I am kept on the upper storeys of the castle, now, with a washstand and little barred window all my own, from which I see the grey sky, the dirt-coloured wall, a swatch of green grass. I am to testify before the Justices today. The Justices in question are an Earl, a Baronet and a Knight. Mister Hopkins brings me a fresh gown, and a looking glass. A looking glass, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. I try to hide my excitement. I think it is a very plain and usual sort of looking glass—a few oily fingerprints in the top corner—but it seems to me no less than sorcery. I have been told before that a mirror is like a picture writ with light itself, but it looks more real than that—as real as a doorway one could step through to join one’s other, mirror-self as easy as a good morrow and god bless. In truth I am grateful I never had a glass before, for my time in gaol must have changed my looks for ill, but never having seen more than the general shapes of my self, I shall never know how I have been marred. I move forward and backward before the mirror. I tilt my chin, open my mouth wide, inspect the meat of my cheeks, my own little teeth. I am entirely delighted with myself, this first Rebecca West. I am clean again. My hair has been clipped to my shoulders and put away beneath a new white cap. The gown has a high collar and is of a very sober grey wool. Butter wouldn’t melt, as they say.
Sat down before the Justices, I feel rather less impressed with myself. The Earl of Warwick is tall and sharp-nosed and fast-talking, and wears voluminous sleeves of washed gold silk. His hair creeps back from the dome of his head as though his speedy progress through our sad little world has blown it half away. He owns ships and African slaves and a good part of Massachusetts Bay, but looking at him sitting there and scratching at the back of his hand I cannot conceive of how one man is able to do all of that, and yet remain what could be called a man. There is the Baronet, Sir Harbottle Grimston, deputy lieutenant of Essex, whose hair falls in waves from a black velvet cap like a spaniel’s ears. It was this very Baronet, I know, who first issued the warrant for Mother Clarke’s arrest. I do not like the insinuating way he talks—like Mister Hopkins, he thinks he is a very clever man, but I do not think he is so clever as Mister Hopkins, even, sitting there darkly, a toad of satins. Then there is Sir Thomas Bowes, the Knight, whose face is a pretty, pale snowdrop above his marvellous collar of lace. It is clear that Sir Thomas is unsure exactly how awed it would befit his station to be, in the presence of the Earl and Baronet, and as a consequence he quivers between not at all and very awed with such a quickness one fears his dainty neck might snap clean in two. A dull spring morning of rainy, watered light, and not a one of them wants to be here at the castle listening to the prattle of a peasant girl beneath a borrowed cap.
This is the story I tell.
I tell of a Shrovetide evening, when I was not yet seventeen, on which my mother bid me make haste about my work, for she wished me to join her in a visit before sundown. Two women walking through the fields, the dewfall of evening on their shoes. There, I say, my mother gave me great charge never to speak of what I should hear or see, and faithfully I promised I would not (for the benefit of my noble audience, I lower my eyes and muster a blush). Ere long we came to a house, but I know not to whom it belonged, and never saw it before or thereafter, and within were Mother Clarke and Liz Godwin (I people my invention only with those whom I know already to be damned). Liz Godwin produced a book with a red cover and from it we read a prayer that I no longer remember, and thereupon the imps, in their deep unrelenting shapes and pristine noise, like the jingle of shells worn on the coat of a Lord of Misrule, did appear. I tell how Mother Clarke’s skirts were filled to overflowing with them in the shapes of blue-eyed kittens about a week old, and how Mother Clarke kissed each and said that they were her children, had by as handsome a man as any there was in England, and the creatures delighted me. I tell how Mother Clarke turned one hoary eye upon me, her face thin and leathern as Methuselah’s own snapsack, and asked if I would keep counsel of what I had seen, or else suffer greater tortures and pains than those of Hell. I speak of a Covenant and Oath wherewith to renounce the blessings of Christ our Lord and all merit of his passion; I speak of a little black dog that jumped into my lap and kissed me thrice, kisses I felt to be very cold (Hopkins notes that witches commonly testify the Devil’s touch to be unnatural cold, and how by that token they surely know him to be their master). And then I stop, and I wait for the hard look of God to clatter down from the sky and through my back like a fiery lance, because I am a liar. But nothing comes.
