Suffer a Witch Read online

  “I prefer country ways,” said Hugh with a sidelong glance at Pippa.

  Something inside of her soared.

  “Were you at the new field?” Pippa asked. The Feltons had cleared and plowed what had once been fenland after purchasing tracts from smaller farmers. Using stronger equipment they were able to make fertile what once had been unsuitable. The Feltons’ new grain fed their fat cattle. It was making them land-rich, for in these uncertain times fewer families had money to spare for new enterprises.

  “I was,” said Hugh. “I must confess I find it exciting.”

  “Plowing?”

  “Overturning virgin soil,” he said.

  A furious blush overtook Pippa. “I know not what you mean.” But she turned her head to look up at him from under her eyelashes.

  Hugh smiled. “But you do know how invigorating the outdoors can be. You’re the only girl I know who runs free across the fields.”

  “I like my freedom. It must be taken when it’s there.”

  “I agree,” said Hugh. He stopped walking and looked hard at her. “Do you know … I think perhaps we are alike. We are country folk, with country values. I care nothing for what my Christian brothers in the towns and cities find important. Not money, which is different from wealth, the wealth of the land. Not prestige, not even religion. Not,” he paused, putting a thoughtful hand to his mouth, “not that I don’t value piety.”

  “Your idea of it is just more natural,” suggested Pippa. She was, as always, impressed with Hugh’s command of his ideas. He was educated further than she, who could not even read beyond simple things. Her heart pounded at his serious words. Perhaps it meant he took her seriously, too, as more than a friend or acquaintance or pretty girl with whom to flirt. Once again, Pippa dared to hope that Hugh might choose her above all the more eligible girls with whom he flirted, too … That he wasn’t really engaged to Elizabeth Yates, that he didn’t really prefer Winifred Radcliff … She blinked once to ground herself and paid close attention to his speech of philosophy.

  Hugh took long, slow, deliberate strides as he walked. “I feel to be close to God is to do His work with humility, to help the poor, to do good and be joyful. Not to deny oneself but to embrace all of this as God’s creation, and safeguard its virtue.” His eyes, azure like the sky, scanned the fields and trees that surrounded them, and came to rest on the white timber church a half mile down the road.

  “And virgin fields? Are they to be safeguarded too?”

  “They are to be cultivated,” he said. His eyes moved from the church to pause on Pippa’s lips.

  Pippa laughed and skipped ahead of him. “Catch up with me!” she shouted over her shoulder, and then as though they were children again, they raced to the village. As she flew along the road, Hugh holding his pace at her heels, she flung her arms outward and closed her eyes, remembering the first time they’d done this. When they were children, before all the burdens of class and marriage and expectation, she had always been a few steps ahead and leading the way to wildness, and he would always catch up to her.

  PIPPA WAS SIX and Hugh eleven when they married. It was midsummer, the brightest and longest day of the year, and the forest was bursting with green. Pippa, tall and gangly for her age, skipped past a rock where a lizard basked in the sun; she paused to say hello. The lizard’s emerald eye regarded her with patience. Giggling, she glanced behind her for Hugh. She knew these woods better than he did and she could hear him crashing through the bushes down the path.

  Today they were playing gypsies. “If you’re a warrior, you have to hurry,” called Pippa.

  “I’m a king today. And I stopped to present you this royal gift,” said Hugh, stepping from behind a tree and presenting her with a branch of blueberries.

  Pippa’s eyes widened. The berries were large, round, and the deep indigo of perfect ripeness.

  “Come,” said Hugh, seizing her hand, “and tell my fortune in the apple grove!”

  When they played gypsies, Pippa was always a fortune-teller.

  They ran together, ducking beneath branches and twisting around the trunks of trees. When they emerged into the rosy glow of the apple grove, they stopped to catch their breath. Hugh flopped backward onto the grass. His eyes matched the sky above him.

  He was the only friend of Pippa’s who was a boy. She was often called strange by the other boys of the village, and she knew it was because of her mother, but Hugh treated her differently. He said she was quite normal to him.

