Inside, a wide expanse of space was skirted with tables bearing what looked like carpenters’ tools, chisels and hammers and other, stranger black metal devices. One large iron hook hung from the ceiling, with an ominous looking pulley and chain dangling down. Two buckets sat beside a pile of coal by the window. There was an air of terror in the cold room and it was suddenly too small. A three-legged stool sat in the centre of the chamber.
Another uniformed guard joined us, one that was mutton-chopped and cleft-chinned with strong arms showing through his sleeves. He carried a book and inks and settled into the one comfortable chair in the corner of the room.
‘Horst,’ he said to the glassy-eyed man holding my arm. ‘I will take the records. Make it quick. I have not eaten yet. Get what you need and we’ll sup before the burnings. The smell is more bearable with food in your belly.’
‘I’m going to give you the chance to tell me your name before I take off your lovely wheat-blonde hair. All of it.’
‘What good would it do to tell you?’ I challenged him. ‘Would you let me go if I told you? How can you have me locked up here as a witch when you know nothing about me? What evidence do you have that I am a witch other than that I am a young woman who was on the street without a chaperone? I am seventeen years old and there is no law against being in public alone, is there?’
‘It’s my job to round up witches and I can smell them.’ He grinned. ‘I’m very good at my job.’
With that, he grabbed my hair hard and pulled tight, jarring my neck as he pulled my head to his face, where he inhaled deeply of my hair. Sniffing. My skin prickled with disgust at the touch of this man.
‘No one ever leaves this place except via the square,’ he said, pushing me roughly to the ground where I fell with a thud. ‘Most women round these parts are witches, all part of a secret coven, where you plot your bewitchments.’
‘That’s nonsense and you know it,’ I said defiantly, feeling the dull ache at my hip that would become a bruise. ‘Those broken people upstairs are not witches. They are ordinary God-fearing people caught up in your leader’s insanity.’
‘The Hexenbischof is the wisest man in Franconia, in all of the land,’ the sallow-faced man went on, his voice taking on a shimmer of blind awe, his eyes blistering with power. ‘The famines and crop failures, the rebel risings of those of the false faith, those who would defy the Holy Emperor of Rome. They are in league with the devil and the Bible tells us that anyone who admits their witchery must die.’
‘So then, I ... I do not admit it,’ I stammered as I saw him take a pair of rusted sheers from the workbench. ‘I am not a witch and my name is Rosa. I am an orphan and have no family. That is the truth. Please, tell the Hexenbischof that my name is Rosa. I do not know my kin.’
My head was filled with tumbling portraits of Mutti, Papa, Hans, Frau Berchta, Christoff and Kristina – all I held dear. Telling him my name would have done me no good and only confirmed my fate. I realised that arguing, or defending myself in any way was futile. These guards were cats playing with us mice for the pure pleasure of smelling our fear.
‘You can do better than that, Rosa the Pretty,’ he laughed and, grabbing my hair, he began to hack at it, so close to my scalp that he grazed my tender skin, and I felt the slick of blood. I cried out but told myself that it was only hair and it would grow back. There were much worse things he could do.
‘A name!’ he demanded.
‘Just Rosa,’ I persisted in what had become a game of wills.
The man in the corner was writing down what I said, mouthing the words as he wrote.
The sun was high in the sky out the window by the time I endured a first round with the thumb-screws. My hands were bound and the bolts were screwed tightly on my thumbs until they were bleeding around the nailbeds. My father’s letter had described the same ordeal. The pain throbbed, centred in my hands but radiated to every corner of my body until I saw stars dance before my eyes. Before setting the device upon me the guard had sprinkled it with Holy water and blessed it. The relief when the screws were released rushed over me like rain on a humid day.
The relief was short-lived.
‘We need to move it along,’ the stocky guard recording the futile question and answers called to his colleague. ‘The bootikins might loosen her tongue.’
Droopy-eye looked at me, deflated with relief, and smiled the smile of a sated crocodile.
‘She’s a defiant one,’ he said, dragging up my bound hands and pulling me to my feet.
