The Secret of Isobel Key

by Jen McConnel

  Slowly, she rose from her bench and headed toward the open gate. She hesitated on the threshold, not sure why she would want to disturb the rest of this peaceful place, but something propelled her forward. She was careful to remain on the well-worn paths, for she had no desire to inadvertently step on someone’s grave, and she walked slowly, reading the headstones that were still clear enough to make out.

  The sun began to warm her, and for the first time since coming to Scotland, she shrugged out of her coat, surprised to realize she wasn’t frozen to the bone. She continued to stroll about, whispering the names of the headstones she could read out loud. As a child, she had gone through a brief period of fascination with the ancient Egyptians, and she still remembered that they believed that they would be able to survive into eternity as long as their names were remembered. It was silly, perhaps, but ever since Lou had learned that, she always tried to speak the names of the dead out loud, to give them a brief moment of continued life.

  Lou wandered around the cemetery, whispering the names of the dead. She did not speak the names of Isobel Key, whose remains were not interred in holy ground, nor did she speak the names of Margaret, Janet, or Alexander Nairn as she passed their headstones, for they were worn smooth with the passage of time.

  1666

  She did not protest her arrest, nor did she struggle when she was initially plunged into the darkness of her prison. So far, the only sounds she had made at all had been the screams which first alerted the townsfolk to her crimes.

  The cell they threw her in was dank and tiny. The floor was more mud and filth than wood or stone, and there were no windows for her to see out. Her jailors brought her only water, and every time she thought to lie down upon the filth, someone would rattle the door of her cell, or scream at her, anything to make enough noise to prevent her from sleeping. In response to their noise and threats, the jailors were greeted with eerie silence, but they were hard men set to a hard task, and more than equal to it.

  They kept her, awake and barely alive, for a full seven days while a commission to try her in St. Andrews was requested and granted by the king. Seven days without sleep or food. Seven nights in a dark, nasty hole. Her jailors were not moved to sympathy or compassion, for they had dealt with witches before: not for a few years, certainly, but accused witches were nothing new in the town of St. Andrews. They would certainly not endanger their livelihoods for a servant of Satan such as Isobel.

  On the fourth day of her imprisonment, her strange silence was broken. Isobel began alternately calling out curses and pleading for mercy. Such spite flew through the bars of the cell that if there had been any doubt in the minds of the guards as to her guilt, it was thoroughly dispelled.

  Outside her cell, Hogmanay celebrations were just as joyous as in previous years, but Isobel did not know that. Young women walked backwards over their thresholds, holding up mirrors behind them which they hoped would show them the face of their future love, feasts were consumed, ale was drunk, but Isobel did not comprehend of any of the revelry. Her cell had no window, and the walls were thick, preventing all sounds from creeping in to her ears, and keeping her cries muffled from the people of St. Andrews. Isobel no longer knew nor cared what day it was. All she knew was that she could not sleep, she could not eat, and that she could not forget the image of her once beloved Alexander bathed in his own blood.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Lou finally left the graveyard when the sun was high, and she began to wander. When she realized she had found her way to the bottom of the steep street where Professor MacDonald lived, she started to climb toward his house, hoping to find him at home.

  She knocked on the blue door once, twice, and was about to turn and head back when the door opened. The professor was wearing a different kilt today, this one in deep greens and yellows. He still sported the dangerous looking black combat boots, but his leather jacket was missing and his shirtsleeves were rolled up past the elbows. His hands were covered in dirt, and Lou realized she had interrupted his work in the garden.

  “I’m so sorry, professor, I really shouldn’t have come by without calling first.” She turned to go, but he stopped her.

  “Louisa, was it?” She nodded at him shyly. “The lass who was interested in witches. You’re not disturbing me; come in and sit for a spell.” He brushed his dirty hands off on the rear of his kilt and turned to lead her inside. She followed, apologizing all the way.

  “I really don’t know what’s come over me. I should never have come by like this. After all, I’ve barely met you. I’m sorry I’ve disturbed you.”

  He barked a short laugh. “A pretty girl at my door should hardly be called a disturbance, lass. I’m happy for the company, truth be told. Now,” he said as he led her once again to the cozy study, “what’s on your mind that you sought me out again?”

  Lou didn’t know what she was going to say until she heard the words tumbling out of her lips. “I want to know more about the witch you spoke of yesterday, and more about her niece, Nan. What happened to her after her parents died? Where did she go? What about her family?”

  The professor smiled at Lou. “You’re taking an interest in the family, is that it?”

  Lou nodded, still a bit uncertain as to why she would want to know these things.

  “Well, now,” the professor said as he settled back in his chair, “Isobel Nairn became the ward of George Nairn, he that was her grandfather. The family left St. Andrews after the tragedy, and I believe they settled in Edinburgh for a time.” He paused to glance at his guest.

