The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  I heard him say something about the sermon, about how the minister had got to the point quicker than Father.

  ‘For our father did have a tendency to hesitate, do you not think?’ Matthew said. He stooped to pull a dandelion from the grave, working to bring up the whole of the root, and after a moment it came, white as a tooth. The question caught my attention; once, Matthew would have spoken nothing of Father but praise.

  I said, ‘I heard in there …’ He did not look up at me, but cast one weed away before he began to work on another. ‘I heard some women in there, talking about Rebecca West. That she is accused of witchcraft, like Bess Clarke.’

  He set to work upon another weed, and the bitter scent of it rose up. ‘You have to get these out this time of year,’ he said. And then, ‘You heard right.’ He cleared his throat, and his reasonable, gentle tone did not alter. ‘It is an unfortunate thing. For is not your mother-in-law friendly with Anne West? She is accused again, also. And did not the daughter live with Bridget, at one time?’

  I said, ‘Bridget took her in as a servant.’

  I did not wish to make him angry by saying that everyone knew Anne West’s arrest had been a farce. That the only reason she had even stayed in prison until her trial was for refusing to pay her bail; that had been when Bridget had taken in Rebecca, for a bit of help around the house in return for her bed and meals. I tried to sort out my feelings: I wanted to ask why Rebecca West was accused, but at the same time I did not want to know. It was not as though I liked her.

  But then Matthew said, ‘It might be better if you did not visit Bridget for a while. Until this business is clear.’ His voice was harder. He was crouching still, over the grave, and I could see he was pulling up clumps of soil now, along with the weeds, that the dirt was thick under his fingernails.

  ‘I don’t see how this business comes near Bridget,’ I said, stung. But then, watching his scrabbling hand, I said, ‘Let me do that another time. Come out of the rain.’ For it was just then starting, great fat drops falling into the grass around us.

  Without looking at me, Matthew got up, and we both hurried towards the lych gate, and were just under the shelter when the rain began in earnest. The rest of the congregation had gone. A minute passed, two, as we watched the ground darken spot by spot, and then the spots joining and spreading. What I could see of his face by glancing sideways was stern, and I thought he was going to reprove me for what I had said, for being difficult.

  But then, ‘How was it, to your knowledge,’ he said, ‘that I was burned?’

  I was bewildered. What had this to do with anything? ‘You crawled too near the fire, brother,’ I said. ‘Your wet nurse was not watching, or her servant wasn’t, and –’ I broke off.

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly, then continued, more determined. ‘You know I was two years in Ipswich, after you left.’ I nodded. ‘And you know that as well as having a hand in the grain-merchant’s business, I was secretary to a lawyer there.’ He looked to check I was listening. ‘Once, when a will was being contested, we were obliged to bring in the witnesses.’

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  He had turned away again. ‘One of the witnesses was my wet nurse.’

  Silence, apart from the rain on the lych-gate roof. ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘There are not many in Ipswich engaged in that occupation. She recognized my name, too. Her husband had died and she had remarried a brewer, taken to helping him in his business, demand for her old service seeming to have declined soon after I left her house. Though she did not seem to know why.’ He paused. ‘She said how my face had healed nicely, and that it had been a sad thing for a child to be left so disfigured. It surprised me that she would mention it. But she seemed a kind woman, so I said that she should not feel any blame, that my parents had always said I was an unruly infant and a great crawler. She was confused, when I spoke of blame, said she would never have described me as unruly. Said I came to her a week old, and stayed near two years, and never crawled an inch, under her roof, nor walked either.’ He looked at me, as he finished.

  ‘What? No, but –’

  ‘When I explained to her the tale we were told, she was livid. She insisted I had come to her a week old. And already marked.’

  ‘That cannot be.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’ He peered out at the rain. ‘I thought her honest.’

  ‘But this was – three years ago, more. Did you ask Mother about it?’

  His face closed, set. ‘I would not have so distressed her.’

  ‘The woman must have made some mistake,’ I said. ‘Our parents, they always said your accident happened at the wet nurse’s house. Why would they have said so, were it not true?’

  Matthew turned to me again. ‘Think when Bridget left Wenham.’

  Then I saw what he meant: Bridget had left our parents’ service soon after Matthew’s birth. And if his accident had occurred not in the wet nurse’s house but under our own roof, the roof that Bridget had shared, before she left so suddenly …

  I put a hand on the gate to steady myself. The rain was loud on the shelter now so that I had to raise my voice to say, ‘No, brother. You must have it wrong. Have you asked Bridget about it? You’ll soon see how you are mistaken. Let me ask her,’ I said, but then he clapped his hand over mine, where it rested on the gate.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ he said. ‘You keep clear of her.’ He was hurting me, but as I tried to pull my hand back I met his eyes: then I was still. ‘Don’t you dare speak of this,’ he said again. ‘To anyone.’ His hand was wet, and unpleasantly soft, where the scars were.

  Perhaps he was waiting for me to agree to keep silent, but I said nothing, for I was suddenly taken back to that day before my marriage, the last time we had met, and as on that day I flinched away from his gaze. A moment later, he wrenched open the gate, and walked away into the rain, while I stayed under the lych gate, watching water streaming down the road after him, clenching and unclenching the hand he had crushed.

