Bitter Magic

by Nancy Kilgore

  Everyone froze. Mother glared at Father.

  “That curse came after the baby died, Father.” Margaret’s voice was barely audible, her head hung down.

  “I find her tales quite fascinating,” Andrew interjected.

  Father frowned at him.

  “I have read records of other witch confessions,” Andrew went on. “And her testimony follows a known tradition. The stories of a covenant with the devil, and so on—these have all been reported in similar stories by other witches.” Bessie leaned over to take his plate, stepped back, and paused behind him to listen. “But this woman adds such embellishments,” he continued with a wave of his hand, “and in poetic language.”

  “It was fanciful stuff,” Mother said. “It reminded me of Shakespeare . . . like the witches in Macbeth.”

  Margaret looked up. “I thought you disapproved of Shakespeare, Mother.”

  “I disapprove of your reading Shakespeare before you complete your religious education. But to complete your education as a woman, you will read it. He is the foremost author of our century.”

  “Shakespeare took some of Macbeth’s story from the history books,” Andrew added. “From King James’s tome on witchcraft, in fact. King James believed that a witch raised the wind and caused a storm to destroy his ship at sea. Shakespeare tells the same story in Macbeth.”

  Mistress Collace, who had been unusually quiet, now spoke in a contemplative tone. “Then much of what this woman says and practices has been said and done before. Yet she does not read, nor do her associates, so how could they learn such things?”

  “Her mother was a witch, an evil woman who caused the death of my father and brother,” Father said, glancing up at his wife—who, he knew, did not believe this.

  “The tradition of fairies, elves, and witches goes far back in this land.” Mother sighed. “The peasants do believe it all, and I’m sure these magical practices are passed from one generation to the next. But with the Reformation, and now the Restoration, we hope to bring greater light and love into their lives.”

  “I do agree, Lady Elizabeth,” Mistress Collace replied. “Would that we could teach them, show them, a finer understanding, the higher truths of our Lord.”

  “I see that we are not in accord on this matter,” said Father, “but be advised that the leaders in the kirk and in the region know, as do I, that the only way to eradicate this wickedness is to destroy it.”

  After dinner, Margaret and Andrew walked the castle grounds. Her feet took her naturally to the path toward the sea, and so they strolled between the fields of flax, now blooming again as if the terrible sandstorm of the past year had never happened.

  Andrew took her hand. “When shall we be married, my love?”

  “Oh!” Margaret was surprised by his bold declaration. “I don’t think I am ready to set a date yet, Andrew. There is so much that remains unsettled in my mind.”

  “Unsettled? In your affections for me?”

  “Oh, no, not that. It’s only that I have been so troubled by this trial.”

  “You have feelings for the witch?”

  Feelings? She gazed down over the fields, the farmtown invisible now except for a few distant wisps of smoke, the sea beyond. Andrew had scoffed at her sympathy with Isobel, and he clearly thought that fairies were only superstition. She looked up at him, his face so open and caring. But he did love her. And she loved him. She could trust Andrew with the truth. “I know you do not believe it, but I am convinced that she has extraordinary powers. She found Henrietta, and afterward, she used charms and rituals to cure Henrietta of her wounds. And yes, I visited her in the tollbooth, and I felt such compassion for her suffering.”

  “Do you believe in her magic?”

  “Some of it. The songs to mark the hours and days, the rhymes for the plants and the animals. These things are real, Andrew, and a comfort to the soul in ways that our kirk is not. They find the spirit in nature and link our spirits with the Earth. What Mother said about this being a long tradition is correct, no doubt; but the tradition is not all bad. It’s a way for people to make sense of life, and God within it.”

  “Well said!” Andrew exclaimed. “Though it is not something to be shouted from the rooftops.”

  “No. But if we are to be married, you should know my deepest thoughts, and I yours.”

  Andrew turned and took Margaret’s other hand, smiling into her eyes. “There is no one with whom I would rather converse.”

  She looked into his sweet face and felt a familiar warmth in her body. All will be well, she thought.

