Suffer a Witch

by Morgana Gallaway

  “Oh, who?”

  “F-F-From Stowmarket. J-Jonas Martin, the Bible p-p-printer.”

  “I doubt he’s as nice as their Tom,” said Pippa. Sybil had told them everything about her beau, and Pippa knew him to be a good sort of person. Yet Mr. Radcliff had hidden politics, not that Pippa cared, and so the Radcliffs’ more Puritan cousins would improve their suspicious reputation in the village. They probably wanted this cousin to be married to a Vale girl. She said so to Alice.

  “That b-be the truth,” Alice replied.

  Weddings always made for interesting conversation.

  “I w-w-wonder wh-who the older daughter will marry,” Alice said. “The one j-just above our age. W-Winifred.”

  “I don’t like her, she’s a toad,” said Pippa. “To her, we don’t exist.” She would never say so to Alice, but Pippa also didn’t like that Hugh was friendly with girls like Winifred Radcliff and Elizabeth Yates. It made sense for Hugh to marry one of them, for wealth was attracted to wealth. The thought of Hugh with either of those prim, proper girls made her feel very sour.

  “T-True, she’s not like our Sybil,” said Alice. “F-For wh-wh-whom station don’t matter. We are glad to have her as our friend, our s-s-s—”

  “Our sister,” finished Pippa. When the girls were ten years old, they had made a bond of sisterhood by pricking their fingers with a sharp blackthorn branch and sharing blood. Even these seven years later she could feel the strength of it in her veins. Nothing could break their love. Pippa took Alice’s hand and kissed the back of it. “I must run,” she said. “I’m to fetch yeast from Brewer’s.”

  “Oh! What are ye m-m—?”

  “Making?” Pippa finished again. “Birch wine.”

  Alice’s face lit up. Lillibet’s recipe was a well-loved and well-kept secret.

  Pippa left Alice and walked the familiar way home. She knew every leaf, every stone, every cottage, every family and their history. Past the roundabout, she looked with disdain on the new swinging sign at the pub, which said “Charter Inn” and had a scroll painted on it. She continued up the footpath towards her own home and stopped at the Brewers’ cottage, her closest neighbor.

  “Hallo, Goody Brewer!” she called.

  The Goodwife Brewer was sweeping her stoop with a rough broom. “Good day.”

  “I’m meant for a bit of yeast.”

  “Ah, ye’re making that birch wine.” It was known that Goodwife Brewer was jealous of Lillibet’s wine. One year she’d even tried to steal the recipe by peering in the window.

  Pippa laughed. “Worry not, we’ve not a mind to take over business. ’Tis but once a year we harvest from the birch.”

  “Hmm,” said Goody Brewer with a low grumble to herself, and with ill grace handed over the sackcloth of yeast.

  “Thank you, Goody.”

  At home, Lillibet and Pippa hung linen over the windows so Goody Brewer could not spy on them. The ingredients for the wine were ready: a sack of plump raisins, several pounds of sugar, a few bright lemons, the yeast, and bucket of birch sap. While the sap was set to boiling over the fire, the sugar was added until it looked right according to Lillibet. It was a thick mixture with small, slow bubbles that fought their way upward. Using thick rags to protect their hands from the hot iron, they moved the cauldron off the flame to cool.

  “Now we wait,” said Lillibet. “Until?”

  “Until it’s the warmth of blood,” Pippa recited.

  “Mmm. Good. But there are things you’re yet to learn, child, before you know all the ways of we cunning-folk.”

  Pippa exclaimed, “Then teach me! I’m seventeen. I’m ready to know what you know. I should learn before I marry and leave.”

  Lillibet cackled. “Marry! I think you have a few years yet if your eye’s on that fickle Hugh Felton. He’s not serious about you or anyone else, I seen the way he’s kindly to all the girls, and most richer than you. I hope you’re not set on him.”

  “I never said it!” Pippa cried.

  “You didn’t have to. I’ve seen the way the both of you look at each other.”

  “He’s not fickle. He’s just slow to make an important decision.”

  “He’ll be wanting more from you before he promises anything. I know the type, these gentlemen. Think they own your body just because they own some land. If your good father was still alive, it’d be different. It’d be proper for Hugh to come courting. But as it is, you must be wary.”

