Not that I care for marriage just yet. Jane says that I should look around for someone young and handsome, but she didn’t know Ned. She doesn’t know what we had. Bess needs a father,
she points out when I tell her that, and it is true, but I can’t bear to think of it.
‘I will,’ I promise whenever she mentions it. And I will. Just not yet. I am young still, and there is plenty of time.
Now I drop the cloves back into the sack and brush my fingers together with satisfaction. John has done well. They are dry and firm, and when I dig down, I find no dust, but more precious
cloves. I will be able to sell them for a good price.
Taking a puckle in my hand for the kitchen, I leave Rob in the warehouse and walk back to the house. The streets are wet and slubbery with mud. The rain loosens the cobbles, and the
horses’ hooves dislodge them further, so that the potholes get bigger and bigger. They trap the rubbish that spills sluggishly from the gutters and cast a sour smell over the neighbourhood.
It is not yet autumn, with its brisk winds and sharp air, but summer is long past. Everything is tired and dreary, and the mood in the street is sly, acrid with disappointment.
It is as if the losses of last year have finally caught up with us. We are weary and fretful instead of grateful to be alive. It is harder now. I can feel my sense of satisfaction fading as soon
as I leave the warehouse. I pretend I don’t notice the way folk have started crossing themselves again when I pass, or watching me from the corners of their eyes. I pretend I don’t mind
that my neighbours are no longer my friends. I don’t care, I say, that they won’t let their daughters come to me as maids to help Jane. I have my daughter, I have my home. I have Jane
and Rob, and my business flourishes. I tell myself that I have enough.
Jane has been to market, and Bess is helping her to unpack her basket when I go into the kitchen.
‘What’s the news today?’ I ask, rescuing the cabbage that Bess is pulling off the table.
‘They’re all on about them witches that were arrested yesterday.’ Jane doesn’t hold with the hysteria that sweeps through the city every now and then.
‘More arrests?’ I frown as I stop Bess from tugging a whole pat of butter onto the floor. I sweep her up into my arms and tickle her nose to distract her and she shrieks with
laughter, but for once my mind is not on her.
This witch-hunt is Francis’s doing. After Sir John died of the pestilence, they sent a new priest, a diffident man who cares only for his books and lets Francis run the parish. Francis
himself has taken to hectoring the neighbours in the street, calling down God’s mercy on them. Their sins are not to blame for the sickness, he says, and makes them ask then: whose are? And
it is not a long step for people to remember the witches who curdled their cream before, who made them stumble and drop their pie. If their cow sickens, if their corn rots, if their ale spills,
they look around for someone to blame, and who better than the old women who have no one to speak up for them?
‘Who is it now?’ I ask Jane.
She pauses to search her memory. ‘Bridget Dobson, I think they said, and Madge Carter . . . oh, and old Ma Dent.’
‘Not Sybil Dent?’ I say, my heart full of foreboding, but I know what Jane will say.
‘Her as lives out on the common.’ She nods. ‘They’ve taken her in for questioning. Leastways, that’s what I heard.’
Questioning? I think bitterly. More like they will torture her until she confesses to whatever they want. Sybil, who saved me from Francis, who gave me my Bess.
‘Where is she?’ I demand. ‘Quick, tell me.’
Jane gapes at me in surprise. ‘At t’castle, most like. Why, where are you going?’ she asks, when I put Bess down and head for the door.
‘I’m going to get her out,’ I say.
But when I go to the castle, no one knows anything about Sybil. I spend a frustrating morning being passed around from official to official, every one of whom requires a coin to unfasten his
mouth, even if it is only to suggest that I ask elsewhere. My purse is almost empty by the time I eventually find Sybil in the gaol on Ouse Bridge.
Surrounded by stone, she looks diminished. She is a creature of the woods, a hedge-pig of a woman, and I can feel that she craves the breeze in her face and the stars above her.
I crouch beside her. ‘What can I do?’
‘En’t nothing you can do,’ she says.
‘This is Francis Bewley’s doing,’ I say in a low voice. ‘He knows you are my friend.’
The widow laughs at that, a short wheezy bark of laughter. ‘Bad choice of friends you have!’
‘I don’t think so.’ I set my chin stubbornly. ‘I do not forget what you have done for me.’
‘Better for you if you do forget. There is mischief afoot.’
I lower my voice. ‘Do you see the future?’
