‘Welcome,’ I said, as she carefully crossed the little wooden bridge that Hans had built.
‘Is this the home of Frau Berchta?’ she asked, panting, her broad face flushed with the exertion of her walk. Her chest was heaving.
I could see that the child in her arms was unwell; a small thing, not old enough to walk but not a newborn either, and it was covered with pustules, raised red and weeping, some scabbing over.
‘Come quickly,’ I said to the woman. ‘I am Veronica and your child has the pox. We must hurry. What is your child’s name?’
‘Liesel,’ the woman said, her voice strained. ‘Please don’t let her die. There is a plague of pox running through the village and many are dying. The priests tell us it is God’s revenge for harbouring so many witches in these parts.’
I felt my face prick with anger. During my time with Frau Berchta she taught me many medicinal cures that could be found in nature and I had come to learn that health and sickness had its roots in the natural world around us. God did not punish people with illness. God was not cruel. Only people were cruel.
‘No,’ I told her as I took the child from her arms, her flesh burning from the scabs and blisters. ‘God is not punishing you or your family. This is a malady of balance and we need to even out the humours in your daughter.’
It came naturally to me, healing. Frau Berchta said I had it running in my blood and I believe she was right. People, through their habits and greed, had created disease and pestilence. We needed the earth and her vibrant well of health to restore us. That is why I loved the woods so much. It was a feast, a banquet, of wellness.
‘Are you not afraid you will be struck down by associating yourself with us?’ the woman asked.
‘No,’ I told her as I took the child to the newly built cottage. ‘I have an intestinal armour against the pox.’
The woman stopped and looked concerned.
‘That is witches’ talk,’ she said, silently blessing herself with the sign of the cross, ‘to say you have some supernatural protection.’
‘No,’ I told her and took the child into the house by the fire that Hans had lit earlier that day. I called out to him from where he was chasing the small goats about the pen. ‘Hans, come quick and stoke this fire up.’
I had moved into the spare cottage, where I could study my books and brew my own herbal concoctions. Frau Berchta had been instructing me intently but wanted me to build up my understanding to become a great apothecary and that required experimenting with different combinations of herbs, roots and minerals.
A long bench covered with thick plump cushions lay before the fire and gently I placed the child onto them and opened her smock to get a look at her lesions and sores.
‘She has been scratching badly,’ I said aloud, and the girl’s mother nodded. ‘I will make up a big vat of soothing and drawing tea with goldenseal root and yellow dock. And as much garlic and honey in water as we can get it into her. No food. She must let her stomach work on other things.’
‘Her stomach?’ the mother looked confused.
‘Most imbalance starts in the belly.’
I made up a big pail of garlic and honey water and left the mother to watch her child.
‘It is the pox,’ I told Christoff who looked concerned. ‘Come, I will give you some protection against it.’
By the fire in Frau Berchta’s cottage, I carefully prepared the mortar and pestle and sprinkled dried cow-pox scabs, which the old woman had collected over the years from children with the lesser pox, grinding them to a fine dust. After putting a long thin sharp needle into the fire, I let it cool and pierced the skin on Christoff’s muscled forearm. He flinched but looked at me in the firelight, trusting me implicitly. I poked some of the pox dust into his skin, pressing it in as far as I could without hurting him too deeply.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ I smiled at him, ‘you know how milkmaids have a reputation for beautiful milky skin? It is not for the milk that they guzzle. It is because they all contract the cowpox, which is mild, and barely causes more than a few pockmarks on their bodies, leaving the skin smooth when they are well. And milkmaids rarely ever contract the full pox, which normally leaves survivors badly scarred. I just pushed some cowpox into you. You may feel poorly for a day or two but you will be forever protected from that deadly malady that this little girl is febrile with.’
Christoff blinked into the fire and then back at me, his eyes wide with awe.
‘You are the wisest person I know,’ he said. ‘You are so knowledgeable and brave. What is it about you, Veronica?’
