The Minister's Daughter

by Julie Hearn

  “Those love potions …,” she murmurs. “They don’t always work.”

  Nell tucks her up like a poorly child and goes back down the ladder to rake the hearth and feed the chicken.

  It is time, she realizes, to let everyone know that her granny is sick in her mind. It is time to stand alone as the village healer and midwife—that is, if folk will let her.

  Her own mind, she is sure, contains enough of the Knowledge now to conjure a remedy for just about everything from itchy scalps to gouty toes. The properties of every herb, root, flower, seed, gum, bark, and berry she is ever likely to use are clear in her head. She can distill, infuse, and preserve as necessary. And she understands the significance of adding magical things—the skin of a snake, flakes of iron, foam from the sea, or wine in which a ruby has been swirled seven times.

  The cunning woman has taught her well, for as long as she has been able. She might not have covered everything, but it is enough to get by on, and the rest will come with experience. There can be no more lessons. For her granny’s moments of clarity are so rare nowadays that when they happen, it doesn’t seem kind to press for more Knowledge. The past … that’s all the cunning woman wants to dwell on now. Little bits of the past, as bright and precious as the lozenges of glass that once formed a picture in the window of the church.

  It is weeks since Nell and her granny last showed their faces at church. A Sunday in the village might as well be Tuesday on the moon, for all the cunning woman knows or cares anymore. Even if Nell were to get her ready this morning and down through the fields in time, it is doubtful she would sit still for the sermon. She would dance a jig, more than likely. Or rattle off various ways to pull a tooth without pain. Or loudly accuse the minister of never smiling or of stealing gooseberries from someone’s garden. She would behave, anyway, in an odd and unacceptable manner. People would get annoyed. Children would take fright. No one would understand.

  And so Nell stays home and lets her granny sleep. She is in no great hurry herself to meet with the minister and his daughters—not after their last encounter. Best let the dust settle on that one, she thinks. “I don’t suppose we’ll miss much,” she tells the dun chicken. “’Twill be the usual rant about hellfire, I imagine. No more sermons on frolicking, though, I reckon—not now. Hah!”

  She has a pile of purple flowers with dangling roots to sort through. Saffron: a powerful herb, to be used sparingly lest it cause convulsive laughter and too rapid a pulse. An excellent remedy for yellow jaundice, so long as no more than a pinch of the grated root be taken, in a syrup of honey and white-wine vinegar.

  Nell feels peaceful—happy, even—as she takes the large heap of flowers and roots onto her lap and reaches for her knife. The villagers have always respected her granny. Once they know how things stand, they are bound to feel compassion. And if they doubt Nell’s ability to tend to their ills alone—well, it will be up to her to prove herself. She can do that. She knows she can. She no longer doubts it. Then she and her granny will be all right. They will have enough to eat over the winter, and her granny will not have to worry about a thing. Not a single thing.

  Who knows? she tells herself, flicking petals as dark as bruised thumbnails from the edge of her knife. Who knows, if she earns everyone’s trust and respect quickly enough, she might even get to deliver Grace Maddens Merrybegot—wherever it ends up being born. If it has to be birthed in secret, then is she not the only midwife suited to the task? The only one they can trust? The minister might even send her by carriage. What a thrill that would be.

  At her feet the dun chicken makes a lunge for something.

  “Off!” commands Nell, nudging it away with her bare feet and reaching down to retrieve a dropped root. “It may look safe, but it isn’t. ’Twould probably make you puke until your feathers fell out, so don’t touch it. Don’t be fooled.”

  The minister’s daughters cannot tell who is present in church and who is not. They cannot tell because they dare not look round. They have perfected the art of stillness, these two, as they sit on their usual bench right up at the front, with their heads bent and their hands already steepled in prayer.

  Behind them the villagers shuffle and cough and peer expectantly at the door. For the minister is not preaching the sermon today. Somebody else is. An important visitor, from far away.

  And he is late.

  Patience Madden grows restless. She tugs her sister’s sleeve.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” she whispers. “About the daughter of Herodias, who was given the head of John the Baptist, served up on a platter like a mess of brawn.”

