Shakespeare's Witch

by Samantha Grosser

  Tom found his sister huddled in the chapel, arms wrapped around herself against the cold, shivering. He sat beside her, put his own cloak around her and drew her close in to his body.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Why did you take so long to come?’ It had seemed liked hours she had waited in the cold, light growing dim in the oncoming night, pacing for warmth until she grew tired of it and found a sheltered spot to sit and wait. Fear had abated with the cold and boredom, but now, in the half-light of the candles, she could see the pallor of her brother’s cheeks, the gauntness beneath the bones, and the glimmer in his eyes reawakened her disquiet. He gave her a smile of reassurance that did not meet his eyes, and fear lurched in her belly. She spun herself to face him.

  ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘John has charged us with bewitching him …’

  ‘Us?’

  He tilted his head in affirmation.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No,’ he whispered, taking the fingers of one of her hands in his, stroking them gently. ‘I had no need – his own desire was enough. That, and the wine you prepared … mandragora?’

  She nodded. ‘And herb of grace.’

  ‘Come,’ he said then. ‘Stay with me tonight. ’Tis safer that way.’

  ‘And give fuel to more charges against us?’ She shook her head. ‘Take me home.’

  ‘To face John?’

  ‘To see Nick.’ She wanted to be away her brother; their desires for each other were too dangerous and frightening. Her love for Nick was simple, the natural want of a woman for a man. She felt safe in his bed and she knew that he would fight to protect her.

  ‘As you wish,’ he replied, and though she felt the coldness in his tone, he did not argue.

  He helped her to her feet and held her hand as they made their way through the gloom and hush of the church to the colder air outside, close to the river. She shivered, and he drew her under his own cloak, his arm around her to share their warmth. Close again, she lifted her face to look at him. What had he summoned that night at the Grove? What dark force did they awake with their magic?

  ‘How did you learn your sorcery?’ she asked. ‘Who taught you?’

  He smiled. ‘I learned it from a book.’

  ‘What book?’

  He shook his head and squeezed her shoulder tighter by way of answer, and she asked no more as they hurried on through the dark towards the house in Water Lane. Perhaps it was better not to know after all.

  Tom saw his sister safely to the house, then turned back to make his own way home. He walked slowly, oblivious to the press of life in the tenement buildings around him, weaving through the narrow lanes in automatic abstraction. Sarah’s question turned in his thoughts as he walked, and the cold night went unnoticed. He hadn’t thought of his teacher for years; he could no longer even picture the man’s face. But he could recall his initiation well enough – the young boy seeking knowledge, his innocence offered to the spirits as he had offered Sarah’s. For the whole of his sixteenth summer he had milked the man for his learning, allowing him to use his body in exchange, and when the shadows from the man’s past had caught up with him again and he had no choice but to flee, Tom had stolen from him the ancient grimoire with its densely packed pages of ritual, dark powers contained between the worn leather covers. It lay hidden and buried now beneath the stage at the playhouse, his most treasured and secret possession, though much of it he could barely understand. And though he knew there was danger in it, he still consulted it often, enjoying the weight of it in his hands and the latent power it gave him, unknown magic in the handwritten pages – inks mixed with blood, rituals enacted in their writing. All the sorcery he knew was in that book, but there was far more yet to learn: words of magic he could not decipher, spells in foreign tongues and symbols that were still unknown to him. So he continued to spend his nights quizzing the travellers that he met in the taverns and the stews, searching for more knowledge, for deeper understanding.

  Briefly he wondered what had become of its previous keeper, but the thought didn’t linger long as the cold finally pried its fingers inside his cloak and he quickened his pace towards the warmth of his bed.

  When Sarah reached the house in Water Lane, Nick was waiting for her and John was nowhere to be seen. Nick leapt from his chair to greet her and held her tight against him. She nestled into him, absorbing the smell of him, the strength of his body, his warmth. His lips were against her hair, brushing it with gentle kisses, and she wondered what insanity had turned his wife away from such caresses; the God of the Puritans surely demanded too much. After a time, he loosened his hold on her and she drew back a little, but she remained in the safety of his embrace. ‘Where is John?’ she whispered.

