Familiar Spirits

by Leonard Tourney

  Matthew returned to town determined to shake off his black mood and settle his nagging doubts about the Chelmsford witches once and for all. He stopped at the Crispin house to see how matters stood there. The shop was closed and the shattered windows had been covered with boards and oilcloth. Sometime during the night—probably on toward morning—a vandal had scrawled the name Satan on the tanner’s sign with bright red paint. The tanner’s servants were sweeping up the rubble in the street, and Matthew thought he could hear one of Crispin’s little daughters call out for her mother from an upstairs window.

  He went around to the back of the house, where he saw next door the charred smoking remains of the Waite barn. The poultry pen still stood, but it had been ravaged during the night and not a hen or a duck remained. The garden had been thoroughly trampled. Crispin’s servants followed Matthew; they wanted news. He told them that their master would presently return. They asked about Mrs. Crispin, to whom they were devoted. “She’s been charged with witchcraft,” he told them. “She and her sister too.”

  They nodded their heads and returned silently to their work—except for Will Simple, who said beneath his breath, “Damn them all,” and continued to stare disconsolately at the ruins of the barn.

  Matthew went next door. Susan let him in. He asked her if there had been any word of Brigit, and she shook her head but showed no pride in the fact that thus far her prophecy had been fulfilled. She said the remnants of the family were holding some sort of council in the parlor and she was not to disturb them, but she thought the constable would be welcome.

  He went into the parlor and was coldly greeted by Margaret Waite’s sons and nephew. Matthew told them the ill tidings, which occasioned no surprise. The Waites’ original anger at the slanders levied against the family had now given way to a fatalistic sense that if it was not all God’s will that they suffer, the suffering was at least more to be borne than protested.

  “We feared the worst from the beginning,” said Dick Waite stoically.

  Edward Waite communicated his grief with a heavy sigh, while the nephew John, whose superior air seemed much diminished since the family disgrace, said he doubted his aunts would have a fair trial in Chelmsford. “The town has the scent and will not quit its baying until the prey is well chewed.” But he had also a word of censure for the accused women. “This is what comes of flirting with this foolish witchery in the first place. Aunt Jane should have let the damned girl go to hell before she allowed her to play the fool in her house, and Aunt Margaret should have shut the barn door against her. Now the barn is burned and my aunt’s imprisoned, and God only knows what shall be the end of it.”

  “When will the trial be?” asked Dick Waite.

  “Within the week, or so says the magistrate,” answered Matthew. “He’s called a special session.”

  “A special session, is it,” remarked John Waite. “I trust it will be very special indeed.”

  They regarded Matthew with hard, accusing faces, It was obvious they blamed him too for their troubles. He wished them well and left, more melancholy than ever.

  During the next few days, there were no more disturbances in the town. The date of the trial had been firmly set and the witch-hunter Malvern had written to say he would gladly come to Chelmsford, weather permitting, and so there was great excitement in the air. The jury had been selected from the freemen of the town, and the citizenry was divided between those who, like Peter Trent, believed the sisters guilty beyond question and those—an embattled minority now— who, while not quite willing to proclaim the sisters’ innocence, were at least willing to grant them the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile the families of the accused kept to themselves. Crispin’s tannery remained closed and his workmen idle, for it was clear that no business would come his way until the matter of the witchcraft was resolved. The only event that marred this peaceful interim was reported by John Waite, who came to the constable’s house early one morning to complain of a prowler.

  “What sort of prowler was it?” Matthew wanted to know.

  “A thief, I think, but he’s a fool if he thinks there’s anything left to steal. The mob made off with our chickens and ducks, and the horse, as you know, died in the fire.”

  All the neighborhood was aware of the dead mare. Covered by rubble, the decaying flesh had been potent all week and was much complained of, but it was impossible to find anyone willing to do the work of uncovering and burying the animal. The Waites had only Susan to keep house for them, and almost all the Crispins’ servants had stolen away. Warmer weather coupled with frequent rains had made matters worse.

  “Tell me if you see this prowler again,” Matthew said.

  On Thursday of the week, Mr. Roger Malvern arrived in Chelmsford, bringing with him a scrawny boy whom he introduced as his assistant. Malvern was a corpulent man of about fifty, with ruddy smoothly shaven cheeks and bulging eyes that gave him a threatening, belligerent appearance. He

  • 16 3 •

  limped slightly and spoke with the deep, resonant voice that finds a happy home in a court of law. The magistrate offered him the hospitality of the manor house, and there for the next few days he was frequently called upon for his views. He counseled with potential witnesses and became acquainted with the various clerks. He memorized the facts in the case and generally gave the impression of being steeped in Devil lore. When he met the constable, Malvern asked first whether the accused women had been examined for the Devil’s mark.

  “Why, no, sir, they have not,” Matthew answered.

  Malvern made a face of exasperation. “That’s the first thing to be done in such cases,” he said. “A jury of women must be appointed to do it.”

  To Matthew fell the task of recommending reputable women to perform this function. He included the name of his wife, but Joan was far from pleased.

  “What! How could you serve me so, husband? Should I betray a friend by such service?”

