‘... a trail of blood-blackened flesh from breastbone, through belly, to her loins....’
‘The rhyme came into my head when I was kneeling next to Cissie. I was thinking about the lady and the lamb so the prayers wouldn’t hurt my knees any more ... I told it to Francis because the bad dreams had made me cry ... but I can’t remember now; Papa made the bad words go out of my head‒’
‘... hands trapped above the chest as though in supplication....’
‘She clearly had designs on Mr Marsden’s affections, alleged some vague kinship with the gentleman ... an avowed falsehood. Perhaps she hoped to win him by sorcery and lies. I believe she regarded me as a rival and vowed to destroy me. Twice now she has attacked me and I am sure that she sent her imp to bedevil me that terrible night in the summerhouse. I live in fear of what might happen next‒’
‘Sleepwalking as I thought ... followed her into the dip. T’was no mortal horse, he rode, fair flew at her it did, and she a-moaning and a-bucking under him‒’
‘Always fingering and admiring that brooch, was our Polly ... often pinned it to her shawl and paraded past us putting on her cheeky airs. Ahhh, a winsome lass she was, said she’d hand it down to her girl, if she had one. Full of life, dear Pol.... To think it should have come to this.’
‘... mouth stretched open, earth lodged in her throat....’
‘As the father of five bewitched children and the guardian of another, I saw it as my duty to apprehend shepherdess Gurney. We came upon her out among her sheep and made a civil request for her to return with us to my home. She had nothing to fear from us, yet she attacked my men with a lethal weapon and unhorsed my niece. Her reaction was wholly unjustified but for one reason ... that she was the witch Parson Peebles had charged us to find.’
‘My opinion as a physician, You Honour, is that Polly Trenshaw was buried alive.’
‘... and that concludes the confession of Katharine Gurney, made in the presence of myself, Caleb Peebles, and my fellow examiner, Mr Matthew Marsden, after three full days and nights of watching. I have read to you exactly as it came from her lips, the words she sealed with her mark, here at the foot of the document. And I have to say that old as I am, and accustomed as I have become to manifestations of evil, the witchery of this woman has shocked and saddened me, beyond anything I can remember.’
‘You see here a sorry spectacle, brought low by her own misdeeds and by the privations of prison life. But this is a woman in her prime, who was given every opportunity to learn by the punishment of her evil mother; accepted by the parish; allowed the means by which to earn a living.
‘And yet, and yet, she did not spurn the Evil One when he came to her. She welcomed him into her very bed, succumbed to his lust and gave herself up to be his slave. She became his earthly agent, using her power to lay low anyone and anything connected with the house of Grafton ... even to a babe in arms.
‘And just as she did Lucifer’s bidding, so her familiars in the shape of a dog, named Jack, a cat, called Kitlin, and the black lamb she presented to Miss Caroline Grafton, did hers. We cannot know the extent of her evilness, only God sees all, but there can surely be no crime more heinous in His sight than brutal murder‒’
‘I imagined her a woman alone; unprotected and without defence. In the interests of natural justice I felt morally obliged to speak on her behalf. Having heard her confession, seen the apparitions that visited her, I, Matthew Marsden, admit my gullibility‒’
Justice Johnson sounded his gavel a dozen times before making an impression on the courtroom din.
‘Prisoner at the bar,’ – he shot a censorious scowl at the gallery – ‘you have heard the weight of evidence against you, if you wish to speak in your own defence, do so now.’
Kate breathed deeply and pressed her hands on to the brass studs of the rail in front of her. Her eyes trailed from the array of witnesses on her left, over the men of the jury, to the jaded officials ranged around the judge.
‘You have me condemned as surely as my mother before me,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ll not waste my breath pleading innocence. I learnt as a child there was no justice.’ Her voice rose above the swirl of dissent. ‘You must have your witches, for the Scriptures gave us being. If it weren’t for us the Bible would have no credence; your faith would crumble to dust....’
‘Better for you to repent your wickedness,’ said the judge testily. ‘You are soon to be tried in a higher place than this.’
