The Blue Eyed Witch Read online

  He spoke lightly, but the butler’s face was serious as he said,

  “Does your Lordship suppose she’s alive?”

  The witch certainly looked dead as the scratches stood out vividly crimson on her pale face.

  “She may not be,” the Marquis replied. “Let’s take her inside and decide if it is worthwhile sending for a doctor.”

  The butler snapped his fingers and two footmen went to the side of the phaeton.

  They looked down at the witch and then instinctively they both took a step backwards.

  “Pick her up!” the Marquis ordered.

  Neither of the two young men made any attempt to obey him.

  There was a faint smile on the Marquis’s face as he asked,

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Aye, my Lord!” one of the footmen replied with a broad Essex accent. “I dares not touch a witch and that’s a fact!”

  “And you?” the Marquis asked, turning to the other.

  “Me mother were cursed by a witch, my Lord. Her were never the same after it happened.”

  “Well, she can hardly stay here!” the Marquis said. There was an amused expression on his face as he bent down and picked up the witch himself.

  He thought as he did so that he had no wish to soil himself with the dirt that had stuck to her cloak, but, unless he wished the whole household to be in a state of alarm, he was well aware he had to set an example.

  Holding the girl in his arms, he walked up the steps into the hall, knowing that all the footmen were watching him wide-eyed.

  “Well, Newman, where are we going to put her?” the Marquis asked.

  The old butler seemed to be confused.

  “There’s plenty of rooms in the servants’ quarters, my Lord,” he answered a little hesitatingly, “but – ”

  The Marquis well knew that he was thinking that to have the witch sleeping amongst them would send the servants into a panic.

  Too late he thought he had been somewhat precipitous in bringing the witch to The Castle.

  It would have been more prudent not to interfere and to allow the villagers to deal with her as they thought best.

  Then he told himself forcefully that such ignorant superstitions were ridiculous! They were living in civilised times.

  How could they return to the bigotry and stupidity of those who believed in Satan and all his cohorts and were desperately afraid of sorcery?

  Suddenly the Marquis had an idea.

  “Is Nanny still here?” he enquired.

  “Yes, of course, my Lord. And in the nursery, as she has always been.”

  “Then that, Newman, is the answer to the problem,” the Marquis said and started to climb the wide staircase to the first floor.

  It was fortunate that the witch was so light, because there were still two more floors for the Marquis to negotiate before finally he reached the third.

  ‘Nothing has changed,’ he thought.

  There were the same rather low ceilings, the same pictures hanging on the walls and, when Newman hurried to open the door of the nursery, it was just as it had been when he had been a child.

  The guard in front of the fire, the table with its thick tasselled fringe in the centre of the room, the rocking horse without a tail in the window, the fort that had been his delight until he was really too old to play with it, all were standing where they had always stood.

  Sitting in a low chair, crocheting with a hooked steel needle, was his old nanny.

  She had grown a little greyer and more lined than the Marquis remembered, but otherwise, as she started to her feet in astonishment when she saw who stood there, she seemed as unchanged as the nursery itself.

  “Master Oswin!” she exclaimed. “I-I mean – your Lordship!”

  “You were expecting me, Nanny?” the Marquis asked.

  “I was and I wasn’t!” Nanny replied in a tone he knew only too well. “I doubted if you would have time for me!”

  “I will always have time for you, Nanny,” the Marquis replied, “and I have brought you someone who needs your help.”

  Nanny moved towards him to stare with astonishment at the woman he carried in his arms.

  “Who is she? What has happened to her, my Lord?”

  “I have been told she is a witch!” the Marquis answered. “But she is not yet in a fit state to refute the allegation!”

  “A witch?” Nanny exclaimed. “Stuff and nonsense! Who’s been filling your head with that sort of foolish talk?”

  It was so like the remarks he had listened to as a child that the Marquis laughed.

  “That is exactly what I thought you would say, Nanny. But the point is, Newman thinks they would be frightened to have her in the servant’s quarters, so I can only suggest that you look after her up here.”

  “I’ll do that, my Lord,” Nanny said. “But I’ll not have you putting her on one of my clean beds in that state and that’s a fact! Hold her a minute while I find something you can lay her on.”

  The old woman bustled into the night nursery and the Marquis followed to watch her while she found an old sheet which she spread out over the bed.

  “Now put her down, my Lord,” Nanny suggested. “She’ll do no harm.”

  The Marquis did as he was told.

  As he took his arms from round the girl, he realised she had not stirred and he thought, as he had done when he had seen her lying on the bottom of the phaeton, that she was very likely dead.

  As if Nanny was thinking the same thing, she picked up one thin wrist and put her fingers to it.

  ‘Perhaps,’ the Marquis thought, ‘it was a good thing the witch was unconscious when the peasants found her!’

  Some of the scratches on her arms were very deep and the nails that had made them had removed large pieces of skin.

  He looked again at the mark on top of her head. It had obviously been a heavy blow, a blow that he was sure had been meant to kill.

  Had the old man been speaking the truth when he said that it had not been made by any of the villagers?

  The Marquis was inclined to believe him.

