Year of Wonders

by Geraldine Brooks

  Mrs. Mompellion also brought food, though I could eat none of it. She sat by me and held my hand and whispered whatever words she thought I could bear to hear. I learned only later, for my thoughts were bent then entirely on my own griefs, that when she left after long hours with me she would go next door to Mary Hadfield, whose mother, having come to comfort her in her great loss, now lay ill herself. And thence across the street to the Sydells, who had three lying sick, and from there on to the Hawksworths’ where Jane, who was pregnant, lay ill alongside her husband, Michael.

  Jamie suffered for five days before God finally saw fit to take him. The day of his death, the strange circles bloomed on him: vivid crimson welts rising in rings just beneath the topmost layer of his skin. As the hours passed, these turned violet and then purple-black, hardening into crusts. It seemed as if the flesh inside of him was dying while he yet breathed, the putrefying meat pushing and bursting its way out of his failing body. Both of the Mompellions came when word reached them that these new Plague tokens had appeared. Jamie lay on a makeshift pallet before the hearth, where I had lit a low fire against the evening chill. I sat at the head of the pallet, pillowing Jamie’s head in my lap and stroking his brow. The reverend kneeled down upon the hard gritstone floor and commenced to pray. His wife slid silently from the chair and knelt beside him. I heard the words as if they came from far away.

  “Omnipotent God, and most merciful Father, bow down Thine ear to our request, and let Thine eye look upon the miseries of Thy people. Behold, we cry unto Thee for mercy. Stay therefore Thine arm, and loose not the arrow of death to strike this young child into his grave. Call home Thy Angel of Wrath and let not this child perish under the heavy stroke of this dreadful Plague, which is now a dweller amongst us ...” The fire in the hearth threw a warm glow on the kneeling pair, their heads, dark and fair, bent close together. It was only at the end of the prayer that Elinor Mompellion raised her eyes and looked at me. I shook my head as the tears ran down my face, and she knew her husband’s pleas had been in vain.

  I cannot recount the days that followed. I know I fought the sexton when he came to take Jamie’s body away, crying out in my disordered state and trying to claw off the linen piece wound round him because I feared he could not breathe through it. I know I walked to the church many times. I saw Jamie laid in the ground there beside Tom, and then Mary Hadfield’s mother, and three of the Sydell children and Jane Hawksworth’s husband and after that her son, born too soon and dead a day later. I stood with Lib Hancock while her husband was buried, and the two of us clung to each other in our grief. But I cannot tell you what was said, in the church or at the graveside, save for the line “In the midst of life, we are in Death,” which did indeed seem to me to be the whole description of our plight then.

  Within a day or two, I found a way to trudge once again through my work, though my hands functioned separate from my mind, and I could not tell you a single task I did during that fortnight, as the days and nights slid by. It was as if a deep fog had settled on me and everything around me, and I groped my way from one chore to the next without really seeing anything clearly. When I had no toil to set my hands to, I spent much time in the churchyard. Not, as you would think, at the graves of my boys. I could not yet bring myself to be among the beloved dead. Instead, I lingered in the quiet grove behind the church, where the old graves are. It is a lumpy place, where the ground has heaved and sighed into grassy mounds and the briar roses tumbled in a bright profusion of ruddied hips over graves whose markings are weathered and barely legible. These I could abide to be among. They marked the losses and sufferings of people I did not know, whose pain I did not share. And from there I could not hear the rhythmic swish and thump of the sexton’s shoveling or see the raw sillion laid open to receive the body of another neighbor.

