The House Where It Happened

by Devlin, Martina

  Finally he said, “I’ll take you myself. No time like the present. I’ll fix it up with your mistress. Fetch me a chop and some ale, and we’ll leave directly after I’ve dined.”

  * * *

  I half-expected Master Haltridge to seize the chance to pay court to me as we rode along, me holding on to his belt with both hands – not even a basket between us, since the few bits I had for Lizzie were in a pouch at my back. I didn’t believe he was playing the Good Samaritan for Lizzie’s sake. But he clapped his spurs to the grey stallion’s flanks and rode like the wind, making no attempt to woo me. I leaned in and breathed his clean smell, but could take no real pleasure in our closeness because my thoughts were nipping at me. I was never inside a prison cell, and not looking forward to my first time.

  When we reached Carrickfergus Castle, my master pulled up by a mounting block so I could climb off. He did not dismount, but held my arm to aid me. Then he reached me down a coin. “You’ll need this for the guard.” Seeing I did not understand, he added, “To grease his palm. I’ll meet you back here in an hour – you’ll be well finished by then. A dungeon is no place to loiter.”

  * * *

  The door clanged shut behind me. It was dark in the cell. Cold, too. The kind of cold that makes you hump your back. The kind that settles on your joints and gives them no let-up. There was no window, not even a slit to let in a slice of light. But the thing I noticed above everything else was the smell of decay: it was overpowering. A dozen midden piles would hardly send out a reek to match it. My belly heaved when the stink reached my nose, and I nearly lost my footing. I shuddered, wishing my conscience wasn’t prodding me into this visit. But there was no help for it, so I took hold of myself, breathing through my mouth.

  “Good day,” I said. It sounded feeble. I cleared my throat and tried again, louder. “Good day.” I forced myself forward and splashed through a puddle. Whether it was piss or rainwater I couldn’t tell, but the handful of straw thrown on the ground was no use against it.

  I squinted into the darkness. All I could make out were huddled forms. “Lizzie? Lizzie Cellar? Are you there? It’s Ellen Hill.”

  A jabber came from several mouths, but you could not call it words.

  My hand was shielding the candle given to me by the guard, for I was in the horrors at the thought of no light in this pit. Now I took away my hand and raised the flame shoulder-high. I could see the shapes were people, four of them. I moved closer, and they shrank from the orange glow.

  “I’ve brought food. Here, you must be hungry.” I unhooked the pouch I was carrying, pushed aside a napkin, and lifted out a drumstick. No sooner was it in my hand than a gust of hot, rotting breath blew in my face, and the chicken was grabbed. A pair of fierce eyes in a filthy face glared at me, gnawing the leg, swallowing the meat without chewing.

  But then Margaret Mitchell slowed, and glanced behind her. She took another bite, before holding out the drumstick to a prisoner hunkered with her back against the wall. A lump of pale-brown flesh clung to her lower lip, and her tongue scooped it up. The taste made her think twice, and she looked again at the remains of the chicken leg. But she offered it still. When the woman did not take it, she shuffled forward and pushed it into her hand. The prisoner’s fingers closed round it, without making any attempt to eat. Margaret Mitchell guided the hand upwards, towards Kate McAlmond’s mouth.

  I squinted at the other forms, trying to make out Lizzie. She must be here if the guard said so. A slumped shape, longer than the others, had to be her. Her hair had grown back a bit, covering up the scabs I remembered from the trial, but I couldn’t see her face because it was pressed into her lap.

  “Lizzie, it’s Ellen Hill. From Islandmagee. I’m your friend. I have some salve here for you. So your face can heal. Lizzie? Don’t you know me?” I juked down beside her, moving aside a patch of straw to find a safe place for the candle. She shrank back, whimpering. “It’s all right, Lizzie dear. I’m here to help.”

  Another shape made a rush at me across the cell. “Stay away from her.” It was Lizzie’s mother, Janet Liston.

  “Have a sausage, Mistress Liston. It’s from our own pig.”

