The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  I refolded the note. ‘I will think on it,’ I said, and Bridget smiled, but I could not smile back. I knew I must press her about what Grace had told me; about the talk she had heard between Bridget and Mother the night before Mother died. About the thing she had found in her bed. The man coiling his ropes had gone, and the only sound was the gulls calling in the estuary as they picked and fought over what the ebbing tide had exposed.

  ‘Bridget, listen …’ I said, but then I heard the sound of hoofs in the road: a moment later, I saw Mary Phillips walking her horse towards the gate of the Thorn. I grabbed Bridget out of sight, further into the shadows. ‘I must go,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll wait here till you’re in,’ she said, and caught my hand. ‘Take care.’

  A stablehand had come out to take Mary Phillips’s horse; I waited until she had gone inside before I slipped into the yard. The man saw me but said nothing as I let myself in at the back door.

  Mary was still in the passage, taking off her cloak. She did not greet me. ‘I was in the privy,’ I said.

  Mary only said, ‘I have been with your brother. He will be home in three days.’

  I went back into the parlour. It was unsettling to think of seeing Matthew again. He had been to every large village in the hundred, and I had heard rumours of his doings as if he was some great and distant figure, but now he was coming home. I wished I could be as certain as Bridget of his regard for me.

  Later I whispered to Rebecca the contents of my old landlady’s note. ‘If you wish, I could arrange for you to go,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘But why don’t you?’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ she replied. I saw her plain, enquiring expression. I had wondered if she had not guessed about my condition, but I saw now that she had not. I thought of speaking out, about the coming baby, but then I remembered what she had confided to me at Mother’s house. About her own lost child. I took up my sewing again. ‘I just can’t,’ I said.

  †

  The next day we went back for the last time to Mother’s house. The work there was near complete: when I let us in, the rooms were swept and echoing, smelling of new whitewash and beeswax, ready for my brother and his bride. The last items were in crates, ready for men to carry to the Thorn. I sent Rebecca back outside to pick weedlings from the gravel, while I had a last check round.

  I glanced over the parlour and the kitchen, then upstairs I checked Mother’s old chamber, which would now be Matthew’s. Last I went into my own old room. It felt sad and small, airless, so I opened the shutters and stood at the window to catch my breath. Soon, I knew, I would have to let out my gowns, and for certain stop lacing so tight. The house across the field, I remembered, was Bess Clarke’s. Her shutters were open, and there was a bedsheet hung out in the yard; even at this distance, though, I could tell that it was streaked with bird shit. It must have been out for weeks.

  When I closed the shutters again, the darkness was complete. I thought of when my father and I would go out walking after dinner, in the winter’s early dark. I had always been reluctant to turn down a certain sunken lane; I confessed to him, in the end, that I was afraid there would be monsters. ‘There are no monsters down there, Alice,’ he had said, nodding towards the lane’s darkness. ‘The worst thing that could be down there is a person, like you or I.’ He had meant it as a comfort.

  I went more quickly down the stairs, calling to Rebecca outside, and I was thankful to hear her answer me, her small and ordinary voice echoing up through the dark, panelled spaces of the house.

  23

  Mary Phillips had me take Rebecca into town again the next day, to get the dinner things to welcome my brother home, and though I felt far from glad at his coming, I obeyed her, and we went. It was the first properly hot day of the year so at last I laced myself a little more loosely, and left off my cloak. Mary Phillips did not look twice at me as we left the Thorn, but I caught Rebecca glancing at me now and then as we walked.

  ‘What will happen?’ Rebecca said, as she caught my gaze. ‘Now his warrant’s run out?’

  ‘I suppose it will proceed to trial. I can hardly credit how, these days, but I suppose it will.’ After a minute I added, ‘This may be your last chance, if you wish to leave.’

  Rebecca met my eye. ‘It will go bad with my mother, if I do.’

  ‘You know,’ I said, after a moment, lowering my voice, ‘I have been praying that he meets with some accident on the road.’

