The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XIX

  ADERHOLD AND CARTHEW

  MASTER CLEMENT sat, tense and straight, spiritually girded to meetSatan and his legionaries. Harry Carthew was standing when Aderholdentered the room, but immediately he came and sat beside the minister,his eyes, deep-set in a pale, fever-wasted countenance, regarding, notunsteadily, the prisoner. He had risen from his bed but a week ago;this was the first time he had ridden to the town. There was somethingstrange in his countenance, a look now vacillating, now fixed andhardened. He held his gloves in one hand and drew them through theother with a repeated motion.

  “Give you good-day, Master Aderhold,” he said in a controlled, tonelessvoice.

  “Give you good-day, Master Carthew.”

  The minister’s strong sing-song pierced the air. “Thou guilty andwretched man! We have left thee so long to hug thy own mind becausethere was much work elsewhere to do! To-day we would have thee bethinkthyself. Thy sorcery at the Oak Grange and in Hawthorn Forest andelsewhere is wholly discovered! Thy fellows in iniquity are all taken,and sufficient have confessed to set thee at the stake! Why continue todeny—adding so to the heat of that hell which awaits thee—thy doingsin this nature? What use to say that thou didst not, leaving thy doublein the constable’s hands, return in the storm upon the Hawthorn road,and by the power of Satan affront and stay and with thy devil-furnisheddagger wound Master Harry Carthew?”

  “What use, indeed!” said Aderhold. “And yet I say it.”

  “Then,” said Master Clement, and the veins upon his forehead began toswell, “thou art a foolish poor atheist! What! when thou art compactof denial, and will be lost from earth and heaven because of that,dost think that one denial more will serve thee? Come! Thou struckestthe blow, we know. What witch had come at thy call and was with thee,standing on the hill brow, weaving and beckoning the storm?”

  “What witch?” echoed Aderhold, startled. “Nor I was there nor anyother!”

  Harry Carthew had not ceased to draw the gloves held in one handthrough the other. He sat with downcast eyes, wasted and sombre, morewasted, more haggard, and overlaid with the dull tint of tragedy thanAderhold himself. He spoke now with a flushed cheek. “Let that go by!It matters not what hand struck me in the side that night—” He turnedon Aderhold. “That which I must know, and will know, I tell you—”Shaken by passion he pushed back his chair, and rising moved with adisordered step the length of the room.

  Master Clement could not let pass the first part of his speech. “Notso, Harry Carthew! What! Matters not that you should be brought todeath’s door by the stroke of a wizard misbeliever—”

  Carthew again approached the table. “It matters not, I say. Unless—”He stood looking fixedly at Aderhold, the breath coming quickly frombetween his lips. “It has been confessed that you met these witches andwantoned with them at the sabbats in Hawthorn Wood.... Now, I have beensick and my senses wandering, and I have come but lately back into thisenquiry. Much has happened—much has been done—much has been laid barethat I knew naught of. In particular—” He broke away, walked again thelength of the room; then returning, stood above Master Clement in hisgreat chair and urged some course in an undertone.

  Master Clement first demurred, then, though without alacrity,acquiesced. “Is it well for you to be alone with him? I tell you theDevil hath such wiles—But since you wish it, I will go—I will go fora short while.” He heaved his slight, black figure from the chair, and,moving stiffly, quitted the room. The gaoler stood yet at the door,but, at a sign from Carthew, without, not within, the room.

  The squire’s brother had his own strength. It exhibited itself now. Hestilled his hurried breathing, ceased the nervous motion of his hands,indefinably broadened and heightened his frame, and became the strong,Puritan country gentleman, the future officer of Ironsides. Whateverthere was in him of stanch and firm and good so struggled with what wasdarkly passionate that, for these minutes at least, there rose on thehorizon something that was not the tempest-tossed ship of many months.The masts seemed to cease to bend, the anchor to hold again.