The Justices listen, grave. The Baronet looks gravest of all—I think he has already come to regret his part in this whole sorry affair. He has the face of a man who has come off his horse after riding through a storm, and slid directly into a cowpat. “Miss West,” he addresses me, “you have been bound over for near a year—why is it only now that you come to confess?”
I say that I very much wished to discover all I knew as soon as we were taken to gaol, but that I was put to fear by the promise I had made and Mother Clarke’s insistence that any who betrayed our infernal league, the Devil would pull apart with pincers (this last part comes to me even as I speak, delivered whole into my mind). I say I found myself bound in horrible extremities of torture that agonised my body worse than the rack, whenever I thought to confess. I say that when I looked down at my body I saw it wreathed in tongues of flame. But now these tortures have ceased, I explain, because the witches have once more been brought under the law of God and man, and I think myself the happiest creature in all the world, that I might sit before them and disburden my conscience of its horrible tonnage.
“Miss West,” asks the Earl, “do you know your commandments, my dear?”
“Your honour,” I answer, “I know my commandments. And my letters. I can read, and write some little, as well.”
The three noblemen exchange looks. They are surprised. “And see what use she put this education to,” breathes Sir Thomas Bowes, with a shake of the head.
“Indeed,” sighs the Baronet. “A sad prognostic of the consequences attendant on female literacy, I fear.”
They have other questions. Does the Devil speak plain English, and has he any accent when he speaks it? Can the Devil take any shape he chooses from among all those of beasts and men, and thereby appear to the unwary in righteous costume? Did I—and their carefully primped gentility will not serve to mask their hunger—have carnal copulation with the Devil? What shape did he take when we copulated—the shape of man, or beast? (Another deep blush kindles in my cheeks.) When they are done, they thank me. The Earl of Warwick says he will pray to God to forgive me my very grievous sins, and I wonder if an Earl’s prayers have more weight than those of other men, if God gets round to listening to them more quickly. I have never seen lacework as fine as what the Earl has on his collar, splashed all over with roses almost as big as my hands. Just one of those big slatternly flowers must have taken a week to stitch. And now I am to be honoured with a place in his prayers. A black speck clinging on the shiny skirts of his eligible daughters.
“You did well, Rebecca,” Hopkins tells me, as we stand outside my cell. I can tell he is surprised, and elated, by my account. His fingers twitch at his belt in readiness to set my recollections down on paper. So much of what has gone before has been like the tracking of a whistle through fog, but here I stand at last: real, and telling him he is right, that the Devil lieth heavy upon me, and that I wish to be saved.
Even I, with my very small knowledge of men, think it quite likely that Hopkins will fall in love with me now. I begin to see he thinks he has already. He bows, awkward and over-composed, like a drunk man pretending he is not. He says he will not see me again until the assizes, but he hopes I shall keep well until then. “Do not fear, Rebecca,” he says, gently taking my fingers in his, “you shall be provided for. I will find a place for you, once this business is over. A place where you might nourish your soul in quiet, and in the pious despair of contrition.” He kisses the back of my hand. I take
no pride in this inadvertent seduction. The pious despair of contrition, indeed.
Time passes. I spend most of it in my cell, watching the world warm through the window in this, my twenty-first summer of life. Sometimes I am allowed to walk in the grounds of the castle, under guard, and I listen to the clattering of carts and oyster sellers’ cries from the town beyond the walls. Watch the crows bask in their sun-blanched nests in gullies of stone. They look safe, sure of themselves, apparelled in black for the New Jerusalem. I am here because my obedience is plausible, my body strong and fit to be put to work again. I think often of my mother and the others, and hope they keep well—except for Elizabeth Clarke, who is so very old, and whom I hope it would please God to take by gentler means than those Hopkins and the Justices might devise. At night I lie dry-eyed on my little bed and turn my head to and fro to catch sight of one little star by one little star along the tail of Hydra, and think, you are alive, you survive. Is this not what you wanted?
