by John Buchan
Some sentences from the document David read aloud, and in his voice there was bitter scorn. He believed most devoutly in the menace of witchcraft and in a Devil who could take bodily form and divert the course of nature to seduce human souls, but this catalogue of sins seemed to him too childish for credence. It was what any woman crazed with pain might confess in the hope of winning respite. Most of the details he remembered from his boyhood as common talk; the witch-cake rhyme he had sung himself; the charm to fill Bessie’s meal-ark during the winter he knew to be false, for she had nearly died of want, and he had fed her from the manse kitchen. . . . He had seen her in the Wood, and yet there was no mention of the Wood. Chasehope had been present at the torture, and doubtless his fell influence had kept her rhapsody away from the point of danger. The poor soul was guilty, but not of this childishness.
He looked at her as she lay, mindless, racked, dying perhaps, and an awful conviction entered his mind. She was a human sacrifice made by the coven to their master. . . . He had read of such things, he half-remembered tales of them. . . . Perhaps she was a willing victim — he had heard of such — coming forward with a perverted joy to confess her shame. The torture — that would be to stimulate her imagination. Isobel had always said she was weak in her mind. . . . She might have been chosen by lot in the kirk on Hallowmass-e’en. . . . Chasehope was not her inquisitor, but the dark priest who conducted the ritual.
His anger and disgust rose to a fury. He tore the paper into little pieces and flung them in the pricker’s face.
“What doubly damned crime have you committed?” he cried. “You have tortured a wretched weak woman and taken down her ravings for truth. You have maybe killed her, murderer that you be! Your sins cry out to God, and yours above all, Ephraim Caird, whose hands I have myself seen dipped in the blackest witchcraft.”
Chasehope’s face was smiling blandly.
“I kenna what right ye have to meddle, sir,” he said. “The paper ye’ve torn is but a copy. The memorial itsel’ will be in safe hands this nicht. Wad ye set yoursel’ up against the Presbytery and the law o’ the land, you that have been suspended this day, as is weel kenned, frae your rights as minister o’ this parish? Ye’d best gang hame to your bed, sir, and pray that ye may be delivered frae the sin o’ presumption. This woman will bide the nicht in this place under lock and key, till the Shirra sends for her.”
“She will go with me to the manse this night — and, please God, I will nurse her back into life.”
There could be no question of the consternation of the audience — it almost equalled his own. Chasehope alone kept his composure; the others stared in horror and growing anger.
“That will no be permitted,” came from the lowering Mirehope, and “A bonny minister,” cried another, “to file his house wi’ a dirty witch. He maun himsel’ be ower great wi’ the Deil.” The pricker twisted and grinned, and his eyes watched approvingly the spasms of the woman on the straw.
David was carried out of himself, and before he was aware of it had drawn his sword.
“She goes to the manse. I will suffer no let or hindrance in this plain duty. Whoever opposes me will rue it.”
“Wad ye deforce the session?” Mirehope shouted in a voice like a bull and got to his feet. From the idiot on his perch came an unexpected encouragement. “Fine, sir. Fine, my bonny Mr. David,” cried Gibbie. “Stap your sword in his wame. I’ll uphaud ye wi’ my staff, for the puir kimmer was ill-guidit. I couldna sleep a wink a’ nicht for her skellochs.”
A voice broke in on the storm, and David saw that it was the new tenant of Crossbasket.
“Put up your blade, sir,” he said. “There’s no need for fighting among Christian folk. These honest men have been following the light vouchsafed to them, and if there’s blame to be cast it’s on this pricker chiel that comes from I know not where.”
There was something in the quiet tones which fell like oil on yeasty water. David settled back his sword into its sheath, Mirehope sat down again on his keg, Chasehope turned his head to the speaker with the first sign of discomposure he had yet shown.
