It is not too difficult to lose your life in this Year of our Lord 1649. The country seems to have gone mad! For a start, Charlie’s dead! Who would have thought that a reigning king could be executed by his subjects? But in January, the King and his head had been separated. Not that such an event had brought many benefits for ordinary folk like me, in his place the country is being run by maniacs! Cromwell and his cronies. Them and their miserable Puritan religion, and their fanatical rooting out of anything that looks like ‘Papism’ or ‘witchcraft’. And every woman with a wart is a witch, in their eyes! So many hangings!
May God rot the lot of them and may Christ deliver us from these devils, I prayed, as I approached my rabbit snare. I grunted with satisfaction. One nice, plump rabbit, to add to the one I had already in my bag. At least Barb and the kids would eat well tomorrow, and for a few days afterwards. I could hang for poaching, that I knew perfectly well, but the choice between ‘could hang’ and ‘will starve’ is not really that difficult. And I knew these woods like the back of my hand, I knew how to get back and forth undetected so I was pretty confident of being able to help myself to the local rabbits for many years to come. Anyway, the risk of having my neck stretched was worth the satisfaction of seeing the smile on Barb’s face.
Barb. Life might be a bit hard, but how lucky was I, a mere labourer in the fields, to have landed a wife like her? Five years we’d been married, three kids, all girls, and still she bewitched me with her charms. She was just so beautiful, and I knew I wasn’t the only one who thought so. But she never looked at another man, all her friends were women, I never doubted her for a second. She was my rock. I wish I could have bought her fine clothes and housed her in something better than our tiny cottage, but she never complained, just sang happily as she went about her tasks, laughed gaily at the antics of her children and her husband. Nothing seemed to faze her. We were as happy as we had any right to expect to be. At least she didn’t have a wart. Mind you, she had a birthmark, but it was well hidden from normal view. But I knew where it was, and I hoped to see it again tonight!
I smiled at the thought of her. It was dark now, time to get home. I loved the sounds of the woods at night, the owls calling to one another, the occasional bark of a stag looking for a mate. There was just enough light for me to see my way, although I was sure I could find my way blindfolded.
I soon got home. The girls were abed, and the cottage smelled of cakes baking over the fire, but the woman who met me was not my wife, but my mother.
“Hello, Mother, those smell nice!” I’d always liked her cakes, but I liked Barb’s better, though I never told my mother that. The relationship between my mother and my wife could best be described as ‘fragile’.
“Where’s Barb?”
“Sit down, John.” There was a look in her eyes that I didn’t much like. I sat.
“Your wife,” announced my mother, “is a witch.”
“I know you’ve never liked her, but that’s a dangerous word to use in these times, Mother. She is an angel.”
“You are an idiot. I am serious. She has been convicted of witchcraft and she will hang in the town square tomorrow morning.”
I just gawped at her, my brain incapable of constructing words.
“I had my suspicions. I followed her. She took your children – my grandchildren with her to her..her coven!” She spat the word out.
I managed a few incoherent sounds, but she was just getting into her stride. “Four of them, there were, in the woods, naked as they day they were born. Disgusting! Satanic! Unnatural! I fetched the constable. They were all arrested.”
“Who? What?”
“Kathy Briggs, the baker’s daughter, Missy French, and that Scots girl, the one they call Eulalia. She’s the ringleader. As to ‘what’….I cannot bring myself to speak of it.”
“Try.” I was still attempting to get my head around this.
“Pleasuring each other.”
I tried to look shocked, but I wasn’t. Barb hid no secrets from me. I knew I shared her love with Kathy Briggs, I even knew that Kathy made her far happier than I could ever do with my inadequate fumblings. To me, it was a price worth paying. I hadn’t realised that Missy and Eulalia were also joining in the fun, though.
“That doesn’t make them witches!”
“It does in my book, and it did in the judge’s book, too. Besides, your Barbara,” she paused for effect, “has a third nipple!”
I was nonplussed. I’d counted Barb’s nipples, quite often in fact, and never got above two. “No she hasn’t, she’s got the same number as anyone else! Two! I should know!”
“She has. I saw it myself. Just here! It’s where the devil suckles.” She pointed to a spot on her lower abdomen, nearly at groin level.
“You stupid woman! That’s not a nipple, that’s a birthmark. Everybody has birthmarks! I have a birthmark on my bum! Want to see it? And I like having sex with Barb! Does that make me a witch, too?”
“Don’t be vulgar, John! Where are you going?”
“To get Barb! I love her! I can’t let them hang her just for having sex with Kathy, and having a birthmark!”
“But I’ve made you some cakes!”
“Fuck your cakes!” I kicked them into the fire, and stormed out.
I made it to the town gaol in record time. “Barb! Barb!” Where are you?” I bellowed.
“John?” A familiar voice. “John? Is that you?”
