The House Where It Happened

by Devlin, Martina

  A hubbub sounded at once. “Shame,” cried several voices. “‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’” came from another.

  “Silence in court,” thundered Red Heels.

  When the noise died down, Judge Macartney spoke. “I disagree with my learned friend. Witchcraft is the gravest offence known to man. Some say there be no witches at all, but only creatures silly in the wits. I am not of that view. There is no doubt in my mind that Satan’s slaves walk among us, spreading their contagion. I see no reason not to admit spectral evidence: the pretext that these women were elsewhere was a device, intended to cover their tracks while their shapes visited Mistress Mary Dunbar, reviling and persecuting her. God is not to be mocked, however. Such diabolical wickedness cannot and must not be tolerated. I recommend a verdict of culpabilis: guilty.”

  This caused a racket too, but the voices raised were approving. Both judges looked equally indifferent. The jury retired to consider their verdict. Onlookers stretched, and some predicted the twelve would send for candles and food, arguing long into the night. I stepped out for some air, and ran into Frazer Bell.

  “What will happen to Lizzie Cellar and the others, sir?” I asked. “Will they hang?”

  He footered at some objects in his pocket. “Even supposing they are found guilty, neither beast nor property has been damaged by them, and Mary Dunbar is the only human being harmed. By rights, they ought not to hang. But by rights they ought not to be on trial.” He sighed. “The judges are divided. That’s a good sign. It comes down to Mary Dunbar’s word against that of the accused.”

  “Aye, but she’s a lady.” He said nothing, and so I pushed on. “Do you believe them to be witches, sir?”

  “Ellen, I believe they’re as innocent of witchcraft as you are – but they can trust neither to God nor man to clear them. Folk are only too eager to believe the worst of each other. Did you not notice how all the accused were poor, or old, or ugly, or in some way deformed? Or maybe just quarrelsome? It’s enough to condemn them here. Yet I cannot deny that the peace of our neighbourhood is entirely disturbed. Something must be causing it. If not witchcraft, then what?”

  The slap of hurrying feet made him look round, and someone shouted the jury was returning already. The twelve were gone for less than the space of an hour. As I went back in, I passed close to the accused. There was Bessie Mean, who brewed up Eyebright tea for my father after he was laid low with pains and couldn’t work. And beside her was Lizzie Cellar, who came to Knowehead on my urging. A rank smell hung round the eight. I nodded at them, hoping to convey some fellow feeling, but they had formed a tight circle.

  I compared them with Mary Dunbar, sitting there prim and proper with her hands hooked into one another, the way we were taught in Sunday school. So genteel and elegant, she was – she might have been new-minted. Only her mouth looked out of place: her lower lip was ridged from where her teeth had bitten through.

  Chapter 15

  “Guilty!”

  The chairman of the jury spat out the word, and the eight prisoners burst into lamentations. Relatives in the court room added their voices to the hubbub.

  Margaret Mitchell reared up, ready to do violence towards any of the jurors she could lay those hefty hands of hers upon. “Guilty me arse. May you never get meat on a Sunday,” she snarled at the chairman.

  “Insolent drab! I’ll have you whipped,” he flung back, though he looked shaken.

  The clerk called for silence. “Pray be upstanding for the sentence of this court.”

  Judge Macartney did not look at the women as he spoke to them. “Have you anything to say before the court passes sentence?”

  Their mouths stayed closed – even Margaret Mitchell’s.

  “Very well. Probatum est – the case is proved against you. Nevertheless, the court is inclined to leniency. The witchcraft you practised, while pernicious, was of the non-lethal variety. Count yourselves fortunate your victim appears to be in reasonable health, despite your insidious conspiracy against her. You are hereby sentenced to imprisonment of twelve months and a day, and are further ordered to stand four times in the public pillory. This will give you ample time to reflect on your scandalous behaviour.”

  “Bain’t they to hang?” piped up a child.

  A man answered him. “Naw, the-day’s their lucky day. Maybes they put a spell on the judges, as well as on the lassie thonder.”

