Chapter 28
THEN
Nicholson circled Meggie three times. He pressed his grimy, rough fingertips all over her body, squeezing and nipping her, kneading her flesh, her nipples, her breasts, trying to find a witch-mark.
He enjoyed the way she flinched and tried to twist away from him, red marks quickly melting into bruises where he had mauled her.
He wanted a beauty spot, or a small mole.
Anything he could see that would justify the trial.
‘There!’ Finally. His voice was strong and excited.
‘She bears the mark of the Devil. A brown circle beneath her breast. Look, men, see the filthy witch’s mark?
’ He pointed at a perfectly round mole, dark against the white skin where Meggie’s breast met her torso and her stomach started to curve outwards.
The men crowded around her and murmured their assent.
‘It is. I see the witch’s mark,’ said Robert. He reached out and poked it for himself. Meggie flinched and spat out a curse. The crowd wailed and Robert jumped back, terrified.
This was good. This was better than Nicholson had hoped for. ‘Behold, good people. I shall prick the fiend and test her.’ He raised the staff and again displayed the evil point on the end of it.
He felt privileged to be wielding this staff, the tool of the great John Kincaid. Nobody was ever allowed to touch this staff, apart from the Witch Finder. Its secret was too precious.
For, hidden in the shaft was a small mechanism which was under his control.
The sharp point, which now glinted in the frosty light reflected from the snow, was retractable.
The Witch Finder had only to tweak a small lever worked into the carvings on the staff, and the point disappeared.
This left only a blunt end of wood which he would press against a woman’s thigh, or her breast, or anywhere he deemed suitable – witch mark or not.
By this method, Kincaid – and now he, Nicholson – had control over who he tortured and who survived.
There was no doubt Kincaid was a genius.
If he needed money, he would find a witch or two easily.
If his purse hung heavy and full by his side, he was more lenient.
Nicholson knew all the tricks. But he had just begun this journey towards salvation, appointed by the great magistrates of Newcastle.
And his purse was not yet heavy and full.
Nicholson’s eyes flickered over Meggie again, but decided this one was different. He wanted to see the fear in her eyes as he pressed the staff against her skin. He wanted to see her thin little face crumple and her lips tremble as he carried out the test.
‘But wait! I see another mark of the Devil. On her thigh. See?’ There was the tiniest freckle there, and the men crowded in to look again.
One dragged a filthy fingernail up her thigh, hovering close to where her legs met her body, scratching her skin slowly up and down, up and down, getting closer each time to the secret places within her…
Would he allow him to have his pleasure with her, or what? He was not quite decided.
The bitch hissed at them, spewing curses and insults from her mouth, and kicked out, twisting away. Nicholson pulled a face.
This woman was feral. She was certainly not, to his mind, ‘too pretty’ to take down, and she had an immoral, ungodly mouth on her. No, that behaviour could not be allowed. She could not curse and swear at a Christian gentleman. She would be his, this day, he would make sure of it.
‘Men, I am about to test the witch,’ he bellowed.
‘You, sir,’ he nodded at the man they had called John.
‘Reveal the witch’s face to me. Her body must be tested, but her face must be visible.
I must see whether she moves her lips in a chant or a spell to produce the blood which might make us believe her to be human. ’
That was a good use of words, Nicholson thought. Planting the seed of doubt – even if she did bleed, they might think she had caused it with her Satanic magic to hide her true form.
John ripped the dress down from the woman’s face.
He held the fabric away from her, so her body was revealed and her face was free.
The witch gasped for air and opened her eyes.
She was looking straight at Nicholson; to his great delight, he saw her confusion briefly turn into fear as she registered the point he held up to her eye level.
This would be a joy. He curled the edges of his mouth into a sneer and held her gaze.
* * *
It was really happening. The Witch Finder was going to prick her. She would bleed, of course she would, and maybe the goddess Coventina and the ancient gods of this land would spare her…
Meggie felt more than saw the swift move as the man stabbed the staff into her thigh. She felt the cold wooden edge pushing against her skin. The prayers she had been repeating silently had not stopped him.
Her eyes opened wide, and her mouth formed a silent ‘o’ as she realised she could not feel the pin stabbing her. She looked down, seeing no blood running out of her body.
‘She is a witch!’ screeched Nicholson. ‘She does not bleed. Look. She has failed the pricking. She bears a witch mark. We have heard foul curses stream out of her mouth in this Pagan place of worship. Mr Charles Milburn has provided his testimony. I declare this woman to be a witch.’
‘No!’ cried Meggie as the men seized her and began to drag her away. Then a solution struck her. ‘Please – even if you do not believe I am innocent, my child is. Do not harm him. Please. Take me to gaol. I will stay there until he is born and his father can—’
‘His father!’ That was Mary. ‘That beast within you has a father? That father is Satan. You are quick with Satan’s child.’
Nicholson laughed. ‘A child of the Devil, spawning another child of the Devil. Take her away. Deal with her as appropriate. She may not plead the belly – she must pay for her sins. We can see that no father is coming forward to save her. Nobody will save this creature.’
