The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  The back of the cottage was like the front, scrubby wildness now running down to the stream and what was left of the hen coop, which had been stripped for usable wood. Mint still grew by the door, a dead winter thicket at the woman’s feet. I had stood just there and watched Joseph build that hen coop. Seen him measuring the pieces of it with his forearm and his hand span. I had held Joseph at bay, all the road from London to Manningtree, all the way from the Thorn to that doorstep, but now he was coming back to me, whether I willed it or no. I touched the wall, to steady myself.

  I saw the Irish woman was waiting, and I tried to judge what might win her, what she would best understand. ‘We went to London, for work,’ I said. ‘But he got himself killed.’

  She did not trouble to ask how, but made a sort of noise in her throat, not without sympathy.

  ‘Well, I thank you,’ I said. And then, ‘It’s good ground this, at the front especially. You won’t find stones. You can get carrots to come up with no work at all. They’ll grow like weeds,’ I finished quickly: her face had changed, and I thought she was losing patience. But when I fell quiet, she was regarding me, the damp clothes over her arm.

  ‘Will you wait?’ she said then, and disappeared inside. The dog lay down, and I waited, thinking she would offer me something to eat, wondering how to refuse.

  But the woman came back without the washing, and held out to me some folded paper. As her rough hand grazed mine, I felt my face tremble. It was my letter: the one from me to Bridget, in which I had told her that Joseph was dead. And another, a little older; the direction written in Joseph’s hand. I thought, She does not know. How can she not know?

  ‘Your pardon,’ the woman said. ‘But while you’re going, would you mind? They gave these to my husband. That was their mistake. I only found them last week, I was going to step over with them –’

  I thanked her, said I would pass on her regards, and I would see them into Bridget’s hands. The dog tailed me back round the side of the house, making low sounds in its throat, and came as far as the gate before it turned back again. I did not stop till I was out of sight, clutching Joseph’s letter, and my own.

  As I followed the directions the woman had given, I tried to think what words I could use, how to make Bridget sit down for me to say them. I had not spoken of Joseph since his death, did not know whether I could speak of him now without crying out or falling down. Before I was ready, my feet brought me to where the cottages were and I halted, realizing as I looked down the row that I did not even know which one was hers.

  They were much poorer than her old house. You could see from the chimneys that there would be only one hearth apiece; the windows were unglazed and the roofs needed work doing. There was a child playing in the dirt of the road, but when I beckoned, it ran away indoors. I stood for a moment, at a loss. Then I saw the bench outside the house at the end. I began to walk towards it, and when I reached it, I touched the pool of wax on the seat.

  We had spilled that the night we had agreed to marry. We had been sitting outside Bridget’s back door, her old back door. Joseph had brought out the stub of a candle. True, I had prompted him a little, but that was forgotten as soon as I felt his lips’ softness, the heat of falling wax on my fingertips where he had knocked the candle in its dish, the sudden hardness and shrinking as the wax cooled where it fell on my fingers and on the bench between us.

  Soon, Joseph had gone in, to give Bridget the news. I was raw that night, for I had just fought with Matthew, and I wanted and expected to overhear an exclamation of joy, of surprise. But, though I could not catch what she said, when Bridget’s voice came it sounded doubtful.

  I wrote to my brother in Ipswich, telling him the date of the wedding, but I received no reply. Mother, for her part, did not object. She scarcely said anything at all. I remember she frowned, and asked, ‘Do you think he can take care of you?’

  ‘We can take care of each other,’ I replied. And I confess it, I did feel some relief in that moment, at the thought that my youth might now be more than caring for her. After a minute I added, ‘I love him,’ and she said only, ‘Well, then.’ Wearily, regretfully, as if over a pail of milk that was already spilled.

  Father’s executor, Thomas Witham, gave up my portion gladly enough. But though he was minister at the main Manningtree church, he was reluctant to marry us without Matthew’s blessing, so I went to the other church, up on the heath, and the minister there who did not know us. I was careful to look coy, and let my hand creep to my stomach, when he asked what the hurry was. I am ashamed to own to that, now, though God knows how I was paid out for it in the end.

