Matthew bent to throw another log onto the fire. ‘But why would God make laws against witches, if there were none? Scripture tells us how to deal with them, and the laws of the land, like any other nuisance.’
I cleared my throat. ‘I seem to recall Simon Magus, in Acts, was he not a great wizard? Yet he did repent of his sins, and was baptized.’
Matthew stayed standing, leaning by the hearth. ‘The text is silent on how he ended his days. Not so vague on what became of Babylon. If you look for the redemption of witches, Alice, the Bible is a poor place to start. Exodus is clear enough.’ His tone was almost pitying, almost kind.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live: that was the verse he meant.
Perhaps I made a mistake in trying to talk to him in this fashion, for I never could best my brother in citing scripture. His grasp of it was against me, and not only his grasp of it but the certainty he derived from it. Father had always liked Matthew’s interest in scripture: it allowed him to treat Matthew as he did his other sons. He did not see, perhaps, that when Matthew believed a piece of scripture, he believed it wholly, without any gloss of pity, without any breathing room for others’ imperfections.
So when he quoted Exodus, I was helpless to argue: I saw how in the years I had been gone, washing shirts and sheets and making dinners, my brother had spent that time in reading, in thinking, and the gap between my learning and his had widened still further. I saw that I would have to narrow my target, and take a different tack. I saw that I would have to plead. When I spoke, it was in a low voice. ‘I am sorry, brother, if Bridget and I made a spectacle this morning.’ I kept my eyes on the floor. ‘I am sorry about your dinner – if I said too much, or out of turn …’
‘What do you want, sister?’
‘Your – Ruth Edwards, that is, she said that you are planning to take Grace with you, when you go into the hundred. She said that you are planning to go.’
‘Yes?’
‘But for what purpose? Why do you need Grace?’
‘To assist me while I take confessions, while I make any necessary examinations.’
‘Examinations?’
He moved in his chair. ‘She is my servant, sister, and she will do as I tell her. Unless you wish to come instead? But it will be a fortnight of hard riding. I did not think that would be to your present taste.’ I felt my breath stop in my chest, as he leaned forward. ‘Likewise I can lend you a horse and you may take yourself back to London, if you have friends there still. Perhaps only two days’ hard riding will suit you better.’ Then he stretched out his hand, and I flinched: but it was with one finger, just one, that he touched my belly, encased in my gown. He knew. Mary Phillips had told him.
I got up, and moved away to the table. ‘Bridget told me the truth of how your accident came to pass,’ I said desperately. ‘It was Mother alone, the sickness in her brain –’
But he cut across me. ‘You have no business speaking to her of that. I know what it was. I can make up my own mind, Alice.’
Softly, I said, ‘Grace is young to go, that is all.’
‘She may be young but she knows her duty. It gives me to wonder, sister, whether you do not need a lesson in yours. Perhaps you might manage some gratitude that you are allowed to keep yourself here in quietness, and do only the small tasks I have set you.’ He pulled his case of papers towards him. ‘On which note, sister – Elizabeth Gooding, you know her house? She was obliged to leave suddenly, and I need someone to look in and be sure that all is well.’ He gave me a distant smile. ‘Go tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Mary Phillips will give you the key.’
19
It was Robert Taylor’s horse they had got Elizabeth Gooding for; that whining pinch-mouthed man’s dead horse, and knowing that sharpened the waste of it, when the next morning I let myself into her cottage with the key Mary had given me. It was quiet. Her dog was gone, taken in by a neighbour perhaps, a small vain show of support. There was her Bible where it had been laid aside, and her husband’s cap on its peg by the door, though he was dead and gone. Trying to be brisk, I began by taking out the ashes, along with some crusts, a hardened heel of cheese, a jug of milk that had turned. I rinsed the jug, and set it upside down to dry. I rested a minute before I crouched to check the chamber pot and then went to empty it, breathing through my mouth. Thinking myself finished, I put my head into the scullery.
