Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch (24 page)

“—des Flèches!” Lilian interrupted, sitting bolt upright on the pew. “Sir Guillaume des Flèches, the Norman nobleman who built St. George’s. Good gracious, how stupid I’ve been.” She shook her head, looking chagrined.

“How stupid have you been?” asked Charles.

“Extremely stupid,” Lilian replied. “I’ve been so busy studying Latin that I’ve forgotten my French.”

“Nonsense,” said Amelia. “I speak French fluently, but I missed the clue as well. It’s not a word that comes up often in everyday conversation.”

“Which word would that be?” Henry inquired.

“
Flèches
, of course,” said Lilian. “It’s the French word for
arrows
. Sir Guillaume des Flèches, in English, is Sir William of the Arrows.”

There was a general murmur of pleased comprehension and much nodding of heads.

“And he had a coat of arms, did he, this knight of the arrows?” Henry asked.

“He most certainly did,” said Amelia, resuming the thread of her story. “And Mr. Barlow knew just where it was.”

“Goodness knows I’ve bumped my head against it often enough,” grumbled Mr. Barlow, rubbing his abused pate.

“Sir Guillaume had it carved into the crypt’s ceiling as a bas relief,” Amelia explained. “All we had to do was to look up—and there it was!” She raised her arm dramatically and tilted her head back, as if she could see the coat of arms hovering above her. “A shield surmounted by a plumed helm and emblazoned with three arrows bound together by a slender banner bearing the motto:
Toujours honnête
.” She lowered her arm and explained more matter-of-factly, “The motto means
always honest
as well as
always straight
. It’s a pun, you see.”

“Our knight was a straight arrow, was he?” said Henry. “Good on him.”

“I scratched around the coat of arms with my pocketknife to see if I could find a hole behind it,” said Mr. Barlow, “but I didn’t have any luck there.”

Amelia motioned toward the wall painting in the north aisle. “Then I remembered how Sir George’s cross pointed us in different directions in the church.”

“And sure enough,” said Mr. Barlow, “the center arrow pointed us to a fake stone, like the one Bree found in the bell tower. I used my pocketknife to dig it out and—”

“—he found page four!” Amelia concluded, holding the scroll aloft.

I stood with the others to congratulate her and to marvel at the strange chain of events that had led her to the scroll’s hiding place.

“If Mr. Barlow had been in the schoolhouse yesterday,” she said, “he would have recognized the arrows and taken us to the crypt without delay. As it is, I suppose I must feel some sense of gratitude toward Mr. Brocklehurst’s herd of damp cows.”

“Damp cows?” said Millicent.

“My unwanted acolytes,” Amelia clarified. “They’re distressingly bovine, but without them I would have had no reason to enter the crypt today.”

“If I might have the scroll, Mrs. Thistle?” Lilian requested. “I’d like to get started on it.”

Amelia’s joy in finding the fourth page seemed to drain away as she remembered what it might contain. I felt the same way and my neighbors’ faces indicated that they, too, understood the difficult nature of the task Lilian was about to undertake.

“I suggest that you return to your homes for a midday meal,” Lilian said, as Amelia passed the scroll to her. “I’ll bring my translation to the schoolhouse in one hour.” She hesitated, then said, “On second thought, make it two hours. It may take me a little longer to translate page four.”

Since Fairworth House was out of bounds, Bill decided to take our sons to the Cotswold Farm Park after lunch. Will and Rob were enthralled by the prospect of a boys-only adventure and Bill claimed that he’d rather pet a polka-dotted pig than listen to Gamaliel’s account of Mistress Meg’s demise. I sympathized with him, but felt an overriding need to follow the story through to its end.

I waved them off as they sped away in the Rover, then backed my ancient Morris Mini out of the garage and drove slowly to Finch. There was no other way to drive the Mini, but its sluggish pace suited my mood. I felt as if I were on my way to an execution.

I parked the Mini in front of Bill’s office and joined the steady stream of people entering the schoolhouse. It looked as though the only locals who weren’t there were those who had livestock to feed or businesses to manage. When I commented on the large turnout, Selena Buxton informed me that the vicar had mentioned Amelia’s
scroll hunt in passing when he’d spoken to his parishioners before the morning service.

“They’ve come to find out what it’s all about,” she said. “No one wants to be the last to know.”

