The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER VII

  JOAN

  IT was May three years since Joan had smelled the apple tree in blossomby the well, or had marked the heartsease amid the grass. She drewher bucket of water, flashing, dripping, and cold, rested it upon thewell-stone, and regarded with grey eyes the cottage and its handbreadthof garden.

  She sighed. There had been much of advantage in that long sojournwith her uncle the huntsman, in his better house than this, a milein the castle wood, above the town so much greater than HawthornVillage! There had been the town to walk to, the bright things to see,the bustle in the streets, the music in the church, the occasionalprocessions and pageants, the fairs and feast days. For the castleitself, the great family was not often there, but the housekeeper hadbeen friendly to her, and she had been let to roam as she pleasedthrough the place, half-mediæval stronghold, half new walls andchambers echoing Tudor luxury. Four times in the three years thefamily had been in residence, and then there were other things towatch, though at a most respectful distance!... Once there had been amasque in the park, and, as many figures were needed, there had comean order from the countess. A page had brought it, and had explainedin detail, what was wanted. There was to be a whole pageant of scenesfrom the mythology. She was to enact a virgin who had been veryswift of foot—she was to run swiftly from north to south across thegreat pleasaunce—a young gentleman, who would be running likewise,would throw before her, one after the other, three yellow apples.She would stoop and pick them up while he ran on. She nodded. “Yes,I know. Atalanta.” The page, who was younger than herself but comelyand court-bred, evinced surprise. “Wherever, Phyllis, didst get thatlearning?” She said that her father was clerkly and talked to her ofthings in books.... The masque! It was a world to remember, the masque!How beautiful all things had been, and everybody—and kind! But therehad never been but the one masque, and soon the family had gone away.

  She was thinking, as she stood by the well, that now perhaps they wouldcome back this May and she would not be there. She drew a long sigh,and missed the castle, the park and the wood, the town and the sightof the river and the bridge, over which something was always passing.She missed, too, her uncle the huntsman, who had died; missed hislarger house and the greater coming and going; missed her room, where,standing at her window, she saw the moon rise behind the Black Tower.And now her uncle was dead who had been a single man, and who hadkept them from month to month and year to year with his loud protesteach time they talked of lifting a burden and going back to HawthornForest.... But he was dead, and his house passed to the new huntsman.Joan and her father loaded their clothes and such matters upon a cart,mounted it themselves, and with some farewells to castle neighbourstook the road to their own small cottage, miles away.

  She sighed, but then, with her eyes upon the heartsease, determined tomake the best of it. It was not as though she did not love the cottageand the garden, where presently all the flowers would bloom again, andHawthorn Forest, where she had wandered freely from childhood. She didlove them, she had a warm love for them; and sometimes at her uncle’sshe had pleased herself with being pensive and missing them sadly. Sheloved her father, too; the old clerk and she were good friends, so goodfriends, in an age of parental severity and filial awe, as to havescandalized the housekeeper at the castle. Moreover, though they werepoor and had always lived so retired, and though the country hereaboutsafforded few neighbours, and though she had never known many people inthe village, having been but a young maid when she went away, therewere those whom she remembered, and she looked forward to a renewal ofacquaintance. And the day was very rich and fair, and a robin singing,and waves of fragrance blowing from the fruit trees, and she was youngand strong and innately joyous. She broke a branch of apple blossomand stuck it into the well water; she stooped and plucked a knot ofheartsease and fastened it at her bodice throat. Then she lifted thebucket to her head, and moved with it, tall and steady, over the wornstones of the path to the cottage door.

  Arrived within, she fell to her baking, in a clean kitchen with doorsand windows wide. She was a notable cook, her mother having trainedher before she died. Moreover, what she touched she touched like anartist. She made no useless steps or movements, she neither dalliednor hurried; all went with a fine assurance, an easy “Long ago I knewhow—but if you ask me _how_ I know—!” She sang as she worked, a braveyoung carolling of Allan-à-Dale and John-à-Green and Robin Hood andMaid Marian.

  The good odour of the bread arose and floated out to mingle with themaytime of the little garden. Old Roger Heron, short, ruddy, and halefor all he was so clerkly, came in from his spading. “That smellsfinely!” he said. He dipped a cup into the well water and drank.