‘Frau Berchta is far wiser than me,’ I laughed, ‘but I hope to be as wise as her some day.’
The cottage seemed smaller with Christoff in it and I went to the storeroom to find the herbs I needed to help the child. When I returned, the man looked pained and awkward, a beet colour rising from his cheeks. I stopped, startled by it.
‘Are you all right, Christoff?’ I asked.
‘I … um,’ he stammered. ‘Veronica, please sit here beside me.’
I sat.
‘I want to start a family and build my own home,’ he said in a rush. ‘And I have come to have strong feelings for you and think that … well, Veronica, would you do me the honour of being my wife?’
I smiled and felt tears well up in my eyes, blinding me. I put my hand on his.
‘Christoff,’ I began in a soft voice, ‘I owe you my life and will be forever indebted to you for the risks you took for me. I love you but I am afraid of leaving these woods. And I must take care of Hans and Frau Berchta. I still have so much to learn before I can devote my life to someone else.’
‘I would never stop you from your healing,’ he said pleadingly. ‘I will build you your own house of herbs, a house of healing, a Heilenhaus.’
I looked at him and was swamped by the love I saw in his eyes.
‘You would let me continue to heal? To practise that art? To become a wise woman?’
He nodded, holding my hands tightly in his.
‘It is your calling, Veronica, and I will be your most ardent champion,’ he said softly and leaned forward to kiss my lips.
I moved into the kiss and put my arms around Christoff’s wide shoulders, breathing in the smell of wood and sweat, and I knew that Mutti and Papa would approve of this good man.
‘Thank you, Christoff, for loving me and for loving Hans and for giving me a new life. I promise I will love you forever and we will one day have a house full of chuckling healthy children. And you will build me my very own Heilenhaus. I love you.’
It hit me in that moment and I knew that the rush of feelings that had flooded me in the woods by the stream after Christoff had rescued me were real. They weren’t just borne of gratitude and relief. I truly did love him.
Christoff and I took each other by the hand and looked in on Frau Berchta to tell her our grand news. She had been sleeping through the days more, complaining that her lethargy was sinking deeply into her.
We found her with her silver-white hair in a fan around her head on the white pillow and her crinkled face relaxed to a soft smooth marble. Her eyes were shut and her hands were crossed on her chest as if in prayer. She smiled a contented smile. Frau Berchta had flown off in her sleep to the next world, just as the winter geese had done when spring had begun to warm their wings.
‘Good night, dear Mother,’ I said, going to her, kissing her still-warm cheek, not taken up by sadness but overwhelmed by a deep gratitude for having known her. ‘You and Mutti take care of one another and look over me and Hans and Christoff as well. I owe you my life.’
‘Rest well, dear woman,’ Christoff said sadly as I squeezed his hand. ‘I will craft you the most beautiful coffin and we shall farewell you with all our love.’
We covered her with the embroidered quilt and as I
took in the last smile on her beautiful face, I knew it was her final happiness for Christoff and me and for the children we would have and their children after that.
KATHERINE
RENFREWSHIRE, SCOTLAND, 1697
Reverend James Brisbane came to hear our confessions at daybreak.
‘What would please you more, clergyman?’ I asked, my small voice quivering with the fear that had kept me awake the whole long night. ‘To hear a guilty woman admit nothing or an innocent woman admit everything? For that is the way of your witch-hunts. I have nothing to confess. I am innocent of the charge of witchcraft.’
‘I know you are a Stuart supporter and a believer in the false faith. You still bow to the Pope in Rome, yes?’ he spat.
‘To have a faith is not a sin, sir,’ I bristled. ‘Or else all faiths would be so. You sin against mine and me against yours. There must be many petty gods fighting in Heaven.’
Reverend Brisbane narrowed his dark eyes at me.
