The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  I do not know what she was hoping for: if it was a cheer from the back of the crowd, it did not come. For a moment, everyone watching stood large-eyed, in silence.

  Matthew had turned red. When he spoke, his voice shook with rage. ‘I will visit you tomorrow, madam. Depend upon it. I will be visiting you tomorrow, and I will bring some others, too.’

  ‘Oh, fie!’ Bridget said. ‘You have help enough here, if you want to arrest me.’

  I thought then that Matthew would ask some of the men standing about to lay hands on her, but they looked uncomfortable. If he had asked them, I do not know whether they would have done it. If they had not, then perhaps the tide would have turned on him that day. But I saw my brother master himself, turn again from red to pale.

  ‘Why should I want to arrest you?’ he said clearly and calmly. ‘You are nothing more than a scold, madam. I would not deal, these days, in such a small indictment.’

  There was a moment where no one moved, and then the crowd began again to disperse, to talk among themselves. Already the executioner’s men were climbing up to cut the bodies down. Matthew’s friends were lining up behind him; he made me a curt signal. Gently I helped Rebecca stand straight on her feet, and led her after him. Desperate, I met Bridget’s eye. She looked stunned. Then she was lost in the departing crush, as I led Rebecca behind my brother’s friends, Richard Edwards, John Stearne and the others, all in their best Sunday clothes, back towards the Thorn.

  Weeping, Rebecca gripped my arm. She was talking, talking, I could not stop her, but she was hardly making sense. ‘I told him where you were. The night before he took you into Suffolk,’ she said. ‘It was I who told him, not Grace.’ I pressed Rebecca’s hand, said to her that it was all right, that it would all be all right. I was distracted with the thought of Bridget, of how to get her to safety. I told Rebecca how sorry I was, over and over in a low voice, as the men walked ahead of us, Mary Phillips among them. That was all I could think to say: how sorry I was. I was planning to get Rebecca straight upstairs, to make her bathe her face, and be calm again, so that I could persuade Matthew to let me try to find her a servant’s place somewhere, now that all was done.

  We had reached the yard of the Thorn, and I made to lead Rebecca up the steps to the door. But Matthew said, ‘No, Alice. That whore won’t be coming back in my house.’ I saw Richard Edwards raise his brows, but the other men cleared their throats, and looked away.

  I dropped Rebecca’s arm, and went closer to him. ‘Please, brother,’ I said. ‘I know she is not yet all she ought to be. But I can teach her, she can still learn. Let me take her indoors, and tomorrow we can discuss –’

  ‘It is you, Alice, who is not all you ought to be,’ Matthew said. The men gaped. ‘For I know you are under this girl’s thrall. You have given her our mother’s ring to help her go and live her life of vice.’ He produced it. ‘I found this under her pillow.’

  ‘Madam, you did not?’ one of them said. It was John Cutler: I remembered his face from when he had come at Easter to the Thorn to dine.

  ‘And she connived with her late husband’s mother to do it,’ Matthew said. He sounded almost sad, now; almost regretful. He turned to Richard Edwards. ‘You know her? The one who gave me those low words in the square just now.’ Edwards shook his head.

  I turned on the men where they stood around Matthew. I saw where he was aiming, and I was desperate. ‘Bridget has done nothing wrong,’ I said to them all. I spread my hands. ‘You must not – you cannot let her be hounded as those others have been. For you know why my brother has done all this? Well, I say my brother, but in truth he may be none of mine.’ I pushed my hair out of my face, and looked at Matthew, and at the men around him, and I saw that they did not care about my fate or Rebecca’s. I saw that they wanted their dinner, nothing more. I saw that I was not troubling them. I was merely making them awkward. And Matthew’s face was the calmest of all.

  Inside me, I felt something give. ‘Shall I tell them? It is for shame he is doing it. For his mother disgraced herself to get him. Lay with some travelling labourer, so do not let him deceive you that he is a gentleman. For God knows whose son he is, whether he is our father’s son, or that low tricking fellow’s, or the devil’s bastard for what I know.’