  “Aye, and it is going to taste finely!” answered Joan.

  “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood, And of brave Little John, Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet, Locksley and Maid Marian—’”

  Her father put down the cup, moved to the settle, and sittingdeliberately down, began with deliberation one of his talks ofa thinking man. “Look you, Joan! Goodman Cole and I have beendiscoursing. We were talking of religion.”

  “Aye?” said Joan. She spread a white cloth upon the table and set inthe midst a bow-pot of cherry bloom. “Religion. Well?”

  “You should say the word with a heavier tone,” said old Roger.“‘Religion.’—Things aren’t here as they were at your uncle’s—resthis soul! Modesty in religion and a decent mirth seemed right enough,seeing that the earl was minded that way and on the whole the townas well. So the old games and songs and ways went somehow on—thougheverything was stiffening, even there, and not like it was when Iwas young and the learned were talking of the Greeks. But times havechanged! It seems the Lord wishes gloom, or the minister says hedoes. If it was begun to be felt in the castle and the town, and itwas,—your uncle and I often talked about it,—it shows ten times morehere. Aye, it showed three years ago, but Goodman Cole says it growsday by day, and that now if you appear not with a holy melancholy youare little else than a lost soul!”

  “‘Holy melancholy’ and ‘lost souls,’” said Joan. “I know not why itis that those words together sound to me so foolish.—Doth it helpanything when I am sad?”

  “‘—Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet, Locksley and Maid Marian—’”

  “Stop, child!” said old Roger. “I’m in earnest and so must you be.Look you, Joan! you’re all I’ve got, and folk will be fanciful aboutall they’ve got and try to guard it all around. And it came into myhead while Goodman Cole was talking—and it was he who put it there,talking of your looks, and saying that you had better go mim-mouth tochurch, and that you had a strange way of looking straight at a bodywhen you spoke, which didn’t become a woman, who ought always to gowith a downcast look—it came into my head, I say, that we’re poor andwithout any protector and fairly strange here now, and how evil tonguesare as common as grass, and I said to myself that I’d give you a goodcautioning—”

  “Mim-mouth and downcast look and go to heaven so!” said Joan. “I wonderwhat that heaven’s like!”

  “You mustn’t talk that way,” said old Heron. “No, I know, you don’t doso when others are by, but you’ll forget sometime. Mistress Borrow atthe castle said that you were a very pagan, though an innocent one!That came into my head, too, while he talked. And another thing camethat sounds fanciful—but a myriad of women and girls have found it nofancy! Listen to me, Joan. Since we got our new King, and since theland has grown so zealous and finds Satan at any neighbour’s hearth,there’s been a growing ferreting out and hanging of witches. InScotland it’s a fever and a running fire and we’re not as far as theantipodes from Scotland. Now I’m not denying that there are witches;the Bible says there are, and so, of course, there must be. But itknocks at my head that many a silly old woman and many a young maid hasbeen called a witch that was none! And it came to me that Hawthorn’snot the castle and the castle wood, and that if Mistress Borrow calledyou pagan and said that you stepped and spoke
too freely for a woman,it’s like that some here might take it on themselves to think pureill—”

  “I see not how they could,” said Joan. “There is no ill to think.—Doyou mean that I am not to sing about Robin Hood and Maid Marian?”

  “I like to hear you,” said old Roger; “but aren’t there godly hymns?Use your own good sense, my girl.”

  Joan at the window looked out upon the flowering trees and thespringing grass and robin redbreast carolling in the pear tree. Whenshe turned her eyes were misty. “I like to sing what I feel likesinging. If it chances to be a hymn, well and good—but a forcedhymn, meseems, is a fearful thing! I like to go free, and I like nota mim-mouth and a downward look. But I like not to bring trouble onyou, and I do not like either to have them set upon me for ungodliness,nor to have some fool cry upon me for a witch! So I’ll be careful. Ipromise you.” She laid the trenchers upon the table and turned out fromits pan a warm and fragrant loaf. “I’ll be careful—oh, careful!—Andnow when are we going to get our beehives from the forester’s wife?”