  “You will insure that the jury conducts itself honestly,” he argued. “The court will want marks, no pinch marks or moles to build its case. You’ll be doing the sisters a favor.”

  Joan thought about this for a while and then agreed.

  The next day, the jury of six women convened at the Blue Boar, where the examination was to be conducted. Joan later told Matthew what happened.

  “Margaret was first taken and helped off with her clothing, which was laid out upon the bed and examined carefully. It was humiliating for her. The poor dear was near unto death with shame and fear, quaking and mumbling prayers all the while she was eyed and probed and talked of as though she were not present at all. Her body and most specially her foreparts had many moles and wens, so that among the jurors a dispute commenced as to which made plain her commerce with Satan and which were mere imperfections of the flesh. Then Jane was stripped and examined after the same manner. Now, her body was very white and lovely to look upon, and I could tell some of the women were more envious of that body

  • 16 4 •

  than curious for her soul’s health, and wished they had skin so fair and breast as high and full at her age.”

  “How did Mrs. Crispin take this?” Matthew asked.

  “Even as her sister. She was much mortified and she upbraided the women for their prying and prodding, which several of them—though not I—declared to be their Christian duty. To me it was plain meanness. I wish I had never consented to serve. I was too disgusted to speak.”

  “Well, what, if anything, was found?”

  “On Jane nary a mole nor mark. Her body was as smooth as a babe’s, yet even this caused suspicion amongst the women, who said only Satan could so preserve the flesh in a woman of middle years. Oh, Matthew, I wish none of this had ever happened!”

  Matthew said he was sorry he named her to the jury, although he defended his intentions.

  “You should have seen the husband’s face when he returned and saw what condition his wife and sister-in-law were in,” Joan continued. “At each of us h
e glared. If looks could kill! You know he’s been staying with them at the inn. By his own request. With hardly a servant left at home, he has sent the two children to stay with his sister in Brentwood.”

  Matthew of course knew that Crispin had been staying with his wife. He had seen no harm in it, and the truth was he felt very sorry for him. The tanner seemed little deserving of these miseries.

  “What will happen now?” she asked.

  “The trial is tomorrow,” he said.

  “Oh, that trial” she said with disgust. “A fine fair trial it will be, with the sisters already condemned in the public mind and Peter Trent doing everything in his power to convert those few left in doubt.”

  “I know,” he said, thinking of the women. Of their guilt or innocence he remained uncertain, but of one thing he was sure. Neither would have a fair trial in Chelmsford.

  • SIXTEEN •

  EVERY inn in town was full, and on the morning of the trial the wide place on High Street before the Sessions House was crowded with townsmen and strangers. Frustrated at not gaining admission to the upper rooms, they were obliged to wait in the street for intermittent reports fetched for them by the clerk’s boy, who was tipped handsomely for the service. Promptly at eight o’clock, Matthew drove his cart to the front of the Blue Boar, and with the assistance of Arthur Wilts and two other men deputized for the nonce, he put his prisoners in the back of it. The women were bound, as was the custom in transporting prisoners, and looked humiliated and dejected to be so treated. Yet they spoke without rancor to Matthew and did not appear, like their kinsman, to hold him to account for their arrest. “God must be our help,” Margaret murmured, “now that we are forsaken by our friends.”

  Matthew drove the cart slowly up the street. As he approached the Sessions House, he was recognized and he and the women and his deputies were subjected to a storm of crude insults and threatening gestures. He tried to ignore the crowd, but it was not easy to do. He felt he himself was being incriminated, and many insults were indeed aimed particularly at him: “Witch’s bawd!” “Satan’s minion!”

  There was a side door to the Sessions House and this Matthew used as an entrance. The prisoners were led up the stairs into a large dusty courtroom furnished with long benches and

  a table for the judges and other court officials. There was also a special row of stools for the jurymen and a stand for the witnesses and prisoners. All were presently filled except for the judges’ chairs. Every bench was crammed, and at the back of the room those standing wrangled for positions affording a better view of the proceedings to follow. There was much noise of conversation but this stopped as Matthew led the women up the aisle to their seats. He noticed Joan sitting toward the back of the room and nodded to her; then he rose with everyone else when the clerk of the court announced the entrance of the three judges.

  The three robed men, one of whom was the magistrate, filed in and took their seats. The jurors and spectators sat down, and the two women were made to stand while the clerk read out the charges against them. When each was asked how she pled, she answered innocent, and when Margaret had spoken, someone in the back of the court said, “Yea, innocent as Judas was, by God!” The magistrate reprimanded the person who spoke, although just who had spoken had not been determined, so crowded was the room. Then Roger Malvern, the prosecutor, rose at his place opposite the prisoners’ bench and said that he would prove with incontrovertible evidence that the two accused women were witches indeed, foul conjurers and necromancers, and that Margaret Waite was a murderess as well. He reminded the jury that the offense was a capital one, for witchcraft was not only a crime against God, but treason to the state; he then handed a list of witnesses to the clerk, who proceeded to call out their names. When it was evident that all named were present in the court, the clerk called the first witness.