“Ye’ll forgive me, neighbours,” Mark continued, “since I’m but new come to the parish, but I’ve seen a hantle o’ the world, and I would be wae to see honest men run their heids against a stone wall. The woman may be a’ you say and waur, but it looks as if her handlin’ had been ower sair, and I’m muckle mista’en if she’ll no be a corp ere morning. Consider, friends. — This is no a court constituted by a Privy Council commission; it’s nae mair than a private gathering o’ well-wishers to the Kirk and the Law. In my time I’ve meddled ower much wi’ the Law for my comfort, and I ken something about the jaud. The Law has no cognizance of a pricker or onything like him, and if well-meaning folk under his guiding compass the death of a man or woman that has not been duly tried and sentenced, the Law will uphaud it to be murder, just as muckle as if a caird had cut a throat at a dyke-side. I greatly fear ye’ve brought yourselves into its danger by this day’s work.”
Mark spoke with an air of anxious and friendly candour that called for no opposition. Indeed it was plain that more than one of his hearers had similar doubts of their own.
“The wife’s weel eneuch,” said Mirehope. “Ye’ll no kill a tough auld greyhen like that wi’ a raxed thumb or brunt taes.”
“I hope you’re richt, neighbour,” said Mark. “But if she suld dee, what will ye say to the Shirra — and what to the Court o’ Justiciar? Ye’ve taken doun frae her mouth a long screed o’ crimes, but I’m of the minister’s opinion, that they’re what ony distrackit body wad admit that wasna verra strong in the intellectuals and fand her paiks [punishment] ower sair for her. Lord bless me, but they’re maist o’ them owercomes I heard at my grannie’s knee. I counsel ye in all friendliness to let the minister do his best to keep her in life, or it sticks in my mind that Woodilee will mak’ an ill showing when the King’s judges redd up the business.”
Chasehope angrily dissented, but he had few supporters. Most of the others wore an anxious air.
“I come to the matter of the pricker.” Mark’s homely wheedling tones were like those of a packman in an ale-house kitchen. “I ken nocht about him, but I canna say I like the looks o’ him. I doubt if I was strapped up by the thumbs and had yon luntin’ een glowering at me I wad speak wi’ strange tongues mysel’. It’s no that difficult for a pawky body to gar a weaker vessel obey his will. . . . Get up off that barry,” he said sharply. “Stand ayont the licht till I have a look at ye.”
The words came out like a crack of a whip-lash. The atmosphere of the place had suddenly changed, the woman’s mutterings had ceased, and, as David stood back from the lantern, he saw that Mark had moved forward and was beside the pricker, a yard from him, with the light between them, and the faces of both in full view of the rest. The one shambled to his feet and set his hand to his head as if to avert a blow, while the other, his dark face like a thundercloud, stood menacingly over against him.
“Look at me,” Mark cried. “Look me in the een, if there’s that muckle smeddum in your breast.”
The eyes of the pricker were like small dark points in his dead-white eyeballs.
“Ye’re one Kincaid, but ye’ve gone by mony names. Ye’ve been a dominie and a stickit minister, a thief and a thief-taker, a spy and a witch-finder, and ye’d fain be a warlock if the Deil thocht your soul worth half a bodle. . . . Turn your een to the licht, and keep them there. . . . Answer me ere the Pit opens for ye. Was there ever a word in your mouth that wasna as false as hell? Say ‘I am a liar, like my father the Devil afore me.’”
“I am a liar,” the man croaked.
Mark stretched out one hand and passed it over the pricker’s brow.
“What’s aneath here?” he asked. “Honest banes? Na, na, rottenness like peat.” To the horrified spectators he seemed to pass his hand backwards and forwards through the man’s head, as if a knife had gone through a pat of butter.
“What’s in your een?�
�� he cried, leaning forward. “I see the fires of hell and the worm that dieth not. God! the bleeze o’ them is keekin’ through!”
For a moment it seemed to all that a ruddy glow of flame leaped to the roof, and Daft Gibbie in his agitation fell from his seat and rushed to the door. The idiot flung it open and screamed beyond Reiverslaw to the waiting crowd, “Come inbye, every soul o’ ye. The pricker that tormented puir Bessie is getting his paiks, and Glee’d Mark is drawin’ hell fire out o’ him. Come inbye and see the bonny sicht.”
Reiverslaw and a dozen others entered the granary; the door remained half open and the night wind swept up the dust and chaff of the floor and made the red light seem a monstrous wavering cloud that hung like an infernal aureole over the wretched man.
