And who or what was Isobel Gowdie? A battered wife, or a powerful cunning woman? A healer, or one capable of doing harm?
Margaret hesitated, but had to ask. “That woman who came out of your house. She blamed you for the storm. Surely, you do not have that kind of power?”
“Oh, aye, I have power to raise the wind.”
“But—how?”
“When the clouds begin to darken and move, I say the charm and strike the rock. And the fairies do help, to be sure.”
Margaret was tightening her horse’s girth. She stroked Miranda’s neck. It sounded like Isobel had waited until a storm was rising, then said her charm . . . and took credit for it.
“But that woman is Agnes Pierson, who does tarry with the minister,” Isobel said.
“Mister Harry? What do you mean by tarry?”
Isobel didn’t answer. She turned and wrapped her plaid round her shoulders. “Now we go to Kilrock Castle. And I will cure the Lady Henrietta.”
“I pray,” Margaret said, “that Henrietta will regain her spirit, and not become dull and dead-looking like the MacQuarrie lass.” After the battle, Cromwell’s soldiers had invaded towns, plundering homes and ravishing many Covenanter women, like Jean MacQuarrie. Her mother had told Margaret about the lively Jean, who had become so gray and dismal, even suspicious of others who meant her well. Suspicious towards Margaret’s father, because the Hays had not been attacked. Some people thought John Hay had provided support to the English. But of course, he would never do that. “People just want to find someone to blame,” her mother had explained.
“Come.” Isobel walked toward the road.
Bessie, heeding Margaret’s order, had brought the carriage and was now waiting in the farmyard.
“You can take Miranda,” Margaret said to Isobel, and without hesitation, Isobel turned back and jumped lightly up onto the horse. “Horse and hattock, ho!” she shouted, and took off at a gallop. How did Isobel, who had no horse, learn to ride like that?
Margaret stepped into the carriage and sat beside Bessie. At the reigns, Ben Buchan urged the horses forward, and they were off.
Margaret had never let anyone else ride Miranda. What had possessed her now? Why had she so easily loaned out her precious filly? She did want Isobel to go as quickly as possible to Henrietta, but there was something else. Isobel commanded respect—deference, even. She did have power.
When the carriage arrived at Kilrock Castle, Isobel was already waiting in the courtyard. Standing straight and proud, she seemed taller now, no poor wretch, no mistreated wife. Isobel was clearly in charge.
Lady Anne, short and bustling, appeared in the doorway and showed them immediately to Henrietta’s chamber.
They stepped into the room; its stone walls unadorned. A recessed window on one side brought in some light and a vigorous fire in the fireplace made the room warm. In the middle, the four-poster bed, draped with embroidered white satin, framed the small figure beneath a featherbed. Her face flushed with fever; Henrietta glanced at Margaret then closed her eyes.
Margaret sat down beside her.
Isobel, standing at the foot of the bed with her basket, addressed Lady Anne. “How long has she been like this?”
“A week and three days.” Lady Anne paced back and forth in the small room. “Ever since she came home.”
Isobel reached into her basket. “Straw, clay, and an herb from the field,” she said. She turned to Henrietta’s maid, Jean, a young dark-haired lass who was hovering in the corner. “This must be boiled.” She handed Jean the straw. “And this washed.” She took out a lump of clay and a bowl. Jean wrinkled her nose and shook her hand, reluctant to take the slimy clay.
“Go on now, Jean,” Lady Anne ordered.
Jean took the clay and hastened away.
When Jean came back, Isobel took the boiled straw and mixed it in the bowl with the herb, a trailing stem of green leaves, and the clay. She spat upon it and shaped it with her hands, then applied a portion to Henrietta’s forehead and temples. The remainder, a sticky lump, she held high above her head and marched about the room, chanting another rhyme, while the three other women watched.
