tending their chickens, chopping firewood. She saw a few backs as people hurried into their cottages, and as she passed the Bear a murmur of voices drifted through the open door into the street.
They were male voices and Phoebe didn’t pause. If the village men were gathered in the taproom, they wouldn’t welcome a woman’s presence. The men who remained in the village considered womenfolk irrelevant to their own manly pursuits, which were of course of supreme importance and quite beyond the ken of a mere female.
Phoebe gave a scornful little sniff at this reflection. She had seen too much of the way country women kept body and soul together, the sacrifices they made for their families, the selfless way they shouldered their own burdens and those of the menfolk, to have much time for the entrenched belief in the superiority of the male.
The woods were quiet, the snow covering long melted, and Phoebe thought she could smell the first faint intimations of spring. A snowdrop raised its fragile head above the moss-covered roots of an old beech tree, and a pheasant started from a bush heavy with berries at the side of the path.
Phoebe’s heart lifted as it always did at this time of year. It always seemed as if there was so much to look forward to.
Meg’s front door stood open, and the black cat sat on the threshold washing himself. He gave Phoebe an incurious stare from his greeny gold eyes.
“Meg!” She stuck her head in the door. There was no sign of Meg. “So where is she?” Phoebe demanded of the cat, who blinked and yawned, rose, stretched and arched its back, and stalked daintily away down the path, his tail aloft.
Phoebe shrugged and followed him. The cat always knew where his mistress was to be found. Hardly mistress, Phoebe corrected herself. Companion was probably the correct word. Cats acknowledged no superior. Cood examples, perhaps, she thought with the same exuberant lift of her spirits that had accompanied her walk.
Meg was milking the goat in the little shed at the back of her kitchen garden. She looked up with a glad smile as Phoebe came into view, walking behind the cat.
“Well, and it’s glad I am to sec a friendly face.” She squeezed the last of the milk from the teat into the pail and stood up, slapping the nanny on the rump with careless affection. “I haven’t seen a soul since you were here last.”
“No one’s had need of you?” Phoebe kissed her.
“No one’s come anywhere near me,” Meg replied, picking up the pail. “Either everyone around is healthy as elves, or there’s trouble still abrewing.”
“I’ve heard nothing,” Phoebe said. “Granny Spruel wasn’t in her garden when I passed just now, so I wasn’t able to get the latest gossip.”
Meg shrugged philosophically. “Well, come and have some tea. That’s a very elegant riding habit.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Phoebe said complacently. “I’m astonished you recognized me.”
“I wouldn’t have, except the hem has a water stain, and your shirt is hanging down below your jacket, you’re missing a button, and your hat brim is only half turned up,” Meg pointed out.
“Oh, well, you know what they say about silk purses and sow’s ears,” Phoebe responded dolefully, tucking her shirt back into the waistband of her skirt. “Nothing stays done up on me for more than a minute. I doubt even Brian Morse can work the necessary miracle.”
“And who’s that gentleman?”
“Oh, let me tell you all about him.”
They sat in Meg’s kitchen, drinking blackcurrant tea while Phoebe expounded her theory that Brian Morse could be put to good service. She would permit him to flirt with her, although why he would want to she couldn’t imagine, but he could do so and she would pick his brains at the same time. He would surely be able to give her some insights into Cato’s military preoccupations so that she could surprise her husband with her intelligent contributions. It could turn out rather well, she thought.
The cat had returned with them, but he was restless. He paced the kitchen, jumped onto the table, onto the shelf above the range, back to the floor. Then he stalked to the door and went off down the path.
“Going hunting,” Meg said, refilling Phoebe’s teacup.
The next instant, the cat came flying back into the kitchen, racing footsteps sounding on the path close behind him.
“Phoebe… Meg…” Olivia burst into the kitchen, her hair flying loose from its pins, her breath coming in gasps. “They’re c-coming!”
“Who are?” Phoebe had jumped to her feet, sending her cup spinning to the floor in a dark splash of blackcurrant.
“The village… they have the witch finder,” Olivia panted. “They’re a few minutes behind me. Meg has to hide!”
Meg drew herself up to her not inconsiderable height. “I’m not hiding from a rabble,” she said.
“But you
And then they heard the sounds. It was the sound of feet, the soft rumble of voices. Then the cat flew out of the cottage, fur on end, his tail a thick bush. He leaped onto the roof of the cottage with a loud meow of outrage.
The crowd appeared out of the trees. It was the whole village, Phoebe thought in stunned horror. The men were in front. They carried heavy staves; behind them swarmed the women, some carrying babies, some with children clinging to their skirts.
“Olivia! For God’s sake, get out of here!” she cried before the mob had reached the gate. “You can’t be found here!” For some reason it didn’t occur to her that what was not meet for Lord Granville’s daughter might also be wrong for his wife.
“In the apple loft,” Meg said calmly. “Go quickly. Phoebe’s right. When they’ve gone, maybe you can go for help.”
Olivia hesitated, then she turned and scrambled up the ladder into the loft.
Phoebe and Meg with one mind stepped out of the cottage, side by side, presenting a united front to the incoming tide.
In the middle of the front line strode a tall man in a frieze cloak and a fiat-crowned, wide-brimmed black felt hat. He carried a thick walking stick and a large leather pouch at his waist.