  At last I stopped. As my voice rang into silence, I heard the high, tight note of it. I felt how my hands were clenched at my sides, how my cap had slid backwards off my head. I was breathing hard. All the men’s eyes were on Matthew, and I was ready for his rage, wanted it even, wanted him to strike me so I could strike him back.

  We all waited, for one moment, two. At last my brother sighed, then turned to Richard Edwards, with a face full of sadness.

  ‘You see how it is, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘You see how delicacy can turn so soon to madness?’ Some were nodding.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. I turned to Richard Edwards. ‘I mean it. It’s true.’ But none of them would look at me.

  John Stearne said, ‘It is as we spoke of, Hopkins. She spent so many years in your mother’s company, and we know how that poor lady suffered. A weak mind like that, in a woman, it can be bent so easily to vice.’

  I looked about me wildly. Rebecca had backed away a few paces, but now she stood still, transfixed. Beside the steps, Mary Phillips watched impassively.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Matthew said, ‘I fear I cannot entertain you as I had hoped to. I must see my sister settled.’ And they all replied, ‘Oh, of course, Hopkins. Please take our best prayers for her health.’ Disapproving, uncomfortable, they wanted only to be gone.

  ‘Mary?’ Matthew said, and Mary Phillips stepped towards me, took hold of my upper arm, digging her fingers into the flesh.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘I am quite well.’ She started to haul me into the house, and I shouted, tried to wrench my arm away from her, but stumbled, was dragged up one step before I got on my feet. I saw the retreating backs of the men as they left the yard, and Rebecca’s shocked white stare where she stood by herself at the gate. Mary Phillips pushed me over the threshold, shut the door on her and shot the bolt.

  ‘Brother!’ I said.

  But Matthew turned to Mary Phillips. ‘Give me your keys.’ With steady hands, she extracted them from her belt.

  I remember her satisfied face, and then Matthew had me by the arm, and I said, ‘Brother, you’re hurting me,’ but he was pulling me up the stairs so that I tripped more than once, and then I kicked against him, tried to make myself heavy, and almost got loose. But then Mary Phillips was there, blocking the way down, and I felt her firm hands on my back pushing me upwards, and Matthew got my arm again so that I tripped and staggered beside him. ‘Brother,’ I said, ‘please, listen –’

  But then we were at the attic door, and he opened it and thrust me in. I heard the key turn in the lock, and then I heard no more.

  42

  Christmastide, this year of our Lord 1646

  As I told you in the beginning, I have been notching a floorboard to reckon the days since I have been locked up here. I have watched the moon as it has tracked across the slit window, waxing and waning. I believe now that it is Christmastide again, though I could not say the precise date: when I am hungry I sleep more, and I cannot vouch that I have not lately upon occasion slept a day and a night and another night through.

  This that I have written has been another way of marking time. When I was first imprisoned, the words rushed out headlong; now there are days when I manage to set down a few only before I am weary and have to lay aside my pen. I fear now that these words that have cost me so much, they will never be read. For if anyone meant to come for me, then surely they would have come by now.

  In the first days, Matthew came up to see me from time to time. He never brought food, or took away my chamber pot – that is always Mary – but he would talk to me. He would tell me that I must not worry, for he did not think me bad, only weak; in my mind, I knew he meant. And I would say that he was right, that I
was weak, but I was resolved to do better. He would say that I could come out when I had mended my behaviour, and I would say that I believed I had mended it, and he would tell me not to interrupt. But then, the next time, I would keep quiet, and he would chide me for my sullenness; though when he did so, he would wear a little smile.

  I think the smile was for how perfect it is, his plan. I think that though by the end he did not believe Mother sick, but rather eaten up with vice, still he took her reputed sickness – the weakness of mind I had insisted upon – and turned it on me. And though I think his plan will be the death of me – though I am certain I will die in this attic, for one more winter will surely accomplish that – still I came to look forward to his visits. I think of what Bridget said of Mother, how a person can grow to love their gaoler.

