Familiar Spirits

by Leonard Tourney

  The clerk called out for order, and cried out again and again. The uproar continued. It was not clear whether the spectators were more amazed by the tanner’s confession or disappointed that there might not be witches to hang, after all. Although the truth of Malcolm Waite’s death now seemed determined beyond reasonable doubt, still the debate continued throughout the room, especially among the citizens of the town who knew all the parties in the case. Mrs. Roundy could be heard above the din screaming that it was Ursula Tusser she had seen despite what Crispin had said, and Alderman Trent had come forward from his place to argue with Roger Malvern about his conduct of the prosecution. Finally the uproar subsided and the magistrate was able to address the jury, who had all this while been in a great state of consternation about what they were to do now.

  “I have conferred with my fellow judges,” said the magistrate in his deep authoritative voice, “and we are of one mind. The jury, if it wishes, may have opportunity to reconsider its verdict, now that new evidence has been heard. If that is your wish, you may retire now. Otherwise, deliver your verdict.”

  At this the poor foreman, whose bladder had been swollen and aching for the past hour and was beside himself with agony over it, cast a hurried eye over the faces of his fellows. Then he said the jury would like to reconsider. He thought, however, with a sheepish grin, that the verdict might be quickly arrived at, and that this could be done well enough where they sat.

  “So be it,” said the magistrate, pleased himself at the prospect of a quick finish to the proceedings, which had now gone on well beyond the usual hour of his supper.

  There was an air of excitement in the chamber while the jury deliberated. They did so within a few minutes of whispers and nods, gestures and signs. Then the foreman rose and announced, “Sir, we find the accused women, Margaret Waite and Jane Crispin, not guilty of the charges made against them.”

  The magistrate thanked the jury for their pains, but no one could hear beyond the uproar that now resumed and that no clerk’s commands would quell. Since the magistrate and his colleagues departed hastily through the side door, the turmoil of recrimination and congratulation that followed, the cheers and cries of shame mixed oddly together, went unchecked.

  Matthew led Thomas Crispin away. Jane hung upon her husband’s neck, weeping copiously. It had been forgiveness Matthew had read in her face, after all, and the thought of it gave him the only joy he had had that long miserable day.

  • TWENTY-ONE •

  EARLY next morning, Matthew and Arthur took Thomas Crispin up the road to Colchester. Colchester had a gaol, which Chelmsford did not, and the tanner was to be tried at the next assizes, in April.

  The journey turned out to be a memorable one.

  All the way it drizzled; in places the road became a virtual quagmire. In time Matthew and his prisoner were forced to forsake the cart for Arthur’s spare horse, and the constable and his prisoner ended up riding double into Colchester, with anyone’s guess which of the two men was the more drenched and begrimed. But strangest had been Tom Crispin’s cheerfulness along the way. Despite his heavy manacles and the prospect of months of imprisonment and heaven knew what beyond, he acted more like a man just born to a new life than one on the verge of losing the old. He spoke generously of his wife, whom he praised for her gentle, loving, forgiving nature, and quoted many pleasing proverbs the gist of which was that the man who had not lost God had lost little besides. “It’s a wonderful woman J married, Mr. Stock,” Crispin said more than once as they rode, the rain streaming down their faces, the horse clomping down in the ooze, the fields bleak and soggy.

  When Matthew returned to Chelmsford the day after, he found much changed in the town. Although Tom Crispin was a confessed murderer—the law making little distinction between the doer of an act and the procurer thereof—he was also the object of much sympathy, now that his story had been told, and it was thought that his long record of honest dealings and his well-allowed charities would hold him in good stead when his case was finally heard by a jury. As for the animosities inspired by the trial of the sisters, these were mostly forgotten, at least by those who were not among the principals in the case. The prosecutor Malvern left town at once, it was said, to go to York where there was another outbreak of cursed necromancy and witchcraft. He took young Michael Fletcher with him. Those who witnessed the departure of the two said that Malvern was much dejected by the outcome of the Chelmsford trial, but that the boy was apparently indifferent to the fact that the accused women had been exonerated. Malvern was asked to explain how the young prodigy could have so erred, but declined to answer. It wasn’t clear if Michael Fletcher remembered anything that happened to him when he was seized with one of his fits, but the outcome did not seem to have shaken his confidence in his own powers.