  The judges rose and went off together, with no sign of unfriendliness over their disagreement. Death, a whipping, or loss of liberty to those they dealt with was all in a day’s work to them.

  The soldiers prodded the prisoners and they shuffled out. Lizzie Cellar supported her mother, despite hirpling badly herself. I daresay Lizzie’s leg was hurting from lying in a dungeon. Becky Carson tripped over her feet and banged into the woman ahead of her. Margaret Mitchell turned, and I was sure she would say something cutting, but she caught Becky by the arm and half-carried her along.

  The crowd followed, danders up. When folk feel let down, anything can happen. One big ox of a fellow, who had to be a blacksmith from the soot only half-washed off his face, took a rope from round his waist and shaped it into a noose. He dangled it at the women, taunting, as the eight were loaded into a cart. Somebody picked up a stone and threw it at them. It bounced harmlessly against the wood, but Lizzie put her mother behind her for protection. Another man, whose aim was truer, took up a missile and it struck Lizzie in the face. She fell to her knees. Up went a roar of glee, and those closest to the cart started pounding and then rocking it.

  The captain of the guard let fly with a string of oaths, lashing out left and right with the hilt of his sword, while his soldiers used their musket butts to try and clear a space round the cart. But as fast as they beat people away, more rushed forward to take their places.

  “Get back, damn you to hell!” yelled the captain.

  “What are you protecting them for?” came the jeers.

  I had a good look at his face then, and saw it was Captain Young.

  The blacksmith let out a shout. “The bitch! She’s givin’ me the evil eye!” Quick as a wink, he flung the noose at Lizzie and managed to get the rope round her neck at the first throw. Before anybody could stop him, he jerked her overboard into the sea of bodies. As she sank, I thought I heard her moan like a cow in labour before she was lost to sight.

  Captain Young signed a command to his sergeant, and a volley of shots rang out over the heads of the crowd. It acted like a dose of ice water. Folk froze. A second volley and they scattered. The captain snatched up Lizzie, face down on the cobblestones, and threw her back into the cart with as little gentleness as she was taken from it. Then he leaped onto that black stallion of his, nudged it alongside the cart, and grabbed the bridle of one of the horses hitched to it.

  “Let’s go! Use your whip!” he shouted to the soldier at the reins.

  He clapped his spurs to his mount, and the cart rumbled off at speed. Meanwhile, his sergeant lined up the remaining soldiers, their muskets trained on the crowd.

  “Who’s addled enough to die for a witch?” called the sergeant. “This time we’re not firing over your heads.”

  * * *

  I didn’t oftentimes get a chance to spend a wheen of hours in Carrickfergus. When I did, I liked to admire the handsome buildings and fancies in the shops – though Mister Sinclair said sober dress was more pleasing in the sight of God. Still, usually I enjoyed a look. But after the court case I had no heart to take my pleasure. And pickpockets were bound to be at work, so I was nervous of my few shillings. My purse was tucked into a pocket in my shift, but those rascals had nimble fingers.

  Forbye that, I had an uneasy feeling about Knowehead. Anything could be happening in the house, with not a soul left to keep an eye on the place. There was no certainty that finding eight women guilty of witchcraft would end the pother there. Like as not, some new class of disturbance was lined up.

  At least Jamesey and Sarah were over at the Wido
w Patterson’s farm, rather than in the house. They had begged to come to Carrickfergus, but my master felt they were too young for such a spectacle, and arranged with the widow to keep them for the day. He wanted her to sit with them in Knowehead, but she said no power on earth would persuade her to spend time in that house, with only two bairns for company. My master wasn’t a bit pleased, but he could find nobody else to take them.

  I would just as soon have gone straight back to Islandmagee after the sentencing, and fetched them home. How and ever, Mercy wasn’t ready to leave, and we still hadn’t met up with Noah Spears, so I had no way back. There would have been space in the carriage my master hired – I could have sat with the coachman – but the Haltridges had gone off with the Dunbars and Mister Sinclair to dine in an inn. Whether grand or humble, folk saw this as a holiday.