They had come for Elizabeth Gooding on a wash day, then, for there were her wet sheets in a tub, ready to be hung outside. I lifted the corner of one, and the feel of the soaked linen in my grasp took me backwards, to London, to getting the last load wrung out before Joseph came home. But the smell that rose up was stale, and the cold, damp sheet was already spotted black with mould. The smell’s taste stayed in my mouth the whole of my slow walk back to the Thorn.
When I got in, I wanted nothing more than to go to my chamber and sit, recover myself. But once I was upstairs, I heard a sound coming from down the passage, the room Grace and the other servants shared. When I drew near the open door, I saw Grace sitting on her bed, weeping.
She showed me a grey swathe of cloth draped over her arm. ‘Mary Phillips has got me a new cloak for riding,’ she said. Her face was grey, too.
I checked the landing, then closed the door behind me. ‘Are you unwell?’ I said.
She bit her lip. Tears escaped down her cheeks. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she said.
I sat on the bed beside her, and put a hand on her back. More tears spotted the pale grey cloak, where she had bundled it in her lap. She took a great shuddering breath.
I spoke to her soothingly for a while, then made her change and get into bed. I said I would tell Mary she had a poorly stomach. Grace was fretful, wanted to leave the candle lit till the scullery maids came up, but it was burned down to a stub, so I told her I would slip downstairs to get her a fresh one. But in the cold passage I heard my brother’s voice in the kitchen and I hesitated, just behind the door. It was partly open, and I could see him standing by the sink with Mary Phillips, still in his riding boots. I heard Mary say, ‘I wasn’t sure what you wanted doing with her.’
‘Put her in a chamber, of course,’ Matthew murmured. ‘The one next to my sister’s will serve.’
‘And, pardon, master, but Grace is too short to lend her anything. Shall I give her something of mine, for now?’
My first thought was that my brother had arranged some kindness for a beggar, for then Mary Phillips disappeared into the scullery and led a person out. Her hair was filthy, almost matted, and her face, too, making her pale eyes larger as they fixed upon my brother; as they fixed upon, and then recognized, me.
It was Rebecca West.
As her face changed, I was forced to step into the room, that Matthew and Mary Phillips might not guess I had been lurking, and as I came forward into the firelight, I could see Rebecca properly. She was slighter in her frame than I, more delicate in her bones – Joseph had once said that a strong wind would blow her away – and she had grown still slighter, I was certain. Most likely that was the gaol food. Her filthy face made me notice that she had the same blue eyes as Grace.
Mary Phillips took hold of her then, and steered her out of the kitchen, and I heard her leading the girl away upstairs.
In my shock, I forgot to watch my tongue. ‘What is she doing here?’
‘She will be here until the trials,’ Matthew said. ‘She is to testify against the others, so she cannot stay at the gaol. And I won’t let her go home. I can’t have her absconding.’ I met his eyes. ‘She will be under your charge, sister,’ he said evenly. ‘Keep her occupied. Make her useful.’
My heart was beating hard, and perhaps that was why the child twisted inside me. I looked at the stone flags at his feet, and governed myself; dug in the pocket of my apron for the key. ‘Elizabeth Gooding’s house,’ I said, and put it into his hand. ‘I have seen to it.’
†
In bed, I lay flat on my back with my hands on my stomach, listening to Mary Ph
illips settle Rebecca West into the chamber next to my own, thinking about my child. About the week in December when I had missed my bleeding, and how sorely I had wanted to tell Joseph, but hesitated, since I could not yet be sure. I had almost told him the night before he died, that Saturday night as he was climbing into bed and about to blow out his candle.
But then he had said, ‘Oh, listen, love – I shall be out tomorrow, after church. We’ve built a new kind of flintlock, to try if we cannot make the workings any cheaper. We shall be going up to test it on the heath.’
‘I never see you any more, on a Sunday,’ I replied. I tried to speak lightly, but I know it came out plaintive.
Joseph frowned. ‘Well, I have to go to church, Alice. You go to church.’ He touched my arm. ‘But if you do not like it, I need not go to the heath after.’
