The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  After that I began to seek chances to listen, lingering whenever Mary and Grace were occupied in the kitchen. One day soon after Prudence’s visit, Ned Parsley and his wife came; Grace’s cousins, of whose baby Bridget had spoken. I heard them in the passage, listened to Ned refusing any refreshment. I heard the door to the parlour open and close, and waited a few moments before I crept down the stairs, put my ear near the wood, and stilled my breath.

  I heard Ned Parsley say their child had been doing well, a good pair of lungs on her, until one Friday when she set up crying in the middle of her usual nap and, his wife having her hands full, Ned had gone in to pick up the child, only to see a great dark bee fly out of the cradle. He had yelled for help, he said, and tried to kill the thing with a bottle, but it wouldn’t die, and soon got away under the door, the same way it must have got in. He said it was like a bee, but not like any bee he had ever seen. I heard Matthew ask what happened next, and Ned’s wife answered, said her child’s little face had swelled up, and her throat. She had swelled right up and kept swelling, and her breathing got tight, and then – There was a pause, a sigh. I heard Mistress Parsley say how she nearly died herself after the baby went, her milk having turned bad. Then Matthew was asking serious questions: dates, times.

  My heart sank. It was beginning properly, then, the testimony being collected, the tales gathering force, gaining credence. I felt the pressure of knowing that Bridget would be hearing them, too, would be wondering why I did not act. I feared she would come to the Thorn, though I could not put a name to what I feared would happen if she did. I thought of writing to my aunt in Cambridge for advice, but she was old, and we had not seen her since Father died. My elder brothers, they were across the sea. I thought of writing to my old landlady in London, but immediately I felt foolish, for we were not kin: what did she owe me? And, in any case, what could I say? Surely it would do no harm, I thought, to watch and wait a little. The women would be shamed, but they would never be convicted. That would not happen – not in these days.

  †

  Two Sundays passed, two Sundays, and Bridget did not show herself at church. I spent the services huddled into myself, keeping my eyes lowered from the minister’s, but I could not avoid him entirely. The second Sunday was Easter, and that day he stopped me, and asked after Bridget. I said I did not know where she was; he said he would like not to fine her, and when I only nodded, he asked me more quietly if there was any matter I might wish to speak of. But I murmured that there was nothing; and I only permitted myself to look up at him when he had already turned away.

  That week, Helen Leech was taken. It was Grace who told me the tale. The Parsleys had helped Helen Leech with money since her husband died, but then a few months earlier with their own baby on the way they had asked her to settle the debt. When they asked her, she had used certain words against them, high words that no one had given much thought to, until the baby died. When the men came for her, Helen Leech had ready what she owed Ned Parsley, counted out precisely in her hand, but when she held it out to him, Grace said Ned would not touch the money: he told her to keep it for the hangman.

  It was her own mother, Nan, who had accused her, Grace told me. Nan had admitted on her own account to being at a meeting at Bess Clarke’s house, and to wishing Richard Edwards’s boy dead, making him shake though he was not cold, and his eyes to roll back in his head. And, Grace told me, Nan Leech had not stopped there, but added that her daughter, Helen, had wished ill on the Parsleys.

  ‘Surely not,’ I said to Grace. ‘Why would she say such a thing of her own daughter?’

  ‘I cannot tell you, mistress,’ Grace said. ‘Though the talk is that the two of them have not spoken in a good three years.’

  I thought about Mother in the days that followed. How far from perfectly I had cared for her, and about the sad, worn clothes, which I could not bear to go back for, that were all she had left me. Yet she had apparently been asking for me in the days before she died. I thought how distressed she must have been by the sad knowledge she had carried so long. I wondered whether perhaps all she had wanted at the end was my listening ear, to put her secret into it before she died. Whether she had looked for me every day, but I had never come.

