Witch Child (5 page)

‘She has the skill, Rebekah. You can trust her.’

‘I hope so.’

I hoped so, too. Her hazel eyes had hardened to agate.

‘We will do what we can,’ Martha said, ‘but we are all in God’s hands.’

‘And we accept His will.’ A man’s voice sounded behind me. ‘In this as in all things. Do we not, Rebekah?’

‘Yes, Father,’ Rebekah replied, but the look in her eyes did not change as she bowed her head. ‘I will fetch the water.’

‘My wife is in a bad way, Mistress Everdale.’ He looked down at Martha. ‘Do what you can for her.’ He turned his tall hat in his hand. ‘Is there anything I can do to assist?’

Martha squinted round. The storm still raged and although it was daytime, with the hatches shut the cabin was near as dark as night.

‘We will need something to light this murk if we are to see what we are doing.’

‘I’ll go and fetch candle lanterns.’

The light they gave was slight, but we were not allowed oil lamps. They were thought too dangerous down here. Neither could the water be heated, not in a storm like this. On board ship, water was not the only element to strike fear.

He went quickly, relieved to have something to do.

Martha looked round at where we were. Near enough in the middle of the cabin, on all sides surrounded by people. She looked down at her patient, lying back on her pallet. Sarah Rivers was thin over the huge bulge of her belly; grey-faced, exhausted already, although her labour had only just started.

‘Father thought you could do with a bit of privacy.’

Tobias came towards us, moving with a sailor’s easy rolling gait over the shifting, lurching deck. He had blankets over his shoulder and a pouch of nails and a hammer dangling from his leather belt.

‘You best be quick.’ Martha knelt to Mistress Rivers, who was stirring now, face creasing with the next wave of birth pains.

‘Mary, take this.’ Tobias handed me a blanket as he took out nails.

I reached up, but was not tall enough.

‘Give it to me.’ I felt arms reach round and above me. Rebekah held the blanket as Tobias hammered. She is nearly as tall as he is.

‘Thank you, sir ... ’

‘Tobias Morse. Glad to be of service. If I can assist in any other way?’

‘You can help her fetch water.’ Martha looked up from inside the makeshift tent. ‘Quickly now.’ She beckoned me to her. ‘Mary, I need you.’

Rebekah stayed by her mother’s side, bathing her face, holding her hand, whispering words of comfort and encouragement. It was a difficult birth, a long hard struggle in the fetid half-darkness of that little tent. The storm still raged, but we neither heard it or felt it, balancing ourselves to the shifting of the deck as we struggled to birth the child and save the mother. She was very weak, having taken little food for weeks together. The baby could still be healthy, for all her strength would have gone to the child, but he was not in a good position.

‘I see him. I see him. Steady. Steady. Steady. That’s it. That’s it. Good girl. Good girl.’

Martha shouted instructions to me and encouragement to the mother. Together we guided the little body into the world. She cut the cord and gave the child a slap on the rump. There was no response.

‘Take the babe.’ She whispered to me. ‘I must look to the mother. She’s like to bleed to death.’

Her arms were slippery to the elbows. She handed the child to me, fresh blood printing his naked form. A boy. Good-sized and perfectly formed. He did not struggle, he did not cry, he just lay heavy and lifeless, limp in my arms. Strands of dark hair plastered his head. His skin showed pearl grey through the streaks of his mother’s blood. His lips were blue and his eyelids were closed, the veined skin pale violet and parchment thin.

His father took one look and turned away. I looked up from the baby’s face to see his sister’s eyes burning into mine. She held her mother’s slack hand gripped in hers. She was about to lose mother, brother, all in one time. I expected to see anguish, sorrow, fear written there. Instead, I saw anger.

I thought what my grandmother would do at such a birth. I opened the baby’s mouth, emptied it out, sucked on his nose and spat. Then I breathed gently into him, light puffs of air. I looked again and although he did not stir or cry out, I thought I saw the skin tingeing pink. I turned towards where Rebekah and Tobias had left the wooden bucket of water and plunged the child in, splashing the water over him. I heard Rebekah’s sharp intake of breath. She was at my side in a stride, as if I was trying to drown the child.