  Alderman Trent said he questioned the wisdom of the magistrate’s allowing the late evidence but had no quarrel with the verdict. While he may have been disappointed in seeing Jane Crispin go free, the arrest and ruin of her husband, his old enemy’s brother-in-law, more than made up for it. He discussed the case with anyone who inquired his opinion.

  As for the others involved, what passions had not been cooled by sheer exhaustion were now quenched by the continuing bad weather, which some said signaled God’s displeasure at the entire episode. A grim succession of cold, gray days in which it was always raining or threatening to rain fell upon the town like a pall, and the subtly undulating countryside took on a drab, melancholy hue that depressed the spirit and provoked Chelmsfordians to keep indoors. There they talked gloomily of an early winter and of the witches’ trial as though it had been another town’s nightmare.

  Of course, life for the families of the accused women changed dramatically. Margaret Waite’s health worsened.

  The sadness that had fallen upon her at the death of her husband, and that indeed had tempered her willfulness and stridency, now deepened as a result of her experiences. She looked twenty years older than she was and would hardly speak to anyone, especially to those former friends who she felt had betrayed her. Something in her had been destroyed. She had an empty, hollow look, a cadaverous look that made strangers shun her. She put her house up for sale. She told Joan, who was practically her only remaining friend, that if there were no ghost haunting her house before, then surely there would be one now, and she could no longer abide its dusty drafty rooms, the awful emptiness of her husband’s side of the bed, and her bitter memories of the living and the dead.

  Bitterest of these memories was her feeling against Thomas Crispin, who had deprived her of a beloved brother and husband and by consequence built a wall between her and the society of her sister. For if Jane Crispin could forgive Thomas Crispin, Margaret could not. The breach was recognized by both women and lamented, but it did seem irreparable. Margaret went to Lincoln to live with her son Dick, and John Waite went back to London, which he declared he was a fool to have left in the first place, despite the threatening of his creditors and several cuckolded husbands bent on revenge. He said that the entire episode of the Chelmsford witches convinced him of the small-mindedness of towns and that he hoped never to leave the more enlightened society of London again.

  The house was sold to the baker, Mr. Roundy, whose wife often afterward gave tours to neighbors and strangers, and recounted her terrifying confrontation with Ursula Tusser’s ghost. Susan Goodyear was kept on and promoted to housekeeper.

  For the Stocks, life resumed its normal course. Joan managed the house and Matthew his shop, and during the winter that followed—and it was a bitter one—his constableship became a secondary concern.

  But they often talked of the Chelmsford Horror.

  “Ah, what a pity it was for them all,” Joan remarked one particularly dismal Sabbath eve, about a fortnight after the trial. She and Matthew were seated before the great kitchen fire nursing their hot caudles and what Matthew feared was for him the beginning of a bad cold. He knew what she spoke of at once.

  �
��It was a pity,” he agreed, sipping the hot sweet liquid. The spicy aroma of the drink cleared his head, which was covered in a shepherd’s cap that he had pulled down over his ears. He wore a woolen muffler around his neck, and over him Joan had thrown a heavy quilt. He sweat for the warmth of his body. All that could be seen of his face was an inch of forehead, the deep-set eyes, and the nose, reddish from the sniffles. He sneezed and wheezed as the fire snapped and popped and Joan talked.

  “It was never clear to me why poor Brigit Able was in the company of Andrew Tusser,” she said, puzzled. “What was she doing in the barn? Was she a conspirator herself, or a victim?”