I wanted to say, ‘Yes, I go to church. Where you go, that is not a church.’ But I did not say anything. I only turned over to face the wall. I could feel Joseph looking sadly at my back. After a moment, he said, ‘You must not be jealous, my love.’
I did not answer him: I was too proud to say, ‘Do not go.’ I still resented Rebecca West, his old fondness for her, and how gently baffled my resentment made him. It was easier, in my pride, to pretend I did not care. Before he blew out his candle, he kissed my cheek, but I did not say anything. I did not reach out for him, or return his kiss.
The next day when they brought back his body I only knew him by his shoes, his clothes, his familiar arms, which they had folded strangely over his chest. I never kissed his cheek again, for they implored me not to lift the sheet: not to look on what remained where my husband’s face had been.
20
The next morning, when I came warily down to breakfast, Rebecca West and Matthew were sitting opposite each other, eating, almost like a long-married couple. Rebecca West looked a different creature. I had dressed myself, after waiting in vain for hot water, for I had heard Grace’s low voice in Rebecca’s chamber that morning, and now Rebecca’s face was scrubbed to a blush, her washed hair shining pale and hanging in a rope over her shoulder. Mary Phillips must have been trimming greens, for a pair of scissors lay close by on the table; at the sight of them, my fingers itched.
Rebecca was wearing one of Mary’s gowns, which, though it was plain and loose, was somehow still becoming. The girl was seated in my usual place, so I went to Matthew’s left; he did not look at me, as I pulled out my chair. Rebecca was helping herself as though she had not eaten for a month. When Grace put down another platter of bread, my brother said, ‘Will you have more, Mistress West?’ and she nodded, her mouth too full to speak. He proceeded to choose the two thickest slices and load them onto her plate, carefully keeping his eyes from her face, or where her dress was loose at the neck. Before Grace turned away I marked again the similarity between her appearance and Rebecca’s, except that Rebecca knew of her beauty and used it. Matthew watched her tuck her hair behind an ear, then pushed his plate aside, and got to his feet. Rebecca made to get up with him, but he said, ‘No, Mistress West. You must eat your fill.’ Then, to me: ‘Find her a cap, will you, sister?’
I wondered whether to forgo my breakfast and follow him, simply to avoid being alone with her, but the moment passed, so I tried to continue calmly eating. Rebecca West likewise applied herself again to her meal, taking great bites that she could hardly fasten her lips over.
‘My brother’s table seems to suit you,’ I said, as she finished what was on her plate and reached for more.
‘As it does you, Mistress Alice,’ Rebecca said. ‘You want to be careful. It tends to stay on the arms, on the jowls, as a woman gets older.’
I kept my eyes on my plate and ignored the remark, as though I had not heard it.
†
Rebecca was in the house three days, before Matthew and Grace went into the hundred. I half expected Bridget to come beating down the door, demanding afresh that Matthew stop, that I stop him. But she didn’t. She didn’t come, and Matthew didn’t speak of her.
Though Rebecca made herself hard to bear – whistling when I set her to polish a chair, talking to the stablemen instead of feeding the hens, and eyeing me in her amused, leering way when I went out to chide her – I was almost grateful for her presence. For Grace didn’t like her either, and Rebecca gave us a subject to talk of that was not Grace’s impending journey. And there was plenty to talk of: it had emerged from among the scullery maids that Rebecca’s testimony would include evidence against her own mother.
On the last night, before they were due to go into the hundred, I heard Grace take Rebecca her dinner in her room. Through the wall, I heard Rebecca give some pert answer, then, on the landing, Grace’s sigh. I went to the door, and beckoned her in.
‘I’m sorry you have to wait on her.’ I smiled. ‘Though not as sorry as I will be, to be alone with her, until you are back.’
Grace smiled, and raised her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I pity her, in truth, mistress. Though for certain I am sure she is better off here, away from those she will speak against.’ She saw my questioning look, and turned her eyes to the floor. ‘I heard your brother say this morning to John Stearne that he scarcely even needs her evidence, apart from the shock it will give the public benches.’ I noticed that she had not called him ‘master’ but, rather, ‘your brother’. She went on. ‘He has enough other testimony, he says, that he could hang them all easily enough without her.’ Grace dipped her head. ‘It seems cruel, to have her speak against her mother, if it is not needful.’