  †

  I walked back to the Thorn. Matthew was not there: he must have gone to the Edwardses’ house, or somewhere else. Asking a scullery maid to bring me something warming to drink, I went to my chamber, and looked out upon my small view; my brother’s stableyard, and the backs of the warehouses beyond. By leaning I could see a narrow strip of the estuary, and Brantham on the far shore. I heard someone below asking about a room, and Mary Phillips saying we were full: that puzzled me, for I knew all the rooms were empty. I would have liked there to be guests in, for the Thorn was too quiet. Down in the yard I saw a stablehand leading a pair of horses out to water them; one was the mare I had ridden sometimes, before my marriage. As if he felt himself watched, the man glanced up at my window, and I ducked away from the glass, but looking inward at my dim chamber I found no better comfort.

  I did not know what to make of what I had been told. Matthew did not ever lie: even as a child, he had always been bluntly truthful. He had hardly seemed to grasp the purpose of falsehood; one more thing that had not helped his popularity with the village boys.

  In my mind, I walked it through. If Matthew had been burned not as a crawling infant but as one just born, days old and incapable – at just the time that Bridget had left our family’s service. Father had been suspicious, always, of servants, and had often expressed that suspicion. As for Bridget, her name had never been spoken in our household until after Father’s death. But then we had moved to Manningtree, and she had made herself comfortable in our lives as if she had always been there. She had benefited from Mother’s will.

  It made no sense. Why would Mother have protected Bridget, why would she have left her anything at all, if it was she who had been the cause of harm to Matthew?

  Leaning on the sill, weary and confused, I heard a knock on the door and, thinking it was the scullery maid, I shouted to her without ceremony to come in. But it was Mary Phillips who entered, holding a cup of wine. She held it out to me, and I took it; I thanked her, but she di
d not turn away.

  ‘I have seen no guests here, yet,’ I said, my voice friendly, but Mary did not smile.

  ‘The master does not wish me to take any, while he is residing here. He prefers it quiet.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, and then, when she still did not go, I said, ‘Is there anything else, Mary?’

  ‘You were at church this morning, mistress.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you see Mistress Edwards there?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Do you not think she looks well?’

  I paused. ‘Very well,’ I said, at last. Mary nodded, satisfied, only taking her eyes from me as she turned away down the stairs. I wondered if I had been too harsh in my first impression of her: whether in fact she was simply different. But she had reminded me of Ruth Edwards, and there was another thing to worry about: how barbed Mistress Edwards had been at church that day. I had few enough friends as it was.

  I stayed in my chamber for the rest of the afternoon, and into the evening. At last, after I was in bed, I heard Matthew come in, and Grace bring hot water up to him; heard her set the heavy pitcher down halfway before she hefted it again to go on up the stairs. I heard her knock, and Matthew murmur his thanks. I tried to dismiss my worry, but could not prevent myself running through it again and again, coming up against the same barrier: if the negligence was Bridget’s, why would our parents lie? But Matthew suspected her. That was clear. I could not avoid the certainty that, if the wet nurse had spoken the truth and he had got into the fire at a few days old, it could hardly have been an accident.

  I thought of going to see Bridget. But Matthew had been so insistent that I should not speak to her of it. I wondered what precisely he thought had happened. For it pained me, in truth, to think anything other than good of Bridget. She, after all, was half the kin I had left. At last, I got out of bed and crouched to find the small pale square of Joseph’s letter to her, where I had hidden it in the shoes at the bottom of my box.

  It was months since I had seen my husband’s handwriting. To look on the lines of direction on the letter’s front took me back to London, and I remembered our arrival there, a pair of frightened children. How at first we thought we could get by on bits and pieces, but we knew no one to give us the necessary trust and tips and favours; then the war, and folk had scarce enough vigour to take care of their own. My portion was soon spent, and we changed our rooms for cheaper ones, and still Joseph found no work, and I began then to hear the whisper in my head, the whisper that grew louder day by day: that we had made a mistake in going there. A mistake, perhaps, in marrying.

  I started to mention to Joseph, how you could not get ling now for under two shillings, so yet again I had got a mix of fish heads to see what I could do about a soup. I pointed out their dull, clouded eyes where they waited in the pail. I told him there would be more meatless days, if he did not get work, because rent and coal, they cost what they cost. Saying these things, I would chop at the onions more roughly, but I would not lay the knife down, even when I could hardly see for tears.

  Then I began to miscarry, once and then again and again, and my husband started to go out more in the afternoons. He always left me a note, for what time to expect him home, but he never wrote where he was going. Sometimes he would come back smelling of smoke, and I would suppose he had been to an alehouse. Other times he would come back not smelling of smoke, and I thought he must be seeing some woman; one more sweet-tempered than me. Now, I almost wish it had been a woman. A woman was the worst I could imagine then. Of course I know now he did not go to women but to preachers. To hear them speak, in cellars and back rooms. I think their words gave him some certainty, in this world that has turned so uncertain.