  To Matthew it was immediately apparent that while all the witnesses had had some association with the two women, none had been particularly close or friendly with them. Most appeared to be nursing some ancient grudge that the trial had given them opportunity to vent in a socially approved way. All but one were female. The first, Mary Bowen, was a frail woman of about thirty-five whose husband was a tailor and suspected Papist. She testified that both Margaret and her

  sister had cursed sheep and crops, frequented with cats and familiars, and exchanged letters that consisted of nothing but strange symbols, which she claimed were Satanic in origin. Mrs. Bowen spoke with great earnestness and detail, and could even recall the exact day of the week it was when she had heard Jane Crispin tell a neighbor boy that if he bounced his ball against her window another time she would cause his arm to wither. Matthew listened intently to Mrs. Bowen’s testimony but dismissed the business about satanic messages, for he knew very well Mrs. Bowen could not read plain English and therefore that fact put her scholarship in grave doubt. Besides, he had heard of no boy in the town with a withered arm. He was amazed when no one else in court showed signs of being disturbed by these inconsistencies.

  Two other females—an aging widow sometimes thought to be a witch herself, and a young girl of about thirteen— testified that the sisters were wont to converse in an unintelligible tongue, to exchange mysterious glances, or to fix with a menacing stare passersby who would not enter their husbands’ shops. A man, Harold Lightfoot, who had once been employed in the tannery, said he had seen his former employer’s wife in deep conversation with a crow. He said that he believed the crow to be the Devil in disguise and that after this conversation was terminated the bird vanished into thin air.

  Upon hearing this, Crispin, who was seated two rows behind the prisoners’ bench, jumped up and called Lightfoot a liar and thief, for he had stolen two calfskins and a doeskin from the tannery and that was the reason he was sent packing. “His abuse of my wife is nothing more than revenge!” proclaimed Crispin.

  “Mr. Crispin!” shouted the magistrate, rising imperiously. “You are already under bond for disturbing the peace. You will keep quiet in my court or I’ll have you thrown out the door!”

  Crispin sat down. After the magistrate’s reprimand the court was very quiet. The magistrate motioned to the prosecutor that the testimony should continue.

  Next to testify was the baker’s wife, Priscilla Roundy. She was a plump, red-faced woman who wore a little white cap that crowned a tangle of blonde curls. Of the witnesses so far, only she had seen the shape of Ursula Tusser. She said she had come upon the spirit while dumping trash in a pit behind her house. It had startled her and she had thought at first that it was no more than some stranger hunting among the refuse for scraps. She was about to order it off when, taking a better look at the visage, she recognized it. “All drawn was the face, and horrid,” said Mrs. Roundy, “pale like the belly of a toad, with large glaring eyes. ‘What?’ said I. ‘Has the widow Waite raised thee up again?’ Whereupon the thing shook its finger and made a wrathful countenance.” “And when did this apparition appear to you?” asked the magistrate.

  “Why, it was the night of the great uproar, the night the wicked barn of Mother Waite was burned to the ground.” “And you are certain this spirit was Ursula Tusser?”

  “Oh, sir,” said the baker’s wife, her eyes round with fright and her hands gesturing as though she were conjuring up the vision herself. “It was the girl I saw, and no stranger. She stood in the shadows, next to the lime tree, yet could I make out the features of the face. I asked her if she were Ursula, and made the sign of the cross to protect my soul. She nodded, by which I took her to mean it was even as I had said, and then cast at me such a dire grimace that I said, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’ As I did so, the spirit vanished.” The crowd murmured at this testimony and Priscilla Roundy began to shudder and shake, contort her face, and babble incoherently. Someone shouted that Margaret Waite had bewitched the woman, and there were hysterical wails from two young girls; however, order was quickly restored when the magistrate brought his gavel down sharply and threatened to
have the court cleared if there were further outbursts.

  The trial continued with the prosecutor asking for the report of the jury of women. This was read to the court by the clerk, and concluded with the information that the Devil’s

  mark had been found on Margaret Waite’s left buttock and that the smoothness of Jane Crispin’s skin was equally valid evidence of her conjuring. This evidence was greeted by expressions of horror and amazement in the audience, and the people cast fearful, accusatory glances at the two women, who were much mortified at having their bodies discussed in public.

  By now it was nearly dinnertime and the judges declared a recess until later in the afternoon. Matthew took his prisoners into the clerk’s tiny office, which was adjacent to the courtroom, where he saw that food was provided for them. Neither woman was hungry. They sat as though stunned, Jane Crispin holding a prayer book with its pages open but not reading it, Margaret weeping quietly. Finally, Jane said, “We have put our trust in God. He will not fail us.” She closed the prayer book. Matthew watched her with cold sadness. Jane Crispin’s slightly faded beauty shone through her grief. She said she was reconciled to whatever God should decree as her personal fate. It no longer mattered to her whether she was vindicated in the eyes of the town or not. She had her faith, her husband’s love, her dear daughters. She said she wanted nothing more.

  “The worst is past for us, Mr. Stock,” Margaret said, drying her eyes. “All that can be done now is for our bodies and spirits to be separated. But since that must befall us all sooner or later, how blessed are we to know of the sure hour when we will face God.”