I winced at the shock of pain and wondered if my thumb bones were crushed and broken or only bruised and split.
‘I’m going straight for the strappado.’
The other man whistled and I looked around, afraid. My father’s letter also mentioned this device but did not elaborate for me to be able to make out which tool of pain it might be.
I was pulled across to a spot beneath the hook and pulley on the ceiling. A chain was dropped down behind me where the guard attached my bound hands with locked bands of metal, my fists pressed together tightly behind my back. He then went to a wheel that was connected to the chain and began to turn it, all the while asking for my name in a droning voice. I realised in a panic that he was hoisting my arms up backward and I fell forward, the chains taking my weight and pulling my arms up behind me. As my arms became level with my shoulders and began rotating unnaturally, beads of searing pain salted my limbs. I screamed in agony.
‘Stop!’ I yelled.
I thought of Kristina’s arms, broken and torn from their sockets and I couldn’t let them go on.
‘My name is Veronica Junius. I am the daughter of Johannes and Rosa Junius of Bamberg. Please just stop.’
I shut my eyes at the shame of my confession. I had wanted to be strong and not give in so easily. I feared then that they would quite easily drag a confession of witchcraft from my soft lips. The chains halted and I stood, leaning forward, arms twisted backward, straining, stinging. And then, slowly, they were lowered.
‘Well, well, well,’ the guard’s voice pattered in time with the groan of chains. ‘The Hexenbischof will be very interested to hear that. You certainly don’t have the stamina of your mother. Ah, that beauty let me all but turn her to pulp and still she never divulged her accomplices. You shame your parents, Veronica.’
He released me and pushed me back into the dank, dark cell, my shoulders beating with a drum of dense pain and my thumbs still smarting. I saw that something was happening in the corner near my blanket. A huddle of women stood there, some crouching, murmuring.
I edged through them to see Kristina writhing like a dying beast and I dropped to her and helped her head onto my lap, her twitching body pulled over my knees. Foamy spittle frothed from her gaping mouth to pool in the hollow of her breastbone. Her upturned eyes showed nothing but white. I said her name over and over as the spittle turned red and she began biting her tongue. With one final heave she tensed and shuddered and then with a deep, guttural exhalation she sagged to nothing and I felt a warm wet puddle at my feet. Kristina had died in my arms, her bladder letting go at the moment of death.
I ran a painful hand over her coal-dark hair combed through with cinders of grey and closed her eyes. Then I broke into fresh tears, not for Hans’s nurse – she was free of pain and spirited to a far better place. I cried for myself because I knew there was no hope. Not a sliver.
KATHERINE
RENFREWSHIRE, SCOTLAND, 1697
I heard the familiar voice before I saw him looming out of the shadows into the cone of light streaming down from the high grill. John. My husband. My heart hammered, the tears pricked and I was about to throw myself at his feet when I saw that at his shoulder, one step behind, was Reverend James Brisbane. I swallowed back any hint of recognition and tried not to read too much from the repulsion dripping from his face as his eyes scanned over my bestial form. My life h
ad become nothing more than grief, constant ache and endurance, but with the appearance of my valiant Earl in the cell, I was awash with a renewed sense of hope.
‘These two are Katherine Campbell, former maid to the Shaws, and the Lang woman, the midwife,’ Brisbane told the man. ‘Neither has yet confessed but they have been witnessed and implicated in the murders of the ferryman, the clergyman and the babies.’
My eyes darted between the two men and then back over to where Margaret Lang lay curled up, pretending to be asleep.
‘Girl, nod your head at the gentleman,’ Brisbane snapped urgently. ‘This is the Earl of Mar, John Erskine, soon to be member of the Privy Council in Edinburgh. He is writing a report on this worrying outbreak of devilment and witchcraft in Renfrewshire, most particularly at Bargarran.’
‘I am no witch, your Lordship,’ I said carefully, my eyes never leaving the handsome face of the man I had kissed by the firelight and promised my life to. ‘There is some mistake and many dangerous tales being told by children.’
