The Witch’s Daughter (6 page)

The scene that greeted Bess in young Sarah’s bedchamber was one of panic and pain. The young girl had not yet been a year married and she had returned to her father’s house for her confinement. The men sat with stern, pale faces in the kitchen, while the women attended the terrified girl. Her mother, her older sister, and at least two aunts crowded round the bed. Sarah looked no more than a child herself at that moment, her hair damp and tangled on the pillow, her skin flushed and shiny, her body dwarfed by her swollen stomach. The room was lit only by a small lamp and a candle, and in the summer heat the air was fetid and hot. Bess put her hand to her mouth as the door was closed behind her. Anne moved quickly to the window and threw it open.

‘Oh!’ cried Sarah’s mother. ‘My daughter will take a chill from the night air in her weakened state.’

‘Your daughter will faint away, robbed of breath, if she is to share the rank air in this room with so many people.’

The older woman thought to protest further, but Anne silenced her.

‘I am here to help, Mistress Prosser. Allow me to do so.’

Despite the best efforts of Old Mary, the labor had consisted thus far of hours of pain and effort and blood and yet produced no baby. Sarah lay wide-eyed, clutching at her mother’s hand, her sweaty face showing a mix of exhaustion and fear. Sarah’s sister dabbed at her ineffectually with a damp cloth.

Mary drew Anne to a corner and spoke to her with a muted voice, which she was forced to raise on occasion because of the girl’s pitiful cries.

‘Bless thee for coming with such speed, Anne. This does not go well. The poor child is all but spent and still no sign of the infant coming forth.’

Anne nodded, listening closely to what the old woman had to say. Bess thought Mary herself looked near collapse. What did she think her mother could do for this wretched girl that she could not? Bess watched the two consulting for a moment longer before Anne stepped over to the bed and laid her hands on Sarah’s belly.

‘Hush, child, do not fear.’

‘Oh, Missus Hawksmith!’ Sarah grabbed at her with a clammy hand. ‘The babe will surely die, and me besides!’

‘No, no. It is just as Mary says. Your infant is lying awkward, ’tis all. We must bid him turn so that he can find his way out.’

She had barely finished her sentence when a powerful spasm gripped Sarah’s body. The girl let out a shout that grew into a shriek until it trailed off to a heartbreaking whimper. Anne placed her hands on Sarah’s belly once more, gently but firmly working to manipulate the baby, to change its position. For a moment it seemed she might succeed, but then, just when the child seemed ready to engage with the process of being born, it would spin upward and sideways again. Anne persisted. Three times she almost won, but on each occasion the infant swiveled at the last minute. Anne straightened up as Sarah endured another agonizing convulsion. Bess marveled at how her whole body was taken up as if by some unseen force. A force that should be aiding the unborn child’s delivery but instead seemed only to be hastening its death.

Anne spoke softly to Mary.

‘Have you tried turning it from inside the girl?’

‘I have’—Mary nodded—‘but she is a lissome lass. There is no room for my crooked hands.’

The two women looked at her bent, arthritic fingers, and then at Anne’s own straight but broad palms. Anne turned to Bess.

‘Show me your hands.’

‘What?’

‘Quickly, Bess, show me.’

Bess did as her mother bade her. Anne and Mary examined her hands closely. They looked at each other and then back at Bess. Anne lifted her daughter’s hands up and squeezed them as she spoke.

‘Bess, you must attend to my words. Do precisely what I tell you, no more nor less. Move with care but firmly.’

‘You mean … but, I can’t, Mother. I cannot!’

‘You must! Only you can do it. If you do not, both mother and babe will die this night. Do you hear me?’

Bess opened her mouth to protest further but could not find the words. She had delivered calves for her father, who had also seen the value of her small hands. She had assisted at lambing time. She had even been present in the room when Margaret was born, though she remembered little past her mother’s determined face. She saw that same fixed expression now and knew it was not in her power to change it. Before she could think further, her mother called for a bowl of hot water and had Bess wash her hands. Anne dried them on clean linen, then rubbed them with lavender oil. All the while Mistress Prosser and the attendant women looked on with disdain at such unfamiliar practices. Anne led Bess to the bed before positioning herself at Sarah’s side, placing her hands on her belly once more. She nodded at Bess.

