by Karen Brooks
The two women had stopped by the Tolbooth on their way back to the cottage, and had managed to slip some more blankets, a clean shirt and some food to Janet. Camron had been worried Janet would not only freeze, but starve. The window wasn’t as low as they remembered, but low enough that all Sorcha had to do was hoist herself onto Nettie’s shoulders to pass the goods through the open window. They even managed a quick conversation as the wynd was empty. No wonder, the way gusts swept down from the north, pummelling them with ice and rain.
Calling out to Janet quietly, Sorcha was relieved when she came straight to the window, crying out in shock when she saw her balanced just below the sill.
‘Hush,’ said Sorcha. ‘You’ll alert the guards.’
‘Nae, I won’t, lass. They’re off-duty.’
‘What?’ asked Sorcha. Surely Janet must be mistaken. There were usually four armed guards hovering about the building, outside the cell doors.
There was no time to waste. ‘How are you keeping?’ asked Sorcha quickly, pushing the blankets through the gaps in the grate. She was surprised how loose the bars were.
‘Better now, thanks to you.’ Janet tugged the blankets inside, then pressed her face to the iron, trying to see past Sorcha. ‘How are you, Nettie love? Carrying some extra weight, I see.’ She winked at Sorcha.
‘Pity they haven’t beaten that poor sense of humour out of you,’ grumbled Nettie.
‘Aye, well,’ said Janet hesitantly when Sorcha relayed Nettie’s words to her. ‘Hasn’t stopped them trying.’
Though it was dark, lights from the houses at the top of the High Street cast enough of a glow for Sorcha to see Janet had a swollen cheek and lip.
‘What have they done?’ she cried and grabbed Janet’s wrist as she thrust the shirt and package of food into her hands.
‘Nothing I couldn’t cope with, lass. Don’t worry. I might be auld, but they breed us tough here in the Weem. Fishwives tougher than most.’
Blinking back tears at the bold words, the courage it took for Janet to utter them, Sorcha could see the welts on Janet’s arms now her sleeve had ridden up. She squeezed Janet’s wrist gently, conveying with that slight pressure all the love and confidence that she could.
‘You’ll be out of there in no time. We’re writing to the Privy Council and to Mr Kippilaw and Mr Cooke — the lawyers you spoke to. When they learn what Cowper’s done, they’ll order your release.’
Janet gave her a wistful smile. Sorcha wanted to caress her battered face, reassure her, but wasn’t sure how. Not when her safety and her freedom were at the mercy of others.
‘I wouldn’t hold my breath, lassie,’ said Janet finally. ‘But thank you all the same. I don’t ken what I’d do without you.’ Releasing Sorcha, she flapped her hands. ‘Now, you best be going before anyone catches you. Or you break Nettie’s spine. You don’t want to be giving the reverend an excuse to lock you up again, much as I’d appreciate your company.’
Sorcha slid off Nettie’s back onto the ground. Nettie tried to reach Janet’s hand, but failed to bridge the distance. ‘There be anything else you need, Janet?’
‘Cowper’s head on a platter would be nice,’ she replied.
Nettie chuckled and nudged Sorcha. ‘Told you if anyone’d be all right, it would be this woman.’ She cupped her mouth. ‘And if we can’t supply you with that, how about some whisky?’
‘I wouldn’t say nae.’
Voices drifted from the High Street.
‘Be gone, quickly.’ Janet began to withdraw into the darkness of the Tolbooth. ‘Fare thee well and God look after you both and the others; you be as dear to me as if you were my own daughters.’
Sorcha looked at Nettie and frowned. Janet was speaking as if she’d never see them again. It wasn’t like her to be so maudlin. The sooner she was set at liberty, the better. Nettie didn’t appear to have heard; she was too busy looking out for whoever was approaching.
‘Come away lest it be the guards,’ hissed Nettie.
Hearts beating fast, the pair picked up their skirts and stayed close to the shadows of the kirk, then slipped into the graveyard before they were seen. Dodging the tombstones that loomed like soldiers in the night, they silently wove their way back to Marygate, coming out at the entrance not far from Sorcha’s.