  Mercy and I walked about the square, arm in arm. At first she wanted to talk about the reed hoops worn by fine ladies, to make their gowns stand out. But there was so much to see that she soon left off chattering and stared her fill. A circle gathered round a Punch and Judy show with a hangman puppet by the name of Jack Ketch. Every time he popped up he was greeted by howls of laughter. Nearby was a man with a set of reed pipes, and a black and white spaniel in a ruff. When he played his music, the wee dog hopped up on its hind legs and danced along. It hardly seemed Christian but it was certainly droll.

  Our mouths were watering, between the meat-pie stalls and the jam-tart sellers – there was even gingerbread for sale in the shape of cats, a witch’s familiar. Mercy gorged herself on it. Only the previous Sabbath, her master preached a sermon against gluttony, but everything went in one ear and out the other with Mercy Hunter.

  “What news?” folk greeted one another.

  “Guilty as sin,” came the answer.

  “They got off light,” was a common complaint.

  “At least they’re locked up where they can do no more mischief.” The speaker pointed to the pillory. It was raised on a platform in the market square – a fearsome-looking wooden device. “We’ll get our chance to show the hoors what we think of them on fair day.”

  Apart from me, nobody was in any humour to go home. There was a stretch to the days after the long winter. And the trial had folk all worked up. Such a carry-on hadn’t happened in living memory in these parts, though the ones lately come across from Scotland said they were common as muck over there. Witches were everywhere, and they knowed how to deal with them.

  “Half the time we dinna bother with the law. If the kirk tells us a woman’s been consortin’ with Satan, we take care of her ourselves. Saves time,” said a sandy-haired fellow. “The Scotch in Ireland be too soft on witches. It gives them a chance to lay their traps. Why do you think yiz had eight of them hussies lined up in the dock? You let them spread like fleas. That’s why.” Down came his hand on his thigh, with a skelp that raised dust. “Flatten the hell-faggots. That’s how you handle witches.”

  A preacher started guldering about weak vessels being all too easy for the serpent to seduce, as far back as the Garden of Eden. “Beware the treachery of Eve,” he warned, and the crowd became even more fired up. Especially the women, who wanted to show they had no truck with Lucifer.

  “Them Jezebels should be hung,” said one woman.

  “Aye. Stretch their necks till they snap,” said another.

  “Hangin’s too ’asy on them,” said a man holding his wee daughter in the crook of his arm.

  Then I heard a fine gentleman, in a velvet coat the colour of a grassy meadow, turn to another just like him and say, “Nothing matches the cruelty of the rabble, turned ferocious by ignorance and superstition.”

  But was he not there for the sport, same as everybody?

  The mood was in danger of turning ugly again, till a peddler lightened it. He leaped onto a barrel and piped a few bars on his whistle. “Be warned by their fate – gather roun’ for a tale to make your hair stand on end. Come closer, friends, and let me tell you the story of The Witches of Islandmagee.” The crowd turned to him, hungry for diversion. “It happened here, good folk, right under your noses. The Prince of Darkness walked among yiz, and took the shape of a woman.”

  “Eight women!” shouted a voice near the front.

  “But they got what was comin’ to them. Evil did not triumph, friends. Justice was done today.” The peddler piped a few more notes, stamping his feet to the beat.

  “Let’s get closer, I want to hear this,” said Mercy Hunter.

  Folk were joining in by the time the chorus came round again. One fellow, old enough to know better, burst into a prancing wee jig of his own invention. The peddler blew Mercy a kiss when he spied her. She gave him a long look in return, till I dug her in the ribs to remind her of modesty.

  “You’d think butter wud’n melt in your mouth,” she said.

  It struck me that for all her sauce, Mercy was probably purer than me: a thought to steal any peace of mind a body might have.

  When he was finished, the peddler skipped off the barrel, nimble as a frog, and someone reached him a pitcher of ale. I daresay he intended hawking his song further afield when he was through with us. Stories of witchcraft find a willing audience. Men and women are not so different from childer. They like to be frightened, just so long as the wicked are paid out in the wages of sin at the end.

