I marveled at how quickly they had forgotten Rebecca’s cruelty in the delivery room, but after a moment’s consideration I realized that they knew the situation better than I. If Joseph were to succeed in extirpating York’s witches root and branch, his Searcher would have to be utterly merciless. Rebecca was the perfect choice.
“You’re going to accuse Mrs. Lee of witchcraft?” I asked carefully.
Several women nodded, and Sarah Crompton spoke for them all. “She’s vexed us for years. Any time we deny her demands for a little coal or a pound of cheese, she sees that we pay for it. She bewitched my churn so I couldn’t make butter, killed two of Grace’s piglets, and kept Goodwife Butler’s ale from brewing.”
“We’re lucky she’s not done worse,” Grace Hewitt added. “But we’ll not take the chance that she might. If we stand together against her, Mr. Hodgson will see her hanged.”
As I considered the situation, I realized that Joseph’s scheme to make the town his own had succeeded, at least with these women. Once he’d rid the neighborhood of a witch, what would they deny him? He could ask for money, for power, for anything at all, and the people would rush to give it to him. Worse, as Joseph gained power, Rebecca would be at his side, perfectly positioned to take her revenge on me for all I’d done.
“What if she doesn’t hang?” Lucy Pierce asked. A note of fear crept into her voice. “What if the jury acquits her? What will she do to us then?”
The women looked warily at one another.
“We cannot dwell on that,” Grace Hewitt said doubtfully.
“Those are strong words from a woman whose children are grown,” Lucy replied. “If we accuse her and she’s not hanged, she’ll have her revenge on all of us, won’t she? I’ll not have her bewitch my child.”
An uneasy silence settled over the room. While nobody thought witches made for good neighbors, thus far Mrs. Lee had not proven herself anything worse than a nuisance; nobody died if butter wouldn’t churn or if beer turned sour. But if they charged Mrs. Lee as a witch and she didn’t hang? It would be a declaration of war against one of Satan’s own, and only the Lord knew what evil she would unleash upon her accusers.
“If we stand together, we cannot fail,” Grace Hewitt repeated. “We have read the books and heard the sermons. Mr. Hodgson will not let her escape justice.” A few women nodded, but others seemed more concerned at the prospect of failure.
“What if she bewitches my child?” Lucy asked. The women fell quiet.
I did not know Mrs. Lee well enough to say whether she was a witch, but I did not envy the women the terrible decision that lay before them.
Rap, rap, rap!
A harsh knocking at the window broke the silence.
Grace gasped, and we all stared at the curtain.
Rap, rap!
A cry escaped from Lucy’s lips, and she looked wildly about the room. I felt my heart hammering in my chest as I strode to the window and threw back the curtain to find a cracked window, but nothing else. I peered through the frosted glass as best I could but saw neither man nor beast.
“It was just the wind,” I said, though I could not explain how the wind could knock on a window or crack the glass. No doubt the women could hear the hollowness in my voice, but none challenged me, for they, too, wanted it to be the wind.
I drew the curtain and tried to turn the conversation to a topic other than witches, but with little effect. A darkening mood settled over the gathering as the women returned to the question of what to do about Mother Lee. I wished that Lucy’s child would come, if only to hurry the day along.
A bit before midnight, Lucy’s final travail began, and we gathered around her. Lucy sipped caudle between labor pangs, and all seemed to be in order until the child began to make his way into the world. As his head appeared I saw that it was grey and hairless, and the skin peeled away at the gentlest touch. While Lucy could not see the child from her perch on the birthing stool, she could read the faces of her gossips.
“What is wrong?” she cried, looking down at me.
“Nothing yet,” I said. I glared furiously over my shoulder at the women. They should be a help, not a hindrance. “Let us have the child into the world.” I prepared myself to work as quickly as I could, but only a few moments later, the smell of death and decay assaulted me. I could not say why or when, but the child had died in Lucy’s womb. A soul-tearing sorrow welled up inside me as I looked up at Lucy. There were few things I dreaded more than telling a mother that her child would not live. I could see the horrible combination of desperate hope and knowing fear on Lucy’s face. She knew what had happened, but she prayed that I would tell her she was wrong, that her child was not dead.