  They walked along the ridge that skirted the farmtown. Below, in the farmyard, children were playing, and a woman came out of one of the huts. She watched the children, then lifted a square of peat from a stack and carried it back inside. Ahead of them, the sea roiled and churned.

  “But what about the other side of that tradition?” he asked. “The witching?”

  Margaret sighed. “This is what burdens my soul. The things Isobel said, about the devils and spirits and the evil she caused.”

  “She is a very imaginative woman. In another class of society, in another time and place, perhaps, Isobel Gowdie would be a poet.”

  “Yes. I think that is part of her charm. She is a storyteller in the farmtown. But Mistress Collace convinced me that much of her own story is imagined. It must be, because some of the elements don’t make sense. I don’t believe she has the power to kill people with her magic arrows.”

  “No. But most of Auldearn does believe that.”

  “Including my father.” Margaret sank down onto the sand. “How can I think of marriage when they are going to murder Isobel? My father is going to burn her at the stake!”

  “Simply for inventing stories.”

  “Not only the stories. She performed the rituals, said the curses, and wished evil upon my family, and that is a great wound to me. There is no evidence that her curses caused harm. The sandstorm came, but she couldn’t have created that. Mister Harry fell from his horse and lay in bed, but her potions didn’t keep him sick. My little brother was ill and died, but that had been expected since his birth. But they all believe that she is the cause. She believes it.”

  Andrew sat down beside Margaret and picked a flax flower. “In England, witch trials have all but died out. There are so many questions, and questionable executions. Women tortured and forced to confess. The educated people have come to understand that belief in fairies and magic and witches is superstition. This superstition was held by the common people, but also by the ruling class that executed them. Now that the magistrates and judges are more educated, they see no need for witch hunts.”

  “England.”

  “It’s where I would like to take you.”

  The two sat in silence, gazing out over the farmtown toward the horizon and the sea. Andrew’s presence was ardent and tender and sparked within Margaret deep affection and excitement. Even though he didn’t believe exactly as she did, there was something exactly right about being with Andrew. If he left Morayshire without her, there would be nothing but dreary emptiness here.

  HARRY

  Chapter 50

  Alexander Brodie cleared his throat. “Let us begin our deliberations.”

  After her confession, Isobel had been taken back to the tollbooth. The men were now sitting in a circle formed by chairs and the front pew. They had eaten a meal at the alehouse provided by Maggie Burnet, one of the women Isobel had named as part of her coven. Maggie, in her white cap and smudged apron, had bustled around them, insisting that she was innocent. “Thou knowest me, m’lairds,” she proclaimed. “The alewife I am, and never a witch!” They had eaten hastily and come back to the kirk.

  Harry sighed. “Tis a troubling task, gentlemen, to understand the workings of the devil. I know that some believe I am too zealo
us in my pursuit of evil and my desire to bring salvation to Auldearn, but it is my hope to save just one more lost soul.” He studied the faces around him, not sure whether the others were on his side.

  Hugh Rose wiped his high forehead and balding pate, then raised a finger. “Isobel Gowdie has told us many a tale and many accounts of her good deeds. She claims to have a cure for a baby who has been bewitched: transferring the evil spell to a dog or cat. She claims to heal bruises and sores with her magic. And, I must say, I admire the poetry of her speech.”

  “Admire?” Harry almost spat out the word. “Is there anything to admire in this creature?” Of course, there was something he had admired, at least before her time in the tollbooth—but he would not reveal that here.

  “All of this is magic, of course,” continued Mister Hugh, “and not the work of the Lord. The remainder of her confession tells of her numerous evil deeds. These things are so wicked, so staggering in their wickedness, that they are hard to comprehend.” He shook his head.

  “Her relations with the devil are the most troubling of all,” Alexander Brodie remarked. “To think that she would renounce her baptism in our Lord Jesus Christ and submit to baptism with this demon.”