  “Still,” said Pippa, eager to change the subject before she received a lecture on being careful with boys. She’d received that one before. “I do feel I’m ready to learn your ways.”

  “That’s because you’re an impatient girl,” said Lillibet. She sighed. “You have trouble following rules, Pippa, and everything about the cunning is rules. You must be disciplined, cautious, and wise. You are none of these things yet.”

  Pippa disagreed with vehemence. “How will I prove myself if you give me no chance? I’m ready, Lillibet, I promise!”

  “Just watch and learn for now,” said Lillibet with a gentle smile that said she’d made up her mind. Dipping a wrist into the bucket, she said, “’Tis ready for the yeast and lemons.”

  Pippa twirled her pinky finger into the sap-sugar mixture and then tasted it. “Mmm!”

  The yeast was added, and Pippa sliced the lemons in two and squeezed them over the bucket so the juice dripped in. Lillibet stirred it in with a wooden spoon and put the lid over top.

  “Three days,” she said. “Then we strain it, and for two moons it ferments, in time for May Day.”

  To Pippa, eager to taste the sweet wine, it seemed like ages away.

  Matthew Hopkins emerged from the dank pit that was the gaol at Colchester Castle. John Steare was at his side. Hopkins was sweating and troubled, although he maintained his personal decorum in front of Stearne, who was similarly agitated. If one of them broke in front of the other, they might lose their resolve altogether.

  Once Hopkins was in the fresh rain, the steady light, he regained himself. They’d conducted an interview with a seventeen-year-old girl. Her wicked mother had sold her to the Devil and initiated her into the ranks of witches. She had given him details, so many details … of imps, of congress with the Devil, of orgiastic sabbat gatherings, of the many times she’d plagued her neighbors with bewitchings. She’d told him that she was wedded to Satan himself.

  He imagined their wedding—black and orange and cream of flesh, riding the night—and shuddered, pushing away the wickedness, focusing on the task at hand.

  They had offered the young woman a plea bargain. If she confessed and gave details on the other witches, the law would spare her the hanging sentence and instead she would spend her life in prison.

  Hopkins and Stearne continued on their walk through Colchester. It was a busy industrial town, full of weavers and textile markets, and their associated businesses such as dyers and tanners. The Dutch influence was strong but the Reformist influence was stronger. It was a place primed for the casting-out of witches.

  They passed a parish church and Hopkins was pleased to see that the vivid stained glass in the windows was being smashed out by workmen in favor of plain glass. God’s heavenly light should be beauty enough. Icons, idols, he thought, and turned away as a bright yellow and blue and red sunburst was shattered.

  “Now that we have testimony for Grimston, what next?” Stearne asked. He was a head shorter than Hopkins and had twice the energy—he had a swinging gait and hands that never stopped gesticulating.

  “This is not the last of the witches,” said Hopkins, pointing with a backwards thumb toward the castle.

  John Stearne was nodding. “’Tis as though we’ve tugged at a small root of a great tree that spreads across this land.” His voice began to rise in pitch. “Now is our chance, Hopkins! When these particular women are long after the hangman, we two shall be hunting others still.”

  “Two men, acting on the will of God, can affect great change,” said H
opkins. Stearne’s excitement infected him. It took shape in his mind, a campaign across all of East Anglia, and then throughout all the counties of England. And Scotland! And perhaps even Ireland—those people were Catholics and not far from witches themselves. While the armies of the King and Cromwell tangled, Hopkins would be a different kind of soldier. He was in the battle for his soul, and for the souls of all good Christians.

  He felt at the purse full of coins at his belt. Like any soldier, he was within his rights to earn a living from his work.

  The clock on Colchester’s guildhall struck four o’clock. Hopkins was startled at the time. “I must be going,” he told Stearne. “While our good Sir Grimston continues to ferret out witchcraft on his estates, we can extend ourselves even further.”

  “Not too far,” said Stearne, “Agnes is with child again and I promised to stay within a few hours’ ride of her.” Stearne, unlike Hopkins, was married and had children.