  “Nan married in 1677, at the age of twenty. Her husband, one Malcolm Ferguson, worked as a cobbler in Edinburgh, and they lived there happily enough, although she must have remembered her aunt, for the herbal survived in the keeping of the family all those years. I don’t doubt that she studied and memorized her aunt’s recipes and spells, for Nan was able to deliver three healthy children and see them live to adulthood. Her children were all girls, Margaret, Jenny, and Agnes. They grew up in Edinburgh, and when they were of age, Jenny and Agnes married local men, but Margaret never wed. It’s from Jenny that my family is descended, and her husband Tom Smith. He was, as you may have guessed by his name, a blacksmith by trade.”

  Lou listened, spellbound, as the old man spun the story of his lineage as effortlessly as if he were reading the lines printed on a tremendously detailed family tree. Lou did nothing to stop his impassioned recital, but twice the professor interrupted himself. The first time he left the room, he returned bearing the same tea service that they had used the previous day, and they shared a companionable midday meal. The second time he went out, he came back carrying a worn manila folder, which he handed to Lou with a flourish.

  “Those are the family photos, those which have survived the test of time and damp, that is.” Lou flipped through the portraits and snapshots, smiling at this further glimpse into the rich family history the professor had been narrating.

  “It looks like you inherited the family hair!” She commented, holding up a photo of a woman in a stiff Victorian dress and stiff smile, both of which were completely at odds with the wild mop of dark curls that crowned her.

  The professor laughed and ran his hand over his own head, making the gray hair stand up as if he had just put his finger in a light socket.

  “Aye, that of it that hasn’t fallen out!” He chuckled, appraising his guest. “You have hair like that yourself, lass. Does it plague you?”

  Lou nodded ruefully. “I’ve always wished my hair were straight, but like my father used to say, ‘if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’”

  “And if turnips were watches, I’d wear one by my side,’” the old Scotsman glibly quoted back. “Did you get your hair from your father, then, that he understood your desires so well?”

  Lou shook her head. “No. I was actually always jealous of Dad’s hair: it’s straight and easy to manage, and he still hasn’t gone grey.”

  The professor studied her for a
moment. “Was it your mother then who gave you that mane?”

  Sighing, Lou decided that it would be better to forestall any further inquiry if she told the professor about her unknown heritage. It wasn’t something she spoke of often, but she felt strangely comfortable with the old man sitting across from her, and she was able to say, “Actually, I don’t know who I get my hair from. I’m adopted.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause, but Lou turned again to the folder of photographs in her lap, pulling out one at random in an attempt to break the tension. “Now, what about this handsome man? Surely that can’t be you?”

  1667

  When they finally came for her, she was so disoriented from hunger, so maddened from lack of sleep, that she would have confessed to any question they put to her. Her judges included George Nairn, father of her slain brother-in-law, and he was adamant about following the letter of the law. Isobel answered “yes” whenever a question was put to her, and the townsfolk heard her confess to consorting with the devil, to plotting to murder newborn babes, and to carrying out the ghastly murders of her sister, Margaret, her brother-in-law, Alexander, and his second wife, Janet. Isobel answered “yes” to all that they said, but that was all she would say.

  When they pressed her to reveal the names of the other witches she worked with, to cast suspicion on her fellow servants of Satan, she simply said “yes”. The judges were dissatisfied that her testimony had not helped root out more of the evil in the community, but even one confessed witch was a victory before God. For all but one of the judges, this was the first witch they had ever had dealings with, and the novelty of the situation left them almost childishly eager to proceed with the sentencing. The doctor who had made the initial accusations against Isobel on that gruesome night did not speak against her during the trial: in fact, he remained almost conspicuously absent from the legal proceedings, but there were plenty of witnesses to take his place. One little boy even told the crowd that he had been passing by the house on the night of the murder, and had heard Satan inside, demanding the service of Isobel Key. The lad did not mention that he was the one who fetched her to the scene. He was a young lad, but old enough to know that if he revealed even his minor role, he might face questioning himself.

  Such testimony was added to countless others, woman who had lost children, men who had lost wives to difficult births, even those who had lost livestock found a way to blame Isobel for their misfortune. None of the hundreds of healthy babies she had delivered seemed to count in her favor, and there was not anyone there who was willing to speak of their lifelong friendship and trust with the healer. It would not have mattered. She was condemned the moment her scream broke the silence on that awful winter’s night.

  Barely able to stand due to malnourishment and sheer exhaustion, Isobel may have felt lucky that her trial was over and done with in such short order; within the span of one day, the confession had been signed and sealed, and Isobel was led out of the court and into the sunlight shining down on St. Andrews.

  Her sentence was read aloud from the steps of the cathedral while she stood meekly to one side. Her hands were bound behind her back, and her wild hair framed her startling and empty eyes. Many villagers came to listen to the sentencing, for it had been some years since the excitement of a witch trial had swept through St. Andrews. Children raced about the crowd, and boys occasionally stooped to the ground and hurled a stone at the witch as they passed. The woman who had delivered many of these children, who had healed their ills and aided their folk, was sentenced to be burned alive for the crimes of witchcraft and sorcery. The sentence was read on the 8th of January, 1667. Isobel was 45 years old and utterly alone.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “The woman is my grandmother, Janet MacDonald. She had married a MacDonald of the Highlands, and how it was she persuaded him to move to lowland St. Andrews has always been a bit of a family mystery. Suffice to say, however, that they settled here somewhere around the turn of the last century. Janet MacDonald had two children, both of them girls. My mother, Mary Anne, was her oldest, and then there was my aunt Maggie. My mother was a suffragette, and proud of it she was too, so that when she married my father, Patrick Simmons, she refused to take his name. That’s how it is I am a MacDonald, as she was.

