Familiar Spirits

by Leonard Tourney

  old and decrepit since their last meeting. Instead, Joan began to search the room for a vessel of water to relieve her friend’s parched lips. This took quite a while. The room was so filled with things, more now than she had first noticed upon entering it. Everywhere she looked, there were things—statuary, plate, ornate chests, tapestries—multiplying by the minute, as though whatever Joan conceived of immediately materialized as a furnishing of the room. And on the mantelpiece—how grand it was!—there now appeared more German clocks than before, all still showing different times and ticking so loudly she could hardly hear herself think.

  Then they stopped ticking. Joan heard a door open behind her and was about to turn to see who had entered, hoping that it would be Mrs. Monks, when she noticed the expression of alarm on the old woman’s face. A yellow, bony arm was thrust out from the coverlet and a quivering hand was pointed toward the door.

  Now Joan did turn, and saw that the serving girl who had admitted her had returned. The girl’s face was lighted with a sinister smile, at once both mocking and vengeful. And Joan knew in that instant, knew in the depths of her being, that the servant was somehow responsible for her mistress’s decaying condition. Joan knew this and she also knew who the servant was.

  Suddenly all the things in the room—statues, plate, tapestries, everything—began to fly around the room like a flock of birds sent to wing by a sudden fright. And through this strange welter, she saw the servant’s face.

  It had been transformed into a grinning, mocking death’s-head.

  Joan woke, terrified. It took her some time to collect herself. The dream—it had been a nightmare of the first order—had left behind it a residue of nausea and shock, and she knew if she tried to rise from her stool her legs would buckle under her. She noticed that the fire in the kitchen had nearly died and a chill had settled in the room—the chill she had experienced in her dream. Her clothing was damp with sweat. Her heart still racing, Joan tried to compose and in-

  terpret the confused elements of her vision—Mrs. Monks’s vanishing, Jane Crispin’s aged appearance, the servant with the sinister smile, looking as though she understood full well what malady had infected her mistress. The awful odor of the charnel house. The odor of putrescent flesh.

  Her effort produced only a deeper stupor of thought. She rose steadily, bracing herself by holding one hand against the wall, and reached down to put another faggot on the fire. She poked in the embers until the faggot spurted with a steady flame, and then she sat down again. She remained so for a while until her heartbeat returned to its regular pace; then she picked up the stitchery she had dropped to the floor, hoping to find solace in this familiar work, an emblem of the world of waking that she hoped to return to.

  But it was a vain wish, the returning. It was as though the dream and its horrors would not confine themselves to sleep. She could not rid herself of the disturbing images or reckon what they meant.

  She put her stitchery aside. She had no heart for it now. She sat staring into the fire, mesmerized by the flames’ erratic dance. The heaviness of her ignorance and confusion was upon her, and it was some time before she became aware of the tapping, too insistent and regular to be the wind.

  She turned to see from whence it came, the signal, and almost by instinct looked first at the window that gave a view of the back parts of the house. The curtains were pulled across it, and mechanically she got up and opened them.

  She heard the tapping again. In the glass panes now exposed to the firelight, she saw her reflection move like a shadow, and then, merging with her shadow, materializing out of the darkness of the yard, a pale face pressed so close against the window that Joan thought she could feel the warm breath through the thin panes.

  • TWELVE •

  IT was nearly nine o’clock when Matthew arrived at the Saracen’s Head. The rest of the town had gone to bed, but in this part of Moulsham lights could still be seen inside the windows of taverns and alehouses, and shouts and rude boisterous laughter could be heard. The dark streets and cartways of the neighborhood were inhabited by shadowy figures staggering homeward or to their next dissolute enterprise, or slumped helplessly in the filth of the street.

  The tavern itself was a shabby affair with a bad reputation. Upstairs was a notorious brothel. The light and scene of confusion held Matthew in the doorway for a few moments, and if at any time he had wondered what had become of the great crowd of strangers that had flocked to Malcolm Waite’s funeral his question was now answered. Elbow to elbow at the bar were as ill-looking a bunch of roisterers and winebibbers as Matthew ever hoped to see cursing some other town with their presence. The disarray of tables and stools, overturned benches, and glitter of broken glass made it evident the tavern had already been the scene of one brawl during the evening. The air, which was heavy with tobacco smoke, held the lingering pungency of fresh vomit.

