Familiar Spirits (14 page)

“Peace, Joan, peace!” Matthew cried, laughing despite himself, for her fury often had a comical side and it did now. Joan had worked herself into a dither, gesturing wildly and looking fierce. Suddenly she burst out laughing herself. Betty came into the kitchen to see what had provoked such merriment. Seeing nothing more than her master and his wife talking at table, she disappeared again.

“I concede to your wording, Joan,” Matthew said, drying

his eyes with the napkin. But Joan made another face, mimicking Trent’s glower. “Oh, stop, stop, for pity’s sake,” he declared. “I’ll die of laughing.”

“Let Trent be Trent,” she said after her antic humor passed and she reached across the table to caress his face with her hand. “But pray tell me, how will you proceed in this business? I hope you will not burden poor Margaret in her time of mourning. It’s true she was thicker with Ursula than we supposed, but it’s over now. What’s the point of raking it all over again to her detriment? Let her be, I say.”

“Never fear,” Matthew said. “We shall have no burdening of widows, no persecutions. But I must investigate, Joan, there’s no help for it. The magistrate says I must, and if I do not, then Trent will. He wants my job as well as his own, and if he takes up the business, then you can say good night and amen too to the Waites and their kin. They’ll all be charged and we’ll watch them hang, one by one.”

Joan shuddered at the thought. “Let us pray no more apparitions trouble us.”

“Amen,” he said.

“And if they do?” she asked.

“If they are nothing more than serving girls gawking from windows, I’ll not care a groat, but if they go about causing deaths, then they must be looked into. In the meantime I’ll speak with Thomas Crispin. Ursula was his servant. He may know more than he has told—certainly Margaret Waite did. What a careless affair Ursula’s trial was is now made plain by these fresh discoveries.”

“What will you ask of him?”

Matthew shrugged. “It’s an ill mason that refuses any stone.”

She considered the proverb and agreed.

“I’ll do it after the funeral tomorrow.”

“Ah, yes, the funeral,” she murmured ruefully. “Would that Malcolm Waite’s burial were the end of this business.” It was the night of the week when by custom the Stocks had their apprentices and servants in after supper for games and songs, for readings from Scripture and other edifying

books. Betty now reappeared to ask if supper was done and the master was ready for such pastimes. In fact, neither Matthew nor Joan was in a mood for such lighthearted fare, but both felt duty bound by the tradition, and Matthew nodded his head. He no sooner did so than the servants and apprentices filed into the kitchen, talking noisily. Matthew directed them to their places at the long table as the talk subsided.

“What shall it be, young sirs and maids?” Matthew boomed with forced cheerfulness. “Japes or songs, riddles or some new thing learned at the street corner when your minutes might have been more profitably spent learning your trade?”

“The witch, Mr. Stock. Tell us of the witch that was seen today!” cried several young voices. Betty joined in the chorus, as did Peter Bench, his pale long face animated with interest.

Matthew*was reluctant. Joan said, “Best satisfy their curiosity, husband, or they won't ask you to sing later on.”

The apprentices laughed, and so did Betty. They encouraged him more strongly. He gave in.

“It was not a witch at all, but simply Brigit Able, the glover’s serving girl, whom all of you know and see daily,” said Matthew.

There were groans of disappointment and disbelief.

“But, sir, I had it from the baker’s wife that it was a spirit indeed that was seen. Both at the window and elsewhere around the town,” proclaimed the squeaky voice of the youngest of Matthew’s apprentices.

“In the town they all say it was Ursula Tusser that was seen there,” said Peter Bench. “The same that appeared to frighten Mr. Waite to his death.”

“Aye, it’s all true, Samuel,” said the oldest of Matthew’s apprentices to the youngest, making a terrifying grimace at the same time. “And she’ll be coming for
you
tonight!”

Samuel’s eyes grew round with horror, but the laughter that followed, touched even as it was with a certain nervousness, put the boy at ease.