‘This woman looks to have been roughly handled,’ the Earl said, his eyes melting over the dirty, scabbed wench he saw before him. ‘What form of torture has been used here? There are wounds, and even authorised torture by state is not supposed to shed blood. The Church has decreed it and you, being a man of the cloth, should know it.’
‘Nothing that has not been sanctioned has been brought to her,’ Brisbane lied. ‘The pricker found a mark between her shoulder blades. A definitive mark of the devil, looking at close range like a bat.’
I shrank into myself under the pained gaze of the man I loved. He was imagining those men looking at me naked and afraid. My hair was crawling with head lice, my body was marked and pocked with scabs and pustules. I knew that I looked like a beast.
‘She had the pilliwinks screwed onto her thumbs and the scold’s bridle when she was insolent. She has not been treated too harshly,’ Brisbane fawned. ‘The hair was cut to look for marks on her scalp and neck.’
‘To make an accurate report I will need to speak with every one of the accused who is going to trial next month. There are seven, yes?’
‘That is correct,’ the reverend nodded in the dim light. ‘I will retreat and leave you to question the accused.’
John Erskine pointed at the mess of rags that was Margaret Lang.
‘Remove that one and let me speak with this woman alone and then you can swap them and I will speak with the other.’
Reverend Brisbane went to the Lang woman and pushed at her with his pointed boot, rough enough for her to groan out a complaint. The man bent to unlock her hand fetters from the chain that linked her to the central post and led the dishevelled woman from the room, closing the heavy door behind him.
John and I were alone. It was the first time I had seen him since I had kissed him farewell, so many months earlier, in much happier and more hopeful times.
‘Kat, what have they done to you? My darling girl.’ He put his arms around me tenderly and despite his soft touch I winced with pain.
‘Oh, John, I had given up all hope that you would come for me.’ I sobbed against his chest, breathing in the soapy clean smell of him. ‘But you’ve come and I am so happy. It is the first day of happiness since the dead of winter and now summer is almost upon us. Where have you been? What took so long?’ My words came in a rush, stumbling over one another.
He held me back, an arm’s length away and rested his soft hands on my shoulders. I looked into his face, so handsome it was almost pretty, and his fine clothes that were made from the very best materials with bronze buttons and gold piping trim. He had dark green breeches and pale green stockings and a pair of polished and buckled high boots. I had never seen him dressed in such fancy attire.
‘I have been turning my fortunes around and have had much success with my mining business,’ he told me. ‘I am doing this for the cause so that I may raise an army to bring the rightful Stuart blood back to Scotland.’
‘But the rightful heir is but a boy, not ten years old,’ I lamented, not understanding why he spoke so.
‘The boy will be King yet if I have my way,’ John told me. ‘But to make a successful stand we must have a long-term plan. Nothing can be rushed and until then I am doing all I can to appear as a devoted servant to the state and the Whigs …’
‘You are dealing with the Whigs?’ I said, aghast. ‘And what of your faith. Our faith? Have you turned your back on the Pope as well?’
Looking around nervously and dropping his voice, John tried to explain. ‘I have not changed or jumped ship,’ he whispered. ‘I am merely playing a game, showing one face while secretly plotting. I am soon to be appointed to the Privy Council and they will never suspect one of their own. I will take them from the inside out.’
‘But how do you plan to get me out of this mess and get the charge of witchcraft dropped?’
There was a long pause while John looked mournfully at his boots being scratched by the old straw on the floor.
‘It is very hard because they suspect the seven of you as plotters for the Stuart throne,’ he whispered. ‘And they suspect that this chapter of Jacobites is led by a person of some notability. I am doing what I can to divert attention from myself and have taken a great risk to come here today, but a brief was offered to investigate the proceedings on this case and I accepted it as a way of being able to see you before the trial.’
‘I have told them nothing, but the children talked,’ I said. ‘I never liked or trusted that Elizabeth and she will be the death of us all. Look around here, John. Look at me. Look at what I’ve suffered.’