‘Have something to wrap him in.’

The shock of immersion had done its work. His skin was turning from grey to pink. He gave a small cry, little more than the protesting mew of a kitten, but he was alive. I took the rough linen, and began rubbing him, chafing the life back into him, then I handed him to his sister.

She wrapped him up and held him tight. She looked down at his face for a moment and then back at me. Her finger brushed my cheek.

‘You are crying.’

I looked around as if waking from sleep. Everyone was looking at me. All around was silence. The sailors had ceased from shouting, the wind no longer shrilled. The storm was over. Everything was still.

Entry 21

The child is to be called Noah. Two days after his birth, two small birds came on to our ship. One was like to a pigeon, the other like a blackbird, but larger. Both were land birds. It was a sign, sent by the Lord himself, so Reverend Cornwell said. The company gave thanks and John Rivers decided to name the baby for it.

The wind is brisk, blowing from the north east. The captain has ordered full sail to be set. The ship keeps an even keel and we make good progress. We expect to sight land daily.

Entry 22

Noah does well, but his mother is still sickly. He has been put to nurse with another mother who is still feeding her infant. Martha has herbs in her store which I take to Rebekah. They are to be made into a tea for her mother to help to heal her.

Entry 23 (May-June? 1659)

Yesterday came a shout of ‘Land, ho,’ and such a rush up to the deck and over to the side that the ship was like to capsize. A boy, fair hair bright in the sun, came sliding down a rope from where he had been watching aloft. He swung from the rigging and stepped up to the captain who had already prised a silver coin from the main mast. The boy took his reward and sent it spinning, flashing end over end. He thrust it into his pocket and grinned, his teeth white in his brown face.

I crowded with the rest to see the land. It showed as a dark line on the horizon, and could have been a band of cloud, but as the ship drew nearer so the vision grew into solid hills and rocky cliffs with white waves curling at the base of them.

We are much further north than we should be, but the sight of land, any land, is welcome after so many days out on the empty ocean. Elias Cornwell stepped forward to direct, thinking to conduct a service of thanksgiving, but the voice of the captain rang out from the quarterdeck.

‘I’ll thank you to clear the decks. My men have work to do. We are not there yet, parson, and this is the Devil’s own coast.’

Elias Cornwell opened his mouth to protest, his pale face flushing crimson at being so dismissed and at being called ‘parson’, but the captain turned from him, barking orders for soundings to be made and the skiff to be launched. On board ship the captain’s word is law. Elias Cornwell led his flock below decks. He would conduct the service in the great cabin.

I did not follow them. Calculating that my presence would not be missed, I gazed out to the land. The ragged line of cliffs rose, jagged and stark, spreading in an unbroken line for mile after mile. I shivered. It should have looked welcome to me, but it did not. I reflected on how bleak it is. Bleak and empty.

‘Sore sight, ain’t it? After so many days at sea.’

I turned to find the boy standing next to me, the one who first saw land and earned himself the captain’s shilling.

‘It looks hostile. Forbidding.’

‘Aye, it is that. I wouldn’t like to have to land just here. This coast is treacherous. Doesn’t do to take the ship close in, the rocks here could tear the bottom right out of her.’ He squinted his eyes towards the shore. ‘And even if you did land, you’d find nothing but wilderness, and meet no-one but savages.’ He turned to me. ‘You’re the girl who saved the babe. They say it was dead and you blew the life back into it.’

‘I did nothing of the kind,’ I said, quick to deny any hint of magic. ‘All I did was clear his mouth and nose so he could breathe.’

‘I meant no offence. It is just what they say ... ’ He shrugged, changing the subject. ‘You do not go with the others?’

He nodded towards the deck. Voices raised in prayer and thanksgiving rose through the planking.

‘No. I prefer it up on deck.’

