by Jason Beech
13.
Mary caught a whiff of gunpowder carried through the bars above by the wind. The Royalists would storm the walls and quench their blood-lust before long. She squeezed her face as far as it would go between the bars to get close to her sister. Elisabeth’s limp neck could barely lift her wan face. When it could, Mary shivered, unsure she wanted to see it. Elisabeth’s red eyes and shrunken skin made the situation far from positive.
The chaos outside calmed Mary’s nerves as she concentrated on Elisabeth. Mr Harrison must have heard those nerves, for they wound tight as spun string and every movement plucked them. She held his fascination. His idiotic walk around her showed his foolish thoughts, like he played at being a lord. She intimidated him. She pulled at something within him. Reminded him of something, someone – she knew it.
“Elisabeth.”
Elisabeth had curled into a ball as far into the corner as the rough stone wall would allow. Whatever daylight reached inside reflected off her sister’s clammy flesh.
“Elisabeth … please take this.” She thrust a goblet half-filled with water through the bars. She’d taken it from the desk. Seen the Captain’s filthy lips sip from it, but it was all she had at hand. Elisabeth didn’t shift, so Mary placed it gently on the hard floor.
She listened to the shouting in the square, voices hoarse and desperate, the beat of horses’ hooves. What to fear most: that they belonged to the Royalists, or the town’s garrison. Either way, men doomed her and Elisabeth both.
As the cruel barks of soldiers and the sad wails of normal folk fell, as Mary guessed their blood had, urgent steps trumpeted a decision made. She grasped at the bars, impatient again. “Elisabeth, take a drink, damn you. You have to come to your senses before they start asking their questions. You must have your wits … Sister, listen to me.”
Captain Billingham swung open the door and marched in. He backed into the wall and kept his small hand on the large handle, all attentive to the tall man who marched in after him. The Captain’s lids dropped low over his eyes as he stared at her. She shook at how he framed her in those eyes – as if he had her where he wanted. Mary rubbed at her neck as she stood and diverted her attention to the man who mattered. She noted his annoyed glances at the Captain. He wouldn't let the little man influence his opinion, good or bad.
Jacob scurried in last, unable to lift his attention from his feet, clear he wanted to share some sympathy.
She shivered at her grasps for any straw.
“Let's get this started.” Harrison inclined his head to the Captain who did the same to the doorway. In stepped five men. The last halted at the sight of her. His mouth shifted like Punch’s, but words slipped from his tongue and back down his throat. His heavy steps, authoritative on entry, hollowed, as if he walked on air to the chair on which Harrison invited him to sit. All five new men took their seats while Billingham closed the door on the town and took his position by the dignitaries. Jacob melted into the wall at the back, and Harrison strolled back and forth as he pretended to read the parchment in his hand.
Mary burned her eyes into the General. He must stand and call the whole thing out as a farce. Let these men know she and Elisabeth couldn't have had anything to do with Jack’s death. The General bent an ear to the man by his side. His attention skirted round her, his eyes on her feet, her hands, a moment on her breasts, but he refused to engage her soul. If they rested on her eyes she knew he would fall into guilt. She recognised the man’s power swayed on the edge of the abyss, and the iron in her blood bent for the first time.
14.
Samuel waved the paper to the jury. Its snap and crackle induced Jacob into a foot-shuffle and arm-rub. Elisabeth stood at the bars, alert, his cup in her hand. A drop of water rested on her chin, and her other hand gripped the bar tight. Samuel’s head bobbed up and down in appreciation. She had appeared finished, but the end had brought out the girl’s spirit.
He clapped once. Time to stick a dagger in her heart. Mrs Smith entered through a side-door, all meek and subservient to the black-clad men. A bow here, a weak, forced smile there. Samuel knew she had iron up her arse to force through her retribution on the sisters. Her feet were soon by the bars. He caught her sly glance at Mary as she opened the cell and proceeded to undress Elisabeth.
“No.” Mary laid supplicant hands on Mrs Smith.