  I hoped that after Helen Leech there might be an end to the accusations. I overheard one of the stablehands saying she had admitted at last to working the death of the Parsleys’ daughter, but that she had accused no others, so I hoped there might be the last of it. But though she had named no one else, she had spoken of keeping an imp, a thing like a small ratting dog, and someone noticed that it was like the kind kept by Elizabeth Gooding, the shoemaker’s widow. Elizabeth Gooding doted on her little dog, and indeed was reading aloud to it when the men let themselves into her cottage. She was reading from the Proverbs, and she had such a strong, clear voice that, without meaning to, they let her get to the end of a verse, after which she marked her place, and looked at them.

  Elizabeth Gooding was the oldest woman accused yet. I heard how when they sent her to Colchester they did not spare her, but took her without any proper garments, in an open cart, though the day was wet. In the gaol at Colchester, I heard, they moved the men to the smaller cell, and gave over the larger one for the women, which, though it was more generously proportioned, was open to the sky.

  I could hardly believe they had truly taken Elizabeth Gooding, whose husband had only lately died, the gentle old man who had once made our everyday boots. When Grace told me of it, I only gave a nod, and waited until she had left the chamber before I allowed my face to fall open in dismay. I liked Elizabeth Gooding. Every person in the town was obliged to her for some kindness or other. If she were named, then who was safe?

  And there was another reason her taking troubled me, though I tried to put it from my mind. Elizabeth Gooding had been more than an acquaintance of Bridget’s: undoubtedly, she had been a friend. The witch business was coming nearer to Bridget, but it had not touched her. Not yet.

  13

  I think of those taken that mild fortnight in April. Though I could never forget their names, I write them down: Elizabeth Clarke, Nan Leech, Helen Leech, Elizabeth Gooding, Anne West, Rebecca West.

  I should have seen that the detailed testimony being collected, the urgent bustle at the Thorn, meant real danger; that it was not just Matthew, his methodical way. It was not just my brother, proceeding with more thoroughness than the great men of the town had expected or asked for. But I did not see the danger. I still thought it would turn out like such cases had before – a brief outpouring of spite, two or three months in prison for the accused, then at trial, an acquittal.

  Yet I rack myself, here in the dark where there is time to think, over whether I did not have a more selfish reason for not speaking out; a reason that had nothing to do with concern for my unborn child. I rack myself over whether I did not also keep my silence because in some fashion I was glad they had named Rebecca West.

  Anne West’s daughter was the youngest to be taken from Manningtree. She was fair as her mother was dark, obliging as her mother was secretive. No one remembered her father, but he must have been a pretty fellow, for Rebecca had pale wide eyes, and clear skin, and though six years younger than me, she was forward for her age so that even when she first came to the town men were watching her up the street. Bridget used to give her small coins to do errands, and when Rebecca came, Bridget would joke with her about marrying Joseph. She used to tug her golden braids: say, ‘Think of it! Grandchildren with that hair!’ At first the girl would laugh along with her, but soon she began to redden, and Joseph to look away.

  As she got older, Rebecca West blossomed. She would dawdle past Bridget’s house with her basket full from illegal gleaning on Richard Edwards’s fields, having risked a reprimand and a bit of rough treatment for the best share of the spoils. She would linger near the lean-to where Joseph kept his tools. And if I had disliked her before, I liked Rebecca still less once Bridget took her in, while her mother was i
n gaol awaiting her trial over John Edes’s pigs. I did not like the way Rebecca strove to be quicker than me in fetching things for Joseph, how she watched him eat as if the food were as nourishing to her as dining herself.

  But she had been an obliging child for certain, and she remained obliging, Rebecca West, after she was not a child any longer, and that was how she came to be accused over Prudence Hart, who lived down the road from the Wests’ cottage at Lawford. Prudence Hart, who had never been much liked but whom everyone pitied: all those stillbirths, all those girls, and Thomas’s wandering hands. Then, this last February, the pain in the middle of the sermon that had made her run out into the street, and fall. The beginning of the sixth month: not usually a treacherous time. No one would touch the mess she left, not even Thomas Hart, who stalked home after his wife, treading her blood up the lane. The mess stayed there in the road outside the Wests’ house till dark, but in the morning it was gone. Of course a fox must have had it, but girls began to whisper that Rebecca West had taken the unfinished child and eaten it; she was known to be obliging Thomas Hart, and so for certain she must wish Prudence away.