  There is, among these old graves, a great soaring stone cross, carved cunningly in the ancient ways of the people who walked these hills beyond the reach of memory. They say that it was brought here from the lonely track that wends near to the summit of the White Peak, and now it looms above the little monuments of our making like some uneasy foreign visitor. I would lean against the cross, resting my forehead against the rough grit of its wind-pitted surface. Remembered prayer-fragments formed and then dissolved, interrupted by the confusion of my thoughts. Behold the Handmaid of the Lord. Why was I not one of the many in the chamber of Death? My husband dead, and yet not me. My lodger gone, and yet not me. My neighbors, and yet not me. My babies—my babies! My eyes stung. I pressed my face against the stone and breathed the scent of it, cool and mossy and calming. Let it be done unto me according to Thy Word. My fingers traced the twining curves that ran up either side, and I imagined the skilled hands that had carved them. I wished I could talk to that long-ago craftsman. I wanted to know how his people had coped with what God had sent them. There were angels carved into the cross, but also strange creatures whose nature I did not know. Mrs. Mompellion had told me once that the cross came from a time when the Christian faith was new to Britain and had to vie with the old ways of the standing stones and the bloody sacrifices. I wondered dully if the craftsman who made it was thinking to outdo those other, older stone monuments. Had he fashioned it out of a faith that was hard and certain? Or had it been the gesture of a man seeking to appease a God who seemed to want not the love and awe that the Scriptures asked of us, but an endless surfeit of our suffering. According to Thy Word. Why were God’s words always so harsh?

  I believe I might have gone on so, given up to grief and confusion, if it had not been for a hirsel from my flock losing itself upon the moors. It was the third sennight after Jamie’s death. I had been negligent of the sheep, and some of them had moved off on their own, searching for the better grass I should have shepherded them to long since. The sky was pewter that afternoon, and the air had the metallic taste of an early snowfall, so I had no choice but to seek them out, even though the task of placing one foot before the other on the uphill walk seemed an effort far beyond me. I was following what I hoped was the trail of their scat along a clough at the edge of the moors, praying to find them and bring them safely down before the light failed, when I heard a horrible yelling coming from near a mine that had been made Old Man by flooding some half dozen years earlier.

  There were ten or twelve people in a rough circle, jostling and staggering, their loud voices slurring as if they’d come straight from the Miner’s Tavern. Lib Hancock was among them, stumbling from the effects of drink, which I knew well she was not used to. In the center, upon the ground, was Mem Gowdie, her frail old arms bound before her with a length of fraying rope. Brad Hamilton knelt across her chest as his daughter, Faith, grasped a fistful of the old woman’s sparse silver hair and raked at her cheek with a hawthorn prick. “I’ll have it yet, witch!” she cried, as Mem moaned and tried to raise her bound hands to her face to fend off the blows. “Your blood will drive this sickness from my mother’s body.” In the circle, Hamilton’s oldest boy, Jude, held his mother in his arms. Rubbing her hand over Mem’s scratched and bleeding cheek, Faith stood up unsteadily and smeared the blood on her mother’s neck, where the Plague sore rose throbbing.

  I was running toward them, skidding and sliding down the steep side of the clough, the loose stones clattering around me, when Mary Hadfield broke from the throng and flung herself down beside poor Mem, pushing her face, all twisted with rage, within inches of the old woman’s. “You killed my family, hag!” Mem writhed, trying to shake her head in denial. “I heard you curse us for bringing the physician to Edward! I heard you as you left my door! Your malice has brought Plague on my man and my mother and my boys!”

  “Mary Hadfield!” I yelled, struggling to be heard over the drunken din. A few faces turned around as I pushed my way, panting, into the circle. “Mem Gowdie did no such thing! Why are you saying this? I was on your very doorstep with her when that quack physician was in your house. She left your door with her lips sealed. Say rather that the physician
hastened your Edward’s death with his leeches and purges, before you slander this good soul!”

  “Why do you defend her, Anna Frith? Do not your own babies lie rotting in the ground from her cursing? You should be helping us here. Get you gone if you have nowt to do but hinder.”

  “Let’s swim her!” yelled an ale-soused voice. “Then we’ll see if she’s witch or no!”

  “Aye!” yelled another, and soon they were dragging Mem, who seemed near insensible from beatings, toward the adit of the flooded mine. Her old, much-mended bodice had given way with the tugging, exposing one withered pap, purple from bruising. The mine was a wide one, and I could see the slick stones descending into darkness.

  “You throw her down there, and you’ll be murderers!” I yelled, trying to get in front of Brad Hamilton, who seemed the most sensible man amongst them. But when I grabbed his arm I saw that his face was distorted by drink and grief, and then I remembered he’d buried his son John that day. He flung me aside, and I missed my footing and fell hard, my head hitting a cropt of limestone. When I tried to raise it, the earth spun and turned dark.