The older woman froze and gathered in her dignity. “Sir?”
Samuel raised an eyebrow to Billingham, who barged into the women’s space and palmed Mary away until the side-wall stilled them both.
“Keep your hands to yourself.”
Billingham turned away, though he kept his spot with his back to Mary to block her view. He sleeved the spittle from his lips. “Sir.”
“Thank you, Billingham.”
“Sir –”
“That’s all, Billingham. Leave the talking to others, now.” Samuel stepped face-to-face with Elisabeth. He kept his eyes on her face, though he could see her naked flesh in his peripheral vision. Mrs Smith stood to the side, her eyes averted from everyone, alert for the next instruction.
“Take a seat.”
Elisabeth’s wide brown eyes had nothing to say – perfect saucers, wells she invited him to drink from. Taste her innocence. Elisabeth did her best to cover herself, but Billingham dragged her arms from her body and forced them to dangle by her side so she remained exposed. Samuel itched from Mary’s reaction, who he watched from the edge of his vision. She wrung her clothes and cast dark thoughts his way.
“Let her be, Billingham.”
The short man’s face screwed as if Mary wrung his skin, too. “Sir. I'm Captain.”
“Leave her be.”
The General sprung to his feet. “Can we get on with this? My stomach is growling and there's a damned army out there ready to slice our throats.”
Sweat rolled from Samuel’s neck – demanded he pull at his shirt’s collar to wipe it away. He held firm. If anybody noticed such an action, he'd lose face.
“You stand accused, Elisabeth Whittaker, of being in league with Satan himself. What have you to say?”
Elisabeth lifted her eyes to him. Fingers crawled inside and pulled at his stomach until his breath came out a loud gasp. The five jurors cocked their eyebrows when he turned to them. He fought the sensation and pushed it away. If the devil did reside within her, he would surely have done worse than turn his stomach. He would have ripped Samuel’s intestines from his body and dangled them before him. The words seated on his tongue would slur, he knew it, if he let them loose. How calm she sat, how composed in her silent accusation. His eyes rested on her breasts. The devil pulled on his loins. He snapped his eyes away, to Mary, whose scowl contrasted so much with Elisabeth’s … innocence.
Billingham fussed around her with his cane and demanded she lift her feet from the ground. He rapped her thigh if her feet touched the floor. She blinked, but kept her tears behind her eyes.
Samuel cleared his throat as quietly as he could manage and calmed himself. The men behind shuffled their feet and burned judgement into his back. “You deny the devil lies within you?”
“I do, sir.”
“And yet you were caught in the company of one of this town’s heroes, Jack Hays, who proceeded to die from some curse you – or whatever lies within you – infected him with.”
“No, sir, I didn't curse him with anything. I have never been in league with any devil.”
“Then why is it you were good friends with a girl, Sarah, who died at the gallows in this very town last year? When she died, for the crime of witchcraft, did you take it upon yourself to replace her as the devil’s vassal?”
“I am nobody's vassal, sir, other than my betters. I am only here because I tried to help Jack. He's my friend.”
Her toes dipped and padded the floor. Billingham tapped her ankle bone. She winced and lifted her knees again, but refused to look at him.
“In what way was he your friend?”
“My friend, sir. I h
ave served him in the tavern many a time. He took a shine to me, but that is all. He was sick. He asked for my help.”
Samuel tapped a heel on the wooden floor and raised an eye. “What kind of help did he need that he had to lie naked in his bed, in your presence?”
“I don't know, sir, other than he itched like mad, sir. He scratched and wriggled and tore his clothes free from his body. What could I do? I couldn't leave him be, to suffer like a dog in a ditch. Sir.”
Samuel harrumphed to give him time to think. He never met resistance like this, even in such a subservient manner. Women would cry, half-mad, and wail their innocence until their guilt squeezed out from the pressure. None ever sat with such composure.
“Why did you call your sister a witch, Elisabeth?”
Elisabeth snatched a glance at Mary and cringed. Turned away from her as if she expected a hand to rain blows upon her head. “Because …” Her lips trembled. “Because she practices witchcraft.”