I began to cry noiselessly, my tears spilling over my haggard cheeks, their saltiness pooling between the cracks in my lips, stinging them.
‘I can’t take much more,’ I whispered in nothing more than a small breath. ‘They have stopped the tortures, now, and leave us here in this filth to count out the minutes to the trial, and we all know how that will go with the children’s testimonies. Even Christian Shaw is taking to the witness stand, and the doctor and that priest. Look into him. He has a pamphlet about the Salem witches and he obsesses over it and means to bring the same story to these hills. Tell them that.’
‘I cannot overturn the trial but will find some evidence to give to your defence counsel,’ he told me. ‘Mr Robertson, yes?’
‘I believe so,’ I snorted unhappily. ‘But he’s no great defence when I have not so much as laid eyes on him yet.’
‘I will get a copy of the pamphlet and tell him what you have told me,’ John said earnestly. ‘I am so proud that they did not pull my name from your lips, Kat. I knew you were a strong lass when I met you. The others are also doing well and staying silent. One woman has gone mad and speaks gibberish. The Pope may help to rally troops for us.’
I saw the fire in his eyes and knew that John burned hot for this cause, but I no longer cared who sat on the throne so long as I was free. Internal panic raced through my blood. He was talking politics while standing in front of me, a broken shell wracked with pain. A terrible sense of betrayal was sweeping over me. It was as if the gossamer veil had been lifted and I was seeing my John for the first time. I was waking from some dream to discover that the truth was actually the nightmare. He did not love me. I prayed to God that I was wrong.
‘I will get you away from this place somehow,’ he told me. ‘And then I will stow you in France where you will be safe and I will only bring you home after we have been victorious. We will have children and live a long and prosperous life, free to be Roman Catholics without being persecuted.’
I liked the sound of France and children. I wanted to write my daughter’s name in the family book, the Systir Saga. These thoughts were shards of sunshine in a thunderstorm. But I had a knowing and could read people. I was suddenly very afraid, sick with it, that John did not have a plan, nothing solid, for my escape or release. Hi
s words were empty.
‘I cannot tap out these days for much longer, John. The heat in here is becoming stifling and Margaret prays relentlessly, so much that I feel that the devil would be some kind of reprieve. I am so desperate that if you do not help me I will call on the grim man because I have wailed to God until my lips have bled and he has not come to my aid.’
‘You have come this far, Kat,’ he said, touching my cheek. But his skin was cold and his hands shook. ‘Stay strong and if you are found guilty at trial I will go to the ends of the earth to get some tearaway to ride through town and steal you from the gallows and head for the hills.’
‘You promise?’ I whispered, pleading, and put my head to his chest. ‘Give me your word.’
‘I will not let them execute you,’ he said and pulled away, looking into my eyes. ‘And you give me your word that you will stay strong and keep from making any confession or mention of my name.’
‘I promise.’ I nodded.
As John left the cell and I saw him dusting off his coat, flicking off the odd louse or smudge that he had collected from my dirty skin, I wondered if the promises exchanged had been of equal weight and measure. I wanted to feel elated and relieved and lick the taste of freedom from my lips but John had been reluctant to even plant a kiss on my mouth and I wondered if his words had simply fallen like feathers to be blown away on the breeze. For the first time, with a gaping emptiness, I began to doubt the man I loved.
PAISLEY
BUNDANOON, AUSTRALIA, PRESENT DAY
My mother slips the overnight bag over her bony shoulder and blows a strand of her freshly coloured purple hair off her face.
‘It’s only for the weekend. I’ve stocked the pantry and you can call me any time.’
Ben, Brent, Emily and I are sitting around on blankets spread across the small patch of grass in the ramshackle backyard, the sun warming our pasty limbs although the breeze is icy. Mum is taking a break, a weekend away to recharge herself, to the beachside resort town of Terrigal, a three-hour drive north. She has a good friend who lives up there and she is in real need of some girlfriend support and downtime that I can’t give her. I imagine many cocktails will be swilled and she might get a good dose of the laughter that has been missing from her life over the last few weeks.
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