Familiar Spirits (3 page)

Suddenly the spell was broken. The crowd roared as if on signal. Caps and hats flew into the air. A group of schoolboys standing near Matthew howled with delight, and the faces of many otherwise grave matrons beamed with pleasure. Children gathered about their parents’ knees were now hoisted to their shoulders to see the sight on the scaffold.

Finally the officers took the body down and Matthew had his last view of Ursula’s death grimace, which had somehow managed to preserve her vengeful smile. He pushed his way through the cheering crowd but quickly found himself immobilized by the press of bodies. It was a public celebration, the jubilation of a people freed from a curse. Some strange fascination was holding them there. He wanted to shout, “Go home! It’s all over. Go home!” But it would have done no good. He would not have been heard, and if heard, not obeyed. Even after Ursula’s body had been thrown into the 
cart with the others, even after the cart had been driven off, the spectators stayed to talk, to congratulate one another. It was like a marriage or a baptism.

He got himself free at last and made for the road. He passed the parson, who was talking to another clergyman. He heard the parson say it had been a good day’s work, especially the execution of Ursula Tusser. The parson quoted the Scriptures, thumping his Bible for emphasis. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” he quoted sonorously.

The other clergyman agreed.

Matthew saw that carrion birds had gathered in a nearby tree and were staring toward the now empty gallows. He heard a balladmonger singing a song about Ursula Tusser, the infamous witch of Chelmsford, and he thought about what he had to do the rest of the day—visit the scrivener, see a carpenter about the repair of one of his looms, meet with the town bailiff and aldermen about a new ordinance regarding the use of the town muckhill. Depressed as he was by the hangings, he almost welcomed this round of mind-dulling chores, even the last, which, given its controversial nature and the personalities involved, would probably consume the entire afternoon.

As the church clock struck six, Matthew Stock came home, weary in his bones. By trade he was a clothier—a pillar of the Worshipful Company of Linen Drapers—and he lived with his wife and their servants and apprentices in a handsome house on High Street, the front ground floor of which was his shop. His constableship was a civic duty. For four years, his fellow townsman had conferred it upon him, despite his protestations of ineptitude. What did he know of crime? How could such a one as he, mild of manner, affectionate by nature, disinclined to any variation from the most direct road, which was to say he was as honest and straight as a carpenter’s rule—how could he play Argus with his hundred eyes to all the mischief, malfeasance, and devilry of which the human heart was capable?

Yet year after year they elected him, and the truth was the honor pleased him, pleased him more than his profits as a shopkeeper. He did his job not only conscientiously but, incredible to him, with great success. He had built a reputation as a clever man, although he read little, spoke without eloquence, and wrote no learned or witty books or poems. His London connections, some of whom were men of renown, were at a loss to explain it. His virtues were simple: dogged determination, an eye for detail, and a clever wife.

Ah, his wife. Joan. Standing on the threshold of his shop, he felt dumpish still from the hangings, despite the intervening busywork that should have provided the solace of distrac-

tion. What he needed at the moment was a good talk with Joan.

He opened the door and entered as the shop bell tinkled pleasantly. His assistant Peter Bench, a young man of about twenty, looked up from behind the counter.

“Good evening, sir,” Peter said, his long pale face cheerful and ingratiating.

Matthew returned the greeting and asked Peter about business.

“Tolerable,” Peter replied, tallying up the day’s receipts. Sales had been better than expected, but then, Peter noted, it tended to be so in the fall when thought naturally was drawn to the colder weather in the offing. Peter grinned and waited for his employer’s expression of satisfaction at his report.

But it was slow in coming. Matthew’s mind was far from cloth. He glanced distractedly over the trencher tables heavy laden with bolts of linen, russet, white frieze, lockram, woolen cloth, and kersey—ells and ells of it. His stock in trade, but far now from his mind.

“Oh, very fine, Peter,” Matthew finally returned absently. “Very fine indeed. You can close up now. There’ll be no more business today.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Stock. Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Peter.”