‘I don’t blame you.’ He grinned, showing his white teeth. ‘Stinks down there, don’t it? No wonder you like it up here. I’ve seen you most fine days.’

‘And I’ve seen you, too. You’re the boy who cares for Martha’s chickens.’

Martha had brought her coop of hens with her, and her cockerel. A woman with hens will want for nothing, that was her thinking, but she had not reckoned on thieving sailors intent on stealing them for the pot. Most have survived so far, thanks to this boy’s care of them, but they are kept up on deck and the recent storm has not treated them kindly. They huddle together in bedraggled bundles, eyes filmed over, feathers staring and crusted with salt. They make no sound, not so much as a cluck. If ever creatures craved for land, they do, even the cock has lost his crow.

‘That I do.’ He laughed. ‘If it was not for me they would all have disappeared down somebody’s gullet.’

‘I wouldn’t like to be him if Martha found out. I am Mary. Mary Newbury. Martha and I travel together.’

‘Jack Gill,’ he held out a hand. ‘At your service.’

I shook the hand he offered. The palm was rough and callused. I turned his hand to find the flesh fissured and split. Salt water had got into the cuts and cracks, turning them into white sea sores, preventing them from healing.

‘I can give you salve for these.’

‘We all get them. It’s no matter.’ He took his hand away, examining a deep fissure in the web of skin between palm and thumb. He jerked his head towards the voices flowing up from beneath our feet. ‘Martha is not kin to you?’

I shook my head.

‘Nor any of the others?’

I shook my head again and looked up at him, surprised.

‘I thought not.’ He reached and grasped the ropes above his head. ‘You keep yourself separate. More often alone than in company.’

‘They were kind enough to take me in, offer me a place, but ... ’

‘You are an orphan.’

I nodded.

I did not count a mother lost almost as soon as she was discovered.

‘Me, too.’ He leaned forward in his rigging cradle. ‘My parents shipped to Virginia. My dad heard there was money to be made in planting tobacco, but he caught a fever and died, my ma alongside him. After that I had to shift for myself.’

‘You didn’t think to go home?’

‘Back to England?’ He shook his head. ‘No-one would welcome me. I’d be just another mouth to feed. I have no home there, no more’n you have, I’ll wager. I got a place as ship’s lad and this is home to me now.’ He gripped the ropes in his hands and leaned out over the water hissing under our bows. ‘The sea.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘The sea’s the life for me. I’ve been up and down this here coast, trading baccy and Barbados sugar and rum for furs and salted cod. Then over to England and France, the Wine Islands and Spain. It’s a growing trade. There’s money to be made.’

I looked at him and he smiled as if reading my mind.

‘Even for the likes of me. I make a tidy sum carrying packets and letters. When I’ve got enough, I’ll buy part shares in a cargo, timber, furs, rum or tobacco. That’ll be sold in London and the money used to buy cloth, iron, tools, pots and pans and other needful things. Sell them and buy again. So it goes round.’ His eyes shone as he drew a circle in the air, describing the trade. ‘Then, when I have enough from that, I ... ’

His voice was nearly drowned by a sudden burst of singing surging up from under our feet. They sang a psalm unaccompanied by any instrument, the sound was ragged, fervent and loud.

Jack laughed. ‘Pious lot though, ain’t they?’ Elias Cornwell’s distinctive tenor warbled above the others. ‘The captain hates a parson worse than a witch.’ He looked round and dropped his voice as if to share a confidence. ‘We got one of them on board.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Strange things have been happening.’

‘Like the storm, you mean? But surely there are always storms at sea?’

‘I don’t mean that, Mary.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean other things. After the storm a great light settled on the mast,’ he cast a glance to where it stretched up above our heads, ‘setting it all aglow, like a great candle, but the flame gave no heat.’ He held out his arm. ‘Not enough to singe a sleeve. St Elmo’s Fire they called it, and it is rare to see. Some call it Witchfire and say that it’s her in spirit. And not just that. Some say there’s a hare on board, or a rabbit ... ’