  “Aunt Maggie married an American after the Second World War, and she moved back with him to, I believe it was New Jersey. Mother stayed in close contact with her, and I knew my cousins through letters and from one holiday visit.

  “My own mother and father never had any other children, and they passed away some twenty years back. I kept close to Aunt Maggie’s eldest daughter, Lisa, although the poor woman has not had an easy life.”

  Lou interrupted him. “Is Lisa still living in the United States?”

  He nodded. “Lisa married and raised a family, but her husband was a scholar, and had to move constantly for his work. The family lived in, oh, three states in perhaps five years? I don’t remember fully, but I do remember it was terrible hard on her children.”

  “What happened?” Lou asked, strangely spellbound by his genealogical recitation.

  The professor glanced at her, his eyes sad. “Lisa’s eldest girl, JoAnn, I think is her name, she was 15 at the time. She got herself with child, and she wouldna’ tell her parents who the father was. It near destroyed the family. She carried the baby to term, her parents wouldn’t hear otherwise, but they made arrangements for the child to be adopted.”

  He stared reflectively into space for a moment, lost in a world of the past. Lou shifted in her chair, and her movement caught the professor’s attention.

  Professor MacDonald blinked once, refocusing his eyes, and then he looked at his guest as if he had never seen her before. He surveyed her from head to toe and back up again, a calculating look in his eyes. “How old are you, lass?”

  “I just turned twenty-one in October.” She answered automatically, even though it was an odd question for him to ask.

  “Twenty-one in October,” he repeated quietly to himself. “And where did you say you grew up?”

  “I don’t know if I did say, but my parents work in Manhattan and I was raised in Hartford, Connecticut.”

  The professor scratched his beard and stared at her. “When in October?”

  His question seemed disjointed, and Lou wasn’t sure for a moment what he meant. “Oh, my birthday you mean?” He nodded quickly at her. “October sixth.”

  He shook violently in his chair when he heard her words, and she worried that the man was having some kind of seizure or stroke. She jumped up to help in some way, but he was already out of his chair and across the room, rummaging in a large roll top desk against the far wall. He muttered to himself as if he’d suddenly lost his mind.

  Lou stood, uncertain as to what she should do. The professor seemed upset by something, and she still worried that he was suffering a stroke: his hands were shaking as they dug through the desk. Should she call an ambulance?

  He let out a triumphant cry and held a letter out to her. “Read it. Go on, read it!” The professor thrust the letter at Lou with a kind of manic frenzy, and she took it from him slowly.

  “Dear Cousin,” she began to read out loud, and he shook his head.

  “No, lass, I know what it says. You need to read it for yourself. Make sure you read it all the way through!” He sat down again on his chair, his former relaxed posture gone. Instead, he perched on the edge of the chair and jiggled his leg impatiently, never once taking his eyes off his guest.

  1667

  The day they burned Isobel Key, two people from St. Andrews went missing. Young Nan Nairn was nowhere to be found, and George Nairn went frantically from overseeing the burning of the witch to upending the town to find his granddaughter. Perhaps he feared the witch had taken her as one final vengeance, and his relief must have been palpable when she was found, hiding in her aunt’s abandoned cottage.

  When she was found, the screams of the witch could still be heard all
the way from St. Andrews, and the child had her head under a pillow and was clutching the bed frame tightly with both hands. Her grandfather was not one to tolerate fits, but he had to remove the little girl bodily from the place, and he feared for a while that the sweet child had indeed been entered by the devil, so loudly did she scream when he pried her fingers off the witch’s bed. Her cries were not quieted until the fire had died down, and the moment Isobel Key was reduced to bone and ash was the moment her niece stopped her ungodly noise.

  George Nairn was a practical man, and now that his granddaughter was found and was once more behaving in an appropriate manner, he didn’t spare a thought for why the girl had been all the way out to the witch’s cottage in the first place, nor did he worry that the sentencing and execution of her aunt had any ill effect on the child now in his care.

  The other disappearance was not solved so easily. The doctor was gone, his shingle taken down sometime in the night and his dwelling cleared of all his tools and belongings. The people of St. Andrews never saw the man again, and none had any answer for his sudden disappearance. It was speculated that perhaps he had tired of life on the sea and had returned to his home in Edinburgh, or that perhaps he had fallen into the land of fairy, but the mystery was never resolved.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Don’t you see, lass, don’t you understand what this means?” Professor MacDonald spoke eagerly, his arms raised to embrace Lou. She shook her head, confused.

  “I need- I just- I have to think. Please, let me think.” The professor lowered his arms, and his beaming smile faded.