The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  For certain, Father encouraged Matthew in his collecting of birds’ eggs, old coins. He showed him how to tell if a penny was bad, or if it was from King Henry’s time. But also Father watched Matthew, as though he were a puzzle he might solve. That struck me, even from a young age, for little else seemed to perplex Father. When my elder brothers visited he was easy and jesting, and as a minister he was warm and firm, beloved of his congregation.

  Mother, though, was not so well liked. Her afflictions had not taken on their later proportion, but still she did not do the sick-visiting and lending and handing out of preserves that was expected of a minister’s wife. Father had met her when he was seeking someone to see after my three elder brothers and myself, just weaned. In town searching for a nurse, he had looked in on his friend Thomas Witham of Manningtree, in whose house Mother was staying. He had gone in search of a nurse, and he came away with a wife who in truth needed nursing herself.

  Father always insisted that hers was only an imbalance of the humours, curable with tinctures and purges. But she did not get better; rather, she got worse. By the time I was old enough to know something was amiss, she had a hundred strange habits that dominated all her hours between waking and sleeping. She was changing her linen twice a day, and she would put it on damp if the servant or I failed to get it dry in time.

  She clung overmuch to Matthew, fretted about his dress and diet, and even as he grew older held him to her longer than most mothers would when he said goodnight. She was not the same with me, but I thought it was simply because Matthew was her true child. I do not remember being jealous: I took it as natural, with him being her own, that she would prefer him. And Father took more than enough trouble over me, teaching me equally with Matthew, even the Latin and history that are not thought needful for girls. We would read together in the afternoons, and when Father got ill, he would often ask me to sing for him instead.

  His death, when it came, was not sudden. Father had the same bad lungs as his father before him, and he declined first, the flesh stripped from him. I hoped he would get better. I hoped and hoped, until the morning I went in to him and he did not look like himself. His face was all sunk in. That morning he looked like something that belonged under the ground, and it was the worst pain I had known.

  Grief did not quieten the world’s demands, and I was thankful to be kept busy. There were claims to sort out, Mother being Father’s second wife, and Matthew lent a hand. The vicarage was wanted for the next man; I undertook the cleaning out and packing. Mother did not weep much. Rather, she wandered about the house – picking things up, putting them down. She was quiet, stunned.

  Father’s burial was perhaps only the third or fourth time I had seen my elder brothers. When we were little, my aunt had brought them at Christmas or at Easter, bigger boys from Cambridge. They felt more like my half-relatives than Matthew did, however closely I resembled them. But when they came for the burial they were polite to Mother and to Matthew, took my hands warmly. They all of them seemed to be trying to grow beards. The two younger were taking their inheritance and going to Father’s friends in America; James, the eldest, said that as soon as he had taken his master’s degree he would be following them, in fulfilment of Father’s wishes.

  With my brothers gone, I knew our aunt’s large house in Cambridge would have many empty rooms. As folk ate and drank after the burial, I tried to linger near Mother and my aunt to hear whether they were speaking of us going to her household. I knew Matthew was already excited at the thought of being near the colleges, and that he hoped Mother might be brought to find him a tutor, now that such things would fall to her to decide. I hoped it, too: that some good thing for my brother might come out of the calamity of Father’s death. For though Father had delayed in sending him away to school, Matthew had long made it plain that he wished to follow him and my three elder brothers into the ministry. Matthew was still but fifteen, and it would not have been too late for him to be sent away to a tutor.

  But Mother spoke with my aunt very little that afternoon, and when they did speak it was only to comment on the turnout, or the state of the roads. When it was over, and those in attendance had been fed and watered and had gone, I helped Mother to fold the tablecloths away. I was amazed that she had lasted the day without a headache, but she seemed calm enough. We were folding in the dark, nearly, for we were running short of candles; so it was that I could not see the look on her face when she said, ‘I have heard of a house in Manningtree.’ And then, ‘Take this.’ She held out the squared corners of a cloth to me, and obediently I pinched them together.

