Shakespeare's Witch

by Samantha Grosser

  She swallowed, sensing worse to come, and in the pause she could not help but raise her head to look at him.

  He gave her a grim smile. ‘Just as well, since you maddened him to murder and he is gone.’

  ‘Murder?’ The word escaped her lips instinctively and ice closed round her heart. Not Tom, she pleaded silently. Please, not Tom. ‘Who? Who is dead?’

  Wickham tilted his head to appraise her response. Could he see her confusion, her fear? she wondered. Did he believe it?

  ‘Who did your imp provoke him to kill?’

  ‘No one,’ she breathed, before she understood the trap.

  Wickham smiled and, unfolding his arms, he rubbed his palms together. ‘At last, a confession.’

  ‘No,’ she said and weakness suffused her, her mind struggling to make sense of things, thoughts clouded by starvation and by weariness. ‘No.’

  ‘You did not send your imp to the boy to stir him to murder?’

  ‘I have no imp.’

  ‘Just to drag him into madness.’

  ‘I have no imp.’

  ‘And to inflame him for your brother’s lusts.’

  She shook her head, overwhelmed. And the fear that Tom was dead stripped the last of her strength away. ‘My brother …’ she murmured.

  Wickham bent close to her again. ‘Your brother …?’

  She lifted her head to look at him. His face was near to hers, thin lips pressed tight together, eyes narrowed. Everything else paled beside her need to know. ‘Is my brother dead?’

  The magistrate sat back and laughed. But he did not answer her question.

  ‘Tell me, Miss Stone, how you bewitched the boy.’

  She shook her head, words failing to come.

  ‘You will not tell me? You would prefer to go back to your cell? We can wait. It is two weeks or more until the assizes. How long do you think you can last without meat or rest?’

  She was silent.

  ‘You’ll tell me in the end,’ he said. ‘But if you tell me now, you may be granted bail till your trial. A soft bed, a warm hearth, meat in your belly …’

  She closed her eyes against the temptation he offered. She could feel her will ebbing low, and the threat of more days in that cell on the stool was like poison in her mind. She shook her head as if she might dislodge the thoughts.

  ‘There are people in my hall,’ he said. ‘People who are waiting to speak on your behalf. People who will no doubt tell me of your honesty and purity, your godliness. But we know, don’t we, Sarah, you and I, that you are neither honest nor godly, whatever your friends or your mother may believe. And until you tell the truth and beg for God’s forgiveness for your evil and your lies, I will not hear them speak.’

  Her mind groped for some solution, but the weariness and fear had made her drunk and her thoughts would not cohere into sense. And still she did not know if Tom were dead. She tried to sense him as she had before in the cell, reaching out to his spirit to come to her, but she could not bring her mind to focus and her thoughts were scattered and broken.

  Wickham, growing impatient, stood up. ‘We’ve proof beyond doubt that John was bewitched,’ he announced in a change of tone, peremptory, commanding. ‘We have the word of the physician who examined him. He is here too, waiting to give his evidence against you. I just need your word of confession. One word. One little yes from you and we can proceed. We are all waiting, Sarah.’

  He stood behind her chair. She could feel him there, looming. Then he bent to speak in her ear. ‘Do you want to keep your friends waiting? I’m sure they have other places to be, important matters to attend to. Men of substance, I believe. King’s men. Do them a favour, Sarah, let them give their statements and leave.’

  She realised she was shaking. Would he really keep her here all day? Surely not. Surely there would come a point when he would have to hear the others. But by then she would be back in her cell, bound and sleepless and starving. And Tom, she thought. What has happened to Tom?

  ‘I am not a witch,’ she whispered. ‘And I have nothing to confess.’

  There was a silence. He moved out from behind her, circling around to take his place once more behind his desk. She felt safer with him there, distance between them.

  ‘The Devil chose well with you,’ he said. ‘A loyal servant indeed. I’m sure he’ll have a warm place ready for you after you hang. As you wish then. We will proceed.’

