The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  He glanced up into the branches. ‘Aye. My boys won’t eat them.’

  I took a breath, and said, ‘He might ask you for names. When he comes back.’

  The minister’s eyes widened. ‘What – here?’

  ‘If he does, my advice is that you give them – one or two, at the least.’

  He shook his head. ‘He will get no names from me.’

  ‘You know what passed at Brandeston?’ I said, for even as I spoke the minister of that place was sitting in the gaol at Bury, awaiting his fate.

  But William Cardinal stood up, and put his hands in his pockets. His smile was gentle. ‘Even still.’ As he said it, his face clouded; over my shoulder, he must have seen my brother coming. Then Matthew was beside us, and the minister said, ‘Ah, sir, how did your business go forward? Is there anything I can do, before I set you on your way?’

  Matthew frowned. ‘The man I needed was gone into Ipswich.’

  There was a quiet, while Matthew watched the minister’s face, waiting. Then the minister said, ‘Perhaps you would like to stay the night.’

  †

  William Cardinal told us he had better wait for his wife to show us our chambers. Matthew said it was no matter, for in fact he had a letter to write. Might he have use of a desk? The man seemed uneasy as he showed us into his study, though I was glad that he made no move to tidy away any particular papers.

  While Matthew wrote his letter, I perched in the window seat. I had sat there often before, on wet days mostly, watching drops of rain make their journey down the thick and serviceable glass. There were still books in their cases all around, books bound in brown and black and green, which from a distance might have been the same ones I had known as a child, and on a closer look, there were even titles I recognized. I sat, my brother’s pen scratching behind me, watching the minister, who had gone back to his digging. It was almost like being surrounded by Father; his echoes, his doubled ghost.

  When the minister’s wife returned from her sister’s house, she showed us up to her guest chambers. Matthew had his old room, but I had the one where Mother had put our few guests; the little boys had mine, and I was thankful for it.

  Dinner that night was stilted. I asked whether the minister had ever met our parents, and the minister said he had been at the same college as my father, though a year or two below; beyond that, he offered no further comment. The minister’s wife, in turn, asked which part of London our mother hailed from; Matthew, seeming to dislike the question, answered only briefly. The minister asked whether Matthew had a family himself; when my brother stayed quiet, I said he would soon be married, and then of course the minister’s wife asked about the wedding, but my brother did not seem to wish to speak of that either.

  The minister’s wife seemed on edge, and hid it less well than her husband; she kept exhorting her boys to sit up straight, and chew their food. I asked after our old servant Sarah, for I knew she still lived in those parts, and I was told that she was well, and still at the same farm. Her brother had it now. At that the minister’s wife tilted her head; from an upstairs room her youngest was wailing. Then the floorboards creaked as the servant went to him, and he hushed. The easy things to speak of seemed exhausted, and I allowed the table to fall into silence.

  After dinner I thought to step outside for a moment, but in the passage by the back door, I paused. The kitchen door stood half open, and I saw a good fire blazing, and a kettle set upon it. A rocking chair was placed beside the hearth, just like our old one. I thought of Mother, sitting there, Matthew laid in her lap. Just then the servant crossed to the kettle and, catching sight of me, she turned. ‘Can I fetch you anything, mistress?’

  ‘No – I beg your pardon, there is no need,’ I said, and hurriedly let myself out into the darkening garden. I closed the door behind me and stood still beside the herb beds as they breathed out their scent.

  Someone said, ‘Your father also had three sons, did he not?’

  I turned. It was the minister.

  ‘My apologies for disturbing you,’ he said. He put his hands into his pockets. ‘I like to take the air before bed.’

  ‘He had four,’ I replied. ‘Three with my mother, but she died, and he married my brother Matthew’s mother after.’

  ‘My wife sometimes jokes that this place is lucky. We have three ourselves, so.’ Craning his neck, he made a shooing motion, and I turned in time to see two round pale faces disappear from an upper window. He looked at me, rueful. ‘My older ones, in the summer they perhaps do not attend to their bedtimes as they should.’