  That afternoon she took her distaff and sat in the doorway and span.The cottage stood some distance from Hawthorn Forest road, but therewas a narrow greened-over path that wound between. The robin sanglustily; daffodils, edging the walk to the gate, were opening theirgolden cups. Old Heron had gone a mile to engage Hugh the thatcher tocome to-morrow to mend the roof. Joan span and span and thought of thecastle and the masque.

  An hour passed. The gate-latch clicked and she looked up. An old woman,much bent and helping herself with a knobby stick, was coming towardher between the rows of daffodils. When she reached the doorstone Joansaw how wrinkled and drear were her face and form. “Good-day,” she saidin a quavering voice.

  “Good-day,” answered Joan.

  “Good-day,” said the old woman again. “You don’t remember me, but Iremember you, my pretty maid! I mind you running about in the woods,playing as it were with your shadow, with your hair braided down! Nowyou wear it under a cap as is proper. I’m Mother Spuraway, who livesbeyond the mill-race.”

  “I remember now,” said Joan. “I had forgotten. Will you sit down?”

  She brought a stool and set it for her visitor. The other loweredherself stiffly. “Oh, my old bones! I’ll sit for a minute, sweetheart,but what I wanted to ask you—” She took Joan by the apron and held herwith shaking fingers. “I wanted to ask you if you wouldn’t be Christianenough to spare me a measure of meal? I’ll swear by the church doorand the book of prayer that I haven’t had bite nor sup since this timeyesterday!” She fell to whimpering.

  Joan stood, considering her with grey eyes. “Yes, I’ll give you somemeal. But what! They used to say that you were well-to-do.”

  “Aye, aye!” said Mother Spuraway. “They said sooth. I didn’t lack bakednor brewed, no, nor silver sixpences!—for, look you, I knew all thegood herbs. But alack, alack! times are changed with me.... I’m hungry,I’m hungry, and my gown’s ragged that once was good and fine, and myshoes are not fit to go to church in. Woe’s me—woe’s me—woe’s me!”

  Joan went indoors and returned with a piece of bread and a cup of milk.Mother Spuraway seized them and ate and drank with feeble avidity.“Good maid—a good maid!”

  “Why do they come to you no more?” asked Joan.

  Mother Spuraway put down the empty cup. “Partly, there’s a leech cometo these parts has stolen my trade. I’ll not say he doesn’t know theherbs, too, but I knew them as well as he, and I knew them first! Butmostly, oh, dear heart! because there’s been raised a hue and cry thatI didn’t cure with innocence—as though I didn’t cure as innocentlyas him! But I’m old—I’m old!... I never had aught to do even withwhite magic. There was healing in the herbs and that and good sensewas enough. But I’m old—old, and they bear hard upon women.... And Ihear that there’s a buzz of talk and I may be taken up. I know MasterClement’s been against me since ever he came to the parish—” She beganto weep, painful slow tears of age.

  Joan looked at her with a knitted brow. “There, mother, there, mother!I would not let them that hurt me make me weep. See! I’ll give you yourmeal, and it will all come straight.” She brought her a full measure,and a great share of her baking of bread besides.

  Mother Spuraway blessed her for a pitiful maid, got painfully to herfeet, and said she would be going. “You’ve good herbs in your garden,but I see no rue. If I be straying this way again I’ll bring you a bitfor planting.”

  She went away, her stick supporting her, her eyes still searchingthe little leaves and low plants on each side of the garden path andthe faint, winding track between gate and forest road. Joan, in thedoorway, let her distaff fall and sat pondering, her elbow on her knee,her chin in her hand, and her grey eyes upon the fruit trees. “Shall Itell father—or shall I not tell father? If I tell him, he will say shemust not come again.... And how am I going to help her coming again?”In the end, she determined to tell her father, but to represent to himhow hard it was going to be—and how it seemed to her poor-spirited,loveless, and mean—And as she got this far, she saw another visitorcoming.

