The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  I put back my bedclothes when I could just discern my hand in front of my face. The Thorn was dark still, and silent: I had not heard Mary Phillips yet, or any of the scullery maids. I dressed myself, wearing as much as I could, for I judged it to be too risky to be seen with a bag, and tucked Joseph’s letter to Bridget into my sleeve. I would be on the road before it was fully light. I took the stairs slowly, leaning my weight before I placed it, and keeping my feet near the edge where they would not creak.

  When I reached the bottom, I saw that the back door was open, and someone sitting on the topmost step, looking out into the pale morning. I thought it was one of the stablemen, that I would have to ask him to move to get by, and then wait in the privy until he was gone. But then the figure stood up, and I recognized Matthew’s travelling coat before he turned.

  ‘You’re up early,’ he said. ‘You are packed, then?’

  I was aware of him taking in the bulk of my clothing. When I did not immediately answer, Matthew turned away. There was the cold, clean smell from outside, and the sky was shifting from grey to the palest blue. ‘I would change,’ he said. ‘You’ll boil like that. It’s going to be another hot day.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I won’t do it. I won’t go.’

  Matthew kept his back to me, as though he had not heard. ‘I have been puzzling over what to do with Rebecca,’ he said. ‘After the trials. For there will be bills returned against her, I cannot prevent that, not after Prudence Hart’s testimony. They will need to be thrown out so that she might stand witness. But it strikes me that other bills may be brought – stronger ones.’ He turned to me. ‘If they are, there may be little I can do to save her.’ He examined his palm, licked his finger and rubbed at an imaginary mark. ‘What happens to her, Alice, it is nothing to me. What happens to her honestly does depend.’ He sounded almost bored. It was that which made me shake.

  Without reply I turned, and went quietly back up the stairs to my chamber. I opened the shutters, then stood at the window, I do not know for how long. Down in the yard two stablemen stirred, stretched. They greeted each other, and one spat. On the landing I heard Grace’s soft footsteps and Mary Phillips’s firm ones, and soon the creak and sigh in the next chamber as Rebecca West swung her legs over the edge of her bed. I saw I had no choice but to go. Dimly, I thought that I should never have expected to outwit him.

  I took off all the clothing I was wearing, beyond a light gown and a shift under it, and folded the other items, laying them on the bed. I looked at the large box I had brought from London, but instead I picked up a small, soft travelling bag, and put some things into it, leaving out the thicker cloak. Without thinking, I made the bag light enough that I could have carried it a distance myself, though Matthew’s steady countenance had cowed something in me, and it was hard to think of disobeying him.

  When I got downstairs, my brother was directing the loading of the horses. There was no talk of breakfast. Grace stood in the kitchen entry, her eyes brimming, and though I suspected she might have given me away to Matthew the night before, still I tried to give her an encouraging smile. Rebecca stood just behind her, biting her bottom lip, her face in open dismay.

  Matthew came in. ‘Ready?’ he said.

  Out in the yard, I mounted my horse. It had been years since I had ridden her, and I felt heavy and still weak since losing the baby. But the mare stood quietly while Matthew and Mary Phillips mounted their own beasts, Matthew speaking last-minute instructions to the stablemen and to Grace. I remember my last sight of them in the doorway, Grace’s fair head and Rebecca’s, as I followed my brother and turned my horse out of the yard.

  As we started towards Ipswich, the motion of the animal under me made me think of my youth. But I did not want to be comforted. The roads were quiet, so soon after Naseby, and familiar as far as the Wenham turn. Matthew and Mary Phillips rode ahead together, his dog running at their heels, leaving me to come up behind them. We had brought no stablehand. The morning grew warm, as we rode between hedges flush with unripe hazelnuts, the sun speaking to trees laden with green apples and quinces. It tempted you to close your eyes. It felt ill-fitting to be riding out on such dark business on such a fair day. But for all the warm sunshine, I did not tilt my head back to enjoy it. Instead, I squinted at the dark figure of Matthew, riding ahead of me.