  The guards came and dragged her out, and she sat slumped against the wall where they left her in a small room that smelled of wood shavings and mice. Everything around her was blurred and shifting, and though she strained to hear the voices beyond the door, listening to the footsteps that came and went, when they came to fetch her again she was asleep on the hard wood floor. She came to with difficulty, blinking hard to force her eyes to open, to focus. The guard held her upright, allowing her a moment to come round.

  ‘Can you stand, miss?’ he asked, kinder now that his master was not watching.

  ‘I think so,’ she answered. ‘Maybe just a little help?’

  He took her arm and led her out through the door and into the passage where her friends were waiting to greet her. Tom was the first to get to her and she collapsed against him as the guard let go of her arm. He held her in his arms, supporting her weight, and she pressed herself against him, drinking in the reality of him, solid flesh and warm breath. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she breathed.

  ‘Hush,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s get you home.’

  ‘I can go?’ She tipped back her head to look at him in surprise.

  ‘Will posted bail.’

  She turned to find him, and though his face was no more than a blur, she smiled and nodded her thanks, a curtsey beyond her, and hoped he understood. Then, with her brother’s arm around her and Nick close on her other side, they stepped out of the magistrate’s house and into the street. Above them the sky was low and grey and full, and she tipped her face towards it, breathing in the fresh-sour air of the river, the cool damp welcome against her cheeks as the small party shuffled along the lane towards the High Street. When she thought she could trust her voice to speak, she turned her head to Tom. ‘What happened with John?’ she asked.

  Tom’s eyes locked briefly with Nick’s above her head before he spoke, and fear pulled at her guts.

  ‘He’s disappeared,’ Tom said. ‘Last night at the brothel … he … it seems he strangled Jane.’

  ‘Jane?’ she managed to whisper. She had never thought he might have murdered Jane. ‘But why?’ It made no sense to her. To kill Tom or herself she would have understood. But Jane had no role to play in any of it. ‘Why Jane?’

  No one answered, too much to say here on the street.

  ‘At home,’ Nick said, tucking his hand under her arm, so that most of her weight was supported between the two men. ‘We can talk more there.’

  She nodded, and with a brief farewell to her mother and to Will, she watched them walk away side by side, deep in conversation. Then the two men she loved most in the world walked close beside her through the damp Southwark streets to her home.

  At the house, they gave her into Joyce’s care and Nick could hear the two women on the stairs, imagining the hot bath to come, the fresh linen, Joyce’s motherly touch. Relief to have Sarah home suffused him, and he took his seat at the table in the warm main hall, the fire burning brightly, meat and bread spread out ready. Tom joined him as he poured ale for them both, and they ate for a while in a comfortable silence. He was learning to stifle his distrust, conscious that in spite of everything there was nothing Tom would not do for Sarah. United in their love for her, they were bound together, their fates entwined with hers. He ate the food that was before him without interest or attention and when they had eaten their fill, Tom turned to his host. ‘What do you think will happen to John?’

  Nick shrugged and said nothing: he did not want to think about it. His nights were laced now with bad dreams, John’s guilt interwoven with Macbeth’s, madness
in them both and a lust to kill. He had woken that morning afraid of himself, recognising pleasure in the blood on his hands, the lure of the power to give or take life. For the first time in his life, he began to understand his father’s viciousness, the satisfaction that came with acts of violence. In his dream he had killed them all as he lay with them – John, Sarah, Tom – and the early morning had found him on his knees, praying for God’s forgiveness for the evil that dwelt within him. For what normal man had such dreams?

  ‘Nick?’ Tom’s gentle question brought him back to himself.

  ‘Forgive me. I am tired – I had strange dreams in the night.’

  ‘Aye.’ Tom nodded. ‘It is hard to believe he could do such a thing. That any of us could,’ he said, as though he had understood Nick’s nightmares and the fears that lay behind them.