  “But these tales are so fantastical,” commented Alex Dunbar, the schoolmaster in Auldearn, a tall man with red hair and beard. “This meeting with the devil in the kirk, and the devil sucking her blood and having carnal copulation with her . . . how can this be believed?”

  George Phinney, an official from Kirkmichael, leaned forward in his seat. Phinney was the broadest man in the room, and his bright red doublet emphasized his bulk. “Is she imagining this, or is there a man she met in the kirk, someone large and hairy whom she took to be the devil? Perhaps she committed adultery, and means to cast blame on the devil?”

  “That explanation holds water,” said Dunbar. He cocked his head and cast a glance at the men around the circle.

  “But then, would she add all the other adventures simply to justify this one action?” Mister Hugh asked. “No; it is clear to me that this woman has, indeed, dealt in black magic. Whether in a real or a symbolic way, she has trafficked with the devil and the demons of hell.”

  “Symbolic?” Mister Harry cried. “Do you not see, then, Hugh, how very real this evil is? I myself have felt proof of this. When I was abed with fever and swellings, these women came to witch me, and made me suffer greatly.”

  Brodie nodded, but remained silent. Did Brodie believe him or not?

  Harry winced. He himself served as titular head of the commission, but Brodie’s vote would carry the most weight.

  “There are so many details to her story, and she seems to add more and more as she speaks.” Dunbar spread his arms. “It’s as though she is inventing things as she goes along.”

  George Phinney rubbed his mustache. “Undoubtedly, the woman is mad.”

  John Innes cleared his throat. Innes was a lawyer and scholar, and as notary, he was fastidious in his recording of Isobel’s words. “I have read numerous accounts of these trials, and it is remarkable how these witches repeat the same stories of their doings: the Black Mass, the rebaptism, night flights, destroying the crops . . . all that we have heard here, and almost in the same words. But this woman adds fascinating detail that has never been heard before.”

  “Would this not, then, be the proof of her guilt?” asked Mister Hugh.

  “Or proof of her imagination and inventiveness?” Dunbar added.

  “She herself admits her guilt and expresses sincere repentance,” Brodie observed.

  Harry smiled, knowing, as they all did, that confession and repentance were not a means of absolving guilt, and would serve only to satisfy her executioners that her soul was prepared to meet God.

  Brodie raised an eyebrow. “Can you read us one of those statements, John?”

  Innes riffled through his book and found the page. “‘Alas!’” he quoted, “‘I deserve not to be sitting here, for I have done so many evil deeds, especially the killing of men. I deserve to be riven upon with iron harrows and worse, if it could be devised.’”

  “But I say!” exclaimed Dunbar. “This ‘killing of men.’ What on earth could that mean? There was one man she named, William Bower, a miller in Moynes. I knew Bower. He was already dying of consumption. How could Mistress Gowdie claim responsibility, while flying through the night or otherwise? To me, this indicates that much of her testimony is fabrication, perhaps due to morbid and unrealistic guilt.”

  “Some do believe, “Brodie said, “that this woman is mad—a case of possession by the devil. And she certainly has given us testimony that she was coerced. It may be that her dealings with the devil were involuntary?” He glanced at Harry, then at Innes. “Can you read something which points to that, John?”

  As Innes searched through his book, Brodie and Phinney lit their pipes. Harry crossed his legs and jiggled his foot at a feverish pace. Had he been too zealous?

  “Ah, here is one example,” Innes said. “She tells how the devil subjugated the women into subservience with beatings. ‘He would be beating and scourging us all up and down with cards (the wooden implements used for carding wool) and other sharp scourges, and we would be crying, Pity! Pity! Mercy! Mercy, our Lord, but he would have neither pity nor mercy. When he would be angry at us. He would grin at us like a dog, as if he would swallow us up.’ And in another place, she says, ‘He made us believe there was no other God but him.’”

  Mister Hugh bowed his head, shaking it from side to side. “Twisting the words of the Ten Commandments.”

  “It is as I thought,” said Brodie. “The women were subjugated, enslaved almost, to this demon, whether in their imaginations or otherwise.”

