Face Down under the Wych Elm (6 page)

When her eyes began to adjust, Jennet was able to locate the prisoners, two women attached by shackles to the inner wall. The wavering beam of light fell first on the one sitting on the dirt floor in the near corner. Her arms were wrapped tight around her upraised knees and her head rested upon them. Her coif was askew, revealing scraggly strands of thinning, yellow-white hair that suggested she was much too old to have been Sir Robert's mistress.

When she lifted her head, Jennet bit back a gasp. The woman was trough-eyed, her left eye much lower than the right. No wonder she had been accused of witchcraft! Never had Jennet seen such an evil countenance.

Heart racing, Jennet shifted her gaze to the second prisoner, who was struggling to stand despite the iron chains that held her. This one was younger than her companion but a far cry from what Jennet had come to expect in one of Sir Robert's mistresses. She was at least as old as Lady Appleton, perhaps older. Furthermore, she must have been exceeding thin even before she was put in gaol.

Once on her feet, the woman swayed. Lady Appleton stepped forward to offer assistance but was stopped by a glare that left no doubt in Jennet's mind that help was unwelcome.

Good. She could not be the same Constance Crane. And she wanted them gone. Jennet was ready to leave.

Lady Appleton lingered.

As they watched, the prisoner braced her back against the stone wall, squared her thin shoulders, and looked full at them both. Even in the dimness, Jennet could see recognition dawn on the woman's face. She went still as death, her features frozen.

The corner of one eye appeared to have a distinct droop.

If Jennet had harbored any remaining doubt, the expression on Lady Appleton's face was enough to tell her that, against all odds, this was the same Constance Crane.

"Come to gloat?” Sir Robert's former mistress spoke in a raspy voice caused, Jennet suspected, by the dampness in the cell.

"I am here to help, if I can. Are you innocent of the crime of which you stand accused?"

"I am accused of murder by witchcraft and my cousin here is said to have killed another man by putting a curse on him. As the old rhyme goes, ‘If I be a witch, the devil thee twitch.’”

Holding her breath, her hands clasped tightly together, Jennet waited for the quivering and quaking to begin.

Nothing happened.

Lady Appleton did not seem surprised. She met Mistress Crane's obvious contempt with a bracing tone of voice. “These charges are untrue. Why were they made against you?"

"You believe me?” Her face betraying both confusion and relief, Mistress Crane slumped against the wall. Her brief spurt of defiance seemed to have used up all her strength.

Filled with reluctant sympathy for the prisoner, Jennet wondered how long she had been held in gaol and what means had been used to examine her.

"I do not know why,” Mistress Crane insisted. “I do not understand any of what has happened to us."

Tears sprang into her eyes and she dashed them away with impatient fists. She must be embarrassed to be seen like this by her old lover's widow, Jennet thought. Unless she was past caring what anyone thought of her plight.

Jennet kept her distance but Lady Appleton once more attempted to approach. Mistress Crane's reaction was immediate. Fending off any offer of comfort with a ferocious scowl, she flattened herself against the wall. Lady Appleton retreated, but not before Jennet was able to compare the two of them. For just a moment, they'd stood side by side, illuminated by the lantern. Both had brown hair and blue eyes, but there the physical similarities seemed to end.

Mistress Crane was several inches shorter and by far the thinner of the two. She had a sharp beak of a nose and a small, pointed chin. Lady Appleton's features were more substantial, to go with a square jaw some said was the outward sign of her determined nature.

"You must not give up hope, Constance. If you say there was no witchcraft involved, then I believe you and I will do all I can to help you prove it. The first thing we must do is find another way to account for the deaths. If we can prove someone else murdered those people and explain why, the authorities must perforce set you free."

"Why do you care? You have no reason to help me and every excuse to continue to leave me here to rot.” Her eyes narrowed. “What do you gain by appearing here now?"

"Justice."

The simplicity of Lady Appleton's explanation seemed to startle Mistress Crane. She started to speak, then thought better of it. She waited for Lady Appleton to take the lead.