The voice came from a barred window set at ground level. I raced over to it.
“Barb?”
“John, you have to help us! They say we’re going to hang tomorrow! They say we’re witches!”
By now the moon was up, and I could see all four of them in their cell. All four were stark naked.
“Couldn’t they at least have given you some clothes?” It had been a warm day, but now the night was chilly. I took my coat off, and stuffed it through the bars. She took it, but gave it straight to Kathy.
“Listen, Barb,” I tried to sound reassuring. “I know you’re not a witch, and I know you don’t deserve to die. I’ll go and talk to the Judge. I’ll tell him about our children. I’m sure he’ll relent.”
“What about us?” Eulalia asked. “You’ll plead for Barb and leave us to hang?”
“If they hang, I’ll hang with them.” Barb was firm. “It’s all of us, or none of us, John!”
I bit my lip. This wasn’t going to be easy. “OK. I’ll try.”
I didn’t go straight to the judge. I went to the parson first. I felt that his word might carry more weight than mine, and, besides, I knew him quite well. Barb and I had toed the line, and tried to be good puritans. We’d been in church every Sunday, complimented the parson on his sermons, even though they were as dull as ditchwater, and though I really missed the singing from the old days. I found Mr Briggs the Baker there already, and Bob French, who was Missy’s uncle. Only Eulalia was without representation. Presumably her relatives were up in the wilds of Scotland somewhere.
“Ah, Mr Wragg, I wondered when you would arrive.” The parson glared at me. “So you want me to intercede on behalf of your wife?”
“Yes, sir, I do. I have three young children and I cannot look after them without her.”
“But your mother has assured me that she will be only too glad to act in loco parentis.”
I wished he wouldn’t use Latin. I thought only the Papists used Latin, but I had never felt it wise to point this out to him. Now was certainly not the moment. And I wished my mother wasn’t such an old cow, sometimes.
“But sir, she is old, they need their own mother! Besides, Barb is not a witch!”
“She has the devil’s nipple! I have seen it with my own eyes!”
Had the whole town seen my Barbara naked? “That is not the devil’s nipple, sir! It is merely a birthmark. Most of us have birthmarks.” I glossed over the location of my own. “Sir, I know it is a sin, what she did with the other women, but it is not witchcraft!”
The other two men vocalised their assent. “Missy is a good girl, she’s no witch!” added Bob.
“It is a mortal sin!” exploded the parson. “It is revolting! An abomination! An affront to God and all mankind! Need I remind you what St Paul says?”
I had long ago concluded that St Paul was one of the most miserable gits that had ever set pen to paper, so I quickly assured the parson that I didn’t need any reminder of his pontifications.
“So,” asked Briggs pointedly, “are you, a Man of God, prepared to sit idly by and allow four innocent women to be hanged? One of whom has helped bake your own bread?”
“What I am not prepared to do, Mister Briggs, is to stand in the way of justice! Those women are not ‘innocent’, they have been found guilty of witchcraft by due legal process, by a judge appointed by God to protect us all from the merciless evil of Satan and his evil followers! I am truly sorry that your relatives have been ensnared by such evil, but the fact remains that they have, through their own weak morals. Tomorrow they will die, and may God have mercy on their souls! Good evening, gentlemen!”
We were shown the door, and the three of us trooped round for an equally unproductive meeting with the judge, except that he also threatened us with a spell in gaol for ‘giving succour to evildoers.’
“Well that’s it.” said Bob. “We tried.”
“We could rescue them!” I suggested.
There was a silence while we weighed that up.
“We have to at least try, don’t we?”
The bloody moon was now not a friend, but an enemy. I felt very exposed and vulnerable as we crept back up to the gaol, but there seemed to be nobody near the cell window.
“Barb!” I hissed.
“John? What’s the news?”
“We’re going to get you out of there!”
“What? You mean the judge relented?”
“No, I mean that we’re going to get you out of there!”
There was a collective groan from within. “That’s it. We’re doomed.” Eulalia’s Scottish accent made “doomed” sound far worse.
I tested each of the bars. All were completely solid. Knocking them out would wake the whole town.
“We could get a horse?” suggested Bob.
But there were no horses. We tried a lever, a long wooden pole leaning on a barrow nearby, but all we did was break the pole. And sooner or later the night-watchman would come past on his rounds and the game would be up.
“No.” said Briggs, at last. “There’s only one thing for it.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Bob.
“Yep. Ready girls?”
“Ready!” they chorused.
I looked at him, mouth open, head spinning.
“Wragg, if you ever breathe a word of this, I will kill you!”
Briggs extracted, from within his coat, a kind of a stick, about a foot long. He waved it dramatically. It looked much less substantial than the pole we’d broken, I wondered how it would help.
Suddenly he pointed it at the cell window. “Expecto Felis!”
There was a puff of white smoke from the cell window, and then first one, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth black cat sprang out from between the bars.