  She knew this visitor, and springing up, went to the gate to greether. Before she left this countryside she had often, of Sundays inHawthorn Church, sat beside Alison Inch, the sempstress’s daughter.And after she went to the castle Alison had twice been with her motherto the town, and they had climbed the hill to the castle wood and thehuntsman’s house to see their old neighbours, though, indeed, theyhad not been such near neighbours. Alison was older than she, butat the castle hers had been the advantage, she being at home with anumber of goodly things, and Alison showing herself somewhat shy anddeferential. But now the castle and the park and her uncle’s housewere a dream, and Joan was back in Heron’s cottage that was not onthe whole so good as the Inches’ nor so near the village. Moreover,she was now almost a stranger, and knowledge and familiarity with allmatters were on Alison’s side, to say nothing of her year or two longerin the world. Alison felt her advantages, and was not averse to theother’s recognition of them. Joan and she kissed, then moved somewhatsaunteringly up the path to the doorstone.

  “Mother and I went to take her new smocks to Madam Carthew, and thenwhen we came back it was so fine, and mother said that she would goto see Margery Herd, and if I chose I might walk on here.—The placelooks,” said Alison, “as though you had never gone away.”

  “Nay, there are things yet to do,” said Joan, “and that though we’vebeen here well-nigh a month. You would not think how hard it is to getback the gear we left with folk! They had the use until we came back,and they knew that we would come back—but now you might think that wewere asking their things instead of our own! Three women have lookedas black at me! We got our churn but yesterday, and the forester’swife still has our beehives. A dozen of her own, and when we ask forour poor three back again, you might suppose we’d offered to steal thethatch from over her head!”

  They sat down, facing each other, on the sunflecked doorstone.

  Alison looked about her. “I’ve never seen daffodillies bloom likethese!—Joan, I heard a story on thee the other day.”

  “What story?”

  “They said thou hadst a lover in the town—a vintner.”

  “I never had a lover, town or country.”

  Alison made round eyes. “What! no one ever asked you to wed?”

  “I said not that. I said that I never had a lover.”

  Alison fell to plaiting her apron, her head on one side. “Mother saysthat your father’s that sunk in notions of the learned that he’d neverthink of it, but she wonders that your uncle didn’t see fit to find youa husband.”

  “Does she? Well, one wonders over one thing and one over another.”

  “There are very few bachelors and marriageable men hereabouts,” saidAlison, “but I suppose you’ll get that one of them you set your capfor.”

  “And why do you suppose that?”

  Alison, her head still on one side, looked aslant at the returned
friend. “Oh, men are all for strange and new! Your tallness, now,that most people count a fault, and that colour hair and that coloureyes.... Yes, you’ll get the one you want.”

  “And if I want none?”

  “Oh!” said Alison, and laughed somewhat shrilly. “Have you got an elfinman for your true-love? You’ll not cheat me else with your ‘And if Iwant none?’”

  Joan twirled her distaff. “I do not wish to cheat you.—And you wentwith the smocks to Madam Carthew’s?”

  Alison bent, slipped off her shoe, and shook out of it a minute pebble.“And what do you mean by that?”

  “Mean? I mean naught,” said Joan. “I meant that she was a great lady,and the squire’s house must be fine to see. What didst think I meant?”

  But Alison would not divulge. All that came was, “_I_ noted you lastSunday, how you looked aside, during the singing, at the gentry in thesquire’s pew! But they are godly people, and if you think that _they_looked aside—”

  “In God’s name!” said Joan, “what is the matter with the wench?”

  But before she could find that out, here came one back—MotherSpuraway, to wit. She came hobbling up the green path to the gate, andstood beckoning. Joan rose and went to her. Mother Spuraway held in herhand a green herb taken up by the root with earth clinging to it.

  “It is rue, dearie,” she said. “There was a clump of it left by theburned cot a little way off. So I dug it up for you—”

  Joan took it. “Thank you. I’ll plant it now.”

  “You’ve got company,” said Mother Spuraway. “I’ll not come in. But Iwanted to do somewhat for you—”

  She turned and hobbled off, her wavering old figure wavering away uponthe twisting path.

  Joan went back to the doorstone with the rue in her hand.

  “Wasn’t that Mother Spuraway?” asked Alison. “I wouldn’t be seentalking to her. She’s a witch.”

  “She’s no such thing,” said Joan. “She’s only a wretched, poor oldwoman. Now, what did you mean about Sunday and church?”

  But her father came round the corner of the cottage, bringing with himHugh the thatcher to have a look at the torn roof. Alison rose; thesun was getting low and she must be going. She went, and Joan, at thattime, did not find out what she had meant.