Weyward(30)

The dungeons were silent, but for a distant wail that might have been the wind, or the souls of those already condemned. I searched for the spider, looking under the matted straw, and my heart ached at the thought that it had gone, had left me to my fate. But just as I had given up hope, and curled myself into a ball on the ground, I felt it brush against my earlobe. I wished I could see it: the glitter of its eyes and pincers, but the night was too dark, with not even a sliver of moonlight coming through the grate. So dark that I felt as if I were in my grave already.

If I were to have a grave, that was. I didn’t know what happened to witches after they were hanged. I wondered whether anyone buried them. Whether anyone would bury me.

I wanted to be buried. If I must depart this life, I thought, let me live on in the soil: let me feed the earthworms, nourish the roots of the trees, like my mother and her mother before her.

Really, it wasn’t death I feared. It was dying. The process of it; the pain. Death had always sounded so peaceful, when it was spoken of in church: a gathering of lambs to the bosom, a return to the kingdom. But I had seen it too many times to believe that. The sweep of the reaper’s shadow over an old man, a woman, a child. The face contorting, the limbs flailing, the desperate gasp for air. There was no peace in any death I had seen. I would find no peace in mine.

When I did sleep, I saw the noose, tight around my neck. I saw the breath choked out of me in a white vapour. I saw my body, twisting in the breeze.

They had finished with Grace, it seemed. But I saw her there in the gallery when they took me into the dock the next morning. As of course one would expect. What woman would not want to know the fate of her husband’s accused murderer?

We rose when the judges entered the courtroom. I saw one of them look at me, eyes narrowed, as if I were the rot at the centre of the apple, a canker to be cut away.

The prosecutor called the physician, Doctor Smythson, to the stand. As I knew he would.

They had brought him to see me, at the village gaol. Before they brought me to Lancaster. Though I was mad with hunger and exhaustion, I had not yielded to their questions. They asked if I had ever attended a witches’ sabbath, had ever suckled a familiar or lain with a beast. If I had given myself to Satan, as his bride.

If I had killed John Milburn.

No, I said, though my throat was caked with thirst and my stomach groaned with want. No. It took all my strength to force the word from my body. To protest my innocence.

I had, until then, held on to hope as if it were a stone in my hand.

But when they brought Doctor Smythson to the gaol I feared it was over.

Now, I watched him take his oath on the Bible. He was an old man, and his veins made red patterns on his cheeks. That’ll be the drink, my mother would say, if she were here. He’d indulged in it as much as he’d prescribed it. Though that was by far his least dangerous method of treatment. As I looked at him, I remembered Grace’s mother, Anna Metcalfe: her milk-white face, the colour sucked out of her by leeches.

The prosecutor began his questioning.

‘Doctor Smythson, you recall the events of New Year’s Day, in this, the year of our Lord 1619?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you able to relate them for the court?’

The physician spoke with confidence. He was a man, after all. He had no reason to think he would not be believed.

‘I began the day at dawn, as is my custom. I’d been up late, the night before, with a patient. The family had given me some eggs. I remember I ate them with my wife that morning. We had not long broken our fast when there was a hammering at the door.’

‘Who was at the door?’

‘It was Daniel Kirkby.’

‘And what did Daniel Kirkby want?’

‘I remember thinking he looked very pale. At first I thought he might have taken ill himself but then he told me there’d been some sort of incident, at the Milburn farm. Involving John Milburn. From his face, I knew it was not good. I collected my coat and my bag and set off to the farm with the boy.’

‘And what did you find when you got there?’

‘Milburn was on the ground. His injuries were very grave. I knew at once that he was dead.’

‘Can you describe those injuries to the court, please, Doctor?’

‘A large portion of the skull had been crushed. One eye was badly damaged. The bones of the neck had been broken, as had those of the arms and legs.’

‘And what, in your opinion, would have caused the injuries, Doctor?’

‘Trampling by animals. Daniel Kirkby told me that Master Milburn had been stampeded by his cows.’

‘Thank you. And have you ever seen such injuries, in your career as a physician?’

‘I have. I am regularly called upon to attend the aftermath of farm accidents, which are common in these parts.’

The prosecutor frowned, as if the physician had not given him the answer he wanted.

‘Are you able to tell the court what happened next, after you viewed Master Milburn’s body?’

‘I went inside the farmhouse, to speak to the widow.’

‘And was she alone?’

‘No. She was with the accused, Altha Weyward.’

‘Can you describe for the court the demeanour of the widow, Grace Milburn, and that of the accused, Altha Weyward?’

‘Mistress Milburn looked very pale and shaken, as you would expect.’