  He stood within five feet of Aderhold. He had moved so that the tablewas no longer between them. In doing so, the attitude of advantageand mastership had been lost. The two stood on a level floor, with noconventional judgement bar between them. If in Carthew, beneath murkand tempest, there appeared for the moment something basic, justified,and ultimate, in Aderhold no less character unveiled its mass. Hestood in chains, but they seemed ribbons of mist. It was he that wasmetal and real, and with a sudden loom and resistive force sent back,broken, doubts and fantastic violences of thought and ascription.Though for a short time only, yet for that time, the tattered farragoof superstitions, hanging in Carthew’s mind like mouldering banners ofwars whose very reason was forgot, shrunk and shrivelled until theyseemed but featureless dust. For a time he ceased, standing here, tobelieve in Aderhold’s attendance at sabbats, brewings of poison frombaleful herbs, toads, spiders, and newts, and midnight conspirings inthe interests of the Kingdom of Satan. Even the acknowledged, monstroussin, the extravagant, the unpardonable, the monarch and includerof all—even the enormity of Unbelief—wavered in his mind, grewunsubstantial. There was a fact of great force before him, a mass, areality.... But if, for one larger, saner moment, he rejected belief ina supernatural bond of evil linking together Aderhold and Joan Heron,he by no means did this with the possibility of other bonds—evil alsoif they existed between these two—evil to him as wormwood, darkness,and madness!

  “In particular,” he said, in a voice that thickened as he went on,“I am told that they have taken Joan Heron. I had never thought ofthat—of her coming under suspicion.... I had never thought of that.I do not yet believe her to be a witch—though indeed they bring allmanner of accusation and proof against her—but I will not yet believeit.... But I will have from thee what has been thy power over her! Tellme that, thou atheist!”

  “My power over her has been naught and is naught. I have spoken withher seldomer than I have spoken with you. I have had no associationwith her. Why she should be in this gaol I know not.”

  “It is proved that the morning after you were lodged here she came intothis square, and stood before this prison, making signs.”

  “I know naught of that. What does she say herself?”

  “She says that she had walked to the castle to see one there, andcoming back, paused but a moment in the square. She says she made nosigns.”

  “And is it so hard to believe what she says?”

  Carthew drew a heavy and struggling breath. “There is a passion, Ithink, that teacheth all human beings to lie.... It is said, andloudly, that you came to Heron’s cottage by night, and that she went tothe Oak Grange by night, and that you were paramours.”

  “It is false. I neither went so to Heron’s cottage nor did she come soto the Grange, nor were we paramours.”

  “That day I found you together in Hawthorn Wood—”

  “Do you remember what I said to you? That was the truth.”

  “Not one hour afterward I was told that often—oh, often andoften!—you walked together in the forest.”

  “Then you were falsely told. It was not so.”

  “Was the truth—and ‘is’ the truth.—You are earnest to clear her fromevery shadow of association with you. Why?”

  “Why?” Aderhold’s eyelids flickered. “Why? It seems to me easy to knowwhy. I was not born of so low condition that I would see the innocentdragged to a place like this.”

  A moment’s dead silence; then Carthew spoke with a regathered anddangerous passion. “Others are here—dragged here for their own sinfulactivities, and accused likewise of being your hail fellows and booncompanions. There are here a youth to whom it is said you taughtatheism, and Mother Spuraway and Grace Maybank and your housekeeper atthe Grange and others. Do you grieve for them that they are here?”

  “Aye,” said Aderhold; “I grieve for them. Piteous, wronged souls! Itell you, I have had naught to do with them, no
r they with me!”

  Carthew’s voice quivered, and he struck one hand into the other.“Words are locked doors, but not the voice with which the words areuttered! ‘Piteous wronged souls’ that my gentleman born of no lowcondition feels grief for and would deliver if he might from gaol andjudgement—and Joan Heron whom his voice only trembles not before,only caresses not because he would guard her from the ruin of hisfavour!—What good to loom there against me and thrust that, too, fromyou? You love her! You love her! And now I will know if she loves you!And when I know that I will know what I shall do!”