“Here, now,” said Matthew sternly. “Let’s have no more of

witches. Mr. Waite will be buried tomorrow and it behooves us to speak well of him and his house.”

“Will the shop be closed then?” asked Peter.

“During the hours of the funeral it will,” answered Matthew. “Well, now, what is your pleasure?”

“Songs, songs!” cried they all.

“Very well,” said Matthew, smiling. “What shall we sing?”

‘“A Merry Maid Went Milking’!”

“‘Summer Wanes Apace’!”

“‘Follow Thy Fair Sun’!”

“Ah, I like the last. The verse is most fitting, I think. Someone fetch the lute who’s a match for the strings and accompany me. On the second verse, all join in!”

The lute was brought. Peter Bench seized the instrument and tuned it with great care. When all was ready, Matthew began to sing:

“Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!

Though thou be black as night,

And she made all of light,

Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!”

By the time the rest of the company joined in at the second verse, the apparition of Ursula Tusser seemed all but forgotten. Matthew was quite caught up in his music. Indeed, all the voices blended sweetly. But Joan sat with a sad countenance, for even Thomas Campion’s melodious songs could not dispel the shadow of her fears.

•
TEN
•

The next day, under skies of such threatening hue that it seemed nature herself was grieved at the glover’s death, Malcolm Waite was buried.

The funeral was well attended by the curious, who showed more interest in the now notorious widow than in her late husband. Every pew in the church was filled and—to the churchwarden’s dismay—a multitude of gawkers kept watch and ward amid the gravestones in the churchyard, where they showed little respect for Malcolm Waite or the graves they trod on. Rumor had done her work. If there was a man in the shire who had not heard of the glover’s strange death, he was blind and deaf and dumb too. Christmas and Easter would not see a tithe of the crowd.

The ceremonies began with a procession of mourners, who had come up High Street led by the undertaker’s apprentice, a thin, sallow-faced boy fitted out in sable suit and carrying before him a standard draped in black crepe. The boy marched stiffly and self-consciously to some drumbeat in his head, looking straight on. Behind him appeared the gaunt, lean-jawed figure of the town undertaker, a man named Wynnyff, the very image of death himself, with his gray pallor and drooping mouth, and his eyes fixed on the cobblestones.

The undertaker led the horse at the front of the funeral cart, a four-wheeled conveyance with a canopy under which was the coffin. The coffin was crowned with sprigs of holly and myrtle, symbols of immortality. After came the handful

of mourners for whom the glover’s death had been more than a curiosity.

The widow was supported on both sides by her sons, who had arrived early that morning to see their father buried. Behind them John Waite and Thomas and Janet Crispin walked together, along with the Crispins’ little girls, who were dressed like miniature adults. After the children came Joan, the only friend of the family who had dared to be seen in public with the suspected woman. At the end of the procession were the servants of the two families and a group of Thomas Crispin’s apprentices and workmen from the tannery. Their attendance was obligatory and their faces showed it. Matthew, standing by the church door, spied Susan Goodyear among the servants, but not Brigit Able. He wondered where she was.

The funeral service itself was brief and overtly professional. The parson preached a sermon on the resurrection of the just and prayed earnestly before the mortal remains of the glover were carried into the churchyard and lowered into the ground, but it was evident that he did so without enthusiasm and with a certain amount of personal distaste. The great multitude of spectators and the subdued hostility they showed for the Waite family unnerved him, and he appeared relieved when his duties were done. The rain beginning to fall, the crowd fled for cover.

All during the long afternoon, a furious wind sent the rain dashing in sheets against the houses; the town seemed beleaguered by it. Everything dripped. The houses trembled with the gusts. After changing out of their wet clothes, Matthew and Joan spent their time by the kitchen fire, drinking hot punch. Their spirits had been much depressed by the funeral, and of course the miserable cold and wet made it the worse. Both avoided any further discussion of the Waites or their problems, hoping that with the burial of the glover more than a body had been buried. But both knew too that it was not so. The savage storm was ominous and would surely be interpreted in the town to Margaret Waite’s disadvantage.