Only once they were inside the cottage with the candles lit, the fire stoked and a soup on the boil did they allow themselves to consider Janet’s plight.
Why had she been moved to a lower cell? What were the reverend’s intentions?
‘I don’t like that he’s denied her any comforts,’ said Nettie, accepting a bowl of soup gratefully. ‘That’s not been his way; not after he extracted confessions.’
‘Aye, but don’t forget, Janet retracted hers very publicly.’
‘And he locked her away for that and, from what you saw, had her beaten again.’
‘She suffers, though you won’t catch her complaining.’
‘Not to us, anyhow,’ said Nettie. Janet was the kind of woman who made a career out of complaining about the small things just to get a rise out of people. When genuinely afflicted, she was as tough as a Highlander’s fist.
‘It’s a puzzle. I cannot think what the reverend hopes to gain by allowing her nothing. Moving her to the lower cell makes no sense. And to leave the window unsealed and with the grate so worn and loose a bairn could shift it…’ Sorcha stared at the burning peat, the soup forgotten.
Outside, the wind howled, the sea rumbled and groaned, throwing itself against the shore and the harbour wall. Tomorrow banks of kelp would lie upon the sand like ploughed fields, waiting for the fishwives to reap their harvest.
Grateful she wasn’t the one confined to the Tolbooth any more, she recalled how it felt when she was emancipated. How she’d never really appreciated her freedom until it was taken from her. A thought struck her. She stopped the spoon halfway to her mouth.
‘What is it?’ asked Nettie.
Sorcha’s eyes were wide. ‘You don’t suppose the reverend put Janet there, in that room, so she would escape, do you?’
Nettie’s spoon dropped into her bowl. ‘Dear God —’
‘If Janet does, then the reverend can not only call in the constables to arrest her…’
‘Worse, hen, he can send guards out to hunt not an auld woman, but an escaped witch…’ Nettie glanced towards the window. Rain lashed the glass, rattling it fiercely.
‘She said something that didn’t make sense before, it was so… final. But now it does.’ Sorcha repeated Janet’s words of farewell.
‘Och, the foolish auld woman…’ Nettie began to stand.
Putting down her bowl, Sorcha leapt to her feet. ‘Come on, Nettie. We have to go back to the Tolbooth and stop her.’ Throwing her coat on, Sorcha reached the door first. ‘That is, if we’re not too late.’
FORTY-THREE
She made her escape that night…
— A Letter from a Gentleman in Fife to his Friend in Edinburgh, 1705
While Janet waited for the bloothered soldiers in the street to finish their conversation and head to the comfort of their lodgings, she donned the clean shirt over her filthy one, then wrapped the blankets Sorcha had provided about her body. One went over her head and around her shoulders, the other she tied about her waist, intending to also drape it over the frame as she levered herself out the window. As for the food, she thought about eating it, but knew she might need it once she found shelter. Not that she would seek that for a while. She wanted as much distance between herself and the reverend as possible before she even thought of stopping.
Leaning against the window ledge, she tried to regulate her breathing. By God, her heart was thumping like a soldier’s drum and damn it if that gale wasn’t more glacial than Beatrix’s stare. Could she do this? Never had she felt her age as she did now. But thinking of Nettie and how she could silence a man with a mere look, gave her strength. So did Sorcha. How was it she and Nettie could defy the reverend and bring her supp
lies? Hearing Sorcha’s voice and then leaning out to find her right there had almost stopped her heart. Just as well they’d been out of the Tolbooth a while and able to recover or she doubted Nettie would have been able to bear Sorcha’s weight.
It was nice to see them. Better than nice. To get the chance to say goodbye. Escaping had been on her mind ever since the reverend first put her in St Fillan’s Cave. There was no use trying to get out of that infernal dungeon. Janet knew she had to bide her time and, as soon as she learned she was being moved to the Tolbooth, let alone the lower cell, she knew it had come. Did they forget the weeks she’d already spent in this very same room last year? She knew every corner and crevice as well as those on her own body. Admittedly, the window was sealed last time she stayed, but they often used to talk about what they’d do if they could get it open and how it faced straight onto the wynd. They used to boast about how they’d sprint to the water and leap into the sea and swim as if the devil was on their heels — a dog-shaped devil and all.
