“That’s right,” said Winifred. “Sybil, you didn’t eat anything solid for five days during your fever.”
“I had a fever for five days?” Sybil asked, for she’d never quite had a grasp on how long it had lasted.
“Longer, but you were on the mend when Martha began feeding you porridge,” said Winifred.
They fell silent at the mention of treacherous people from home. Martha had been the one to catch Ursula. Sybil chewed on the bread, trying not to think of their pet raven and what might have become of her. Although the bread was dry and crumbly and made of cheap mullet wheat, it expanded in her stomach and made her feel almost satisfied.
“Thank you, Pippa.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Pippa. “About Ursula.”
Sybil swallowed. “Yes, I worry for her. She’s just a bird. But she was a friend.”
“Worry not,” said Winifred. She’d been told all about Ursula when the girls compared imps. “After you were accused, I heard that Martha brought the bird to that pigeon coop the Renshaws keep.” Quiet Will Renshaw bred carrier pigeons. “Will wouldn’t say anything, he’d take pity on a lame bird and be sure she’s fed at least. Until we get home.”
Sybil squeaked with happiness. “Oh, bless you, Winnie!”
“Until we get home,” said Pippa, finishing her bread.
Sybil kept thinking of Ursula, turning over a picture of the bird in her head, holding it close like a blanket to soothe her. Her fingers itched for a needle and thread and fine white piece of cotton. She would like to embroider something, a black bird, and a border of thorns and twisted vines, all in black to match. Black and white. She closed her eyes to see the stark contrast … not like this gaol, which was dim and brown and dirty.
When she opened her eyes again, the keeper was at their cell, flanked by two guards. There was a man, a civilian with them … a man Sybil recognized.
“Winifred Radcliff!” the keeper called.
All around, women stirred and began to sit up.
“Have the trials begun?” someone asked.
“Winifred Radcliff!”
“Winnie!” Sybil shook her sleeping friend’s shoulder.
“Mmm?” Winifred raised her head and rubbed her eyes. “What is—Papa!” She stood up so fast that she had to cling to the wall to avoid toppling over. Sybil knew what that was like—the rush of blood to the head.
“Go, go!” Pippa nudged her.
Winifred was pushed through the crowd by their fellow prisoners.
“Papa!” Winifred reached her arms through the bars and clung to Mr. Radcliff’s clean lapel. He looked very serious.
“Daughter. You are to come home with me at once.”
“I—what?”
“Your charges have been dropped. Come, child, come out of there.”
Oh, thank you, Almighty Father, thought Sybil. Some angel had tugged on a thread, and that thread had pulled another, and somehow Winifred was free. She collapsed against Pippa in joy, feeling almost as though she was freed, too.
Winifred turned to them, but the keeper yanked her out of the cell so as not to keep the door open. Sybil didn’t know why. We poor creatures are not capable of rebellion. She felt Pippa’s hard, jubilant clasp on her hand and thought, None but one, anyway.
Winifred said, “Wait!” but she was whisked away and Sybil hoped she never returned. It sparked a little hope … perhaps her father, too, would come for his daughter. Perhaps the Reverend would realize that she was his own child and that he’d made an error in judgment. Sybil settled in to wait. She traced a lacework pattern into the dirty floor with her fingernail.
The indolent air of mid-August did not reach inside the gaol. It held a different kind of heat—Pippa sometimes had the odd sensation that Hell itself was nearby, and that if she pulled away some kind of veil, she would see it. The shadows played tricks on her. Her mother had often said that idle hands did the work of the Devil, and that an idle mind did the same. A hundred breaths were held, waiting for trial.
There was a heavy weight on Pippa’s lap. It was Lillibet’s head, for she was sliding towards death, and Pippa knew there was no stopping it. The sentence was written: lethargic weakness punctuated by terrifying spasms. Lillibet’s jaw would not relax, not even to eat or breathe, and her lips were pulled back in a helpless snarl. Every so often, her entire body would lift off the floor, twisting up as though lifted by demons, the contortions so wild that several rib bones and a vertebrae had snapped. The other prisoners stayed away from the cursed one, the possessed one.
