Mother

by Cherry Clayton

Rumours have been spread in town that Mary Panel is a witch. Agnes hears the whispers as she buys bread at the market cross, they flit by her ears, tickling her skin like the wings of a moth.

She hears that her mother turns into a black cat when the sun goes down, hissing and spitting, arching her ebony back at anyone who ventures near, cursing those who cross her.

She hears that her mother speaks to the devil himself through the ears and mouth of the family goat, taking instruction and implementing his evil. Agnes is unsure that Gertrude, the goat, can hear anything anymore, devil or no, she is so old, but such is the nature of town gossip, it pays no mind to practicalities.

It is nearing Summer’s end, and the evenings are still bright. Beams of sunlight slant past the wooden shutters of the Panel’s sparse cottage, pooling onto the stone floor and making Agnes squint as she stands by the hearth, spooning steaming stew from a heavy iron pot onto her plate.

“They say the little lad is poorly” Mother says from her chair at the small wooden table.

She is talking about Lord William Witham’s only son, 5 years old and heir to the manor up at Ledston. Mother had been working in the kitchens for the Witham’s for a few months now, earning a bit extra now that Father and her brother George were gone, victims of the previous year’s Winter fever that had spread across the town like a wildfire raging over dry grass. Not even Mother, with her knowledge of the plants and roots yielded by the local landscape, had been able to cure them. First George, then Father straight after. Memories of the teas Mother brewed to soothe the chest are thrust suddenly into her mind’s eye. Watery, blood-flecked vomit patterning the stone by the bed. Sticky pastes brewing over the fire, the sweet, spicy scent of liquorice root reminding her of death.

Agnes wonders if the townsfolk believe Mother killed them both with black magic. She puts her plate down roughly on the kitchen table and sharply breathes in the aroma of bubbling meat and onions that fills the small room to make herself concentrate on supper rather than death. She sits, tucks strands of fair hair behind both ears and pulls her chair to the table, wood scraping stone. She brings her fork to her mouth, blowing on the sinewy meat.

“What’s wrong with him then?”

“Nobody knows Agnes. He’s laid in bed for 3 weeks now. Pale, sweaty, hot and cold, rattling from the chest. Don’t think it’s the Winter fever again at this time of year.” She looks away for a second, dark eyes settling on the flames in the grate. They sway across the lines in her face, picking up the silver strands in her pinned back dark hair.

“What will be, will be” Agnes chews and swallows. The lump of meat forms a hard ball in her throat making her eyes water, the taste of rosemary blooms in her mouth and she knows it will repeat later.

“Jeffrey asked me if I could help.” Eyes now on her bowl, Mother slowly breaks apart a piece of hard bread and dips it in the steaming stock.

Agnes snorts. Her cousin, Jeffrey, 6 years her senior. Always at the centre of things so he can be the big man in town. He works in the Witham’s stables so of course he’s there, running his tongue, trying to be the one who saves the heir.

Agnes looks sharply at Mother now; blue eyes fix on brown. Her hand freezes halfway from plate to mouth. “Don’t get involved Mother, it’s not worth it. Part of the reason you took the job as maid was to stop the gossip about your remedies.”

“Ah, Agnes,” Mother breaks eye contact. “It’s not that easy though, ignoring suffering when you can help. He’s only a little lad. I can at least help with his breathing. A simple chest rub. No harm can come of that.”

**********************

The boy dies just before the harvest. Agnes feels anxiety clawing at her insides and an uneasiness rises in her stomach like bile. She pushes food around her plate at supper, watching Mother in the candlelight, her jaw working to masticate the meat and vegetables stewed in the pot that day.

It is early evening when they come and the sun sits cradled by the hills, fighting a losing battle against the darkening sky. In a last act of defiance, it casts long shadows across the garden from behind the tall trees of the unfurling woodland beside the cottage.

It is of no consequence that Lady Witham fed the boy the unction Mother had made instead of rubbing it on his chest as instructed. They tie her hands and lead her away in silence. The sunset burns the hills; the trees are on fire.

**********************

The first frosts crawl across the landscape, biting and frozen, leaving a glittering blanket of ice crystals each morning. Agnes huddles against the sharp cold, curled up like a small animal in her blankets.