Above a swell of outraged voices, she cried, ‘I forsake your God, as He has forsaken me!’
And twelve angry men and true howled, ‘Guilty!’
Kate twisted her fingers in the tattered cloth over her stomach, and finding his eyes, quietly smiled.
Loose ends....
Marsden stood by the water-clock in the gaol yard, fascinated by the ebbing waterline in the graduated glass bowl; by the sparkling column of water draining out of it, taking with it the vestiges of a life.
Over the scaffold, dawn light gave the promise of a warm spring day. And the air, rich with the perfume of wallflowers from a nearby garden, rang with the deep warbling notes of a nightingale.
He waited for the meniscus to reach the appointed level, then turned to see the prisoner, eyes set in an unseeing frown, helped up the steps.
Only days since her trial. No mean undertaking ... no mean undertaking at all.
There were few to see the noose tightened; a woman holding a child, a scattering of the idly curious, two turnkeys, a yawning priest, and the executioner. A murmur lifted as the head, shaking abruptly, scorned the chance for last words.
He moved closer to the scaffold, arms folded, his dark eyes fixed on the prisoner. He saw the startled flick of eyelids as the knot jerked against the neck, and concentrated on the eyes – lulling, leading to the final moment.
The air was still save for the trickle of the water-clock and the periodic creaking of the rope. He lingered a moment, following the twisted neck as it swung from side to side.
William Kerry had come to him after her trial, full of innuendos about his dealings with the witch, offering to sell his silence. Foolish man might still have been of use to him. But his feeble mind had a dangerous lack of subtlety, a reckless disregard for self-preservation.
Kerry had come to him in his inn lodgings hard by the court buildings; sweat-beaded lips quivering at his own daring, sure that he would corner his quarry. But confidence had proved a capricious companion, had deserted him in the face of Marsden’s hypnotic influence.
Before dusk of the same day, he was crouched in a dank cell, rocking backwards and forwards as he repeated over and over again, ‘Blood on my hands, pity my little ones ... sweet Jesu.’ While in a candlelit office nearby, Justice Edward Johnson, scanned the contents of a confession newly brought from the gaol.
‘... and that while in the thrall of the convicted witch, Katharine Gurney, I, William Kerry, being then employed as head groom at the Manor of Apescross, did murder the woman, Polly Trenshaw ....’
With a parting glance at the bulging eyes and tongue-wedged jaw of the man on the scaffold, Marsden donned his hat and walked away.
Rebirth ...
The just shall be wrongfully put to death –
Publicly, and being taken out of the midst,
So great a plague shall break out into that place,
That the judges shall be compelled to run away.
...Nostradamus
Beyond the twilight world of the condemned, outside the cold confines of gaol walls, England sweltered its way through the summer of 1665. Eyes across the land bore witness to a lumbering comet and were filled with foreboding. The interpretations of seers and fortune-tellers, astrologers and wizards were in great demand. A sign, came the grim reply, a presage of catastrophe. God had drawn His sword to smite the land, some prophesied, for the wrongful killing of its sovereign lord, King Charles, while others declared the loose morals of the restored court had invoked His wrath.
Slo
w and heavy was the comet, and the news coming out of London was of plague deaths in several of its parishes. God, warned the soothsayers, had loosed a pestilence that would know no bounds. And the people trembled.
Like wildfire it spread through the capital, despite the best efforts of mayor and magistrates. Examiners were appointed to search for and shut up infected houses; watchmen posted to every door marked with a red cross; nurses to tend the dying; bearers to collect the corpses and death-carts to deliver them, under the cover of darkness, to a communal grave. No public gatherings were permitted, no entertainments. Days were set aside for public fasting and prayer. Every dog and cat was caught and destroyed, poison laid for mice and rats. But still the death-toll rose; tens, hundreds, thousands a day buried without coffin or shroud. Watchmen bribed, watchmen gulled, watchmen violently removed, by every means the confined tried to escape. Some wandered the streets raving with the pain of their swellings, others plunged their tormented bodies into the river. Some escaped through woods to the countryside, others sought refuge in the boats anchored on the river. And the blight that was laying waste London, spread its tendrils ever outwards.