She grinned and peered out the window again. The men had gone. Wrapping her fingers around the iron bars, she pulled. The metal barely resisted. Stone crumbled at the base and she shook the bars, loosening them further. In no time at all the entire grate had come away and she heaved it onto the floor, then dusted her hands and pushed the window out as wide as she could. Well, she’d no intention of making her way to the sea, not when she had a sister at St Andrew’s who would take her in. There she could lie low until all this blew over. Still, she’d be sad to leave the Weem, her home; she’d worry about her neighbours, the fishwives and fishermen, never mind the lasses. She wouldn’t put it past the reverend to punish them for her escape.
Somewhere an owl hooted and she could hear faint laughter. How had it come to this? Fleeing the place she was born like a common criminal, turning her back on all she was and had been and all because of a godforsaken minister who didn’t know the difference between an angry auld woman who called a herring a herring and a cod a cod and a fucking witch. Or maybe he did and that was the point.
Casting one last look at the dark, empty cell, whispering a curse to the man who put her there and those who’d done nothing to stop him, she hoisted one leg over the sill and froze. Nae. ’Twas naught. Just cats fighting. There was no sign nor sound of anybody now. Only a mad person would brave this weather — a mad person in league with Satan.
Chuckling, she slowly lowered herself onto the ground, falling slightly at the bottom and twisting her ankle. Pain shot through her body and she braced herself against the wall, sucking air into her lungs and with it, determination. She undid the blanket from around her waist and flung it over her shoulders, grateful for the extra warmth, and wished she could ease the window shut. With one last curse at the Tolbooth and a healthy spit for good measure, she crept past the Mercat Cross and turned into Routine Row, slowing as she passed the house and smithy where all this cursed nonsense began.
The smith, Patrick Morton and his blasted lad, Peter, were sitting in the kitchen, the other bairns arranged around the table like a picture-perfect family. Sitting among them like another son was the guard, Simon Wood. So, this is where he chose to spend his night off. The mother, that scrawny excuse for a woman, was running around after them. They were blethering away as if they hadn’t a care in the world, all of them enveloped in smoke and the umber light of candles and no doubt a fire in the hearth; she could almost feel its warmth as she stopped to drink in the sight. Did she envy them this togetherness? They looked almost holy.
Nae, not when it came at the cost of all those she called friends. Not when it meant she was exiled from her town, her home, for the foreseeable future. There was nothing holy about them, about Simon, or their eldest son. Peter was responsible for the damn mess they found themselves in, the lying widdie; and Simon, a lad she’d known since he was in his ma’s belly, had shown where his sympathies lay, beating her and denying her food and water. Funny how, when given the chance to be cruel without consequence, even seemingly decent people would take it. Bowing her head against the rain that was falling steadily now, she turned aside as two men passed. Ignoring her, they continued on their way and she released the breath she’d been holding.
It wasn’t until she reached the outskirts of town that she stopped again. Already her ankle was throbbing, her head swimming. Wet and uncomfortable, she was thirsty, hungry and the thrashings and sleepless nights were taking their toll. Even with Sorcha’s blankets wrapped around her, it was bitterly cold — worse now she was drookit. Standing on the ridge, a hand against her breast as she fought for breath, she looked across the Forth. The rain had eased until it was just a spittering. Lights from ships’ lanterns were dotted across the black expanse and the lighthouse on the Isle of May swung its huge beam across the waters like a road that, it was said, the spirits of drowned sailors walked along. She thought of her own bonnie lad, Clinton, taken too soon. She thought of Sorcha’s dad, kind Charlie, and his sons, Erik and Robbie. Good God, but they’d all given so much. Had their hearts and souls wrung until there wasn’t any more to squeeze from them. And what of Sorcha’s husband Andy? A dull man, he’d never been right for one such as Sorcha McIntyre, but Janet well understood why the lass had married him. Was she secretly glad when he died? When she no longer had to pretend a contentment it was evident she’d never felt with him? If she had, the guilt that came when the bairn was born dead would have swept that away.