She is startled by a loud knocking at the door and springs out of bed, ready to pounce. She quickly throws on her shawls as the cold greets her bare skin like a hard slap and stands, hunched by the door under the weight of her layers, heart hammering loudly in her chest. The knock sounds again, “Agnes. I have news of your mother!”

Her fingers relax slightly in the folds of her shawl. Jeffrey. She has not seen him since before Mother’s arrest.

Straightening up she lifts the latch and opens the door. Her cousin stands tall on the doorstep in black boots and a dark green cloak. He leans forwards, assures her that although they whisper about her in town, they are still cousins, and she deserves to know her mother’s fate.

He dips his head, straw coloured moustache quivering, as he steps inside the cottage. Agnes shows him to the table, and they sit, like bookends, either side of the fire.

He tells her that Mother was taken to York, kept in the castle dungeons. That Lord Witham attended the trial as a witness and that he, Jeffrey, accompanied his party to care for the horses. He looks away as he tells her that Mother was found guilty. Lord Witham testified as such and many witnesses from the town were called.

Hawklike claws tear at her intestines. She stares at the rings in the wood of the tabletop, listening as Jeffrey lists the townsfolk who took part in condemning her mother.

“When will it happen, Jeffrey?” She needs to know, to see if she can, to witness the finality.

He is silent for a moment, before speaking. “They will bring her here, to Ledston Hill when it is time.”

Agnes nods slowly and thanks him for telling her. Her eyes sting but she swallows hard. He rests a hand upon her arm before he gets up to leave.

**********************

Agnes holds a dark woollen cloak around her body with tense, white fingers. The evening is milder, bringing a false sense of security that the frosts are past. The earth is damp underfoot, and a dense fog is beginning to blanket the hills, lapping at her ankles like waves as she walks quickly up the hill across the softened ground.

Spotting the crowd up ahead she approaches and quickens her step. She finds a concealed spot near the back of the sea of bodies and pulls her hood lower. The smell of the earth is replaced now by the sour smell of stale sweat and old breath from the closely packed townsfolk.

She edges slightly to her left to see better through a gap between shoulders. Her heart leaps and batters her ribcage as Mother is led, chained, to stand in front of a pile of kindling, a wooden stake protruding vertically from the twisting branches and twigs.

Agnes grimaces and cannot conceal a sharp intake of breath at the sight of Mother’s shorn head. Dark, patchy stubble creeps over her scalp and her skin is filthy and marred with dark abrasions and purple and yellow bruises. Her ankles and wrists reveal angry red welts underneath the shackles and Agnes shudders as she takes in her mother’s skeletal frame. She stands between her guards like a swaying scarecrow, a filthy, white gown hangs from the bones of her shoulder blades.

A resonant male voice echoes across the darkening hills as the Justice of the Peace reads Mother’s confession, announcing that she admits to the charges of witchcraft and malfeasance. The evidence is clear, and the punishment is death by strangulation before burning.

Feet merge closer suddenly, slipping on the soil under foot, now ground to mud. Shoulders and heads become mountains over which she cannot see and the next time Agnes spots mother she is being tied to the wooden stake by a guard. He places a rope over her thin, bruised neck.

She clenches her fists by her sides frozen in fear. Her heart is aching, throat tight but she dares not speak out. The noose tightens.

Her limbs finally unstuck, Agnes turns her back. The crowd cheers. She hears the crackling of flame as it consumes dry wood.

**********************

Lord Witham begins to sicken as the weather becomes warmer. Green buds begin to push through the earth now, seeking the light, and the townsfolk linger for longer in the sunny market square. The word is that he cannot move on, that he is ailing with grief for his only son.

Agnes knows better. She lights thick, white, taper candles carved with sigils each evening and lets the wick burn down. She cuts the throat of one of the chickens and stores the sticky red blood in an earthen jar in the cellar next to the roots and pickled cabbage. Her fingers stiffen as they hold a sewing needle, creating a miniature man from the cloth of Mother’s blanket. She fills him with straw and the stinking heart of a mouse before pulling the pale threads closed and tying them in a tight knot at his chest.

Whispers around town now that the lord cannot get out of bed, has not been seen for a while. Agnes bathes the cloth man in chicken blood and whispers his fate into his stuffed ears.