  No one seemed to take notice of his entrance; all attention was fixed upon two strapping fellows squared off in the middle of the room. One of these Matthew recognized as Will Simple, Thomas Crispin’s foreman at the tannery. The other man was a stranger. Will Simple and the stranger were naked

  to the waist, and in the lamplight and haze of tobacco smoke their well-muscled shoulders and chests shone with sweat. The host, a short dumpy man named Snitch with a pocky anguished face, was wedged between them trying to settle the quarrel, whatever it was about. Snitch looked near to soiling his breeches for fear more ruin would come to his precious establishment, which was a scurvy filthy place to begin with. The other patrons egged their favorites on, told the host to let the two combatants have at it, and laid wagers on who should win and whether the loser should be killed or merely maimed.

  Matthew surveyed the scene with disgust and apprehension and was about to elbow his way to the center of the room and stop the fight before it started when he saw someone else he knew. It was Ned Hodge, the unemployed handyman and carpenter with whom Matthew had spoken outside the Waite house the day before. Hodge was drunk. He had a queer look on his narrow ugly face and his bald pate glistened as though he had been anointed with oil. It was evident the recognition was mutual. Hodge wended his way toward Matthew until his hot garlicky breath blew strong in Matthew’s face like the effluvia of a midden-heap on a hot day in August.

  “Marry, heaven be praised!” Hodge proclaimed, in a high wheedling old woman’s voice. “It’s our constable. Come to the Saracen’s Head to honor the company with his presence.”

  Matthew acknowledged Hodge’s rude greeting coolly and made a move to get around him. Hodge blocked his way. “Tell me now, Mr. Stock, how is your good friend Mother Waite, she who gives the evil eye to her neighbors and knows how to rid herself of husbands when she puts her mind to it? She serves your needs, I warrant, since you and she are such great gossips?”

  The mention of Mother Waite caught the attention of some of the men standing close at hand, and they turned to look at Matthew suspiciously. More might have followed from Hodge’s question, shouted above the din in the same wheedling voice as before, had the two combatants not decided at that moment to commence battling in earnest. A

  flurry of blows and kicks savagely delivered to head, chest, and groin caught the attention of everyone, especially the more drunken of the men. His vision obscured by the onlookers who had pressed in tightly around the fight, Matthew glimpsed the bloody face of the stranger and then, maneuvering closer, he saw Will Simple let fly with a strong right arm that sent his opponent sprawling onto one of the tables, whereupon it collapsed with a huge crash.

  “Kill him, Willy!” cried a harsh female voice from somewhere in the room.

  “Hell and damnation,” cried another voice, a man’s. “He shall not, else I am no Christian!”

  “Look out, he’s got a dagger,” shouted a blowzy slattern perched out of danger on the stairway.

  Someone shoved Matthew from behind. He recovered his footing only by seizing the shoulder of a man in front of him. His effort
to save himself was wrongly construed as an assault, however, and the man turned sharply, spat out an oath, and took a swing at Matthew’s jaw. The blow clipped Matthew’s ear, his vision blurred, and he felt unsteady on his feet. The stench of tobacco, which he detested, the sharp pain and ringing in his ear, the closeness of the room, and the rankness of sweat—all conspired to undo him. For a moment he stood wobbly, staring stupidly at the man who had struck him. Behind the man, the two fighters had resumed their struggle and seemed well on their way to mutual extinction. The man muttered another oath and turned around to watch the fight, while Matthew nursed his damaged ear and wiped from his eyes the tears of pain that momentarily blurred his vision.

  When he could see again, he realized that the fight was winding down. The tanner’s foreman had his opponent on the floor and was pummeling him severely in the face. Hoots and shouts of delight mixed with encouragement and praise for the victor. Matthew pushed forward, ignoring the throbbing pain in his ear, and seized Will Simple by the shoulders. In a loud voice he commanded him to stop. Someone— not Hodge but another—recognized Matthew and cried, “It’s

  the constable!” The beating ceased, Will Simple got off the fallen man, and the crowd quieted.