  Pippa wondered what Hugh would think if she was cunning like Lillibet.

  Wandering around the clearing, snacking on the blueberries that she knew would turn her mouth dark, an idea struck her. “Let’s play something different today.”

  Hugh lifted himself onto one elbow. “What shall we play?”

  “Let’s play married,” she said. “A gypsy wedding!”

  His eyes widened. “Well … I suppose. I can’t tell any of the lads I’m married, though.”

  “Of course not,” said Pippa. “It’s a secret wedding because … um … because you’re meant to marry the evil witch daughter of the enemy king! But you decide on the fortune-teller instead, because she sees the future.”

  Hugh grinned. “And why do you decide to marry me?”

  “Because you’re the good king, of course.”

  He stood up. “How do people get married, anyhow?”

  She bit her lip. “I don’t know. We’ll have to make it up.” Stepping toward Hugh, she felt a shimmer, as though the air gasped. “We stand facing each other.”

  They stood solemnly, Hugh a head taller. “All right … close our eyes,” said Pippa.

  Hugh closed his, but she peeked up at him. He had a nice face, a kind face. She liked the way his fair hair laid across his forehead. He was too young for it to be cropped yet.

  Pippa thought in her head, We are married. We are married. Then she said aloud, in a firm voice, “I take you, Hugh the Brave, to be my husband.” She stared at him and raised her arms to the sky.

  He opened his eyes. His features were like stone, held in a trance, an enchantment that flowed from Pippa’s mind.

  Around them, an eddy of wind swirled, and apple blossoms began to fall like snow into the clearing. Thicker and faster, the flowered, scented cloud engulfed them.

  “Take me as your wife,” Pippa coaxed. The words seemed to come from someone much older than six.

  Hugh stood frozen, staring at her. After several moments, when the fallen blossoms were caught in their hair, he whispered, “I take you, Pippa the Cunning, to be my wife.”

  Pippa wasn’t sure what to do after that, and so she held out her palm for him to kiss. She felt the tickle of his lips and it made her giggle.

  That seemed to break the spell, and she cried, “Now here comes the evil king to avenge his daughter!” she pointed at a spot in the trees, and they broke apart, and seized long sticks to use as swords against their imaginary enemies.

  PIPPA SMILED TO HERSELF as she thought of her inadvertent charm on Hugh. They’d never spoken about that day, but ever since, he’d paid all kinds of special attention to her … more than was due a girl of her lowered station, from a man of his high station. Now that they were old enough, who knew … they had always been friends, but from the way he sometimes looked at her, so speculative … Pippa prayed their relationship would take a different turn.

  “Pippa, stop,” he said in her ear.

  They thundered to a halt at the crossroads. Something out of the ordinary was happening at the inn. The Green Man sign had been taken down, the Renshaws stood in deep discussion with the carpenter, and their son Will was taking apart the bracket that held the carved sign. Overseeing all of this was Reverend Yates.

  “Hile, Will,” said Hugh.

  “Hallo, Hugh Felton,” said Will. “And Pippa. Good day.”

  “What are you doing with the sign?” Pippa asked, pointing.

  “Don’t be forward, girl,” said Reverend Yates.
<
br />   “Oh!” she cried as the carpenter took a hammer and chisel and split the old sign down the middle to loose it from the bracket.

  The Green Man’s wide eyes seemed upset by what was happening to him. To Pippa it was as though a family member had been struck in the nose. The Green Man was not just for the inn. He was in the woods, in the trees. She’d seen his face in the gnarled oak near the clearing. She’d seen him in the morning inside the mulberry bush below the kitchen, and in the yew tree when the sun hit it just right.

  “The inn is being renamed,” said the Reverend. “To something less pagan. There is wickedness abroad and we must guard our own souls with greater vigilance.”

  Hugh looked troubled. “Has this to do with the rumors of witchcraft to the south?”

  A small shiver went through Pippa. She remembered the pamphlet from Essex. But then she remembered that she knew how to defend herself against black magic. Her mother knew ancient tricks. The Reverend might even call them pagan. Still, she was certain that white witchcraft was not a crime.

