by Julie Hearn
Sam can feel his legs wobbling. He is useless, under that gaze of hers. Totally, utterly useless. “It is,” he mumbles “’Tis truly beautiful, that is.”
In her mind Nell can see the newborn, all swaddled up and doing its best to keep breathing. She has come here on a mission, to save its soul, and now Sam Towser is stuttering like an idiot. And that sly, hoity maid …
Something similar to a growl rises in her throat, and she surges forward, both hands raised.
“Oh! Oh!” The stupid-looking daughter has found her tongue and is squealing like a piglet. “Help!” she yells. And she cringes back against the fire surround, her open mouth drooling as the cunning woman’s granddaughter goes hurtling across the room and snatches her sister’s sampler straight out of her hands.
“Father! Someone! Help!”
And as the fingers that still tingle from touching damp baby hair prepare to rip straight through an embroidered lizard and the words “Virtue is … ,” the parlor door crashes open and in strides the minister.
“Ooer,” mutters Sam. He had been halfway across the room, preparing to grab Nell by the back of her apron—by the scruff of her neck, if necessary. But one look from the minister sends him scuttling into a corner.
It is the three girls, then, who face the man.
“What devilment is loose in my house?” His voice is soft, but there is danger in it. His eyes flick over each child in turn. Grace. Patience. And … ah, yes … the scruffy little heathen whose grandmother follows the old ways.
Nell returns his gaze with as much courage as she can muster. His look is like a shadow falling or the brush of cobwebs on a damp day. It makes Nell shiver. She is glad when his eyes return to the curiously flushed face of his older daughter.
“Well?” he says. “Answer me.”
Nell opens her mouth, to speak out of turn, but never gets the chance.
“’Twas a bee, Father. It landed on my sampler. Patience feared it might sting her, until this … this person shook it off.”
What?
Nell swallows, startled by the smoothness of the lie, which is also an unexpected reprieve.
The minister narrows his eyes. He looks across, just for a second, at the blacksmith’s red-faced son, then back at his pink-faced daughter. The expression on his own face is grim. He would kill her, Nell realizes. If he thought she had been dallying with some lad, even just speaking to one, he would kill her with his bare hands.
“So where is this bee?” the minister says. “For I see it not, nor do I hear its droning.”
“It has flown, Father. Through the window.”
“Ah. Then you have had a lucky escape, child, have ye not?”
“Yes, Father.”
Nell clears her throat. “We knocked,” she pipes up. “Me and Sam. But no one came. We been sent to fetch you, if you please, for a newborn in the village. He be … he be not right lusty, so they want Gods words spoke.”
Slowly the minister turns her way.
“I could have you whipped,” he says. “Both of you. For trespass.”
Nell lowers her eyes. She is still clutching the sampler.
“I could have you put in the stocks,” he adds. “For your insolence.”
Nell flinches. There are spells to turn situations like this around, but she has never needed one, until now, and isn’t sure how to begin. Her granny would have managed. This is how:
A SPELL TO MAKE SOMEONE LIKE YOU
Hold the head high, and banish all niggling thoughts. When the mind be as calm as a millpond, call silently upon the energy of the southern quarter—the Power of fire. Visualise thyself wrapped thrice around by red-gold light. Breathe in the light. Feel the strength and the warmth of it, within and without. Know thyself blessed and worthy of all company. Wait three beats of the heart, then smile at thine adversary. So mote it be.
Nell, though, is in no mood to befriend this particular adversary. She keeps her head down and neither smiles nor speaks. Her hands feel all sticky. They will leave dirty marks on the sampler, but she doesn’t care about that, either.
Sam is the one who grovels. He does it well—partly because he is terrified, but mostly because he knows, just as surely as he knows that “S” is for “Sam” and that the sun rises in the east, that groveling like an idiot gives him a fighting chance of returning home unwhipped.
And just when Nell thinks she will puke if she has to listen to another minute of the boy’s bootlicking drivel, the minister sweeps across the room and flings open the door.