"To begin with, you must tell me all you know of these two deaths, starting with the names of the victims and how they were connected with you."

Jennet searched the cramped cell, hoping to spot a chair or a stool. Her mistress would be more comfortable seated. The conditions in the gaol would make her leg throb if they stayed much longer. Ever since she'd injured it in a fall some years earlier, excessive damp troubled her.

A straw pallet was the only furniture. It moved suspiciously when Jennet poked at it with her toe. Withdrawing her foot a safe distance, she decided that if the two women shared their quarters with a rat, she did not need proof of it.

"My cousin is accused of killing Clement Edgecumbe,” Mistress Crane said.

"Who was he and how did he die?"

"He was her neighbor. He fell into a trance from which none could wake him and after eight hours, died."

Jennet felt her face pale. She was no expert on herbs but she'd learned enough from Lady Appleton over the years to know that if Master Edgecumbe had not been bewitched to death, he might have been poisoned.

"Was Mistress Milborne near Clement Edgecumbe before this happened?” Lady Appleton asked.

"No. Nor did she send him any gifts of food or drink. But they'd quarreled the previous Sunday, over some trivial point in the vicar's sermon."

"Was any accusation made at the time?"

Mistress Crane shook her head. “Lucy was charged when I was. Neither of us had any warning that something was amiss until we were arrested."

"Anyone suspecting another of witchcraft must lay information against that person with the constable or local justice,” Lady Appleton mused aloud. “Who gave information in Lucy's case?"

The old woman spoke for the first time. “Mildred Edgecumbe, widow of Clement. That spiteful cow! If I'd been inclined to hex someone, ‘twould have been her."

She subsided again after this outburst, once more lowering her head onto her knees. Jennet, watching her closely, thought she saw her make the Papist sign of the cross.

"What of the man you are accused of killing?” Lady Appleton asked Mistress Crane.

"His name was Peter Marsh."

"Was he known to you?"

A cackle erupted from the older woman, though she did not trouble to look at them. Mistress Crane's face blossomed with bright color.

"Ah,” Lady Appleton said.

"No! That is only what they say of me.” Mistress Crane spoke in a choked voice, as if she struggled to hold back tears. “Peter and I were friends but I never gave myself to him. And he never gave me cause to want him dead."

Skeptical, Jennet felt little sympathy, but Lady Appleton patted Mistress Crane's arm and murmured soothing words. “Did no one speak in your defense?"

Again, confusion showed on Mistress Crane's face. She shook her head, as if to clear her mind, before she answered.

"We have another cousin, Hugo Garrard. He is head of the family and resides at Mill Hall, where I have been housekeeper since Lady Northampton died."

Bitterness twisted her features.

"I thought he meant to help us, but we have been here for weeks, Lady Appleton, and he has done perilous little on our behalf. We have been insulted time and again in the guise of being questioned, and again and again we have been accused of things neither of us has done. I was acquainted with Peter Marsh. That much is true. And he was a handsome man. But I never allowed him to ill-use me, as the clergymen who interrogated me appear to mean the term. That being true, how could I become angry enough to kill him for refusing to marry me? The subject of marriage was never raised between us!"

Ill-used her, then refused to marry her. The charges had a familiar ring to them, but Jennet could not place where she might have heard them before. She stopped trying to remember when Lady Appleton asked Mistress Crane to recount all she could recall of the period just before Marsh's body was found.

The tale riveted Jennet's attention. Gathering plants under the full moon. A messenger sent at dawn from Mill Hall to Edgecumbe Manor. The body under the tree. And a wych elm, too!

Jennet shuddered in delight at this last detail. Let Lady Appleton say what she would, Jennet believed that witches had the power to hex and to kill. And if ever she had seen a woman who looked like a witch, it was Constance Crane's trough-eyed cousin.

By the time Constance had finished recounting the events leading up to her arrest, Susanna had come to a conclusion. The woman was guilty of nothing more criminal than befriending an older, infirm relative.

