allthese years the plague—never before at Hawthorn such a thing as thebold wounding of the squire’s brother—never before so many accidentsof one kind and another! For new activities new beings.... The leech,of course, proved beyond all seeming to be so fell and wicked aman! But not the leech alone.... The feeling, whatever it was, wasincreasing. There seemed something pent and thunderous, lying in waitfor its chance....
There were those now in the crowd who had not beenhere earlier, who, having heard what was toward, had made their way inafter the first. Some came from without the village. The tinker wasplain to the front. Midway of the room might be seen Will the smith’sson and his mother, and beside them Katherine Scott, the forester’swife. At the back, in company with the Lukins, stood Alison Inch.

  The squire looked down at a piece of paper which he held in his hand.“Now what is this about a grey and white cat, and the burned cot inHawthorn Wood?”

  There rose a murmur, like wind over sedge. It grew in volume, and outof it came clear a woman’s voice. “It’s her familiar. He gave it toher. The boys saw him give it to her at the burned cot.”

  The squire lifted himself a little—looked over the crowd. “Who spokethere? Come forward here, you who spoke!”

  A confusion; then Cecily Lukin was pushed to the front. She cameprotesting, her face flushed. “Oh, Your Honour, I didn’t know I wasspeaking so loud! I never meant to say anything—”

  “Nay, you _must_ say,” answered the squire. “He or she who keepswitness back will find trouble for their own part!”

  “I said naught,” said Cecily, “but that she had a grey and white catwhich lay on the hearth or in the sun, and that once I did see it angeritself and grow larger than natural, and its eyes glowed like lanthornsand it went backward, rubbing itself against her skirt—”

  “Mother Spuraway’s skirt?”

  “Oh, no, sir!” said Cecily. “They say Mother Spuraway’s imp is a greenfrog that lives in a stream by her door—”

  A boy beside the tinker, nudged by the latter, opened his mouth. “Tomand Dick and Jarvis and I were playing in Hawthorn Forest by the burnedcot. And a grey and white cat came out of the stones and climbed up inthe plum tree and sat and looked at us, and we tried to drive it away,but we couldn’t. Then Master Aderhold came out of the woods and grewas tall as the plum tree and put up his arm, and the cat came and layupon it. And there was Joan Heron standing in her grey dress, and shewas as tall as he was, and he gave her the cat and she laid it alongher shoulder, and they went away through the woods without their feettouching the ground—”

  The forester’s wife was an impatient dame. By this she had worked herway into the row nearest the justice and the minister, and now sheraised her voice. “Your Honour and Maister Clement, I keep bees, and,Your Honour, they’ve not done well for a lang, lang time! They’ve notdone well since, out of kindness, I took three hives frae folk thatwere gaeing visiting and put them with my ain. Those bees I took, Iswear were not just bees! Times I thought as much while they harbouredwith my bees, and would do naught nor let my ain do aught—but Ikenned it well when they were gone back to where they came frae! YourHonour and Maister Clement, I ha’ gone by where those hives standnow and seen those bees come flying in with wings a span long andshining, and bodies daubed with gold and making a humming sound like afiddle-string! And those visiting folk were not auld Mither Spuraway,though I doubt not she be a witch, too!—Those beehives are standingunder the thatch of Heron’s cottage!”

  * * * * *

  At sunset that evening Joan sat on her doorstep, her elbows upon herknees and her brow in her hands. The apple trees were in bloom, theheartsease was in bloom beside the well, red and gold cowslips brushedher shoe. The day had been warm, but the evening fell cool and rich.All day she had not gone from the cottage. She had seen none passeither; the road, the fields, the wood were as quiet as though humanlife had fled from the earth. She sat with a heart oppressed, the worldgrown vague and monstrous.... The cottage, the garden, the fruit treeswere wrapped in the afterglow. The birds were still; the last bee hadcome in from the flowers; somewhere in a marshy meadow, the frogs werebeginning.

  The grey and white cat came and rubbed itself against her. She liftedher head, and saw three or four men on the winding path between theforest road and Heron’s cottage. As they came nearer she recognizedfirst the tinker, but in a moment saw that the one at the head was theHawthorn constable. Her heart stopped, then began to beat very heavily.As they came through the gate and up the little path she rose from thedoorstep.

  “Good-day,” said one of them.

  “Good-day, neighbours.”

  The constable cleared his throat. He was a stolid, elderly man withmany daughters and sons, and he opposed to the world a wooden,depthless face. “Probably you know,” he said, “what we’ve come for?”

  “No,” said Joan: “what have you come for?”

  The constable put out the staff that he carried and touched her on theshoulder. “In the King’s name! You’re to come with me for being a witchand working great harm to the King’s good subjects—for laming andcasting spells—for worshipping Satan at his sabbats at the burned cotand the fairy oak—for plotting mischief with an infidel, blasphemer,and sorcerer—”

  Joan stood motionless, her grey eyes clear, the blood not driven fromher heart. She had seen the harm brewing, she had had her torturein watching the deep storm gather; now that it was rolling over hershe grew suddenly steady. Though she knew it not she had always hadstrength and courage, but now she touched and drew from some greatreservoir indeed. A wholesome anger helped her to it, an inner totalrebellion and scorn, an amazed recognition of universal, incrediblemistake and folly! Truly if men based life so crumblingly, on sucha lie as this!... Sabbats at the burned cot and the fairy oak....Plotting with— Something swept over her face, her frame seemed to growtaller in the flower-starred dusk by Heron’s cottage.

  The tinker was next to the constable. Now he spoke with an elfish grinand his foot trampling down the cowslip by the door. “Mistress YoungWitch never thought, did she, that when Tom Tinker came up behind her,standing before the prison yonder, he saw well enough that she wasmaking witch signs to one within?—Now the witch to the warlock—lemansmust lodge under the same roof!”