Bess looked at the young girl who was lying before her. Her chest heaved with the effort of labor and of pain. Her cheeks had taken on an alarming pallor. She looked up at Bess, her eyes pleading. Bess leaned forward and slowly eased the fingers of her right hand into the girl.

‘What do you feel, Bess?’ Anne asked.

‘I cannot be certain … not the head, nor any limbs.’ She looked at her mother, brows creased, trying to picture in her mind how the baby could be arranged in its mother’s womb. ‘I think … yes, I feel the child’s back, and here, its shoulder.’

Old Mary cursed quietly, ‘ ’Tis as I feared—the babe lies crossways.’

Mistress Prosser began to weep.

Anne held Bess in her gaze. ‘Feel for the top of the shoulder. Work your fingers over the bone. I will aid you from outside, but you must turn that baby so that his head is drawn downward.’

‘There is no room. I cannot take a hold…’

‘You must!’

Bess searched with her fingertips, finding her way to the nape of the unborn child’s neck and then over its tiny shoulder. She pulled, gently at first, then with more force. ‘It will not move.’

Old Mary stepped forward to whisper in Anne’s ear, but her words were audible to all.

‘Anne, I have the hooks…’

‘No!’ Anne was adamant. ‘Not while the infant still lives.’ She turned to Bess again. ‘Keep trying,’ she said.

Bess did as she was told but feared her efforts would prove fruitless. The slippery baby seemed stuck fast in its impossible position. A terrifying image came into Bess’s mind. She recalled with frightening clarity the time her father had failed to deliver a particularly large calf. After battling for hours, he had thrown up his hands and sent Bess to the dairy to fetch the cheese wire. He had used it, with slow and deliberate movements, to slice the calf into pieces so that they might take it out and save the cow. No one could be certain the creature had been dead before he started dissecting it. Bess could see now the pathetic limbs and hooves lying in a gory mess beside its mother. The cow herself had died the following day. Bess blinked the picture from her mind. She must stay calm. She must be steadfast. If she was not, Sarah would pay the price with her life. Bess redoubled her efforts, shutting from her thoughts the notion that she might harm the child—it had to come out. At last she began to detect some shifting in its position. Anne noticed it too.

‘Do not let it slip back,’ she said.

Bess prized the shoulder to one side and felt the head moving downward toward the birth canal. At that moment, a powerful contraction swept through Sarah’s body. The girl was now too weak to scream and instead emitted an eerie wail.

Old Mary stepped forward.

‘Bear down, child! Do not falter now. Push!’

Now she screamed. With one last, gargantuan effort, with strength summoned from an unknowable place that exists hidden within every mother, Sarah screamed and pushed.

Bess gasped as her hand and the baby were driven out. Everything happened with such speed she barely had time to grab the infant as it slithered onto the blood-soaked linen.

‘Look!’ Bess cried. ‘He’s out! A boy!’

Anne examined the child who protested loudly, much to the relief of everyone in the room.

‘The Lord be praised!’ whispered Mistress Prosser, raising her daughter’s hand to her lips.

Old Mary smiled a toothless grin, ‘The Lord and young Bess here,’ she said. ‘She surely be her mother’s daughter.’

Bess watched the baby wrapped in warm swaddling and handed to his mother. Sarah kissed the top of her newborn’s head, her face transformed, the cloud of death removed and replaced by the warm joy of life. She looked up at Bess.

‘Thank you, Bess,’ she said.

‘I need no thanks beyond seeing you and the babe safe and well, Sarah.’

‘I will never forget what you have done for us,’ Sarah said, before closing her eyes.

Bess felt her mother’s hand on her arm.

‘Come, Bess. Let us leave her to rest.’

‘I feared I might fail,’ she confessed.

Her mother smiled. It was a smile that from anyone else might have been said to betray pride. She shook her head. ‘You did well, child,’ she told her daughter. ‘You did well.’