  She wanted to say no, but she was too hungry. She grabbed it with one hand and squashed it against her, while the other hand rested on her daughter’s head.

  “Has anyone been in to see about Lizzie?” I asked.

  She shook her head, snatters dripping from her nose.

  “I’d like to help her. I brought something to make her face better.”

  “You’d want to be a miracle-worker.” She threw me a look, spiteful as a cat, before putting a thumb under her daughter’s chin, coaxing Lizzie’s head up.

  I wasn’t sure if I was seeing right. I lifted the candle off the ground and held it near Lizzie’s face. There was a rope burn on her neck. But that wasn’t what bothered me. No, it was her eyes that made my heart clatter against my chest. One eye was shut tight, and a half-moon scar snaked over it from eyebrow to cheekbone. The eyelid of the other was swollen and red, half-lowered over an eye that didn’t move. The eye itself was covered by a milky veil. When I brought the candle closer to check, there was no change to the eye. It did not follow the flame as I moved it from left to right. It did not flinch from the light. It stayed just the same as if it gazed into darkness. Grumbling, Janet put her arm over her eyes to shield them.

  But Lizzie Cellar was silent. Lizzie Cellar was blind.

  * * *

  I didn’t go to Carrickfergus to see the women pilloried on fair day. I have no stomach for such a display. But Mercy Hunter went, and reported back that the mob was vicious. Folk even took against the oldest dames, a sorry sight with their necks and wrists locked into the stocks, and their backs creaking from being forced to stoop. Mercy’s master brought her with him to watch the full penalty of the law carried out. Not that she cared a haet about right and wrong.

  She said all eight of them were put two by two into the pillory, the way the animals went into the Ark. “Folk were riled up agin the witches,” Mercy said. “But they were twice as angry when a fellow gave out to us. ‘Pillorying prisoners is a relic of barbarism,’ says he. ‘’Tis the law of the land,’ somebody shouts back. ‘A medieval law,’ says he. ‘The year is 1711, not 1311.’ He shut up quare an’ quick when they said they’d pillory him if he did’n watch hisself.”

  A bonfire was lit afterwards, where a piper played, and some of the men were the worse for ale, singing shanty songs.

  “I met a tinker with rings in her ears,” Mercy admitted. “They looked wile well.”

  “Your master would have kitlings if you turned up in earrings.”

  “The woman offered to pierce mine for a wee consideration.”

  “Mister Sinclair would put you out on the street.”

  “He would, aye. Still an’ all . . .”

  “Never mind your gee-gaws – what about the women in the pillory?”

  She stroked her ears, and told me how Margaret Mitchell, above all the prisoners, irked the crowd. “She vexed folk, on account of answering back when they called her names. ‘I’m no witch,’ she shouted. ‘If I was, I’d ask the Devil to take a bite out of yiz.’ After that, instead of rotten eggs and sods of earth, a great gulpin wrapped a cabbage leaf round a rock and took aim. He hit her fair and square on the mouth. You want to have heared the gulder Margaret Mitchell let out of her. An’ the minute she opened her mouth, half her teeth fell out. Folk laughed themselves giddy. A second stone caught her on the side of the head, and I think she might a fainted from the blow. It was hard to tell, the way the stocks kep’ her on her feet.”

  She stayed her full time in the pillory, despite the injury. The captain of the guard curled his lip at the antics of the common folk. Mercy stayed near-hand to him, because she never could resist a uniform. “These Irish are unruly devils,” he said to his sergeant. But he wouldn’t give the signal to release Margaret Mitchell. A preacher took the captain to task. “We aren’t I
rish. We’re the Scotch race in Ulster, and we’ve given our life’s strength, aye, and our lives as well, to uphold the British connection here.” The captain executed an elaborate bow and begged his pardon, but Mercy said he might have been mocking the preacher. Master Sinclair was an easy target.

  “What about Lizzie Cellar?” I asked. “Did they hurt her?”