  The rumours spread, and Rebecca was taken off to Colchester gaol, and I have racked myself over whether I did not feel a small kind of triumph when I heard of it. Whether I did not feel that she had got what was in some way coming to her.

  14

  But though I found myself able for a time not to think of Rebecca West, the news of Elizabeth Gooding’s arrest would not leave my mind, and the memory of the first time my brother and I had gone to be measured for boots and she had given us a cake of sugar to share; how she had taken such pleasure in watching us divide it, though we were far too old for such treats. A simple memory: but the guilt it stirred set me trying in earnest to find a way to talk to Matthew.

  Though as children we had always spoken of our small daily worries and concerns, after Father’s death, after we moved to Manningtree and Matthew’s life departed from what he had thought it would be, he and I had slowly stopped talking. When I tried to speak to him about Mother, whether bleeding or purging was the proper thing for her, I too easily let him dismiss it. As I had let him dismiss it that time Thomas Witham’s daughter had conceived a foolish liking for him, having decided his scars were romantic. She had come to see me one day only to entreat Matthew to walk home with her. She had not come again, and although he stood near her at church, she never said a word to him. And I had allowed Matthew to claim that it was fine, to say it was nothing.

  So I had no pattern, no tested template now for speaking to my brother of things he did not wish to speak of, yet it was weighing on me, what was happening in the town, what Bridget had told me of his birth. So it was a clumsy beginning I made one day when he hesitated beside me on the yard steps. I had found some empty jars in one of the unlocked rooms, good jars but full of dead moths and flies, and though I had no use for them I had set about cleaning them, trying to do something ordinary that I might not have to hide in my chamber. But the baby was heavy inside me that day, so I was moving slowly.

  I had filled a pitcher with hot water and carried the jars out to the steps, so Matthew coming in had to pause with his hat in his hands while I moved them out of his way, and that was when I took my chance to speak. I tipped out the dust from one of the jars. I will speak plainly, I thought. I wiped my hands on my apron, and said, ‘Surely not Elizabeth Gooding.’

  He studied the band of his hat. ‘I agree, it is surprising. It is regrettable.’ He took a breath. ‘But, you see, I cannot exempt her. Having been accused, she will be examined, and if she is clear she will be let go.’

  I forced myself not to back down. ‘I was thinking …’ I said. ‘Might she not be unwell?’ He looked at me. ‘Might she not be unwell in the manner that our mother was unwell?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  I folded my hands. ‘What you told me of your wet nurse – how you came to her, already – already as you are now. I do not believe our father would have been untruthful only to protect Bridget. And so,’ I met his eyes, ‘do you see? You can free yourself of any suspicion for her. Perhaps an accident happened, with Bridget or with Mother, for you know she was uneasy in her mind –’

  ‘You’ve been to see her, haven’t you? Bridget? What lie did she tell you?’ He half turned away, agitated. ‘How can you doubt it, after she fixed our mother to change her will? And now she tries to slur our mother’s memory, tries to imply that she was otherwise than she should have been. I think that Bridget was jealous. She wanted a husband, she wanted a child. What did she do when she came here? Found some urchin, and took him in.’

  ‘What are you saying, Matthew? She took Joseph in for kindness.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘Not only did she play our mother. She’s always played you, Alice. Like a flute. Do you not see how she led you into your foolish marriage?’

  ‘But she suspected nothing of that before we told her,’ I said. I could feel matters getting away from me and tried to speak more gently. ‘Matthew, I thought you reconciled. I cannot undo my marriage now.’