  It was not the habit of the peasants to kill witches by bludgeoning them.

  They wanted the fun of testing them by swimming, of searching for the extra teat that was concealed on their bodies, by which they were supposed to feed their familiar, usually a black cat.

  And there had also been the amusement of sticking a needle into a witch to see if she would bleed.

  The theory was that the Devil sealed his compact with a witch by giving her a mark on her body which was a token of his power.

  If the mark was pricked and did not bleed, as warts rarely do, this was indisputable proof that she was a witch. When the Marquis was in Scotland, he had been shown one of the needles that had been used by the Witch-prickers for this test.

  It was very sharp and had a handle. He was told that in some cases the needle used was retractable, to make those who watched believe the woman was guilty because she did not bleed, while in fact the needle had not pierced her body at all!

  One false Witch-pricker was caught in Scotland and on the gallows confessed that he had caused the death of two hundred and twenty women for the price of twenty shillings apiece.

  The tortures of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were terrible and barbaric. Thumbscrews, the rack, eye gougers, branding irons and an apparatus known as ‘the question’, which could dislocate every bone in the body, were all used.

  Yet it seemed to the Marquis that the people who believed in witches were still as ignorant and cruel as they had been then.

  There had been an atmosphere of hate and fear about the peasants of Steeple that was unmistakable.

  He knew that, even if the witch had sunk in the swimming test, they would have seen to it that she was not alive when finally they had finished with her.

  ‘Paganism dies hard!’ he told himself.

  “She’s alive, my Lord!” Nanny cried, putting the witch’s hand down gently.
“But only just!”

  “Well, do your best for her, Nanny.”

  “I will, my Lord! And don’t you go a-listening to that heathen nonsense. They’re ignorant creatures in this part of the world and always have been!”

  “I remember your saying very much the same thing when I was a boy,” the Marquis replied.

  “People don’t change,” Nanny added. “They only get older!”

  “That is true enough,” the Marquis agreed and he was smiling as he went downstairs.

  Chapter Three

  “Tell me about the local trouble and unrest,” the Marquis said to his agent.

  Roger Clarke had recently taken over from his father, who had been agent at Ridge Castle for over thirty years.

  He was a young man – not more than twenty-seven – but he was dedicated to his work and the Marquis knew that Mr. Graham thought highly of him.

  “There has been trouble, my Lord, ever since Sir Harold died.”

  “Why?” the Marquis enquired.

  He sat back in the high velvet armchair behind a huge flat-topped desk at which he remembered seeing his father sit on the few occasions when he had visited Ridge Castle.

  But the Marquis knew it was his grandfather who had set the precedent that the library, which was an extremely impressive room, should be the place where employees, tenants, farmers or anyone who sought his jurisdiction should be interviewed.

  Nobody could have failed to note how distinguished the Marquis looked with a background of books and pictures set under the exquisitely painted ceiling.

  It was a masterpiece executed by Italians who had been brought from Italy especially to work under one of the great artists chosen by Adam.

  The long windows, framed with crimson velvet curtains, looked out onto the smooth lawns and the riot of flowers and almond blooms had been designed to achieve the maximum effect when viewed from the windows of The Castle.

  Roger Clarke was young enough to appreciate and envy the Marquis’s outstanding elegance in his grey whipcord riding coat, his close-fitting breeches and the manner in which his white stock was tied in a new style that must have been a headache to his valet.

  As if the Marquis was conscious of the admiration in his agent’s eyes, he said,

  “I must commend you, Clarke, for your reports which Mr. Graham has shown me. They are admirably written, concise and to the point.”

  “Thank you, my Lord,” Roger Clarke said, colouring at the unexpected praise.

  “And now tell me what Sir Caspar is doing to cause so much trouble.”

  “He has reduced wages for one thing, my Lord, and has stood off all the older men without an adequate pension, which means in most cases that they must starve or go on the Parish.”

  “Why should he have done that?” the Marquis asked sharply. “I always understood Sir Harold was a wealthy man.”

  “That is what we all thought, my Lord. But I cannot help suspecting that Sir Caspar needs the money either to redeem his debts or for further spending in London. He has no real interest in the county.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” the Marquis enquired.

  “He has not come home, except at very irregular intervals, for years,” Roger Clarke replied. “And it is local gossip that Sir Harold had continually begged him to return.”

  This only confirmed what the Marquis had thought about Caspar Trydell.

  At the same time he knew how easy it was for the labourers to resent any change of employer and he wondered if perhaps Sir Harold in his old age and being ill had grown lax.

  “How are the estates run?” he enquired.

  “They are in good heart, my Lord. The last manager was a conscientious fellow and I know for a fact that Sir Harold was very satisfied with him. Sir Caspar, however, sacked him on the grounds that the yield from the fields was not high enough.”

  “Was that justified?”

  “No, my Lord! We had a bad harvest last year and your Lordship’s returns were not up to their usual standard. Gales and torrential storms in the spring played havoc with the crops, as it did with the breeding of wild birds.”

  “I saw a good covey of partridges while I was coming here,” the Marquis commented.

