The Witch Hunter's Tale(92)

“What the Christ has happened?” Martha hissed in my ear. “Has he joined with Rebecca? What are we going to do? If he goes free, all is lost.”

She did not have to elaborate. If Joseph escaped the noose and returned to power, my family would be destroyed. I would lose Elizabeth, both Will and Tree would hang, and the trials of witches would begin once again. And with Rebecca’s hint that someone other than Joseph had bewitched her, I could not be sure that Martha and I were safe. Within weeks, we could all be dead.

The prosecutor came to me, panic clear in his face. “What has happened here?” he demanded. “The two of you are making a fool of me!”

Rebecca had disappeared into the crowd, and Joseph stood tall, his shoulders thrown back, every inch the cavalry officer he’d been a few years before. A handful of Alderman had crossed the room to speak with him, a sure sign that they thought he might go free. I considered the choice of paths that lay before me, and the toll that each would demand. But in the end the decision was not a hard one.

“Call me as a witness, and I will see this through,” I replied, and told him what I needed him to do. After I explained my plan, I glanced at Martha, who nodded in approval.

“Your scheme had better work,” the prosecutor said. “Or we’ll both suffer.”

“I know that far better than you,” I breathed.

As the Judge and bailiffs tried to return the hall to some semblance of order, I closed my eyes and said a prayer. I did not know if God would aid perjurers in their work, but if He did not I would lose all that I held dear.

* * *

“Lady Hodgson,” the prosecutor began. “You have known Joseph Hodgson for many years, have you not?”

“Yes I have,” I replied. “I came to York when he was a youth, and I was married to his uncle.” All the jurymen knew this, of course, but the customs of law must be obeyed. I found it curious that for the first time in my life the truth felt strange on my tongue. No doubt it was because I knew the lies that would soon follow.

“When did you begin to suspect he was a witch?”

“In truth, it was soon after he began to hunt for witches within the city. He had never done such a thing before—what could he know of witches?—yet he discovered them wherever he looked. I wondered how that could be.” As I spoke, I looked from the prosecutor, to the judge, to the jurymen. I had no desire to see Joseph’s reaction to my lies.

“My work as a midwife brought me to the Castle,” I continued. “Here I talked to women who would soon hang for their witchery. When they heard his name, they quailed in fear, and I wanted to know why.”

“Did they tell you?”

“Aye. It took some doing, but I convinced a few of them to tell me the truth. They did not deny their crimes, but they claimed that my nephew, Joseph Hodgson, had tricked and enticed them into witchcraft with false promises and feigned affection. I then realized that he was their imp, sent by Satan himself to lure them into damnation.” The jurymen glanced nervously from my face to Joseph’s. I knew they would be torn: They would not want to hear that a man such as Joseph had fallen into the Devil’s hands, but they would believe my words because I was a gentlewoman and a midwife.

“And more than one woman told you this?”

“Half a dozen,” I replied. I sounded so sure of myself, I could almost believe my own lies. “They came from different cells in the Castle, but they told similar tales, so I believed it to be true.”

“Are these women still living?”

“No,” I said. “Joseph saw to it that they were hanged before they could expose him for his crimes.”

“If you believed that Joseph was a witch, why did you not accuse him?”

I laughed at this in the same way I imagined Rebecca would. “Because I saw what happened to those who opposed him.”

“What do you mean?”

I turned to address the jurymen directly. “When George Breary tried to stop the witch-hunts, Joseph murdered him.”

As I’d hoped and expected, the jurymen stared at me in amazement. A great hubbub broke out within the hall, and I heard a strangled cry from my left. I took this to be Joseph’s objection, but I kept my eyes on the jury. The prosecutor waited until the judge had quieted the room before he continued.

“Joseph Hodgson murdered George Breary?” he asked in amazement. His surprise was feigned, of course, but nobody who heard him would have known. “How do you know?”

“Because George told me this before he died.”

Once again the crowd began to murmur, and Joseph tried to object, but the judge demanded silence.