It was sobering to hear her relate how coldly and practically Matthew had spoken of it all. But I could not believe he was so certain of gaining convictions. Surely that was just boasting among men.
We heard a cough through the wall, the creak of a bedframe. Grace said, ‘I think, mistress, you will be doing her a kindness if you keep trying to find her some occupation. For I heard your brother say the trials will not be until July. Better she does not have the chance to think too much while she waits.’
I touched her arm. ‘And so you are going in the morning. Are you ready?’
She tilted her head. ‘I think I can do what is required. Mary Phillips has explained it to me. There will not be much. In truth, she says I am to be there in case the accused woman needs to go to the privy or she faints or somesuch.’ She looked at me. ‘Your brother has given me a dried orange with cloves in it for when we have to go into low places.’
From the way she spoke, I could tell that whatever liking she might have had for Matthew was dissolved and gone. ‘Remember, Grace. You did not elect this. You must just obey him and come back safe.’
‘He bade me tell you, while we are gone, to find something for Rebecca to wear at the trial that will fit her better. Something respectable,’ she said.
‘Right,’ I said. She had turned towards the door. ‘Take courage, Grace,’ I added.
When she had gone back to her room, I sat on my bed. It suited Matthew, I could see, to have one of the accused women speak against her own kin. He would convince a court of their guilt much more easily if he could make the women seem unnatural, like beasts in the eyes of their watching neighbours. The thought turned me cold.
I had been so certain, my first days at the Thorn, that whoever was accused, whatever fuss was made, they would surely be acquitted.
†
The next morning, I wished I could feel a quarter so certain when I stood on the yard steps as Matthew helped Grace up onto my old horse, then mounted his own. In her new riding cloak, Grace seemed very small, her face pale under the hood. Matthew glanced down at the three of us, Mary Phillips, Rebecca West and myself. Then he was moving off through the gate, and they were gone, to see about finding company for the five Manningtree women waiting in Colchester gaol.
21
It was as though the sniping on Rebecca West’s first day at the Thorn set us in a pattern of scrapping children, though I think it almost helped me to have a thing of such small co
nsequence to worry over. We took our meals together in the parlour, and not two days had passed after the departure of my brother and Grace into the hundred before I could not stand to watch Rebecca chewing any longer. I put down my knife crossly and said, ‘Will you close your mouth?’ But her only reply was to take another large mouthful of meat, so that I had to look away from the mess between her lips.
For lack of other work to do, Mary Phillips had found Rebecca some bags of wool that wanted carding, and it was my task to sit with her and sew, to be sure she did not shirk. It was awkward, being thrown together for long hours in that way, for the natural dullness of the task would have led most women to talk. But we did not, only sat either side of the fireplace, hands busy, the pale spring sunshine flooding in from outside.
Though I was there to watch Rebecca, I could not shake the feeling that Mary Phillips had been ordered to watch me. She would go through the mime of asking me what was wanted for meals, and when I spoke of going back to finish the work at Mother’s house, she gave me the keys to my old chamber and my brother’s without comment. But it was Mary who woke us in the morning, and Mary who locked up at night.
Yet though Mary Phillips kept her eye on me, still it would have been easy then for me to leave. I thought about it every day. Only the baby, the stubborn aliveness of its tapping, kept me rooted at the Thorn. For I knew that if I risked the journey and lost it, my last remaining link with Joseph, I would never forgive myself.
Gradually, my sitting with Rebecca daily seemed to exhaust our mutual dislike. When I took her with me to collect my new gowns, she even ventured to remark on the fine weather. I agreed that it was very fine.
‘God, I can’t take a breath or move my foot but Mary watches me,’ she added, a moment later.
‘Take it lightly,’ I said. ‘She is the same with me.’ Rebecca slowed. We were out beyond the houses now, and the warm sun pleasant. ‘I know you do not like it with us,’ I said, ‘but it is better, is it not, than where you could be?’
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