  “Both, probably,” Matthew replied nasally. “After the trial, Susan Goodyear told me the truth of it. Brigit had told her how the spirit of Ursula had come to her in the night. The girl was beside herself with terror, but Andrew had something more in mind than scaring her to death. I imagine he revealed himself as flesh and blood, and got her to go to the barn where they took cover during the riot, thinking they’d be safe. It seems Brigit and Andrew were a little more than friends while he lived, and she may have not been too disappointed to find that he was alive, after all. With the town up in arms over the ghost, it was likely he was planning on leaving soon. Things were getting hot for him. Perhaps he told Brigit he would take her with him.”

  “So it must have been them whispering in the barn the day I was so afraid.”

  “No doubt. Andrew probably thought he’d pay off old scores around town, but he didn’t plan on the riot or the fire.”

  “Any more than Tom Crispin expected his wife and sister-in-law to be accused of witchcraft.”

  “It was risky business for them all,” he said.

  “Poor Jane Crispin,” she said. “What will happen to her now?”

  “She’ll be fine. She’s a strong woman, as these events have shown. The arrest and imprisonment of her husband have proved her mettle, if any ever doubted it. She’s turned over the management of the tannery to Will Simple, provided he engages in no more tavern brawls, for which he has given her a solemn oath. I myself witnessed it. The children miss their father, but Jane has promised he will return to them in the spring.”

  “Was that wise?” Joan asked, concerned. “Promising, I mean.”

  “I pray God it prove to be,” he said. “Tom Crispin murdered his brother-in-law. There’s no denying it. Whether the jury will find extenuating circumstances in his story, I cannot say. Of all my duties as constable, conveying that man to gaol was the saddest. I told you how merry he was, didn’t I? Along the way he never complained of his lot or cast one of us a threatening look, even though he was in manacles and we his appointed guardians.”

  He had told the story to her several times, but she didn’t remind him of that. Matthew went on: “Save for Tom Crispin’s desire to rid himself of a false friend and blackmailer, he was virtually without guile in this business. His mistake was in not being honest with his bride. He should have told her how it was that Philip Goodin had died. He should have used Malcolm Waite as a witness. We would have a different story then.”

  “Oh, but he feared to lose her,” she answered.

  “There was small chance of that,” he said. “She’s a very reasonable woman. She may have loved her brother but she knew what a hothead he was and how he detested the thought of her marriage to the tanner.”

  “I don’t think it was that easy,” she said.

  He looked at her with surprise. “Why wasn’t it that easy? It seems to me the obvious course. Telling the truth.”

  Joan smiled tolerantly. “But there was love, you see. Don’t speak of reason in these matters. It had nothing to do with that, neither on his part or hers. She loved her brother well—despite his quarrelsome nature and hostility to her betrothed. And Tom Crispin loved her beyond measure. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, even though there was but a small chance of it. The very thought of that small chance terrified him.”

  “Well,” said Matthew disapprovingly, but in a tone suggesting that he was prepared to allow his wife her way, “he was not the first man bewitched by love, then. Hell is full of good meanings and wishings—”

  “And so is heaven,” she answered, “or who of us would have hope of it?”

  Their dispute, such as it was, was at a stalemate. They fell into a companionable silence, watching the dancing fire. Matthew felt a tickle in his left nostril. He struggled against the urge to sneeze and then yielded. The sneeze was violent and competed with the raging of the storm outside.

  Joan sat up, startled.

  “It’s only me,” Matthew grumbled apologetically, wiping his nose with his handkerchief. “It’s this pestilent cold.” “Jesus bless us both,” she said, looking at him wide-eyed. “I must have dozed off. And what a dream came upon me of a sudden! I was sitting as I now am and heard a noise at the window. A tapping. Then a lightning flash illuminated a glaring visage. It was the same as before.”

  “Andrew Tusser dressed as his sister.”

  “Yes. Then you sneezed and I—”

  “Awoke to find no spirit present but your husband. Thank God for sneezes, then.”

  “Yes, thank God for them.” She rubbed her brow, as though to wipe away the dream.

