The Witch Hunter's Tale(14)

“Did she ask you about other witches?” I asked.

“Aye, and she was not pleased when I told her that I did not know of any. She threatened to have me swum if I did not tell the truth. But I knew she couldn’t do that, not by herself. I kept my peace.”

Martha and I bid farewell to Hester and I pounded on the door to summon the jailor.

“Lady Hodgson?” Hester said as we waited. For the first time she sounded uncertain. “Will you be there tomorrow?” I turned to face her. Her eyes shone in the lamplight, and I realized that she’d invited me to her execution.

For a moment I wondered why she would ask such a favor. What comfort could I offer to such a wretched creature?

And then I knew.

For as long as she could remember, Hester Jackson had lived on the edge of the parish. She had no husband, no children, no family. Nobody in the city loved or cared for her. In the best of times her neighbors viewed her as a parasite, taking bread from the mouths of their children, and with all of England at war, we hardly lived in the best of times. When William Asquith accused Hester of witchcraft and murder, whatever friends she’d had would have abandoned her. Indeed, they’d probably been crueler than most, if only to distance themselves from an accused witch. Hester Jackson had nobody.

I nodded, and she thanked me.

As soon as Benjamin Hunter returned to let us out of the cell, it was clear that the black mood into which I’d cast him had subsided. When Martha and I reached the top of the stairs we saw the reason. A dozen or more people stood outside the tower door, eagerly waiting the chance to see a witch before she was hanged, and each would have to pay Hunter for the privilege. As we left, I prayed that Hester would not suffer at Hunter’s hands, and that her visitors would not mistreat her, although with less than a day to live, what further indignity could they offer?

Martha and I found the road into the city far busier than it had been on our way out, and we had to fight against the crowds to cross the Castle drawbridge. The mass of people eased once we reentered the city, and we could talk without having to shout over the hubbub. By now the shopkeepers had set up their stalls along the street, and boys, wrapped in layer upon layer of cloth, cried their wares as the north wind whipped the brightly colored awnings.

“That was not what I expected,” Martha said.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t expect her to say that she had killed the Asquiths. I didn’t think she would admit to being a witch.”

“Once the guilty have been condemned, they often want to tell the truth,” I replied. “We saw it ourselves not so long ago.”

“Yes,” she replied. But I could tell that something else bothered her.

Martha tried again. “I didn’t think she would say she had bewitched them. How could she have?”

Then I understood.

“You don’t believe witchcraft is real!” I cried. I knew there were some who denied the reality of witchcraft, and I had heard of Reginald Scot’s infamous book, but had not thought to count Martha among the skeptics.

Martha shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. But I can’t help noticing that most women accounted as witches are like Hester: Poor and old, with no family to save them.”

“Such women are all the more easily tempted by Satan,” I replied.

Martha laughed coarsely. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard the sermons. Witches are no different than other women. We are weak willed and so inclined to lust that Satan can lead us astray with little trouble. No wonder men must keep us leashed.”

“It’s not just that,” I replied. “He offers women like Hester everything they lack, everything they could dream of: money, protection from the world, and the power to take revenge on their enemies. For some women, especially those inclined to malice, it could be a difficult offer to resist. Hester says she did not mean to hurt the Asquiths, but even so she fell into witchcraft. You heard her admit it.”

“I suppose,” Martha said. “I told myself I’d believe in witchcraft when the Justices started hanging men for the crime.”

“Do you believe in it now?” I asked.

Martha’s doubts about God and the supernatural were not new, of course. From her first weeks in my service, Martha and I argued over the place of God in the world. She had long abandoned any belief in His goodness or the usefulness of prayer. In her mind, if God existed at all, He was an absent parent who had left His children to engage in whatever petty cruelties they could imagine. For a time I endeavored to convince her otherwise, but in truth she had turned me more to her opinion than I had turned her to mine. Or perhaps she was just finishing the work that Michael’s and Birdy’s deaths had begun. I would be lying if I said that I did not question God’s goodness when I cast a handful of dirt on the corpse of my last surviving child.