The Witch Hunter's Tale(27)
“One morning he awoke, and his leg could not bend,” she said. “We didn’t know who had done it, but nobody doubted it was witchcraft. He dragged himself around the village screaming that he would have his revenge. I’d never seen him so afraid. Mother Hawthorne took him in, laid him on her table, and said a blessing over his knee. The next day he was fit as could be. He was the cruelest boy in the village, and she took him in and healed him. And do you know what the strangest thing was?”
I shook my head.
“In all the time she helped her neighbors, she never asked for a penny. If someone was kind enough to offer, she accepted it, but she never set a price or demanded to be paid after she finished. She was just trying to be neighborly in the best way she knew how. The only way she knew how.”
We walked in silence. I did not think she’d finished her story.
“Of course I don’t think much of her work was magic,” she said at last. “She just knew enough of village business to figure things out. When my father lost two shillings, and John Parker appeared in a new shirt, she knew to blame him. And when Sairy Smith asked who would marry her? Everyone in the village knew that Nehemiah Shaw had eyes for none but her. It wasn’t magic, it wasn’t the devil, it was just that she knew things, and she knew what people wanted to hear.”
By now we’d gotten home and settled in the parlor. I could hear footsteps above, and I knew Elizabeth would soon join us.
“What about your brother’s leg?” I asked.
Martha laughed. “Healing him might have been the work of the devil. He’d not have caused such trouble with a bad leg, would he?” She paused. “I don’t know how she healed his leg, just as I don’t know what happened to Lucy’s son. But some things are counted as magic that are nothing more than common sense or happenstance. And these seem a thin rope with which to hang a woman.”
“There was a cunning-woman in a village near our manor,” I said. “Widow Rugge. But she dealt more in vinegar than sugar. My parents told our servants that if she came to the door in search of food or wood for her fire, she should not be denied.”
“They believed her to be a witch?” Martha asked.
“They never said as much,” I answered. “I think they decided it was better to give her a few pennies than to lose a sow or have a cow run mad.”
“Or worse,” Martha said. “She could have taken you.”
“Aye, she could have.” I did not relish the idea that Widow Rugge had used me as a lever to move my parents to charity.
“What became of her?” Martha asked.
“She died in her sleep just before I married Luke,” I answered.
A look of surprise crossed Martha’s face. Just as she rarely mentioned her brother Tom, I did not often speak of my first husband.
“I don’t think Mother Lee will enjoy the same quiet death,” Martha said.
“No,” I replied. “I don’t think she will.”
* * *
For the rest of the week all of York held its breath in anticipation of the witch-hunt. The city vibrated with the same mixture of excitement and dread that precedes a terrible storm. We all knew there would be blood and some would suffer terribly. But the hope was that the slaughter of York’s witches would appease God, and that His wrath against the city—wrath made visible by the icy river and audible by the howling winter wind—would abate.
One of the more pleasing effects of the December wind had been to drive Tree down from the Castle for days at a time, which gave me the chance to mother him and Elizabeth both. Elizabeth was no less pleased by Tree’s arrival, and the two of them soon were joined in the excitation of the coming witch-hunt. I found them one afternoon peering out the parlor window trying to guess which passersby might be witches. Whenever anyone looked in their direction, they would cry out in horror and seek shelter behind the curtains until the danger had passed. Martha and I looked on their antics with amusement, but I heard Hannah reprimanding both of them.
“And what do you think a witch would do to the two of you if she thought you were mocking her?” she demanded. Elizabeth and Tree—wisely, I thought—stayed silent. “Why, she could bewitch you with a glance or a word, and there’d be naught that anyone could do to save you.”
I thought she had gone too far in scaring the children and stepped in.
“Hannah, that is enough. There’s no need to frighten them so.”
If Hannah heard me, she gave no sign of it.
“And if anyone offers you food or seeks to pinch your cheek, you must flee from them, for that is how children are bewitched,” she continued. “The day of reckoning is upon us, and the evil ones will not give up their place in the city so easily.” She looked at me. “If the city troubles the witches, the witches will trouble the city, for they will not be hanged without a fight. We’d best be prepared.”