Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  The court was composed of the two score of ministers in the Presbytery, and only Mr. Fordyce was lacking, for he was once more stretched upon a bed of sickness. As it was only a preliminary examination there were no witnesses, since the object was to give the accused a chance of stating his case and so narrow the issue to be ultimately tried. The Moderator read aloud sworn statements, to which no names were appended, the names, as he explained, being reserved for the time when the complainants should appear in person. To David it was obvious that, though one of the statements was by a soldier of Leslie’s, the others must come from members of his own flock. There was nothing new in the details — the finding of the cavalier’s clothes in the manse outhouse, the interference with the troopers at the Greenshiel, and certain words spoken on that occasion; but what surprised him was the fact that the avowal which he had made to Mr. Muirhead was not set down. It was clear from the Moderator’s manner that he proposed to forget that episode, and was willing that David should deny any and every charge in the libel. Indeed he seemed to encourage such a course. “The Court will be glad,” he said, “if our young brother can blow away these most momentous charges. Everybody kens that among wars and rumours of war daft tales spring up, and that things are done in the confusion without ill intent, whilk are not defensible. It is the desire of all his brethren that Mr. Sempill shall go forth assoilzied of these charges, which are maybe to be explained by the carelessness of a domestic and the thoughtless words of a young man carried for a moment out of himself, and no doubt incorrectly reported.”

  But David did not take the hint. He avowed frankly that he had entertained a fugitive of Montrose at the manse, and had assisted him to escape. Asked for the name, he refused to give it. He also confessed that he had endeavoured too late to protect an Irishwoman at the Greenshiel, and had spoken with candour his opinion of her persecutors.

  “It is alleged,” said a heavy man, the minister of Westerton, “that you promised these poor soldiers eternal torments, and them but doing their Christian duty, and that you mocked at them as inferior in valour to the reprobate Montrose.”

  “No doubt a false report, Mr. Archibald,” said the Moderator. “It’s like that the worthy sodgers had been looking at the wine when it was red and werena that clear in their understanding.”

  “I cannot charge my memory with what I said,” David replied, “but it may well have been as set forth. That, at any rate, was what I had it in my mind to say.”

  A sigh of reprobation rose from the Court, and the Moderator shook his head. He honestly desired to give David a way of escape, not from any love he bore him, but for the credit of the Kirk. This, too, was the general feeling. As David looked over the ranks of his judges he saw stupidity, arrogance, confusion, writ on many faces, but on none malevolence. This Court would deal mildly with him, if he gave them the chance, for the sake of the repute of their common calling.

  He laboured to be meek, but no answers, however soft, could disguise the fact that he and they looked upon things from standpoints eternally conflicting. It was suggested to him again and again that the stranger at the manse had been entertained by his housekeeper, an ignorant woman and therefore the less reprehensible, for had she not rolled up the clothes and hidden them in the byre, as the accused admitted? But David refused to shelter behind any misapprehension. He had admitted the man, what was done had been by his orders, and — this in reply to a question by the minister of Bold — what he had done he was prepared to do again. The close of the first day’s sederunt found the charges proven in substance by the admission, indeed by the vehement proclamation, of the accused.

  For David there was no share in the clerical supper at the Cross Keys. He lay at a smaller inn in the Northgate, a resort of drovers and packmen, and spent such time as remained before bed in walking by Aller side, under the little hill crowned with kirk and castle, watching the salmon leap as they passed the cauld. Next day, the facts having been ascertained by admission, the Presbytery debated on principles, David was summoned to justify his conduct, and — with a prayer that he might be given humility — complied. With every sentence he rode deeper into the disapprobation of his hearers. He claimed that the cause of the helpless, however guilty, was the cause of Christ. Should a starving enemy be turned from the door, even though it was an enemy of the Kirk’s?

  “Man, can ye no distinguish?” thundered the minister of Bold. “Have you no logic in your head?” And he quoted a dozen savage Scriptural precedents against him.

  Was the Court, David asked, in a time of civil strife and war between brothers, clear that the precedent of Israel and the tribes of Canaan held? The men they fought against were professing Christians, indeed professed Presbyterians. Granted that they were in error, was it an error which could only be extirpated in blood?