“Get out,” he orders.
Sam goes, but Nell stands her ground.
“The newborn,” she says. “What of him?”
“I will attend to the babe directly.”
The girl, Grace, prods her sharply in the ribs.
“My sampler,” she says, “if you please.”
Nell looks round at her, really looks; and what she sees makes her fearful in a way she cannot fathom. There is no emotion at all in the older girl’s eyes, and her face is as blank as her square of linen would have been before she began to embroider it.
Slowly Nell passes her the sampler. Her mouth, as she does so, seems to open of its own accord.
“Beware,” she says. “For a bee, when provoked, do sometimes leave its sting behind.”
The words are out before she has time to consider them. Later—weeks later—she will remember and regret such boldness, but for now she simply wipes her hands on her apron, turns on her heel, and marches away.
The minister’s voice follows her into the hall, the menace of it ringing in her ears as she lets herself out of the house.
“I mislike thee, child. I mislike thee heartily. Mark well what ye do, for the Lord is watching—and so am I.”
Miserable old ranter. Sour-faced bogger. Hope the piskies pay a visit. Hope they come by night, slip-sliding down the chimney to curdle the milk and dance widdershins round your table. Hope they pull out every one of that Grace girl’s eyelashes while she sleeps. Hope they piss on her sampler….
Sam is waiting for her at the gate.
“She be swooning for me!” he declares, his face shining. “She be wanting me like nothing on earth, don’t you think so?”
And Nell pushes him with such unexpected force that he goes sprawling against the gate’s iron bars.
“You’re a bogging fool, Sam Towser!” she shrieks. “An’ you’ll keep well away from that hoity maid, if you’ve any sense at all in that head of yours.”
Sam looks at her in total surprise. Her face is all screwed up and dark with rage. She will never be a dainty thing. Not like Grace. His Grace.
“You’re just a chit of a girl, you are,” he says. “An impudent chit of a girl. Best you get along home to your granny. Go on. Afore the minister hears more of your shrewish tongue or the piskies do stuff petals in your mouth to sweeten it.”
Nell needs no more telling. She is already running.
And hussssh goes the whispering and the rustling through the hedgerows as she passes. Trouble stirring … trouble a-coming … oooo yessssssss.
The Confession of Patience Madden
THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1692
Grace was the pretty one. It wasn’t supposed to matter,, but it mattered to me. I would lie awake in the dark, feeling my face with my fingers, hoping my nose might have gotten smaller, by some miracle, and my cheeks less like dumplings.
My wakefulness had grown worse since we had moved across the border. The new house was on a hill. It was big and bleak; all covered over with creepers and full of shadows. I knew it was the Lord’s wish that we should make it our home while Father brought the one true faith to the ignorant and decidedly scruffy people of the village. But I didn’t like the house. It gave me bad dreams.
“Stop fidgeting!” Grace would snap at me. “Go to sleep.”
And I would try not to mind that her face, next to mine, looked like an angel’s.
Our mother had been beautiful. Beautiful and good. I liked to t
hink that she had followed, in spirit, from the place where she had birthed us. I liked to picture her hovering over our bed at night, a silent, invisible presence. Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, I could have sworn true that her hand came to rest on my brow. I imagine it still, even though I am almost three times the age she was when she died and no longer care that my brow, like the rest of me, is loathsome to behold.
I was a baby when our mother got sick and went away. She went away and never came back because the sickness killed her. Grace and I rarely spoke of her anymore. She was dead, and that was that. But we knew where Father kept some of her things—the precious things she brought to the marriage, before becoming a Puritan—and Grace knew where the key was hidden.
The night it all started we had been in our new home no more than two moons and were still finding it strange. My father had gone down to the village to baptize a baby boy. It was hot for April, and Grace was as restless as a linnet in a cage. She ate next to nothing at supper and seemed distracted during household prayers.
I caught Father watching her as we knelt. I fidgeted to get him to notice me, too, but the looks he threw me were stern, as usual, so I gave all my attention to the Lord.
