The Witch’s Daughter

by Paula Brackston

  ‘That caused him to fall?’

  Anne nodded. ‘Help me get him to the house and put him to bed.’

  They raised him gently to his feet, an arm around the shoulders of each parent, and half carried him to the cottage. Bess made to follow, but Anne called back, ‘Help Margaret with the windfalls. Come in when you’re finished.’

  Bess bridled at being so excluded. She wanted to help tend to Thomas, not to be left out in the orchard. But she knew work had to go on. And, more important, Margaret must not be alarmed. She would do as she was told and take a turn in nursing her brother later.

  A low cot was made up for Thomas in the main room so that he might benefit from the fire. When dusk fell and Bess at last took Margaret in, she was concerned at the sight of her brother. In a few hours he appeared to have gone from a pale but strong young man to a clammy, fever-ridden boy with ragged breath and dull eyes. Bess took her turn in gently sponging his face. Anne had added a few drops of rose oil to the water, but they could not mask the increasing odor of poor Thomas’s overheating body. Despite the fire that seemed to be raging within him, he shivered, moaning at the pains in his limbs and joints, complaining that he was colder than a cow’s tail in winter. When Margaret was asleep in the other room, Anne had John and Bess help her strip Thomas. They bathed his whole body and put him in a soft nightshirt of his father’s.

  ‘What is it, Mother?’ Bess asked.

  ‘A fever.’

  ‘Born of what ailment?’ Bess pressed her for a more detailed answer.

  ‘Too soon to say. We must bide with him. Time will reveal to us what it is that makes him suffer so.’ Anne would not meet her daughter’s questioning gaze. ‘Go to the dairy. Fetch me the tea in the tall jar on the top shelf.’

  ‘The nettle tea?’

  Now Anne looked at her. ‘Yes. You remember how to prepare it?’

  Bess nodded.

  ‘Quickly, then.’

  Bess left her brother’s side with reluctance but with purpose, pleased her mother considered her able to make the infusion for him. As she reached the door to the dairy, she glanced back. The three of them made a poignant tableau—mother kneeling at her stricken son’s side, father standing beside her. As Bess watched, John, without taking his eyes off Thomas for an instant, reached down and stroked Anne’s cheek. Anne placed her own hand over his and gripped it tightly against her face. Bess knew, in that tiny moment, in that one small but telling gesture, she knew that her brother was in mortal danger.

  By the next morning Thomas seemed neither better nor worse but had lost the ability to sleep. Instead, he fidgeted on his bed, shifting his weight this way and that in a vain effort to find a less painful position. Margaret was out collecting the eggs. John had gone to Batchcombe market to sell the cheeses. Anne and Bess worked at their lace so as to be close to Thomas. All at once he swung his legs to the floor and struggled to his feet. Both women rushed to him.

  ‘Thomas’—his mother put her hands on his shoulders—‘you must rest. Do not try to raise yourself.’

  ‘No!’ Anger tinged his curiously slurred words. ‘I must be about my work, Mother. I cannot leave all to father.’

  ‘You are not well,’ Bess told him. ‘Father will manage until you are recovered.’

  He would not be quieted but fought against them with some newfound strength.

  ‘Leave me be! I will go out,’ he said, staggering past them to the door, oblivious to his state of undress. His gait was shambolic and precarious, so that he clutched at furniture and walls as he went.

  ‘Thomas!’ Anne called after him. She and Bess tried again to persuade him back to his bed but without success. He was ranting now, a stream of incoherent words, as if talking to some unseen person in the room. At last he took hold of the latch and wrenched the door open. Bess feared what might happen to him if he started to fall about outside, but he was prevented from leaving the house. John stepped over the threshold, guiding his son back inside. He turned him, firmly but gently, not back to his bed but through the door into the bedchamber.

  ‘Come, Thomas,’ he spoke softly, ‘thou’st been working hard. Rest yourself now.’

  Bess and Anne followed and helped get him into his own bed. Thomas seemed exhausted from his exertions and fell into a fitful sleep at once.

  John took Anne’s hands in his. ‘I have been to the village,’ he said.

  Anne’s face asked the question, though she could not bring herself to say the words.

  ‘Others are ill,’ he confirmed. ‘Some already dead.’

  ‘How many?’ Anne whispered.

