“There’s a spirit with you,” Lillibet told Sarah after several moments. “You’re with child.”
A fresh sob escaped Sarah’s lips. “No! What am I to do? I’m ruined. Me life is over.”
“Calm thyself!” Lillibet was not impatient, but she always countered others’ emotions with stern calm. It had seen the old woman through Pippa’s tempers, which could be considerable.
Pippa added, “Listen to her, she’s seen everything. I doubt you be the first village girl to have this problem.”
This made Sarah hiccough and say, “I’m not?”
“Of course not,” said Lillibet. “Why do you think so many babes be born a month early in a new marriage? Now answer me this. The man who’s planted ’is seed in you—will he marry? Has he the means? If so, be wed with haste, and no one need ever know that the consummation came before the contract.”
“I cannot,” said Sarah. “He cannot.”
“Don’t be stubborn, girl. You’ve got yourself in this situation, ’tis up to you to make him marry you.”
Sarah caught her lip with her large teeth.
“May as well tell us, we know much already,” said Lillibet.
But Sarah would not give a name. Instead she buried her head in her hands. Then with an anguished wail she said, “He’s already married!”
Pippa sat straight up. Married? She knew that in theory, married men could dally with unwed girls, just as single men did, but that it was happening in her own village was a shock indeed. She desperately wanted to know who it was.
Lillibet on the other hand looked unsurprised. She sighed and said, “So be it. Ye have two options, Sarah Ford. The best, and the right way, is to admit the mistake and raise the child. Perchance in the future a good man will come along and marry you anyway, seeing as your fertility is not in question.”
Sarah shook her head. “Ye don’t understand. Me father will murder me. Already me sister had to be sent away, for she lain with a man, though she didn’t fall with child.”
The Fords, it seemed, had an issue of female discipline in the household. Pippa thought again on Sarah’s parents: they were strict to excess and sometimes the red welts of a strap could be seen on the backs of Sarah’s hands. She remembered there had been talk that they might go to the New World.
“I know!” Pippa burst with her idea. “Sarah, did your parents not think of going to the Massachusetts Bay Colony?”
“They did … ?”
“So if you can convince them to go, you may be able to start a new life. Say that you were married and then widowed just after, no one will know. There’d be no shame for anyone to see.”
Lillibet smiled approval at her daughter.
Tears began welling up in Sarah’s eyes again. “I cannot. Do you not see? It’s me own father that I’m most a-feared of. Is there not something to be done? Something to … to … make the baby go away?”
The exuberant energy of springtime seemed to wilt and retreat from the windows. A dove that had been calling to its partner in the yard ceased its cooing. The piglet—who had been drinking from the trough—paused. Pippa could hear it.
Lillibet said, “That’s your other option. A way to set loose the babe that grows in you.”
“I didn’t know that!” Pippa cried. “How?”
“There never was a need to tell,” said Lillibet. “And, in God’s grace, there never will be for you. You wait until a proper marriage before letting a man touch you, Pippa, do you hear?”
“But how?” Sarah asked.
“An old way. A way that only cunning-women know. And only women must know! Do you understand, Sarah Ford? If I do this thing, and if you whisper a word to any living soul, I’ll kill you with me own carving knife. Do you vow silence to me, here, now?”
“I do,” said Sarah. She nodded her head over and over. “I do, I do.”
“So be it. And I’ve not decided that I will do it. I’m … considering. Leave us, go home, say nothing, and come back in the morning. Then I give my answer. Be ready for a good size fee.”
Sarah, looking frightened by the cunning-woman’s flashing eyes, stood and ran out the door. Her retreating steps were soft on the spongy footpath.
Subdued by all of this, Pippa said, “Lillibet? I feel it’s wrong to kill a babe in the womb, especially in the springtime. Is it not … is it not to break the Commandments? Is it not murder?”
Her mother sighed. “Or is it murder to let her carry to term? If Sarah’s cast out, Pippa, she’s good as dead, and would lead a life of degradation and poverty. ’Tis not up to us to decide. If we help her not, she may try something herself to lose the babe, a way even more dangerous.”