  Rebecca spread her hands, as if to say, ‘Of course you have.’ But my thoughts had been weighing on me, for I knew they were a sin. More than once those weeks I had imagined Matthew lost in the hundred, beyond the main roads, the fields lying soft in the dark; I had summoned up that land, how it is confusing, how you might hurry towards home but a track you think leads out on the Harwich road gets smaller, narrower, and ends in a wall and a silent thicket. The world turned against you, flat and silver, under the moon.

  I knew it was a sin, my ill-wishing: I knew that there was not even a hair’s breadth between that and what some called witchcraft.

  Upon reaching town, Rebecca and I divided the errand between us: I would buy the fish, while she went to the victualler’s. When I had what I needed, I waited for her at the appointed corner near the assembly rooms, but she did not come. I waited longer. I might have been mistaken, but I thought folk were casting glances in my direction. Some I knew by sight, but I had no way of telling whether they were staring because of my slight yet evident belly, or because of my brother’s business. My face burned. A few minutes passed, and still Rebecca did not appear, so I began to walk in the direction of the victualler’s.

  But as I approached I saw a commotion outside the shop. I quickened my pace. It was a woman, Robert Taylor’s wife, grappling with someone – she had her by the hair. It was Rebecca. As I broke into a run, the woman threw her out into the street. By the time I got near, Rebecca had picked herself up and lurched towards me, weeping furiously, smearing the tears away with the back of her hand. I saw Robert Taylor’s wife’s fat, frowning face as she stepped back from the doorway into the dimness of the shop, and I thought to ask her what on God’s earth she had thought she was doing, but Rebecca was already away up the road, so I turned and hurried to catch her. Breathing hard, I fell into step beside her, and put a hand on her back.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘Christ help us. What happened?’

  ‘They wouldn’t serve me,’ she said, her face hard.

  ‘But why?’ I said, and her mutinous look dissolved into fresh tears.

  It took me half the walk home to make her tell me how she had gone in for the things Mary Phillips had ordered, but Robert Taylor’s wife had ignored her. Knowing the things were paid for and seeing them in a tidy pile on the far side of the counter, Rebecca had reached across to claim them. But one of the other women in there had grabbed her wrist, hissing that she was not welcome. Rebecca had pulled away, and the woman had caught her smartly across the face, as if by accident. Then Rebecca had called her a name, and Robert Taylor’s wife had come round the counter.

  ‘I’ve had worse,’ Rebecca said, after I made her sit on a wall, a few minutes away from the Thorn, so I could brush her down. She was rubbing her scalp. ‘She didn’t pull any out.’ But I could see her shock. Suddenly, I could see her fear.

  She was still upset that evening, so I was trying to chatter more than usual, as we sat over our simple supper: and that was why I dismissed it, when I first felt the ache. I tried to ignore it, but before long I pushed my plate away.

  24

  It was that night I lost my child. Strange, that we say ‘lost’, as if it were an act of carelessness. Rebecca told Mary Phillips I had a headache, and helped me upstairs; when I stepped out of my gown, the skirts of my shift were red. Rebecca grasped straight away what was happening, and she wanted to go for a doctor.

  ‘A little blood might not matter,’ I said. ‘It could be I
will hold onto it, if I can just lie down.’

  But I did not hold onto it. Pains came upon me, through the evening and into the night. Rebecca was scared, and I had to lie to her, say how I had helped many women do this before, and it would be just like a birth but easier. In truth, I was frightened: I had lost them before, but never so late. Around midnight, I nearly sent Rebecca for Bridget, but I knew enough from listening to Ellen that there would be little she could do to help me, until we knew whether it had all come out. We had to be quiet, so as not to bring Mary Phillips down the passage from her chamber. Rebecca, thinking clearly through her fright, gave me a twist of cloth to bite on. I remember the pains, and having to push properly. I know that I must have made noises. I remember getting up from the bed, and something hanging down, and telling Rebecca not to pull on it, and hearing a sound and realizing it was my own chattering teeth. When the rest came away, Rebecca caught it in a cloth, and I asked her if it looked whole but she sounded doubtful, so I got up to check. From other times I had expected something botched-looking, the colour of what a butcher will spare for his dogs. But this was not like that: granted, there was the mess that came after, but in the midst of it lay something tiny, and recognizable, grey and asleep. I had to cover my mouth with my hand.