  He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘How could I be reconciled to that shameful piece of folly?’

  I swallowed. ‘Our mother did not forbid it,’ I said.

  ‘You shouldn’t have needed forbidding,’ he said, his voice rising as he forgot himself, and I became aware of one of the stablemen, who had been leaning against the wall, disappearing into the stable. ‘I wonder at times, Alice, if our father did not make a mistake in the licence he gave you. Running about the countryside, thinking yourself greatly learned. Perhaps he thought for a child it was no harm, but God strike me if it did not turn you into a –’ He stopped himself. I flinched, certain the servants must be listening. But he had not finished. ‘Well, you will obey me now. You will do your duty. You will not go any more to Bridget’s house. You will do what I have asked you to, at Mother’s, which should be enough to occupy you.’

  As he spoke, I saw a live moth creep out from where it had slept in the jar, its grey wings dusty. Quickly Matthew put out his foot and crushed it. He stepped into the entry and wiped his feet on the mat. Then he turned back.

  ‘Do you know what happened to my wet nurse?’ he said. His face was calm and even. ‘She died. Not two weeks after she spoke to me, standing there in perfect health. She was found cold in her bed, and those who washed the body never could determine the cause.’ He looked at me. ‘What I think is, she crossed Bridget, and that was the cause.’

  I said nothing in reply. The stableman was back, and a scullery maid peeped out from the entry, and I did not want to say in front of them that what he spoke was foolishness. I thought he would go, then, but instead he stood watching as I hefted the pitcher and poured my hot water over the jars. I could hardly believe how he had gone so quickly from cold to hot to cold again. My heart beat hard, and I could feel the baby tapping inside me in response. Matthew stayed regarding me for one long moment, and then another; by the time the steam had blown away, he had gone.

  I put the jars to dry, and going in, I almost knocked into Grace. From her eyes, I knew she had heard what had passed in the yard.

  ‘My brother is out of temper,’ I said to her, trying to produce a smile. ‘I cannot think why, for all his business goes smooth before him, and my mother-in-law is nothing but a harmless old woman. But there! They have never seen eye to eye. There is nothing to account for it.’

  But Grace did not look soothed by my words. ‘Mistress,’ she said, ‘I –’

  But Mary Phillips appeared then in the kitchen entry. She told Grace to stop detaining me, and to get back to her work. Shaky, I climbed the stairs to my chamber.

  I pitied Matthew. I knew I had scarcely scratched the surface of the horror he must feel, if in some fashion he was aware that it was Mother who had harmed him, and on purpose. But along with the pity, doubt was creeping in. I wondered, not for the first time, whether Mother’s weakness of mind could have passed to h
im in the blood. Whether he was himself quite well. And with the pity, with the doubt, came the fear. It shook me that, in front of everyone, he should have raised his voice to me in that way.

  What was worse was that the thing of which he had accused Bridget was hard to dismiss, though on the steps I had wanted to refute it. I thought of how many times I had seen her with babies, the children of the women round about, who would be passed to her for inspection. I thought of how swiftly she had offered to take my own, when it came. I tried to dismiss a shiver of doubt – to put from my mind the many years Bridget had spent childless. For I knew the strength of that pain. I tried not to think of a wrong and fruitless wanting, long and carefully concealed.

  15

  The next day I took Grace with me into town. Since I had come back to Manningtree, especially after what Bridget had said, I had been aware of how few gowns I had and how sorely they were worn. But I had been reluctant to go to John Rivet, the draper, for Grace had told me that he and his sister had been among the first spreading rumours about Bess Clarke. That was not the only reason that I was reluctant to be measured for new things: the truth was, I knew my waist was thickening. But I had been mistaken for a servant by more than one of my brother’s visitors to the Thorn, and Matthew himself dressed so carefully. He had mentioned more than once since my return how he had credit with every tradesman in Manningtree, and that I should order whatever I needed.