Matthew went through the narrow passage that connected the shop with the kitchen of the house. It was a big, cheerful kitchen with a great stone hearth, and he paused on the threshold to watch his wife at work. She was standing with her back to him, decked winsomely in her white cap and apron. Her pretty oval face, when she turned at his greeting, was flushed with the warmth of the fire and her forearms were bare and plum-colored in the firelight. But even before she returned his greeting and, following it, his embrace, he sensed something was wrong.

“Is the witch dead, then?” she asked, turning back to the hearth.

“She is,” he said, placing his cap on the rack behind the long, well-scrubbed trestle table that was the kitchen’s chief

item of furniture and the center of household activity as well. He sat down and regarded his wife cautiously. Joan dipped the ladle into the pot and withdrew it, then blew upon the savory contents and tasted.

“That will do,” she said to Betty, the cook, who had just come in.

Betty greeted her master and began setting the table. Joan sat down opposite Matthew. Betty began to serve. The cook was a woman of about fifty, rotund and slow, with a plain, cheerful face. The stew steamed; the salad of mixed greens harvested that very day from what remained of Joan’s fall garden pleased the eye. They drank strong dark beer of Joan’s own brewing and supped upon pewter plates.

“It’s a crying shame, if you ask me,” Joan said between mouthfuls, ignoring the fact that she had not been asked.

“The girl? Yes, I suppose it is. Her death was awful.”

“Justice, you men call it,” she said with sarcasm.

“A jury of women found the mark.” He thought of the ghastly smile, the body swinging in the still air. A witch.

“Oh, the mark. Well might they find a mark. What body is perfect, then? Who without some superfluity of nature between the top of the head and the sole of the foot? What was hers?”

“A nodule, an ulcer—beneath the left breast,” he answered, trying to remember. His memory of the trial was vague. He had not attended. It was the week he’d been down with the ague.

“Oh, indeed, beneath the left breast, was it?” She grinned derisively. “And that mark the learned jury determined was the infamous witch’s teat. Where the Devil sucked upon her. Why, had they stripped me naked and searched me through they might have found more than that to feed their credulous eyes upon! What of that small ruddy birthmark upon my upper thigh? Or the mole upon my left knee? And might one of our daughter Elizabeth’s poppets, much tattered now but dear to us still as keepsakes of her childhood, not be found at the bottom of the chest to lay the groundwork for my conviction and damnation as a notorious witch and malefactor?”

“Come now, Joan,” he said in a feeble effort to temper her growing heat. “No one would think
that
of you.”

“Marry, sir, there’s a man of overweening faith, I warrant,” she replied shortly.

“I believe in witches,” he responded firmly, draining his cup.

“Nor do I deny them,” Joan said. “And yet I believe too in obnoxious old women their neighbors would gladly rid themselves of, and foolish maids with idle hands and minds who make much of necromancy and fortune-telling to call attention to themselves. In truth, such have no more power than a dog has to bring down from the tree the squirrel beyond his paw’s reach.”

“They say the evidence against her was strong. At her hanging she smiled—”

“Strong! Smiles! Evidence like a reed in the wind. Come, husband, your brief against the girl. Tell me your strong reasons. Her smile offended, you say?”

“It was no brief of mine, wife,” Matthew declared, growing heated himself now, for he had not looked to find Joan’s disapproval of the jury’s verdict to be heaped upon himself. “I levied no charge against her, but merely executed the magistrate’s writ.”

“That’s true,” she conceded.

“I was no juryman. I was home abed the morning of the trial.”

“I remember it.”

“The facts are well known,” he continued. “The evidence seemed more than enough. Two of her friends testified that she bewitched them. She cast fortunes and claimed to raise spirits from the dead. She frequented with familiars, which thing the Scriptures expressly condemn. Mrs. Byrd testified she had seen Ursula in the company of a cat of most foul visage and strange behavior. Indeed, she had many cats about her.”