  I said, ‘We thought –’ I stopped. ‘I thought we would go to Cambridge.’

  But Mother’s voice was brisk, as she finished folding the cloth. ‘Cambridge is expensive, Alice. You know that.’ And then she said defiantly, ‘And it will do me good to be near Bridget again.’

  ‘Who is Bridget?’

  ‘She was my servant, before I married your father,’ Mother replied. ‘She came with me from London. She came here, though she left – she left when you were a baby. Do you not remember her?’ She stacked the folded cloths together. ‘I suppose you would not. She looked after you. But she moved, just after Matthew was born, back to Manningtree and took in a little boy, I think, and lives there still. That is why she came to my mind.’

  When Mother said this, I remember thinking, servants have never had names before. Servants, in our parents’ stories, had always been ‘that ungainly girl’ or ‘that girl with the red hair, the one from Colchester’. Mother had most usually recalled them only when she came across a bad piece of mending, or a burn mark on the table, and had occasion to remember the culprit. And beneath each instance of dismissiveness, each complaint, was the unspoken name of the wet nurse who had let Matthew crawl too near the fire, who, though I could not have known it then, would one day cross into our lives again.

  But that day, that funeral day, I remember only my surprise, and Mother’s worried look as she handed me the folded stack of linen. ‘You’ll tell your brother?’ she said. She was aware, I think, that it would be a blow.

  Matthew took the news quietly enough. No Cambridge after all: instead, only Manningtree, its little docks, its bustle not of scholars but of farmers and small merchants. I remember Matthew on our last day in Wenham, how he went out into the garden while Mother and I did the packing. He said he wanted to leave things in good order: stayed out past dark, pulling weeds viciously from the vegetable beds, and burning them in a heap. I watched him for a while out of the kitchen window, kicking loose pieces of brush into the fire, not even moving out of the way of the upward billowing sparks.

  My brother buried his resentment that day. But resentment buried is not gone. It is like burying a seed: for a season it may stay hidden in the dark, but in the end, it will always grow. I did not see it, though we were still close, even at that age. I think now that to be close to someone can be to underestimate them. Grow too close, and you do not see what they are capable of; or you do not see it in time.

  Here listed the old ways of finding them out, so far as I can discover. See fuller notes on each method elsewhere.

  The tradition of the witches not weeping.

  The witches making ill-favoured faces and mumbling.

  To burn the thing bewitched, & c.

  The burning of the thatch of the witch’s house, & c.

  The heating of the horseshoe, & c.

  The scalding water, & c.

  The sticking of knives across, & c.

  The putting of such and such things under the threshold, and in the bedstraw, & c.

  The sieve and the shears, & c.

  The casting the witch into the water with thumbs and toes tied across, & c.

  The tying of knots, & c.

  5

  When I woke, my first morning at the Thorn, it took me a moment to come to where I was. The inn was quiet. I changed my shift and found a cap and apron in my box, fresh but creased. There was dirt in the fin
e cracks of my palms. I would need to soak my hands later: like Mother, Matthew had always been particular about such things.

  My only black dress had been taken out for brushing: it would have to be the brown. Brown was easier, anyway, on my pale winter nubbin of a face, my cracked lips, my red hands. I walked about the chamber plenty, in getting myself ready; then I waited for some minutes, but Grace did not come.

  The stairs and passage were quiet. I knocked on the door beside my own, but there was no sound within: Matthew was not back, then. I stuck my head into the kitchen, and saw only a scullery maid. I asked her for something hot to drink. I knew it was time to go to Bridget.

  I felt shaky, skittish, as I took the familiar field path along the edge of the woods. The wind was cold and dry from the east, and from the heath you could see the small grey shapes of waiting ships out in the channel. The walk to Bridget’s house took longer than I remembered, for there were fences on the common land where there had been no fences before.