She thought of Sorcha now. She’d heard rumours she’d found happiness with that lad from Skye, bonnie Captain Ross. She prayed it was so. The lass deserved at least some of that in her life. But he was gone now, too, like the ever-changing tides. It would be hard — for her, for poor Nettie too. Women without men to speak for them — control them more like. It was a bleak day when Reverend Cowper arrived in the Weem and began to preach against women of her ilk. He was the kind who saw her and the other fishwives as Eves in a seaside paradise — temptations to lure men away from their wives, as if the men were fish and the lasses bait.
Hopefully, when Janet returned — and return she would — it would be to a different Pittenweem. One where witches were dismissed as the product of fevered imaginations or, more to the truth, the by-product of revenge. Revenge for what? For being a woman. A scold. Independent, headstrong and able to make her way. Well, she prayed to God that Sorcha, Nettie and the others made their way, with whomever and in whatever direction they pleased. For now, hers lay that way — towards St Andrew’s.
Turning her back on the sea, she lowered her head as sleet began to whirl about her, the wind making her nose run and eyes water. Janet put one foot before the other and left behind all she’d ever known and all she’d ever been.
Not forever, she promised herself. Only for as long as it took for justice to be served.
FORTY-FOUR
She was a person of very bad fame, who for a long time was reputed a witch…
— A Just Reproof to the False Reports and Unjust Calumnies in the Foregoing Letters, 1705
As soon as they realised Janet had indeed escaped the Tolbooth, Sorcha and Nettie’s first instinct was to find her and force her to return. Staring helplessly at the grateless open window as the rain hammered down and they whispered about where to look for her, it slowly dawned on them that searching the lanes and byways would draw attention to what she’d done. Without another word, they drew their coats over their heads and returned to the cottage. Far better they let the woman get a head start and pretend they knew nothing.
Only, that was harder than Sorcha thought. Unable to sleep, she moved between the chair and the window all night. A chill had crept into her bones, no doubt from the drenching she’d received, but she felt it was more than that. It was as if something dark and dire had lodged in her soul. She couldn’t shake it. Nettie drowsed in the bed, waking occasionally to ask if Sorcha had heard or seen anything.
‘Only the snow and wind,’ whispered Sorcha. ‘Go back to sleep.’ And the sea, she thought. A
lways the sea.
Before dawn, the women tidied themselves, ate a small breakfast and then, retrieving their creels from where they’d stored them the day before, made their way to the harbour as if nothing was amiss. There were a few people abroad. Moira gave a wave as she released Crabby to run about the graveyard. The streets were wet. Deep puddles reflected the grey sky, giving the road a strange pitted feel, like a foreign landscape. Not that Crabby cared as he plodded through them. Birds wheeled in the heavens, so high their cries were muted, as if they were afraid to land. Underlying the ever-present brume of hearth-smoke was a salty, metallic smell, like hundreds of shucked oysters. Instead of ducking into Water Wynd as they usually did, Sorcha and Nettie chose to go down Cove Wynd and past the Tolbooth in the hope they’d learn something.
As they rounded the corner, they came upon Camron MacGille and the Stuart brothers talking animatedly to a group of soldiers. The men were tense in their frayed uniforms. Weapons were drawn, faces hard. Some were jabbing their fingers towards the water as they spoke, talking in hushed voices. Nearby, outside the baker’s, a group of men and women watched on warily, arms folded, eyes flickering. The main door to the Tolbooth was open. The window of Janet’s cell had been closed.
When Camron and the others caught sight of Sorcha and Nettie, one by one they ceased to chatter. The faint sounds of activity in the streets nearby, doors closing, folk being hailed, and the grind of cart wheels, could now be heard. The town was waking to the news.
Before Sorcha could approach and pose a question to the men, Gerard Stuart came running up the wynd from the direction of the manse.
‘Right,’ he called. ‘Camron, Private Smith and Corporal Inglis, Sergeant Thatcher says you’re to come with me. We’re to search the witches’ houses.’
Camron swung to look at Sorcha and Nettie, but no one else noticed.