After Father had departed, and Grace and I had finished our chores, I went, as was becoming my habit, to the window seat of our bedchamber to sit awhile and look out over the garden. I had a whole world of imaginings in my head in which to lose myself. Different family. Different home. Different face…. If I sat for long enough, I no longer saw the treetops or the lengthening shades of evening, so lost did I become in choosing a dress from my make-believe closet or conversing with an imaginary brother who adored me.
That night I was dragged from both my imaginings and the seat, by Grace.
“Come with me “she said. “Quickly”
She had a key in her hand.
I wanted no part of it. But “Hurry “she said. And she hustled me out of our chamber and along the passage, her fingers digging into my arm as we moved. Outside the room where Father slept, we hesitated.
“Quickly,” said Grace again, and in we went. The sun had set, and the room would have been in darkness but for a ripe, round moon casting silvery beams across the floor. The great oak chest stood at the foot of Father’s bed. It was strangely carved, with creatures that were neither man nor beast, and it looked, to me, like a coffin.
“Come away,” I whispered. But Grace was already down on her knees, turning the key in the lock. A bittersweet perfume rose up as she lifted the lid, and for a flicker of time it seemed the mother I had barely known was right there, about to hug us.
“It’s here somewhere,” my sister muttered. She was pushing aside brocades and velvets—crushing them, without caring. A belt like a length of knotted rope, only softer and prettier, fell to the floor. I wanted to cry out, Be gentle! Be gentle! But she would have laughed in my face. And anyway, I, too, wanted to rummage.
I knelt down beside her.And “Oh … ,” I murmured, and “Oh …̶ again as my fingers fastened on one lovely thing after another. A comfit box, shaped like a scallop shell … a silver knife strung on a chain of silver acorns … a goblet with a rim of jeweled stars.
Such beautiful, beautiful things. My mouth watered as I touched them, as if they were spun from sugar. The comfit box was easy to open. There was something in it—a white substance, hardened to a lump. I couldn’t resist a tiny lick. But, ugh—salt. She’d kept salt in there….
I wondered what the knife was for. For peeling fruit, probably, or snipping ribbons.
“Ah,” said Grace. And she pulled out my mother’s looking glass. It was an object known to us, after all, it was kept hidden away and we possessed no other. Father used it, from time to time, when he preached against vanity. “Woman!” he would thunder, from the pulpit. “Beware the futility of preening and self-love. For thy name is Eve. Thy name is vanity!” And he would raise that glass, in both hands, and tilt it to reflect a face here and a face there. The old, the young, the wrinkled, the pretty … nearly every woman in church would lower her eyes then, so revolted did my father look when he caught a flash of them between his hands.
I wasn’t interested in the looking glass. The lying glass. Satan’s mirror. I had found a cherrywood box full of tiny things—buttons and pins, bodkins and beads, and spools of silken thread. And nestled there, glinting strangely, was a tiny clasp in the likeness of a frog. An exquisite little frog, its warty greenness made of close-set emeralds, with two rubies for the eyes.
Beside me Grace was preening.
“You’re vain,” I said. “You’re like the daughters of Zion who were haughty and walked abroad with wanton eyes. The Lord will smite you for that, Grace. He will make you stink and go bald!’
She paid me no mind, only smiled at her image. Her face, in the moonlight, looked dreamy and far away. She was a girl who was always gazing into darkened windows or pools of water—her only means, ever, of catching her reflection, unless she was lucky enough to see herself in church, when Father swung the glass.
“If you were a boy,” she murmured, “a handsome boy, would you fall in love with me? Would you do anything my heart desired? Would you?”
I should have guessed then what was brewing. I should have read the signs. But I was young, and lone, and conscious only of my mother’s absence and my father’s complete indifference. That desire could be flung out, like a net, went beyond my understanding. And the idea of my sister beguiling someone—anyone—because she was as hungry for affection as I never entered my head.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
It was then we heard the commotion in the yard. A clatter of hooves on cobbles.
“It’s Father!” said Grace. “Quick!”