  Pulling my eyes from the bench, I raised one hand to knock at Bridget’s doorframe, the unopened letters tucked tight in my sleeve. The knock sounded faint, and far away. I still did not know what I would say; I felt as though I was drowning in the past. Inside, I heard Bridget moving about, saying, ‘God rot this door.’ Then it jerked open, and she saw me. She reached out her arms. ‘Get yourself inside!’ she said. ‘You’ll be perished.’

  She looked the same, but she felt lighter, smaller, and I embraced her carefully. When she let me go I stepped in at her urging, and I saw her glance up and down the street before she shut the door. She began to talk straight away as she tidied, fumbling in her pockets, whisking things out of sight. She retreated to the far corner of the room, where a few pans hung from hooks on the wall, and began to move things about, chattering.

  I saw she was bent now, and went more slowly. I recognized her hearth brush and the bucket for taking out ashes; many of her possessions were the same, though there seemed to be fewer. On the table there was a round of coarse cheat bread a quarter gone, and the ordinariness of it made my throat catch with what I had to say.

  ‘Sit by the fire,’ Bridget insisted. ‘But tell me, where is Joe? Is he coming on with the baggage? I don’t know. If you’d said you were coming, I’d have got something better for dinner.’ She was smiling, had lifted a jug of something to pour, but when I remained standing and silent, the table between us, she put the jug down. I felt queasiness wash over me, worse than it had been in recent mornings.

  ‘Will you sit down?’ I said.

  But she did not move. She put her hands in her apron pocket, and stood waiting. For a moment I was certain that if I tried to open my mouth, I would be sick. But at my silence, Bridget’s face changed.

  ‘What?’ she said, at last.

  ‘I did write, but it went to your old place.’ I put my letter on the table, and we both looked at it. It seemed crumpled and small.

  I said it quickly, about him being dead.

  I did not meet her eyes. After a moment she picked up the jug again, and poured from it into a pan. She gathered two cups, set the pan over the fire and sat down in one of the chairs; slowly, I took the other.

  ‘It was in December,’ I said, but she raised her hand to silence me. I had forgotten how her face was never still; how openly pain moved over it. I bit my lip, surprised that I felt almost angry. That I wanted her to tell me how my loss was greater. I fought the feeling down.

  The wine steaming, Bridget picked up a cloth, neatly lifted the pan from the fire, and divided the wine equally between the cups. She handed me one, and only then did she look at me. ‘How, then?’

  ‘They were testing some new guns,’ I said, but Bridget shifted in her chair, and then the tears came. I had never seen her cry before. For a time, neither of us spoke. Bridget sniffed, not delicately, and picked up her cup. I watched her drain it, the steady movement of the skin folds at her throat. When she had done, she shook her head bleakly. ‘My own baby boy,’ she said. She touched the letter, but did not move to open it. I looked down at my hands.

  ‘I did try to make him keep clear of it,’ I said. ‘Do not think I did not try.’

  We fell quiet. When I looked up, she was regarding me. ‘You’re fatter in the face,’ she said. I nodded, and her eyes started to soften, but then she swallowed, and said, ‘Well. I can
always take it, if you want. When it comes.’

  I was amazed. ‘You think I’d part from it?’

  ‘I only meant, you’ll marry again, won’t you?’ She spread her hands, spoke more gently. ‘Not every man would want another’s infant in his household.’

  ‘Bridget. I’d never let this child go.’ I paused. ‘We lost four.’

  ‘You what?’ She stopped still at that, covered her mouth a moment. ‘He never said.’

  She reached for my hand, but I pulled it away from her, trying to push back the thought of my last child, how I had lost it at three months in the privy; of the one before that, on the kitchen floor. Bridget had never been a proper midwife, but for small coins she would do simple physic, help with birthing for folk too poor to pay a surgeon; also, with bringing unwanted babies away. Clutching my cup of wine, I was trying to push back the memory of a day not long after we first came to Manningtree, when at my knock she had opened her front door slightly, and through the gap said, ‘What?’ She had let the door fall wider when she saw who it was. There was blood all down her apron, and one hand slick, the rust of it bedded in her nails. ‘You can’t come in just now,’ she had said, ‘I have company.’ The look on her face was impatient, matter-of-fact, as if I had surprised her in an act no more harrowing than the plucking and jointing of a bird.

