Witch Child Read online

  I took the little bundle of leaves and stuffed them in my sack.

  All the way back I felt as though I was being watched, I felt my skin pricking, and that’s a sure sign of it, but I saw nothing. At first I thought that it was someone from the settlement. I hurried to my hollow tree, fearing that I would be discovered, but when men do venture into the forest, to hunt, or cut wood, or fell trees, they make a deal of noise that can be heard for miles. I almost began to believe in spirits.

  Jonah was most interested in my new plant. He turned the leaves over in his hands, examining them with his glass, pronouncing it to be some species of soapwort. He thought it could be useful in times when real soap was not available. He asked where I had found it.

  ‘By a lake,’ I said, the colour springing to my face.

  ‘Hmm, hmm. Good, good.’

  Jonah did not notice my blushes. He spread a sprig carefully and began to copy it into his Herbal, making me promise to show him where I found it growing. I nodded in agreement, wondering what I would show him, since I did not find it growing at all.

  Entry 49

  The next time that I went to the forest, I felt again the pricking of my skin. I stopped to listen and look around, but I could see no one, hear nothing out of the ordinary. I went on, pretending nonchalance, but with all my senses alert. Still I had no warning.

  He appeared so suddenly that I truly thought he was a spirit and I started back, showing fear despite myself.

  It was the Indian boy, the one I had seen in Salem, the one who had helped to guide us here. He carried a short bow in one hand and a quiver of arrows slung across his back. He held his other hand out open-palmed towards me, probably thinking that I would bolt from him, crashing away like some startled animal, as Deborah would, or Sarah, or any of the other girls from the town. But they would never come so far into the forest. They cower on the edge, peering into the trees like frightened children. I am not like them. Once I had gathered my senses, I stood my ground.

  ‘I am not afraid. What do you want?’

  He shrugged and looked down. He has lashes long and thick as a girl’s, they brush the black lines painted on his cheeks. Then he looked back up at me, his eyes full of mischief.

  ‘I have seen you many times. I thought you were a boy, at first, but then ... ’

  If he left the soapwort by the lake, then he must have seen me ...

  I stared, eyes wide and horrified, far more discomforted by that than by his knife, or bow, or his fearsome appearance. His laughter rang out and from somewhere deep in the woods first one jay bird called back, then another. He laughed even more as memory brought the blood thudding to my face. Now I turned to run, but he was too quick for me.

  ‘Stay.’ He caught my arm. ‘Our people, the girls and women often go naked – it means nothing.’

  ‘It means something to me.’ I shook him off and ran as fast as I could.

  ‘Wait! Stop!’ he called after me. ‘You and the old man – Jonah –’

  I did not hear the rest of his words, I just went on running until I was back at my hollow tree.

  Entry 50

  Jonah has had an accident. He was helping Tobias and John in the saw-pit when a log that they were positioning slipped, falling on to his ankle. The foot is at a bad angle and Martha thinks the bone may be broken, but there is no way of telling as the joint has swollen to prodigious size. She gives him poppy to take the pain away, but she calls for St John’s Wort, briony, comfrey, dill and scabious to make a poultice. None of them grow here. I do not know what to do.

  Entry 51

  Martha has done what she can with her store of medicines, but Jonah’s foot blackens and he is feverish. There is no doctor in the settlement. There are only a few of them in the colony, and no one is sure where we would find one willing to come. Not everyone even sees the need for one, despite Jonah’s poorly condition. Reverend Johnson says the matter is in the hands of God.

  Tobias is preparing to ride. We have no horse, but John Rivers has offered his. It is past noon, though, and John thinks that it would be better to start out tomorrow morning. All is undecided, but what we do know is if Jonah does not get help he will lose his foot and may well die. Martha bites her lip. She thinks we are already too late. I can see it in her eyes.

  I can stay inside no longer.

  I will take my sack and head for the forest. Collecting now is not a matter of curiosity merely, of scientific discovery. It is a matter of life or death.