  I hardly like to confess it, but I bought a ballad – I was one of those fools soon parted from their money. The peddler winked, handing it over, but as I paid my thruppence I saw a mark on his left thumb that looked as if he was branded for a thief. “A burn from the fire,” says he. No sooner was the money gone than I was sorry, because he offered to trade Mercy one for a kiss. Mind you, giving a ballad to Mercy Hunter was a waste – she could scarcely read more than her name.

  The pamphlet showed a drawing of a woman fondling a goat, with her skirts kilted up to her knees. Be Warned by Their Fate: The Witches of Islandmagee, it said.

  There once was a nest of foul witches

  Who worshipped the Devil not God

  They danced naked at fiendish assemblies

  Cavorting with he-goats and dogs.

  O, if they don’t swing for their sins

  Then they’ll surely roast

  If the law it don’t stretch them

  Devil snatch the hindmost.

  On dark nights when good folk lay sleeping

  Their vice they indulged, to their shame

  By tormenting an innocent virgin

  Who bravely resisted their games.

  O, if they don’t swing for their sins

  Then they’ll surely roast

  If the law it don’t stretch them

  Devil snatch the hindmost.

  The maiden was pure, incorruptible

  To prayers and her faith she held tight

  And the witches were tracked down and punished

  Putting paid to their Satan-stirred spite.

  O, if they don’t swing for their sins

  Then they’ll surely roast

  If the law it don’t stretch them

  Devil snatch the hindmost.

  So bolt all your casements, lock every door

  Stuff rat holes and chimneys with rags

  And pray God and his angels preserve you

  From Islandmagee’s evil hags.

  Yes, pray God and his angels preserve you

  From Islandmagee’s evil hags.

  * * *

  The day was wearing thin by the time we spotted Noah watching a wrestling match fornenst the Castle, and got our lift home from him. Mercy Hunter gabbed in my ear every step of the way: she was all delighted with herself because a value in coin had been put on her kisses. But I paid her no heed. I was thinking about what the pedlar said about justice being done in Carrickfergus courthouse.

  Justice didn’t feel all that satisfactory.

  As we neared Kilcoan More, smoke appeared on the horizon. Not a lazy curl from a chimney stack, but thick clouds of it rushing upwards
and outwards. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, louder than anything the wee drummer boy could manage – a fire meant death and destruction. Mercy clutched my arm. “Whose house do you think it is, Ellen?”

  I shook my head. It could be any one of a number of places.

  Noah Spears slapped the reins to persuade the ass to pick up speed. When we rounded the corner, we saw the cause of those grey plumes. The meeting-house had gone on fire.

  “The minister’ll go off his bap when he sees this,” gasped Mercy.

  The fire was nearly out now – others had reached the blazing building before us. But you could smell it still in the air. The sizzle, the scorched wood, the ruin. This was a fire that had raged away to its heart’s content for a time. It must have caught hold while everyone was at the witch trial. It was a wonder anything was left above ground. The roof had caved in, and the doorway was in bad shape, but the blackened walls were holding up. The meeting-house was in a sorry state, but it was still standing.

  “What happened?” Noah called to a soot-covered group of men.

  Bob Holmes broke away and walked across, coughing. “Turf ashes were throwed on a dunghill over thonder. Our best guess is a wind blowed up, an’ tossed some of them onto the roof timbers. That let the fire get goin’. A-coorse, it never could a taken hould if the whole blessed island had’n been in Carrickfergus, hopin’ for a mass hangin’. It’s a mercy there’s a wall left.” A coughing fit took him and he bent over, holding his knees, while Noah leaned down to hammer his back.

  “There’s more to this than meets the eye,” said Noah, and we all nodded. He turned the cart to drop Mercy and me home.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I feel sorry for aul’ Sinclair,” Mercy said. “He’s bein’ punished for takin’ a stand agin witches, so he is.”