“Has his wife recovered?”
“She is abed at Dr. Shields’s infirmary. Her arm was broken during the incident, and her back much bruised. But…after all, sir…she is his property, by the writ of marriage.”
“I have a suggestion,” Matthew said, which relieved Woodward of a difficult decision. “Since Mr. Noles last night defeated the Devil with a handful of hay, surely he can hold off the demons of Hell with a carpet-beater. Why not bring him one with which he might defend himself.”
Bidwell slowly blinked. “Are you joking, young man?”
“No, sir. He seems to be proficient with such a weapon, doesn’t he?”
“What kind of damned horseshit is this?” Noles said, almost hollering again. “I want out of here, right now!”
“I won’t have this man’s blood on my hands, if the witch strikes him dead tonight.” Bidwell nodded at Green. “Let him loose.”
“Sir?” Matthew said, as the gaol-keeper found the proper key from his ring. “If the witch strikes Mr. Noles dead tonight, I don’t believe there’ll be need to interview the other witnesses.”
“He’s right,” said Paine, standing behind Matthew. “It would put the rope around the witch’s neck, pure and simple!”
“Hold.” Bidwell grasped Green’s arm before the key could be inserted in its lock.
“Have you lost your damned minds?” Noles bellowed. “She’ll kill me tonight if you don’t let me out!”
Matthew said, “I don’t think she will. It would be against her interests.”
“You!” Noles stared at Matthew, his eyes hot. “I don’t know who you are, but you’d best beware me when I get out!”
“That loose tongue might earn you a further sentence,” Woodward warned. “I’m a magistrate, and the young man is my clerk.”
Bidwell added, “Constrain your speech, Noles! That is, if you value your freedom come morning!”
“Damn you all, then!” the prisoner shouted. Turning, he picked up from the floor a bucket above which several flies of the non-demonic variety were circling. His face purple with anger, Noles braced his body to fling the bucket’s contents at his tormentors.
“Noles!” Green’s voice seemed to shake the gaol’s walls. “Your teeth in trade!”
The bucket hung poised on the edge of being thrown. Even in his rage, Noles realized it was a bad bargain. He paused, shaking, his face contorted in a sneer that might have cracked a mirror. He lowered the bucket to his side and finally let it drop into the hay.
“Tomorrow morning you shall be free,” Bidwell said. “If you so wish, I’ll…have brought to you a carpet-beater, with which you might—”
Noles laughed harshly. “Give it to that skinny whelp and he can stick it up his arse! Go on, I’ve nothin’ more to say to you!” He sat down on the bench and turned his face toward the wall.
“All right.” Bidwell motioned Green on. “Let’s see to Madam Howarth.”
They moved along the corridor, to the final cell on the left-hand side. From the occupant of this cage there was no outburst of noise or apparent movement. A hooded figure wrapped in coarse gray clothing lay huddled in the hay.
Bidwell’s voice was tight when he spoke. “Open it.”
Green used the second key on the leather cord, which evidently unlocked all the cells. The key turned, the lock clinked, and the gaol-keeper pulled the barred door open.
“Madam?” Bidwell said. “Stand up.” The figure did not move. “Do you hear me? I said, stand up!” Still, there was no response.
“She tests me,” Bidwell muttered, grim-lipped. Then, louder, “Will you stand up, madam, or will Mr. Green pull you to your feet?”
At last there was a movement, but slow and deliberate. Woodward thought it was as dangerously graceful as the uncoiling of a serpent. The figure stood up and remained standing against the far wall, head fully cloaked and arms and legs shrouded by the gray sackcloth.
“I’ve brought visitors,” Bidwell announced. “This is Magistrate Isaac Woodward and his clerk, Matthew Corbett. The magistrate desires to ask you some questions.”
Again there was no reaction. “Go ahead, sir,” Bidwell said.
Woodward stepped forward, into the cage’s doorway. He took note of the cell’s furnishings: a refuse bucket, the same as afforded Noles; another smaller bucket that held water; a bench, and upon it a wooden tray with some scraps of bread and what appeared to be chicken bones. “Madam Howarth?” Woodward said. “I am here to ascertain the facts concerning your situation. Do I have your compliance?”