  “Shhh!”

  It was murky, first thing, and although the mist has cleared, there is a mushroomy smell of autumn in the air that sneaks into the church whenever the door opens.

  It wafts in now as the big door bangs, and the congregation turns, like one body, to gawp at the person just arrived.

  Matthew Hopkins. Witch-finder General. Come all the way from the place called Essex to rout Satan from their midst.

  The congregation gasps, for although he is a small person, his style gives him height and a regal presence. His expensive broad-brimmed hat tilts disdainfully as he takes stock of his surroundings, and his Geneva cloak swishes like a kings mantle as he strides toward the pulpit.

  He used to be a lawyer, this man, so he knows full well how to mesmerize an audience—how to put the fear of God into them.

  Already, before he has opened his mouth or even reached the pulpit, the villagers are falling silent. Coughs are being smothered, and little boys are nudged hard to make them behave.

  For who knows whether a coughing fit or too much fidgeting might turn out to be proof of Satanic possession? Who’s to say? This witch-finder has already drawn confessions from dozens of folk in the place called Essex. Ordinary folk, probably. And good folk, too—until the Devil sweet-talked their souls away.

  At the back of the church a little girl gets the hiccups. Her mother presses a hand over her mouth as if to stop her screaming.

  Matthew Hopkins holds a gold-topped cane in his right fist, which he taps, deliberately, as he mounts the pulpit steps. The sound has a menacing ring to it, like carefully timed slaps.

  Towering now over everybody else, he leans forward and scans the rows of heads and faces intently. No one dares meet his eye. Even the Watchers look away.

  The minister is standing apart from the congregation, the better to oversee the proceedings.

  The witch-finder nods to him briefly, grips the pulpit rail, and unleashes, with all the subtlety and eloquence he can muster, enough fear of God to frighten twenty saints.

  Afterward … after he has swept from the church, with the minister and his daughters trotting in his wake, the villagers glance at one another in stunned silence. Is it you? their glances wonder. Can it be you? For it isnt me, I swear it. Then they look round, as the witch-finder suggested they should, to see who is missing … who dared not show themselves in the Lord’s house this day.

  And then they gather in huddles outside, to murmur, then to argue, as suspicion feeds on rumor and spreads from group to group.

  Four people were not in church: Mistress Bramlow and her baby boy, the cunning woman, and the cunning woman’s granddaughter. Mistress Bramlow has a reasonable excuse. She also has a husband to defend and protect her.

  “Never!” he shouts now, so all can hear. “Never would my Jenny dabble in Satan’s doings. The baby’s ailing, ’tis all, and ailing bad.”

  His usually frank and pleasant face becomes troubled, then grim, as he realizes how this situation could put those he loves in danger. Those women, the ones the witch-finder told of, the ones hanged as witches—Margaret Moore, who showered vermin on spotlessly clean houses; the servant girl Rebecca Jones, who willingly gave two drops of blood to the Devil; Elizabeth Clarke, the one-legged crone who suckled imps in the form of a white kitten, a fat spaniel, and a long-legged greyhound—they are nothing like his Jenny. And no one must bel
ieve it. Not even for an instant.

  “The cunning woman!” he blurts out, without really thinking. “Where is she?”

  And the muttering groups come together to form one crowd, and everyone looks to Jack Bramlow for further guidance. He hesitates then, knowing in his heart that he has no proof whatsoever that the cunning woman is a witch.

  He opens his mouth, prepared to soften such a wild accusation, but Silas Denby interrupts.

  “That purge she gave me weren’t right,” he whines. “She put the worst torment into me with that purge, and I be all out of sorts still and badly feared in my mind.”

  “’Tis true,” declares his wife. “’Tis true what he says. The cunning woman did him great harm with that purge. She’s the one—the witch among us.”

  Half a dozen voices rise up in agreement, recalling how a love potion did nothing but bring on heartburn or a tonic for the liver caused a rash of boils bad enough to scare the crows.

  No, someone argues. The cunning woman has birthed our children and cured our ills for many years. She is no witch. She cannot be.