  ‘Eleven so far.’

  ‘O dear Lord.’ The color drained from her face.

  Bess could stay silent no longer. ‘Mother? What is it? What is happening?’

  Anne could only shake her head, for a moment robbed of speech. Then she took a shuddering breath and faced Bess.

  ‘Gather the bedding.’ She gestured at the room. ‘Take everything from here that does not belong to Thomas. Your father will move the beds. Then fetch me candles, no, tallow and a pail, and I shall have need of water. And sage to burn … Quickly now, Bess, there is no time to stand gawping.’

  ‘But, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Listen to what I tell you, Bess. Once I have my things about me here, you are not to come into this room again. Do you hear me? Nor let your sister so much as set one foot through that door. You must look after her yourself and keep her from this room and from me. Promise me!’

  ‘I promise,’ said Bess, her tears blurring the sight of her wheezing brother as he shivered on his bed. She understood now, though no one could tell her plainly what she wanted to hear. In her heart she already knew the truth of the news her father had brought from the village. She knew the truth of it, and she felt more afraid than she had ever been in her life before. People in the village were dying. Her brother was dying. Many others would endure the same slow, painful fate. Plague had come to Batchcombe.

  The next few hours passed in a whirl of activity. Bess did as her mother had instructed and then, keeping Margaret close by, set about Thomas’s chores with the animals. There were cows to be milked, swine to be fed and watered, wood to be gathered in. Bess made herself concentrate on her tasks and deflected Margaret’s ceaseless questions with vague assurances. She could not let herself think that while she fetched kindling, her brother’s life was ebbing away. Such thoughts would either paralyze her or send her into madness. As she returned the cows to the byre she saw her father lighting a bonfire. Onto it he was piling Thomas’s bedding from the previous night, as well as all his clothes. The sight moved Bess near to tears. She stood and watched her father, her heart breaking at the sight of his slumped shoulders and bowed head.

  That night she lay on her makeshift bed in the hall and listened to Thomas’s pitiful moaning from the next room. She had seen her mother only briefly, when she had emerged to go outside for a moment’s air and stillness.

  Bess had watched her go outside. The door to the bedchamber was ajar, and the need she felt to see her brother was stronger than she could bear. She pushed the door and stole into the room. She stood beside Thomas’s bed and peered down at him. The room was gloomy, and he lay with his face turned to the wall.

  ‘Thomas?’ she whispered, then ‘Thomas?’ a little louder.

  At the sound of her voice, he rolled over. Her first sight of him forced Bess to stifle a cry. One side of his face was blue-black and swollen, the other pale and somehow shriveled. One eye was bloodshot, the other a crimson mess. The stench of his wheezing breath made bile rise in Bess’s throat. It took all her self-control not to run screaming from the room.

  ‘Bess? Is that you?’ He lifted a hand, searching for her.

  Bess steadied herself and took his hand in hers. His grasp was not that of a strong youth but of an old man.

  ‘I am here, Tom. Be still.’

  ‘It is good to see you again. I feared…’ He was unable to finish the thought. Ho
t tears brimmed up in his wretchedly grotesque eyes. ‘Forgive me, Bess,’ he sobbed.

  ‘Forgive you? For what?’

  ‘For not being braver. I know I should be, for Mother, for all of you. It’s only that … I be so afraid.’

  Bess knelt beside him and clasped his hand to her breast. ‘Oh, Thomas, there is no courage in being fearless. Do you not know that? A person who knows fear and yet can still think of others, well, he be a brave man.’

  Thomas looked up at her, a crooked smile distorting his face further.

  ‘Do you truly believe that, Bess?’

  ‘I do.’ She nodded, her own tears falling to join his on the damp coverlet.

  ‘Bess! What are you doing?’ Her mother’s shout from the door forced Bess back on her feet.

  ‘I just wanted to see him, Mother, just for a moment.’

  Anne grabbed her arm and hauled her to the door, pushing her roughly through it.

  ‘You promised me, Bess!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I only wanted…’

  ‘What you wanted is of no importance, girl. Do you know what you could have done? Do you?’ Anne slammed the door shut.