Nothing, from the hooded woman.
Woodward glanced quickly at Bidwell, who nodded for him to continue. The magistrate was aware that Green and Paine were flanking him, presumably to catch the woman should she fling herself at him. Matthew watched with acute interest, his hands clenching the bars. Woodward said, “Madam Howarth, would you please speak the Lord’s Prayer?”
Again, nothing. Not a word, not a nod, not even a curse.
“Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?”
“Of course she does!” Paine said. “But speaking it would scorch her tongue!”
“Please.” Woodward held up a hand to beg the man’s silence. “Madam, on these matters I do need your response. Your unwillingness to repeat the Lord’s Prayer can be taken as your inability to speak it. Do you not understand how important this is?”
“She’ll understand the noose, all right!” Bidwell said.
Woodward paused, putting his thoughts in order. “Silence is guilt, madam,” he continued. “I want you to listen well to what I say. There is much talk here of nooses and hangings. You know of what you stand accused. Many witches in these colonies have met their deaths by hanging…but since you stand accused of murdering your husband, to whom by law you owed obedience, this is also a case of what is called ‘petty treason.’ The punishment for such treason is not the rope, but death by fire at the stake. Therefore it does you no good whatsoever to remain mute to my questions.”
He may as well have been speaking to a gray-gowned statue. “This is absurd!” he protested to Bidwell. “It’s all useless, if she refuses to speak!”
“Then we ought to get a stake ready, yes?”
“Sir?” Matthew said. “May I pose her a question?”
“Yes, go ahead!” Woodward answered, disgusted with the whole thing.
“Madam Howarth?” Matthew kept his voice as quiet and un-threatening as possible, though his heart was beating very hard. “Are you a witch?”
Bidwell gave an abrupt, nervous laugh that sounded like an ill-tuned trumpet. “That’s a damned foolish question, boy! Of course she’s a witch! None of this would be necessary if she wasn’t!”
“Mr. Bidwell?” Matthew speared the man with a cold gaze. “It was a question I posed to the woman, not to you. I’d appreciate if you would not presume to answer for her.”
“Why, you’re an impudent young cock!” The blood flushed to the surface of Bidwell’s jowls. “If you were more than half a man, I’d require satisfaction for that sharp tongue of—”
“I,” spoke the woman, loud enough to command attention. Bidwell was immediately silent. “…am…judged a witch,” she said, and then nothing more.
Matthew’s heart was now at full gallop. He cleared his throat. “Do you judge yourself one?”
There was a long pause. Matthew thought she wouldn’t reply, but then the hooded head tilted a fraction. “My husband has been taken from me. My house and land have been taken.” Her voice was wan but steady; it was the voice of a young woman, not that of a wizened crone as Matthew had expected. “My innocence has been taken from me, and my very soul has been beaten. Before I answer your question, you answer mine: what more do I possess?”
“A voice. And knowledge of the truth.”
“Truth,” she said acidly. “Truth in this town is a ghost, its life long departed.”
“There, listen!” Bidwell said, his excitement rampant. “She speaks of ghosts!”
> Hush! Matthew almost snapped, but he restrained himself. “Madam, do you commune with Satan?”
She took a long breath and let it go. “I do not.”
“Did you not create poppets for use in spells of witchcraft?” Woodward asked, feeling he should endeavor to take command of this questioning.
The woman was silent. Woodward realized, uncomfortably, that she was indeed making a statement: for whatever reason, she would only speak to Matthew. He looked at his clerk, who was also discomfited by the woman’s behavior, and gave a shrug of his shoulders.
“The poppets,” Matthew said. “Did you make them?” Bidwell let out an exasperated snort, but Matthew paid him no heed.
“No, I did not,” the woman answered.
“Then how come they to be found in the floor of her house?” Paine asked. “I myself found them!”
“Madam Howarth, do you know how the poppets came to be in your house?”