  Hopkins fetched Elspeth from the ragamuffin he’d paid to watch her while he was in the gaol. Within an hour he was on the road toward his own home, Elspeth racing along beside him. The rhythmic pounding of the hooves made his head hurt and a refrain echoed in his head. Sunset is coming. Sunset is coming.

  It was Friday.

  Hopkins dreaded being on the road tonight. The sights and smells of the gaol clung to him, and the soft whispering voice of the girl as she told him of unspeakable sin. The witches’ imps could be anywhere, their empty animal eyes watching him from the side of the road, noting his progress and direction.

  They might catch him, and use him, and he might like it.

  Only one thing could cleanse him of this fear. Once the bad women, the witches, were gone, he could rest.

  Elspeth’s pink tongue lolled out of her grinning mouth as she trotted alongside him.

  “Good girl,” Hopkins told her. “Good dog.”

  Past forests and fences, huts and manor houses, past mud puddles and over meandering streams, it was a grey early twilight when he reached Mistley. “At last,” Hopkins said aloud, as though wearied from the journey and not from his own imagination. He slowed the horse to a gentle canter and pulled to a stop in front of his Thorn Inn. The windows were glowing and it was crowded with men, friends and strangers, drinking foamy pints of ale.

  The room was so warm and congenial that Hopkins drank more than he intended. He stocked good ale at the Thorn. A pleasant relaxation suffused his body. There was nothing to threaten him when he was in good company. He lifted his mug in a toast to Parliament, a toast to America, a toast to Sir Harbottle Grimston. But, as always, the pub emptied and Hopkins retired home to his cottage with Elspeth and fumbled at his collar and took off his boots.

  He paused to add five more scratched crosses on the oak beam. “Manningtree,” he muttered. Seven of them now. Seven little witches.

  The room was lit by a single candle in a handheld lamp and the shadows flickered around him. Elspeth whined and curled up on her rug at the foot of his bed. Everything was tip-tilted and Hopkins knew he’d had too much to drink. “To bed,” he muttered, “to sleep.”

  He should not have blown out that candle. He should have let it burn down after he was safe in the realm of a solid sleep.

  “Blackie. Beetle blackie!”

  “No,” Hopkins moaned.

  “Shhh, shhhh.”

  “Heeper reaper, little peeper. Listen up and listen well to all the things I have to tell.”

  Original witch, original sin. Born of sin, they’re bad bad bad like me.

  Somehow Hopkins fell asleep, cowering, and then in the soft envelope of darkness, her lizard’s glowing face told him what to do. Smooth scaly green skin, a sickly light in hollow lizardly eyes, a toothless grin. “Sator rotas,” she said. “Friday, Friday, the witch flies high. See and smell, her shadow’s in the sky. Special time, Matty, I love you most. You belong to us!”

  “No. Yes. Please.”

  He was on his back. She writhed above him so fiery warm.

  “Slave to me, slave to us, arch now upwards, born of lust!”

  In the circle they danced and sang. They laughed and pointed. He was humiliated and he liked it. “Drink, drink,” they implored him. “At midnight on a Friday, use a silver sickle and prick thyself, Matty. Let us drink of you, and you will drink of us. Down your throat, warm blood, your head between our legs. Suckle, little merry boy. Listen up and listen good. We know you’d join us if you could.”

  “At midnight on a Friday.”

  “Silver sickle.”

  “Read the book, chant the rhyme, call the Master, you are mine …”

  “Read the list.”

  Hopkins awoke in a throe, a sweating fit, an aching pleasure and tears streamed down his face as he mumbled aloud his instructions. “Read the list. The Devil’s list …”

  ONE OF PIPPA’S CHORES was the cleaning of the chicken coop. Her nose wrinkled at the sharp odor while their two hens fussed about her feet. She nudged them away. Pippa had no great love for chickens other than the way they tasted. “Go on. You too, Eli.”

  They had a new piglet they’d named Eli, payment from a farmer after Lillibet had cured him of a boil. The piglet believed it had a right of abode not in the shed, but in the house with Pippa. Whenever she was in the yard the creature trailed after her. As she looked down into its beady, intelligent eyes, she had to admit a fondness. “Shame we must eat you someday,” she told it.