  ‘It must be a pleasant thing, to be in a house where there are children,’ I said. ‘Myself, I am a widow.’ Then, after a breath: ‘I sometimes think I would accept any position in a household that had children in it. If you were to hear of any such place …’

  The minister was quiet. From the bottom of the garden, a blackbird called, that low, pure sound. Then he said, ‘It saddens me, mistress, but I do not know that I can help you. For my wife, she, too, has heard what passed at Brandeston.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  He lowered his voice. ‘May I be frank?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All we want,’ he said, ‘is your brother gone. How can we speed it?’

  I met his eyes. ‘Put him on another scent,’ I said. ‘Somewhere else between here and Manningtree.’

  The minister’s eyes widened. ‘I cannot,’ he said.

  Behind us, I heard a window open. ‘William!’

  It was the minister’s wife. She nodded to me, and closed the shutters.

  ‘I should go in,’ he said.

  I lingered in the garden after he had gone. I could hear from inside the house my brother bidding someone a brief goodnight. I took one more breath of night air, then went in, shutting the door on the silent and unyielding garden. From long habit I put home the bolts, top and bottom, though when I turned, the minister’s wife was there with a lamp. ‘I was just coming to do that,’ she said. She did not smile.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I replied.

  35

  My father’s grave was so far under the shade of the churchyard hollies that only moss would persist there; a lush, springy carpet, which was almost tempting enough for me to kneel and lay my cheek on as I stood beside the grave with Matthew, waiting for the service to begin.

  I regarded the gravestone, for which Mother had left money, with the name spelled correctly in handsome large letters and the dates all as they should be, but still it was hard to believe that Father was truly there, in the earth. I had never seen him put under for, of course, only men go for the burying. To me, it was as though my father’s flat body had been vanished from his bed, like a card trick when your eyes are not fast enough to see how it was done. While Matthew was still standing over Father’s plot, I wandered among the other stones. It came to me that I did not even know which grave it was that Matthew had fallen into, all those years ago.

  In church, the minister preached stiffly; I wondered whether he was always thus, or whether it was because my brother was there. His text was from Corinthians. He said the verse about speaking, understanding and thinking as a child; about how a man must leave off childish things. It made me think of something Bridget had said once, about how when you hear a man spoken of in the Bible, whatever is said, that goes for a woman, too.

  It was impossible to sit in that pew and not think of Father preaching. Out of the tail of my eye, I caught sight of Matthew listening intently and felt a flash of sorrow for our old closeness: for how sad, how lonely he must be now, as well as angry. For I was sure he knew what Mother had done. And if he did, it must have been weighing on him.

  It was not until we were filing out after the final prayers that I caught sight of Sarah. At first I thought I was mistaken, but then she turned to take the arm of a young man who was with her, and I knew it was her. She had stayed longer than some of our later servants, had only moved on when I was six. Only Father had called her by name:
Mother had called her ‘you’.

  I turned to see Matthew talking with the minister, the minister’s wife standing by, and without thinking further I followed Sarah and her companions down the church path and along the lane. Soon I saw them turn in at the gate of their farm. When I reached it I hesitated. The place was still cleanly kept, and two of the barns had new roofs. I had taken a risk in coming there, but if anyone knew more about what had passed in our household at the time of Matthew’s birth, it would surely be Sarah. For she had been born in Wenham, lived all her days there, before and since her time serving my family. If there was anyone who could say why Matthew would think Bridget a witch and a whore, perhaps it was Sarah.

  I went to the door and knocked, and when a girl answered, I said who I was. Sarah must have heard my voice, for she came out at once, and welcomed me in. At her insistence the children were cleared out of the kitchen. The girl fetched us something to drink, then left us, shutting the door behind her.