“Ha! Sound evidence
that”
Joan responded. “Who in Chelmsford has not come upon that same congregation of cats, forced to make a home for themselves in the fields and

woods. I have heard it said Ursula was a great lover of animals. She would often take in strays, or at least feed them kitchen scraps. Simple charity to God’s creatures, if you ask me.

“Yes, but what about her necromancy? What, will you dispute the reality of spirits? Have you fallen into that awful atheism of which the parson has spoken more than once lately?”

“I am no atheist!” she protested. “Were there no spirits, nor indeed conjurers to bring them alive again through Satan’s power, sacred writ would never speak of the Witch of Endor, who raised the prophet Samuel’s shade. But for that it does not follow that every simple girl wanting the judgment to mind her business and avoid the appearance of evil must be confederate with the powers of darkness. Why, what necromancy did she perform that she should be brought to trial for it?”

Matthew conceded that no witness to such performance had appeared.

“Well may you grant that none appeared. For the truth of the Scriptures I will attest and grant Samuel’s spirit was raised as an article of faith, but do not try to persuade me that Ursula conjured up some familiar spirit to reveal to Brigit Able or that other girl—Susan Goodyear—that her future husband should be tall or short, ride a Drown horse or a gray. Stuff and nonsense, the whole of it. I swear this town has lost its senses in the matter of witches, ever since Elizabeth Francis and old Mother Waterhouse and that vindictive daughter of hers met their ends upon the gallows in our parents’ time.”

They finished their stew. It had been a long day for Matthew and he took no pleasure in these wrangles. What had he wanted upon returning home but a quiet meal, his wife’s companionship, and then to bed? He dared not tell her about his horror at Ursula’s death now, about that vengeful smile that had made his blood run cold. Joan was in no mood to be sympathetic. The best he could hope for was a change of subject. If he dropped the subject of witches, would she? He

regarded her face as she finished her meal and wiped her mouth on her napkin in the delicate way she always had, as though she must not press the lips too hard. From long experience he knew the ways her thoughts ran, like an oft-trod road where every rock, bramble, and tree is known and bears a familiar name. Her jaw was still set in her humor, her eyes brooding dangerously. No, there would be no dropping this subject.

Dropping.
The word caught in his throat, lodged there as though he had spoken it aloud. The scaffold again. Ursula Tusser limp and smiling. Should he concede, then? Admit the girl had been falsely accused, her condemnation an outrage against reason, morals, true religion? And what if Ursula had been innocent for a fact, the victim of malicious gossip? Yet the jury had returned a speedy verdict. All those testimonies. The bewitched girls. He had heard it all—by hearsay, of course, since he was ill at the time. Could the whole town have been wrong?

“I heard she would not repent on the scaffold,” Joan said, bringing him back to her, the table, their kitchen.

“No, she did not. The parson could not prevail upon her, nor the crowd. You would not believe the uproar. She died keeping her counsel.”

“Then she had much integrity for one so young,” Joan said sadly. “Why should she answer to such ridiculous charges?”

“Why, to save her own neck,” he said. “It was a poor pitiful defense of her life that was made. Why, look you now, even her brother could hardly do more in her behalf than swear no ghost came from the grave at her bidding. It was never in dispute that she was the leader of the group of idle young persons who met in Malcolm Waite’s barn loft to practice curious arts. Even Ursula admitted
that."

“Be that as it may,” Joan said, “there was no small envy in the accusations. Consider her accusers—Brigit Able and Susan Goodyear—green girls and lazybones, the both of them. The Devil will find work for idle hands to do. What is upon their minds at that age but young men and mischief?”

“They claimed Ursula had bewitched them, cast a spell upon them—”

“Ha!”

Betty cleared the table, brought more beer. Joan continued: “I suppose her brother has taken his sister’s death very ill. She was his only kin, you know. Both were orphans. Thomas Crispin showed much kindness in taking them in when their father died.”