  But for a long time I was sure it was women he was seeing, since although he had always been careful, hesitant in putting his hands on me, once we began to lose the children he hardly touched me at all: by the time he died, we were lying together once a month, or less. I did not have the words to tell him that I wanted him, whether children came of it or not. I might have wondered then whether he even desired me at all, except that he still held me close at night, in his sleep.

  To sit with his letter to Bridget in my hands was to think of the days when I would find a scrap of paper to tell me he would be back at eight, the small sinking at reading such a message with all the day still left before me. But when I broke open the letter and began to read, it was as if Joseph was in the room with me: his dead voice speaking.

  He greeted his mother, told her he had found employment, at a gunsmith’s. Only piece-work, he wrote, but it pays well. Soon they will start me doing the workings for the flintlocks, and then I will earn still more. My breath caught as he spoke of his work, the ordinary pieces of metal and wood that he had smoothed and fitted together. That had seemed so harmless.

  I skimmed over his next words, but then my eye caught on my own name. I am glad I have found work, for Alice has shown herself so strong and capable. I think I have been near useless to her, since we came here. I think I have not done my duty in providing for her, though she has had such sorrows to bear, and I know I have fallen short in other ways. So you may see how I am the more glad now that I can finally do this one thing for her, of bringing this money home.

  I had to break off reading to wipe my face; I could not bear it, that Joseph should ever have thought himself useless in my eyes. They came back to me, all the mornings he was up while it was still dark, our last winter together, and how each day he would kiss me and whisper to me to keep safe before he went out to his work.

  I made myself finish the letter, to the end where my husband sent Bridget his best love. It made me think of Bridget’s letters to him, their rambling openness. There must be some reasonable explanation for Matthew’s accusations, I thought. There must. For Bridget had always been one to face a mistake, not to run from it. And surely she could never have harmed a child. Why would she? She loved children: she had taken Joseph in from the street, and her love for him had shown in every word of her letters.

  Lying awake, I thought, I will go and see her: never mind what Matthew said. I determined that I would work for them to be reconciled – they would need to be reconciled, when the child came. Though my resolve did not feel as firm as I tried to pretend. As I finally fell asleep, I thought, ‘strong and capable’. It was like reading a stranger described.

  8

  The Monday morning I woke late. I had passed a fitful night, reaching out in my sleep for Joseph, probing with my cold feet between the sheets to seek the warm nook of his knee, as had been my habit when he was alive.

  Grace brought water up, and told me Matthew had gone out, likely for the whole day. I thought about going to Bridget’s, to ask her about Mother’s will, and what Matthew had told me of meeting his wet nurse. But my resolve to do so had cooled. Perhaps it would be better to win Matthew over, I thought; get his permission to speak to Bridget about it. I could ask him, and go the next day. Instead, why should not Grace and I go to Mother’s house, and make a start on what was to be done there? All I needed was the key.

  A few minutes later I went downstairs and stood in the kitchen entry, watching Mary Phillips’s back as she dealt with some salt cod. She had been soaking it, and now she held a bit out to one of the kitchen girls for her to taste whether it was ready: as the girl noticed me, I knocked on the door post, and said where I was going.

  Mary had a civil enough face as she extracted the front-door key to Mother’s house from the large bunch at her waist. She had already turned back to her fish when she said politely, ‘Shall I tell the master where you’ll be, mistress?’

  I stopped. ‘Of course tell him.’

  ‘And shall I tell him anything else?’

  She spoke so quietly, and I thought I had not caught her words – I stepped back towards her. ‘What was that, Mary?’ I said, but as I spoke, she turned with the bowl of salt-fish water in her hands, turned round too fast or made it look as if she had,
and the soiled water spilled all down me, and the bowl fell to the floor, and shattered.

  ‘Oh, mistress!’ she said. I felt the coldness soak through to my skin. The gown would clearly need washing, but still Mary stooped to brush at it, knocking shreds of fish to the floor: I was aware of the tight roundness of my belly, scared she would feel it.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, stepping back, and as soon as I saw her face I knew that she had already guessed about the baby: that was what she had meant, about telling my brother anything else. My breath halted. How could she know?

  I had to wait, soaking, while one of the scullery maids rinsed a cloth to get the worst of the mess off, and then I went back upstairs to change. In my chamber, I sat down. I had been sickly, the previous morning: it would be like Mary, I thought, to be inspecting the contents of chamber pots.

  Though Matthew would not be pleased, I knew I would have to tell him soon about the child: even supposing Mary had not done it already, I could not keep lacing so tight. But I had schooled myself by then, through each long, painful time that had gone before, to keep from thinking of the baby as a true living child: not until it breathed outside me. With how unsettled matters had been since my return, I was reluctant to tell my brother this piece of news, which might soon change everything so completely.

  I was reluctant to tell him that the first child in his house would not be his, but mine. That he might have to pay out himself for the upbringing of my Joseph’s daughter or son. And I did not want my brother to see how my stay in his household might last the rest of my life; for it was unlikely that any new man would be keen to marry me, if it meant taking in another’s child, too. I did not wish to think of any of it, for I also knew that if I did carry this baby, and it did live, then I would never be able to go back to London. I would be dependent, wholly, on my brother’s goodwill, however things turned out in Manningtree.