  It was an unlucky plea, for it brought forth a frenzied torrent of denials. The appeal of his opponents was not only to Scripture, but to the decisions of the Kirk. Was there not here, one cried, that rebellion which was as the sin of witchcraft? What became, cried another, of the deference which a young man was bound to show to the authority of his fathers in God? “Are we to be like Rehoboam, who hearkened to callow and inexperienced youth, and not to those elders who partook of the wisdom of his father Solomon?”

  Presently David was silent. He remembered that meekness became him, and he had a sharp sense of the futility of argument. Respectfully he bowed his head to the blast, while a dozen of his brethren delivered extracts from their recent sermons. The Moderator confirmed the sense of the Court.

  “Our young brother is lamentably estranged from Christ,” he said in a voice which was charged with regret as well as with indignation. “He is like the Church of Laodicea, of whom it was written, ‘Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.’ I tell you, sir, he that is not with us is against us, and that in the day of the Lord’s judgments there can be no halting between two opinions. It is the duty of the Kirk to follow His plain commandment and to rest not till the evil thing be utterly destroyed from our midst, even as Barak pursued after the chariots to Harosheth of the Gentiles, and all the host of Sisera fell upon the edge of the sword, and not a man was left. You are besotted in your error, and till you repent you have no part in the commonwealth of Israel, for you are like Lot and have taken up your dwelling in the Cities of the Plain and have pitched your tents towards Sodom, whereas the Kirk, like Abram, dwelleth in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and hath built there an altar to the Lord.”

  The Presbytery refrained from any judgment on the case, that being deferred till a later meeting, when, if necessary, evidence could be called; but in view of the fact that the minister of Woodilee had acknowledged his fault and exhibited contumacy thereanent, he was by a unanimous decision suspended from occupying the pulpit and dispensing the Sacrament in the parish, and from all other pastoral rights and duties. As the winter was close on hand, when evil roads lessened church attendance, it was agreed that spiritual needs would be met if Mr. Fordyce were enjoined to conduct public worship alternately in Woodilee and Cauldshaw.

  David rode home in a frame of mind which was neither sad nor glad. He felt no shame at his suspension, but he recognized with a pang the breadth of the gulf which separated him from his brethren, and the ruin of those high hopes with which a year ago he had begun his ministry. He realized that he was but a poor ecclesiastic, for he could not feel that loyalty which others felt to a Kirk which was mainly the work of men’s hands. “They have lamentably perverted reason and justice” — he remembered Montrose’s words; and yet most of them were honest men and pious men, and maybe their good on a wide computation was greater than their ill. It was his unhappy portion to have encountered the ill. But if the Kirk cast him off he had Christ—”Other sheep I have which are not of this fold,” was Christ’s word — and he must follow with all humility the light that was given to him. When the main trial came on he would not relent in his denunciation
of the Wood, and his loss would be well repaid if, like Samson, he could bring down with him the pillars of Gaza. . . . He consoled himself thus, but he knew in his heart that he had no need of consolation, for the thought of Katrine was there like a live coal.

  He came to the manse in the gloaming, to find Isobel waiting for him in the road.

  “Heaven save us a’!” she said, “but there’s an awfu’ thing come to Woodilee. They’ve prickit a witch, and it’s nane ither than puir Bessie Todd o’ the Mains. Guid kens what they did till her, but a’ nicht the clachan rang wi’ her skirlin’. The pricker fand the Deil’s mark on her back, and stappit a preen [pin] intil it up to the heid and nae bluid came, and they burnt her feet wi’ lichtit candles, and hung her by the thumbs frae the cupples till they garred her own to awesome deeds. I canna believe it, the puir doited body, but if the ae half is true she’s far ben wi’ the Adversary, and oh, sir, it’s fearsome to think what wickedness can be hidden in the hert o’ man. She said the Deil gie’d her a new name, whilk she wadna tell, and she owned that ilka Lord’s Day, when she sat under ye on the pu’pit stair, she prayed to him—’Our Father, which wert in Heaven.’ But whatever her faut, it canna be richt the way they guidit her, lickin’ her wi’ a bull’s pizzle and burnin’ the gums o’ her till she yammers like a bitted powny. If she maun dee, let death come quick. For the Lord’s sake, Mr. David, get her down to the Kirk Aller tolbooth, for the Shirra is kinder than yon red brock [badger] o’ a pricker. The verra sicht o’ his wild een sends a grue to my banes — and Chasehope standin’ by him and speakin’ saft and wicked, and smilin’ like a cat wi’ a mouse.”