  Nick looked away, remembering the dying face of his companion in the dream, the struggle as his hands gripped Tom’s neck, squeezing, his own thrusting into climax as he took another man’s life. The image sickened him and a thread of vomit rose in his throat. He swallowed it down and washed the taste away with more ale. ‘What power can drive a man to kill?’ he murmured, more to himself than to Tom. It was a question he had pondered often since he was given the part of Macbeth, but now it had a new urgency and resonance and his nightmares had gifted him some small understanding.

  ‘How could we not have seen it coming?’ He lifted his eyes then to Tom. ‘One moment he was there, drinking at the table with us, and then … How could we not have known what he was thinking?’

  ‘Who can ever know the thoughts in another man’s mind?’ Tom replied. ‘And who would want to? But thoughts are not deeds. Which among us has never harboured evil thoughts?’

  ‘What evil do you dream of, Tom?’ he asked. It was not hard to imagine Tom with wicked thoughts.

  Tom smiled. ‘It is best left unsaid. You of all people know the power of the spoken word, the potential of language for magic.’

  Nick said nothing but he observed the other man with his languid, easy movements, the almost womanish elegance, the changing blue-grey eyes that met his own now, bright with amusement at the scrutiny. He had seen the same look in his sister. A brief shadow of the attraction he had felt for him flickered inside and swiftly died.

  ‘What?’ Tom laughed. ‘What evils do you think me capable of?’

  Nick lifted an eyebrow, answering Tom’s humour with his own. ‘I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess, my friend.’ But he was conscious of the darkness in Tom, a lust for something beyond the usual vices of the brothel and the games of chance, an appetite for sin. Whatever else, he had no doubts that Tom would find his eternal rest in Hell.

  Tom laughed again, comfortable in his role as sinner and enjoying Nick’s unease at confronting it, and a sense of pity for John rippled through him. The boy had never stood a chance against Tom’s seduction: such confidence brooked no resistance. Then he remembered the rising of his own brief desire for Tom and wondered if he would have fallen too, if Tom had chosen him instead. Before the dreams of last night he would have been sure of his own strength to resist, but the nightmares had shown him a part of himself he did not recognise and he was no longer so certain of who he was.

  Sarah’s appearance at the door distracted him from his thoughts. She was clean and bright and pretty again, the matted hair washed and brushed, a fresh gown. She smiled at the sight of them.

  ‘Will you eat?’ Nick gestured to the food still spread on the table.

  She slid onto the stool next to her brother, at an angle to Nick, and took a little bread and cheese. Nick poured her some ale, which she sipped at.

  ‘You must be hungry,’ Tom said.

  ‘A little,’ she replied. ‘But my belly has shrunk.’ She looked down briefly and touched a hand to her stomach as if to reassure herself it was true, and Nick wondered how badly she’d been used in the prison, if hunger had been the worst of it. Rage at her treatment simmered in his blood and he tensed his jaw against it, making himself remember that she was home now and with him, the danger and humiliation passed for a time. She caught his look as he watched her eat and smiled, and the affection in her smile reassured him. He touched his fingers to her arm. ‘I’m glad you’re home,’ he said.

  ‘No more than I,’ she returned.

  When she had eaten all she could they sat at the fireside, and she settled herself in the cushions at the hearth while the two men sat in the chairs either side of it. He wanted Tom to leave. He wanted Sarah to himself, but her brother showed no signs of going. Will was working around them at the playhouse today, rehearsing scenes without them, and a performance in the afternoon that needed neither man. But Tom showed no interest in attending to his duties as company tailor. Nick lowered himself to the cushions to be closer to her, and she smiled as he reached up to smooth her still-damp hair back behind her shoulder.

  Tom watched and Nick was sure he understood, but still the younger man made no movement to leave. He sidled in closer so that his body was almost touching hers and she dropped her face away, shy of his touch before her brother. He stroked the line of her jaw with his fingers and she rubbed her head towards the caress. He lifted his head to look at her brother. Go, he mouthed, with a gesture of his head toward the door. Leave.