  The strangeness of the fields made me think of the first time I had walked them, the day after we moved to Manningtree. Mother had prevailed upon us to take a basket of something to her old servant Bridget’s house; we took apples, I think, from the orchard at Wenham, though it was not the season, and the small yellow fruits were soft from their long winter storage. I remember knocking, the way the suspicion had dispersed from Bridget’s face as I said our names: like watching the sun come out. Her house was larger than I expected, for one who had once been a servant: two hearths, hives, chickens, and plenty of space for growing things.

  Bridget fed us that day on cheese and radishes, and she answered my questions about her books – she had Mother to thank, she told us, for being able to read – and likewise about the various places she had lived throughout the Tendring Hundred since leaving our parents’ service, and about how she made money now with her bees, and by the dosing of horses and pigs.

  Most folk, receiving scant answer from my brother, would begin after a time to talk only to me, but Bridget talked to both of us. She met Matthew’s eyes, and told him that he had been that tiny when she left, and what hair he had been possessed of, even at that tender age. She had included him in each of her stories, and not only did she keep from staring at his scars, but she never even glanced at them. Even that first day I was drawn to Bridget: though it was impossible, it was as if I remembered her face.

  The next day, she returned the visit, and this time, as Matthew let her in, I saw she had a boy with her. We all sat in the front parlour, which was still full of crates, Bridget in what I would come to know as her one good dress; she made sure to ask Mother about her health, before introducing her Joseph, who I knew must be the boy she had taken in, awkward in his Sunday clothes.

  While Bridget talked with Mother of the journey from Wenham, what things had been broken in the course of the unloading, I stole looks at Joseph. I had not met many boys with whom I had not grown up, and as Bridget and Mother talked about nothing very much, I noticed him: his thin, boyish height, his strong hands, his yellow hair, which wanted cutting. And though I did not catch him doing it, I knew he was glancing back at me.

  At length, Mother finished lamenting how the fire did smoke, and smiled at Joseph, and said, ‘You are a tall lad, Joseph. What age are you?’

  Here was an excuse to look at him properly: at once I noticed his gentle eyes, as he replied, ‘Mistress Hopkins, I believe I am nineteen.’

  Matthew said, ‘Cannot you remember?’

  Joseph paused, looked at Bridget: his face turned a faint pink, and he did not seem to know what to say.

  It was left to Bridget to explain that his precise age was not certain, for he had not come to her as a baby, but as a child five years old, or seven: the son of a woman who had died in Colchester gaol and a man who had gone away to sea.

  As Bridget spoke, Matthew sat kicking his heels on the rung of his chair, and I did not look at him. I had not imagined a tale so bad, when Mother had spoken of Bridget taking in a child. I knew that my brother would be shocked that Bridget was so plain about Joseph’s low birth.

  As Mother said how fortunate Joseph had been, Bridget replied, ‘But your boy here. What would he be now? Fifteen? And so handsome. I think he has just his father’s forehead.’

  Mother smiled, made some uncertain agreement. What with the scars, it was not common for folk to call my brother handsome. An awkward silence fell, and again I studied the floor. I was grateful when Joseph cleared his throat, shifted in his chair, and told Mother that he knew some lads who would be glad to come and sweep the chimneys. As Mother thanked him, I looked up in relief, and at last I caught him resting his gentle eyes on me.

  I do not know what Matthew saw or knew, but when he wished our guests good day it was stiffly, and only once they were at a safe distance from the front door did I see him grow calm.

  ‘Did you not like them?’ I said.

  He turned to me. ‘You saw the state of her fingernails?’

  I let it go, on that occasion. I thought he was still sore about Cambridge; I thought that Father’s caution about servants had found its mark in Matthew, that he had perhaps picked it up like an affectation, a thing of no consequence.