  I bit my lip, and said to myself that none of what had happened to me, none of it was her doing. She was watching me; frowning. I cleared my throat. ‘You moved,’ I began, and tried a smile.

  ‘In the autumn. Your brother’s friend Grimston put the rent up on the old house,’ she replied, her voice dry.

  ‘You should have told us. We could have helped,’ I said. And then, ‘But what do you mean, his friend?’

  ‘Matthew has found his way into favour with the great men hereabouts.’

  ‘Grace said something about him scribing for people,’ I said. ‘It surprised me, for before, he was never –’ I stopped, for I could see she knew what I meant. He was never one for making friends.

  ‘I’ve heard the same,’ she said. I could see her discomfort. She had unsealed my letter, and glanced at it; now she shut her eyes, and laid it aside. When she opened them, she said, ‘There was a reason I didn’t tell you, Alice, when I moved. I’m not a fool. There was more in Joseph’s letters than he wrote. I know you were in trouble.’

  ‘I took in washing,’ I said. It was true: to tide us over, I had started to take sheets from our landlady. She being a midwife herself, there was always plenty. She favoured me, and paid more than she had to, but even so, there had been no room for mistakes in my housekeeping. Spoiled milk had mattered. A dropped egg. My labours were never enough to keep away the cramping fear of relentless thrift; so when Joseph had found work through a man at his church who was a gunsmith, God forgive me, I had been glad.

  We lapsed into quiet. Bridget and I had talked so easily together, once: but now every possible subject was loaded with sadness. But I thought, At least I can try to help her from thinking about Joseph.

  ‘I was sorry not to come back and see Mother buried,’ I said.

  ‘I do not think she had much pain, at the end.’

  ‘Were you with her?’

  ‘I saw her the day before,’ she said. ‘Your brother preferred her not to have visitors, but as chance would have it I went over that day. Grace let me in. Your mother was fretful, I’ll not deny. But not in too much pain.’ She folded her hands. ‘Will you stay here?’

  ‘With Matthew.’

  She nodded. ‘You’ll need some new gowns, with who’s visiting at the Thorn these days,’ she said. I saw that she did not mean to be abrupt: it was only that she was speaking to me as she would another woman. As though I was not a child any more.

  She looked at me, and her voice turned troubled. ‘Alice, there’s been talk,’ she said. ‘In town.’

  She had left the wine-pan near the heat, and just then I caught the fumes, of hedges and old cellars. ‘What do you mean?’

  Bridget shook her head. ‘Richard Edwards has decided that someone looked funny at his youngest, and the child died after.’ I recognized Richard Edwards’s name. He had the most land in Manningtree, next to Sir Harbottle Grimston. ‘And there have been other infants –’ She broke off, lowered her voice despite the thick walls. ‘Certain women are stirrers, on top of being bone idle. But men have been crediting it who are learned enough to know better.’

  ‘What do you mean? Are they saying someone is to blame?’ I remembered what Grace had told me the night before, about the book with the names in it.

  ‘You’d know Bess Clarke?’

  Elizabeth Clarke. Bess. For certain I remembered her. She had one leg that buckled under her so she used a rough crutch, which made sores in her armpit, which in turn stank.

  Bridget spread her hands. ‘Elizabeth Clarke is a sharp-tongued woman, she keeps a dirty house. But what would she want with killing a child?’

  ‘Richard Edwards’s child? They accuse Bess? But how –’

  ‘Then there’s Ned Parsley’s baby –’

  ‘What about it?’ I asked, fearful suddenly.

  She sat down again, and passed a hand over her face. ‘Christ,’ she said, and I did not admonish her. ‘I’m telling you this because I know your brother won’t. They’re saying it was done with witchcraft.’

  I bit my lip. ‘Surely Matthew could not give currency to such foolishness.’

  Bridget stood up slowly. ‘It is not only Bess Clarke. There are others. For every sudden death, every accident – Prudence Hart fell down and lost her child, and was took numb all down one side, and they’ve decided that’s someone’s fault. Robert Taylor’s out for blood, too, something about a dead horse. I’ve heard others accused besides Bess Clarke.’