That was true. Sybil had once told Pippa a story about a girl from Bury St. Edmunds who’d fallen with child and thrown herself down a stair. The baby had died, but so had the girl.
“Pippa. Be a good girl, go to the wall and bring me the coin satchel.”
Pippa caught her slender pinky finger in a hidden notch and the loose stone in the wall slid out. It was all the savings of the household. The soft leather satchel was lightweight in her hands. She opened it, pawing through and counting the coins. “Lillibet? There’s so little!”
“I know. The cost of everything goes up every year, and we’re not making up for it. So often the farmers pay in grain, or cheese, or piglets—“ Lillibet gestured out to the yard, “—but those things don’t pay for rare herbs and the spirits we need to make tinctures. Or sugar, or shoes, or cloth. We need coins. They keep through the winter.” She paused and put a hand on Pippa’s cheek. “I’ll do this thing for Sarah. You will not burden yourself with it. I know the ways. I’ll do the gathering, the brewing, the casting.”
But Pippa wanted to become as her mother. “No,” she said. “I’ll help you. I want to learn—no, I must learn. I do take that same vow put upon Sarah Ford. I’ll never tell a living soul these secrets, ’cepting of course my own daughter, should I be blessed.”
Lillibet took her hand. “Watch and learn, then. This is what it means to be cunning: to know the secrets of life and death. ’Tis no light burden. I … I hope this will not return to haunt us. I hope this is the right thing, that we will not be punished by God for what we’re about to do …”
Pippa had never heard such reluctance in Lillibet’s voice before.
Her mother wrung her hands as though drying off the worries. “I hope that someday you know the joy of children, not the liability.”
“Just not without a husband first!” said Pippa. They laughed together, but the state of the money sack was sobering, as was the thing they would do to put some weight in it.
SARAH FORD RETURNED THE next morning, her face drawn. Overnight she looked aged by several years. “I still want this.”
“Twenty shillings,” said Lillibet.
Sarah gasped. “What? How’m I supposed to pay that?”
“’Tis your business to pay. ’Tis my business to cure your condition. I’ll not be having this moral burden on me without recompense.”
Sarah nodded. “Then I’ll have him—er—I’ll have the fee for you.”
Curiosity piqued, Pippa stared at Sarah, wondering again who the father really was. He was married, he was the sort of man to dally with a dairymaid, he would pay twenty shillings to avoid the consequences. Perhaps Goodman Renshaw at the inn? He had an eye for pretty young things—she’d caught him staring at her more than once—and could explain away twenty shillings as business expenses.
Then she remembered the tincture of St. John’s Wort that she’d delivered to him … for masculine strength!
Her eyes widened with the possibility. Hmm. It seemed there was much more beneath the surface of the Vale than she’d known.
“Start with these berries,” said Lillibet, handing Sarah a handful of fresh blueberries. “Eat as many of them as can be found on the hills. This’ll prepare you. ’Tis not a certain thing. If the herbs don’t work, it’ll damage the babe inside—you must be ready for
other means.”
Pippa shuddered. The night before, Lillibet had told her dreadful things about other women and what might be tried by quack doctors—things about shears or wires with hooks on them. By then it was often too late anyway, for the girl would have started to show a rounded belly and large breasts, and the stain on her honor could not be removed.
“Also,” Lillibet warned, “it’ll not be pleasant. You may get sick and the bleeding, when it begins, may go for weeks. You could turn yellow for a time and feel very poorly. Ready still?”
A resolute nod.
When Sarah had gone with her blueberries, they closed up the cottage and set out to the west, where the land was wild and many things grew on the slopes and in the forest meadows. “Look for a strong showing of mugwort,” Lillibet said. “We must pick it in the light of the full moon, but in the meantime ’tis best to know where to go. Errands made at night should be swift. Find angelica, as well, and that we can take right now.”
Angelica was easy to spot, for it was tall and had a compound bloom of white flowers on the top. Pippa found a good patch of it in the high grass near one of Felton’s fields. Using a sickle-shaped knife carved from bone, she took four stalks and thanked the plants for sharing with her, just as she’d seen Lillibet do.
