The Witch Maker (19 page)

‘Perhaps I should move with the times a bit more,' he suggested. ‘How do you think I'd look in one of them new collarless Beatle jackets?'

‘Ridiculous,' Paniatowski said, without hesitation.

‘Aye, that's what I suspected,' Woodend agreed.

They gave the waiter the order for their drinks, then Paniatowski said, ‘There's something I've been meaning to bring up, sir.'

‘Go on, then.'

‘I think I've been followed around Hallerton.'

‘Who by?'

‘An old man.'

‘Not an old man with a black an' white check cap an' green muffler, by any chance?' Woodend asked, thinking of the one he'd seen when he'd been knocking on the shopkeeper's door. ‘Leaned heavily on a stick?' he elucidated. ‘Dived for cover when you noticed him?'

Paniatowski shook her head. ‘No, this man wore a trilby and didn't have a stick at all. In fact, mine was very nippy for his age. But there was definitely something furtive about him.'

‘Maybe Tom Dimdyke's hired him as a private eye, an' his job is to trail you,' Woodend suggested.

‘Not likely though, is it?' Paniatowski asked.

‘I suppose not,' Woodend agreed.

And since there seemed to be nothing more to say on the subject, he found himself looking around the bar and examining the customers. They were a mixed bunch, he decided. Some – going by their flat caps and wellington boots – were obviously farm hands, snatching a pint between the last milking of the day and their suppers. Others, wearing jackets and cravats, were equally obviously office workers of some kind – part of the new generation of townees who had moved their families into the countryside. And standing at the bar, looking questioningly at him, was a man wearing a check shirt and brown knitted tie.

Woodend signalled that the man should join them. ‘This is Mr Tyndale,' he told Paniatowski. ‘He's somethin' of a local historian.'

‘So you know all about Meg Ramsden?' Paniatowski asked.

Tyndale smiled diffidently. ‘I've read all the available records. And I suppose I know as much about the way her mind worked – and the way the minds of the villagers worked – as any modern man possibly can.' He gave a lopsided grin. ‘Of course, if you ask the folk in Hallerton, they'd say that since I wasn't born there, I know nothing at all.'

‘Tell us somethin' about Meg,' Woodend said. ‘Do you think she
was
a witch?'

‘Are you asking me if she really had magical powers?' Tyndale said, his smile transforming itself into an amused grin.

‘No. Since I don't believe in magic myself, there'd be no point. What I am askin' is whether
she
thought she could perform magic.'

‘Absolutely not. She was far too level-headed a person for that. The power that Meg worshipped was much more tangible. And that's where the real problem was.'

‘Would you care to be a bit more specific?' Woodend asked.

‘Meg was no witch, and everybody in the village knew it. But what they also knew was that she had the ability to make their lives a total misery – and very often did.'

‘An' how did she manage that?'

‘Meg inherited a fair amount of money from her father. Enough to live comfortably on. But she didn't just sit on it – she put it to good use. Villages like Hallerton always exist on the edge of disaster, and when times are particularly hard, the people who live there have no choice but to borrow money.'

‘An' Meg became the village moneylender?'

‘She did indeed. And a particularly harsh one she was. In those days, villages were real communities. Everybody supported everybody else. But Meg was having no truck with that. A debt was a debt, and if it couldn't be paid in cash, then it had to be paid in some other way. There are at least three or four documented cases of Meg calling the bailiffs in to evict families that had fallen behind with their payments. By the time she died, she owned half the village.'

‘Can't have made her popular,' Woodend said.

‘But there was one way in which she was generous,' Tyndale continued. ‘She was very free with what we used to call “her favours”.' He turned to Paniatowski and blushed slightly. ‘Sorry if this is getting a little indelicate for you.'

‘I'm a detective sergeant in the Mid Lancs Police,' Paniatowski told him sweetly. ‘It comes as no news to me that there are some women who never wear knickers.'

‘I see,' Tyndale said, still not sure of how to take her. ‘Well, anyway, if you took Meg's fancy, she'd soon let you know it, if you understand what I mean.'