She buries him, stinking and putrid, at the crossroads, at the place where they scattered mother’s ashes after they burnt her body.

**********************

In symmetry with his son, Lord Witham dies just before the harvest. Agnes hears the news from Jeffrey when he comes calling with a gift of bread. He stays on the doorstep, eyes darting. He leans in slightly as he tells her that rumours amongst the staff are that Lord Witham had taken a Chamber Maid for a lover. That the Mistress, driven half mad by grief as she was, had poisoned her husband to death. Jeffrey wonders if the Justice of the Peace will investigate. His dark gloved hand strokes his long pale chin. Lord Witham’s corpse is not yet cold in the grave, but he has grasping relatives whose claim to Witham Hall far outweighs that of his childless widow.

Agnes clutches the loaf of warm, sweet-smelling bread to her chest as she watches Jeffrey’s retreating back. He turns as he closes the gate, dark cloak swaying around his calves, to wave before going on his way.

Agnes closes the door with a quiet click and sits at the table before breaking off a piece of the soft, fresh loaf. She chews slowly, savouring the salty sweetness of it on her tongue. Her mouth twitches at the corners and a laugh bubbles up from the depths of her stomach.

**********************

The light has long since disappeared for the day, but her feet know the way through the maze of trees. She stops finally in a circular clearing dotted with an assortment of large grey stones patterned green and yellow by lichen. Agnes leads the goat behind her with a rope, which she ties to a pale tree trunk. An owl calls from somewhere nearby and the wind passes, muttering through the woodland. She is safe here, protected.

Agnes places her hand upon the nearest of the stones. Her finger traces the outline of a spiral, carved long ago into the surface of the rock, and tiny flecks of silvery grit and balls of soft, cool moss roll beneath the tips of her fingers. She lifts her chin and looks upwards. Spiky branches claw the sky like twisted fingers, and she fastens her gaze past them letting them frame the night sky. She closes her eyes, mutters what sounds like a prayer before moving away slowly, her feet shuffling through leaves and undergrowth, as she gathers dry wood to build a fire.

The flames splutter into life at the centre of the stones, tongues of orange and red crackling. They send shadows dancing across the forest floor and illuminate the face of the goat, flickering in the mirrors of her eyes.

Agnes breathes in deeply savouring the scent of the earth; of woodland and burning ashes. Her feet walk a circle past the goat, around the trees and back to the start. She walks slowly towards the flames and feels the heat radiate as she draws almost level. It makes her cheeks sting in the cold air as the warmth finds her skin. She allows herself to stand for a moment as she remembers.

She upturns a small pot into the grasping fingers of the fire. It is filled with earth from the crossroads, Mother, her ashes and the land as one, and the flames shoot up in greeting, green and hissing. She reaches now to her boot, a flash of silver at her ankle and she holds her father’s dagger in her hand. She approaches the goat. Gertrude has been a good animal and Agnes’s sorrow at what she must do forms as a calcified stone at the pit of her stomach. It will be over quickly.

Quickly, she draws the knife across the throat of the goat and blood spurts and gushes forth. She collects what she can in the now empty pot as the goat groans and crumples at the knees before falling to the ground. Agnes gags at the stench as the animal opens her bowels. She kisses her fingers, reaches down and touches Gertrude’s silky head in thanks.

She lifts the pot by the handle and the undergrowth whispers underfoot as she walks back to the fire. She circles the flames, pouring the thick, red blood as she goes. She whispers harshly and the flames make a rushing sound, shooting upwards with a scream. Agnes inhales the smoke, feels the burning heat in her body and smiles as a figure takes shape within.

Translucent and ethereal, Mary Panel is wild eyed and wild haired. She steps from within the embrace of the flames and nods when her daughter addresses her.

“They will pay. All who see your shadow will sicken and fail, just as did Lord Witham. This is my curse upon this land, and it will stand, generation after generation. They will mutter your name in fear and with good reason”.

The wraith that was Mary Panel closes her eyes and disappears as she walks into the woods. Agnes keeps watch as the flames fail and die. She waits until the shadows merge into darkness and her skin raises into goosebumps. She shivers with cold as she heads back to the cottage.