“I forbid the quaking-fevers, the sea-fevers, the land-fevers, and all the fevers that God ordained, out of the head, out of the heart, out of the back, out of the sides, out of the knees, out of the thighs, from the points of the fingers to the nibs of the toes; let all the fevers go, some to the hill, some to the heap, some to the stone, some to the stock. In St. Peter’s name, St. Paul’s name, and all the saints of Heaven. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!”
Isobel recited the charm twice, then again as she circled the room, stopping only when Henrietta opened her eyes.
Margaret frowned. Could a fever be charmed out of a person and transferred to a hill or a stone? But, she remembered, Jesus himself had cast demons out of a man and into a herd of swine. So why was that a holy miracle, and this would no doubt be called magic? Perhaps because Isobel was not a minister authorized to say a public prayer.
And because Isobel was a woman.
Henrietta was breathing evenly now, and her expression became placid as if she’d just stepped out of a storm-tossed boat onto dry land.
“Oh,” Margaret breathed, taking her friend’s hand.
Henrietta smiled.
“Lord in Heaven!” exclaimed Lady Anne. She threw herself down on Henrietta, weeping with great heaves, as Henrietta murmured, “Mother, be calm.”
Lady Anne looked up and stared at Isobel in wonder.
Margaret, now standing beside the bed, found herself holding the slimy straw-and-clay lump that Isobel had handed to her after the charm.
Henrietta’s red hair was pushed away from her wet forehead, and the bright redness of her cheeks had faded. A sliver of sunlight crept through the window, illuminating Lady Anne’s white neck against her green velvet gown.
Isobel sank down on the Persian carpet and bowed her head. With her pale hair hanging down and her body drooping, she looked exhausted.
Margaret studied the lump of clay in her hand, and now she saw that it had a shape: an oval, no, a pear shape, almost like a woman, with two tiny mounds that could have been breasts and a nub at the top for a head. She made to hand it back to Isobel, who shook her head.
What should she do with this? She looked around then gently placed the clay figure on the window well. It would dry and Henrietta would have it as a reminder.
Margaret leaned over the bed. “Henrietta,” she whispered. “How is it with you?”
Henrietta cast aside the satin featherbed and sat up. She looked at her mother, at Isobel, and then at Margaret. “I believe I feel better.” Her skin had a bit more normal color now, and her eyes were brighter. She slowly drew her legs up and over the side of the bed.
“Not so fast, m’lady.” Isobel rose from the floor and came over to the bedside. “Ye might be feeling better, but ye must go slow to come back to the living.”
“Yes,” Henrietta said in a quiet voice. “It was as if I were dead, and I now feel more alive.”
Lady Anne stood and cried out, “May the Lord be praised!”
“And Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and helpers three,” Isobel said, echoing some of the words from the curing. “And Queen of the Fairies, fair Maeve.”
“The fairies,” Henrietta cried. “I thought I saw angels, but perhaps they were the fairies.”
“Around your bed, as we are now,” Isobel said in her low, deep voice.
“Yes . . . how did you know?”
“I did see them, too. Queen Maeve and her sprites.”
Henrietta looked confused. “But—” she protested, turning to Margaret, “I didn’t see those—or if I did, I didn’t know their names.”
“St. Michael, St. Mary, and the Hol
y Three,” Isobel sang, humming in a voice like a reverberating cello as she moved about the room. Bessie remained standing at the foot of the bed, as did Margaret, and watched Isobel.
Lady Anne leaned over and stroked Henrietta’s arm. An air of serenity seemed to radiate around mother and daughter. Lady Anne looked up at Isobel again, and stood quickly. She thrust her hand into a fold in her gown, pulled out a small leather bag, smiled, and gave it to Isobel. “Thank you, and may the blessing of Our Lord be yours, my dear.”
“My lady.” Isobel bowed in a manner less like a peasant than a queen acknowledging her subjects. And then, like quicksilver, she slipped out of the room.
Bessie’s face widened into a big, one-toothed smile.
“Cunning women,” Bessie told Margaret on the way home, “know the fairies and the saints and all the other beings most of us can’t see, and they can call on them to help with their healing.”