“I knew it.” Mrs Smith couldn't restrain herself.
The men behind him murmured, some outrage he couldn't figure. How he had teased new information out of the girl should have pleased him, but again his stomach churned.
“Mrs Smith, you will contain yourself.”
She bowed her head, but couldn't straighten her lips.
He lifted Elisabeth’s chin with a finger, against all his etiquette, but he heard above the voices in the room a murmur of a storm to come, from the mouths of a crowd angry at its earlier treatment – when the cause of the town’s problems remained alive.
“How so, Elisabeth?” He played the patriarch, his tone smooth and inviting. This woman would spill it all, like they all did, as they hurried their voyage to the rope.
“Look at her.” Elisabeth kept her face turned away from her sister. She offered soft eyes to Mrs Smith. The older woman nodded, receptive to the narrative. Mary's shoulders slumped in disbelief, her mouth agape at what she heard.
Elisabeth raised her voice an octave, the better for the dignitaries to hear her all the clearer. “Look at her, sir. You saw the people out there, all skin and bone. Starved and half-mad. Now look at my sister. She's full. Her skin glows where theirs are dull and grey.”
Mrs Smith’s head bobbed in agreement. “It is true. You could hardly distinguish the people from the bare winter branches.”
“Mrs Smith, know your place.”
Mary’s jibe about Mrs Smith’s husband had clawed into the older woman.
“It’s the kind of accusation a witch might indeed throw, to save herself. After all, you’re not exactly skin and bone.” Samuel chanced a glance at Mary. Her attention had stitched to Elisabeth. He sored at how she had not noticed his intervention on her behalf. He doubted Mrs Smith had ever skipped a meal for as long as she had lived, and now he scanned the room – neither had these men of substance.
The murmurs outside heightened to a chant he couldn't make out. It raised the hair on his neck like pikes. The General drove his contempt through Samuel so hard it made the Witchfinder’s hands shake. He wrung them and cursed himself. He waved the paper in his hand to distract from the turmoil in his chest.
Billingham’s face bellowed red. He needed release, Samuel could tell. “Billingham, can you round up more witnesses?”
“No, he cannot.” The General stamped his foot. A vein in his temple pulsed like a worm’s wriggle to the surface. “We end this now. Has anybody any evidence that this woman is a witch? If so, step forward. Now.”
“Sir.”
Everybody squinted into the back of the room where Jacob had raised his hand.
15.
Jacob turned the coin Mr Harrison had given him round and round in his pocket. If he stopped, he might collapse to the ground, or succumb to a spell. The Captain puffed his chest because of the General’s intervention and had offered his opinion that the women must be witches, otherwise how could they step so far from society’s normal path? “They've infected a few women in these turbulent times. All trying to be independent. Chaos. Absolute chaos.”
The General, still on his feet, barked at the Captain. “When we require your opinion, we will ask for it. For now, shut your mouth, man.”
The Captain retreated and bowed his head, more fiery red than ever. Jacob stood beside Elisabeth, doing his best not to make contact. His sister filled his head, her head at an angle from how her neck had snapped. She had seen Elisabeth just the week before her death. Maybe the Mary woman had infected Elisabeth and his sister. He dared a glance at the older sister. She let her hair hang so loose. It enticed.
“What is it you have to say, boy?”
The Witchfinder raised a hand to protest the way the General had taken over the trial, but the old soldier stamped to the room’s front and cast his presence over the interrogator.
“She …” Jacob flashed a look at Mary, as if he had held his previous glance too long. “She … earlier, that is, when I took her down to the cell … she dug at me.”
“What do you mean?”
Shouts of “Hang ‘em” brutalised the air outside.
“Come on, boy, say what you mean.”
“She cast a spell on me. Or tried to.”
“What kind of spell?”
“She tried to seduce me, so I would let her go.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. She said nothing … but … I started … to go hard. Down there.”
16.