  David’s heart sickened with disgust. Chasehope had turned the tables on him; he had diverted suspicion from himself by sacrificing a half-witted woman. And yet this Bessie Todd had been a member of the coven — he had seen her grey locks flying in the Wood. Chasehope was presiding at the examination and torture; he would no doubt take good care that no word of the truth came out in her delirium. And Isobel, who had denied with violence his own charges against this very woman, seemed to believe her confession. She was revolted by the cruelty, but convinced of the sin. That would no doubt be the feeling of the parish, for who could disbelieve avowals which must send the avower to a shameful death?

  “Where is the wretched woman?” he asked.

  “They have her lockit up in Peter Pennecuik’s girnel. . . . They’ve gotten a’ they want, and they say that the Shirra has been sent for to carry her to the Kirk Aller steeple, whaur they confine the warlocks. . . . They’re in the girnel now, and the feck o’ Woodilee is waitin’ at the door. Will you stop for a bite? . . .”

  David waited only to stable his horse, and to buckle on the sword with which he had girt himself on the night of the second Beltane. He ran so fast towards the clachan that he was at Peter Pennecuik’s house before Isobel, labouring in his wake, had turned the corner of the manse loan.

  The night had fallen dark, but from inside the girnel came a flicker of light. David had once before seen a witch hunt — in Liberton, as a boy — and then there had been a furious and noisy crowd surging round the change-house where the accused was imprisoned. But the Woodilee mob was not like that. It was silent, almost furtive. The granary was a large building, for it had once been the barn of the Mains farm; it was built of unmasoned stone cemented with mud, and had a deep roof of thatch; through the chinks of both walls and roof came thin streams of light. The spectators did not press on the door, but stood in groups some paces back, as hushed as in the kirk of a Sabbath. The light was too dim for David to recognize faces, but he saw that one man stood at the door as keeper, and knew him for Reiverslaw.

  He had been drinking, and greeted the minister hilariously.

  “We’ve gotten ane o’ the coven,” he whispered thickly, “ane you saw yoursel’ in the Wud.”

  “But Chasehope is among her accusers.”

  “I ken, but we’ll get that kail-worm too, in the Lord’s guid time. At ony rate, we’re sure o’ ane o’ the deevils.”

  “You fool, this is a trick of Chasehope’s to divert attention from the Wood. This miserable woman has only confessed bairnly faults, and on that he’ll ride off scot free.”

  The truth penetrated slowly to Reiverslaw’s foggy brain, but in the end he saw it.

  “God’s curse on him, but ye’re maybe right. What are ye ettlin’, sir? Gie me the word and I’ll come in by and wring the truth out o’ him wi’ my hands at his gutsy thrapple.”

  “Bide where you are, and let none leave this place unless I bid you. I will see if I can get justice done.”

  But when Reiverslaw opened the heavy door to let him enter, the first glance told David that he had come too late. The great empty place had straw piled at one end, and on a barrel in the centre a flickering lantern. By it, on an upturned barrow, sat the pricker, a paper in his hand and an inkhorn slung round his neck, his face wearing a smirking satisfaction. He had once been a schoolmaster, and at this moment he looked the part again. Behind him, sitting on kegs or squatted on the floor, were a dozen men — Chasehope at his elbow, Mirehope, the miller, Peter Pennecuik, Nether Fennan — David saw only a few faces in the dim light. Daft Gibbie by some means or other had gained entrance, and had perched himself in a crevice of the wall, whence his long shoeless legs dangled over Chasehope’s head.