  “You are mad! Her life and mine touch not, save as this Hawthorn musicjangles our names together! I shall presently be dead. I know it, andyou know it. Leave her living, her and these others! You have thepower. Leave them living!”

  “Power!” the other burst forth. “I have no power to save her. She isbound with a hundred cords! Had I not fallen ill I might have—or Imight have not— But now it is too late. I cannot!” His helplessnesswas real enough, and it made—if he would not feel it too crushingly—adark bubbling-up of heat, violence, murky and passionate substance anecessity to him. He gave it way.

  Aderhold saw the change, the resurgence. He made with his chained handsa stately and mournful gesture. “As it will be!” he said.

  The other burst forth. “Aye, I believe—I believe that you havepoisoned and corrupted her, and that there is truth in every wordthey say! Now as I am a baptised man there is truth! For you are anunbeliever and God’s enemy! And is not God’s enemy of necessity blackand corrupt and a liar to the last particle of his being, to the lasthair of his head, to the paring of his nails! More—you have stoodthere weaving a spell to make me listen and well-nigh believe! Well,your spell will not hold me!—As God liveth I hold it to be true thatyou met by night in Hawthorn Forest—”

  “Look at me!” said Aderhold. “That is as true as that it was I whostruck a dagger into you on a Sunday night! _Now_ you know how true itis!”

  Carthew gave back a step and went deadly white. There was within himthat root of grace that he had risen from his sick bed with his firstmadness lessened and his mind set on managing a correction in theminds alike of Hawthorn and the commission. In the first wild turmoiland anger, pushing home under the half-moon from Heron’s cottage,blood staining his doublet and his head beginning to swim, he hadseized—it coming to him upon some blast of the wind that he must findand presently give a reason for his condition—he had seized the firstdark inspiration. It had answered—he had found on stepping from weeksof stupor and delirium that it had answered so well and thoroughlythat now—always below the Unbelief and Blasphemy—it was one of themain counts against the physician. He had thought to be able to casthesitancy and doubt on his original assertion. It was dark—the figurewas cloaked—it might not have been the leech.... He found that hecould corrupt no one’s belief that it was the leech—Hawthorn, hisbrother, Master Clement, the commission, all were unshakable. He knewnot himself how to shatter their conviction. He could not so injure hisown name and fame, the strict religion, the coming England, the greatservices which he meant yet to perform, as to stand and say, “I lied.”He could see that even if he said it, he would not be believed. Theywould say, “Your fever still confuses your head.” Or they might say,“They are casting their spells still.” Or they might ask, “Who, then,struck you?”... It was impossible.... Even did they believe it, whatwould it alter? Nothing! The apostate and sorcerer was in any eventdoomed. A straw more or less would make no difference. Surely one outof the circle of God’s mercy need not be too closely considered.... Buthe paled with the issue thrown so by the man himself between them.

  He paled; then desperately opened the gates to anger the restorative,and jealousy that shredded shame to the winds. Moreover, there flashedinto his soul in storm a suspicion. “Who struck me? Knowest thou_that_? If thou knowest that, then, indeed—”

  But Aderhold knew not that. He stood with folded arms and a steadyface. It was now to summon the ancient virtue, to play truly theRepublican, the free man, now to summon courage for others. Life! Life!And what men and women had suffered would be suffered again. And stillthe ether sprang clear and time stretched endlessly, and what was losthere might be found there. He looked at Harry Carthew with a steadfastface, and reckoned that the younger man was unhappier than he.

  The door opened with a heavy sound and Master Clement reappeared.Carthew flung himself toward him, his face distorted. “Naught—naught!And now I think the worst—I tell you I think the worst—”

  “I have always thought the worst,” said Master Clement. “Send him hencenow, and let us see these others.”

  ... Aderhold moved before the red-faced, wry-mouthed gaoler throughthe dark passageway and down the stair, back to the chill and darknessof his dungeon. Within it, the gaoler made a moment’s pause beforehe should turn and, departing, shut the thick door with the soundof a falling slab of a sepulchre. He stood, to the eye a rude andportentous figure, but to the inward vision giving off at timesrelieving glints.