Outside the cold confines of gaol walls, aboard a packet that sailed the glistening waters from Severn to Avon port, came the spectre of death....
Kate wound her fingers around the transom of the small window opening. She pressed her temple against the cold stone, listening to the crickets, and felt the fluttering movement of the new life in her swollen belly.
She had meant to take it to the gallows with her, this thing he had impregnated her with; had kept the knowledge of it to herself, not wanting the execution stayed. But he had outwitted her even in this.
Marsden had come to her on the eve of her execution. He had stood by the cell window, picking at the flaking rust on its iron bars and without a trace of irony, described for her the remarkable recovery of the Grafton children. And of their father’s unstinting generosity towards him, their saviour. Then with a sardonic laugh at the world in general, he had touched the spiky new growth of her hair.
He mentioned the child casually enough, at first, but from the moment the turnkey had left them together, Kate knew that it was the only reason he had come. In his eyes she watched latent curiosity ferment into something more intense; a want that filled her emptiness with unhoped for satisfaction.
‘I will take it away from here,’ he assured, ‘when you are gone.’ She had laughed then, until the laughter threatened to choke her.
‘A witch’s bastard, sired by a murderer? You’d have me suffer such a misbegotten creature to draw life,’ she had railed.
‘I will have it.’ His voice had been cold with certainty as he rapped the door for the gaoler to come. When the lumbering official appeared, Marsden snapped, ‘Unless you would murder an innocent child, this woman’s execution must be postponed ... she carries the child of the condemned man, William Kerry. See to it a physician is sent for.’ There had been no arguing against the word of a gentleman or the gold noble dropped into the gaoler’s hand.
That had been two full moons ago. Two whole months since she had vowed to murder the fruit of his loins before he should have it. She had hated it then, loathed it because it was of him. She had tried, by refusing all food, to purge her body of its parasitic use of her. Then the fever had taken her. For weeks she had been locked into her disorientated mind, kept alive by the rough care of gaoler Bart Halliwell. And with the gradual return of her strength, she found that her hate for the child had burnt itself out. It had come through the sickness with her – it depended as much on her for life as she on it.
And there was no question that she wanted life, now. The fever had ground through the layers of acceptance, consumed a lifetime of conditioning. Out of the ashes had leapt the instinct to survive. She vowed to live as she had never done before, to embrace the special strengths she had inherited from her mother – in honour of her mother. The guilt of betrayal, of green eyes across a courtroom, no longer troubled her. Memories of a woman strong and compassionate filled their place. A woman who had used her talents to ease suffering when suffering came to her door, a woman who demanded little but suffered no one to take from her the little she had. Elizabeth Gurney had accepted the mantle of witch, and so would she. Never again would she suffer passively but carve a way forwards for herself and the child. The child had saved her neck and her sanity. The plague, an inner voice told her, would present her with the opportunity to elude the gallows altogether. One by one the obstacles were falling aside, until one alone loomed large: and his shadow haunted her thoughts.
Marsden had murdered Polly, and others before her. His condemnation of her had amounted to the same – almost. Of all living souls she alone had glimpsed the evil lurking behind the mask of Matthew Marsden. And she knew that he would not rest until he had claimed the child and destroyed her. Knowing was her only advantage. Her one hope was that she could elude him until the child was born, until she could build her strength and take the battle to him, on her terms.
Kate filled her lungs with fresh air. Under the window, a pig, surrounded by scratching fowls, foraged in the dust. From behind her in the grim room, the dying woman moaned.
The animals would starve, she knew, when Mistress Halliwell followed her serving girl to the mass grave. There would be no one left to feed or slaughter them, except the dying woman’s husband, and Bart Halliwell was too distraught to notice or care.
The plague had sailed into port, Bart had told her, brought from London by a stowaway. Within a week he was telling of how it seared through one parish after another, filling the lime pits faster than the felons released from gaol for the duty, could dig them. He told of once busy streets grown grassy with disuse, of the ever growing number of watchmen and doors daubed with red crosses. His stern, yet not unkindly face, grew steadily greyer and more forlorn with every passing day.