And she slipped the looking glass between the folds of a cambric nightgown and jumped to her feet. I still had the cherrywood box, held open on my lap.
“Come on, you stupid goose. Hurry!”
My fingers touched the emerald frog. It was so perfect. So small. And I wanted it so badly that my hand closed around it and took it away as naturally as a pike’s mouth would open and close around a living thing in a small, dark pond.
Then I snapped the box shut and thrust it to the bottom of the chest.
“Hurry.” Grace slammed the lid down and turned the key. She hadn’t noticed my thieving. She thought I was just being slow. A slow, clumsy goose. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
I slept badly that night. The emerald frog was hidden beneath my side of the mattress. In my dreams it was choking, and I was to blame. I didn’t see Grace get up or hear her lift the window latch. When I woke, with a start, she was leaning out, bending to the dark with her arms outstretched. She looked like a swan or maybe a dove. It seemed to me she was going to fall.
“Grace?” I murmured, unsure, at that second, whether I was truly awake. She whirled round. There was something in her hands; something plucked from the air or from the creeper that grew on thick twisted stems all over the front of the house.
“What is it?” I said. “Is it a bird? Is it a bat? Is it dead?”
“Be quiet,” she hissed. “Go back to sleep.”
She was about to shut the window. But before she did, she leaned again into the night and made a sound like she was tutting or spitting a mouthful of gruel. I know now that she must have been blowing a kiss. A kiss …
I know, also, what it was that she caught. What he threw to her that night. For I found it, long afterward, beneath her side of the mattress. A wooden heart, branded through with the letters “S” and “G.” A rough, ugly thing compared to my frog, but equally precious, to her, I dare say. And as dangerous. And as impossible to keep hidden away for long.
MAY 1645
It is still dark on May Morning, when Nell opens her eyes. The cunning woman is talking in her sleep. “Ground ivy,” she mutters. “Two drams …” and then, “No whitethorn in it … No … No … Leave out the whitethorn.”
“Granny!” Nell scolds. “
You be blathering again.”
The old woman stirs. Her body, beside Nell’s, is as small as a child’s and as bony as a bird’s. “Violets,” she mumbles. “For the throat ache …”
Nell frowns. Scuttling and nibbling sounds she is used to, because there are mice, starlings, and all sorts sharing this roof space. The rain, too, sometimes wakes her, for there are holes in the rafters where the thatch has fallen in or blown clean away. Her grandmother’s nighttime chunterings, though, are a recent thing, and most unnatural.
Wide awake now, Nell rises from the pallet and climbs down a ladder into the bottom room. The fire, with the great cauldron slung over it, has burned to a pile of ashes. The air smells of wood smoke and sour herbs.
“Out of my path!”
A dun-colored chicken with eyes as dark and stupid as currants scuttles heavily away.
May Morning … Nell opens the cottage door, pushing hard against damp hinges and a great tangle of honeysuckle. To the east, faint streaks of light and the promise of another fine day.
Not many years ago fires would have been burning throughout the night on hilltops all around. And somewhere there would have been a circle. A circle of green branches, with hay stooks marking the four quarters and flames glowing bright in the center. A circle cast in secret, near oak trees and running water. Nells granny would have been there, presiding over everything with her wand, her knife, and her platter of salt. There would have been dancing—wild, spiral dancing—and a feast of Sabbat cakes, dripping with honey. Just before dawn the young would have gone whirling away into the woods, and any babies conceived would have been special. Merrybegots. Natures own.
Nell is a Merrybegot, and proud of it.
Ever since she can remember, she has washed her face in the dew every May Morning and gone with other children to gather flowers for the pole. Today, though, there will be none of that. And what will the piskies make of this sudden break with tradition? Piskies love a bit of revelry, particularly with summer coming to warm their lairs and stir the blood in their stringy veins. The piskies wont think much of the minister for spoiling everyone’s fun. Really, someone ought to think about appeasing those piskies, with a bit of cake or a few primroses scattered in the lanes.
