Familiar Spirits (28 page)

“A vile trick!” cried Thomas Crispin, who had been in the courtroom and watched Michael Fletcher’s demonstration. “Oh, Mr. Stock, can nothing be done?” asked Dick Waite. Crispin asked to see his wife.

“The magistrate has given orders,” Matthew said. “No one must see the prisoners until the jury has reached its verdict.” “What, does he fear escape, or a new round of bedevilment visited upon the town by these hapless women?” John Waite demanded in his cynical vein. “If my aunts be witches, how then can these walls and your guards prevent their curses?” It was a good question, for which Matthew had no answer, but he did have his orders and they had been clear. He stood his ground despite Tom Crispin’s pleadings and threats. The

tanner’s face swelled with rage. Alert for trouble, the two guards effectively barricaded the door to the clerk’s office with their crossed halberds and regarded the tanner’s pugnacity with concern.

Matthew caught the eye of the clerk, who, having remained in the courtroom talking to one of the judges, had become aware of the trouble. The clerk left the room and returned within minutes with three more of the magistrate’s men.

Outnumbered and outweaponed too, Tom Crispin and the Waites now gave up their efforts and went off with some contemptuous words for the court, the guards, and Matthew.

Matthew pursued them to the chamber door, trying to reason with them. He did have his orders, but he assured them they would have a chance to see the women later.

“When?” stormed Crispin as they stood at the courtroom door. “When they are on the gibbet? What of my poor children? Will they be allowed to see their mother?”

The relatives of the accused women glared at Matthew resentfully and clattered down the stairs, calling him a base traitor and a scoundrel.

Matthew watched them go, their rebuke still ringing in his ears. He saw Arthur Wilts advancing toward him. The deputy was filthy with dirt and ash, and Matthew remembered what he had had him doing all morning. Arthur’s flushed, excited face and breathlessness bore the marks of imminent revelation.

“We’ve found something, sir, me and the lads,” he said in an excited whisper. “It is most strange and wonderful.”

“What is it?” asked Matthew, sensing that this strange and wonderful discovery was more than buried treasure.

“You must come to see for yourself, Mr. Stock. None of us dared to touch it, nor understand what it is our eyes see.”

The stench of decay was more noticeable than ever. About twenty feet from where the barn had stood, Matthew’s youngest apprentice was bent over double, gagging helplessly and drooling into a pool of vomit at his feet. Beside him, his older companion, equally ashen, was seated cross-legged on

the ground with the handle of the spade resting against his forehead. Beyond them, Matthew could see that the foundation of the barn had now been exposed, and to the right between the house and the garden were a pile of charred planks and beams and the blackened carcass of Malcolm Waite’s mare.

Matthew and Arthur had come at a run from the Sessions House and both were out of breath.

“The barn had a kind of cellar, you see,” Arthur explained as they advanced toward the ruin. “For the storing of roots, probably. The fire burned the floor above quite away.”

Matthew pulled his handkerchief from his pocket in an effort to control his rising nausea.

At the west end of the foundation was a hole of about ten feet square and half that in depth. On closer inspection, Matthew could see that Arthur was right; it was a cellar with an earthen floor and walls, and with an access that had been somewhere inside the barn. Still holding the handkerchief, he got down on his haunches and peered into the recess, which was strewn with rubble.

The mare had not been the only victim of the fire. The collapsing floor had covered the bodies with debris and ash, but the human forms were unmistakable. They lay side by side, two of them. One was the missing Brigit Able. Death had not graced her homeliness. The glistening pupils of her eyes could be seen, despite the thin covering of ash that had given her a blackamoor’s visage. The small mouth yawned grotesquely, preserving the shape of her scream when she had realized there was no escape.

By her side another human form lay face down. The legs were crossed awkwardly beneath the long russet gown, and one blackened arm, the sleeve burned away, draped protectively across Brigit’s chest while the other was twisted painfully beneath the body. The hair, which was all of the head Matthew could discern from above, was long and fine and clearly a woman’s.

He climbed down into the pit to complete the identification. Its rigor passed, the body yielded itself to his touch, and as it turned, the fine long hair splayed around the small heart-shaped face of Ursula Tusser’s ghost.

•207*

“New evidence? What new evidence?” asked the magistrate dubiously.

The magistrate sat at table where he was enjoying the company of several of his London friends who had come up to Chelmsford for the trial. He was not pleased by this interruption but Matthew was insistent. For the magistrate, the trial was virtually concluded; all that remained was the sentencing and on that point the law left little to his discretion.

While the conversation buzzed and tableware clanked, Matthew gave a hurried and confused account of the discovery of the bodies, of the excavation of a grave now in progress, and of the suspicions he proposed to make certain if he could only be allowed a few additional witnesses.

“More witnesses? My God, man. Have we not had a devil’s plenty of witnesses? Would a cloud of witnesses make the guilt of these two viragoes more sure?”

One of the magistrate’s companions at table had overheard Matthew’s plea. A distinguished jurist himself, he reached over and placed a cautionary hand on the magistrate’s arm. “It might be worth letting the constable question his witnesses, my friend,” the jurist advised. “The trial has been more diverting than a bearbaiting thus far. I should not mind passing another hour if the constable will promise us good value for our money.”

Matthew, hearing this, said that he would promise good value, but the magistrate continued to look doubtful. He

reminded them both that the case had already been submitted to the jury, and that even now the jury may well have reached its decision.

“Come, sir, don’t be an old grumble guts with more concern for procedure than for justice,” said the London jurist, with a wink and a hearty slap on the magistrate’s shoulder. “There’s precedent for delay if that’s your concern. It’s not every year your town gets so much attention. Why, the Queen herself is aware of these proceedings and would gladly learn of your willingness to give these
women
every opportunity to defend themselves.”