‘Even now, with the stench of your burning flesh on the breeze and the hammering of anvils on the gallows, you dare to speak to me in this way, a man of God, of faith! You! A woman!’
It was a balmy hour past midday when we, the condemned, were led through the labyrinth of corridors within the Tollbooth for the last time out into the bleach of day. My eyes stung from the sun, burning me blind for some moments. We were chained together like oxen and pushed, tripping, out into the courtyard and up into the back of the open wooden cart. I gasped to see that instead of benches for seats the cart was lined with seven coffins of untreated boards and we were pushed by a guard to sit on them.
The yeoman of Paisley began to ring the bell and walked in front of the cart as it made its way down High Street, heading north toward the Gallow Green. Children, like stray puppies, danced beside the cart yelling all manner of obscene and cruel taunts. Although I had promised to be brave and strong in memory of my womenfolk who had gone before me, I could not stop the tears from running down my clammy cheeks. I could barely breathe as I thought of my charred bones being hammered into the box on which I sat, to be buried in the ground.
Margaret Lang was praying, citing the psalm about walking through the valley of death, her voice fast and chattering and level, her eyes shifting and afraid, belying her true terror. More townsfolk were appearing and accompanying the cart to the place of death. I looked at their mottled faces, pock-marked and laughing, and I thought they looked like carrion birds waiting for a meal.
The cart rocked along with a rhythm that reminded me of a heartbeat and I imagined I was in my mammie’s womb, listening to the blood-beat, awaiting a future that I could not comprehend. When a baby is born, I thought, it probably thinks it is dying but then there is light and just when you think everything is over, you realise it has just begun.
We passed the river, a ribbon of thick water with uneven muddy banks on either side and jewelled with the occasional silver jumping fish. I stared at the eerie sway of sea reeds dancing like tentacles beneath the murky surface and gagged at the smell of river sludge and fish heads left behind by anglers.
I was almost twenty years old and this thought sat like a stone in my stomach: twenty was all the years the Lord had allotted for me.
‘That young ’un don’t look much like a witch,’ I heard a child exclaim, disappointed, and I wondered how anyone could really know a witch. Was there an outward sign warning honest people? A snaggle-tooth or some obvious defect? Anything and nothing could mean a witch. A simple birthmark or freckle. A witch could be fair. A witch could be foul. A witch, I smiled – a cold, hard smile – could be anyone at all because the witch lived in the thoughts and fears of people.
The Lindsay brothers and farmer Lindsay all had their heads bowed and eyes shut and Peg Fulton was waving merrily at everyone crushed about the streets to see the witches on their way to their deaths. I concentrated on my breathing because it was all I had left of life. I took a deep gulp of air and held it and wondered if I should do that on the gallows: take a deep breath of air to sustain me into the afterlife. Or should I breath out and empty my chest so that the strangling would take me all the quicker. These thoughts flew like trapped birds in my head, breaking their wings against my skull.
I reached across and held old Agnes’s hands. They were shaking and were slick with sweat.
‘My eyes cannot see,’ the old woman whispered. ‘I do not see them although they see me.’
The sound of iron against wood echoed out above the sounds of the street and I imagined men putting the final touches to the gallows. Breathing. Just breathing. I kept the steady breath in and out through pursed lips and felt a trickle of sweat fall to the dimpled corner of my lips. My breath now roared in my head like a winter wind.
As we neared the Green I looked ahead, not shying from the spectacle, and saw that the grounds had been readied and most of the townsfolk and villagers had come to see the witches up close. A scaffold had been built with a sturdy railing and a set of steps up to a wooden grandstand for nobles to sit at, high and away from the commoners. Upon the tall gallows, seven ropes drifted down, loosely waving in the gentle breeze.
In the grounds on the outskirts vendors sold tea and pitchers of liquorice water and itinerant peddlers shouted out the discounted prices of their wares. The smell of baked goods made my face crumple with memory. I would never eat bread again. Something so wonderful as that would never happen again. I thought of all the crusts I had eaten without savouring them and I wished then that I had. The people danced and sang to fiddlers as they readied themselves for this great holiday celebration and I could see that many had worn their Sunday best. It disgusted me. Their feverish joy disgusted me.