The fever had taken Lillibet’s mind a few days ago, just after Winifred was released. Now she mumbled nonsense, when she was able to speak at all.
Pippa was tormented with the thought of the herbs that might save Lillibet, the rest and care that might cure her. And if she’d not been so weakened in body and spirit by the cruel tests of the witch-finders, she might have fought it off. Pippa used a gentle touch to soothe Lillibet’s brow. All she could give her mother was her presence and her prayers.
Two days ago, in her disappearing voice, Sybil had asked Pippa what ailed Lillibet, if it was what they feared.
“I’ve not seen it before,” Pippa said, “not in the flesh. But I know it to be the lockjaw.” The very word was a death-knell in this place with no treatment, no ointments to relax the clenched muscles. Sybil had shuddered and Pippa ordered her not to touch Lillibet, not even in comfort. “You’re too weak. It might be a curse. I would not want you to be afflicted.”
It was impossible not to touch and be touched in this cell, however. Three or four others also suffered from plague, a disease of incarceration. The first woman who’d caught it had died a week ago. Pippa wondered if all of them might die before coming to trial.
With every thin, rough breath that Lillibet took, Pippa felt her own will to live draining away. In … gasp … and out. That breath was a clock winding down to nothing. The whole world might do this, Pippa thought, drain away like Lillibet. She began to wonder about the great fiery battles in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse, and she began to doubt they would ever come. This was the way things ended, in fever and in mindless suffering, in broken bones and disintegration. If God was order, then Satan was chaos, and from where Pippa sat, Satan was winning.
There was nothing to be done about lockjaw, but it was not always fatal. If the blood could be kept pure and the humors in balance with the use of herbs, recovery was possible. But in a body already ravaged by starvation and torture … Lillibet’s light was gone. Her hands were claws and her bones were cracked by the ferocious supernatural writhing of her own muscles. There was a liquid sound in her lungs, which meant the infection had moved into dangerous areas of her body.
What was more, Lillibet seemed to know. She’d known at the first sign of stiff jaw before being yanked into oblivion by the fever.
And there was nothing Pippa could do.
Sybil crept up, tiptoeing around the field of arms and legs, holding onto the wall for support. She was so thin she could have been swept away by a breeze … not that there was any fresh air down in this pit. “Shall we pray over her?”
“All we can do,” said Pippa, bitterness a poison in her mouth.
“Shh,” said Sybil, “Quiet your thoughts. She has taught you well. Death is not the end of things, but the beginning of new life.”
Grief seized Pippa’s heart in a vise, warped it in a mockery of Lillibet’s own twisting, and she sobbed. Once, twice, three times she cried out for her mother. Sybil watched with impassive gentleness.
“That’s it, Pippa. You must accept what you cannot fight.”
Her vision blurred by tears, Pippa looked at Sybil and wondered how she had become so wise … that she, who was like a song on the wind, could pin down the very essence of the thing.
“Let us pray,” said Sybil, clasping her tiny hands together and bowing her head.
Pippa recited with her the prayer for the sick. “Oh, Father of mercies,
God of all comfort, our only help in time of need … We humbly beseech Thee … relieve Thy sick servant for whom our prayers are desired … Grant that she may dwell with Thee in life everlasting …”
Throughout it all could be heard Lillibet’s failing breath.
“She is sanctified,” said Sybil after the prayer. “She will go to a place better than this.”
Pippa watched the slight rise and fall of her mother’s tense chest. Lillibet had been hollowed out.
Sybil said, “Every breath must die so that another can begin.”
Pippa closed her eyes. Perhaps they were all but a breath inside the mind of God. Perhaps death was that moment of release, when the lungs contracted to fill anew. She thought of all that Lillibet had taught her, and was sorry she could not have learned more. She was sorry how badly she’d botched her life before the trials, that she’d ever disappointed Lillibet with her silly and unthinking ways.
“But you’ve seen the death of my father, your husband,” Pippa whispered to Lillibet. “You would not want me to grieve the coming of your winter, and your rest.”
As the hours dragged by and Pippa waited and prayed, she could be almost grateful that her mother would not suffer the indignity of a public execution. This way it was almost a natural death.