“Witchcraft!” I breathed, eyes wide with terror. One of the cats rubbed affectionately against my leg, purring so loudly I feared we’d be discovered.
“Barb?” I croaked.
“Miaow,” said Barb, and leaped into my arms.
May God rot the lot of them and may Christ deliver us from these devils, I prayed, as I approached my rabbit snare. I grunted with satisfaction. One nice, plump rabbit, to add to the one I had already in my bag. At least Barb and the kids would eat well tomorrow, and for a few days afterwards. I could hang for poaching, that I knew perfectly well, but the choice between ‘could hang’ and ‘will starve’ is not really that difficult. And I knew these woods like the back of my hand, I knew how to get back and forth undetected so I was pretty confident of being able to help myself to the local rabbits for many years to come. Anyway, the risk of having my neck stretched was worth the satisfaction of seeing the smile on Barb’s face.
Barb. Life might be a bit hard, but how lucky was I, a mere labourer in the fields, to have landed a wife like her? Five years we’d been married, three kids, all girls, and still she bewitched me with her charms. She was just so beautiful, and I knew I wasn’t the only one who thought so. But she never looked at another man, all her friends were women, I never doubted her for a second. She was my rock. I wish I could have bought her fine clothes and housed her in something better than our tiny cottage, but she never complained, just sang happily as she went about her tasks, laughed gaily at the antics of her children and her husband. Nothing seemed to faze her. We were as happy as we had any right to expect to be. At least she didn’t have a wart. Mind you, she had a birthmark, but it was well hidden from normal view. But I knew where it was, and I hoped to see it again tonight!
I smiled at the thought of her. It was dark now, time to get home. I loved the sounds of the woods at night, the owls calling to one another, the occasional bark of a stag looking for a mate. There was just enough light for me to see my way, although I was sure I could find my way blindfolded.
I soon got home. The girls were abed, and the cottage smelled of cakes baking over the fire, but the woman who met me was not my wife, but my mother.
“Hello, Mother, those smell nice!” I’d always liked her cakes, but I liked Barb’s better, though I never told my mother that. The relationship between my mother and my wife could best be described as ‘fragile’.
“Where’s Barb?”
“Sit down, John.” There was a look in her eyes that I didn’t much like. I sat.
“Your wife,” announced my mother, “is a witch.”
“I know you’ve never liked her, but that’s a dangerous word to use in these times, Mother. She is an angel.”
“You are an idiot. I am serious. She has been convicted of witchcraft and she will hang in the town square tomorrow morning.”
I just gawped at her, my brain incapable of constructing words.
“I had my suspicions. I followed her. She took your children – my grandchildren with her to her..her coven!” She spat the word out.
I managed a few incoherent sounds, but she was just getting into her stride. “Four of them, there were, in the woods, naked as they day they were born. Disgusting! Satanic! Unnatural! I fetched the constable. They were all arrested.”
“Who? What?”
“Kathy Briggs, the baker’s daughter, Missy French, and that Scots girl, the one they call Eulalia. She’s the ringleader. As to ‘what’….I cannot bring myself to speak of it.”
“Try.” I was still attempting to get my head around this.
“Pleasuring each other.”
I tried to look shocked, but I wasn’t. Barb hid no secrets from me. I knew I shared her love with Kathy Briggs, I even knew that Kathy made her far happier than I could ever do with my inadequate fumblings. To me, it was a price worth paying. I hadn’t realised that Missy and Eulalia were also joining in the fun, though.
“That doesn’t make them witches!”
“It does in my book, and it did in the judge’s book, too. Besides, your Barbara,” she paused for effect, “has a third nipple!”
I was nonplussed. I’d counted Barb’s nipples, quite often in fact, and never got above two. “No she hasn’t, she’s got the same number as anyone else! Two! I should know!”
“She has. I saw it myself. Just here! It’s where the devil suckles.” She pointed to a spot on her lower abdomen, nearly at groin level.
“You stupid woman! That’s not a nipple, that’s a birthmark. Everybody has birthmarks! I have a birthmark on my bum! Want to see it? And I like having sex with Barb! Does that make me a witch, too?”
“Don’t be vulgar, John! Where are you going?”
“To get Barb! I love her! I can’t let them hang her just for having sex with Kathy, and having a birthmark!”
“But I’ve made you some cakes!”
“Fuck your cakes!” I kicked them into the fire, and stormed out.
I made it to the town gaol in record time. “Barb! Barb!” Where are you?” I bellowed.
“John?” A familiar voice. “John? Is that you?”
The voice came from a barred window set at ground level. I raced over to it.
“Barb?”
“John, you have to help us! They say we’re going to hang tomorrow! They say we’re witches!”
By now the moon was up, and I could see all four of them in their cell. All four were stark naked.