Especially not in Finch, I thought, but I kept the thought to myself.

Amelia had again saved a seat for me in the front row, but hers was empty when I arrived because she was on the dais, asking for quiet. When she had the crowd’s attention, she repeated the general introduction Lilian had made the previous day, presumably to save Lilian the trouble of repeating it.

Amelia had just finished adding the chapter about the crypt when Lilian entered the schoolroom, carrying the scroll Mr. Barlow had found and a notepad. Amelia exchanged a few quiet words with Lilian, then stepped down from the dais and sat beside me, looking at once expectant and resigned.

I couldn’t tell what was going on in Lilian’s mind. Her face, which had seemed troubled prior to her reading of the third page, was now an inscrutable mask. I wondered if she was holding her emotions in check to avoid being overwhelmed by them.

“Since Mrs. Thistle has brought you up to date on the memoir’s history,” she said, “I’ll read my translation without preamble. I would ask you again to hold your comments until I’ve finished.” She cleared her throat, gazed down at the notepad, and began to read.

“When the witch finder arrived at the house in the woods, thirty of us stood waiting for him, with Mistress Meg seated before us on a large, flat stone. He ordered her to confess her crimes. She said she would not, for she had committed no crimes. He repeated Jenna Penner’s accusations and called for more witnesses to come forward.

“Mistress Brown came forward. She said: ‘There is no harm in talking to goats. I am no witch, but I talk to my cow and sing to her,
too. The biggest simpleton in the parish knows that singing calms a fussing creature and helps the milk flow.’

“Mistress Tolliver came forward. She said: ‘There is no black magic in Mistress Meg’s potions. She makes them from the herbs God grows in the woods and in the fields and along the riverbanks. The biggest fool in Finch knows how to use herbs to soothe a sore throat or to reduce a fever.’

“Master Hooper came forward. He said: ‘Jenna Penner’s pig died because Jenna would not go to the well to fetch water for it. Jenna has always been too lazy to look after her animals.’

“Mistress Cobb came forward. She said: ‘Jenna as a young girl would always blame others for her troubles, and she would tell lies to make herself appear blameless. She has not changed.’

“Master Malvern came forward: He said: ‘Jenna covets Mistress Meg’s goats. To have them, she would let Mistress Meg hang.’

“Others came forward to give further instances of Jenna Penner’s guile and greed. Jenna said they were all witches in a coven meant to ruin her, but the witch finder told her to be silent. He asked me if Mistress Meg attended church. I answered that I had seen Mistress Meg attend church on many occasions. Jenna Penner called me a liar, but again the witch finder told her to be silent.

“The witch finder weighed the testimony of the one against the testimony of the many. He weighed Jenna’s bitter, resentful words against Mistress Meg’s dignified silence. After much deliberation, he declared Mistress Meg’s innocence.

“He ordered Jenna Penner to be placed in the stocks for three days. But for her children, he said, he would have placed her in the stocks for thirty. If she dared ever again to bear false witness against anyone, he warned, he would not be so lenient.

“The witch finder and his men departed. My flock and I departed. Master Tolliver and Master Cobb took Jenna Penner to the stocks.”

Lilian looked up from her notepad. “There the text ends.”

For a moment nobody moved or said anything. Then whispers ran through the room like a summer breeze.

“Innocent?”

“Not hanged?”

“Not tortured?”

“They spoke up for her.”

“He lied.”

“He was a priest and he lied.”

“Jenna lied, too.”

“Doesn’t make it right.”

“Innocent?”

Lilian coughed peremtorily and the whispering ceased.

“I’m as surprised as you are by the verdict,” she said, smiling, “and I’m ashamed to say that I was stunned by the villagers’ testimony. I expected them to jeer at Mistress Meg as she was taken away. Instead, they defended her and discredited her attacker. I wish I could apologize to them for underestimating their intelligence, their courage, and their loyalty.”

“What about the rector?” Millicent said primly. “He fibbed, didn’t he? In page two, he said Mistress Meg never went to church, but he told the witch finder she did. It can’t be right for a man of God to be telling lies.”