  She hurried through the chicken job, ending with a snort of disgust. Eli trotted after her, trying to nose his way into the house, but Pippa closed the door before he could. She set to work scrubbing the kitchen table. Residue and stickiness could not be allowed to build up; Lillibet was strict about not contaminating different herbs. Pippa gritted her teeth and scrubbed hard, figuring if she was strong about it, it would make up for her haste.

  Lillibet said from her chair, “Take your time, child. No need to rush through life.”

  “Yes, Lillibet.” But she moved the brush all the harder. She wanted daylight left to work on her collar. Sybil had given her some threads and although Pippa’s needlework was nowhere near the artistry of Sybil’s, her designs were interesting enough. Her embroidered flowers were often so jagged and impatient as to be passed off as exotic.

  Red and blue, she decided for the tiny flower she would stitch on her linen collar.

  “Oh, begone,” she snarled at a stubborn patch of honey in the crack of the table.

  “Shh,” said Lillibet, holding up a hand.

  Pippa noticed the aged perfection of that hand, the way it held still, the freckles and the knobs. Her mother’s caring hands could heal with one touch.

  She stopped her scrubbing. A drop of water plinked onto the dirt floor where it was absorbed.

  “Is someone crying outside?” Pippa asked.

  “Your youthful ears can hear better than mine,” said Lillibet. She stood up and peered through the tiny square window. “So there is.” She opened the door.

  Standing with her head down was Sarah Ford, a dairymaid from the other side of the Vale. She trembled and tears streamed down her pale young face, and her hands were pressed against her flat belly. “Please,” she said, dropping to her knees at their door, “please, cunning-woman, help me.”

  “Stand up, come in,” said Lillibet, snatching the broom from the corner and using it to prod Sarah inside. “Make not a spectacle. Pippa, get the door, so that pig don’t try to come in.”

  Pippa bolted the door. “Sarah?”

  “Stop that crying,” said Lillibet. “Take this brew, sip it nice and slow. That’s right. Hush, now. Whatever your problem, there’s an answer.”

  At first Pippa wondered if Sarah was under magical attack. There were few physical aches or pains that could produce such extreme distress for a young person. She sat down and, although still scrubbing the table, she went quiet about it so she could listen.

  “Now,” said Lillibet, taking the pewter cup from Sarah, “tell us what ails you
.”

  Sarah wiped her face with the cuff of her sleeve. “I missed me monthlies.”

  Pippa ceased her scrubbing.

  Lillibet made a low noise. “Have you ever missed them before?” she asked Sarah.

  The girl shook her head. “No, never.”

  “You been regular, right along with the moon cycle?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when did it happen?”

  “When did what happen?”

  Lillibet gave her an unwavering glare. “The thing that makes you be with child. During what time of your cycle?”

  Sarah sniffled. “At—at, well, I know not.”

  “It was more than once?”

  What terrible immorality, thought Pippa, although she was consumed with curiosity for what Sarah knew and she did not, although they were both unmarried. She also wondered how it could have been allowed. Sarah’s parents were God-fearing people who would surely whip their daughter, or even cast her out. Pippa had once seen a public whipping of an adulteress in Lavenham.

  Sarah refused to say anything more, and so Lillibet pressed further.

  “You must tell me, child, so we know what to do. You were supposed to bleed at the dark moon, and did not?”

  A nod.

  “The first bleed missed?”

  Another nod.

  “And you lay with a man around the full moon?”

  Hesitation, then a nod.

  Lillibet pressed her lips together. “That’s four weeks on, if you’re with child. Onto the bed, flat on your back, so I may determine the situation.”

  At first Pippa wondered if her mother was going to inspect Sarah’s privy parts, as had been done when Pippa first started her monthlies at the age of twelve. Lillibet had checked her and pronounced her normal, and it had been horribly embarrassing for Pippa at the time. But was there a way to tell pregnancy just from looking at the exterior of a woman?

  It wasn’t what Lillibet was after. Instead those knobby hands patted Sarah on the forehead as though to soothe her, and then she touched Sarah’s belly. Lillibet closed her eyes and began to hum. She closed her eyes and her face was transported, her brow quivering as though seeing something behind her eyelids, her lips moving barely. Then, her mouth turned into a frown.