  “Aye, she was pelted sore. No allowances were made for her bein’ blind. Her ma asked to go in the stocks at the same time as Lizzie, so she wud’n have to watch her lassie suffer.”

  “Was she let?” I held my breath.

  “She was.” Mercy chewed her lip. “Lizzie looks like death warmed up.”

  She spoke some more about the witches’ punishment, but my mind skittered away. Aye, I had a bad conscience about Lizzie Cellar. The visit I paid her did nothing to ease it.

  “Ellen Hill, you bain’t listenin’ to a word I say. What’s eatin’ you, at all? The gurn on you would fright a babby. If you ask me, you need to find a new position. Knowehead is turnin’ you crabbit.”

  “Sorry, Mercy. It’s just that I’m doin’ the work of two here, and it does’n look as if there’ll be any let-up because there’s still no word of Peggy McGregor comin’ back to us. Thon distemper she took in her stomach has’n shifted. I’ve a broad back, but there’s too much work here for one. If I could manage a decent night’s sleep, it might help, but when I do get to bed I lie tossin’ and turnin’ and listenin’ for noises.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to admit it to Mercy Hunter but what really kept me awake was Hamilton Lock: having left his grave, he wouldn’t go back to it so handy. He started with old Mistress Haltridge and moved on to Mary Dunbar – who would he turn his attentions to next? It could be me. And that was a possibility to keep even the hardiest soul awake at night.

  “Do you hear noises after dark, Ellen?”

  “I hear – I don’t know what I hear. It might just be mice. Or birds on the roof. It’s not quiet in the house, that’s as much as I know. I’m worn out, so I am.”

  “Aye, it’s not what you’d call a cheerful place. I’m no sooner in this house than I’m lookin’ over my shoulder. I only call because of you – and even then, wild horses would’n drag me in come nightfall. All the neighbours are givin’ Knowehead a wide berth – I daresay you’ve noticed. I don’t know how you put up with it here. Something’s not right about this house. It’ll never be right.”

  “Ach well, you get used to it. An’ I have a terrible good master. They’re not so easy to come by.”

  “You an’ that master of yours. Mind he doesnae make a fool out of you. Or worse. Well, Ellen, if you willnae find a new position, then you must do something about the one you have. Talk to your mistress. Tell her you need Peggy back or another pair of hands. One or t’other. But you cannae go on as things stand.”

  * * *

  I told the mistress I was run off my feet, and she spoke to my master, who went to Belfast to see about Peggy. He could have sent a letter. But the way things stood in the house, I think he welcomed the junket. Lately, not a day passed but something went wrong. If it wasn’t the casement clock stopping, it was the roof leaking – on a dry day – and if it wasn’t the roof leaking, it was cracks appearing in the walls. As for Jamesey and Sarah, they ran about Kilcoan More from morning till night. Come suppertime, they had to be chased down and hauled back to the house – it was rare for them to come of their own accord. I never knowed a pair so unwilling to set foot in their own house. My master would never admit there was anything odd about Knowehead, but he leapt at the chance to ride to Belfast to arrange Peggy’s return, even though he said he was only going because he could pay a visit to his wine merchant at the same time. The mistress wanted to go with him, but he said it wasn’t fair to land me with the bairns on top of all my other chores.

  But Peggy McGregor breathed her last on the day he went to see her – not long before he landed in, as luck would have it – and instead of arranging her return he wound up taking charge of her burial. She was laid in the ground in Belfast, instead of in St John’s graveyard where she wanted to rest.

  The mistress was agitated by that. How and ever, my master told her Peggy’s life had run its course, and she was lucky to have a virtuous death. “It was more convenient to bury her in Belfast, sweetheart. I couldn’t go dragging her remains back to Islandmagee.”

  “I hope at least you had the decency to see she was buried looking east.”

  “Of course I did. I was fond of Peggy. I’ve known her all my life.”