And then she would remember the utter destruction of her home and safety. Lillibet was going without her. And then the despair would rear up, seizing her, breaking her into pieces as the curse had done with Lillibet.
“Oh, no, it’s Bucktooth,” said Sybil, nodding at the nasty-faced guard at the bars. On occasion he liked to take a woman out of the pen and beat her, and sometimes drag her somewhere else, after which she would return a shattered creature. It was why Sybil and Pippa stayed toward the back, even if it meant they were last to get a ration of food or water.
When a woman reached a hand around the bars, begging for water, Bucktooth swung his club at her, and with a nauseating crunch and a high-pitched howl of pain, her fingers were smashed.
Pippa could feel the weight of the building and the earth above her head. She was in a different kind of cave here. If her spirit was a flame, it was being snuffed out by that swinging club in Bucktooth’s hand … by the hands that tossed her into a pond … by the bodkins and needles that pricked her skin. She closed her eyes. “Sybil, I have something to tell you.”
Sybil tilted her head to listen.
“If … in case … well, I think you’re the one most likely to survive this. I should have told Winnie. If I’d known she would be released, I would have.” With a deep breath, and an apology to Lillibet who’d sworn her to secrecy, she whispered, “There is a special place in our woods.”
Sybil’s wide eyes reflected the torchlight from the corridor. Pippa knew it was right to tell Sybil how to reach the cave, about the mark on the rowan tree, how to move the stone and crawl inside, and of the treasures that could be found there. She said it was a safe place. “If we be accused of witchcraft, then perhaps they truly covet our knowledge.” If Pippa was going to hang for what she knew, than she wanted to be worthy of it. That cave was special and it could not be left to decay.
Sybil, with a touch of her usual flightiness, said, “’Tis no surprise to me. All sorts of things can hide beneath the hair of a leaf.” She blinked at Pippa. “The secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you,” said Pippa. She felt she could follow Lillibet into the shadow lands. There was not much else to live for. He’s dropped me, he’s forgotten me, she thought about Hugh Felton. If it was a small chance before, ’tis impossible now. He thinks of me as I am: a low failure, a wretch. He must believe I did bewitch him. He hadn’t come to save her, to speak for her, and she knew what that meant. She was never his, as much as she wanted to be. Now the one thing that had made her stand out to Hugh—her spirit—was dust on the ground.
Like a cat chasing its tail, such thoughts went round and round in her head, and still Lillibet’s thin breath grew thinner, and her eyes dimmer in the gloom.
A SPASM WOKE PIPPA from a listless sleep. “Lillibet!” she said, hovering over her mother’s face. “Oh, Lillibet. Please be at peace. I can stand it no more … please, please … oh Lord God, please!”
Lillibet’s limbs stiffened, and then were limp again as the pulses of disease did their last work. Her mouth was a grinning rictus. With broken fingers, Lillibet grasped the folds of Pippa’s petticoat and lifted herself halfway to a sitting position. Her eyes were fierce with inner concentration.
“Let me go,” Lillibet rasped. “Release me.”
For a terrible moment Pippa thought her mother truly was possessed, that it was more than disease and fever. But then … by a miracle, Lillibet’s jaw moved, and she spoke around her rigid tongue.
“John. John.”
Through her tears, Pippa said, “Papa—your husband—is waiting for you. He’s there.”
“Pippa. Let me go. You go and live.” A small smile lifted the bleeding corners of Lillibet’s mouth—a sight so gruesome it was almost beautiful. “The Death Crone comes for us all. I will go, and dawn will follow the night.” With a final determined wince, Lillibet said, “Listen close.” She breathed in short, shallow pants. “Take me head when I be dead. Keep it in the cave. Then I shall always be with you. Take me head when I be dead.”
Pippa’s mouth fell open.
Lillibet giggled a girlish laugh through her teeth. “Funny, yeah? They not be expecting that!”
A bubble of laughter escaped through Pippa’s weeping. Of all the things … struck dumb, she could but nod at Lillibet.