  When he stopped coming, I thought it might have been the smell. For though the attic is not short of fresh air, the weather was warmer then, and I do not deceive myself, I know it must have been unpleasant. But I was aware, too, that I was hearing less and less from below: there were no visitors, and the noise of the stablemen disappeared from the yard. September passed, and I did not hear Ruth Edwards’s voice. Some days now I hear barely the creak of a stair, so I know that Matthew must be gone from the Thorn. I hate to think what business draws him so often away.

  Once, early on, I set up shouting and yelling through the slit window, yelling for help to anyone who would hear me. It was when you would still hear the whistling and laughter of the stablemen, and I heard them fall silent at my calling. Before long, Mary Phillips came up. On that occasion, she told me scornfully to hush my noise. She said, ‘Do you think anyone will come? We have told them you are mad, like your mother was mad. We have told them you are a danger to yourself.’ Then she smiled.

  The next day, instead of shouting for help through the slit window, I called out, ‘Fire! Fire!’ That brought Mary Phillips up running, and she hit me more than once. When she had gone, I touched my fingers to my ear, and they came away red.

  After that I never put my back to her. I think it was only a few days later that I waited until she was standing with the door open, balancing my used chamber pot, and I pushed her. But she did not fall. She dropped the pot, which rolled and splashed its contents across the floor, but with her two hands she caught herself in the doorframe. She went out, stepping round the bad part of floor, and she did not come back then for four days. By the end of the fourth, when she brought a pail of hot water and a scrubbing brush, a change of clothes and a clean chamber pot, a jug of fresh water and a round of bread, I had been lying on my back, catching stray drops of rain on my tongue where the wind drives them through the slit window.

  Since then, Mary has been almost civil to me. She brought me fruit when it was the season; though I suppose it would be inconvenient for her, were my teeth to fall entirely out of my head. She brings me news from the outside, though I know it is only the news she wishes me to hear. Of the woman burned at Ipswich, say: Mary Lakeland, burned awake, for no one would touch her to throttle her first. She had killed her husband by witchcraft; my brother convinced her jury of that. To kill your husband is counted not a murder but a treason, and the penalty for a woman is fire. When Mary Phillips told me of it, I remember thinking, Robert Taylor will be contented. She told me that the day was blustery, and that the woman was slow to burn.

  There had been eighteen got at the Bury assizes, she told me that, too. I think of the tall, pale woman Matthew must have paid to give my evidence. I think of those hanged, and of Mary Lakeland, and the scores of others from the trials that have followed: in King’s Lynn, in Huntingdon and Northampton. A hundred women, more: Mary Phillips never fails to bring news of my brother’s accumulating successes. But she has told me nothing of Rebecca West’s fate, or Bridget’s. I have asked after them, more than once, but when I ask, Mary turns away, pretends she does not hear. I fear that Matthew did as he had promised, and that he paid Bridget a visit, the morning after he had locked me away.

  At times I have feared also that my mind is growing weaker. I do not see the devil, but I see shapes in the shadows, and strange fancies plague me. Some weeks ago, a small bird found its way in through the window, and frightened me with its scuttering, panicked flap. When it had exhausted itself, I found that I was too afraid to help it to freedom for I had convinced myself that the bird was no natural creature. That it was waiting for me to come near. You might understand it, could you read his ledger, as I have, with all its listed imps. Try to dream up a thing that is like a rabbit, like a greyhound. A thing that is like a dog, like a fox, but is not wholesome. Creatures that take a simple shape, but you know they are not simple. The greyhound might drop down on you from the ceiling. The rabbit might open its mouth wide to speak, or to reveal a hollowness that is vast and beyond knowing.