  Entry 52

  I took tracks untrodden and ways unknown. I am not afraid of getting lost. I was brought up in the forest, friend to the woodcutters’ sons and the charcoal burners’ children, I mark my way.

  I did not at first see the Indian boy, but that did not mean he wasn’t there. I walked until I felt my skin pricking again. It’s a game of cat and mouse we’ve been playing, but now it has to stop.

  I called for him to come out.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I need your help.’

  I explained our trouble.

  He listened carefully. ‘My grandfather remembers Jonah. He thinks he’s a good man. Not like the others. A healer, like himself. My grandfather is Powwaw.’ He frowned as he tried to find a way to explain. ‘More than a healer, spirit leader.’

  ‘Like a minister?’

  ‘Not like John – son.’ He pronounced the parts of the name separately as if they were two different words. ‘My grandfather guessed what Jonah did in the forest and sent me to help. I left the soapwort as a gift. Then, when I met you again, you ran away from me.’

  ‘Will you help us now?’

  ‘I will ask my grandfather. He will know what is best.’

  ‘Take me to him.’

  ‘No. That is impossible. I will come to you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon.’

  He was gone before I could question him more.

  Entry 53

  Jonah is no better. His fever grows and his foot blackens even more. He has been moved from the Rivers’ to the house he is building with Tobias. It is a bare shell, but at least it is quiet and empty of children. Martha tends him, as he tosses and groans. All night the fever grows and by the morning he is delirious.

  I meant to stay awake and help Martha, but I must have dozed off. I woke to find Tobias pulling on his boots.

  Dawn was breaking, the air rang with the sound of birds calling from the forest.

  ‘I wish that bird would stop its chatter.’ Martha put her fingers to her temples. Through the general chorus came the cry of a jay bird, calling again and again.

  I ran to the door, wrenching it open. On one side of the step stood a great basket of herbs. Fleshy stems and thick glossy leaves glistened with dew, so freshly picked that they had not begun to droop. On the other side of the step lay a smaller basket, covered with a cloth. This contained small gourds, little clay pots and folded packets of bark. I looked up and around. The jay bird call was near, very near. I followed into the forest.

  He was waiting for me under the trees. There he gave me his grandfather’s instructions. The leaves in the basket must be boiled and the cooling mass bound around the foot. The powders in the birch bark folds must be mixed in water and drunk to control the fever. The liquid in the clay pot is to clear the blood of poisons. Lastly, the contents of the little gourd should be rubbed on to the skin to help heal the break once the bone is set and the swelling gone down.

  I don’t know how to thank him.

  ‘He is not cured yet. I will be here tomorrow to see how he does. Listen for me.’

  ‘Wait! What is your name?’

  ‘Jaybird – can’t you guess?’

  His laugh rang out and birds replied from all around the forest.

  When I went back to the cabin, Martha had taken the baskets inside. She had guessed the purpose of the bunches of leaves and was boiling them in a kettle. The smell they gave was clean and fresh, conquering the odours of sickness, filling the room wit
h healing.

  I told her how I had come by these things, and explained the treatment carefully. Martha is not happy about the extent of my woodland wandering, less so about trafficking with the natives and using their heathen remedies. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. She knows we have no choice.

  Tobias does not need to go for the doctor. The poultice has eased the swelling, and the powders have brought the fever down. The colour of the skin is improving. Jonah’s foot is no longer black.

  ‘’Tis a miracle,’ Martha said as she unwrapped the dressing. ‘That’s what it is. We are all God’s children. They are better Christians than some I could name, despite their heathen ways.’ She turns to me. ‘’Tis not to say I’m pleased with how you came by this. Such wandering could draw attention. If you were seen ... and with him ... ’

  ‘But I have been most careful not to be.’

  ‘But if you were ... ’

  She looks at me, her honest face troubled, but she leaves off scolding to tend to Jonah. His pain is not over. Martha and I prepare to set the bones. We will need Tobias to hold him down.