“I do not,” she said.
“This is a fool’s court!” Bidwell was about to burst with impatience. “Of course she’s going to deny her wickedness! Do you expect her to confess her sins?”
Matthew turned to the captain of militia. “How did you know to investigate the floor of her house?”
“The locality of the poppets was seen in a dream by Cara Grunewald. Not the exact locality, but that the witch had something of importance hidden underneath the floor of her kitchen. I took some men there, and we found the poppets beneath a loosened board.”
“Was Madam Howarth still living there when you made this discovery?”
“No, she was here in the cell by then.”
“So this Cara Grunewald told you where to look?” Woodward asked. “According to the dictates of a vision?”
“That’s correct.”
“I should think we might want to speak to Madam Grunewald, as well,” the magistrate decided.
“Impossible!” Bidwell said. “She, her husband, and four children left Fount Royal two months ago!”
Matthew frowned, rubbing his chin. “How long was Madam Howarth’s house empty before these poppets were discovered?”
“Oh…two weeks, perhaps.” Now it was Paine’s turn to wear a furrowed brow. “What’s your direction, young man?”
“No direction yet.” Matthew offered a faint smile. “I’m only testing the compass.”
“Magistrate, I protest this ridiculous behavior by your clerk!” Bidwell had nearly snarled the word. “It’s not his place to be posing these questions!”
“It is his place to be helping me,” Woodward said, his temper beginning to fray from the man’s insinuations. “As we all desire to find the truth in this situation, anything my well-versed scrivener can add to that process is—to me, at least—entirely welcome.”
“The truth is already clear as glass, sir!” Bidwell retorted. “We should put the witch to death—fire, hanging, drowning, whatever—and be done with it!”
“It seems to me there are too many questions yet to be answered,” Woodward said steadfastly.
“You want proof of her witchcraft, do you? Well, here it is then, and she won’t have to speak a word! Green, remove the witch’s clothing!” The burly gaol-keeper started into the cage. Instantly the gray-cloaked figure backed against the wall, so tightly as if to press herself into it. Green didn’t hesitate; in another two strides he was upon her, reaching out to grasp a handful of sackcloth.
Suddenly the woman’s right hand came up, its palm lodging against the man’s chest to restrain him. “No,” she said, and the force of her voice stopped Green in his tracks.
“Go on, Green!” Bidwell insisted. “Strip her!”
“I said no!” the woman repeated. Her other hand came up from the folds, and suddenly her fingers were working at the wooden buttons of her cloak. The gaol-keeper, realizing she had elected to disrobe herself, retreated to give her room.
Her fingers were nimble. The buttons came undone. Then she reached up, pushed the hood back from her face and head, shrugged quickly out of her clothes, and let the sorry garment slide into the hay.
Rachel Howarth stood naked before the world.
“Very well,” she said, her eyes defiant. “Here is the witch.”
Matthew almost fell down. Never in his life had he seen a naked woman; what’s more, this woman was…well, there was no other description but belle exotique.
She was no wizened crone, being perhaps twenty-five years or thereabouts. Whether by nature or due to the gaol’s diet, she was lean to the point of her rib cage being visible. Her flesh was of a swarthy mahogany hue, her Portuguese heritage. Her long, thick hair was black as midnight but in dire need of washing. Matthew couldn’t help but stare at her dark-nippled breasts, his face reddening with shame but his eyes wanton as those of a drunken seaman. When he removed his gaze from that area, he instantly was attracted to the mysterious triangle of black curls between her slim thighs. His head seemed to be mounted on a treacherous swivel. He gazed into the woman’s face, and there found further undoing of his senses.
She was staring at the floor, but her eyes—pale amber-brown, verging on a strange and remarkable golden hue—burned so fiercely they might have set the hay aflame. Her face was most pleasing—heartshaped, her chin marked with a small cleft—and Matthew found himself imagining how she would appear if not in such dire circumstances. If his heart had been galloping before, now it was a runaway. The sight of this lovely woman naked was almost too much to bear; something about her was frail, deeply wounded perhaps, while her expression conveyed an inner strength the likes of which he’d never witnessed. It hurt him to view such a creature in this ignoble fashion and he sought to rest his eyes somewhere else, but Rachel Howarth seemed the center of the world and there was nowhere he could look without seeing her.