  When I came to myself, Mary Hadfield was wailing, “She’s sinking! She’s sinking! She’s no witch! God forgive us, we’ve killed her!” She was tugging first one of the men and then the other, trying to pull them to the adit. Jude held the end of the frayed old rope that had been tied to Mem, staring at it as if he expected to find some answer in its torn strands. I struggled to my feet and peered down into the dark, but I could see nothing but the distorted reflection of my own bloodied, anguished face peering back at me from the surface of the water. When I saw that no one was going to do anything, I pushed them aside and flung myself over the lip of the adit, feeling for the first stemple. But as I put my boot upon it, the rotted wood crumbled and fell away, and I dangled for a moment over the pit before someone, I did not at first see who, reached out an arm and pulled me back.

  It was Anys Gowdie. Breathing hard from running all the way up hill from the village, she wasted no words. Someone clearly had brought news to her of what was afoot, for she had a fresh rope tied ready around her waist. She slung it over the old turn-tree and secured it to the stowes, then she slid straight down into that slimy dark. The others had fallen back from her, but now they surged forward, peering down into the mine. One of them staggered into me, the weight of his drunken body pushing me down onto my knees against the rock. With all my force I drove an elbow into his side and shoved him back, and then, wiping the blood from my eyes, I, too, strained to see into the adit. I could just make out Anys’s hair, bright against the black water. There was a great deal of splashing, and then she began to climb, the limp body of her aunt lashed to her back. Luckily, many of the stemples were still sound enough to hold such a weight, and as she neared the top, Mary Hadfield and I reached down to grasp her arms and pull her up the last few feet.

  Mary and I laid Mem upon the ground and Anys pressed again on her chest as the abusers had done not so many minutes earlier. Dark water spewed from her mouth. The old woman wasn’t breathing. “She’s dead!” wailed Mary, and that disordered group took up the keening. Anys paid them no mind but knelt beside the body, covered her aunt’s mouth with her own, and breathed into it. Kneeling beside her, I counted out the breaths. After the third, Anys paused. Mem Gowdie’s chest rose by itself. She sputtered, groaned, and opened her eyes. The relief I felt lasted only an instant, for Lib, in a crazed voice, began crying: “Anys Gowdie’s raised the dead! It’s her that’s the witch! Seize her!”

  “Lib!” I cried, rising dizzily up off the ground beside Mem and grasping her by both arms. “Don’t be a fool! Who among us here hasn’t put their mouth to a lamb born unbreathing?”

  “Shut your mouth, Anna Frith!” Lib Hancock yelled, throwing off my hands and at the same time stepping toward me, bringing her face inches from mine. “For you yourself told me that this witch consorted with the Devil’s spawn who brought the Plague here! Know you not that Viccars was a manwitch? And she was his vessel!”

  “Lib!” I shouted, seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her. “Don’t speak so of the blameless dead! Is not poor Mr. Viccars in his grave as surely as your dear husband?” Her eyes, glazed and strange, regarded me with hatred.

  Cries of “whore” and “jade” and “fornicator” were coming now from every twisted mouth, as the mob surged at Anys where she knelt beside her aunt, leaping upon her and clawing at her flesh. Only Mary Hadfield stood back, her face stricken. I pushed Lib out of my way and tried to get to Anys. A wind had whipped around from the north, the maddening, deafening wind we call Gabriel’s Hounds. Anys was strong and fought them, and I tried to help her, grasping at one and then another, trying to pull them off her until my head began again to spin. Then Urith Gordon screamed.

  “I can’t see my reflection in her eyes! Sign of a witch! Sign of a witch! She witched my husband into lying with her!” At that, John Gordon began laying on to Anys like a man possessed. I grabbed at his forearm, trying to pull him back from her, but by then I was covered in blood from the gash on my temple, and I felt the beating in my head and I knew my strength was insufficient to his frenzy. “Must get Mompellion” was my last thought; as I turned to run, someone struck me a blow that sent me sprawling.

  I groaned and tried again to rise, but my limbs would not obey me. I saw the noose go around Anys’s neck and knew they planned to hang her with her own rope, using the stowes as the scaffold. What I did not foresee was what happened next, for Anys Gowdie ceased her struggling then and drew herself up to her full, impressive height. Her cap had fallen off and the tendrils of her wet hair fell about her like strange golden snakes. A trickle of bright blood ran from her mouth.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice deep and uncanny, “I am the Devil’s creature, and, mark me, he will be revenged for my life!” The men who held her stepped back a piece, making the sign of the cross and the other, older sign, against strong magic.