  “Aye, but not fond enough to honour her dying wish. And I know why. You’re afraid of another funeral setting tongues wagging about Knowehead.”

  When he didn’t reply, she took to her chamber for the rest of the day. It showed she wanted to do right by her old servant. If Peggy looked east in her grave, she’d be facing Jesus on His return to gather the godly with Him to walk the golden streets of the New Jerusalem. My master would have done anything for Peggy McGregor. Except give those who liked to blab more grist for their rumour mills.

  * * *

  The next time Mercy called for a chat, she told me Margaret Mitchell was left without a tooth in her head after her turn in the stocks. She had it from the minister. The following day, I said it to the mistress when she was helping with the dusting – even she could see it took more than one pair of hands to get through all the housework, and she didn’t mind the light jobs. No chance of her taking on anything heavy or dirty, mind you. She wouldn’t even climb on a chair and brush away cobwebs, though the spiders were making free with the house. Still, every little helped, and I was glad of what she was willing to do.

  She must have repeated the story about Margaret Mitchell to my master, because he paid for a barber to attend her in gaol. He was always particular about teeth, my master. It was too late to save hers so the barber pulled out the broken stumps. That was a prodigious act of Christian charity from a man whose home was overrun by witches. I only know what he did on account of the mistress finding the bill among his papers, prying where she shouldn’t have been. She was puzzled by his interest in Margaret Mitchell, but seemed inclined to praise him. He wouldn’t hear tell of any compliments. Indeed, he seemed un’asied.

  * * *

  “James! My best gown! It’s riddled with holes!” The mistress’s screeches were enough to raise the dead.

  “Ach, dear me, Isabel! It’s too bad. The moths have nibbled away your lovely green frock.”

  “Moths? You think moths did this? My gown was ripped to pieces deliberately. And I know who’s responsible.”

  “Hush now, Isabel, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Don’t I? It would take a moth the size of a bullock to make a hole this big. You could put your fist through it.”

  “There, there, dear heart. We’ll buy you the cloth for a new gown, twice as fine as this one.”

  “I don’t want a new gown, James, I want a new home. I can’t bear this house. It’s all the fault of Knowehead. It’s oozing with poison!”

  “Settle the head, now, woman. You’re upset, but that’s no excuse.”

  “I’ve every right to be upset when Hamilton Lock tears my clothes to shreds.”

  “Don’t be daft. You’re seizing on unnatural explanations when there’s a perfectly natural one.”

  “What’s natural about only one gown being wrecked? All the other garments in the chest are untouched. This one was chosen to teach me a lesson. It’s malice, deliberate malice, that’s what it is. I can’t bear it!” Her wails rang out over the house.

  “Daddy, why’s Mama weeping? Has the bad man hurt her?” Wee Sarah was drawn to her daddy’s side.

  “Hush, sweetheart, Mama’s got a headache. She’ll be right as rain after she has a lie-down.’

  My master billed and cooed over his lady, and made promises about taking her to Dublin for a spree. Finally, he had Noah harness up the ass and cart and drive her to Carrickfergus with Jamesey and
Sarah for the day. She needed some hustle and bustle round her, he said – the house was too melancholy. He’d ride into town and join them later, after attending to some letters which could be posted in the town.

  I went off to the dairy, mulling over the damage to the gown. Only a few days previously, the mistress took it into her head to store some of her things in the great chest in Mary Dunbar’s chamber. The green gown was among the clothes she had me put into it. I always liked the dress, and took particular care with it as I folded it away. I knowed for a fact there was nothing wrong with it then.

  Hand and mind churning, I didn’t hear my master come up behind me. Next thing I knowed, my cap was wheeked off.

  “Master, stop that!”

  “I can’t stop, Ellen. I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop watching you. I can’t stop wanting to be near you. Have pity on me.”

  Tell him to go, I urged myself. But I was weak and the words wouldn’t come. When I said nothing, he took it I was willing. His fingers fumbled to unpin my plait, working at it until the hair was spread out over my shoulders.