  Entry 54

  I have to heed Martha’s grumbling. I have limited my visits to the forest, but still I go. Our only neighbours are the Rivers, not counting old Tom Carter and he’s either drunk or sleeping it off. I never see anyone else, so what do they know?

  Anyway, Jonah thinks her fears are silly. He encourages me to find out more. Sumac, sassafras, snakeweed, joe pye weed, pipsissewa, snakeroot, skullcap. The list grows. Jaybird shows me where to find the healing plants and herbs, giving some their native name, others the name that the settlers give to them. He explains the properties of the plants, pointing out which parts are poisonous, which are wholesome, what can be used to treat which ailments. I listen carefully so that I can tell Jonah.

  ‘How does he do?’

  ‘Much better. Soon he will be able to walk with a stick. Meanwhile he sits with his leg propped up and works on his Herbal.’

  ‘I told my grandfather about that. He finds what you do interesting. He wants to meet you.’

  ‘You mean Jonah. But he can’t walk, I told you.’

  ‘Not him. You.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘That’s for him to tell you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Not today. It grows late. You will know when. I will find you.’

  With that he left, melting into the forest. I know I cannot follow. I cannot even tell which direction he takes. His feet make no sound, no scuffing of leaves or cracking of twigs and I catch no sight of him in the dappled shadows.

  Entry 55

  I never know if Jaybird will be there. He just appears. I never see him. He could be an arm’s length away and I would not guess it. He is teaching me how to be quiet in the woods. Quiet enough for the animals to come out and show no fear. And he teaches me bird calls. I can do the jay bird almost as well as he does. That’s how I know he’s there. I call, and he calls back.

  Sometimes, he leaves gifts by our door. Little woven baskets of rush or willow, containing nuts and fruit, plums and blueberries. He knows that these are Martha’s favourites; they are like bilberries, but sweeter and bigger.

  He never comes to the town. Neither do any other native people. He is the only one I have seen since we came here.

  Entry 56 (October? 1659)

  ‘You want to know why the woods are empty of my people?’

  We are eating strawberries in the forest. Jaybird knows a place where the fruits grow until the first snow, which will not be long now. We sit opposite each other. Dressing like a boy makes me easier with him. He treats me like a brother.

  ‘Very well. I will tell you. When the first settlers came, my people welcomed them and without us they would have perished. We taught them how to live, what to grow, when to sow, when to harvest. We thought the land was big enough for all to live together. But that was not to be. More came, and more came, wanting more land, and more land. They took the land, land that we had cleared, for it was easier for them to settle there. But that was not what killed the people.’

  ‘You were attacked? Wiped out?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not in the way you mean, with guns and weapons. The white man brought sickness, disease. This began many years ago, before even the first Pilgrims came to Plymouth. Fishermen began to come from Europe, to fish the seas in the north. Every winter they went back, but did not have to stay to leave their fevers. Then traders came, wanting fur, and they, too, brought illness. When the English came they brought the spotted sickness. Our medicine men were powerless against sickness they had never seen, that came from across the sea.

  ‘Many, many of our people died. Those that were left were too weak to hunt, to fish, to plant crops or bring in the harvest. We belonged to the Pentucket band of the Pennacook nation. Our main village was to the north, on the Merrimac river. So few were left there that their land was sold to the English. My father was a Sachem, leader of a small band remote from the main centre on a tributary river. He hoped that his band could escape the sickness which raged along the Merrimac, but that was not to be. People came to us for help and brought the sickness with them. He died, and my mother, and my sister and brothers and many, many others. A white man, a good man, took pity on our plight. He did what he could for the sick, which was little, and he took me and some others. Cared for us, schooled us, treated us as his own.’

  ‘But you left him?’