“Well,” began the magistrate, ready, it seemed, to shift around in the wind but still hesitant at the tiller.

“Oh, sir, don’t say ‘well,’” chided the jurist, laughing. “Say ‘very well’ and ‘so be it’ and ‘let it be done forthwith.’” The magistrate laughed good-naturedly. “I am prevailed upon on all sides, I see. I cannot deny the Queen’s wishes, can I? Mr. Stock, I shall convey your request to my fellow judges. Let’s see how your credit stands with them. If they agree, the jury shall be recalled and their verdict delayed until we hear this new evidence, which I confess I cannot make head nor tail of in your narrative. But I warn you, sir,” continued the magistrate, addressing his friend the London jurist, “if I am called to account for this irregularity, your own admonishments shall be my excuse.”

“If you are called to account, I will join you in the prisoners’ box and use simple charity and a love of justice as my sole defense,” said the jurist pleasantly. “Now make arrangements to reconvene the court and let us return to our dinner while we can.”

The magistrate beckoned to one of his servants, and the message was conveyed to the court clerk. Matthew thanked the magistrate and his London friend and went at once in the direction of the Sessions House.

But he did not stop there. He passed through the milling crowd and went to the churchyard, where in a remote corner a grave was being exhumed under Arthur Wilt’s supervision. “He’ll come to the coffin anon, sir,” Arthur said as Mat
thew came up. “They don’t bury them as deep as they were wont.”

Matthew looked down into the shallow hole. The gravedigger was working vigorously in the damp, clayey earth. His spade struck something hard, and within a few minutes the top of the plain oblong box could be seen.

The gravedigger put down his spade and wiped his sweating brow with a dirty rag he had pulled from the pocket of his leather breeches. He looked up with dull lusterless eyes at the two men watching him.

“Go ahead, man. Open it,” Matthew said.

The gravedigger shrugged, and then, using the tip of the spade as a pry, he began working at the coffin’s lid. Secured by a few pegs, the lid gave easily and the coffin was opened.

Of the three witnesses standing in the forlorn churchyard only one was surprised at what was now seen. That was the gravedigger, who swore by the patron saint of his trade that he had never seen such a sight. No, not in the twenty-five years he had digged.

The coffin was empty except for two canvas bags, securely tied, which upon inspection proved to contain a mixture of small rocks and sand.

At two o’clock the court reconvened. The magistrate had been true to his word. He had secured the agreement of the other judges, and they had determined to hear further evidence on behalf of the women. Informed of this, Malvern was furious. He objected strenuously, arguing that the jury ought to be allowed to render its verdict. Such was the law, he said, and he hoped the judges would abide by it.

But the magistrate was firm, nor did the spectators seem disappointed. They had enjoyed the trial to this point and had high expectations for what remained, even those who had called a great deal of attention to themselves during the morning by having been possessed, as they chose to call it. Matthew’s only restriction was that his new evidence was to be relevant and briefly presented.

Matthew was no lawyer, and he lacked the lawyer’s elo
quence and subtlety, but he had attended enough assizes and quarter sessions to understand the procedure of the court. Moreover, he was undaunted by the opposition of the prosecutor, whom he thought, for all his learned terms and quiddities, a pompous self-serving ass, interested in little more than advancing his reputation as a witch-hunter.

His objections overruled, Malvern sank down in his place, folded his arms, and looked at the jury for sympathy.

Matthew gave the clerk the names of the additional witnesses and these names were read aloud to no little surprise and wonderment of those called. The first was to be Mrs. Roundy, the baker’s wife. Flushed with pleasure at once again being the center of attention, she made a great to-do of coming to the witness stand, being as she was a woman of considerable awkwardness. In a loud voice, she begged pardon of those whose feet she stepped on in her eagerness to retell her experience, and when she arrived at her place Matthew had to wait until she had caught her breath, so excited was she at the prospect of once more speaking in public.

Since she had already taken her oath, Matthew proceeded immediately to his questions, asking her to tell her story again—the one of her vision of Ursula’s spirit. Without asking why she should, Mrs. Roundy began to relate her dreadful encounter with the apparition, sparing no detail from the original version and adding a few new embellishments that made the story all the finer.

“Would you describe exactly the person you saw?” Matthew asked when she had finished her account.

“It was Ursula Tusser to the life,” said Mrs. Roundy. “I have said
that.”

“Yes, you did,” said Matthew, “but pray oblige us with the details of dress, of figure, the color of the hair.”

“Ursula was well known on the street,” answered Mrs. Roundy. “I can see no purpose—”

“Answer the constable’s questions, please,” said the magistrate, scowling.

The baker’s wife cocked her head, and her brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Well,” she said, “it was very dark and most of

what I saw was the face, but I think she wore a plain gown with slit sleeves and a low bodice. The color of her hair . . . was ... I cannot recall what it was. It was dark, you see. The figure was just standing beneath the lime tree.”

“Did she wear a cap?”

“No, I think not.”

“Then you did see the hair?”

“Well, yes, I did. It was like Ursula’s. The way it was worn, I mean.”

“Long to the shoulders?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Stock. So it was.”

“But that is not how I remember Ursula’s hair,” said the constable. “At least not when I saw her
last
. Her hair had been shorn in gaol. There wasn’t an inch of it covering her skull. She looked more male than female.”

Mrs. Roundy said that that was true. She had been at the hanging herself, had seen Ursula.

During Matthew’s questions, Arthur had brought Susan Goodyear into the room. Now he led her forward to where Matthew stood. Matthew picked up a leather pouch and took from it what first appeared to be a small furry animal but, upon being shown to the court, proved instead to be a wig, a long wig of straight light brown hair. He asked Susan to remove her cap and fit the wig upon her head. This Susan did, smoothing the hair with her hands.