Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch

by Nancy Atherton

“Margaret died three hundred years ago,” Amelia managed between sobs. “I’m not crying for her. I’m crying for my poor brother Alfred.”

  “Why are you crying for Alfred?” I asked.

  “Because he killed himself,” she blurted, her face crumpling. “Suicide runs in the family.”

  There was a fleeting moment of shocked silence before we converged on Amelia, each of us murmuring whatever words of consolation came to mind. Her sobs slowly abated, though her face remained a mask of inconsolable grief.

  “Amelia,” Kit said gently. “I have some idea of what you’re going through. My stepfather killed himself. If you ever want to talk, I’m only a phone call away.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” she said, wiping her eyes, “but I may as well talk now. I don’t think I can stop myself.”

  “Don’t even try,” said Kit.

  “Alfie was such a good brother to me,” she said softly. “We didn’t know he was ill until the first time he tried to kill himself. The paramedics saved him, but he was never the same. He would be fine for months, then he would plunge into an abyss of despair.”

  Raindrops pattered to the ground as a breeze shook the branches overhead. It was as though the trees, too, were shedding tears for Alfred.

  “After his second suicide attempt, he was placed in a special care facility,” she went on. “The doctors diagnosed him as schizophrenic, bipolar, manic-depressive, obsessive-compulsive—whatever term was fashionable at the time. He was given all sorts of drugs and sometimes they’d work for a while, but even when they did, the side effects were unbearable.”

  Amelia swallowed hard and twisted her hands in her lap.

  “Sometimes I couldn’t bring myself to visit him,” she said. “Sometimes I ignored his calls. It gets tiring, you see, year after year, always bracing yourself for the worst, never knowing what will happen next, and after our parents died, Alfie was wholly dependent on me. I had no energy to spare for a husband or children, so I didn’t think I’d ever marry. Then I met Walter.”

  “Walter Thistle,” I said. “Your late husband.”

  “Walter was unfazed by Alfie’s illness,” she said, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. “He found new doctors, better treatments, and suggested that we bring Alfie to live with us at Highburn. I was doubtful at first, but Walter knew best. The tranquil atmosphere helped Alfie to stay on an even keel. My brother spent the last ten years of his life at Highburn and the only symptom of his disease to manifest itself in all that time was a reluctance to leave the estate. As long as he was at Highburn, working busily on his projects, he was content and happy.”

  I put a hand to my forehead as the light of understanding dawned. Alfred hadn’t been physically disabled, as Aunt Dimity and I had assumed. It had been a mental disorder that had prevented him from coming to Finch to search for the remaining pages of Gamaliel’s memoir.

  “Gradually, Alfred’s world became smaller and smaller,” Amelia was saying. “After Walter died, he couldn’t bear to leave his room. I found him there almost a year ago, sprawled on the floor beside his overturned desk chair.”

  “There is no doubt that he committed suicide?” asked Willis, Sr.

  “A paramedic found the empty tablet bottles,” she said dully. “They had rolled under Alfie’s desk. And the postmortem extinguished any faint hope I might have had that the overdose could have been accidental.”

  Amelia blew her nose in the tear-soaked handkerchief and sat up straighter.

  “You can have no idea how happy I was to find the biscuit tin,” she told us. “I couldn’t go on living at Highburn after what had happened and I needed to do something to…to commemorate my brother’s life. I sold the estate, bought Pussywillows, and came to Finch to finish a project that was dear to his heart.” She looked down at the scroll in the old bottle. “I’m almost sorry we found the final pages. I thought finding them would free me to move on, but I feel…paralyzed. Now that I’ve done what I set out to do, I don’t know what to do next.”

  Nell continued to stroke her back and Kit put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s the waste I can’t stand,” she said, through a fresh trickle of tears. “Alfie was a genius. A mind like his comes along once in a century, but it was all for nothing. Margaret Redfearn died to save a village, but my brother died because a disease would not let him live. Alfie wasn’t a hero. He was a poor, pathetic victim.”

  Willis, Sr., coughed almost inaudibly, but Amelia heard and turned to him. With her puffy eyes, pink nose, and escaping tendrils of hair, she looked as vulnerable as a woebegone child.

  “May I ask how old Alfred was when he died?” Willis, Sr., inquired.

  “He was sixty-six,” she replied.

  “And how old was he at the time of his first suicide attempt?” Willis, Sr., went on.

  “Twenty,” Amelia answered, her voice breaking.