  We put up at the Lion in Ipswich, a decent house that was full of the calling and singing, the feet on the stairs and the slamming of doors that I had missed at the Thorn. The next day we rode out the short distance to Copdock, Mary Phillips with us. When we got there several women were waiting, lining up to tell tales on each other, and my brother took notes, leaning on a board on the church steps. I listened to one woman speaking to my brother of Mother Skipper, whom she said was no Christian. When Matthew asked what evidence she had: did Mother Skipper stay away from church? The woman said that, on the contrary, the devil had told Mother Skipper to attend church and make a great show, but that if she attended diligently he would nip her.

  Before long, Matthew turned to me and said I might go and rest. The fierce joy he had shown in Manningtree seemed gone; he was serious now. Intent. I wandered away, and sat under a tree. I felt dazed, as though I had taken a hard blow to the head. The stained glass of leaves above me made a queer green light where I sat in the shade.

  After a time, some men brought the woman called Mother Skipper; Matthew and Mary Phillips took her into the minister’s house. Their small figures a distance away were like figures in a dream. I thought they must be taking further testimony, or perhaps doing the searching that Bridget had described. I did not trust my brother’s seeming leniency, how nothing seemed to be required of me. Why would he have brought me with him only to have me sitting idle?

  I see now that my brother was letting me grow used to my new circumstances, letting me lower myself into the scalding bath of them, inch by quarter-inch. He stayed with Mother Skipper two hours or three, and when he and Mary Phillips came out, he let me overhear the arrangements being made for Mother Skipper to be taken to the gaol at Bury St Edmunds. Then we went on our way. As we rode, it got dark, the country quite still except for the small pale owls that had come down to warm themselves on the baked road. Our approach set them winging upwards, and they looked as souls might look, parted from their bodies. Seeing them, I could not help thinking freshly of my baby, but I held back my tears. I did not wish Matthew to see me cry.

  †

  It was the next day, towards evening in the village of Chattisham, that I first took part in a watching. Matthew opened the back door of the house, and beckoned me in. He pointed to a low chair by the fireplace, and bade me sit in it and keep my eyes open.

  ‘Watch for anything coming near her,’ he said briskly, ‘whether it be a fly or whatever else, however small.’

  Anne Alderman sat on her stool, and glared. She was an old woman, and thin in the manner that makes a person seem dried-out. At first I thought she was holding that position herself, knees up to her chest and grasping her ankles, but then I saw the bindings that secured her wrists discreetly to her feet. Someone had done them with scarves rather than rope, someone kind, I thought. Not Mary Phillips.

  At the foot of the stool, I saw a small puddle on the stone-flagged floor. Another woman was watching, sitting on a bench by the front door. ‘There was an ant’s nest there,’ she said, her chin rising, ‘but your master said they could not be imps, for while Mistress Phillips was searching her he had me boil a kettle of water and pour it on, and they floated up dead.’

  Matthew turned to Anne Alderman. ‘The imp you suckled. For what did you employ it?’

  She looked at him coldly, for long moments, then said, ‘I’m sure you ask your own imp daily to help you grow a beard. And to inflate your head that it might look less like a dried pea.’

  I took a sharp breath: I wished there was a silent way to tell her to keep civil with him.

  Matthew turned to the other watching woman. ‘Do not walk he
r at eight after all,’ he said. ‘Leave her as she is, till I come back. Alice, you are to stay and keep up the watching.’

  He went out then, and Mary Phillips with him. We sat in silence. After a time, the clock struck seven. The quiet grew on me, the almost-held breath.

  Then the clock struck eight, and soon Anne Alderman began to let out occasional gasps, as she shifted about to ease her joints. I wanted to get up to ease her bonds, but I could not. At each gasp the other watching woman looked to me, as if it were my decision whether to spare her. I wished Anne Alderman would ask to piss, for if she had I would certainly have let her get down: but I was wary of the other watcher, that she might report to my brother any offered kindness, and he might punish me for it, and the woman on the stool be made to suffer the more.

