Familiar Spirits (9 page)

Joan’s
 
husband had been gone nearly an hour when the women descended upon her in a flutter of excited talk. They were her friends—her gossips, as Matthew was fond of terming them in his droll humor: Alisoun Monks, the scrivener’s wife; Elizabeth James, a plump loquacious person who had persisted in her widowed state for such a long time that hardly anyone in town could now remember her husband; and tall, stately Mary Carew, who put on airs and whose husband, like Matthew, was a clothier.

The women brought the news. They had been hurrying on their way to visit Joan when they were attracted by the crowd outside the Waite house. Curious, the women had mingled long enough to be witnesses to the extraordinary manifestation of Satanic power that was now the talk of Chelmsford. In fact, as their subsequent accounts to Joan revealed, none of the women had
seen
the apparition that was said to have shown itself in the upstairs window. What Mrs. Carew had seen was the terrified expression of a poor woman’s face who had seen it, and
that
was sufficient testimony for her.

The other two women fell into agreement, the way in a team of three horses running abreast all stumble if one does.

“Oh, it was a dreadful sight,” exclaimed the widow James, pressing a plump white hand to her ample bosom. “A most awful and portentous visage.”

She made a face to emphasize her horror and the other women looked on sympathetically. “Just imagine it,” she

said, “in broad daylight with a hundred or more Christian souls looking on.”

“One poor wretch fainted dead away,” added Mrs. Carew, and made a clucking noise of disapproval. “The grocer’s wife and her child were nearly trampled by the crowd.”

The women had seated themselves at the long trestle table in the kitchen and were being served hot caudle to take the chill from their bones, but by the flush on their faces it was evident that their excitement had warmed them enough. When had such a sight been seen in the town?

While her friends gave their reports, adding or correcting as they saw fit, each vying with the others for the most horrendous version of the scene, Joan listened, applying her hands to her stitchery, pausing only long enough to sip her drink. The spicy caudle was pleasant on her tongue, but she thought the women’s news very bad indeed. Of this strange supernatural occurrence she trusted Matthew would tell her upon his return, but she did not like the sound of riotous trampling of women and children, and she was concerned for her friend Margaret Waite. What a state the poor widow must be in with a husband to bury, a riot at her door, and a ghost in her attic!

“Did any of you see my husband?” she thought to ask.

“Marry, he was there in the flesh,” said Mrs. Carew, who had always been a little jealous that it was Joan’s husband and not her own who had been repeatedly elected by the freemen of the town to the important office of constable. “But he could do little good, given the size of the press and him but one man.”

“Strangers have flocked to the town to see the wonder,” remarked Mrs. Monks with a satisfied expression on her face. “On High Street it is like market day for the throng. The alehouses and taverns will do a great business.”

“Yes, but the honest merchants of the neighborhood must close up shop for fear of invasion of these riotous wonder-mongers,” said Mrs. Carew disapprovingly. “Let us pray the authorities can keep order and protect the decent and Godfearing from these enormities.”

Joan winced under the implied criticism of her husband and looked up sharply at Mrs. Carew. “I’m sure the town will suffer no great damage from this,” she said coolly.

The tone of Joan’s response caused a shift of topic and the women began to speak of Margaret Waite. They had all known her for years, but it was evident that none except Joan had liked her very much. She had been distant and haughty, even after her husband’s business failure. A woman with a successful husband was supposed to carry herself proudly, but one in other circumstances should at least affect humility. At any rate, that was the women’s opinion.

During this time, Betty brought a plate of cates and marchpane and distributed the sweets among the women, who continued to talk while they ate. The conversation narrowed in focus—Margaret Waite’s relationship with Ursula Tusser.

“I say Mrs. Waite was as thick as her serving girls with the witch,” affirmed the widow James, looking around the table for support for this proposition.

Mrs. Carew agreed. “Were Margaret’s body to be scrutinized, I warrant we’d find the mark,” she said with scarcely concealed relish. “Why, I tell you she was one of the circle. Twice weekly they met. In the Waite barn, that horrible rat-ridden place. It ought to be torn down.”

“Burned,” said the widow, munching.

“Destroyed completely, even to the foundation,” added Mrs. Monks.

Mrs. Carew made a disdainful face, and the image of the offending structure floated into Joan’s mind. Mrs. Carew said, “What more proof of complicity would a reasonable woman want than that? Pray, would a Christian family abide such practices under its own roof?”

The question hung in the air, and since its answer seemed obvious none of the women responded. Joan held her peace. She had her own ideas, as her husband had discovered, but she was not prepared to advance them at the moment. She felt decidedly at a disadvantage. She had not been in the street, not seen the new apparition of Ursula Tusser. Ursula’s

activities she knew by hearsay alone. Her sense of fairness precluded any snap judgments.

Mrs. Monks now stated that her scrivener husband had done some small services for the Waites. “I learned a thing or two,” she said, nodding her head judiciously.

“What did you learn?” asked Joan, looking up from her stitchery.

“Marry, that Margaret was all agog over Ursula’s arts, despite what she said at the trial. My husband said that Malcolm Waite told him he was grieved over his wife’s curiosity about these matters. He urged her to give over these preoccupations and trust in God, but she would not be schooled so.”

“Why, could the good man not impose his will, control his wife?” asked Mrs. Carew, who always made much of masculine authority in her talk with friends but ruled the roost at home.

“Not Malcolm Waite,” observed Mrs. Monks with a brittle scornful laugh. “He was a milksop, always allowing his wife her will.”

“A husband who will do that may find she’s allowed him his horns,” cackled the widow James, whereupon they all laughed.