  “Have you decided, Papa?” Will asked Mr. Renshaw. “On the name?”

  “Yeh,” he said, “from now it be called The Charter Inn, seeing as we have a charter from God to provide refreshment to this village.”

  Reverend Yates looked satisfied with this. So did the carpenter, for whom it would mean a commission.

  Pippa took a quiet leave from Hugh and the others. Her legs felt weak all of a sudden, as though the destruction of the Green Man had done something to her own spirit.

  All was quiet in the house of the Reverend Peter Yates. It was the hour after dinner and the minister was in his study, writing the sermon or studying the Bible. It was always one or the other. His two eldest daughters were in the room they shared, speaking in low voices. The house-woman had gone to sleep. When the Reverend’s wife had died many years ago, Martha had been hired to cook, clean, and do the things that a woman was needed to do.

  This routine left Sybil Yates alone to pursue her own strange designs. This evening it was an embroidered handkerchief. She’d forgone the usual border of flowers or initials. Instead her quick fingers flashed in the gloom and, thread by thread, she stitched a colorful bird perched on a bare branch. The bird had bright red tail feathers and blue-green wings and a crest of yellow at its head. It had taken Sybil a long time to gather up the colors she would need and there was no room for error.

  The low light of the candles was no hindrance. She had the entire bird in her head: its motion, its plumage, the sound it made when it sang. Whether there was such a bird in life did not matter … perhaps it existed somewhere in the tropics. Sybil’s imagination often took her to the borderlands between myth and reality. She murmured to herself, “Ladybird, ladybird, this knot I knit. Ladybird, ladybird, this knot I cross …”

  She tilted the fabric toward the candle and smiled at it. She was almost to the exciting part: the bird’s eyes. Those should be … green, she thought. Green as a newborn grain. She stuck the needle in the safe place between her lips and her pale thin fingers searched for the correct thread to set aside; she would hate to lose track of it.

  Sybil always seemed to lose things. Hairpins, needles, buttons, and even larger objects like her hairbrush and her favorite petticoat. She wondered if she was plagued with mischievous fairies. Perhaps Pippa would know what to do about it. They could make a charm together, or even offer something to the fairies to end their thievery.

  Under her breath she sang a soft hymn to the spirits. Her mother was with her tonight and appeared as a bright white light that danced in Sybil’s peripheral vision. Whenever she tried to pin it down with her gaze, it zipped away. “Oh, Mother,” she said. “I miss you. So does Father. He takes too much solace in the Good Book—not that he cannot find solace there—but I fear he does not pay much attention to his daughters. To your daughters.”

  That wasn’t all the way true. Sybil’s father often warned them against the evils of the world. He also found special rapport with Elizabeth, Sybil’s oldest sister. Elizabeth shared his passion for religion and they discussed the Bible together. Sybil found herself ignored in this, for she found it difficult to memorize things from the Bible or any other book, and her attention wandered from one thing to another.

  “You make no sense,” Elizabeth often told her, no matter what it was Sybil had said.

  Sybil remembered the first time she had tried to explain things to her family. It had also been the last time. Since then, she had kept her conversations with her mother a treasured secret.

  THE FIRE CRACKLED and popped, and Sybil’s five-year-old eyes watched the pulsing of the red-hot coals at the bottom. It was like a beating heart, the fire, and it warmed the parlor where she and her sisters listened to their father as he read aloud from the Bible. He told the story of Jesus and Lazarus. Raising the dead was nothing tricky to Sybil. Her world was made of fairy tales and magical deeds. She believed the Bible to be true just as she believed the legends of King Arthur.

  They’d adopted a tiny kitten last week and Sybil had suggested the name of Galahad. He would be raised to hunt mice in their house.

  Elizabeth, nine years old, dangled a piece of yarn in front of Galahad’s tiny, playful paws.

  Catherine, seven, sat on the sofa, curled up, watching and listening and quiet as always.

  Glancing up at her father, Sybil noticed that the glowing white light was back. It hovered at his right shoulder. The light smiled and winked at Sybil.