Mark had him by the shoulder. “And what’s this?” he cried, tearing his shirt aside and showing his bare throat. “As I live by bread, it’s a Deil’s pap!” Certainly to the audience it seemed that above the breast grew a small black teat.
The creature was in an extremity of terror. Fear had so drained the blood from his eyeballs that the pupils seemed to burn with an uncanny brightness, even after the red had gone out of the light.
“There’s nae bull’s pizzle needit to make this wauf [feeble] body confess.” Mark’s iron grip was still on his shoulder. “If ony neighbour has ony misdeed in his mind, I’ll warrant to wring it oot o’ the pricker as glib as a bairn’s schule-lesson. I’ll mak’ him own to the Black Mass in the kirk on Hallowe’en. . . . There’s nane speaks? Weel, we’ll leave the dott’rel to his ain conscience.”
He relaxed his grip, and the man dropped gibbering and half-senseless on the floor.
“There’s your bonny pricker,” said Mark to Chasehope. “There’s your chosen instrument for getting truth out o’ auld wives. Do as you like wi’ him, but I counsel ye to get him furth o’ the parish if he be a friend o’ yours, or the folk will hae him in the deepest hole in Woodilee burn.”
Chasehope, white and stammering, found himself deserted by his allies, but he still showed fight.
“I protest,” he cried. “I kenna what hellish tricks ye’ve played on a worthy man—”
“Just the same tricks as he played on the auld wife — a wee bit o’ speirin’.”
“It’s no my blame,” said Chasehope, changing his ground, “if I have leaned on a broken reed. The man was sent here by folk that vouched for his worth. And nevertheless, whatever the weakness o’ the instrument, the Lord has wrocht through him to produce a confession—”
“Ay. Just so,” said Mark dryly. “But what kind o’ instrument is yon to procure the truth? Will ye get caller water out o’ a foul pipe?”
“The Lord works—” Chasehope began, but Mark broke in on him. His dark mocking face, in which the squint of the left eye was now most noticeable and formidable, was thrust close to the other’s.
“See here, my bonny man. — Ye can get ony mortal daftness out o’ man or woman if ye first put fear on them. Ye’ve seen the auld wife and ye’ve seen the pricker. Do you come forrit forenent the licht. Ye’re a buirdly chiel, and weel spoken o’ for canniness. Ye can keep your thumbs unraxed and your hide unscorched for me, but by the God abune us I’ll warrant that in ten minutes by the knock I’ll hae ye confessin’ fauts that will keep the haill parish waukrife till Yule. . . . Will ye thole the trial?”
The big man shrank back. “Na, na. I kenna what spell the Deil has gien ye, but ye’ll no lay it on me.”
“So muckle the better for yoursel’.” Mark turned to the others. “Ye’ve a’ seen, neighbours, that my spell, as he ca’s it, was nae mair than just an honest speirin’. I’m loth to think that this clachan should suffer for what has been done this day, so the sooner we get the wife to bed and weel-tended the better for us a’.”
“She shall go to the manse at once,” said David. He had been examining the tortured woman, who had passed into unconsciousness, and it seemed to him that her heart beat very faintly.
“That will be wisest, no doubt,” said Mark, but at this point Chasehope found support in his protest. Mirehope, Nether Fennan, and the miller exchanged anxious looks.
“Take her to Alison Geddie,” they cried. “She has a toom [empty] bed, and it’s near by.”
“She will go to my own house,” said David, “and be nursed by my own hand. I trust no man or woman of you after to-day’s devilry.”
The place had filled up, and it seemed to him that the better part of the parish were now onlookers. It was clear that a considerable number were on Chasehope’s side, for the mention of the manse had wakened a curious disquiet in many faces. David solved the problem by dragging out from the back of the granary a wooden sledge used for drawing peats. He covered it with straw and laid the woman on it.
“Reiverslaw!” he cried. “You take the one end and I’ll take the other.”
The farmer advanced, and for a second it looked as if he might be prevented by force. He turned fierce eyes on the crowd. “Ay, sir. I’ll dae your bidding. . . . And if ony man lifts his hand to prevent me, he’ll get a sarkfu’ o’ broken banes.”
