The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE WITCH

  THE morrow came and went in heat and tenseness and excitement. Thethird day arrived and passed with no lessening. The fourth day cameand the fever ran more high than before. The Crown, the jury, and theWitch Judge, the throng nodding approval, had now checked off MotherSpuraway, Grace Maybank, Dorothy and her nephew, Elspeth No-Wit, andthe youth. It remained on this day to concentrate upon and finallydash to earth the main sorcerer and that one who patently had been hisparamour and adjutant—the “maiden” of the wicked crew. There weremany witnesses and much wild testimony. Small facts were puffed out tobecome monstrous symbols. Where facts failed, the inflamed and morbidimagination invented. It was strange hearing to the two who had dwelledat the Oak Grange and Heron’s cottage....

  They questioned Elspeth No-Wit. “You had a meeting the night before theleech was taken?”

  Elspeth laughed and nodded.

  “What did you do there?”

  “We had a big kettle and a great fire. Everybody dropped what she lovedbest in the kettle. We played and clapped hands and jumped as high asthe tree-tops. When we clapped our hands, it thundered, and when we ranaround the kettle the wind blew our clothes away.”

  “You were brewing the storm that broke next day?”

  “Oh, aye!”

  “The leech and Joan Heron were with you?”

  Elspeth twisted her body and peered around. “Is that Joan Heron and isthat the leech? They ran round thrice to our once, and they kissed theclosest, and at last they wandered away.”

  Will the smith’s son was called. “You stopped at Heron’s cottage thatSunday evening?”

  Will stammered, looking wild, hollow-eyed, and awed. “Aye, I did,please Your Honour!—But I never would have stopped but that it wasstorming so.—My mother was with me, please you, sir.”

  “No one means you any ill.—It was dark under the clouds without, butthere was a light inside the cottage—a red light?”

  “Yes, sir; bright like firelight.”

  “Hardly, I think, true firelight: a red and strange light.—It was wellafter the hour when the leech had been taken from this Oak Grange?”

  “Aye, Your Honour. ’Twas close to dark.”

  “With the constable and his men, and Master Carthew riding a part ofthe way, he must then have been upon the Hawthorn road, his face set tothis gaol?”

  “He must have been so, sir, but—”

  “We are coming to that. It is a fact, is it not, that witches andwarlocks are able to transport themselves, with their master Satan’said, through the air—and that so swiftly that you cannot see theirflight?”

  “Oh, yes, Your Honour,” said Will. “They fly in sieves, and sometimesthey steal bats’ wings.”

  “Very well. Now you and your mother opened this cottage gate and wentup the path to the door, and to reach that you had to pass the window.As you did that, passing close, you naturally put forehead to theframe, and looked within, and the place being filled with that redlight—”

  “It wasn’t very bright,” said Will. “It was like a faggot had partedon the hearth, and there was now a dancing light, and now it was dark.There was nothing clear, and we heard naught because it was lightningand thundering—”

  “And you saw—”

  Will moistened his lips. “Yes, sir.—She and a black man weretogether—yes, please Your Honour, standing locked together—”

  “The black man was the leech?”

  “We didn’t know it, then, sir—How could we,” said Will, “when he wasthree miles the other side of Hawthorn with a guard? But I know it now.It was the leech.—And mother and I went on and knocked at the door,and she opened it—and there was nobody there but Joan—Joan and thegrey and white cat.”

  “You stayed no time in that cottage?”

  “No, sir, please Your Honour. There was that that frightened us.”

  Will the smith’s son was motioned down. They set Mother Spuraway againin the eye of the court—Mother Spuraway, wrecked until she was nigh ofthe fellowship of Elspeth No-Wit. “You have told us that on this Sundayevening you were running in the shape of a hare through field and copseby the Hawthorn road. We have obtained from you that you saw the leechpart from his natural body, having by black magic so blinded the guardthat they went on bearing with them but a shadow, a double, and yetunsuspecting that cheat. Now tell us what the sorcerer did.”

  Mother Spuraway plucked at the stuff of her kirtle. “He mounted in theair.—Storm—storm—break storm!”

  “He went toward Hawthorn Wood?”

  “Yes, oh, yes! Hawthorn Wood.... Rue around the burned cot.”

  “That is, toward Heron’s cottage.—A time passed, and you, crouchingthen in the hazels by the road, saw him returning.—Now, mark! Wasthere a horseman upon this same Hawthorn road?”

  Mother Spuraway tried to mark, but her mind was wandering again.She preferred, it seemed, to talk of when she was a young woman andSpuraway and she had wandered, hand in hand, in Hawthorn Wood. But onewrenched her arm, and said something in her ear and brought her backwith a shiver. “‘Horseman’? Oh, aye, Your Worships! A great, noblehorseman.”

  “You saw the leech coming across the fields from the direction ofHeron’s cottage, and you saw this horseman riding through the stormtoward Hawthorn Village. What then?”