‘Sounds like a woman who'd be on top more often than she'd be underneath,' Paniatowski said.

Tyndale coughed awkwardly. ‘Exactly,' he agreed. ‘It's not known how many of the men from the village she took to her bed – they weren't going to admit it, were they? – but it is absolutely certain that any good-looking traveller who was passing through Hallerton would soon fall prey to her.'

And they probably wouldn't have put up much of a fight, Woodend thought, remembering the portrait – the one which looked so much like Mary Dimdyke – that hung in the Meg Ramsden Museum.

‘Anyway, then the witchcraft trials started in Lancaster, and that was just the excuse the villagers had been looking for. As you know, they tried her themselves, and then carried out their own execution.'

‘But was it
just
an excuse?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Didn't they really believe she
was
a witch?'

‘Perhaps a few of them might have pretended they did. But even by the standards of the time, there was very little of what you might call “evidence” of witchcraft. Oh, a couple of children died in the village, but infant mortality was very high in those days. And a few sheep went sick – but shepherds back then were too good at their job not to know the cause, even if they didn't know the cure. So while they might have said they burned her as a witch, they actually burned her for being Meg Ramsden.'

‘You mentioned she had no kids of her own,' Woodend said.

‘That's right. And I might further have suggested that was part of the problem. If Meg had been able to fulfil herself in the way most other women did, she may have been less interested in money and adultery. I believe the contemporary phrase for what she did is “displacement activity”.'

Paniatowski bridled. ‘You mean that if a woman doesn't have kids to tie her down, she's bound to turn into a first-rate bitch!' she demanded.

Tyndale gulped. ‘No, I wasn't meaning to suggest—' he began.

‘Of course you weren't,' Woodend said, attempting to rapidly smooth over the cracks.

But Paniatowski didn't
want
them smoothing over. ‘And why is it always the wife's fault?' she asked. ‘Maybe her husband had no lead in his pencil. Maybe the reason she took her pleasure elsewhere was because he wasn't enough of a man for her.'

‘I ... er ...' Tyndale said, helpless in the face of this fresh onslaught.

‘From what Mr Tyndale's just told us about her sleepin' around, she'd have been almost bound to get pregnant if she'd been able to,' Woodend said.

‘Besides, her husband
did
have a child,' Tyndale said, in an attempt to insert himself back in the conversation. ‘He married again, before Meg's ashes were even really cold. Of course, he never actually saw the baby, because, by the time it was born, he was dead himself, but—'

‘It's all so very convenient, isn't it?' Paniatowski interrupted. ‘Meg was a strong woman, so there must have been something wrong with her. And from that it's only a short step to saying that everything that happened to her must have been
her
fault!'

Woodend stood up. ‘Let's go an' get a breath of fresh air, Monika,' he said in a tone which made it plain that he was issuing an order.

Paniatowski followed him through the door. A chill breeze was coming in off the moors, and when it hit her, she shivered.

‘Now what the bloody hell was that all about?' Woodend asked.

Paniatowski shrugged. ‘I just get sick of people – men especially – assuming that—'

‘Listen, Tyndale's not a criminal,' Woodend said harshly. ‘He's a member of the public, who's tryin' to help us as best he can, an' I will
not
tolerate him bein' spoken to in the way you just have.'

Paniatowski looked down at the ground. ‘Sorry,' she said.

‘An' so you bloody-well should be,' Woodend told her. ‘We're goin' back in there, an' when we do, you'll treat the man with the respect he's entitled to. Understood?'

‘Understood,' Paniatowski muttered.

Tyndale was still sitting at the table where they had left him, though from the look of apprehension as he saw Paniatowski approach, it was plain that he had at least
considered
flight.

Woodend and his sergeant resumed their seats. ‘So Meg's husband remarried straight away, did he?' Woodend said, as if there had been no gap at all in the conversation.

‘That's right,' Tyndale confirmed.