The strange cortège moved out into the darkness, without opposition. It may have been the honest feeling of the majority that let it go; it may have been the truculent Reiverslaw, or David with his white face and the sword bobbing at his belt: but most likely it was the fact that Mark Riddel walked by the minister’s side.
Bessie Todd died just before morning. Isobel received her old gossip with tears and lamentations, laid her in the best bed, washed and salved her wounds, and strove to revive her with cordials. But the trial had been too hard for a frail woman far down in the vale of years. David watched all night by her bedside, and though at the end she became conscious, her mind was hopelessly unhinged, and she babbled nonsense and scraps of childish rhymes. If he could not pray with her, he prayed beside her, pleading passionately for the departing soul.
As Isobel straightened the body and closed the eyes, she asked anxiously if there had been any space given for repentance.
David shook his head.
“Puir thing, she got the Devil’s fee and bountith, and muckle guid it did her. Let’s hope, sir, that afore her mind left her she had grace given her to renounce him and creep to the Mercy Seat. . . . We’ll gar some folks in Woodilee look gash [ghastly] for this. There was a time, Mr. David, when I wad have held ye back, but my word now is Gang forrit, till ye rive this parish wi’ the fear o’ God, and sinners we ken o’ will howl on their knees for as quiet a death-bed as Bessie’s.”
CHAPTER XVII. WOODILEE AND CALIDON
The pricker disappeared from the parish in the night. The dead woman was buried decently in the kirkyard, and her male kin attended the funeral as if there had never been a word against her fair fame. There was indeed a certain revulsion of feeling among plain people in Woodilee. Bessie had been liked; she was regretted and pitied; the downfall of the pricker seemed to invalidate her confession. But there was a party — Chasehope was the leader — who held that solemn things had been trifled with and that the minister had gone far to bring God’s curse on the parish. He had laid his hand to his sword like a malignant, and had made light of an awful confession before the pricker had been discredited. Bessie might have been innocent of witchcraft, but in his plea for her he had shown a discreditable leniency towards the sin. Women might be old and frail, but if they were leagued with Satan it was enough to put them beyond the pale of Christian sympathy. The minister was patently rebellious and self-willed, a scorner of the yoke of Kirk and Word.
But the night’s events caused a notable increase in one reputation. The new tenant of Crossbasket had shown himself an ill man to counter. He had the interests of the parish at heart and had given wise advice, and he had confounded the pricker with a terrible ease. Clearly a man with power; nor was there reason to think that the power was not given him from on high. A hard man to gainsay, as even Chasehope had found. His friendliness had made him popular, and folk were slipping
into neighbourly ways with him. Soon he would have been “Mark” to most, and “Glee’d Mark” behind his back. But from that night formality and decorum invested him; he was “Crossbasket” even to the children, and the humbler doffed their bonnets when he drew near.
He came to David one evening when the candle was lit in the study.
“What arts were yon,” the minister asked, “that turned the pricker from a man into a jelly?”
Mark had sat himself in a deep armchair covered with black leather, which had been David’s father’s and had come to the manse from the Pleasance after the roup. He had crossed his legs and let his head lie back while he puffed his tobacco-pipe. He laughed as he answered:
“A simple divertisement, but good enough for such a caddis-worm. A pinch of Greek powder in the lantern, and for the rest a device I learned among the tinklers in Hungary when some of us gentleman-cavaliers had to take to the hills and forests for a season. But the body was easy game. The sight of my een was enough to melt his wits. . . . Chasehope’s another kind of lad — there’s metal there, though it’s maybe of the Devil’s forging. . . . But for the moment we’ve fairly houghed his shelty.”
“You saw how distraught he was,” Mark continued, “ay, and others beside him, when you offered to carry the wife to the manse. The reason wasna ill to seek. When she was being tortured to confession, Chasehope was beside her and mastered her with his een. . . . She was one of the coven, you tell me. But once in your hands he was feared she would tell things of more moment than the blethers they wrung out of her. . . . She didna speak? Ay, I thought she was ower far gone. It was maybe as well that the puir thing died, for after the handling she got there was small bodily comfort left for her.”
“By her death her tormentors are guilty in God’s sight of murder,” said David.