‘Better not,’ she says after a moment. ‘Better not.’
‘I will speak for you at your trial,’ I promise, but she shakes her head.
‘Won’t do no good, and it’ll be worse for you.’
I go anyway. The court is damp, and the widow’s cough shakes her whole body. Francis is there, smirking and triumphant. They lay out the accusations, one by one – that she cast a
spell on Anne Harrison, that she made Percival Geldart’s cow sicken, that she caused the corn to mildew – and they get progressively darker, as if the imagination of the city is peering
into a dark hole. She communes with Satan, she has a familiar, she sucks innocents into her web of evil. And the proof, if proof were needed: she has a witch’s mark. The women have stripped
her and examined her, and the mark of the Devil is there on her leg.
Sybil just shakes her head, unable to speak for coughing, so I get to my feet. ‘Good sirs, this is nonsense. Sybil is not evil. She is a cunning woman who makes remedies for folk who ask,
that is all.’
‘She is in league with the Devil himself,’ cries Francis. ‘Are you her accomplice to speak for her so?’
There is a hiss from the onlookers at his veiled accusation. I look steadily back at him and keep my voice level. ‘I am her friend. Sybil Dent has helped me, as she has helped
you.’
Francis’s eyes bulge. ‘I have never had any contact with that vile creature. How dare you suggest it?’
‘Because it is true,’ I say. ‘During the sickness, I went to her for a remedy. I gave it to you when I nursed you, and you were cured.’
‘It was God who saved me, Mistress, not you!’ Francis is striding around, putting on a show of outrage. ‘The witch’s remedy didn’t save your husband, did it? Or was
that its purpose, hmm?’
I clench my fists in my skirts. My jaw is so tight that I can barely unlock it to speak. ‘It was the pestilence killed my husband, not the Widow Dent,’ I say, biting out the words,
knowing I cannot give in to the rage and loathing that consumes me whenever I see him. ‘She has only ever saved me from harm.’
I meet his eyes. There is no point in telling the court that Sybil saved me from him. They would not believe me, but Francis knows the truth, and I know it.
But no one listens to me. They have made up their minds about Sybil. She is to hang to make them all feel better.
I visit Sybil in the prison and pay the gaoler handsomely to treat her well, although whether he does or not I cannot tell. I take her a basket of food and an infusion to calm the spirits, for
which she nods her thanks.
‘You’re a good girl,’ she says as I crouch beside her. ‘You look out for yourself now, though.’ She reaches out and her frail hand closes around my wrist.
‘There is danger for you, and it is close. You must be careful.’
‘I’m always careful,’ I say lightly, but she shakes her head.
‘You rush like a fool into the unknown. You act without thinking of the consequences. You must stop and consider.’
I don’t understand what she means. Yes, I did once rush to meet Francis before I knew what he was. That was a mistake, but I won’t make it again.
I cover her hand with my own. ‘I know Francis Bewley watches me,’ I say. ‘I know he would hurt me if he could, but I will not let him,’ I promise. ‘I have learnt my
lesson.’
Sybil tries to speak, but her words are lost in the terrible coughing. ‘The rope will put an end to this cough anyroad,’ she wheezes at last.
‘I’m sorry.’ I wish I could help her, wish I could save her, the way she saved me.
‘There’s one thing you can do for me.’ Even now she is able to read my mind, it seems. ‘Look after Mog. She’s a fine cat and I don’t want them hurting
her.’
They hang Sybil the next morning. The sky lours sullenly and weeps a fine drizzle that clings to my eyelashes. I am there as a witness. Stony-faced, I watch as they half-lift her onto the
scaffold. She is so small and frail, she looks tiny standing under the noose. At the last moment she opens her eyes and looks straight at me.
‘Remember,’ she says. I don’t hear her, but I know that is what she says.
‘I will.’ I will always remember, and in my heart I curse Francis Bewley and the jeering crowd around me, who think killing an old woman will make them feel less afraid.
When it is over I take my basket and I go out to Sybil’s cottage. Already it is lifeless and dank. I collect the herbs Sybil used, and I scatter them on the wind. ‘I won’t
forget,’ I say.
Mog appears and makes no protest when I pick her up and put her in the basket. Indeed, she appears to be expecting it, and curls up to make herself comfortable for the journey.
I open the basket in my kitchen and she gets out, stretches and sits down to wash her paws.