  But it soon became clear that Mother trusted Bridget, and I grew close with her, also. I was not well placed to make friends among the other girls in Manningtree – at nearly seventeen I had arrived somewhat late for it, and Mother did not go visiting much. But I found my refuge in Bridget’s house. She had a whole shelf of books, and unlike Father’s, Bridget’s books were not only about God. I remember looking along their spines, turning to her, saying, ‘You have three books on the keeping of hounds.’ I turned back to the titles. ‘Two on the proper arrangement of troops in battle.’

  Bridget stopped stirring what she was stirring, wiped her hands, and placed them on her hips. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Though if women would write more books, I live in hope that they’ll find some other topics.’

  But while my liking for Bridget grew, while I found more and more reasons to look in on her – and, of course, on Joseph, too – Matthew’s first dislike persisted. Bridget became brittle about him in return, saying plainly once that he was spoiled. When she said it, I knew that it was true, that part of why Matthew disliked her was because she did not put down her sewing whenever he began to speak, as Mother did. But Matthew’s disapproval did not prevent me seeking to become Bridget’s kin.

  I believe I thought that in marrying Joseph I would be getting a new mother. But as soon as he told her of our plans, she changed with me, withdrew, and I turned sulky: told myself she was jealous, that she was like those mothers who want to keep their sons always babies. Her affection for Joseph remained undiminished, and once we were married and moved to London, she wrote to him most weeks – she greeted both of us at the start of each letter, but I knew they were written for him. When he died, I read and reread the thick pile of her letters he kept on our bedchamber sill, pored afresh over their detailed complaints and small news.

  Bridget’s letters were like a pattern for the life that I had failed to make for Joseph in London; a life with gossip, little disputes, neighbours’ births and their marriages. The thought tasted bitter: even among so many people, I had not made enough friends. For where we took our rooms, there were only the Dutch women who would watch me pass with their amused dark eyes, and the French ones who would clatter by me, laughing together, the tips of their noses red with cold. In our part of London each kept with their own kind, except there were none of my kind, or else I did not find them, and Joseph and I were alone, with Bridget’s letters the only link to our old life in Manningtree.

  Her letters kept arriving after Joseph was dead, after a fortnight and after three weeks, the second hoping, more pointedly than the first, that he was in good health. I did not know what else to do but read them, then let them lie unanswered, sitting at the kitchen table in order to have something solid to lean on, eating what my landlady brought
me, trying not to think.

  Though I had failed to tell Matthew of my husband’s death in my letter to him, I made myself do it when I wrote to Bridget, finishing the note quickly so that I would not have to think long on what the words meant. Now, on my first day back in Manningtree, as I walked towards her house, I was glad that I had told her. That I would not have to see her first shock and pain.

  The path led downhill in sight of the church from the top of the heath to Bridget’s place, but when I reached the cottage, from the gate I could see the thick, dead grass all around and the damp rising up the brickwork. An aging cow lay against the wall, chewing. I knew that something was wrong for certain when I saw Bridget’s little patch, likewise choked with grass, and beyond it the old wooden hives, one blown or kicked over, the other upended and filled with dung. It was impossible that Bridget could have let it get to this.

  Then a dog came from around the side and towards me, barking and crouching low to the ground. Keeping my eyes on it I called out: a woman, not Bridget, replied from the back of the cottage, and the dog disappeared. I gathered my courage and followed it. The woman was standing on the back step, wringing out clothes for a child, little shirts and breeches. She had dark hair, and I noticed the thickness of her arms. The dog stood at her feet. Close up, I saw it was half blind, with one milky eye.

  ‘I’m looking for Bridget,’ I said.

  ‘Aye. Moved on.’ She was Irish. I smiled, but I could feel the dog watching me.

  ‘Do you know where to?’

  ‘Friend of hers, is it?’ The woman shaded her eyes.

  ‘Family,’ I said. ‘I’m her son’s wife.’

  She nodded. ‘She’s in one of them cottages now, on the road up from the dairy. Decent woman, she is. We’re still burning the wood she left us.’ She pulled a damp hand across her nose. ‘Never spoke of a son.’