“Is that the witch?” He stopped and pointed at Meg with his stick.
“No!” Phoebe exclaimed, pressing her foot on Meg’s to gain her silence. “And just who might you be, sir?”
He stepped forward. “I, my good woman, am the witch finder. And I am here to find a witch.” His voice boomed through the quiet, and the villagers at his back shifted and murmured in agreement.
“I am not your good woman!” Phoebe declared, incensed. Her only hope of prevailing was to intimidate this man and his rabble with her own status. “I am Lady Granville, and my husband is the representative of the law in this country.”
“Aye, ‘tis true,” one of the leading men said.
“Indeed it is. And you should know better than to have truck with this nonsense, Bill Watson!” Phoebe jabbed a finger at him.
“Be silent!” boomed the witch finder. “I have the authority to seek out witches across the land. And I fear no one in the exercise of my holy work.”
“Where’s the vicar?” Phoebe demanded. “He’s the one supposed to be concerned with holy work.”
“The vicar has given his blessing. The devil is among us and must be cast out,” the witch finder droned. “You will stand aside, woman, and let me do my work.”
“I mostly certainly will not!” Phoebe planted herself in front of Meg, arms akimbo. Meg was silent, seeming to accept Phoebe’s tactics. Phoebe had no idea whether the natural authority of her own position as Cato’s wife would carry any weight in the face of this muttering crowd. But it was all she had if they refused to remember her as a friend.
The witch finder suddenly drew something from his leather pouch. It was a long, thin needle. “I smell not one witch but two,” he said. “You did well to send for me, good folk.”
“May the devil take you and damn you to hell!” Phoebe cried, not sure whether anger or terror was holding sway. She couldn’t believe this was happening, and yet she knew it was a nightmare lived all too often across the land.
The witch finder spun around to face the crowd. “You heard her curse me. You heard her call upon the devil. Seize them both. We’ll prick ‘em and find the mark of the devil.”
“You touch me and you will answer to Lord Granville.” Phoebe raised her hands as if she could thus ward off the throng who had begun to move towards the two women.
There was an unmistakable hesitation and she had a moment of hope. But the witch finder knew how to command a crowd.
“If there be no mark, then they have nothing to fear. Only the guilty would resist the test. Will you go on with the devil in your midst and watch your children die, your crops fail, your cattle fall where they stand?”
“No… no… no devil!” a woman cried at the back. It was the woman whose child had died. She pushed forward, her face contorted with hatred, her eyes crazy with grief. “She killed my child.” She pointed at Meg. “She put a curse upon him and my baby died.” She spat directly into Meg’s face.
It was the signal for the rest. They surged forward and Phoebe and Meg were both surrounded. Hands grabbed at Phoebe, wrenched her arms behind her back, tied her wrists with rope. She cursed them, using every expression she had ever heard in barnyard and stables.
And yet rough as they were with Phoebe, they manhandled Meg with a savage brutality, scratching and punching her as they trussed her. A yowling shriek that truly sounded like the devil shivered through the air, and a black bundle, hissing, spitting, claws tearing, flew through the air to land on the back of one of Meg’s captors.
He screamed as the cat’s claws dug into his back, and the witch finder gave a bellow of satisfaction. “The familiar!” he cried. “I have no need of pins. We’ll swim the witch.”
“Aye, swim the witch… swim the witch.” They took up the chant, and Meg’s cat loosed his hold and leaped back up onto the roof again. For a second he was visible on the gable, and then he was gone in a black streak.
Phoebe struggled for breath. “You cannot swim for a witch without finding a mark,” she said desperately. “It is not permitted. You cannot do that. You know you cannot.”
She could think now only of buying time. If it meant they had to endure the ordeal of the pricking, then so be it. Once Meg was trussed, wrists to ankles, and thrown into the freezing river, she would drown. If she held her breath and came up again, seeming to float, then they would burn her for a witch. There was no salvation, short of a miracle. But while there was time, there was time for a miracle.
“Aye, she’s right,” Bill Watson said slowly. “We’ve to do this accordin‘ to law an’ custom. Tain’t right otherwise.”
There was a murmur of agreement, and the witch finder, after a moment when he seemed to assess the mood of the crowd, said, “ Tis all the same to me. I smell witches, but if you want proof, then you shall have it. Bring them.”
He strode through the crowd, who parted before his staff like the Red Sea before Moses‘. They surged around Meg and Phoebe and drove them after the tall figure of the witch finder.
Phoebe stumbled along, conscious not of her own ills but of Meg’s. Meg’s face was scratched and bruised. Her gown had been torn and her breast was exposed, but her expression was grimly determined. She would show this rabble not the faintest sign of fear.
In the apple loft, Olivia stared out of the small round window as the procession surged away. Then she half jumped, half fell down the ladder to the kitchen. Meg’s carving knife lay on the breadboard on the table, and Olivia grabbed it up. She had no idea what she could use it for, but just possessing a weapon made her feel better.
She pulled the hood of her cloak close about her face as she set off after the mob, running through the woods parallel to the path until she came up with the stragglers. In their heated excitement they paid no attention to the tightly cloaked new arrival slipping into their midst.
Chapter 14