  For a moment or two, neither of us spoke, though Sarah studied me closely. She had always used few words. I was foolishly surprised to see the touch of grey in her hair: I still thought of her as the quiet, brisk girl she had been when she had worked in our household.

  ‘I dare say you had forgot my face,’ she said.

  I smiled. ‘How could I?’ I said. ‘Your face is my first memory, near enough.’

  There was another quiet, and then she said, ‘Can I ask what your business is here? For I know you didn’t only come to visit me. My Lucy said she saw you sitting beside Mistress Cardinal in service.’

  ‘I am here with Matthew. He is selling land. That piece by the churchyard, with the apple trees.’

  ‘We did not know if he was here to drag us out and hang us,’ she said evenly.

  ‘I do not think your minister would countenance it,’ I said.

  ‘I am surprised any can. Of course I know none of this is your doing, Alice.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘I always wondered how your brother would turn out. God knows, he was a strange child. The bed-wetting, and the listening at doors – but your mother, she wouldn’t be strict with him. She used to cry herself when he would have his tantrums, and that was all that would halt him. My lot, they’ve always had a slap to correct them, and a kiss to soothe it later, but that never worked with Matthew …’ She hesitated. ‘Even when he was a little lad he seemed – low, like a grown man will get. It must have been the shock, I suppose, from that lazy wet nurse dropping him in the hearth … He was later to walk than any child I have known. He did it in the end, but I had to take his little stockings off, hold his two hands in mine and drag him all the way across the kitchen floor, his toes stubbing on the flags. It nearly did my back in, but he was walking in a week.’ I remembered what Matthew had told me the wet nurse had said about his late walking.

  ‘We were always told he had crawled into the fire himself, at the wet nurse’s house,’ I said.

  But Sarah gave her head a little shake. ‘Must have been a white lie. Perhaps they said it so he would not grow up blaming her. For certain your brother was never one to forgive a slight.’ She sighed. ‘I used to wonder they didn’t keep him at home, or at least bring him back sooner, but then the mistress was always so poorly in her health.’ She stopped. ‘How is the mistress now?’

  ‘She died. This winter gone. I was widowed the same month.’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said. ‘I am sorry for it.’

  ‘The woman who was my mother’s servant, before you – Bridget. I married her son. Well, her adopted son.’

  ‘Adopted?’

  ‘Yes. She had none of her own.’

  ‘Did she not?’ Sarah looked interested.

  I was nearing the reason I had followed her home from church. ‘Do you know much of her?’ I said.

  Sarah tilted her head. ‘I spoke to her once or twice.’

  I lowered my voice. ‘Do you know why she left my family’s service?’ I went on. ‘I have heard that she left not long after my brother was burned. I have heard that he was not burned at the wet nurse’s, but before he ever went there.’

  ‘I never heard that,’ Sarah said.

  ‘I have heard that she might have had a hand in it. Even that she and my father might have had some manner of flirtation.’

  ‘Flirtation?’ Sarah’s face was a careful blank.

  ‘Did you not wonder? About why she left when she did?’

  Sarah looked at me, for long moments. ‘I never heard she had anything to do with your brother’s misfortune,’ she said. ‘That was the wet nurse’s doing, that’s what I was told. As for Bridget, her going –’ She broke off. ‘In truth, I did think she was with child. Nothing showed, but with how quick she went …’

  ‘You think it could be true, then?’ I sat back. ‘That she and my father, they were in love?’

  Her eyes came back to my face. ‘Love?’ she repeated. Then she pushed back her chair, and stood up to mend the fire. She did it slowly, and when she came back to her seat, she sank into it. ‘I was twelve when I came to your family’s house,’ she said. ‘Sixteen when I left it. When it started, I thought I was mistaken.’ She glanced away. ‘Rather than standing back, your father might come through a doorway at the same time as me, so that the front of him would brush against me. I tripped, once, on the back step, over a pair of his boots, and he came out of his study, and in helping me up, he put his hands otherwise than he should have.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘I am sorry to say it. I know you were fond of him. But men, you know – and I wouldn’t have you think Bridget went looking for anything she might have got from him.’