  “If this weather continues, it will be the best nesting season we have ever had,” Roger Clarke said with a note of enthusiasm in his voice which the Marquis did not miss.

  “You enjoy shooting?”

  “Very much, my Lord. I have always been hoping that your Lordship would honour us one September.” “I will think about it this year,” the Marquis said. As he spoke, he remembered how he had enjoyed shooting with John Trydell.

  It had been an inexpressible kindness on the elder boy’s part to teach a lonely child, incarcerated in the great castle with only a prosy Tutor to keep him company, how to shoot.

  The Marquis had been ten at the time and it was John Trydell who had found him a small gun, explained carefully and patiently how he must carry it to be safe, how he must always unload before climbing over a hedge or fence or crossing a stream.

  The Marquis could still remember his excitement when he shot his first rabbit.

  Afterwards there had been his first partridge, his first snipe and, most thrilling of all, his first duck very early on a morning when dawn brought a flight in from the sea.

  Nothing he had ever achieved in later life had quite equalled the elation of that moment, when, having fired his gun, he waited breathlessly to see if the bird fell.

  “I will certainly consider coming here either in September or October,” he said aloud.

  “We shall look forward to it with great pleasure, my Lord,” Roger Clarke replied and his tone was undoubtedly sincere.

  “This afternoon I will ride out to the boundaries of the estate,” the Marquis said. “I would like to visit the farm at Weatherwick. We have a good tenant there?”

  “An excellent man, my Lord!”

  “And we might be able to do Danely Farm at the same time.”

  “We, my Lord?”

  “Naturally I shall expect you to accompany me,” the Marquis answered, “and you can explain as we go exactly what you propose doing with the land we farm ourselves.”

  “I should be honoured, my Lord.”

  The Marquis rose to show that the interview was at an end, but Roger Clarke hesitated.

  “What is it?” the Marquis enquired.

  “I hope you will not think it impertinent, my Lord, but everyone is talking of how you rescued the witch from being ducked at Steeple.”

  “I imagined it would give them something to chatter about,” the Marquis responded with a faint smile.

  “I was wondering if your Lordship had any idea of the identity of the woman in question”

  “None at all!” the Marquis answered. “She has not yet regained consciousness. Someone, Clarke, and I intend to find out who it was, hit her a blow on the head which would have killed a normal woman.”

  “Do you think one of the villagers who had found her did it, my Lord?”

  “I doubt it,” the Marquis replied. “As they were dragging her to the duck pond, it would have spoilt their amusement if she had been already dead! I thought that, although they were obviously activated by hatred and fear, they were not the sort to commit murder.”

  “No, indeed, my Lord. They are simple folk and, as your Lordship knows, extremely superstitious, but that’s true of everyone in Essex.”

  Roger Clarke grinned.

  “No one has forgotten the first witch trial at Chelmsford when Elizabeth Francis pleaded guilty.”

  “To what? I have forgotten the details,” the Marquis asked.

  “To bewitching a child, my Lord, so that he became decrepit. Elizabeth Francis had learnt her witchcraft from her grandmother. She had renounced God and her familiar was a white cat called Satan.”

  The Marquis looked sceptical and Roger Clarke went on,

  “That cat, speaking in a hollow voice, promised her both riches and a husb
and. He demonstrated his prowess by killing a man who had refused to respond to her advances.”

  “And the court believed this?” the Marquis enquired.

  “She admitted that with the assistance of the cat she killed a child and secured herself a husband. She then murdered her own baby.”

  “Good Lord!” the Marquis exclaimed.

  “Elizabeth passed on her cat in exchange for a cake, to a Mother Waterhouse, who sent Satan to drown a neighbour’s cow, kill his geese, spoil butter and commit murder.”

  “If I remember correctly, Mother Waterhouse was the first woman in England to be hanged for witchcraft,” the Marquis remarked.

  “That’s right, my Lord, to be followed by hundreds more.”

  “It all happened a long time ago.”

  “To the peasants it happened yesterday! They still whisper about Elizabeth Bennett, who confessed to having two belligerent imps who held her prisoner for hours and tried to push her into the oven!”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “Can they really believe such nonsense?”

  “They do indeed, my Lord. Any cow that sickens is thought to be a victim of the evil eye and sow fever is ascribed to the direct action of the Devil! I am sure that they still make figurines of clay in the likeness of an enemy and stick pins in them to create pain and even death.”

  “Surely we have taught people a little more sense in the last two hundred years?”

  “I doubt it, my Lord,” Roger Clarke replied, “and certainly not as far as Essex is concerned. Your Lordship will recall that we here are not far from the ‘Witch Country’.”

  “The Witch Country?” the Marquis repeated in a puzzled tone.

  “The part of South-East Essex divided from us only by the River Crouch is known as the Witch Country, my Lord.”

  “I was not aware of that,” the Marquis murmured.

  “The whole population, irrespective of social position, is obsessed by fear of wizards and witches,” Roger Clarke explained. “Ghosts haunt the fields and the Devil has been known to chase a Parson from the pulpit.”

  The Marquis raised his eyebrows.

  “Of course there are white witches and wizards who cure warts, find lost and stolen property and remove evil spells.”