  She was shaken, that was clear enough. I waited, but then she said, ‘No, what I think is, I will not say who. It is women jawing that help damn them, along with meddling men who think they know the law.’ She turned away to take the pan back to the sink. ‘Matthew’s been scribing for them,’ she said. ‘You ask him what he’s been scribing.’

  I drank the last of my wine: I felt aggrieved that she would not confide in me. Despite what Grace had said, I did not believe that Matthew could be involved in such proceedings. I felt the dregs of the wine fur my mouth. ‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I will ask him about it, of course I will. But I am certain it is not what you think. I am sure it will be nothing.’ I stood up, and she moved ahead of me to unlatch the door.

  As I shrugged on my cloak, I felt Joseph’s letter in my sleeve, and the thought of him slid across me, his cheerfulness, his cold-weather cough. But I could not bring myself to give it to her, to part with it yet.

  ‘Take care of yourself, then,’ Bridget said, standing by to let me out. In the daylight, her eyes were red, and she clutched her elbows against the cold. I put a hand on her shoulder, and before I could move she had folded me into her arms again. I felt tears start in my eyes. For a long minute, she did not let me go. When she did, she smiled a tight, brave smile as I stepped away.

  I had assured her that I would come again soon, had already turned, when she blurted, ‘There was a boy tampering with my thatch. Last Friday night. He ran off before I could raise a light.’ She stepped forward. ‘Do you think that will be nothing, too?’

  Her face looked brittle, all bone, and she seemed suddenly on the verge of tears. I thought of how any noise after dark would seem, if the town was on edge as she had described. I put my hand on her arm, and softened my voice. ‘Just boys,’ I said.

  I felt in my bones as if hours had passed as I walked back to the Thorn. I have told her, I thought, I have done my duty. But that did not comfort me. I tried to put away the guilt of Joseph’s letter in my sleeve. At the top of the heath, I stopped for breath. The tide was coming in, the river flowing imperceptibly backwards.

  I tried to be sensible about the witch nonsense. Things were happening in the town. That was clear enough. Some pe
rsonal grudges, no doubt. Folk often resorted to talk of witchcraft when other charges were hard to prove. Women were taken up for it, one or two, every five years, or ten; it was done to teach them a lesson, but these days they only passed a month or two waiting in gaol before being acquitted when it came to trial. They were sometimes drunken women, or women who had inconvenient babies, or who bawled insults in the street. But there had been no spates of witch-hanging for many years. Such things were a matter for Scotland, France, wild places across the sea or north of the border.

  Even if Bridget is not wrong, I thought, all that will happen is Elizabeth Clarke will be taken away and given a slap on the wrist. And if Matthew does have some part in it, then it will be as a record-keeper alone. I tried to smother the picture of Bridget at the door, how frail she had looked, hugging her elbows.

  Grace greeted me, as I came in the door at the Thorn, and followed me up the stairs. ‘Have you been visiting, mistress?’ She took my shawl from me and folded it over her arm. ‘I didn’t know where you were.’

  ‘I’ve been to see my late husband’s mother,’ I said.

  Grace ducked her head, but she did not move away. ‘The master is due back this evening,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ I said. I wished to sit down. I felt cold and empty. ‘Listen, Grace, will you bring me up something to eat? Something hot?’

  ‘If he asks where you’ve been today, I shall just tell him you’ve been visiting,’ said Grace, and then, without looking at me, she turned, and went away downstairs.

  Later that afternoon, as I was combing my hair, using the faint reflection in the window, I thought of Grace’s odd behaviour. Matthew had never liked Bridget, but why should Grace think he would trouble over me paying her a visit?

  I pulled a clump of hair out of my comb, enjoying its cleanness. I rubbed it into a ball, and threw it on the fire, where it fizzled and smoked to nothing. And that was when it came back, the knowledge that belonged with Bridget’s parting words. The boy tampering with her thatch: that old method of finding out a witch. That you could take a piece of a witch’s thatch, burn it, and bring her running.