Wilkins, the fellmonger, Gilly, the seamstress and her aging father, Edwin, the baker’s boy, Constable Williams, his entire family and servants all dead within a weekend. Turnkeys became watchmen and examiners as one by one their prisoners were conscripted to the death-carts as bearers and bellmen and drivers. Alone at night in the empty gaol, Kate would watch the flickering glow from street-corner braziers and listen for the weary ringing that signalled the passing of the cart to the cemetery beyond the town walls. And inured herself to the terror and the suffering outside as she waited for daylight and the gaoler’s return.
Then came the morning when Bart Halliwell did not come to her cell. Not that morning, nor after. Alone save for the doleful clanging of a church bell, without food or water, it seemed that her worst fear had been realized. The gaoler had succumbed and with it her lifeline. She had wept then and prayed away the hours, until at last she was overcome by exhaustion and lost consciousness.
She had not recognized him at first. The cell was dark save for the amber glow of the lantern he was holding over her. But in the seconds it took her waking senses to focus, she had realized that the unkempt figure, with wild staring eyes was gaoler Halliwell.
‘She has the tokens,’ he gasped, dry-mouthed. ‘My poor Rosy is come down‒’ He braced himself against a pitted stone wall, his rasping breaths filling the cell with urgency. Rosy, Kate guessed, was Rosemary Halliwell, the gaoler’s wife.
‘Who is tending her now?’ she asked gently.
‘I’ll have no one come,’ he choked, ‘not surgeon, or nurse, even if they could be had. I’ve seen what tortures they inflict on ... on .... Dear God what am I to do for her?’
Kate knew too well his fear of the physicians. Days ago he had described for her the treatment he had seen administered to a dying friend. Convinced of the efficacy of bringing the already painful swellings in the man’s groins to a head, to coax the disease from him by causing the pus to come away, the physician had first applied a poultice. Finding that this only hardened the boils, he had then attempted to use his scalpel but the tissue refused to give. As a la
st resort he had attempted to burn into the shell by applying caustics to the lacerated flesh. Agonized, the wretched man had broken free of the straps that bound him to his bed and leapt to his death from an attic window.
‘Have you made report of the sickness?’ she asked. Closing his eyes, Halliwell shook his head.
‘The examiner will shut up the house soon enough – me with it.’
‘You clung to freedom that you might come here ... to see me?’ she ventured.
‘They say you are a witch,’ he murmured. ‘Agent to the Devil.’
‘I am accused of many things – murder among them,’ she added warily. ‘For all that you still seek my help.’
‘If it would but help her I would call on Lucifer himself. God has no mercy for the likes of us,’ he said through his teeth. ‘For the help I once gave you, come to her now. Do whatever needs must – use the dark forces, only help my poor girl before it is too late‒’ His voice had risen to a sob.
‘You don’t know what you are asking, gaoler,’ she answered, rising from the pallet. ‘No reward ever came of dealing with evil forces. They will lure you with promises meant only to entice, never to be fulfilled and in return they will take everything.’
Halliwell wandered towards the cell door and back again. ‘You are afraid for yourself and the child,’ he rasped. ‘Who knows but that I have brought the infection with me? See I breathe out air fresh from a sick room. My clothes, my hair all shot through with it.’
‘My little knowledge of herbs will not save her‒’
‘Then comfort her, ease her suffering,’ he begged. ‘You know how, witch. Only stop her cries echoing in my head.’
It was the opening had Kate had been waiting for; not knowing how or when, but knowing it would come. If the gaoler went without her now, he might never return and the opportunity would be lost. So it was that she agreed to nurse his wife.
In the dead of a moonless night she shadowed him out of the gaol. In defiance of the curfew, they skimmed through streets and alleyways, dodging sleepy watchmen to pick their way across the rough pasture leading down to the gaoler’s cottage on the outskirts of the town, to a room acrid with sweat and the odour of sickness.
The Witch (The Witch Trilogy Book 1) Page 10