“Couldn’t they at least have given you some clothes?” It had been a warm day, but now the night was chilly. I took my coat off, and stuffed it through the bars. She took it, but gave it straight to Kathy.
“Listen, Barb,” I tried to sound reassuring. “I know you’re not a witch, and I know you don’t deserve to die. I’ll go and talk to the Judge. I’ll tell him about our children. I’m sure he’ll relent.”
“What about us?” Eulalia asked. “You’ll plead for Barb and leave us to hang?”
“If they hang, I’ll hang with them.” Barb was firm. “It’s all of us, or none of us, John!”
I bit my lip. This wasn’t going to be easy. “OK. I’ll try.”
I didn’t go straight to the judge. I went to the parson first. I felt that his word might carry more weight than mine, and, besides, I knew him quite well. Barb and I had toed the line, and tried to be good puritans. We’d been in church every Sunday, complimented the parson on his sermons, even though they were as dull as ditchwater, and though I really missed the singing from the old days. I found Mr Briggs the Baker there already, and Bob French, who was Missy’s uncle. Only Eulalia was without representation. Presumably her relatives were up in the wilds of Scotland somewhere.
“Ah, Mr Wragg, I wondered when you would arrive.” The parson glared at me. “So you want me to intercede on behalf of your wife?”
“Yes, sir, I do. I have three young children and I cannot look after them without her.”
“But your mother has assured me that she will be only too glad to act in loco parentis.”
I wished he wouldn’t use Latin. I thought only the Papists used Latin, but I had never felt it wise to point this out to him. Now was certainly not the moment. And I wished my mother wasn’t such an old cow, sometimes.
“But sir, she is old, they need their own mother! Besides, Barb is not a witch!”
“She has the devil’s nipple! I have seen it with my own eyes!”
Had the whole town seen my Barbara naked? “That is not the devil’s nipple, sir! It is merely a birthmark. Most of us have birthmarks.” I glossed over the location of my own. “Sir, I know it is a sin, what she did with the other women, but it is not witchcraft!”
The other two men vocalised their assent. “Missy is a good girl, she’s no witch!” added Bob.
“It is a mortal sin!” exploded the parson. “It is revolting! An abomination! An affront to God and all mankind! Need I remind you what St Paul says?”
I had long ago concluded that St Paul was one of the most miserable gits that had ever set pen to paper, so I quickly assured the parson that I didn’t need any reminder of his pontifications.
“So,” asked Briggs pointedly, “are you, a Man of God, prepared to sit idly by and allow four innocent women to be hanged? One of whom has helped bake your own bread?”
“What I am not prepared to do, Mister Briggs, is to stand in the way of justice! Those women are not ‘innocent’, they have been found guilty of witchcraft by due legal process, by a judge appointed by God to protect us all from the merciless evil of Satan and his evil followers! I am truly sorry that your relatives have been ensnared by such evil, but the fact remains that they have, through their own weak morals. Tomorrow they will die, and may God have mercy on their souls! Good evening, gentlemen!”
We were shown the door, and the three of us trooped round for an equally unproductive meeting with the judge, except that he also threatened us with a spell in gaol for ‘giving succour to evildoers.’
“Well that’s it.” said Bob. “We tried.”
“We could rescue them!” I suggested.
There was a silence while we weighed that up.
“We have to at least try, don’t we?”
The bloody moon was now not a friend, but an enemy. I felt very exposed and vulnerable as we crept back up to the gaol, but there seemed to be nobody near the cell window.
“Barb!” I hissed.
“John? What’s the news?”
“We’re going to get you out of there!”
“What? You mean the judge relented?”
“No, I mean that we’re going to get you out of there!”
There was a collective groan from within. “That’s it. We’re doomed.” Eulalia’s Scottish accent made “doomed” sound far worse.
I tested each of the bars. All were completely solid. Knocking them out would wake the whole town.
“We could get a horse?” suggested Bob.
But there were no horses. We tried a lever, a long wooden pole leaning on a barrow nearby, but all we did was break the pole. And sooner or later the night-watchman would come past on his rounds and the game would be up.
“No.” said Briggs, at last. “There’s only one thing for it.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Bob.
“Yep. Ready girls?”
“Ready!” they chorused.
I looked at him, mouth open, head spinning.
“Wragg, if you ever breathe a word of this, I will kill you!”
Briggs extracted, from within his coat, a kind of a stick, about a foot long. He waved it dramatically. It looked much less substantial than the pole we’d broken, I wondered how it would help.
Suddenly he pointed it at the cell window. “Expecto Felis!”
There was a puff of white smoke from the cell window, and then first one, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth black cat sprang out from between the bars.
“Witchcraft!” I breathed, eyes wide with terror. One of the cats rubbed affectionately against my leg, purring so loudly I feared we’d be discovered.
“Barb?” I croaked.
“Miaow,” said Barb, and leaped into my arms.