  ‘I cannot credit this, Sarah,’ I said. ‘Might you not have imagined it?’

  ‘He never did that when my chest was flat,’ she said. And then, more softly, ‘Though, mistress, I know plenty who’ve had worse from their masters.’

  I stood up. I did not know what to say. ‘I had better be going,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t be away too long.’

  Before she let me out, Sarah raised her eyes to mine. ‘You think, then, that your brother will soon be on his way?’ she said. ‘It’s only that he may not need the minister to give names. If folk hear he is near, they may come themselves, without any bidding. Any who have reason to think they might be accused. For everyone knows how it is in the gaol. They hear of those who have died in there already. And so they think, better to be arrested now, than next month and have to wait for the spring assizes. They think, like as not it would kill you. A whole winter in there, before your case is even heard.’

  †

  I walked back to the minister’s house, unseeing and unhearing. I could not believe it, about my father; did not want to believe it. Arriving back, I found no one in the parlour. From the kitchen I could hear the clank of dishes, and the servant whistling softly through her teeth. Seeing the minister’s study door open, I thought to look out of the window, to see if they were in the garden. I could hear voices, and leaning close to the glass I could see Matthew talking to someone near the back door. The glass bent the shapes of them, but the fellow seemed earnest, and was clutching a hat in his hands: the man buying Father’s land, perhaps. I turned. There on the desk lay my brother’s brown leather case, open.

  I ducked into the passage, and crept to the back door, which was open a crack. I heard the fellow running on in talk, and Matthew saying yes or no at intervals. I retreated into the study, and pulled the door to behind me. I thought, If Father’s missing pages are not burned, they are in that case. If I could find them I would know: whether he had forced Bridget, whether she had left our house in shame, whether they had been in love. So I opened the case. Some of the contents fell out onto the desk, and I began to sort through the documents. But Father’s missing pages were not what I found.

  At the top of the pile were unsent bills for some of the towns we had visited, then two or three letters from my brother Thomas. But I did not read them. For what had also fallen from the case was Matthew’s ledger, and this
I opened, turning back through the pages, my horror growing. The lists of women, the bland and terrible words written next to their names. I turned all the way back to Bess Clarke’s name, and read the notes of her case. I turned further, to an entry dated long before I had come to Manningtree, before the witch business had even begun. And there, from December, was a list of the five Manningtree women, the first accused. A list dated before some of their alleged crimes were even said to have been committed. There they were in black and white:

  Elizabeth Clarke

  Anne West

  Rebecca West?

  Nan Leech

  Helen Leech?

  I turned cold, thinking of what Grace had said, my first day at the Thorn: about Matthew having a great book with witches’ names in. He had selected them, then. Quite coldly he had chosen them, those he had known would be vulnerable, and before any rumours had even started. Perhaps what had begun as anger, as grief towards Mother, towards Bridget, perhaps that had taken root and spread into something disciplined, some poisoned way of seeing. My hands shaking, I fumbled the book and half dropped it, and as I did so, some further sheets fell out where they had been folded inside the back cover. As soon as I saw the foremost of them, I knew at one glance what it was.

  It was the sketch Matthew had made Grace produce of the item she had seen in Mother’s bed. The drawing was carefully worked, and showed a figure about the length of a palm, and round, but as though it had its knees tucked up, head lowered and hands folded close against the body. She had drawn tiny dense lines all over, to show the texture of it, for I remember she said that it had been rough-looking, and, as she thought, made of hair.

  On the next sheet I found a series of questions, and below each, several answers, and beside every answer a name. I recognized the names, from stories Rebecca and I had gleaned and pieced together from the gossip of my brother’s business in the Tendring Hundred.