  Bess shuddered at the memory of her mother’s fury and of the suffering of her poor brother. She gave up chasing sleep and pulled Margaret closer to her. Somewhere before dawn, Thomas began to wail, a nerve-jangling noise that Bess knew would haunt her the rest of her days. As a feeble dawn broke through the unshuttered window, the wailing stopped and with it Thomas’s heart.

  Groggy from lack of sleep, Bess pushed off the covers and stirred herself. She shook Margaret gently, but the child did not wake. Looking down in the scant light, Bess saw now that her sister’s face was the color of unripe cheese. She heard a shrill scream, and it was some moments before she realized the noise came from herself.

  O dear Lord, what have I done? What have I done?

  Life disintegrated into a mess of fever and panic. Bess found it hard to believe what was happening could be real. Surely it was some hideous nightmare from which she must soon awake, gasping and afraid, only to be quickly calmed and restored by the ordinariness of everyday life once more. Only it was not a dream. Margaret lay muttering and sweating in her bed in the hall, Bess at her side, whilst Anne prepared poor Thomas for his grave. Into this madness came the sound of a wagon outside and a brutal hammering on the door.

  ‘Open up! Mr. Hawksmith? Come to your door!’ a gruff voice demanded.

  Anne appeared from the bedchamber. She looked at John.

  ‘The searchers!’ she said.

  ‘Mother, what do they want?’ asked Bess.

  ‘Thomas’ came the reply. ‘They would take our boy away.’ Anne looked fit to faint.

  ‘Not while I live,’ said John, his voice drawn up from a deep place of suffering and loss. He marched to the door and shouted through it. ‘There be nothing to concern thee here! We will see to our own.’

  ‘You have the plague in your house, Mr. Hawksmith. We must see for ourselves and take any bodies to the pit.’

  ‘No!’ Bess shouted. ‘Father, you must not let them.’

  John grabbed the end of the kitchen table. ‘Help me, Bess.’

  Together, they dragged the heavy piece of furniture so that it braced the door. John leaned against it.

  ‘Open up, Hawksmith. We will only come back with an order from the governor and more men, you know that.’

  ‘Come back with the whole of Batchcombe, for all the good it will do thee!’ John roared, ‘No child of mine will be laid to rest in a plague pit, d’you hear me?’

  There came a muttering from outside and then silence.

  ‘Have they gone?’ Anne asked.

  ‘They have,’ said John. He went to the window and watched for a while, then spoke firmly to Anne. ‘We must bury the boy tonight. It cannot be left any longer.’

  Anne took a turn in nursing Margaret while Bess tended the beasts. The cows had not been milked properly for days and were surly. Bess wept tears of grief and frustration and fear as the oldest kicked the pail of milk from her hands for the second time. She thought she had never shed so many tears and feared she would never stop. Thomas was dead and Margaret was dreadfully ill. Had that been her doing? Had she taken the illness from Thomas to Margaret herself? The thought of it made her heart constrict. She hurried out to check that there was still sufficient water in the meadow for the cows. Walking back to the cottage, she saw her father digging Thomas’s grave. She stopped and watched him, unable to drag herself away from the sight of her beloved parent doggedly turning shovelfuls of wet soil, digging ever deeper, preparing the place for his firstborn to spend eternity. As she watched, he finished the grave, a dark, muddy wound in the grassy orchard. He straightened up and she saw him wipe a tear from his eye with the back of a grimy hand. For a moment she thought he might be praying, he was standing so still. Then, without a sound, his legs folded beneath him and he fell forward into the grave.

  ‘Mother!’ Bess yelled as she flung down the milk bucket and ran toward her father. ‘Mother, come quick!’ She reached the grave and stared down into it. ‘Father!’ He lay moaning on the floor of the gritty space. Bess climbed down and tried to raise him to his feet. He drifted in and out of consciousness, muttering sounds that were not clear enough to be words. His hands were clammy and his face flushed and hot. Anne peered down from the top of the grave.

  ‘O Lord save us!’

  ‘He fell in. He is ailing, Mother. Father is unwell! He is too heavy for me to lift.’

  Anne slithered down next to Bess, and together they hauled him to his feet.

  ‘Push, Bess. Come on, we must get him out.’