‘Do the test again. The cold weather – it makes the blood stay within my body. It has settled within me…’ Meggie had to try; surely, it couldn’t end like this for her?
And she could not say Emory’s name; she could not claim him as her child’s father.
It would be unfair and they would take him away as well…
‘Very well,’ cried Nicholson. ‘I am nothing if not a fair man. I shall test you again.’ He raised the staff and prepared to prick Meggie once more. Then there was a blood-curdling scream from the women who had forced their way to the front of the crowd, and they pointed over Meggie’s shoulder.
Nicholson looked up and his face filled with horror. The staff wavered in the air, as if he was unsure of what to do with it. Meggie managed to turn around; she saw the men who were beside her fall to their knees. A misty shape was taking form, reaching out to her, as if through a watery haze.
‘Blessed Coventina!’ cried Meggie. ‘You came to save me. Merciful goddess, prove to these men I am not the witch they fear me to be.’ She dropped to her knees and raised her bound hands to the shadow, imploring it for help.
The shadow resolved into the shape of a woman.
She had long, fair hair and her clothes clung to the outline of her body, and her grey eyes were wide and terrified.
The image was insubstantial, but as it approached Meggie, it leant towards her, further, stretching its fingertips towards her.
It had to be Coventina; it had to be. But Meggie had never considered that Coventina might look so much like herself, Meg Noble.
‘Demon!’ cried Nicholson. ‘The witch has summoned a demon. Get thee back to Hell.’
* * *
Nicholson raised the staff in the air and grasped it with both hands.
He brought it down with a crack across Meggie’s shoulders.
The girl let out a cry and crumpled onto the ground, falling face forwards.
Nicholson grabbed the rope, the one from Meggie’s waist the man had tossed aside, and looped it around Meggie’s neck.
He pulled it taut as she gasped and spluttered, her hands clawing at the makeshift noose.
He heard the words she was trying to say, and he believed them to be curses.
‘Go back to Hell!’ he shouted, ‘Back, Demon, back.’
When he saw the woman was still struggling, he placed his knee into her back to give himself more purchase and pulled again and again.
When, finally, she fell limp, he rolled her onto her back and grabbed the dagger that they had forced her to drop. Raising it to the heavens, he brought it down in her heart.
‘She shall not rise again,’ he bellowed, twisting it to make sure it was buried deep enough.
He stabbed again and again, repeating his accusations, until even his men were sickened by what they saw.
Three of the men tried to wrestle the weapon away from him, and they pulled him off the woman, but the dagger remained buried in her chest up to the hilt, slippery with blood.
The girl was obviously dead; she lay unnaturally twisted on the ground, blood congealing around her, matting her hair and soaking her clothing.
Someone had the decency to throw a cloak over her, and they led Nicholson to the side of the Well.
He was still hurling abuse at Meggie, even whilst they tried to reason with him.
* * *
John staggered away from the crowd and vomited. Robert crawled out shortly afterwards and sat beside him, his face pale. The images of what he had just witnessed replayed over and over in his mind’s eye.
John wiped his mouth and turned to speak to the older man. ‘She bled,’ he whispered. ‘She was not a witch.’
Robert shook his head. ‘No. But she is something queer. She summoned up something in there. What else could that… thing… be? We all saw it!’
‘At first, I thought it may be Alice,’ choked out John. His eyes filled with tears, and they spilled down his cheeks. He looked helplessly at Robert. ‘Coming to help Meg Noble.’
Robert shrugged. ‘I do not know. She would have called her by name, surely, if it were Alice. And it did not look like Alice.’
John dropped his head into his hands. ‘What will happen to her? Surely they cannot leave the body there?’
There was a commotion from the area where the carnage was, and Nicholson stormed past the man. He was no longer restrained by his lackeys, but they guarded him closely as he left; John thought it was for his own protection.
‘Remove it. Take it away and burn it. Reduce it to ash and bury it. It shall not rise again! Tell nobody what we witnessed here. Let it be known that she was a witch. Let anyone who defies my findings be condemned as a witch. They shall meet the same fate without the trial. Only a person who harbours a dark side would have seen anything in there, anything that happened in there. Do you understand? Do you understand?’ He leant down and screamed the last three words in John’s ear.
John flinched and nodded.
Nicholson fixed Robert with the same gimlet stare and waited for a response. Robert stared at him and inclined his head.
Apparently satisfied, Nicholson stormed off and ordered someone to begin the task immediately.
The Bell Man slung a bloodied bundle over his shoulder. John retched again and Robert looked the other way, across the field to the ruined fort. He saw a man up there on horseback. Charles Milburn.
He had clearly decided to wait and see what the outcome was.
But nobody had to wait long before the smoke began to curl upwards into the slate-grey sky. It had stopped snowing now, but the landscape was blanketed in white, and the clouds were hanging heavy with the promise of a fresh fall before evening.
Long before the new snow came, the pyre had burnt out.