“You touch me and you will answer to Lord Granville.” Phoebe raised her hands as if she could thus ward off the throng who had begun to move towards the two women.
There was an unmistakable hesitation and she had a moment of hope. But the witch finder knew how to command a crowd.
“If there be no mark, then they have nothing to fear. Only the guilty would resist the test. Will you go on with the devil in your midst and watch your children die, your crops fail, your cattle fall where they stand?”
“No… no… no devil!” a woman cried at the back. It was the woman whose child had died. She pushed forward, her face contorted with hatred, her eyes crazy with grief. “She killed my child.” She pointed at Meg. “She put a curse upon him and my baby died.” She spat directly into Meg’s face.
It was the signal for the rest. They surged forward and Phoebe and Meg were both surrounded. Hands grabbed at Phoebe, wrenched her arms behind her back, tied her wrists with rope. She cursed them, using every expression she had ever heard in barnyard and stables.
And yet rough as they were with Phoebe, they manhandled Meg with a savage brutality, scratching and punching her as they trussed her. A yowling shriek that truly sounded like the devil shivered through the air, and a black bundle, hissing, spitting, claws tearing, flew through the air to land on the back of one of Meg’s captors.
He screamed as the cat’s claws dug into his back, and the witch finder gave a bellow of satisfaction. “The familiar!” he cried. “I have no need of pins. We’ll swim the witch.”
“Aye, swim the witch… swim the witch.” They took up the chant, and Meg’s cat loosed his hold and leaped back up onto the roof again. For a second he was visible on the gable, and then he was gone in a black streak.
Phoebe struggled for breath. “You cannot swim for a witch without finding a mark,” she said desperately. “It is not permitted. You cannot do that. You know you cannot.”
She could think now only of buying time. If it meant they had to endure the ordeal of the pricking, then so be it. Once Meg was trussed, wrists to ankles, and thrown into the freezing river, she would drown. If she held her breath and came up again, seeming to float, then they would burn her for a witch. There was no salvation, short of a miracle. But while there was time, there was time for a miracle.
“Aye, she’s right,” Bill Watson said slowly. “We’ve to do this accordin‘ to law an’ custom. Tain’t right otherwise.”
There was a murmur of agreement, and the witch finder, after a moment when he seemed to assess the mood of the crowd, said, “ Tis all the same to me. I smell witches, but if you want proof, then you shall have it. Bring them.”
He strode through the crowd, who parted before his staff like the Red Sea before Moses‘. They surged around Meg and Phoebe and drove them after the tall figure of the witch finder.
Phoebe stumbled along, conscious not of her own ills but of Meg’s. Meg’s face was scratched and bruised. Her gown had been torn and her breast was exposed, but her expression was grimly determined. She would show this rabble not the faintest sign of fear.
In the apple loft, Olivia stared out of the small round window as the procession surged away. Then she half jumped, half fell down the ladder to the kitchen. Meg’s carving knife lay on the breadboard on the table, and Olivia grabbed it up. She had no idea what she could use it for, but just possessing a weapon made her feel better.
She pulled the hood of her cloak close about her face as she set off after the mob, running through the woods parallel to the path until she came up with the stragglers. In their heated excitement they paid no attention to the tightly cloaked new arrival slipping into their midst.
Chapter 14
They were borne in savage triumph to the village and onto the green where the stocks and the whipping post stood.
“Where’s the beadle?” Phoebe demanded in a last-ditch attempt to avert this horror. “You cannot conduct this business without the beadle.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “And you cannot conduct it without the Justice of the Peace,” she continued on a rush of ascendancy. “Send for the Justice.”
“The Justice has no say in the matter of witches,” the witch finder declared in stentorian tones. “Strip her and seize her to the whipping post.”
He advanced on Meg and was about to rend the collar of her already torn gown when he gave a shout of triumph.
“Alia! She carries a serpent’s tooth at her neck.” He grabbed the thin string that held the tooth Phoebe had drawn, and snapped it. He held it up for the crowd. “See, the serpent’s tooth.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd!” Phoebe cried. “It’s her own tooth. I pulled it for her myself.”
“It takes a witch to defend a witch,” the finder said in triumph. The crowd’s murmur became full throated and Phoebe felt the terror she had so far held at bay begin to overwhelm her.
Two men rushed at Meg to seize her to the whipping post, and Phoebe closed her eyes under a wash of despair. Once the witch finder began his poking at Meg’s naked flesh with his long pins, looking for the devil’s mark, he would find it.
Not an inch of her skin would be left untouched; the most intimate crannies would be prodded. Every tiny blemish he would prick and they would bleed, but eventually he would find one that didn’t bleed. This witch finder would ensure that he found his witch, but he would give the crowd a good show before he did so.
Phoebe knew as Meg did that there were witch finders who would use a pin with a retractable point. At some point, when the crowd was sufficiently worked up, they would apply that pin and it would draw no blood. Their fanatical love of their profession, if thus it could be called, permitted any subterfuge. And Phoebe knew that they had here such a witch finder.
And soon it would be her turn.
But for the moment she was standing ignored, her hands bound behind her, all her senses straining towards Meg, who was lost to view in the crowd.
Olivia glided away from the throng. Phoebe’s heart jumped as she saw her. Olivia seemed to stroll away, casually, as if the scene no longer interested her. A couple of heads turned in her direction, but then the witch finder gave a cry and the mob surged forward jostling for a view.
Olivia stepped behind Phoebe. She knelt so that she was obscured by Phoebe’s body and began to saw at the bonds with the awkward carving knife, terrified she would cut Phoebe’s wrists. Phoebe held her breath and let her head droop as if in defeat, surreptitiously spreading her legs to give Olivia more of a shield.
The last strand broke. “Run!” Olivia hissed. “Before they finish with Meg.”
“I can’t leave her.” Phoebe knew they were wasting precious time, but her feet seemed planted in the ground.
“You c-can’t do her any good here!”
Phoebe saw her point. She turned and raced with her, across the green to the tangle of narrow lanes running off the main street. Every minute she expected to hear someone cry the alarm, but the interest in Meg and the witch finder was at fever pitch, and all eyes were riveted to the finder’s long pins as they slid into Meg’s flesh.
They reached the corner of Church Lane and stopped, panting for breath.
“What can we do?” Phoebe demanded on a gasp as she bent double trying to catch her breath. “We have to rescue Meg.” She looked desperately towards the village green. “Dear God! What can we do?”
“If they swim her, she’ll drown!” Olivia said, agonized. “Should we go for help? C-call my father?”
“There’s no time,” Phoebe said. She felt sick and exhausted and stupid.
A great shout went up from the rabble, and Phoebe and Olivia shivered at the surging triumph of the sound. And then the calls of “She has the mark… the devil’s mark. Swim the witch… swim the witch…” went up.
The crowd parted as the witch finder came through, brandishing his long needle. And only then did they notice the absence of their other victim. “Where’s the other witch?” he demanded in ringing tones.