  ‘Safely asleep. We stopped at an apothecary on the way and got a sleeping draught. He is peaceful now, praise God.’

  She nodded and they turned, still holding hands, and stepped to the fire. She settled herself before it and he sat close to her so that when she lifted her head she could only meet his eyes, staring intently into hers, his mouth but an inch from hers.

  He said, ‘John accused you of bewitching me.’

  She frowned, searching to understand words that seemed to make no sense. ‘But I thought it was because of Tom,’ she said. ‘Because he thinks Tom seduced him through witchcraft …’

  ‘It is that. But he also claims you have bewitched me to love you.’

  ‘He has lost his mind,’ she said. But the truth of the charges frightened her, for truth has a way of being heard and she knew of no magic against it. She had never thought to harm anyone, only to stir up Nick’s passion more keenly and to act on his desires: she had never sought to bring him to her against his will. And why should it matter to John, anyway?

  ‘There is more,’ Nick said, lifting her chin with a finger and tilting her head up towards him. He was watching her as though he would read every thought through the window of her eyes. She tried to smile, but dread was weighting the very blood in her veins and she could barely summon the strength she needed to move her lips.

  ‘He has said that if I marry you before God and He does not strike you down, he’ll believe you are no witch.’

  ‘But you cannot marry me.’ The pity of it struck with new force and she hated his wife afresh.

  ‘We can handfast in church, and it will buy us some time.’

  ‘A handfast is binding,’ she said carefully, though the thought of it was tempting. ‘You’re not free to make me promises you cannot keep. You’ll end up in prison.’

  ‘Better that than you at the end of a rope,’ he answered.

  ‘No,’ she said. She couldn’t let him endanger himself on her account. He was innocent of all of it, and she would have him stay that way. ‘There must be another way.’ She needed to talk to her mother – her mother would know what to do.

  ‘There is none,’ he said. ‘And I would happily bind myself to you whatever the consequence.’ He lowered his face to meet hers, mouth against mouth, one hand holding her head, the other searching out her breast. For a heartbeat she resisted, needing to think and to plan, but his fingers against the skin of her breast undid her and she gave herself up to the passion, awareness of her danger sinking with his touch.

  When Nick woke, the bed was empty beside him and for a moment he thought he had dreamt of her there again. Such strange dreams he was having of late, dark images that faded into air as soon as he awoke, leaving him only with memories of darkness, shadows that trailed his waking thoughts. But last night had been no dream – she had shared his bed, her body soft and warm, and now she was gone. Reluctantly, for the room was cold, he threw back the covers and swung himself out of bed, reaching for his shift and shrugging into it. He shivered. Then, without bothering to light a candle, the way well known, he crossed to the door and opened it, pausing on the landing to listen. The new crescent moon shed a quiet light through the landing window and cast tall shadows across a silver film.
<
br />   He paused at John’s door. Hearing nothing, he assumed the boy was still sleeping. He hoped so, praying that sleep would calm John’s madness and bring him back to peace. Creeping downstairs, no light glimmered around the hall door, but he opened it anyway, peering into the gloom. The curtains were drawn and a deeper blackness hung in the room. He went in and drew back a curtain to allow a faint light to seep in, but the room was empty, so he drew it closed again and stepped out once more into the passage, following it through to the back of the house, past the kitchen and down the step that led to the back door and the yard. The door was ajar and a jolt of apprehension tugged at his innards – had someone broken in through the night? But as he drew the door wider open he saw the figure of Sarah on the grass, her white shift shining in the moonlight, the shape of her body outlined against it, long hair trailing down her back. He smiled to himself, enjoying what he saw, and for the first moments he imagined she was dancing. Her arms were raised above her head, her body swaying. But then he realised that it was not a dance as he understood it and held his breath. At the same moment she sensed his presence and turned, and he saw the smile that lit her face on seeing him there. She came towards him and took his hand and they sat on the step by the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he whispered.