  Tom hesitated for a moment, his eyes searching Sarah’s, and in the exchange that passed between the two of them, Nick suddenly understood something new: Tom had known Sarah before him, and the look he saw now was ownership. Confused, uncertain he had read it right and hoping he was wrong, he dropped his hand from her face and backed away from her, gaze switching from one to the other, praying to see a different truth. Sensing the change, Sarah sat up straight and the fearful glance she flicked to her brother only served to confirm his suspicion.

  ‘What is it, Nick?’ She turned to him and touched her fingers to his arm. The skin burned with the contact and he drew his arm away.

  ‘He seduced you too?’ he managed to whisper. ‘You too?’

  She swung her head away from him but he slid near her again and grasped her chin in his fingers, drawing her face round toward him so that he could look at her. Blue-grey eyes that changed in the light, the same as her brother’s. They flitted away from him now, trying to reach Tom but he held her head firm.

  ‘Tell me the truth.’

  She swallowed and he could feel the unevenness of her breath, her hesitation. But even as he felt cruel for pressing her after all she had been through, his need to know overrode his pity. Was it this need that drove a man to kill, he wondered, an instinct that overthrew all else?

  ‘Tell me.’ His fingers gripped her chin tighter and she flinched, but he did not loosen his hold. ‘Tell me the truth.’

  There was a silence, the only sound the roar and crackle of the fire at his back and his own heartbeat loud in his ears.

  It was Tom’s voice that broke the deadlock. ‘Yes.’

  Nick’s head snapped round to face him.

  ‘I seduced her in an act of magic to win your love for her. Now let her go. You’re hurting her.’

  Nick’s hand dropped from Sarah’s jaw and he backed away, lifting himself into the chair again, elbows resting on his knees, head lowered. His gaze grazed the rug at his feet, examining the fine weave, the delicate pattern. It had been one of the first things he had bought with the money he inherited and he was still proud of it: it was the finest thing he owned. From the corner of his vision he saw Sarah move towards him, kneeling beside him, a tentative hand reaching out then withdrawing. His breathing was hard and short, his thoughts in turmoil, and he could not raise his head to look at her. His body sank with the weight of this new knowledge, and his limbs felt unlike his own. An image of Sarah from his dream cut across his mind before transforming into Tom, face contorted in the moment of his death, and his own arousal as he thrust himself inside him. The recollection excited him now, and to his disgust he felt himself beginning to harden.

  ‘Nick?’ Sarah’s v
oice whispered close to his head. ‘Say something.’

  Slowly, he turned to look at her. ‘My mind is poisoned,’ he breathed. ‘Get away from me.’

  She backed away, towards her brother, and when finally he could bring himself to lift his head, they were together: Tom on the chair and Sarah on the floor close by his legs, her brother’s hand resting on her shoulder, her fingers holding his. Even in his misery Nick thought how beautiful they were, watching him with those blue-grey eyes that would haunt him always now.

  ‘What else is true?’ he heard himself ask. ‘Did John have the right of it after all? Were we bewitched?’

  ‘Love is a spell of the gods to torment us,’ Tom said. ‘You should know that.’

  ‘This was no spell of the gods,’ Nick spat. ‘This was your doing.’

  They were silent and he knew that he was right. ‘And John?’

  Tom let out a snort of derision. ‘I needed no spells to win John. He was mine the moment I set my heart on it. His sins were all his own doing.’

  He said nothing, his mind struggling to make sense of it all, but he could hardly bear to take his eyes away from Sarah. She was watching him, her hand still holding her brother’s, and the thought of them together sent a shudder through him, hairs lifting on his arms.

  ‘Love born of love,’ she said, letting go of Tom’s hand, approaching him once again. He let her come, too weary now to force her away. And in spite of all he knew, he still wanted her. The spell had done its work well – no matter what she had done to win him, his love for her remained.

  ‘Will I ever be free?’ he murmured.

  She reached a hand to his face, her soft, cool palm cupping his jaw, her lips close to his. ‘Is that what you want?’ she replied, leaning in, her mouth pressing into his mouth, the warmth of her tongue against his teeth. Desire erupted through him, heat in every part of him, and he cradled her head in one hand, fingers twisting in her hair, their mouths still pressed hard together, joining them.