  But then a young lad chimes in, recalling how the cunning woman met him and some others in the lane, just a few weeks back; how she looked at him slantwise and muttered a curse.

  “That’s right!” his father yells. “And you heard what that witch-finder said. A sly wench will keep up appearances while serving Satan all the while. ’Tis only by testing her the way he tested them witches in Ezlix that we will know for sure.”

  “Aye!” bellows Silas Denby. “Let’s float her! Let’s throw the cunning woman in the pond, neighbors, and see if she sinks or swims!”

  And “Aye! I’m with ’ee, Silas!” calls out the blacksmith, for no better reason than he cannot understand why his lazy scamp of a son went for a soldier, and he needs someone to blame.

  There are those who protest still, but their words are drowned out by ugly shouts of “Lets do it!” “Lets fetch her!” “Float the witch!”

  “Wait!”

  A woman’s voice, high-pitched and determined, cuts through the rest. Everyone swivels round. It is the ministers housekeeper, hovering there on the edge of the crowd—with them, yet slightly apart.

  “What about the girl?” she says, blinking fast. “The cunning woman’s granddaughter? For did I not see her with my own two eyes enter the bedchamber of Grace and Patience Madden? And did I not hear her ill-wishing them until they howled to be released from her hexing?”

  Silas Denby pounds his fist in the air and stamps one foot upon the ground. “Aye!” he roars. “Let’s float the brat as well.”

  But Jack Bramlow shakes his head. “Not Nell,” he calls decisively. “Not the child.” He frowns over people’s heads, directly at the minister’s housekeeper. “Those girls howled at all and sundry, so I hear,” he says. “Would you duck every woman and maid who went to gawp at them, Mistress? Just to be on the safe side?”

  The housekeeper looks flustered. She cannot answer that.

  “The cunning woman, then!” she shouts out quickly. “We needs must float the cunning woman. For she had a hand, I’ll wager, in whatever ailed those innocent, God-fearing girls.”

  Silas Denby, the blacksmith, and some of the bigger lads are already shifting impatiently and flexing their big hands as if preparing to wrestle with an ogre or storm a whole battalion of Cromwell’s army.

  “What are we waiting for?” shrills the housekeeper. “For if the old crone be a witch, best we find her out. And if she be innocent, what needs she fear from a bit of a drenching? We can always pull her out if she sinks.”

  Other women, silent up to now, find their voices and agree. They could not go along with the men’s rough talk, but what the housekeeper says sounds both fair and reasonable.

  “Fetch her!” they shout. “Fetch the cunning woman!”

  The men cannot change their minds. Not now. Not with womenfolk urging them on. Only Jack Bramlow hangs back as the blacksmith and Silas Denby lead other, rougher men away from the church, heading for the fields that lead to the cunning woman’s cottage.

  At the last minute he decides to follow on.

  “Go home,” he tells his daughters. “Let your mother know the way of things. Tell her I will be back directly.”

  “I want to watch the ducking,” says the middle one. “I want to see the old woman go splash in the pond. The others are going. Can’t we?”

  She is jumping up and down in her eagerness to follow the stream of women and children making for the wood where the pond lies in its circlet of rushes as still and as charmed-looking as a dish of mint tea.

  Jack Bramlow places a restraining hand on this daughter’s shoulder.

  “No,” he tells her. “This is no revelry, child. This is not for you to witness. Go straight home. Now.”

  With his children scuffling reluctantly away, he prepares to follow the men. Before he does so, he turns to the one other person still lingering beside the church and gives her a long, searching look. The minister’s housekeeper flushes, but she meets his stare defiantly. Then she turns and flounces off—not in the direction of the pond, like most of the other women, but back to the big house, where the minister and the witch-finder will be waiting for her.

  She hopes this pair of very important men will not be disappointed by the turn of events. After all, if the cunning woman is found to be a witch, it surely won’t be long before the granddaughter is suspected too.

  At the crest of the hill she stops to catch her breath and looks back down. She cannot see the other women, for the wood has swallowed them up, and they are already gathered beside the pond. Waiting.