  It took the better part of an hour for the two women to heave and drag John out of the slippery tomb. By the time they had him back in the house, all three wore coats of mud. Bess barely had the strength to fetch water, but she knew they must wash her father and themselves. Margaret wriggled restlessly on her cot, calling out for her mother and for something to make the pain stop. Anne and Bess put John to bed. Anne lit sage to burn in the hearth, and they rubbed both John and Margaret with lavender oil. As Bess sat next to Margaret, stroking the girl’s tiny arms gently with the fragrant oil, she wondered again about God’s love and decided there was none of it in the Hawksmith house that night. She was so tired she all but fell asleep on the floor where she sat. Her mother roused her with a gentle shake.

  ‘Bess, we must bury Thomas. The bearers will be back soon enough if we don’t. I won’t have them take him,’ she said.

  A numbness fell upon Bess as she fetched the barrow. Anne had wrapped Thomas tightly in his winding sheet; there was no time for coffins now. The women shifted his body onto a board, which they shuffled onto the barrow, and took him outside. It had started to rain, and since it was October, the water did not content itself with falling downward but descended at such an angle as to creep under every coat or collar. Bess and Anne did their best to move Thomas gently, but such was their fatigue and so hampered were they by the now sludgy graveside that they were reduced to simply tipping him into the watery hole. Wordlessly, they shoveled and scraped at the earth until the grave was filled. They stood silently contemplating the mound of soil in front of them. The rain ran unchecked down their faces. It coursed down their backs and dripped from their every hem. Bess waited for her mother to say something, some words of comfort or farewell or some attempt at commending his soul to God. But nothing came. Bess had not the heart to try. Where was the use in talking to God now? She reached out to touch Anne, but her mother swung about and strode for the house.

  ‘The living need us’ was all she said.

  As Bess reached the cottage, she noticed for the first time the mark the searchers had left on the door. It proclaimed to the world that this was a plague house. Not a farm, not a home, not a cottage where people lived and were loved. Just a building harboring disease, a place to be despised and spurned. As Bess went inside, she wondered how many more graves she and her mo
ther would have to dig. And who would be left to dig their own.

  That night Bess and her mother sat by the fire, too exhausted to work at their lace. Too low in spirit to bother to heat some pottage. They had finished a dry wedge of cheese and drained the final flagon of last year’s cider some hours before. Bess felt her stomach threaten to reject even that. She looked at her mother. The uneven light of the fire illuminated one side of her once-handsome face, casting deathly shadows beneath her eyes. A vision of how Thomas had looked the last time she saw him came into Bess’s mind. She shut her eyes against it, but still it persisted, worse in the darkness behind her closed lids. Instead, she looked toward Margaret. She was sleeping peacefully now, while John in the next bed moaned and turned over fitfully.

  ‘She does not seem to suffer so much now,’ Bess said to her mother.

  Her mother continued to stare into the flames. ‘She is sleeping.’

  ‘That is good, surely? With rest can come healing.’

  ‘It can.’ Her mother’s voice carried no conviction.

  Bess could stand her evasion no longer. ‘Will she live, Mama? Tell me she will.’

  Now Anne changed the direction of her gaze. She looked first at where Margaret lay, then turned to face Bess. Even such small movements seemed to involve enormous effort.

  ‘She has the plague, Bess.’

  ‘But some survive it, do they not? Some live on.’

  ‘Some do. The strong and the grown. Those most likely to succumb are the weak. The old. And the very young.’ She had not the energy for emotion. The fire took her attention once again.

  Bess got to her feet. ‘I will not let her die. I will not!’ she said. She swung the kettle over the heat, then fetched honey from the dairy. She poured hot water into a bowl and stirred in the amber syrup. She took it to Margaret. Propping the child up on bolsters, she spoke to her softly.

  ‘Come now, little Meg, see what I have for thee. Here.’ She lifted a spoonful of the warm liquid to her sister’s cracked lips. Margaret’s eyelids fluttered but did not open. Her neck was disfigured and swollen by the buboes on it. And those hideous lumps in turn bore a mass of red spots. Her skin was beginning to darken with the bleeding beneath the surface that gave the disease its nickname of the Black Death. Bess pushed such thoughts from her mind and gently prized open her sister’s lips, tipping a tiny sip of the honey-water into her mouth. It dribbled back out. She tried again. This time Margaret spluttered, but the taste stirred her a little so that she opened her reddened eyes.