“It’s not right,” Lilian acknowledged. “The rector should have told the truth and trusted in God’s grace. It’s possible that the witch finder would have been open-minded enough to overlook Mistress Meg’s repeated violations of church law. It’s also possible that he would have condemned her as a witch for those violations alone. Before we judge the rector too harshly, I suppose we all must ask ourselves: Would I tell a lie to save a cherished member of my community from incarceration, torture, and execution?”

I knew what I’d do, but many of my neighbors appeared ready
to debate the issue loudly and enthusiastically until nightfall. Before they could work up a full head of steam, however, Amelia spoke.

“Is it finished, then?” she asked, peering anxiously at Lilian. “Is the memoir complete? Have we found the last page?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Lilian.

Silence returned as the villagers absorbed Lilian’s weighty words.

“There’s more?” called Mr. Barlow from the back of the room. “How can there be more, Mrs. Bunting? Jenna Penner got her comeuppance and Mistress Meg lived happily ever after. The story should end there.”

“Perhaps it should, Mr. Barlow,” said Lilian, “but it doesn’t. There’s another small drawing at the end of the text. There must, therefore, be another page hidden somewhere within the bounds of St. George’s parish.”

Inspired, no doubt, by a desire to earn Willis, Sr.’s, undying gratitude, Selena instantly volunteered her home, Wren Cottage, for the search, while Millicent all but insisted that we tear Larch Cottage apart to find page five, but both offers were politely refused.

“I’m sorry, ladies,” said Lilian, “but the new glyph bears no resemblance to a bird or a tree. I’m not quite sure what it is. I tried to replicate it, but my sketches were rather pathetic.” She looked at Amelia. “Mrs. Thistle? Do you think you might have a go at it?”

Amelia returned to the dais to study the parchment while Lilian held it flat for her on the long committee table. She then took a pencil from her carpet bag and a blank page from Lilian’s notebook and with swift, sure strokes made an enlarged copy of the glyph. Lilian promptly handed it down to George Wetherhead to pass around.

I was the last to see the sketch, but though I held it right side up, upside down, and sideways, it conveyed nothing to me. The new glyph seemed to depict the face of a yawning monkey, but I couldn’t
connect the bizarre image with any reference point. To my knowledge, there was no Yawning Monkey Cottage in Finch.

The glyph left everyone else at the meeting equally baffled, but the idea of a “next page” struck sparks in more than one imagination. As my neighbors filed out of the schoolhouse, they began a lively discussion of what the fifth page might contain. “Jenna’s Revenge” was a popular theme, along with “The Rector’s Confession” and “The Witch Finder’s Return.”

“I don’t know why we should bother to find the fifth page,” I murmured after Amelia and Lilian had descended from the dais to join me. “They’re entertaining themselves perfectly well without it.”

“With tragedy outrunning comedy by a mile,” Amelia observed.

“They can’t help it,” said Lilian. “Melodrama is in their blood.”

“Amelia,” I said, “would you make another sketch of the new glyph for me to show to Bill? I’d do it myself, but I find even stick figures challenging.”

Amelia obligingly produced a second sketch and I tucked it into my purse. I felt no need to inform her that I intended to share it with one other person before I showed it to my husband.

I was about to press Willis, Sr., master glyph guesser, into service.

Twenty-two

O 
r not.

Though I went to Fairworth House with high hopes, I left in high dudgeon after Deirdre stopped me at the front door, saying that she’d been absolutely forbidden to interrupt Willis, Sr., for any reason short of a major house fire or a nuclear emergency. As I didn’t qualify in either category, I drove home, but I had no success there, either. The monkey-face glyph meant nothing to Aunt Dimity or to Bill.

In the morning, I brought the sketch with me into the kitchen, hoping it would inspire a flash of insight. The strategy didn’t work for me, but produced a result nonetheless, from a wholly unexpected quarter. Will and Rob took one look at the drawing and burst into fits of suspiciously merry giggles.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“It’s Howling Hal,” Will managed between gurgles of laughter.

I stared at him. “Who’s Howling Hal?”

“He’s one of the funny faces at Anscombe Manor,” Will told me.

“Whit Kerby tried to wee in him once,” Rob explained happily, “but he couldn’t wee high enough.”

“And he hit the door instead,” Will continued with a mighty guffaw.

“No one uses the door, Mummy,” Rob said hastily, seeing my appalled expression.

“It’s all bricked up,” Will added.