  The friends of the beaten man came forward, splashed some ale in his face, and got him to his feet. Holborn, as they called him, had two very swollen eyes and a red mouth devoid of several of its teeth. He was breathing with difficulty and clutching his chest. His eyes were ablaze with anger and humiliation. Will Simple, on the other hand, was in good condition, all things considered. While Holborn was being seen to, Will put on his shirt and jerkin, smiling with grim satisfaction. Some of the patrons patted him on the back and said he had handled himself well. The host gave him a cup, which he drained, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  Matthew knew the tanner’s foreman to be an industrious, well-behaved young man who had always managed to avoid this kind of trouble. His first question, now that the fight had stopped and the room had grown quiet enough for him to hear the sound of his own voice, was what had caused the quarrel.

  “It was him,” said Will, thrusting an accusing finger in his adversary’s direction.

  “What did he do?” asked Matthew impatiently.

  “It was what he said, sir. He told a devious lie, sir.”

  Matthew looked at the other man, at Holborn. Holborn was holding a bloody handkerchief to his mouth and glaring at Will Simple with intense hatred. “Very well, what did you say?” Matthew asked Holborn.

  “I said his mistress practiced the black arts, that she was a very she-devil herself, and them that served her was no better than she.” Holborn spoke with a northern accent, and Matthew asked him where he was from. Holborn said he was from Norwich; he had come to Chelmsford to see the witches hanged.

  “Have you no witches to hang in Norwich, then, that you must come to Essex to make trouble?” Matthew asked dryly. Holborn did not answer. He kept daubing his mouth with the handkerchief. Someone handed him another and he thrust

  the bloodied one away, revealing for a moment the extent of the damage to his mouth, a swollen mass of red tissue.

  Matthew turned back to Will. “And, hearing this, you flew to your mistress’s defense?”

  “I did, Mr. Stock,” said Will Simple.

  “I grant this fellow’s words were a powerful provocation,” said Matthew, looking first at Will Simple and then at Holborn, “yet while defending your employer’s wife is a virtue indeed, you are both guilty of breach of peace and, considering the state of things here, the host may have a complaint against both of you for damages.”

  “Aye, I will indeed, Mr. Stock,” said Snitch, wiping his hands on his filthy apron nervously. “A half dozen of my stools lie beyond repair—and look at that table! The legs are flattened like a spider’s legs. And this mess upon the floor, the blood and gore—”

  “That will clean up fast enough,” said Matthew, interrupting the host’s inventory of damages. “The broken stools, I grant, are another matter.”

  “Why, what must a man do when his mistress is defamed by such a dunghill mouth as this fellow is?” proclaimed Will Simple, growing heated again. “Say, ‘Thank you, sir, that’s all well and good’?”

  “Why, turn the other cheek,” cried the high-pitched railing voice of Ned Hodge as he came forward. “That’s what our good honest constable recommends for the town as well, while we poor Christians are forced to endure the enormities of witches and their minions.”

  This remark incited the approval of many in the crowd, and Matthew had to take a barrage of complaints from perfect strangers. They maintained that no decent constable spoiled the fun of some stout fellows having a good time when he should be pursuing malefactors and traitors such as witches. Matthew had hoped Hodge had gone home. His continued presence and loud mouth were ominous.

  “In faith, Constable,” cried a big-bearded man, glaring at Matthew from red, watery eyes, “why are you here when

  Mother Waite makes merry with the Devil and mocks the sacraments by giving the wine and wafer to her dog?”

  “Oh, Lord!” exclaimed the slattern on the stairs, “Oh, tell me not that she does that!”

  “Aye, she does,” replied a third man, whom Matthew vaguely recognized as one who had spent a day in the stocks last summer for urinating in the street. “For I have seen it with my own two eyes.”

  The man, who wore a tattered leather jerkin and dirty cloths bound around his feet for shoes, came forward to the center of the room. He strutted around like a cock, proclaiming, “I have seen it with my own eyes and shudder to tell of it.”

  The crowd grew attentive, and the brawl and the host’s complaints were immediately forgotten.