Mary put a hand to her heart as if the Grim Reaper had grasped it and would squeeze away her life any moment. “I didn't make you do a thing, Jacob.”
“You made me shift.”
“Look me in the eye.”
Billingham thrust himself in her space, close enough for spittle to splatter her face. “Why, so you can make him change his mind?”
“Yes. Yes. A dozen times, yes. With words. Normal words. To argue my case.”
The fraud, that jumped-up shit, the so-called Witchfinder, clasped Billingham by the shoulder and pulled at him. The short man spun and almost punched Harrison’s nose. Harrison leaned away in expectation, his eyes ablaze at the insult.
Mary thrust her breasts forwards. “I can't help that I have these, and that you men lust after them. Look at you all now, lusting at my sister. There's no need for her nakedness. You stripped her for your own perversions.”
Every man, along with Mrs Smith, swayed back a little, as if to avoid the devil as he projected towards them.
“You, Witchfinder, you're a fraud. You came here for a bag of gold, and you get the maximum if you judge us guilty. You filthy pig. You parade your virtue like you've never looked at my tits. But there you are, looking at them again.” She thrust her shoulders back and invited him in.
“You make me look.”
She laughed at the difficulty he had in lifting his eyes to hers. “Hypocrite.”
“Mary, quit now.” The General kept his face harsh, but she recognised the sentiment which twitched around his face.
“No, General, because you should be at the front, here, defending me. After all, it's I who has kept you and your kind so well fed.”
“That's enough.”
“No –”
This explosion at her betters convinced Billingham of her witchery. She didn't care. Her blood demanded she tell the truth. She would have continued but chants gathered on the wings of fury, ready to strike. The room fell silent, cowed by the danger outside. The chant gave way to a whistle, the sound they'd heard so much over the last few weeks. The cannonball exploded high on the wall. Stone scattered across the square outside. Shouts and screams made this room smaller, as if the walls closed in on them to squeeze away their lives.
The General rushed to the window to check the situation. He couldn't have stiffened any further if he’d died a week ago.
“Harrison, the verdict is given. The jury finds the two women guilty. They hang now.”
“General –”
“Now.”
Mary grab
bed at Elisabeth’s wrist, which hung limp. Her sister’s face drained to grey, as damaged as the castle wall. She muttered jumbled words. Mary’s energy pumped. Her eyes scrabbled for anything she could use as a weapon. The other lords murmured discontent, but another cannonball and the shouts outside made them concur with the sentence.
“My lord.” Harrison stepped into Mary’s space as he addressed the general. “This is not how it works.”
“Get those women out on the scaffold now and hang them in full view. We do not have the time for your nonsense – Witchfinder.”
Mary took a moment’s comfort in the General’s sneer at the title, Witchfinder, until she settled her gaze on Harrison’s sword, which swung in its sheath from his belt. She drew it and pointed it in Harrison and the General’s direction.
“Mary, no.”
Harrison swayed this way, then that. She waved the sword with his movements and expected him to make a thrust at her any moment. She ought to leave her sister alone with these animals, after what she said, but she kept an iron clasp on her wrist and pulled her up.
“Get dressed, Liz, we're leaving.”
“Mary, I planned to find you innocent of the charges. I swear to you.”
“You're full of horseshit, Mr Harrison, as is every man behind you.” Mary positioned herself so she had them all in her view, including that toad Billingham.
“How will you escape the town?”
The General snorted. “How do you think we all have our rounded figures, Witchfinder? A tunnel runs beneath her tavern. Some of our enemies have no qualms when it comes to trade.”
“Why not feed the whole town?” Harrison blinked at Mary.
“Because the General here wants the town under tight control. They see this hero unaffected by starvation and they think him invincible. Nothing can be his fault. So they look for blame elsewhere. And so here we are. Witches.”
The Witchfinder palmed the guard’s weapon down. The guard appealed to the General for a decision, but the man couldn’t spit out words. “Go. Jacob, head out with Mary. Get her out of here.” Jacob rubbed at his knuckles. “But she stays here.”