  “The theory of possession is persuasive to me,” Dunbar declared.

  “But, if she was possessed,” countered Harry, “then all the more reason for her execution. A madwoman possessed by the devil, and one who has much influence on her countrymen, is certainly a danger to our society.”

  “And to our religion,” Hugh added. “Our faith is based upon righteousness and truth.”

  “We are commissioned by the Lord himself to eradicate iniquity,” Harry continued. “And we must seek out the other witches in the coven.”

  “But,” Dunbar protested, “is this not madness in itself? She has named so many—at least fifteen other women, and two men. Do we try all of them, as well?”

  “And does not this long list of names also speak to the fact of her madness?” Phinney asked.

  Harry raised his hand to interrupt the discussion. “Gentlemen,” he said, “Isobel Gowdie has confessed to witchcraft, and she is aware of the gravity of her sin. It is not only biblical, but also the law of the land, that a witch must be condemned to death.”

  John Hay, the Laird of Park, had been silent up to this point, but now he spoke. “And we do know that this woman’s mother was also a witch. Agnes Grant’s evil curses killed my father and my brother. There can be no doubt that these curses carry the power of the devil to destroy.”

  “We must examine her once more,” pronounced Brodie, “before our final verdict.”

  Harry sighed again. He had not expected such differing opinions from these men.

  MARGARET

  Chapter 51

  Margaret and her mother stepped down from the carriage into a crowd of people around the kirk. Isobel’s fame had spread throughout the countryside, and the kirk was now filled with not only the Auldearn congregation, but also lairds and gentry as well as farmers, merchants, and craftsmen from all parts of Moray. The lower classes, the peasants and laborers, had been turned back from the door in favor of more important people, and had to stand outside. As they passed through the kirkyard, children ran about and the people shouted and laughed, eating the bannocks and dried fish they had brought, drinking from flagons o
f ale, and generally enjoying a festive atmosphere.

  Lilias Dunlop, who was carrying a large basket, and buxom Agnes Pierson stood a few paces from the others. Some of the farmtown folk huddled and muttered to one another, glancing at Lilias and Agnes and directing slurs in their direction. “Poisonous toad!” hissed Jonet Fraser. “Eel-skinned witch!”

  “No more a witch than thee, Jonet Fraser!” shouted Agnes. “Thou flap-mouthed traitor!”

  Inside the kirk, everyone sat in their pew. When John Innes stood, the crowd fell silent. He lifted his book and read, “At Auldearn, on the twenty-seventh day of May 1662, Master Harry Forbes, minister at Auldearn; Mr. Alex Dunbar, schoolmaster and clerk of the session of Auldearn; George Phinney of Kirkmichael; John Hay of Auldearn; and Alexander Brodie of Forres witnessed the confession of Isobel Gowdie, spouse to Hugh Gilbert of Lochloy. On said day, Isobel professed repentance for her former sins of witchcraft, and confessed she had been overlong in the devil’s service. Without any compulsion, she proceeded in her confession, in manner following . . .”

  Isobel, who had been imprisoned in the tollbooth for over a month, stood in front of the congregation and raised her head. Her dress hung limp on her gaunt body, and her eyes, magnified in her sunken face, stared into some mysterious place beyond the ceiling. “I acknowledge, to my great grief and shame, that fifteen years hence, I denied Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the Kirk of Auldearn, and gave over my body and soul to the devil.”

  Margaret was again sitting between Mistress Collace and her mother. Fifteen years? How could that be? That must have been part of her fantasy world, as Mistress Collace said.

  The kirk was quieter this time, a crowd of rapt, staring faces, ears straining to hear every word.

  Isobel then repeated, almost word for word, her other statements, but now elaborated in greater detail. She spoke of her coven falling to their knees with their hair loose, bowing to the devil, who had taught them many terrible things. She had seemed so weak when she came in, but now she stood up tall and spoke clearly. How had she rallied this strength and power?