27
Court
THERE ARE TO BE FIFTEEN WITCHES TRIED IN Chelmsford on this, the 23rd of July 1645—and it can only be the start, for near one hundred more are held bound over across Essex and Suffolk, awaiting judgement. The sky is headlong, cloudless blue, and the square outside the courthouse filled with a clamouring multitude. Those who have arrived early and been fortunate enough to have secured spots by the windows have brought victuals and pots of beer, and will not move all day. They’d piss their own shoes before losing these coveted situations. Stories are passed through the crowd of the witches’ myriad villainies, but also of the Witchfinders’ infallible and wonderful power in discovering them. There is also a moderating dose of cynicism—the cultivated suburbanites of deep-inland west Essex, where the hills roll dry and golden, laugh heartily to hear that their neighbours from fen and salty tide-wash can find nothing better to do with their time than tip cows and ride one another to Sathan’s black masses by means of enchanted bridles. They would not be surprised to learn that all of this nonsense was the result of nothing more sinister than simple rustic folk baking mottlegill into pies. Then there are the countryfolk themselves, scrubbed and primped as though for church, anxious of pickpockets. Some—Goody Parsley and Minister Long among them—have come down from Manningtree to bear witness to the testimony. Some—Misters Rawbood and Edwards among them—have come to give it.
The women wait in the courthouse cellar, lined shoulder to shoulder on benches, chained at wrists and ankles, behind bars. It is cool and earthy-smelling here, underground. They are frightened, quiet; but for many who have been kept long in provincial jails, there is a relief that something, at last, is happening. Some are even hopeful—assize judges are invariably learned men, and learned men give short shrift to country superstition, or the local grievance and prattle wont to shape it into nooses. So their quiet, nervy talk goes. The Widow Moone is weeping, great big silent tears that sit on her face undisturbed, like seed-pearls. “There, now. Take it on the chin, Mag,” says Helen Clarke, who is shackled up beside her. This prompts Liz Godwin to comment that it ought to be easy for the Widow Moone to take things on the chin, having so many to choose from, which causes the Beldam West and Widow Leech and Mother Clarke to fall to furtive cackling.
Hopkins paces the boards in the courthouse directly above. He saw the women arrive that morning, women by the cartload. A happy morning. They are so dirty and narrowed by inanition that is hard to differentiate them from one another at all, now. An assortment of sour shapes in rags. More like dried-up seed cases than women, paltry things the earth pushed up, that the wind could blow away. He remembers certain names, those which had a homespun poetry about them—Fogg, Greenleaf, the Stowmarket woman with the gall to be called nothing less than “Dorothy Magicke”—and particular countenances, but cannot, in his memory, now unite the one properly with the other. It is so hot. He adjusts his collar, pushes back his hat. Today is a day to make account. He hopes he looks well for it. What did he do, really? For what can he be held responsible? Not for the law, not for that. He went only where he was invited. He took just what money was offered. He gave nothing more than the benefit of his learning. He is a true servant of God. True servant of God. True servant of God.
OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on Earth as it is—as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses—as—
See she cannot the witch cannot say it the witch the word of God sticks in her craw the good word why are her eyes like that unwholesome like something baked in its own skin in the sun imagine licking a rotten—where they ripen and fall in secret—rotten in a mouth—
Forgive us our trespasses as—
There must be signification it is not difficult after all a child knows it my daughter my four-year-old can count upon their hands are rings of gold click her fingers and turn the fleet to frothing blood—
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy—
And why singest thou Psalms my love when thou know’st thyself to be a damned creature—and just like that a handsome face a jagged hoof set on the edge of the milk-pail it cannot be ignored and neither would you—you would take it in your mouth—the truth is he likes girls and women. Truly. They are steeped in story, and also violets—a sweet life song—
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come—for ever and ever—
And the truth is was different last night seemed to want it more spirited avid jagged what was she thinking about damned if I know never—says she dreamed of walking through the white gardens of Heaven when she came by a harp resting on an outcrop of cloud and pushed it having within her a strange and sudden urge to destroy to see it topple—down through the sky like a morning star—which is after all the meaning of that name, the meaning of the name Lucifer—
The Baronet leans forward to look at Old Mother Clarke (who was born in Clacton Port the very hour Michelangelo died in Rome, though she does not know it). “You cannot say,” he sneers, voice swelling with incredulity, “our Lord’s prayer, madam?”
“I can say it,” she says in a small voice, her liver-spotted hands resting on the bar. “I know it.”
“But you do not say it, madam.”
Was she not affrighted, asks the Earl of Warwick, to have so many little devils about her skirts?