  Once I got up and went towards the fire to stoke it, thinking as I went to whisper to Anne Alderman that she must ask me to be let down, but as I got near she glared at me, as if she would rather have her hands cut off than ask me for anything.

  It must have been near an hour later when Matthew came in with Mary Phillips. He seemed in good spirits; I think they had been dining with the minister.

  ‘Well, Anne?’ he said. ‘Anything to tell me yet?’ He looked at me. ‘Anything to report? Nothing seen?’ I shook my head. ‘Not a fly? Nothing?’ He turned back to the woman on the stool. ‘Well, Anne, we will leave you with this woman here, and soon more folk will come, that she might sleep. But you will not sleep. Do you hear me? Not until you have told us what employment your imps were given.’

  He spoke almost regretfully, as he gathered his things. Mary Phillips signed to me to get up and I put on my shawl. The woman on the stool was rocking – you could hardly see it but she was. They did that, to ease their joints; on other occasions, I saw them rock so much as to upset the stool and go crashing to the floor, only to have relief from that one position.

  While I was putting on my shawl, the clock struck nine, and as Matthew was about to open the door for Mary Phillips, at last Anne Alderman spoke. Her voice had that hoarse sound, for she had not used it for many hours together.

  ‘Sir,’ she said. ‘Sir, it is true. I employed my imps to make away with my grandson.’ She hung her head. ‘I wished my son’s child cold in the mouth, and it died soon after.’

  Matthew halted in the entry. ‘Get her down,’ he said, and the other woman got up to untie the scarves that held Anne Alderman in place, then put out an arm to steady her as she painfully extended each limb.

  ‘Walk her up and down,’ Matthew said. His voice was even, calm. For a moment, I thought he meant it as a kindness. But then he went on, ‘Do that until eleven or so, and then back on the stool. I think she has not yet told us all. We shall be back in the morning. You can tell the others.’

  Then he let me and Mary Phillips out ahead of him, into the cool evening.

  †

  That night, Matthew went out into Ipswich, to the house of someone he knew from the years he had lived there; he took his dog and his leather case with him. I sat by the fire in one of the Lion’s back rooms. My brother’s new maps were spread out on the tables, maps such as I had never seen. I studied the place names up through Suffolk, tracing with my finger the shape of the coast, tracing my way into the unknown territory for which we were making, through places I had heard Matthew speak of. My heart stilled at the thought of the folk in those towns and villages, how they did not even know what was coming.

  At least, I thought bleakly, I would be removed from seeing harm done to anyone I knew. At least I had not had to watch Elizabeth Gooding be confined to a stool, watch time do twice the work of any beating, watch her climb down as though her legs were broken. I thought, If I was ever blameless, now my blamelessness has ended.

  Soon, I knew, we would be moving beyond Ipswich, beyond anywhere I had ever been, and taking the road north. I knew that I must somehow find the means to fight my brother. But I could not put from my mind what Bridget had said about that piece of truth; the one she claimed would have been no use to me against him.

  29

  Matthew knew what he was about when he went softly with me as we began our journey through Suffolk. He waited to show me the full extent of what he would make me do, until we had gone beyond anywhere I might have found a friendly face, beyond anywhere I could have got by alone without a horse and without money.

  He waited until the next day, when we rode out from the Lion, with our saddle bags this time, making for a place called Playford, from where we would go on north. We reached it in the baking heat of mid-morning: a few houses, a church and a water mill, where Matthew signalled that we would stop. There were no women waiting, and the place looked half asleep. I tied my horse to the hitching post and turned away – thinking to go down to the river, find somewhere shady to sit, for the riding had worsened the pinching feeling in the left side of my belly, where my baby had been.

  But Matthew called me back. ‘No, Alice, you stay with me,’ he said. ‘I think you shall be needed today.’

  I see now that there were certain conditions that made places ripest for my brother’s success. To begin with, fear of Catholics helped him, not new fear but old fear, fear in the marrow; fear that has had time to translate the hoc est corpus of the Latin mass into the hocus pocus from which meaning has been entirely lost. At Playford, the minister was a godly man, but some of the landowners round about were from old Catholic families.