They also harvested fresh pennyroyal from the banks of the gentle brook behind the cottage. Its strong minty scent made Pippa sneeze. The pennyroyal would be used in a tea, Lillibet said, to stimulate the womb into contractions. It was the most harmful of the ingredients. “Once,” said Lillibet, “my mother told me of someone who took pennyroyal tea, too much and for too long. It wasn’t working, see, and she felt that continuing would loosen the babe. But instead, she became all cold and sweaty, and her innards ached, and she died. That’s why we’ll give Sarah enough tincture for five days only. If it don’t work …” she shrugged.
Pippa had no idea that familiar herbs as mugwort and pennyroyal could do such a thing. Once in awhile she drank mugwort tea to bring on strong dreams. “It’ll work,” said Pippa, confident in whatever Lillibet chose to do.
Lillibet laid the collected ingredients on the kitchen block. It had taken three full days to prepare the mixtures and the charm.
When Sarah Ford arrived, she looked like a woman with a death sentence. Her hands were clasped in front of her. She wore a maroon dress and the same plain collar as before. A folded cap covered her mousy hair. Every stitch of her garb suggested humility, surrender.
“Ready?” Pippa asked.
Sarah nodded once.
“Come in, then.”
Lillibet had strict instructions for the taking of the herbs. “Have you been eating berries?” Lillibet asked the unfortunate girl.
“Yes, Goody.”
“Now you make a tea with these leaves of angelica and mugwort. Make it strong, steep it until the color is settled. I’ve measured it out for you, day by day, see? Then add a small spoonful of the tincture to the tea and drink it.” Lillibet waved the little brown bottle with the clear tincture of pennyroyal inside. “Do this three times a day for five days. On the third day, take this—” she handed Sarah three small bouquets of fresh picked parsley, each tied with a long string, “—and put it up inside thy privy parts.”
“What?”
“You heard me, child. You’re no stranger to things bein’ a-put there. The parsley should bring on bleeding. Whatever you do, don’t stop taking the tea, no matter how poorly you feel. Then come back to me.” Lillibet gestured at Sarah. “Now sit.”
Sarah sat down and Lillibet asked permission to lift her dress up to her belly. “All women here, don’t be shy, this will help the child depart now.” Lillibet pushed the woolen dress up so that Sarah’s navel was exposed. She left the other petticoat intact for the girl’s modesty. “This’ll make you right as rain, see? Now close your eyes.” Lillibet began to murmur a rhyme. With her special paintbrush, dipped in the blood of a bat, she wrote a sign on Sarah’s white skin. It was the rune for the thorn, to prick and to bleed, to reverse the growth of the life within.
Pippa listened carefully to the words Lillibet spoke. “Christ who died on the cross. Christ with the crown of thorns. A hedge is formed around thy womb, the child from the womb is shorn.” Pippa closed her eyes. It was as though she could see inside Sarah’s skin to a hot, wet, weightless place, to a secret cave, where the first stirrings of a doomed life listened to a mother’s gentle voice. Lillibet whispered to it, “She’s not ready for you, little one.”
When the spell was cast and Sarah vanished into the rain, Lillibet turned to Pippa. “You’ve done good, child. You did your job and did not judge the failings of others. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you.” Pippa dipped to her mother. She continued with her chores for the day, and tried to focus on the compliment, but she couldn’t help feeling like she was about to cry. She wondered if they’d done a dreadful wrong. Somewhere in that rain, a new life would be flushed away, and they had new coins in their satchel because of it.
That night, Lillibet sat Pippa down at her feet, near the fire, and told her old stories of babes born in the Vale, and their various complications. “Life,” Lillibet said, “is a funny thing. Sometimes it takes, sometimes it don’t.”
Lillibet was wise, and Pippa listened.
On the night her friend Pippa was learning new things, Sybil too was in an unfamiliar land. She writhed and muttered deep in her sleep, on her feather mattress, and was not herself. No one witnessed this, for there were three bedrooms in the Yates house—it was a graceful old place—and Sybil got the single room because she was prone to talking in her sleep.