  “The house is full of noises caused by the tempest. It’s only winter in advance of itself, beating upon the door.”

  She looked relieved and reached out to stroke his hand. “It

  is bedtime, isn’t it?” she asked. “Go early to bed and late to your grave, or so the proverb goes.”

  “And a true proverb it is,” Matthew said, rising with difficulty, swaddled as he was in so many wraps. His joints were stiff, his head throbbed. “Although grim and untimely, given my condition, this talk of graves,” he went on, thinking still of the proverb. “I feel a hundred years of age or more—and an unhealthy hundred at that. Which reminds me of a song on that very theme. I’d give you a verse or two along the way, but this cursed cold has put me quite out of voice. No more sweetness than a bullfrog.”

  On the way to bed he hummed the first few notes anyway, just to spite the rude elements without and disarm whatever restless spirit of the dead might be lurking at the top of the stairs.

  • EPILOGUE •

  MARGARET Waite blew out the candle at her bedside and watched until she could gauge the strength of the pale and sickly moon against the darkness of the room she had been given in her son’s house. Absolute darkness always aggravated her tormented memories and made the cold nights colder still; were it not for the cost of candles, she would have had hers burning all the night. Below in the house, the voices of her son Richard’s family had long ceased, and her wonted loneliness descended upon her, making her subject to gruesome thoughts and unspeakable fears. Of these, the worst was the sensation of someone or something lying beside her in the bed. When her mood was most dreadfully upon her, she thought she could hear breathing, and once, upon the midnight hour, she was awakened by what she thought was a sudden snort of the kind with which her husband used to punctuate a long stretch of snoring. She had called out his name and listened for the familiar voice at her ear, then thanked heaven that no answer came.

  Yet she knew it was Malcolm, and after a while it made no difference. She would creep into bed, extinguish the light, and wait. He would join her in the bed, never showing himself, but she could feel the weight of his body on the mattress. She took it all philosophically. In life they had been one flesh; it no longer seemed possible to her that death should divide them in any meaningful way, and soon—this she could feel in her marrow—she would go the same path into the absolute darkness.

  But this December night, the tapping at her window insinuated itself into her consciousness like a twitch of the nerve. The taps were too regular and insistent to have been the wind, although God knew the house was full of groans and rattles enough. No, it was a summons. The summons for which she had been waiting since the night of Malcolm’s death.

  When
she realized what it was and what it portended, her heart seemed momentarily to stop. She gasped for breath, but got up out of bed straightway and walked toward the window under the eaves.

  There was no curtain to pull aside, and no reflection of herself to distort what she beheld beyond the little panes of glass where there was no ledge to stand upon and no ground nearer than the cobblestone street a dozen or more feet below. The long, straight hair framed the pale, distraught face like a cowl. The eyes of the apparition were without expression, but the lips, swollen and dry, curled slowly into a smile of grim triumph.

  “Ursula? Ah, Ursula,” she heard herself moan.

  Her legs gave out and she sank onto the rushes. She looked not at the window again but at the rough-hewn beams of the ceiling that seemed to descend upon her. In the few seconds before she lost consciousness, she imagined the discovery of her own body the next morning. There would be no witnesses to the cause of her death, which would seem the natural consequence of age and prolonged grief. But she would not regret that. She had been enough of a burden on her son Richard, on his unfriendly wife, on the rout of ill-mannered grandchildren, the names of whom were always slipping in and out of her memory like those of ill-mannered guests. Thinking of these things, she could almost bless the visage staring in upon her.

  She heard the tapping again, the summons; she smiled into the gathering gloom, at the beams that kept descending upon her like the boards in her coffin. She thought: Have done, Ursula. Have done. The reckoning has long since been settled.

  The tapping continued, more insistent than before, and Margaret felt herself slipping away now, slipping out of the old sick body the way a clever apprentice, weary of his work, escapes his master’s vigilance by a sudden deft movement. One moment he’s there, the next he’s gone like a whisper on the wind.