The women went on to the subject of Ursula Tusser. Joan’s friends did not share her doubts about the young woman’s guilt. Outnumbered and disinclined at the moment to debate, Joan continued to listen as Ursula’s enormities were recounted and, she suspected, embellished. Mrs. Carew claimed Ursula had conjured regularly and kept open company with familiars and imps. Then Mrs. Monks said the girl had given her soul to the Devil, and reminded them all of the Devil’s mark that had been found beneath her right breast.

“It was the left,” said Mrs. Carew, smiling tolerantly. She had been on the jury of women examiners and had seen the mark herself. Examined it with finger and eye, she stated.

Mrs. James, not willing to be outdone by her friends, then told how the girl had caused a great swelling in her nephew’s groin, so that the surgeon had to lance it, whereupon black

pus oozed forth to the amazement of the surgeon, who declared he had never seen the like. And Mrs. Monks related a new story of how Ursula bewitched a pail and made it run downhill after her, and the widow James confessed that she had once in her girlhood been tempted to conjure that her sow might breed the more but resisted the temptation. She also admitted buying a charm of a traveling tinker, which, he assured her as he pocketed her tuppence, would enable her to find hidden treasure. The charm had not worked and she cast it away, she admitted sadly.

Mary Carew wanted to know then what manner of charm she spoke of, and the widow said it was a smooth white stone about the girth of a peach pit, and Mrs. Carew declared she had a stone exactly like it and, by flinging it into the air behind her and then walking to where it lay, she had once recovered a silver spoon one of her babes had lost in the grass. She said the widow was very foolish for casting off the stone so readily, but the widow, although her face was sad enough, declared she thought the stone was a hoax.

After some additional talk about the properties of stones and charms, the women speculated that Ursula’s circle might well have encompassed more persons than those identified at the trial, and proceeded to name several elderly women of the community and at least one man who, Mrs. Carew was sure, kept female imps in his closet to satisfy his lustful pleasures.

Joan felt very uncomfortable and worried with this line of talk, realizing that once such suspicions began and were voiced, there would be no end to them. Every person with a grievance against his neighbor would find cause to accuse him of the black arts, and the same charge would be returned until no one in the town could trust another. It was a great relief to her when about noon her friends excused themselves and left her to mull over a tangle of truth and fantasy that seemed more hopelessly confused than ever. It was her feeling now that the charges against Ursula had doubtless had some foundation in fact, although whether or not the girl deserved hanging she continued to question. But what was she to make of this most recent apparition?

When the dinner hour passed and Matthew had not returned, Joan began to worry more than ever. During the long afternoon, she busied herself but could concentrate on nothing. Restless beyond endurance, she told Betty she was going out, collected her cloak and cap, and went into the street. Within minutes she was standing before the Waite house.

The crowd of gawkers was gone now and no signs of a riot remained. Shops nearby were open but doing little business. The afternoon sky was solemn and threatening, the air chill and damp. The handful of persons passing the house seemed at pains to avoid it, and those she knew made no effort to greet her or stop to talk. The only friendly face she saw was that of Arthur Wilts. He was leaning against the doorpost of the glover’s shop as though he himself were the proprietor. He wished her good day.

“Good day to you, Arthur.”

“The constable told me to question any who came,” explained Arthur when Joan inquired what business of his it was what she wanted with the occupants of the house.

“Arthur Wilts, you know me well enough,” Joan said crossly. “Make way. I want to see my friend Mrs. Waite, if you must know, and comfort her on the death of her husband. Is that so strange?”

Arthur smiled sheepishly and stepped aside.

She knocked at the door, and presently it was answered by Susan Goodyear. The girl explained that her mistress was abed and in her chamber, but invited Joan to come in and wait. Joan was shown into the parlor.

While Susan revived the fire with a few faggots, Joan took in every detail of the room with her careful housekeeper’s eye. Its furnishings told the story of prosperity fallen into adversity. The wall hangings were faded and dusty; the great sideboard was bare of pewter, doubtless sold off to pay the family’s debts. Above the hearth there had once hung the sword and breastplate of a martial ancestor. She remembered them well, but the mementos were gone now. It was all very sad, and she wondered in which of the straight-backed chairs Malcolm Waite was sitting when he died.

She waited alone in the room for what seemed an hour, pretending to read a collection of dry sermons she had found on the mantelpiece but hardly progressing beyond the first page. Why should she read sermons when the chamber spoke one so eloquently?
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Her only Latin. She contemplated the thought and grew more melancholy than ever. The dark house reeked with the odor of disappointment, failure, death. She found it overpowering.

Then Susan returned to say her mistress would be down shortly. Joan thanked the girl, and, finding the chamber no longer to be endured, she told Susan she would walk in the garden in the meantime.

Joan passed through the empty kitchen and out the back door. Emerging into the bracing air, she gave a sigh of relief. Before her lay the rectangular patch of herbs and greens that was Margaret’s garden. The patch was overgrown, and the outlines of an earlier regimen of squares and circles—an artful geometry—was now barely discernible. Beyond the garden was the ivy-enshrouded privy with its door ajar, beyond still a low stone wall and the meadow sloping to the river. To the right of the garden stood the barn.

This now infamous structure caught her attention and for a few moments she stood regarding it. The rough-timbered barn was much weathered and tottering, with a high-pitched roof of rotting thatch and with gaping front doors loose on their hinges. At one side of the building was an empty swine pen in which weeds and thistles grew wantonly; at the other an enclosure for ducks, geese, and hens. The fowls cackled and honked, but the familiar notes of their discourse soon passed from her awareness. The sight of such disrepair and neglect renewed her melancholy, but the infamous barn aroused her curiosity as well. She did not mean to snoop, and yet, with no one around to tell her stay, she felt the urge to explore.

She followed the path that led around the garden and then fanned out before the barn doors. She was halfway to her destination when she paused. Suddenly she felt she was being watched. She surveyed the garden, then turned to look back