“Here!” Bidwell said. “Look here!” He strode toward the woman, grasped her left breast in a rough grip, and lifted it. He pointed at a small brown blotch underneath. “This is one. Here is another!” He pressed a forefinger against a second mark on her right thigh, just above the knee. “Turn around!” he told her. She obeyed, her face blanked of emotion. “The third one, here!” He put his finger against a dark blotch—a bit larger than the others, though not by very much—on her left hip. “Devil’s marks, one and all! This third one here even seems to be the impression of her master! Come, look closer!”
He was speaking to Woodward, who was having as difficult a time in the presence of this compelling nudity as was Matthew. The magistrate stepped forward to get a better view of the skin blotch that Bidwell was showing. “You see? Right here? And there too?” Bidwell asked. “Don’t those appear to be horns growing from a devil’s head?”
“I…well…I suppose so,” Woodward answered, and then decorum dictated that he retreat a few paces.
“Her right arm,” Matthew said, with an uptilt of his chin. He’d recognized two small, blood-crusted wounds near the elbow. “Rat bites, I think.”
“Yes, I see. Another on the shoulder.” Bidwell touched the shoulder wound, which was gray-rimmed with infection, and the woman winced but made no sound. “The rats have been after you, Madam?” She didn’t reply, nor did she need to; it was obvious the rodents had been visiting. “All right, we can’t have you eaten up in your sleep. I’ll have Linch catch the bastards. Put your clothes back on.” He walked away from her and immediately she bent down, picked up her sackcloth, and covered herself. Then, shrouded once more, she huddled in the hay as she’d been at the beginning.
“There you have it!” Bidwell announced. “She cannot speak the Lord’s Prayer, she created those poppets to enchant her victims, and she has the marks. For some unholy reason known only to herself and her master, she murdered or caused the murder of Burlton Grove and Daniel Howarth. She and her hellish kin are responsible for the fires we’ve been lately enduring. She conjures phantasms and demons and I believe she’s cursed our orchards and fields as well.” He placed his hands on his hips, his chest bellowing
out. “It is her plan to destroy Fount Royal, and on that account she has made great and terrible progress! What more remains to be said?”
“One question,” Matthew said, and he saw Bidwell visibly flinch. “If indeed this woman commands such awesome and unholy powers—”
“She does!” Bidwell asserted, and behind him Paine nodded.
“—then why,” Matthew went on, “can she not strike mere rodents dead with a touch?”
“What?”
“The rats, sir. Why is she bitten?”
“A good point,” Woodward agreed. “Why would she allow herself to be bitten by common rats, if she’s joined with such a demonic league?”
“Because…because…” Bidwell looked for help from Green and Paine.
The militia captain came to his rescue. “Because,” Paine said forcefully, “it’s a trick. Would you not think it more peculiar that Noles was attacked by the rodents, but the witch was spared? Oh, she knows what she’s doing, gentlemen!” He looked directly at Matthew. “She is attempting to blind you, young man. Her evil is well planned. If she has the bites of rodents on her flesh, it was done by her will and blasphemous blessing.”
Woodward nodded. “Yes, that sounds reasonable.”
“Then there’s no disagreement of the fact that she is a witch?” Bidwell prompted.
Matthew said, “Sir, this is a matter for careful consideration.”
“What damned consideration? Who else has poisoned my town but her? Who else murdered her husband and the reverend? Boy, the facts are there to be seen!”
“Not facts. Contentions.”
“You push me, boy! Remember, I’m your host here!”
“Would you take my clothes and turn me out into the forest if I refuse to view contentions as facts?”
“Please, please!” the magistrate said. “Nothing is being accomplished by this.”
“My point exactly!” Bidwell steamed. “Your clerk seems determined to blunt the weapon you were brought here to wield!”