2

A week later, at the start of the day, with dawn barely progressed sufficiently to light her way, Bess took a basket and headed into the woods to gather moss and lichen for her mother’s pharmacopoeia. The early daylight cast not a shadow and gave soft edges to tree and stone so that the world appeared somehow gentler and more yielding. As Bess reached the limit of the pasture, she hesitated. She loved the woodland and yet had always the sense that in stepping into its leafy embrace she was entering another realm. Here things were hidden and secret. All manner of possibilities dwelled in the tangled roots and verdant undergrowth. The trees provided a place unknowable and mysterious for shy and mythical creatures to abide in. It was a place of fairies and sprites and wood nymphs. A place of magic.

Bess found herself treading thoughtfully as she threaded her way deeper and deeper into the forest. She was not afraid, nor even nervous; rather she felt she should show a certain respect, a reverence even, to those woodland deities whose stores she now plundered. She stooped to peel moss as thick as wolf fur from a shady rock. She laid it carefully in the bottom of her basket and continued. On a blackthorn she found an abundance of silvery lichen. She plucked the brittle antlers from the lower boughs until she had sufficient. A narrow brook provided perfect conditions for more moisture-loving mosses, all good for speeding the mending of open wounds. She was picking her way over stepping-stones when she heard, or rather sensed, a disturbance. It was not as if a sound had reached her ears, more that she noticed a change in the air about her. A subtle shift in the energy. She cocked her head and listened, then pushed slowly into the woods in the direction of whatever it was that she detected. A few paces farther and she could indeed discern sounds. There were grunts and groans, animalistic and gruff. Now she could plainly hear gasps and moans. A movement up ahead made her stop. She brushed aside a curtain of ivy that was obscuring her view. What she saw made her start. Two figures, one darkly dressed, tall, and powerful, the other a woman—no, a girl—all but naked save a few dove-white strips of her torn slip. They were standing, the girl pressed up against an ash tree, the man with his back to Bess. She dared not move, afraid they would discover they were being watched, but at the same time she realized they were far too involved in their energetic lovemaking to be so easily distracted. She was about to turn and slip silently back into the trees when something caught her attention. A frayed piece of rope. The girl was bound to the tree. Now she looked again, Bess could see that the girl’s moans and wails were not of ecstasy but of anguish. She was not enjoying the attentions of an ardent lover but was being raped. Bess opened her mouth to shout out but checked herself. She must do something to rescue the poor young woman, but a man capable of such a thing would not give up his prize easily. She had no weapon with which to protect herself or to threaten him. She cast around for a strong stick or heavy stone. At that moment she heard shouts coming from a way off to the west, deeper into the forest. The man heard them too and turned to look over his shoulder. Turned so that Bess could clearly see his face, and there was no mistaking the stern features of Gideon Masters. Features distorted by a bestial lust and eyes inhumanly red with anger. The girl heard the voices of her would-be rescuers and called out to them. Gideon stepped back. He placed a finger under the girl’s chin and raised her face. He stared into her eyes, his lips moving quickly as if uttering some prayer or incantation. The girl’s lids grew heavy and she slumped forward, her weight taken by the rope that tied her. Gideon took a pace onto the eastward path but then hesitated. Swinging round, he narrowed his eyes in Bess’s direction, scanning the undergrowth. But Bess had already dropped to the cover of the forest floor. She heard him turn again and make off through the forest. She stayed where she was but peered through the foliage in time to see the searchers find the girl. She recognized them as the family of gypsies who had passed through the village some days before. The mother flung herself at her daughter and clung to her, weeping loudly. The father stormed about, cursing in a tongue unknown to Bess and shaking his fist at the sky, before untying his daughter and carrying her away in his arms. Bess abandoned her basket and slunk back the way she had come, not daring to stand and run until she was sure she was out of sight, clear of the terrible scene, one which would stay imprinted on her mind forever. She was in reach of the sunshine at the edge of the woodland when Gideon sprang out in front of her, blocking her escape. Instinctively she recoiled from him, but then anger gave her courage. She would not let him see her fear.

‘Why, it is young Bess Hawksmith. I was certain it was you I saw.’

‘Let me pass.’

‘How long had you been hiding, I wonder? How long were you watching, hmmm?’

‘I was out gathering moss and lichen.’

‘Really? I do not see any.’

Bess cursed herself for abandoning her basket like a frightened child. Gideon stepped closer. The warmth of his body was clearly discernible and gave off an earthy odor. Bess turned her head away from him. When he spoke again, she could feel his breath against her ear.