Margaret hugged her arms. “I know that, Bessie. Mistress Gowdie was telling me about the fairies and her powers.”
Bessie looked at her with alarm. “When did she tell you that?”
“Just today, in her hut, when I went to fetch her.” Margaret wouldn’t mention that she had been there before.
“Ach, ye mun’ never go into that hut again. Didn’t I warn you about that woman? You must take great care with her, as her powers can go to harm.” She sighed. “But today, they went to the good. She prayed to the saints, and they brought a cure for the lass.”
“Mister Harry says that praying to the saints is evil, too. It is superstitious, like worshipping idols. He says it is of the devil.”
Bessie lifted one eyebrow. “And dost thou believe that what just happened was of the devil?”
Margret shook her head no. “Henrietta has been returned, and it looks as though the life has been restored in her. How can that be evil?”
Bessie didn’t reply. Margaret could see that she was being prudent, not wanting to contradict the minister lest she be seen as one of “them.” And indeed, Mister Harry probably would call this witchcraft. She thought of Jane Dunlop’s witch trial. Margaret’s father said the punishment was just desserts for the evil she had done, but her mother had shaken her head in sadness, saying she was horrified at “the terrible times we live in, when we return evil for evil.” Margaret had heard her parents arguing long into the night.
After today’s events, she knew that Isobel’s magic was real. It was good, not evil, no matter what Bessie or Mistress, or even Isobel, said.
And she intended to learn more about it.
ISOBEL
Chapter 26
I crossed the farmtown yard to Elspeth Nychie’s hut and stooped to enter. This hut was almost identical to mine, but Elspeth had a table and two chairs. Elspeth and her husband, Jacob Taylor, unlike most of the farmtown people, had been able to keep some furniture over that hard winter when everyone else had had to burn theirs for heat. Maybe they had stolen a tree from the Lochloy Wood, the laird’s wood, or perhaps it had come from a neighboring farm.
Elspeth’s brittle gray hair was bound up on her head today, but as usual, the strands fell out all over, making her look like she was always in a hurry with no time to fix it proper. She leaned over the table toward me. “I dreamed we danced at the Downie Hill,” she said, almost in a whisper. She stood up and waved her arms in exuberant gestures. “Twere you, and me, and Lilias Dunlop and Bessie Wilson. We danced and frolicked and feasted!”
“We put the besoms in the beds,” I added, “and off we flew to the fairy house to eat and to dance!”
“So, you had the same dream?”
“T’were no dream. We do fly from our beds in the night, real as can be, though none of the people can see us. They see our besom and think it our body.”
Elspeth furrowed her eyebrows in a skeptical look. “In my dream, we went in the likeness of a crow and a hare. You a crow, and I a hare.”
“And we went to the dye house of Alexander Cumling.”
“Yes! But how—”
“And we took the yarn and cast three knots and put it in the dyeing vat.”
“To make it all black!”
“We have our powers, and we made some mischief.”
“We did!” We both laughed with loud guffaws, and Elspeth smacked the table.
“But I hear,” she said, “that Mister Harry be plotting to bring you to the council, and there to try you as a witch.”
“As he did my mother.”
“Your mother, Agnes Grant.”
I hunched over, remembering. “They poked her and prodded her, and when she fell asleep, they pricked her with pins. Over and over, until she cried and wailed and admitted to whatever they forced her to say. ‘Did you attend Black Mass with the Devil? Do you repent?’ And when she denied, they asked her again and again, for days and days, not letting her sleep at all. She was bruised and red with sores all over, and almost unconscious, until finally she confessed.”
We huddled in our plaids, squeezing tight our shoulders as if to protect ourselves from the memory. “I never suffered so much, even through hunger and cold and weariness from work, as to see my mother murdered like that. I felt it in my own body, that burning.”
“And Mister Harry, the examiner.”
I stood up and raised my fist. “I did vow to exact revenge on Mister Harry.”
Elspeth grinned wide. “You raised the wind and knocked him down, and now he is a’fever!”