  “Hello, Mama,” she said.

  Papa stopped his reading, mid-word.

  “What did you say, Sybil?” Elizabeth asked, dropping the yarn into Galahad’s waiting grasp.

  “She’s here,” said Sybil, wanting to share with her family the things she saw. They didn’t seem to understand and, struggling to find the correct words, she said, “Our mother. She’s here.”

  Papa frowned and closed the Bible, keeping his place with a finger. “Sybil, child, your mother is in Heaven with God.”

  “No, she’s not! She’s here in this room!”

  Elizabeth scowled. “Stop imagining things and listen to Papa’s story.”

  Catherine blinked and looked from one person to the other.

  “Papa, don’t you believe me?” Sybil asked.

  Her father sighed. “Elizabeth, do not scold your sister. She’s young and doesn’t understand.” He made a petting gesture at Elizabeth, telling her to relax.

  But Sybil did understand. Her family could not see the glow of Mother. She followed the light as it bobbed and danced. Smiling, her own heart swelled. Although her mother had never known her, and had held her but once before passing away, Sybil knew that she was loved.

  “What is she smiling at, Papa?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Sybil.”

  Papa’s soft, stern voice tugged her away from the light.

  “Sybil.”

  Breaking contact with the spirit, she turned her wide eyes onto him.

  “It is a temptation,” he said. “For you, especially, daughter. If it comforts you to know that your mother watches us from the arms of Christ, far away in Heaven, then doubt it not. But Christian spirits stay not with us on earth. Don’t claim it, for you upset your sisters.”

  Sybil closed her eyes. Perhaps if she listened very hard, her mother would speak through her. It had happened before. Then her family would believe her.

  A voice moved in Sybil’s throat.

  Images played across her eyelids. A smiling woman, a young Reverend—Papa—with a gift of apples in a basket, and then the words erupted out of her mouth.

  “She says hello to Petey,” Sybil said slowly. She didn’t know who Petey was, but it was not a message for her.

  Her father sat straight up in his chair.

  Sybil said, “She remembers the apples. There was a note in the apples. The reddest apples from the best harvest. She polished that one special for you. Then she baked you a pie.”

  The Bible fell from Papa’s grasp
and hit the floor with a great thud.

  “How—” he croaked.

  “She says it was her time to die and that she was sorry to leave. She didn’t mean to hurt you, Papa. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t my fault, either, she says.”

  The Reverend stood up, shaking with rage. “Stop it!” he shouted at Sybil. “Stop it! This is—wrong, it’s unnatural, this is an invention! Stop!”

  But Sybil couldn’t stop the force that moved her lips. On the brink of tears, she said, “‘The white dove sat on the castle wall. I bend my bow and shoot her I shall. I put her in my glove, feathers and all.’ She says that was what you said together.”

  Elizabeth and Catherine stared at her, horrified, and Sybil cringed under her father’s burning gaze. This had been a mistake. She should never have said it aloud … Mother, she thought, they don’t want to hear you.

  A feather-light caress moved across Sybil’s heart and the presence was gone.

  Sybil clamped her mouth shut. She resolved to keep her mother to herself from now on.

  “Get out,” Papa whispered. “Go upstairs. Get out. You are a necromancer.”

  Sybil didn’t know what a necromancer was, but it couldn’t be good.

  “You are a cursed child. Go. Go.”

  Shaken, she scrambled up and darted out of the room, away from the circle of fire-warmth and into the cold dark hall. How was she supposed to know he would react in such a way?

  She heard him tell Elizabeth, “Tuck your sister into bed and return here. We will continue our reading.”

  Elizabeth appeared in the doorway and seized Sybil’s hand, dragging her up the stairs to her child-size bed. “You are a stupid child,” Elizabeth hissed. “Why do you say such stupid, bad things?”

  “I didn’t—”

  They reached the bedroom and a light flared as Elizabeth struck a match for the single candle. “Into your bedclothes,” she ordered Sybil.

  Sybil spun around as she changed. She liked feeling dizzy.