  My brother also did best wherever there were scattered dwellings, where a woman might keep one or two cows and be almost independent, where she might live alone in her cottage at the edge of the woods, as Margaret Legat did. I found out later that at one time Margaret Legat’s family had been gamekeepers to the old landowners, and that Margaret was not as strict with her churchgoing as some others might be. Her son had gone to war, a vigorous boy who had once climbed up on the miller’s roof in gauntlets and thrown a wasps’ nest down his chimney. Margaret Legat had refused to let the miller beat her son. After that, the man had waited his chance, and the chance was Matthew.

  When we arrived, Margaret was sitting by the window in the one large room of her cottage as though she was waiting for us, a Bible in her lap. She looked up as we went in through the low entry: myself, Matthew, Mary Phillips, the minister of Playford and the miller. Glancing around, I thought, She must have borrowed that Bible. It’s too clean. There was a dead leaf smell, like soil, and a smell of the two chickens that scratched and pecked at a few torn cabbage leaves under the rough table. When she saw the three of us and the minister, Margaret stood, with difficulty. She held herself low, like a wounded animal, and somehow, though I had not yet been present at a searching, though I did not yet know more than the vague shape of what it entailed, still I knew in that moment, I knew exactly what it was Margaret Legat had done.

  ‘Searching first, I think,’ Matthew said to Mary, and Mary stepped forward. The woman did not move, as if she was slow to understand what was happening. Mary took her arm, a little roughly. ‘What’s through there?’ Mary said, pointing.

  ‘That’s where I sleep.’

  ‘Right,’ Mary said to me. ‘Time for me to show you the method.’

  I took a breath. ‘I am not feeling well,’ I said, looking at Matthew. ‘I feel faint.’

  The miller cleared his throat. Tactfully, the minister turned his gaze.

  ‘Come now, Alice,’ Matthew said. ‘You’ll help Mary.’

  ‘I can’t, forgive me,’ I said, and went for the door, but Matthew was quicker than I thought and he reached me before I had it all the way open, and I remembered how strong he is, though he does not look it. He seized the door in his hands and blocked my progress, all the while making it look gentle, making it look like nothing. The men turned politely aside, as Matthew placed his own foot over my own, softly at first, but then leaning his weight forward until I felt something in the top of my foot give, and it took my breath. Eyes watering, I stood still. I could not have moved an inch.
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br />   ‘Do not shame me, Alice, in front of these others,’ he said, and he made the murmur low and the tone of it caring. ‘Now. You’ll help Mary, won’t you? You have the knowledge, do you not?’ Through my pain and confusion I could not think.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Leave her, then,’ I said to Mary, crossing the chamber, trying to disguise my limp. I took the woman’s elbow, more gently than Mary had done, to lead her into the alcove where she had her bed.

  Behind a curtain there was a filthy mattress. I thought I saw something move under the blankets. Mary said, ‘Take off your things,’ and I averted my gaze. Despite my own pain, despite the woman’s humiliation as she pulled her smock and her shift over her head, I was holding my own skirt away from the walls, to keep it from touching anything, for though some attempt at tidying had been made in the larger room, the smaller one was the filthiest I had ever seen.

  But then Margaret Legat dropped her smock onto the mattress, and I saw the crusted streak of blood that ran down the inside of her leg, hip to knee, then smeared away. It could not have been mistaken what had happened. No chance of the bleeding being the monthly kind: Margaret Legat was past sixty. I had to prevent myself turning away. ‘She’s interfered with herself.’

  ‘What did you have there?’ Mary said. ‘A wart? You foolish woman. We do not regard them.’

  Margaret Legat stood, slightly bent. Though it was warm she was shivering. I had never seen another woman so naked. Her face and hands were brown and her body yellow-white, like a root. She did not look mutinous, as Anne Alderman had, but rather fearful; I could tell she was not of the full understanding. Mary made her squat that she might proceed with the searching. I saw the place where she had cut off part of herself, the blood crusting now.