By four o’clock, although the wind persisted in its fury,

the rain had stopped and in the west the sun made a halfhearted appearance from between large mottled clouds. The cobblestone street was slick and treacherous, but Matthew decided to go out. He traversed the puddles and runoff from the alleys and ditches and arrived at the Waite house, where he found John Waite and Margaret’s sons visiting quietly in the parlor.

In their thirties, the sons resembled the mother more than the father. They were men of middle stature with broad faces and wide-set eyes and mouths with fleshy underlips. Matthew remembered them as young boys, Edward and Richard—or Dick, as he was called. They had been quiet and well behaved as children, and had grown up to be serious men. Successful too, if their clothing was any indication. They greeted the constable coolly and exchanged reminiscenses. They were deeply grieved over their father’s death but not surprised. They had been well aware of his ailment. They had not, strangely enough, heard about Ursula Tusser and had not learned until a few hours before of the slanderous accusations now being made against their mother. Their cousin John had explained it all. Outraged and defensive, they regarded the constable suspiciously until he assured them that he believed none of the gossip and would do all he could to clear their mother’s name.

For the next hour, he provided his own account of what had happened since the death of Malcolm Waite, mentioning also his commission from the magistrate, just so they would understand the difficulty of his own position. During this time, John Waite listened intently and made no demur; Matthew assumed that his version largely confirmed what the nephew had told his cousins. Critical before of his aunt and uncle’s credulity in regard to Ursula’s powers, John Waite now seemed content to be silent, either out of respect for his aunt’s bereavement or for fear that an incautious remark would provoke his cousins.

Margaret came down from upstairs, where she had been resting. Seeming slightly refreshed, she invited Matthew to join the family at supper, which had been laid out on a table

at the end of the room and offered a pleasant array of meats, fruits, and cheeses. Matthew declined with thanks, and said he wanted to speak to the Crispins.

Margaret said, “Thomas was here—Jane too—and I hoped they would take supper with us, they and the children, but Thomas took my sister home. She was drenched to the bone and Thomas feared she would fall ill from it.”

“She had a rheum and cough, I think,” said John Waite.

The discussion turned to the weather.

“If ever some superstitious fool looked for a sign of God’s disapproval, the frenzy of the storm was it,” remarked the nephew in a loud voice.

One of the sons said he thought the very violence of the storm might purport nature’s grief over the death of a good man.

They talked now about what the storm meant, the second son, Dick, observing that great inundations foreshadowed insurrections and the downfall of princes. Margaret clasped her hands together and prayed it was not so, for the family had had sufficient grief. Matthew excused himself, saying he would see himself out. But Margaret insisted that Susan show him to the door. As Matthew was about to step into the street, the serving girl touched his arm and asked him to wait.

“I must speak to you, sir,” she said, staring up at him.

“About what? Where, by the way, is your companion Brigit? I missed her at your master’s funeral. Pray God she’s not in bed with some fever.”

“She’s gone,” said Susan, her eyes brimming with tears. “That’s what I had to tell you, sir.”

“Gone where?

“I rose this morning and found her gone from our bed. She left no message and took what few clothes and possessions she had with her.”

“She’s run off, then,” said Matthew, not surprised considering the temper of the town. “Does your mistress know?”

“I told her, but she is too mindful of her own grief to care. Now all Brigit’s work must fall upon me until a new servant

is found, which may not be soon, for who will work in this house with such horrible goings-on, spirits coming and going, and such a howling wind to put the fear of God upon us all?”

“That’s just the weather—the wind’s fury,” he said in an effort to calm her. He wondered why she stayed herself, and was tempted to ask her. But he did not want to put ideas into her mind. Margaret Waite had enough troubles as it was. He asked her if she or Brigit had seen another apparition.