  Away to her right she can just make out the men, drawing closer to the cunning woman’s cottage. From this distance, they look like animals moving slowly but surely from one stubbled field to another. What she cannot see is that the ringleaders have torn thick branches from trees and are waving them like cudgels. Jack Bramlow, walking many strides behind the others, just looks like a straggler—an animal that cannot keep up with the herd.

  The minister’s housekeeper pictures the cunning woman sitting unawares at her fireside. She feels a thrill of malice, which she stifles quickly, knowing it to be wrong. Still, who knows? The old crone might well be entertaining Satan this very minute. The men might burst in on all manner of evil doings, in which case she herself need have no qualms about the things she has said this day.

  Turning, she walks the last few steps to the gate of the big house. There will be a meal to prepare after she has reported back to the minister and the Witch-finder General. A fine meal, with sauces and sorbets. Perhaps Miss Grace will manage something light. She needs to eat, in her condition.

  No mention has been made of Miss Grace’s state since the cunning woman’s granddaughter let the cat out of the bag some weeks ago. The girls belly does not yet show, but the housekeeper is no fool. All the other signs are there. Still, she has given the minister her solemn oath—sworn on the Holy Bible, in his presence—that she will not breathe a word of it to anyone.

  “Whatever ails my elder daughter is the Devils work,” the minister told her, pressing his own gloved hand over her work-reddened fingers where they rested, like five sausages, on the Lord’s book. “Satan’s trickery! The result of witchcraft!”

  It had made her blush to feel his hand upon hers. It had made her go all of a flutter. So she had kept her own suspicions to herself, while the minister murmured on:

  “With the Lord’s help, we will trap the witch—the cunning woman’s granddaughter. But we must tread carefully, matching the Devil’s stealth with our own. In the meantime, Mistress, you must remain silent on the subject of my daughter Grace’s health. Do you understand my meaning?”

  “I do, sir,” she had replied.

  He had reached for his purse then, producing a sovereign.

  Keeping her gaze lowered, she took it. She appears to be in the minister’s confidence now, and it feels like a thrilling place to be. He is a devout
man, after all, and a clever one. And if he believes the cunning woman’s granddaughter hexed Miss Grace, why then surely his faithful servant has a duty to join him in his fight against such witchery.

  Knowing herself so privileged, so special to the minister, brings a smile to the housekeepers face as she hurries through the briars, scattering stones and breaking cobwebs with her great big feet.

  She has no more thought for the cunning woman’s fate than for the spiders that scuttle from their broken homes and the heavy tread of her boots. Nor does she see the thing that scrambles from the undergrowth, until it has lifted the hem of her skirt, grabbed the top of her right boot for leverage, and bitten her hard on the back of her leg.

  Snake, she thinks, whirling round in a panic. Or rat. Where? Where is it? Whatwasitandwherediditgo?

  And it is only because the piskie that attacked her is too old to move fast—or even to flash its arse anymore—that she spies it disappearing into a clump of thistles … a rickety, rheumy female, in a skirt made from a patch of sacking and belted with the strings of a stolen bonnet.

  “May the Lord and all His saints protect me!” moans the housekeeper. “A piskie. A piskie went for me, all unprovoked!”

  But she has enough of her wits about her, despite the pain in her leg, to remember the age-old line.

  “I see you. You see me. A question asked must be answered free.”

  Slowly, grudgingly, the ancient piskie parts the thistles and steps out, a scowl deepening the pits and wrinkles of its face.

  “Quickety-quick,” it rasps. “Traitor. Judas-person. Causer of harm.”

  The housekeeper flinches. Then she swallows and clears her throat.

  What to ask?

  The piskie, she knows, won’t linger long. So:

  “Will I be better off one day?” she wonders. “Will … will my situation improve?”

  The old piskie woman is sniffing and snarling and snorting and glaring all at the same time. Its nose is all bunged up still, with the memory that compelled it to bite this traitor-woman on the leg region in the first place—a memory of the old one asleep in the corn, unaware of the cruelty … the indignity … the terrible dishonor in store for her. And now the air is humming with the kind of information that most old piskie women would prefer to ignore as they live out their last decades in a rambling, toothless stupor.