She flew on a broom. It was between her legs and this felt nice somehow. In the sky all around her was mist, fog, white cloud … although she could not see through it, this was a comfort, because something about flying on a broom was transgressive and Sybil did not want anyone to see.
“Not that way,” said a voice.
Sybil glanced over to see another figure on a broom, a man. He was dressed as her father, in black with a conical hat, but he had the face of Tom Radcliff. The wind ruffled the short hairs around his ears and he smiled at her. “I will meet you at the end,” he said, and then veered off in some other direction.
“But I don’t know where I’m going!” she tried to shout at him. Her words came out tinny and ineffective. It was as though the wind had stolen her voice.
The air grew warmer. Then the clouds in Sybil’s head formed a tunnel. They spiraled in front of her, a clear path forward, and Sybil was yanked along it.
Faster and faster … then she opened her mouth to scream. She emerged above the Vale and could see the fields and the village and forest as though she was a bird. And in the center of her view was a fierce vortex that spat lightning and sucked everything into it: cows, pigs, houses, people. Her sister Cathy flew past her, dress flapping in the wind, and vanished into the maelstrom.
Then, Sybil felt the tug on the broomstick, and she began to drop towards the whirlwind, too. The force of the wind on her clothing made her collar constrict around her throat, choking her.
A bird croaked.
“No!” Sybil tried to shout. She tried to tug herself away but to no avail.
There was the croak again. She turned her head to see a baby blackbird struggling to fly alongside her, but it tumbled away, not into the vortex but toward the forest.
Closer, closer, and then the twister morphed into a living creature, a writhing worm, black and segmented and rising from the earth. That conquering worm opened its maw lined with silver bodkin teeth. She fell towards it.
She gasped awake.
From the light behind her curtains, it was almost dawn. Relaxing, she flopped back onto her pillow, and scrabbled underneath her mattress for her dream charm. It was a tiny cushion into which was sewn a sprig of valerian and a bundle of spiderwebs, to catch bad dreams. Spiders were the guardians of sleep because they came out at night. Sybil remembered gathering the webs for
the charm with Alice and Pippa—they’d found fresh dewy webs and had carefully moved the spiders off their homes before gathering the web into a tiny ball.
The thought of her dear friends did not calm Sybil, however … it made her more anxious for fear they were having nightmares of their own inside a black cloud. She tried to fall back asleep for a few hours, but it was interrupted when Elizabeth clattered down the stairs at dawn.
Later in the morning after her breakfast, and after she’d helped Martha with sorting the laundry, Sybil buttoned up her leather shoes—she’d dabbed a dot of red paint on each black button—and climbed up the long hill to fetch Alice.
She found her friend finishing up the hours-long task of churning butter. Her sight wandered to a place above Alice’s head where she thought she saw a pointed finger. It turned out to be the shadow of a branch through the window.
Alice released the churning stick, flexing her fingers. “Mama? May I be excused?”
“Yes, yes,” said Goody Baxter, waving at the girls. “But come back soon, Alice, I need you this afternoon.”
Together they walked to Wylde-Wood cottage. Pippa’s home was an off-kilter sort of place. Sybil had always liked it. A thin plume of smoke rose from the crooked chimney, the chickens wandered about the yard picking at seeds, and Lillibet could be seen dusting the windowsill. She spotted them and waved.
“Good day!” the girls returned.
Sybil said, “Is Pippa about?”
There was a clatter inside the house and then Pippa emerged in her house dress and an apron covered in flour. “Hello!”
“Have we interrupted?” Sybil asked.
“No,” said Pippa, “I’ve just put the loaf in. I’ll clean up. Come in!”
Lillibet added, “Take a cuppa tea to revive thee.”
Sybil laughed because she adored inadvertent rhymes.
The three girls sat down with hot cups of herbal brew while Lillibet went out to the yard, sat by the brook, and washed her feet.
Suffer a Witch Page 8