And then I saw him.
I saw my John in his frockcoat and boots polished to a high gloss and he disgusted me. In that moment as he came level with the cart I loved him and hated him with equal measures of intensity. He was the only man I had ever loved and yet he had become the death of me.
‘May God look after you, Kat,’ he called over the din. ‘It will be quick.’
I saw the broken expression on his face, tears welling up in his eyes and I knew he was sad to see it come to this. I did love him still. Even then. It hit me hard, like a blow from an axe, that he did not and never had loved me nearly as much in return. If our roles had been reversed in that moment I would have clung to him and begged to be burned alongside him, my life having no meaning without him. He might have loved me a little but he would live on to love again. Is there anything worse than unrequited love? Yes there is, I thought, looking up ahead at the Gallow Green. I was suddenly stuck by a terrible thought. My granaidh’s book.
‘John,’ I screamed, and he turned to me. ‘My belongings. My books, my Bible, my purse. Please see my sister gets them. Isabel at Bargarran. I beg of you. If you do nothing else for me. I beg you. Give her the book!’
‘I promise,’ he called back, his voice wisping into the breeze, and I prayed to God that on this one thing he would be true.
The ropes loomed closer. The peat below was being turned ready to be lit. My chest constricted and terror began seeping into my legs making them heavy like lead.
The people had brought stools and cushions and bread and beer. It was a grand county fair. When the cart appeared and cut through the festive throng, the people cheered and jeered and spat wads of tobacco and worse at us. I wiped something away from my cheek and felt more tears pool in my eyes. To be facing death was impossibly terrible but to be so humiliated and shamed on this, my final journey, was crippling to my very soul.
‘Forgive them, Father,’ Margaret Lang prayed frantically, her eyes squeezed tight, ‘for they know not what they do.’
‘Oh, but they do,’ Agnes Naismith whispered.
‘I am going to die,’ I muttered aloud. It all suddenly came crashing down on me, the truth and cold reality of the situation biting at my blood,
screaming down at me, crushing me. This was that nightmare, the one where you run on the spot and scream into a void of silence. I could not wake up. I began pinching my thighs, digging hard. Wake up. Wake up. I began to feel the flames of panic rising up from my belly into my throat.
Some voice that sounded so very far away began to tell me that I would be the first to drop. It was telling me that a nobleman had paid for this small measure of kindness as I was so young of years. And then my legs gave way and I was pulled free from the back of the cart unable to stand. I crumpled to my knees. A veil of tears blinded me and I was looking at the world as if from underwater and could not make anything out. My hands were unshackled and they fell down heavy by my sides. Rough hands pulled me to my feet, jostling and pushing and dragging and carrying me along. I was weightless, being buoyed along like driftwood in the sea. But then the terror gripped me in a vice and my body seized up like a rigid plank of wood. I dropped down from the arms around me like a dead weight and sank to the damp ground.
‘Mammie!’ I wailed, howling for my good mother. ‘Mammie!’
I lost control of my bladder, my skirts around me becoming sodden with my fear. Strong arms picked me up again and held me painfully, constricting me, containing me.
I screamed, ‘I do not go quietly!’ I was desperate to defend myself at last. ‘I am a goodly woman and it is those who murder me who should burn. I don’t want to die. Someone please help me! Mammie, oh God, Mammie, please help me.’
The world outside was silent. I could hear nothing but the blood in my veins. Pumping hard and fast. It sounded like water running through a flooded causeway. I looked about, thrashing beneath the arms around me. The crowd was staring, open-mouthed, soundlessly uncomfortable that this witch was not more accepting while being carried up to the gallows where she would be hanged.
Hexenhaus Page 24