  I remember groping my shift over my head and pulling on another, hauling myself into bed, as Rebecca turned away to build up the fire.

  I drifted miserably into sleep, thinking, So, then, that’s the last of Joseph, gone. I could not stop telling myself how we had rushed, I had rushed us, into marriage; how I had lied about being with child to have our banns read quickly. It was easier to be fierce with myself than to think of the small grey tight face I had seen that night, now burned all to nothing.

  In the morning, while Rebecca was fetching my bath, I crouched by the fireplace. It had been swept, but I pushed my fingertip through the film of white ash on the stone. I cried, for a few minutes, with my fist in my mouth. I thought of how I had kept myself laced so tight those last months. I thought of the day I had come to Manningtree, and the woman in the inn at Chelmsford who had not been able to see me holding my child; how I had fallen in the cart, and made the bruise on my belly. I thought I could feel my heart, just like when, at seventeen, I had fallen from my horse. The fall put my shoulder out of its socket, and Bridget had wrenched it back in; afterwards, I could feel in detail the gritty surfaces of the injury, the scoured hurt inside.

  It is still raw with me, my last lost child, but the grief has turned cold now, and become more akin to anger. For though it may be I would have lost it anyway, I think of those months at the Thorn – the daily shock and strain of what was happening – and it is hard not to think that my brother’s doings had some hand in my loss. When I think of my child, I think now of vengeance.

  25

  After my early bath, I crawled back into bed and slept again. When I woke, Rebecca was still in my chamber. She had a cloth and bowl and set to cleaning my face: I had sweated in my sleep. It made me guilty, how good it felt. When she had done, she set aside the bowl and regarded me. ‘How do you feel?’ she said. ‘When you can stand I’ll strip your bed.’

  ‘How long have I been sleeping?’

  ‘It is noon now. Your brother is due back soon.’ She avoided my eyes. ‘Mary Phillips must have heard something. I told her you had a bad stomach as well as the headache. I think she guessed the truth, but I didn’t know if you would want me to speak of it.’

  ‘No,’ I said. Those last weeks I had kept the child to myself, crushed into me. Now, not having announced my condition, I had no one to condole with me. No one except Rebecca.

  ‘Shall you get up?’ she said.

  ‘I must.’

  She moved to help me, but I put out my hand. ‘Rebecca, I wish to thank you,’ I said.

  She looked down. ‘I feel badly, mistress. If I had not frightened you yesterday –’

  ‘Oh, hush,’ I said. ‘This was no fault of yours.’

  She said, ‘I tried to look for you, what it was, but I could not tell.’ I saw tears spill down her cheeks, and she withdrew her hand to swipe them away. I thought, How many ways there are to lose your children.

  ‘It just …’ I began, and stopped. I studied my hand. ‘It only grieves me that I never told him.’

  She nodded, her face wet. ‘But think. If he had known, he would have been so delighted,’ she said. Then, more quietly, ‘We never did, you know,’ she said. ‘Joseph and I. For what it is worth. We lived in the same house. That was all. We were young.’

  I glanced up at her, and smiled sadly. How, I thought, had I carried that fear so long with me? Some small flickering between a boy and a girl that flared and then was snuffed out. For even if he had been weak for a moment, and she was soft, what was that now? Compared to five years of dressing and undressing, embracing, skin and dampness, the shortness of breath, the finishing, the washing and the small discomforts of afterwards. Compared to hope of children. I saw in that moment that, for my five years of marriage, I had been afraid of a shadow. But as Rebecca helped me to dress, my thoughts grew muted, for as soon as I moved all I felt was raw, creaking pain.