  “Your brother lived for nearly half a century, fighting demons most of us can scarcely imagine,” said Willis, Sr. “There are many kinds of heroism, Mrs. Thistle. Living with mental illness is one of them. Allowing life to fill the emptiness death leaves behind is another. You may at this moment feel paralyzed, but soon you will be making a new backdrop for the Nativity play, selling chipped Coronation mugs at the jumble sale, and nurturing a nasturtium for the flower show.” His gaze shifted to the blazing red bracken. “You will also return to the glade time and again, to capture its soul with your paintbrush.”

  “How can you be certain?” Amelia asked.

  “Because heroism runs in your family.” Willis, Sr., stood. “Shall we return to the manor? I believe a nice cup of tea would do all of us a world of good.”

  Willis, Sr., took a step forward, wavered, and nearly fell, but Amelia jumped to her feet to steady him.

  “Lean on me, William,” she said, putting an arm around his waist.

  “Perhaps, Amelia,” he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, “we can lean on each other.”

  Epilogue

  Fairy tales, as Nell had said, are always complicated.

  Although there is not one micron of doubt in anyone’s mind that Willis, Sr., is deeply in love with Amelia, and she with him, he hasn’t pressed an engagement ring on her or urged her to marry him by Christmas. He continues to court her delicately and deliberately, as if he wants her to catch her breath before plunging heart-first into the life they will build together.

  I knew that, with his help, Amelia would emerge from her grief like a spring crocus bursting through the snow. But it would take time.

  “It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it?” I said. “The way the past can haunt the present?”

  It is indeed.

  It was a blustery night in mid-November. A hard freeze and a biting wind had set the stage for winter. It felt wonderful to be indoors, curled in the tall leather armchair in the study, with a fire in the hearth, Reginald in the crook of my arm, and the blue journal open in my lap.

  Thankfully, Amelia’s past won’t haunt her forever. Life insists that we go on. As does Finch.

  I smiled. “Peggy Taxman’s already roped Amelia into baking brown bread for the bake sale and Millicent Scroggins invited her, somewhat frostily, to serve as a judge at next year’s art show.”

  Millicent, I take it, has not yet forgiven Amelia for revising her position on remarriage.

  “No,” I said, “but Elspeth Binney seems reconciled to the new reality. She asked Amelia to tea the other day.”

  A sensible woman. Now that William is out of the running, perhaps she’ll turn her sights on more a likely prospect.

  “The pickings are pretty slim in Finch,” I said.

  One of Elspeth’s delightful nieces may introduce her to an appropriate suitor. Or a stranger may come to the village and sweep her off her feet.

  “I hope so,” I said. “I like Elspeth. A few strangers came to Finch today, as a matter of fact,” I went on, “but they were too strange for Elspeth. Some of Myron’s minions missed t
he message about the death of Bowenism. They tried to stage a sit-in, in front of Pussywillows, but Amelia ruined their plans.”

  How?

  “She couldn’t sweep them off their feet because they were sitting down,” I said, “so she swept them off the pavement—with a broom. I’d say they didn’t know what hit them, but I’m pretty sure they did.”

  Mr. Brocklehurst has a lot to answer for.

  “Oh, he’ll answer for it, all right,” I said cheerfully. “According to Bill, the prosecution has a mile-long list of people eager to testify against Myron. Bill also found out that Bree and I were right to trust our instincts about Ol’ Laser Eyes. Myron’s mustache and ponytail were fake and his hippie wardrobe was tailor-made.”

  Inauthenticity is a common malady among self-appointed spiritual leaders.

  “Myron was a New Age version of a plastic preacher,” I said, nodding, “and behind every plastic preacher, there’s a con.”

  The phrase “a goat leading sheep” comes to mind, but I don’t wish to be unkind to goats. Speaking of which, have Rob and Will persuaded William to go along with their latest scheme?

  I laughed. Bill and I had decided that Will and Rob were too young to hear the story of Margaret Redfearn, but word of her goat herd had somehow reached our little pitchers’ big ears. They’d immediately dug out of their toy chest a pair of cuddly toy goats Bill had bought for them at the Cotswold Farm Park and used them as a starting point in a discussion aimed at persuading their grandfather to raise goats at Fairworth. Willis, Sr., had promised them solemnly that he would give their proposal careful consideration.

  “I don’t know what William will decide,” I admitted. “He tends to be putty in his grandsons’ hands, though, and he might like the idea of having a few goats about the place, as a tribute to Mistress Meg. I suspect he’ll leave the final decision to Amelia.”

  I’m glad the boys like her.

  “They’ll like her better if she gets them their goats,” I said, “but they like her well enough as it is. A woman who bakes their favorite cookies and paints portraits of their ponies can do no wrong in their eyes.”

  I’m surprised that Amelia has enough time to bake cookies. It seems as though she hasn’t put her paintbrushes down since she walked out of the woods with William.