  “I was walking in the street, I was. There she were, sitting in the window. It was Mother Waite herself, upon my oath. ‘Good morning, Mistress,’ says I in a friendly way, expecting no more from the woman than a Christian greeting in return. But does she speak to me? Nay, not a word she says. Instead, she screws up her face like a bloody mackerel.” The man twisted his face into a grotesque scowl. “Then she takes a cup and pours it and gives the same cup to her dog.”

  “Pray, what color was the dog?” called the slattern on the stairs in a harsh, guttural voice.

  “Why, it was black, black as night.”

  “Ah” went the crowd, and some blessed themselves.

  Matthew started to say that Margaret Waite kept no dog, but he knew the denial would be useless. The crowd in the Saracen’s Head, restless for some new novelty, had become quite caught up in the shabby man’s story. He was urged from all sides to continue, by drunken, drawling voices hoarse with impatience and too much use.

  “She gave it to her dog to drink,” the shabby man continued. “Then she takes a bit of bread and breaks it. I heard her mumble something.”

  “What was it, fellow?” asked Will Simple skeptically. ‘“Come, beast, drink this milk, eat this bread’?”

  “Nay, it was not milk she gave the creature but wine, and the words she spoke were in the Latinish tongue.”

  “Oh, in Latin,” moaned the slattern on the stairs. She hugged her bony knees and tipped from side to side. “Lord have mercy upon us!”

  “What meaning had her words?” asked Hodge, looking more sober now and thrusting himself to the forefront of the discussion.

  “It was the Mass, such as Papists say. Bonum, bonorum, honororum, sic, and so forth,” entoned the man.

  “Why, that’s the Paternoster backwards!” exclaimed the bearded man.

  Matthew knew a little Latin, enough to know that what the man had said was perfect gibberish, but the rest of his audience was obviously impressed.

  “It was Mother Waite who did it, you say?” asked the host, a note of concern in his voice. “She who lives on High Street . . . the glover’s wife?”

  “Where have you been, host?” growled Hodge, regarding Snitch as though he had just said a most foolish thing. “Is there anyon
e who doesn’t know she buried her husband this very day—and in the churchyard too? Some say she killed him with a dreadful curse that made his bones and heart dissolve the way a waxen figure melts in the fire to a shapeless puddle. Others that she raised the spirit of Ursula Tusser— that famous witch—from its grave and caused it to appear to her husband, so that his heart would stop from the sheer horror of the spectacle. Oh, he was a good man, Malcolm Waite was. A decent man. Now his wicked widow makes merry with his money.” Hodge’s voice trailed off and terminated in a stifled sob of sorrow. The crowd murmured with discontent and horror.

  “Malcolm Waite was out at heels when he died,” said Matthew, unable to restrain himself any longer. “And I have seen the widow both the day of her husband’s death even until

  now. A more grieving widow you will not find—no, not in Christendom.”

  “See, friends, how our constable speaks the witch fair, defends her boldly in the face of such powerful testimonies!” cried Hodge. “Mother Waite’s husband lies in his grave, hardly cold, while she lives—she and her sister, corrupt both, to work their spells on the rest of us brave enough to denounce their wickedness.”

  The temper of the crowd had now turned dangerous again and Matthew was berated all around. Holborn, his bleeding staunched at last and feeling himself vindicated, joined forces with Hodge to denounce Matthew. The whole room seemed to be against him. They yelled in his face; they pushed close with their bodies and shook their fists, defying him. In all the room, Matthew’s only ally was Will Simple, who was also enduring the onslaught of insult and complaint. Now the little carpenter leaped upon one of the tables and commanded the attention of all by commencing a diatribe against the freemen of the town. His speech was rough but effective. He claimed the only honest ones among them were those of modest means. The freemen lived upon the backs of the poor and kept them in the dirt for the benefit of the rich. He stormed on, his eyes flashing wildly: “See this merchant-con-stable before you with his brave worsted hose and fur-faced gown. Why, attired as a gentleman he is, though no better a man than the rest were he laid bare to the buttocks. Comes he to spoil the innocent pleasures of the poor—those among us who must sweat for our bread—charging us with disturbing the peace. Whose peace? ask I. Why, the bread-and-butter peace of the constable and his friends. Yet will he do nothing about the real evil that threatens us, threatens us all, every soul here?”