  †

  When my brother rode into the yard I scarcely looked at him. I was dull with discomfort; my breasts were leaking inside my bodice. Even through my grief I was anxious about that, for I did not know whether it was supposed to happen, with a five-month loss. But despite my worry, Grace caught my eye. She was slumped forward in her saddle as she halted her horse, her face drawn. She got down gingerly, like a woman of seventy years, and when she met my eyes, she did not even smile. I heard Rebecca greet Matthew politely, as one of the men caught Grace’s bridle and led her horse away; but Grace paused in the yard, as if unsure of which way to go or of her welcome, and Rebecca was there before me, taking her arm, lifting her bag and walking with her into the house. As they passed me, I murmured to Rebecca to take her to my room, where there was a fire. I felt dazed, my tongue clumsy in my mouth.

  I stayed in the yard long enough to be sure that Matthew was occupied with Mary: he stood talking to her in a low voice, his leather case tucked under his arm. I turned away indoors.

  Rebecca was coming out of my chamber just as I went in. She bit her lip, smiled at me thinly, and went into her own room. Grace was sitting by my fire, in my chair, and when she saw me she made to get up, but I waved her down. Carefully, I sat opposite her. I wanted to tell her about the child. But she seemed so weary.

  ‘I didn’t think to receive any kindness from her,’ she said, gesturing at the wall.

  ‘She’s been good to me. I – I think we judged her harshly.’

  ‘Four of the women in the gaol are dead. I told her, just now. Perhaps I shouldn’t have – but she asked after them.’

  I sat still. ‘Dead? Not her mother?’

  ‘No. Although she’s in a bad way.’

  ‘And how did they … ?’

  ‘Some fever. But they were starving.’ Grace folded her hands. ‘Rebecca was paying the gaoler for their food before your brother brought her here.’ She grimaced, to show how Rebecca had been paying the man, and I looked away.

  The fire shuffled itself, and we let it subside. Grace was clearly too weary to build it up; for my part, I feared that crouching might bring on my bleeding again. I wanted to tell her about the offer that had come from my old landlady, for it struck me that there was nothing to stop me going now. Nothing to stop us going. But she was too frail to think about the future.

  After a time, I said, ‘Do you want to tell me about it? The hundred?’ I spoke slowly, hesitantly. In truth, after what Bridget had said about the searching, I did not know if I had the strength to hear of it.

  I saw Grace was weeping, not the hiccuping childish crying of when she had been afraid to go, but silent, contained tears. ‘Sometimes I would sit in the room,’ she said. ‘But other times they would put a stool outside the door and say, “Grace, don’t come in, whatever you hear.” ’ Sh
e hugged herself. ‘There were folk in each place, taking matters into their own hands. And they had women there, the ones who wash the dead, who would do anything for a coin, and they –’ She broke off.

  ‘No need,’ I said, and touched her knee. ‘No need, Grace, if it’s too hard.’

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, determined, ‘that some of them seemed to enjoy it.’ She pulled a hand across her eyes. ‘Mary Phillips rode out to join us, and I tell you, mistress, I have never seen her thrive better.’ I saw, then, how suddenly she had been forced to grow up. It made me sad.

  ‘Why is she thus?’ I said. ‘Mary? So hard like that?’

  Grace frowned. ‘I knew a girl from Ramsey, where she was born, and I heard her hint once that Mary’s mother was not married. That they were despised, and Mary taunted. I know she grew up poor. I know she hates the barest thought of anything not respectable. But I do not see – Would that not make her keener in her sympathy?’ She shook her head. ‘Whatever the truth, it is no excuse.’

  ‘As long as you did not fail in your charity,’ I said, and touched her knee again. ‘Which I know you will not have, whatever you were made to do.’

  After a moment, Grace said, ‘I think – when I told you of what thing I saw, the day before your mother died, I am worried that I gave you to suspect … I think now I was wrong to say it.’ Her face was troubled.

  I leaned nearer. ‘You were mistaken?’

  ‘No. I saw the thing I described. But I think now I put a construction on it, I made Bridget out guilty when I did not know for sure. Though I did not know, I made up my mind.’

  ‘It is only natural,’ I said, wishing to soothe her, but slow to find the right words. ‘You must have heard my brother speak ill of her, so then, of course, you would think her bad.’