  ‘The choice was not a hard one to make. I grew old enough to know that there is more to being a white man than learning his language and wearing his clothes. I wanted to go home to my people. Except I found that I had no home, I had no people. My village was a white man’s town. Beulah.’

  ‘What had happened? Where had they gone?’

  ‘We do not live just in one place as the white man does. The place you call Beulah was our place in summer. In winter we go deeper into the forest to hunt and take shelter from the worst of the winter and come back in the spring to plant and fish. It has always been that way. One spring, the people, what was left of them, returned to find the village had been taken. Their holy places overturned. The graves of their ancestors desecrated and built upon. Their food stores had been broken open, the contents stolen. They had no choice but to move on.’

  ‘So there was no-one?’

  ‘Just my grandfather. He stayed. He watches the holy places. The stones are still there ... ’

  ‘What stones?’

  ‘Great stones stood on the top of the hill. They had been there since time began, marking the place as sacred to our people, and now ... ’

  ‘They lie under our Meeting House.’

  I remember remarking how oddly-shaped they were, not fresh cut and squared, but ancient, weathered by time, worn by wind and rain.

  ‘We have stones like that at home.’ I told him of the ones my grandmother visited, and the great ones I had seen on Salisbury Plain.

  ‘Then your people should respect them.’

  It was my turn to shake my head. ‘They would think them heathen.’

  ‘Even their own?’

  ‘Even their own. You have been in the town?’

  ‘Enough times.’

  He did not explain, but I could tell from the way he said it that he would not go again.

  Entry 57

  ‘There’s been talk. I told you there would be.’ Martha fixed her eye upon me.

  Our house is finished. After we have eaten we settle round the fire as darkness descends outside. Martha has had a visit from her sister, which always unsettles her.

  ‘Talk?’ I looked up from my stitching. ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of you. Wandering in the forest. And more besides.’

  ‘What talk is this, Martha?’ Jonah asked, alerted by the worry in Martha’s voice.

  ‘Jethro Vane complains his hogs sicken. He says that someone has given them the Evil Eye. Mary was seen to come and go from the place where they roam. And she was seen star
ing at them, and shouting, like to cursing ... ’

  ‘I was not cursing! You told me to drive them off if they came in our garden! I was shouting because they are bold creatures, half wild from living in the woods. They take some shifting.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘My sister, Anne Francis. She wanted to warn me, what folks were saying ... ’

  ‘Worry you more like.’ Jonah’s face darkened. ‘She strikes me as a meddler and a keen bearer of ill tidings. Take no notice.’

  ‘Not much gets past our Annie. She has an ear for gossip, that I’ll give you, and a finger into every pie.’ Martha shook her head. ‘But that only serves to strengthen her warning. You do not know these people as I do.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, but there’s always some proper explanation.’ Jonah sighed. ‘“Evil Eye”? What stuff!’ He is a man of science and has little truck with superstition. ‘Like as not Jethro Vane’s swine caught the sickness from the ones his brother brought here.’ He went back to his book. ‘They looked to me like a sickly lot.’

  ‘Like as not they caught it from Jeremiah himself,’ I said.

  Tobias laughed. Jeremiah Vane shares his daughter Deborah’s colouring. He is russet-bearded, small-eyed, narrow-jawed, and long-snouted, and thus much resembles a Tamworth hog.

  ‘This is no matter for laughing!’ Martha’s eyes flared green in warning. ‘Such talk is dangerous. We all know where such whispers lead. We don’t want folk turning against us.’ She turned to Tobias. ‘You, sir, can mend the fencing. I do not want his hogs anywhere near our property. And you,’ it was my turn now, ‘you can mend your ways! No more going into the forest. No more wandering. Lest tongues wag even more.’

  Entry 58

  ‘They live in the forest in nakedness, in sin and degradation. They make nothing of the land. They live worse than beggars.’

  Goodwife Anne is paying another visit, this time in the evening, so she can speak to all of us. She is giving us newcomers the benefit of her wisdom and superior experience. Her subject is the native people.