  ‘It’s a beautiful night,’ she replied, which didn’t answer his question.

  ‘Sarah,’ he urged. ‘Tell me truthfully. What were you doing?’ He held her hand tightly and peered into her face. Her eyes were shining, lit with laughter, and her lips were curled with a smile. He had never seen her look so beautiful. She lifted a hand to his face and smoothed the rough cheek with a gentle finger.

  ‘Nothing,’ she murmured. ‘I was doing nothing.’

  He twitched his head away from her touch. ‘I’m not a fool,’ he said. ‘Tell me the truth.’

  She let her hand drop and he saw the uncertainty cross her face before she spoke to him again. ‘I was dancing,’ she said, but her eyes gave the lie away.

  ‘You’d leave me with suspicions and doubt?’ he replied. He would rather know the truth of it than the horrible imaginings that were starting to crowd his mind. He thought of John, raving like a lunatic and terrified, and for the first time suspected there might be truth in his words.

  She swallowed and turned her face away, watching the narrow moon once more as it slipped behind the clouds, allowing the darkness to reclaim the night. He examined her in profile, the high cheekbones and strong nose, the full lips, pursed now in thought. It seemed impossible she might be a witch, so young, so beautiful. And he, so in love with her. He squeezed her hand again and prayed to God in his heart that it was not true. With the pressure of his hand on hers, she turned to him again with a small sad smile on her lips. Her chest rose with a deep breath as though she were about to say something, but she paused and took another one before she finally spoke.

  ‘I do a little natural magic,’ she said. ‘Nothing evil, nothing dark – a few herbs, a few words chanted over them, a healing here and there. A cunning-woman is all, a gift from my mother. You know she is a midwife?’

  He knew. But he had seen her praying to the moon; she was not telling him all.

  ‘You pray to Hecate?’

  ‘I pray to the moon and the earth – to the forces in the cosmos that move us and give us life. Only that. Nick, please believe me.’ She touched her finger to his cheek again and turned his face to hers. ‘Please believe me.’

  He wanted to believe her. The touch of her aroused his desire for her, love for her brimming through him. But John’s charges rang in his mind: she had bewitched him and made him hers – it was not a natural desire.

  ‘Am I under your spell?’ he whispered, their faces close, his own hand raised now to her cheek, her skin soft and smooth and cool against his fingers. ‘Have you bewitched me?’ He remembered the strange spice of the wine and the passion between them afterwards, but with the memory his desire overruled the logic in his head. He didn’t care if she had bewitched him, for what was love anyway but a spell of nature to make us mad? He bent to kiss her, one hand reaching down to gather up the hem of the shift and find the soft flesh underneath. She sighed and moved into him as his fingers sought out her secret places, but even as he laid her down on her back on the cold grass and slid himself inside her, a shadow trailed across his thoughts, a fear that she was something other than she seemed who would lead him down to Hell.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Pale Hecate’s Offerings

  ‘How now, you secret, black and midnight hags? What is’t you do?’

  ‘A deed without a name.’

  ‘I conjure you …’

  Sarah watched in silent fascination, echoes of the rite she did with Tom pulsing in her mind. I conjure you, I conjure you … She could hear her brother’s voice, whispers in her head – this was sorcery indeed, spirits summoned, mischief made. Her veins seemed as ice and she was frozen to the spot, unable to tear herself away, though all her instincts bade her run and just keep running.

  ‘Speak.’

  ‘Demand.’

  ‘We’ll answer …’

  Tom as spirit now, obedient to Macbeth’s summons – witch, daemon, creature of the darkness – and she shuddered, afraid of what the words might invoke, conscious of their power. She slid her gaze to Will in his usual place at the edge of the stage and wondered at his knowledge. No wonder he had nightmares when his head was filled with scenes like these, his thoughts composed of words of occult ritual that could open doors to powers of darkness. Did he truly understand what he had done? For how did he know of such things? It was hard to credit he possessed such arcane learning. But all her certainties had slipped away since the vision in the shewstone: everything she thought she knew and felt and understood had shifted underneath her feet, and she could only watch and wait. The fate she foresaw never left her mind, trailing all her thoughts and dreams, a dark destiny waiting – it was simply a matter of where and when. But she had trained herself to shut it in a corner of her mind, for Death hangs over us all, awaiting his chance, and there is nothing any soul can do but live out the time allotted.