  “She’s been busy,” I agreed.

  In addition to painting pony portraits for my sons, Amelia was painting house portraits for each of her neighbors, as a way of thanking them for coming to her aid when she needed them.

  When she wasn’t painting portraits, she was reacquainting herself with her first love: botanical art. I often spotted her with her gear in a pack on her back, tramping across a field to study the berries or grasses or mushrooms that had caught her eye. Almost as often, I spotted Willis, Sr., tramping with her.

  As he had predicted, she’d returned to the glade several times, but she hadn’t yet recorded it with her paintbrush. She’d have to get to know the place very well, I reflected, before she could capture its complex soul.

  Lilian, too, had been busy. In response to popular demand, she’d read all six parts of Gamaliel’s secret memoir aloud to a standing-room-only audience at the schoolhouse at the end of October. Her reading had generated so much interest among the villagers that she’d produced a printed booklet of her translation. She’d then buckled down to write a full-length book about the memoir, which she intended to dedicate to Alfred Bowen.

  I hoped Lilian’s book would be successful, but not too successful. Hoards of black-clad Mistress Meg fans demanding access to Plover Cottage, the bell tower, Dove Cottage, the crypt, Anscombe Manor, and Redfern Meadow would be no more welcome in Finch than the Bowenists had been.

  My copy of Lilian’s slim booklet was lying on the old wooden desk beneath the diamond-paned windows in the study. I glanced at it and wrinkled my brow.

  “What puzzles me,” I said, looking down at the blue journal, “is the memoir’s first page. Why did Gamaliel call Mistress Meg a ‘fearsome and most potent witch’? Why did he talk about calamity and retribution? He must have known when he started writing that Margaret Redfearn wasn’t a witch.”

  Wasn’t she? She rejected the church, she was fearsome in her determination to live her own life, and she brewed potent potions in a house in the woods. In most English villages, she would have been identified as a witch and the retribution for consorting with her, or worse, being related to her, would have been calamitous. The villagers were incredibly brave to stand up for her as they did, but even here, her image was distorted. As the years passed, she became Mad Meg, the horned, axe-wielding crone who maimed helpless children. I’m proud of Gamaliel for setting the record straight. Margaret Redfearn was a heroine, not a hag. If I had my way, a statue of her would be erected on the village green.

  When I thought of Gamaliel’s flock testifying before the witch finder, I couldn’t help picturing my neighbors defending Amelia. Finch, it seemed, had a long tradition of protecting gifted women.

  In my mind’s eye I saw the animated faces of the women who’d gathered around the bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night—Amelia, Lilian, Bree, Emma, Nell, Peggy Taxman, Sally Pyne, Christine Peacock, Elspeth, Millicent, Opal, and Selena. Married or not, they were all strong and independent. Some might even call them fearsome and they were nothing if not potent. If Margaret Redfearn had returned to Finch that night, I thought, she would have recognized many kindred spirits.

  If there ever was a statue of Mistress Meg on the village green, I hoped its plaque would read:

  In Finch, we cherish witches.

  Amelia Thistle’s Brown Bread

  Makes three loaves

  Ingredients

  5 ½ cups whole wheat flour

  1 ½ cups unprocessed bran

  2 ½ cups white flour

  ½ cup Crisco shortening

  2 packets dry yeast

  1 teaspoon sugar

  1 ½ tablespoons salt

  4 cups water (adjust for humidity)

  Please note: The recipe calls for three 6 x 9 x 3-inch bread loaf pans.

  Mix together brown flour, white flour, bran, and salt in a very large mixing bowl. Rub in shortening. Warm 3¾ cups water to 110 degrees. Reserve ¼ cup heated water. Mix together the yeast, the sugar, and the reserved ¼ cup of water. Add the yeast mixture to the rest of the warmed water. Make a well in the center of the flour. Pour the yeast/water mixture into the well. Mix together to make a soft, slightly sticky dough. Knead for 10 minutes.

  Return the dough to the mixing bowl. Cut a large cross in the center of the dough. Spray the surface of the dough with cooking spray to keep it moist. Cover the bowl with a damp towel, and place it in a warm place to rise to twice its size, about 1 hour.

  Knead the dough again, then divide it into three balls. Shape each ball into a large sausage and put each sausage into a greased and floured 6 x 9 x 3-inch loaf pan. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

  Allow the dough to rise again for 20-30 minutes, until the loaves reach the tops of the pans. Place the pans on the center shelf of the oven, and bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 45 minutes. Allow to cool on rack.

  Serve well-buttered slices with cups of your favorite tea, preferably before a roaring fire, during a thunderstorm. Although a snowstorm will work well, too.