On the surface, there was little anyone could do to help her and yet Susanna felt impelled to try. Once she had been jealous of Constance but that time was long past. Although Susanna could not explain the bond she'd come to feel with some of her husband's former mistresses, neither could she deny its existence. In part, it was guilt that urged her to offer Constance her assistance. The man who had deceived and disappointed Constance had been Susanna's husband. With his death, she had inherited all he'd had, including the responsibility, when she was able, to right old wrongs.

She leveled a direct look at Constance. “You say you have been questioned?"

"All too often."

"By whom?"

"Constable. Archdeacon. Justice of the peace. Clerk of the court. Clergyman.” She ticked them off on dirty fingers with broken nails.

"Were you called before the church court?"

"No, but only because there has not been time. I have told every one of them the same thing. I am no witch. I did no one harm, nor even wished harm upon him."

With every word, Susanna felt more keenly a sense of outrage at the injustice of Constance's treatment. If she did not help Constance, no one else would.

"What of Mistress Milborne?"

The older woman did not look up at her name. She sat slumped against the wall, her head bowed.

Constance hesitated, then said in a quiet, despairing voice, “Lucy refuses to recognize the authority of those who question her."

Remembering her own reading of the pamphlet Jennet had acquired from the chapman, as well as bits and pieces of gossip she'd heard about other witchcraft trials, Susanna phrased her next question with care. “Have Lucy's neighbors been in the habit of consulting her as they would a cunning woman?"

"She has a small herb garden,” Constance admitted, “but where is the harm in that? So do most housewives."

"Indeed. A necessity if one wishes to keep the household healthy."

"Lucy was ill much of the winter. I nursed her. I would have known if she engaged in any evil practices and I swear to you that she did not."

Susanna was willing to accept Constance's word that she did not believe her cousin was a witch, but that did not answer her question. “Cunning men and women do no evil but they do cast spells and sell charms and even unwitch those who believe themselves bewitched."

Constance stole a look at her kinswoman and seemed startled when Lucy at last decided to speak. “'Tis my calling they hold against me,” she mumbled.

"Calling?” Puzzled, Susanna waited for her to elaborate, wondering if she was about to hear a confession of witchcraft, after all.

Before anyone could say more, the door to the cell opened to admit a tall man in the black robes of a clergyman. Ignoring Constance, Lucy, and Jennet, the newcomer turned suspicious green eyes on Susanna.

Startled by his sudden appearance and his rudeness, she stared back, assessing him in much the same way he examined her. His face seemed at odds with his clothing, having a male beauty no woman could miss noticing. Such handsome features, together with broad shoulders and coal-black hair, would have made him a welcome addition at the royal court, had he not had such a disapproving way about him.

"Lady Appleton of Leigh Abbey.” His voice was mild but there was annoyance beneath the surface politeness.

"Do I know you, sir?"

"Only in passing."

"I would not have forgotten you."

"We never met face to face. I remained hidden in your stables, my features concealed, and departed the following day to take ship."

The extreme plainness of his garb had already indicated the likelihood he'd been in exile during the reign of Queen Mary, when a return to Catholicism had been forced on all good Englishmen, and those who refused to be converted, in particular those who had preached the New Religion from the pulpit, had fled the country to avoid being burnt to death as heretics. Susanna had helped many of them to escape.

How young and idealistic she had been then, she thought. She had even believed her marriage could be a happy one, that Robert would approve of the risks she took for her father's friends and for others who believed as they did.

How naive she had been! When Robert had discovered she'd made Leigh Abbey into a way station for those persecuted by Queen Mary, he'd been horrified. If it would not also have made his own position at court untenable, he'd have turned her over to the authorities. A few years later, however, when Queen Elizabeth restored the New Religion and banned Catholicism, Robert was quick to turn coat and claim credit for his wife's activities.

Struck by a thought, Susanna glanced at Lucy. An old woman, living in her own cottage, might well cling to the religion of her youth. Was that at the root of her trouble with her neighbors?

The clergyman spoke, drawing Susanna's attention back to him. “I am Adrian Ridley. From Leigh Abbey I journeyed to Strassbourg, but I spent the greater portion of my exile in Geneva."