I smiled with pride. “And we must make sure that there he’ll stay for two months or more.” I took my sack and laid on the table the things I had gathered: the flesh and guts of toads, pickles of barley, parings of fingernails and toenails, the liver of a hare, and bits of cloth, all slimy and rough and soft together, a feast for the devil. “And now, to task!”
I took my knife and hacked the ingredients into small pieces. Elspeth brought a pan of water, and I dumped the minced concoction into the water. “Now we let it steep, and tonight, we will say the charm.”
In the evening, when the men and the bairns were asleep, I came back to Elspeth’s hut. The concoction was now congealed, and we poured it into a sheep’s bladder. Outside, we walked a little distance from the farmtown, set the sack on the ground, and together recited, “He is lying in his bed; he is lying sick and sore; let him lie intill his bed two months and three days more.”
“And we shall say it thrice against the recovery of Mister Harry.” Twice more, we chanted the charm.
We took the bag and set off on the road to Auldearn. We would go to the manse and say the charm over his bed. Singing as we went, and all manner of folk could see what merry friends we were, laughing beneath the gloomy night sky, but no one was on the road at this hour. When we arrived at the manse, we peered through a window. There was Mistress Forbes, sitting in the parlor in her sour loneliness, even though ’twas the middle of the night. We went ’round, but the back door was locked. We couldn’t get in the house.
The next day, we set out again, over the fields and into the village, where we came across young Jane Martin, a bonny maid all pink and dimply, on her way to the manse where she served alongside Agnes Pierson.
I waylaid Jane. “Jane, we want to make some mischief for Mister Harry.”
“And we need your help,” Elspeth added.
Jane smiled slowly at the thought of the mischief, then frowned. “Not to raise the wind, I won’t.”
“Nay, Jane, not to raise the wind. We want you to smear your hands with this potion and rub it on Mister Harry, then swing the bag over him in his bed. And say this rhyme, though say it quietly: ‘He is lying in his bed; he is lying sick and sore; let him lie in till his bed two months and three days more.’ Ye must say it thrice o’er.”
“And why should I do this?” Jane asked with fearful eyes.
“Because you know how he hurts with his words and his witch hunts. You know he is an evil man who claims to be of God. And that does make him doubly evil.”
Jane looked up at the sky and swiped a lock of curly blonde hair out of her face as she considered. Her skin was flawless, soft and creamy. Elspeth and I shared a look that said, the perfect trap for that man.
“Yes, I know what you mean,” said Jane at last. “He does swipe and grab at me whenever I pass, the lech’rous demon.” She smiled again. “And I will do it!”
Mister Harry would welcome Jane into his chamber . . . that we knew. And for her to swing the bag and pretend it was a healing cure was no large task. She simply had to utter the words quietly, and the sick man would most likely not hear.
HARRY
Chapter 27
The doctor had finally arrived, and Agnes Pierson showed him into Harry’s chamber. Harry winced as Doctor Urquhart came in carrying a large black satchel. He knew what was in that bag.
The doctor placed the bag on the floor and sat on the chair beside the bed. He looked around the room, then at Harry, and sighed.
Doctor Urquhart was a squat man who moved slowly with an air of dreaminess, as if he were thinking of anything but medicine. He was the only doctor in all of Morayshire, and rarely came to Auldearn. Though Harry knew this procedure could very well prove more painful than the injury itself, he was grateful that the doctor had come for him. No doubt this had been because he was the minister, an important person.
“Lie still and open your arm,” the doctor said.
Harry lay back obediently and pushed up his sleeve.
Doctor Urquhart took a tortoiseshell case out of his pocket, opened it, and removed the thumb lancet, a two-edged knife with a sharp point. He laid the point on Harry’s arm at the inside crook of the elbow and pierced the skin. A copious amount of blood immediately spurted out and into the cup the doctor held.
Harry gasped, but he was determined to endure. He was sure the treatment would alleviate his fever, shivers, and the huge red swellings on his leg.
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