  Her glance strayed across the playhouse. All eyes were rapt, spellbound by the scene before them. And John, close to the stage and staring at Tom in terror – pale, sweating, trembling. She followed his gaze to watch her brother too, transformed into something other than he was, withered and wild and dangerous, and she began to understand John’s fear.

  Later, when the play had moved on to more worldly matters, her mother came to the playhouse, climbing the outside steps to the wardrobe and pausing at the door to regain her breath after the climb – it was a tall flight of stairs. Then she stepped down into the room where Sarah was stitching a witch’s dress and drew up a stool at the workbench, fingering the black wool automatically, giving a slight instinctive nod of approval at its quality, a tailor’s wife in her core.

  ‘Mother.’ Sarah gave a small nod of greeting.

  ‘Daughter.’

  There was a silence. Sarah put down her needle and waited, forbidding herself to speculate on what news her mother brought, schooling herself to patience.

  Finally her mother spoke. ‘You are in love with Nick,’ she said. It was not a question. ‘Tom came to me last night and told me all.’

  Sarah wondered how he had done so without her father’s knowledge, but she did not ask – her brother’s capacity for secrecy had always amazed her.

  ‘Everything?’ Surely he had not told her all?

  ‘Everything.’ Her mother raised an eyebrow and nodded in affirmation, and Sarah dropped her gaze, ashamed for her mother to know such things about her.

  ‘Nick will handfast with me,’ she said, ‘to keep John from proclaiming me witch.’

  ‘He isn’t free to do so,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘And it will not help.’

  Sarah was silent – there was no answer to her mother’s bald statement of the fact. She had turned it over again and again
in her own mind that morning as she cleaned and swept Nick’s house before leaving for the playhouse, imagining herself as mistress there with the house as her own, thinking she would have been a good wife to him and borne him many children. And though she knew it was but idle fantasy, it had been easy to picture their life together. It was a cruel game his true wife was playing, to hold him yet deny him his due. She had loved him once, and it seemed a strange path for a Puritan to take. Perhaps he should have beaten her after all, Sarah thought wryly, or at least demanded what was rightfully his.

  ‘Sarah?’ her mother called her attention back.

  She slid her eyes from her sewing towards her mother, who was observing her intently, shrewd eyes narrowed and questioning, and Sarah felt like a child again, in trouble for some misdemeanour. She lowered her head once more and stared at the stitching that lay on the bench. Her mother said, ‘We must ask for help and bring the world back into balance.’

  She swallowed, forcing down the doubt and fear. ‘Where?’ she asked.

  ‘The Grove. Midnight.’ Her mother rose. Then she slid from the stool and was quickly gone. Sarah watched her till she moved out of sight beyond the door before turning her attention back to sewing the witch’s gown for Tom.

  In the afternoon, they went to Whitehall, summoned by King James to play a comedy. Sarah had never been to Court before, but her excitement was tempered by nerves, fearful that John might bring his charges again before the King, whose interest in witchcraft was famous and his sympathies not in doubt: he had written a book on daemonology and prosecuted witches in Scotland himself.

  She sat close to her brother on the boat that bore them up the river, the Company’s costumes in a trunk behind them, and said nothing, but she knew he understood her fears. A rising crescent moon rode low above the city, peering through a shifting veil of cloud, but she drew no comfort from its presence, and the journey seemed long as the boatman laboured against the tide, the water lapping and surging against the bow until she began to feel sick with the movement. A pair of swans bobbed beside them, indifferent. Instinctively she nestled closer in to Tom, who turned his head with a smile and squeezed her hand.