  “I ran under the earth,” said Mother Spuraway. “For I was now a prettyblack mole, dressed all in velvet and blind—blind—blind—blind—”

  It was with a different—oh, a different, different tone that theyquestioned Master Harry Carthew and harkened solicitously to what hehad to tell. All the crowded place leaned forward and listened, inthe hot, slanted gold of the fourth afternoon.... Joan saw them all,and saw into their minds prone before the foreknown truth of whateverMaster Carthew was about to recount. She sat like carven marble andviewed and knew the world she viewed. She saw Alison and Cecily, Willand his mother, Goodman Cole, the forester’s wife, Lukin the carter,the tinker, many others. She saw Master Clement and all the clergyand gentry of the commission, the court, the spectators. She saw theWitch Judge who was going to hang her. And townspeople with whom shehad had acquaintance.... The vintner who had wished to marry her washere, pale and of a tremendous inward thankfulness. And servants fromthe castle, and the new huntsman.... All here to see her hunted—herand the others. She felt their tongues go over their lips, and thewarm indrawing of their shoulders and nursing of their elbows—felt andcared not.

  Carthew was speaking in a hollow, short, determined voice. If a blacklava torrent of passion and madness was devastating his soul, fewenough knew it of all in that thronged place.... At no previous timehad there been such soundlessness in the hall, such keyed and strainedattention. Hawthorn, at least, believed that Master Harry Carthew wasto be a great man in England, was to climb high, with the Bible inhis hand. For the town, that was of another cast of opinion,—if itconceived of him hardly so highly, if it shrugged its shoulders andwaxed bitter over these mounting Puritans, yet it felt in its heartthat they were mounting and gave to their personal qualities an uneasyrecognition. It, too, marked Harry Carthew for a coming man—though itmight not hold with Hawthorn that the fact of Satan’s striking throughthe sorcerer’s hand at this life marked a recognition on Satan’s partof qualities the most dangerous to his sovereignty. And Carthew wasyoung, and, though yet gaunt and pale and hardly recovered from thatfelon blow, of a manly form and a well-looking face. All through thelong trial he had sat there so evidently poisoned and suffering—urgednow by his brother and now by others to leave and take his rest, yetnever going—sitting there with his eyes upon this murdering wizard....The throng was ready to make him into the hero, the visible St.George—standing there now with his spear lifted to give the one last,needed blow.... There was the dragon, there! the pale leech and all thewretches with him, and dim and horrible behind him all his train ofevil works, and Satan horned and hoofed, spreading enormous bat wings,making the very hall brown and dusky! Fu
ll beside the leech, in allminds now, stood that most vile witch Joan Heron.

  Carthew’s words were few but explicit. “The sky was very dark—thereseemed more thunder and lightning than there had been. I was severalmiles this side of Hawthorn. I was riding without regarding the road,my mind being on other things. My horse stopped short, then reared.I felt the blow. It was given by a cloaked figure that immediatelyvanished.... Yes, it bore resemblance to the leech, Gilbert Aderhold.”

  The words fell, aimed and deliberate, like the executioner’s flamingtow upon the straw between the piled logs. A stillness followed asthough the throng were waiting with parted lips for the long upwardrun of the flame. Then out of it came Joan’s voice, quiet, distinct,clear, pitched loudly enough to reach from wall to wall. “Thou liar!Know all here that that man whom Will the smith’s son has called theblack man and saw through my window—that man”—she stood, her armoutstretched and her finger pointing—“that man was this man who speaksto you! Know all here that for weary months Master Harry Carthew hadpursued and entreated me who speak to you now—that when he turned thatafternoon upon the Hawthorn road it was to ride to Heron’s cottage andbreak in upon me there! Know that Will the smith’s son, looking throughthe window, saw _him_. But he, hearing those two knock, and fearingdiscovery that would spot his fame, snatched up his cloak and madeoff through another door. But he hid not far away, and when they weregone and darkness had fallen, back he came, stealing in at night upona woman alone. Know all of you here that I wanted not his love. Knowall that we struggled together, and that I struck him in the side witha hunting-knife. Know all that he rode from Heron’s cottage to CarthewHouse, and to save himself lied as you have heard!”

  She stood an instant longer with her arm outstretched and her eyes uponCarthew, then slowly turned, moved past Aderhold, and, taking her placebetween Mother Spuraway and Grace Maybank, leaned her elbow on her kneeand her chin on her hand.

  The Witch Judge’s instantaneous thunder, the clamour of voices, thehubbub in the hall appeared to give her no especial concern. Whensilence was obtained, and Carthew, white as death, gave a categoricaldenial, she only slightly moved her shoulders, and continued hercontemplative gaze upon this scene and much besides. That if the crowdcould have gotten at her she would most likely have paid with death atonce for her brazen mendacity, her measureless vile attempt to blackenone whom the Enemy most evidently feared and hated, appeared to troubleher neither. She sat as still as though consciousness were elsewhere....

  The next day it ended—the Hawthorn apostasy-sorcery-witchcraft trial.Judgement was given, sentence passed. The court, the crowd, the bishop,Hawthorn, the town, all seemed well of a mind. Death for six of theeight. For the youth who read too much and for the boy, old Dorothy’snephew, pillory and imprisonment; but for the six, death. Burning forthe apostate and sorcerer, the leech Aderhold, though, so squeamishgrew the times, he might be strangled first. For the five witches thegallows—though it was said that the old woman Dorothy had sickenedwith gaol-fever and would not live to be hanged. The sheriff would seeto it that the execution took place within the month. In the mean timeclose prison for the evil-doers, and some thought, maybe, on how theChurch and the Law for ever overmatched the Devil.