  To fight these fancies, which I know are not real, I know I must think of things that are solid and true. I must occupy myself: pace up and down, look through the items that are stored in the crates up here, or when it is dark, feel through them. Lately Mary Phillips brought up the trunk of Mother’s clothes, and also boxes containing Matthew’s books from his old chamber at Mother’s house. Mother’s Bible was among them, that Bridget had. I do not like to think of how it found its way back into Matthew’s hands. At first I could not bear to read it, with the pages turned down to those verses pertaining to whoremongers, sorcerers and idolaters. But it is the only Bible I have, and so before too long I opened it, and when I did, I saw something.

  That the bent corners were not of one page, but four or five pages clumsily turned down together. I saw that, and suddenly I knew that it was not Matthew who had marked those pages, in some rage against Bridget. It was Mother, with her swollen intractable fingers, who had turned them down. As some sad reminder to herself, perhaps, of what she deserved for her mistakes, she had done it. I see now that Mother was a prisoner of more than one kind. And I wish now more than anything that I had not joined Father in telling her so often that she was tired. Perhaps she might have found the means, somehow, to get better. But we told her she was tired so many times that, at last, I think that was all she knew how to be.

  Sometimes I wish that I could follow Mother into death. For it is I, not she, who is tired now. But my chest has kept rising and falling, steady and stubborn. I have kept pushing my pen across the page, choosing words, trying to put down the truth about Matthew. But I have done, now: I have said what I can say. I have set forth the facts of the case, and I have not strength to do more. It will be up to someone else, now, to judge them.

  43

  The twenty-ninth day of September, this year of our Lord 1647

  I did not think I would have cause to pick up this book again, this pen. But something has happened: three days ago I did something, and I scarcely believe I have done it. It is a sin. And though I know I should not justify it, here is my justification.

  Think of being in the dark, day on day. Your arms and legs, despite your best efforts, they waste. Your hands grow pale and thin. You read and write, walk up and down, but it is hardly enough to occupy you between the appearances of the woman servant who brings you food and water, though never enough of either. A day comes when she does not arrive, and you cannot hear any sound in the house. That is not unusual; it has happened before. You are calm, because yesterday she brought you a rare bowl of water to wash in. It is cold, and the surface grimed, but if need be you will drink it.

  Another day passes, and there is no sound of her on the stair, though you have done nothing to displease her. When she brought the water she took away your gown for washing, leaving you in a worn shift, and you are cold. These months, you have lost flesh, and a thought strikes you. You open the crate that contains the gowns your stepmother willed you. On top is the mourning gown, the one that belonged to your true mother once, altered to fit your stepmother. A little short, then, but no need to let the hem down any more, for who is there to see, in here, if you show your ankles a
nd shins?

  You try on the gown, but as you attempt to lace it up, there is something bulky, something scratchy in the bodice, something there that you had not noticed in shaking out the gown and folding it. You reach in to feel what it is, and what you touch makes you wrench off the gown and tread it away from you till it lies puddled at your feet. A minute passes. Tentative, you lift the fabric. To free what has been sewn into the bodice, you risk cutting into your fingers, for you have no scissors and you will not put your face near it to use your teeth.

  When you have freed the item, you place it on the floor in front of you. It is a child made of dark hair. You do not touch it much, but crouch there for a long time, looking.

  You have no fire or pins, but close by stands the bowl of water you were brought for washing. Knowing everything you know, you must decide what to do.

  You examine the mourning gown again, how delicately the item was sewn in. Cleverer by far than putting it in one of the pockets. You think of your stepmother’s will, the precise wording: I do most particularly will her all my clothing. At the time, you took it as a slight, thinking she meant some insult by it, to leave you a heap of gowns that she knew would never fit. You see now that, far from slighting you, she was directing your attention. That it was not the clothes themselves that were the legacy: it was what they concealed.

  At last you pick up the item, and handle it. It feels rough and light. You run a thumb over the child’s blind features, its nubs of arms and curled legs. Feeling almost foolish, you put it into the bowl of water, where it floats: with one finger, you push it under. Small bubbles emerge from where they must have been trapped in the weave.