“Good girl,” said Lillibet. Her head fell backward onto Pippa’s cradling arm. Her breathing was erratic, labored, as her own body tightened against itself, suffocating her. Something seemed to lift away … and then it was just a ruined corpse with a mouth that gaped like a cavern. Lillibet’s eyes were empty windows and with shaking fingers, Pippa closed the lids over them.
“Farewell, Lillibet,” she managed to say, before falling against the wall. Her own eyes were suddenly dry of tears. She was hollowed out, too.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, PIPPA and Sybil took Lillibet’s bowl and discussed what to do. Pippa didn’t know what the gaol did with the bodies of accused witches and so she crawled over to Anne Alderman to ask her.
“Isn’t hallowed ground, if you be worried about tha’,” said Anne. “Accused don’t mean guilty, so I believe a blessing still be said … but, the grave is common. Behind the prison and near to the tanning pits.”
“What happened to your husband’s body?”
“That be how I know. Had to sign for it, and he was buried at the plot at home.” Anne peered over Pippa’s shoulder at Lillibet’s slumped figure. “She died, then?”
Pippa nodded.
“Sorry. But unless you got someone outside to take ’er body, she’ll go to the common ground. ’Tis an open pit, horrible stench this time of year, and the birds go for the pickin’s.”
Pippa crawled back to Sybil. “They’ll toss her in the common grave.”
“And she wanted you to take her skull?”
Pippa would have expected fragile Sybil to be shocked by this request, but Sybil seemed to think it perfectly normal. “’Tis what she said.”
“Hmm. You’ll want to take the rest of her body, too.” Sybil fingered the button on Lillibet’s petticoat. It was dull pewter. With deft fingers she tugged on the threads and detached it. “I have an idea. Rub this button against the wall and make the edge sharp.”
“Why?”
“We’ve got to have a way to find her body amongst the others. So we give her a necklace.” Sybil parted a small section of her long hair and began to weave it into a braid. “Make that sharp enough to saw off this hair of mine.”
“Oh!” said Pippa, understanding. She filed the edge of the button on the rough stone. Soon the curved edge was thin and sharp enough to cut skin. She flicked the edge of her thumb on it and wondered if it could help her escape.
; Sybil smiled sweetly and took the button. With a sawing motion she cut off the long plait of hair from the roots of her scalp. The rope of gold fell into her hands and she tied the ends together in a firm, expert knot. “Here. Lift her head for me.”
With gentle hands Pippa raised the head of what had once been Lillibet. It did not look human anymore, and like no one she recognized. Still, the body acquired a sort of dignity when Sybil graced the neck with the pale braid. The hair looked fresh against the taut grey skin. Sybil tucked it beneath the collar and patted it once.
“There. Now you have something to look for.”
“Thank you, Sybil.” Pippa wasn’t sure what she would have done without her friend. She leaned back. “Do we tell the guards now?”
“I’ll tell the round one,” she said. “Not Bucktooth.”
“Lord, no.”
When the fat guard came on his round, Sybil, who was waiting at the bars, flagged him over. In the suffering hush of the cell, Pippa could hear her words clearly. “A woman died. Of the lockjaw.”
“Fine,” said the round boy, who did not have the hard eyes of a man yet. “It’ll be collected. Who was it?”
“Her name was Elizabeth Wylde.”
“Fine.” The boy leaned over. “Anything else?”
“No …” said Sybil.
He licked his lips. At first Pippa thought he was going to say something fresh toward Sybil, but it turned out his interest was gossip. “The assizes are set for a week from now. That’s when the trials start. But they be trying to get them done fast, for the King’s army is marching this way.”
Sybil turned toward the corner where Pippa waited, and nodded at her.
Pippa’s spine stiffened.
“The girls in here think you’re sweet,” Sybil said to the guard in a faux whisper.
The guard shook his head at her, but seemed chuffed nonetheless.
Another pair of guards arrived for Lillibet’s body and her bowl. She was passed across the cell and dropped onto a wooden board. Pippa watched her mother go. Every part of her ached.
Sybil picked her way across and collapsed next to Pippa. “The trials are almost here.”
Suffer a Witch Page 23