‘I suppose it's hardly surprisin' that he didn't spend long in mournin' after the way Meg had humiliated him,' Woodend continued. He paused, and gave his sergeant a warning look, but Paniatowski seemed completely wrapped up in her own thoughts. ‘I shouldn't imagine Mr Ramsden did a great deal to stop the trial and burnin', either.'

‘Mr Ramsden?' Tyndale repeated, mystified. ‘Her father? I thought I'd already told you that he was dead.'

‘Not her father,' Woodend said. ‘He wouldn't have been called Ramsden, would he? It's her husband I'm talkin' about.'

‘Ah, I see what you mean,' Tyndale said. ‘You're wrong, but that's probably my fault for explaining it badly. Her husband wasn't a Ramsden at all.'

‘Then why was
she
?'

‘Strictly speaking, she wasn't. But that's the way things were in villages. Whoever they were married to, women were habitually called by their maiden name until the day they died.'

‘Which, in Meg Ramsden's case, was probably long before she would have gone naturally,' Woodend said. ‘Anyway, I take it that this husband – whatever his name was – didn't do too much to stop her being burned.'

‘Far from it,' Tyndale told him. ‘In fact, he was one of the main instigators of it.'

‘Along with the Dimdykes.'

‘I really have made a mess of explaining things, haven't I?' Tyndale said. ‘He didn't
help
the Dimdykes. He
was
a Dimdyke. Harry Dimdyke. The man who tied her to the stake.'

M
ary Dimdyke, the nineteenth virgin since the death of Meg Ramsden to go through the ritual, took a deep breath at Lou Moore's front door before knocking. When the door swung open, she slipped off her shoes and stepped through the gap.

It was a warm evening, but the inside of the cottage had none of the heat of the air outside, and Mary felt a chill on the soles of her bare feet. She looked around her. She couldn't see much. The electric light had been switched off, and the room was lit by half a dozen tall candles in the centre of the floor.

The people sitting beyond these candles were no more than dark shapes. Mary wondered for a moment if her brother was there – but then realized, of course, that he was not. This was a vital part of the process, but it was not one that the Witch Maker had a role in.

‘Art thou Mary Dimdyke?' asked a deep voice from beyond the circle of light.

‘I am,' Mary said.

‘Dost thou know why thou art here?'

‘I h ... have been called by the sp ... spirit of Roger Tollance.'

And around the room, her words were echoed by everyone gathered there. ‘The spirit of Roger Tollance ... the spirit of Roger Tollance ... the spirit of Roger Tollance ...'

Mary knew the whole story of Roger Tollance, of course.
Everyone
in Hallerton knew the story.

Roger Tollance had been nothing when it all began. Less than nothing. A shell of a man who had once been a priest but had lost his faith in God and replaced it with a faith in drink.

For a while he had fallen in with a group of strolling players who, their own theatre in London having been closed due to outbreak of the plague, had taken to touring the provinces to make a living. They had been hard-drinking men themselves, but in the end even they had not been able to take Roger's excesses, and when the company had moved on from Hallerton, they had simply left him behind.

That he had remained had been due less to his desire to stay than a lack of will to go on. A man could scrounge as easily in Hallerton as he could anywhere else, he had probably told himself – easier, since there was no competition.

For years, children had pointed at him scornfully as he lay drunk in the street. Adults, feeling pity for him, had offered him a space in their barns, where he had lain down in the straw with the beasts of the field. Sores had covered his face and body. He stank. No one had ever imagined that he would become a great man – the saviour of the village. No one had thought, in those long-gone days, that his spirit would still be being invoked nearly four centuries later.

‘Dost thou come here of thy own free will?' a disembodied voice in the corner of the room asked Mary.

No!
she wanted to scream.
I come because it is expected of me. I come because even my own father and my own brother will not protect me from this.

But aloud, she said, ‘I do c ... come of my own free will.'

‘And why dost thou come?'

‘Because I must pl ... play my p ... part. We must all pl ... play our p ... parts.'

‘We must all play our parts,' Roger Tollance said, standing on the Green on the blackened spot where Meg Ramsden had been burned.