  On the straw behind the lantern lay the witch. Her grey hair had fallen round her naked shoulders, and that and a ragged petticoat seemed her only covering. Even in the mirk David could see the cruel consequences of torture. Her feet were black and swollen, and her hands, with dislocated thumbs, were splayed out on the straw as if they were no longer parts of her body. Her white face was hideously discoloured in patches, and her mouth was wide open, as if there were a tormenting fire within. She seemed delirious, for she gabbled and slavered uncouthly to herself, scarcely moving her lips. Every now and then her thin breast was shaken with a frenzied shivering.

  At the sight something gave in David’s head. He felt the blood rush above his eyebrows, and a choking at the back of his throat. Always a hater of cruelty, he had rarely seen its more monstrous forms, and the spectacle of this broken woman awoke in him a fury of remonstrance. He strode to the lantern and looked down on her, and then turned away, for he sickened. He saw the gimlet eyes of the pricker — red like a broody hen’s — and behind him the sullen, secret face of Chasehope.

  “What devil’s prank have you been at?” he cried. “Answer me, Ephraim Caird. Who is this mountebank, and what have you done to this unhappy woman?”

  “All has been done decently and in order,” said Chasehope. “The Presbytery is resolved to free this parochine of the sin of witchcraft, and this worthy man, who has skill in siccan matters, has been sent to guide us. There is a commission issued frae the Privy Council, as ye may have heard, to try those that are accused, but the first needcessity is to find the witches and exhort them to confession. This woman, Elspeth Todd, is convict out o’ her ain mouth, and we’ve gotten a memorial o’ the ill deeds she owns to. Word has been dispatched to the Shirra, and the morn, nae doot, he’ll send and shift her to Kirk Aller.”

  The man spoke smoothly and not discourteously, but David would have preferred oaths and shouting. He put a great restraint on his temper.

  “How did you extort the confession? Answer me that. You have tortured her body and driven her demented, and suffering flesh and crazed wits will avow any foolishness.”

  “We followed the means sanctioned by ilka presbytery in this land. It’s weel kenned that flesh sell’t to the Deil is no like common flesh, and the evil spirit will no speak without some sort o’ compulsion.”

  David snatched the paper from the pricker and held it to the lantern. It was written clearly in a schoolmaster’s hand, and though oddly and elliptically worded, he made out the sum of it. As he read, there was silence in the place, except for the babbling of the woman and the mowing of Daft Gibbie from his perch.

  It seemed to hi
m a bedlamite chronicle. The accused confessed that she had been guilty of charming, and had cured a cow on the Mains by taking live trouts from its belly. She had “overlooked” a boy, Hobbie Simson, at Nether Fennan, and he had sickened and lain for three months on his back. She had made a clay figure of one of the ewe-milkers at Mirehope and stuck pins into it, and the girl had suffered from pains and dizziness all summer. She had shot cattle with elf-bolts, and had cursed a field on Windyways by driving round it a team of puddocks. The Devil had trysted with her on a rig of Mirehope’s, and had given her a name which she would not reveal, and on the rig there had been ever since an intractable crop of thistles. Her master visited her in the likeness of a black cat, and she herself had often taken the same likeness, and had travelled the country at night sitting on the crupper of one of the Devil’s mares. By means of the charm of the seven south-flowing streams and the nine rowan berries, she had kept her meal-ark full in the winter famine. She confessed to having ridden John Humbie, a ploughman of Chasehope’s, night after night to a witch-gathering at Charlie’s Moss, so that John was done with weariness the next day and unfit for work. The said John declared that he woke with the cry of “Up horsie” in his ear. At these gatherings she admitted to having baked and eaten the witch-cake — a food made of grey bear and a black toad’s blood, and baked in the light of the moon, and at the eating had sung this spell:

  “Some lass maun gang wi’ a kilted sark;

  Some priest maun preach in a thackless kirk;

  Thread maun be spun for a dead man’s sark;

  A’ maun be done ere the sang o’ the lark.”

  She admitted that she had taken the pains of childbirth from women — but what women she would not say — and that then the child had been born dead, and had so become a “kain bairn” for the Devil. Last, and most damning, she had between her shoulders the Devil’s secret mark.