  “Everything goes,” he said in a deep and rusty voice, “by looking atmore than just itself. In another day in England or in another countryto-day, you’d have been racked or put to the scarpines till, when theywanted you, we’d have had to carry you!”

  “That’s true enough,” said Aderhold. “One should have a gratefulheart!... True enough—as I know—as I know!”

  “It’s ten days to assizes,” said the gaoler. “It isn’t lawful to putfolk to the question in England—though if you stand mute, there’s_peine forte et dure_—and of course nobody’s going to do anything thatisn’t lawful! But you know yourself there are ways—”

  “Yes,” said Aderhold. “Do you mean that they will be used?”

  But the gaoler grew surly again. “I don’t know anything except thatthey want your confession. They’ve got a story that’s going to be soldin chap-books all over England—and ballads made—and of course theywant all the strange things in. It’s like the pictures of George andthe Dragon—the more dreadful the dragon, the taller man is the George!The town’s all abuzz—with the King writing a learned letter, and thebishop coming and the Witch Judge.—They want a dreadful dragon and thetallest kind of George!”

  “I see,” said Aderhold. “Even the dragon, the spear at his throat,expected to flatter!—O Diogenes! let us laugh, if we die for it!”

  “Anan?” said the gaoler. “Well, it stands that way.”

  The door shut behind him, grating and heavy. That it stood that wayAderhold found in the days that followed....

  It drew toward assizes. Five days before the time he found himself onelate afternoon, after a weary, weary hour of facing the commission,again in the long, dusky prison room where he had seen Joan. He knewnow that it was a kind of antechamber, a place where prisoners weredrawn together to wait occasions. More than once during these last dayshe had been kept here for minutes at a time, and sometimes others hadbeen here and sometimes not. But Joan Heron never. One day he had seenDorothy, and in passing had managed a moment’s word. “Dorothy, Dorothy!I am sorry—” Dorothy had gasped and shrunk aside. “Oh, wicked man!Oh, Master Aderhold—” He had seen also the youth with a clear passionfor knowledge to whom he had lent books and talked of Copernicus andGalileo. This one had not been fearful of him.

  To-day he saw neither this youth nor Dorothy. But suddenly, as hestood waiting his gaoler’s leisure, he was aware of Joan Heron....From somewhere came a red sunset light, and it followed and enwrappedher as she moved. She was moving with her arm in the grasp of a manof a curious and sinister look—moving by the wall at the end of theroom—moving across, then back again, across again and back, across andback.... Aderhold drew near, and it was as though an iron hand closedhard upon and wrung his heart.

  Joan went very slowly, dragging her limbs, more haled by the man thanmoving of volition. Her form swayed, seemed as if all and only itsdesire was to sink together, fall upon the earth and lie there withtime and motion ende
d in one stroke. Her head was sunken forward, hereyes closed.

  The man shook her savagely. “No sleeping!—When you are willing to tellyour witch deeds, then you shall sleep!”

  “Joan! Joan!” cried Aderhold. He moved beside the two. The man lookedat him but, stupid or curious, neither thrust him off nor dragged hischarge away. It was but for a moment.

  Joan opened her eyes. “You?” she said. “All I want is to sleep, sleep—”

  Her face was ghastly, exhausted. Aderhold uttered a groan. “Do theynot let you sleep either?” she said. “Five days, five nights—and I amthirsty, too.”

  He managed to touch her hand. “Joan, Joan—”

  She looked at him with lustreless eyes. “The others have all made upsomething to confess. But though I die, I will not. They may twist acord around my head and I will not.” A spasm crossed her face. “Oftheir vileness they may set the witch-pricker on me and I will not.”Her voice, monotonous and low, died away. The man haled her by the arm,forcing her to walk. She reeled against him. “Sleep ... sleep. Oh, letme sleep!” A door opened. The man with her looked up, nodded, put hishands on both her shoulders and pushed her toward it. Her eyes closedagain, her head sank forward. Together the two vanished, leaving toAderhold a sense of midnight and the abyss.