Old Mother Clarke smiles at that. “Why,” she asks, “would I be frightened of mine own children?”
For killing by maleficium of cattle belonging to Richard Edwards of Manningtree, valued at £10, Mother Clarke is sentenced to death by hanging.
Richard Edwards demands financial recompense for his lost cattle, but who will pay? Mother Clarke has no estate to seize. “Does the fool propose I descend to Tartarus and ask the Beast himself for ten English pounds?” remarks Earl to Baronet, behind his hand.
Helen Clarke claims she is with child. The Baronet adjusts his eyeglasses, peering between his notes and the dirty girl in the dock before him, with her rascal smile, and prison shift slipping from her shoulder. “You have a husband, yes?” he asks. “One Thomas Clarke, who fights with the Eastern Association, a Parliament man?”
She nods.
“I—you were among those bound over at Colchester Castle, yes? For more than a year?” This is a deeply embarrassing situation for the Baronet. He appears to hope that if he simply states and restates the supposed facts of the situation in a tone of increasing disbelief, someone might come to his aid by pointing out the glaring inconsistency they collide about.
She nods again.
The Baronet ushers over his steward, and asks who the gaoler at Colchester is, and if he might be counted a respectable man. (The Baronet assumes that all the men in England of a class below his own must be somehow acquainted with one another. Surely there is some school or other they all attended?) The Baronet and his steward converse in hushed tones for quite some time, the latter flapping up his hands helplessly. The Baronet eventua
lly sighs, and dismisses him.
Sir Thomas Bowes raises a satin finger—he can, he believes, cut to the heart of the matter. “Does not Aquinas speculate,” he begins, drawing the digit thoughtfully to his lips, “that offspring could be born of a union between woman and demon, if the demon first collected seed from a man—and—” He begins to look less sure of himself here. “And, of course, given the demon were able to find means for keeping the seed . . . warm, in his ethereal passage between man and . . .” Here he indicates Helen, surly in the dock. “And woman.”
The Baronet and the Earl of Warwick look down the bench at Sir Thomas. Mister Hopkins clears his throat. He notes that Aquinas did indeed speculate this, yes—but given none present are theologians in the strictest sense, it would perhaps be desirable to skirt this demonological quagmire, and have Helen Clarke sent back below pending further investigation, so that the business of the day might be properly proceeded with. The Justices agree that this would be best, and a jeer goes up from the crowd massed round the windows as she is led below again, grinning with triumph, her hands around her swollen belly.
Helen Clarke is granted temporary stay of execution.
It is hot in the courthouse, baking in the streets. Beer is passed about and sloshed over reddening cheeks. There is shouting. The shouting is so loud that sometimes the indicted women cannot properly hear the charges that are laid against them, and the Justices cannot hear how the women plead. Conclusions are both foregone and seemingly impossible to arrive at. Each must be held partially responsible for the crimes of the others. Margaret Moone will do naught but weep as the teats found about her fundament are described meticulously by Abigail Hobbs. Thomas Hart raises in his balled fist the bloodied sheet upon which his wife miscarried, like a battle pennant. Hopkins lays the manikins found in Liz Godwin’s scuttle out before her, and at first she says she knows not what they are. When Hopkins turns down his lips in mock surprise, and says, “Are you certain, madam? They were found upon thy husband’s property, after all,” she concedes, Yes, she does know what they are she has seen them before but sir it is not what you think they are but innocent a remedy for—and her protestations dissolve in bitter weeping as she realises that it is over, she is done (and that, knowing what is good for him, her husband, Edward Godwin, did not come). Anne Leech is accused of laying a curse on one Elizabeth Kirk, who refused to give to her a much-coveted bonnet. The bonnet in question is laid down before her at the bar by Elizabeth Kirk’s father, Robert, white with thrills of rose-coloured ribbon, and the Widow Leech laughs that being accused a witch would be slander enough, but the suggestion she would wish to put that giddy-looking coif anywhere near her head is aspersion almost too great to bear (with the utmost of respect to Miss Kirk, God rest her soul, whom she is sure the bonnet did well become). Robert Kirk cries out that the witches will burn with the Devil for what they have done, his sweet Eliza gone, and he must be restrained, and is led weeping from the courtroom.
The Manningtree Witches Page 21