Bess is delighted with her. I expect Mog to hiss and spit when my daughter tries to pick her up, but no. She lets herself be clutched against Bess and seems happy to have Bess’s face
pressed into her soft fur.
‘Where did you get that one from then?’ asks Jane.
It’s best for her not to know. ‘I found her outside the walls,’ I say.
‘Found it?’ Jane looks at me closely. ‘Why’d you want to bring a cat home?’
‘She can keep the mice down.’
Jane doesn’t point out that there are plenty of cats in the city. ‘The neighbours won’t like it,’ she tells me bluntly.
I know she’s right, but I am angry and sad. I wanted to save Sybil, the way she saved me, and I couldn’t. I failed her, but I won’t fail her cat.
‘I don’t care what they think,’ I say. ‘The cat stays.’
I blinked down at the half-made pie. The pastry flopped pale and flaccid over the edge of the pie plate, and the slices of apple were turning brown in front of my eyes. My fist
was clenched in front of me. When I uncurled my fingers, the smell of cloves made me queasy.
I dropped them into the apples and threw the whole pie away.
It wasn’t over at all.
‘You’re very quiet.’ Drew’s eyes were narrowed as he studied me over the table that night.
‘Am I? Sorry, I’ve got a bit of a headache.’ I pushed the pasta to the side of my plate and put down my fork. I couldn’t eat. I kept seeing Sybil’s face as she hung
from the gibbet, her face engorged, eyes bulging, tongue protruding obscenely. Foreboding was curdling in the pit of my belly. Something terrible was about to happen. I could feel it.
‘Is there any pudding?’ asked Sophie.
I swallowed the nausea that rose whenever I thought about that pie. I had so nearly served it up with the apples seething with mould inside. I imagined biting into the pastry and tasting rotting
flesh, and I nearly gagged again. ‘Not tonight,’ I managed.
‘Ohhh . . . Why not?’ whined Sophie, slumping in her chair with an exaggerated grimace of disappointment.
Drew frowned at her. ‘You’re lucky Grace cooked at all tonight, young lady. Don’t get used to her providing all these wonderful vegetarian meals for you. You won’t be
getting anything like it when she goes.’
His voice was quite even, the way it always was when he talked about me going. He’d never told me again that he loved me, but discussed my departure in a very matter-of-fact way. I was
glad he wasn’t going to make things difficult for me, of course, but sometimes I wondered if he wasn’t secretly relieved that our relationship had a definite ‘use by’ date
on it.
Sophie’s bottom lip stuck out. ‘I wish you’d stay,’ she said to me. ‘Dad’s such a crap cook.’
‘It’s nice to be appreciated,’ I said. I meant my voice to be dry, but I was still trying to shake the image of the rotting apple pie, which kept getting muddled up with
Sybil’s expression as they dropped the rope around her neck; my smile must have seemed forced, because Sophie’s face clouded and she hunched a defensive shoulder as she bent her
head.
‘I didn’t mean . . . ’ She sucked a strand of hair and looked at me from under her brows. ‘Why don’t you stay?’ she asked abruptly.
There was an awkward silence. ‘It’s complicated,’ I said after a moment.
Bess . . . ess . . . ess
I stiffened as the whisper trickled slimily through the air.
‘What is it?’ Drew was watching more closely than I would have liked.
‘Nothing.’ With an effort I rearranged my face into a smile. ‘I’m sorry there’s no pudding tonight, Sophie. I’ll make one tomorrow.’
‘I’m not a
baby
, you know!’ With a teenager’s lightning change of mood she shoved back her chair.
‘Sophie!’
‘I hear you sneaking around at night.’ Her voice rose over Drew’s. ‘Going home like a good girl! Do you really think I’ll believe you’re not sleeping
together?’
‘That’s enough, Sophie,’ said Drew at his most forbidding, but Sophie was beyond reasoning.
‘You can’t just make me a pudding, pat me on the head and pretend that everything will be all right! I’m sick of being treated like a child!’
‘Then perhaps you should try not acting like one.’
Sophie shot her father a venomous look. ‘I don’t want her stupid pudding anyway. I’m going to be fasting tomorrow.’
‘Fasting?’ Her announcement, flung over the table, caught Drew unawares. ‘What on earth for?’
‘Because tomorrow is my initiation.’
‘Initiation? What initiation?’
‘To the Temple of the Waters. If I pass the test, and show myself worthy, I can ascend to the first level.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’