  “Anys!” I groaned. “Don’t say these things! You know they are not so!”

  She looked at me where I lay on the ground and gave a ghostly smile. But in her eyes, I read judgment: my loose tongue had helped betray her. Then she looked away and stared all around her at her persecutors. The sun, slipping below the horizon, found a narrow slit in the louring clouds. Through it, sudden and swift, beamed a lonely finger of light. It sped over the hillsides, touching each tree and stone until it reached Anys and lit her up as if she were on fire. Her amber eyes glinted yellow as a cat’s.

  “I have lain with him. Yes! I have lain with the Devil, and he is mighty and cold as ice to the touch. His seed, too, is cold and abundant as a river running between our thighs. For I have not lain with him alone! No! I tell you now, I have seen your wives lie with him! Yours, Brad Hamilton, and yours, John Gordon, and yours, too, Martin Highfield!” The women moaned or screamed their outrage, but their men were transfixed by Anys and did not look at them.

  “We rejoice to do it, all of us together and without shame, many times, one after another, and sometimes two or more at once, sucking him and taking him howsoever he desires to go into us. No man’s yard is as great as his. He is as a stallion amongst geldings compared to you.” Here she fixed her glare on the men she had named, and I saw them flinching. “Every wife has said that her pleasure is extreme, far greater than with any of you!” And she laughed as she said this last, laughed as if she could not control herself. The men bellowed like oxen then and tugged as one upon the rope. It snapped tight and silenced her laughter. Her long legs kicked as they pushed her into the adit.

  They were still kicking when John Gordon let go of the rope and looked wildly around for his wife. She saw his crazed eyes and began to run, her moan of fear a gargling bray. John Gordon reached her and brought her down with a blow. He grasped her hair and pulled her face up from the ground, rolling her over like a meal sack. “Is it true?” he yelled, his knuckles bunched tight and poised above her. “Did you lay with Satan?” Be
fore she could answer, he smashed his fist into her face. Blood streamed from her nose. He raised his arm to strike her again.

  Michael Mompellion’s voice, when it came thundering down the clough, was louder and fiercer even than the wind.

  “What in the name of God have you done here?”

  John Gordon’s arm dropped to his side. He turned to stare at the rector. None of us had ever seen such a look upon him. He had a torch in his hand, and it lit his face from beneath so that his eyes were bright, fierce orbs. I thought, as I lay there in my dull pain, that this is how an owl must look to a mouse in that last second before the talons sink into the flesh. And he did swoop then, plunging Anteros down the steep slope, sending the stones flying from beneath his hoofs. I saw that Mary Hadfield was cowering behind him in the saddle and realized she’d had the wit to go and fetch him here. He bore down first upon Brad Hamilton, who was closest to the stowes. Hamilton raised both arms as if to defend himself, but Anteros reared like a battle charger, driving him back. The rector turned the horse and slid from the saddle, throwing down the torch so that it hissed in the mud. He pulled a knife from his belt. Reaching up, he cradled Anys in one arm, slashing the rope with the other. Her beautiful face was unrecognizable, purple and bloated, with the tongue hanging out like a cur’s. He drew his cloak up so that it covered her.

  Someone—I think it was Martin Highfield—was still drunk or crazed enough to try to defend what had been done.

  “She ... she admitted it,” he slurred dully. “She confessed she lay with the Devil ...”

  Mompellion raised his voice to a roar. “Oh, yes, the Devil has been here this night! But not in Anys Gowdie! Fools! Ignorant wretches! Anys Gowdie fought you with the only weapon she had to hand—your own ugly thoughts and evil doubting of one another! Fall on your knees, now!”

  And they did, dropping as one to the ground. “Pray to God that in His infinite mercy He will save your miserable souls.” He drew a breath then and sighed. When he spoke again, the rage was gone from his voice, but each word carried clearly, even over the whine and groan of the wind. “Do we not have suffering enough in this village? Is there not Death enough here for you all that you bring the crime of murder amongst us as well? Gird yourselves, and pray that God does not exact from you the price that this day’s deeds deserve.”