Witch Child Page 5

  ‘Mary, take this.’ Tobias handed me a blanket as he took out nails.

  I reached up, but was not tall enough.

  ‘Give it to me.’ I felt arms reach round and above me. Rebekah held the blanket as Tobias hammered. She is nearly as tall as he is.

  ‘Thank you, sir ... ’

  ‘Tobias Morse. Glad to be of service. If I can assist in any other way?’

  ‘You can help her fetch water.’ Martha looked up from inside the makeshift tent. ‘Quickly now.’ She beckoned me to her. ‘Mary, I need you.’

  Rebekah stayed by her mother’s side, bathing her face, holding her hand, whispering words of comfort and encouragement. It was a difficult birth, a long hard struggle in the fetid half-darkness of that little tent. The storm still raged, but we neither heard it or felt it, balancing ourselves to the shifting of the deck as we struggled to birth the child and save the mother. She was very weak, having taken little food for weeks together. The baby could still be healthy, for all her strength would have gone to the child, but he was not in a good position.

  ‘I see him. I see him. Steady. Steady. Steady. That’s it. That’s it. Good girl. Good girl.’

  Martha shouted instructions to me and encouragement to the mother. Together we guided the little body into the world. She cut the cord and gave the child a slap on the rump. There was no response.

  ‘Take the babe.’ She whispered to me. ‘I must look to the mother. She’s like to bleed to death.’

  Her arms were slippery to the elbows. She handed the child to me, fresh blood printing his naked form. A boy. Good-sized and perfectly formed. He did not struggle, he did not cry, he just lay heavy and lifeless, limp in my arms. Strands of dark hair plastered his head. His skin showed pearl grey through the streaks of his mother’s blood. His lips were blue and his eyelids were closed, the veined skin pale violet and parchment thin.

  His father took one look and turned away. I looked up from the baby’s face to see his sister’s eyes burning into mine. She held her mother’s slack hand gripped in hers. She was about to lose mother, brother, all in one time. I expected to see anguish, sorrow, fear written there. Instead, I saw anger.

  I thought what my grandmother would do at such a birth. I opened the baby’s mouth, emptied it out, sucked on his nose and spat. Then I breathed gently into him, light puffs of air. I looked again and although he did not stir or cry out, I thought I saw the skin tingeing pink. I turned towards where Rebekah and Tobias had left the wooden bucket of water and plunged the child in, splashing the water over him. I heard Rebekah’s sharp intake of breath. She was at my side in a stride, as if I was trying to drown the child.

  ‘Have something to wrap him in.’

  The shock of immersion had done its work. His skin was turning from grey to pink. He gave a small cry, little more than the protesting mew of a kitten, but he was alive. I took the rough linen, and began rubbing him, chafing the life back into him, then I handed him to his sister.

  She wrapped him up and held him tight. She looked down at his face for a moment and then back at me. Her finger brushed my cheek.

  ‘You are crying.’

  I looked around as if waking from sleep. Everyone was looking at me. All around was silence. The sailors had ceased from shouting, the wind no longer shrilled. The storm was over. Everything was still.

  Entry 21

  The child is to be called Noah. Two days after his birth, two small birds came on to our ship. One was like to a pigeon, the other like a blackbird, but larger. Both were land birds. It was a sign, sent by the Lord himself, so Reverend Cornwell said. The company gave thanks and John Rivers decided to name the baby for it.

  The wind is brisk, blowing from the north east. The captain has ordered full sail to be set. The ship keeps an even keel and we make good progress. We expect to sight land daily.

  Entry 22

  Noah does well, but his mother is still sickly. He has been put to nurse with another mother who is still feeding her infant. Martha has herbs in her store which I take to Rebekah. They are to be made into a tea for her mother to help to heal her.

  Entry 23 (May-June? 1659)

  Yesterday came a shout of ‘Land, ho,’ and such a rush up to the deck and over to the side that the ship was like to capsize. A boy, fair hair bright in the sun, came sliding down a rope from where he had been watching aloft. He swung from the rigging and stepped up to the captain who had already prised a silver coin from the main mast. The boy took his reward and sent it spinning, flashing end over end. He thrust it into his pocket and grinned, his teeth white in his brown face.

  I crowded with the rest to see the land. It showed as a dark line on the horizon, and could have been a band of cloud, but as the ship drew nearer so the vision grew into solid hills and rocky cliffs with white waves curling at the base of them.

  We are much further north than we should be, but the sight of land, any land, is welcome after so many days out on the empty ocean. Elias Cornwell stepped forward to direct, thinking to conduct a service of thanksgiving, but the voice of the captain rang out from the quarterdeck.

  ‘I’ll thank you to clear the decks. My men have work to do. We are not there yet, parson, and this is the Devil’s own coast.’

  Elias Cornwell opened his mouth to protest, his pale face flushing crimson at being so dismissed and at being called ‘parson’, but the captain turned from him, barking orders for soundings to be made and the skiff to be launched. On board ship the captain’s word is law. Elias Cornwell led his flock below decks. He would conduct the service in the great cabin.

  I did not follow them. Calculating that my presence would not be missed, I gazed out to the land. The ragged line of cliffs rose, jagged and stark, spreading in an unbroken line for mile after mile. I shivered. It should have looked welcome to me, but it did not. I reflected on how bleak it is. Bleak and empty.

  ‘Sore sight, ain’t it? After so many days at sea.’

  I turned to find the boy standing next to me, the one who first saw land and earned himself the captain’s shilling.

  ‘It looks hostile. Forbidding.’

  ‘Aye, it is that. I wouldn’t like to have to land just here. This coast is treacherous. Doesn’t do to take the ship close in, the rocks here could tear the bottom right out of her.’ He squinted his eyes towards the shore. ‘And even if you did land, you’d find nothing but wilderness, and meet no-one but savages.’ He turned to me. ‘You’re the girl who saved the babe. They say it was dead and you blew the life back into it.’

  ‘I did nothing of the kind,’ I said, quick to deny any hint of magic. ‘All I did was clear his mouth and nose so he could breathe.’

  ‘I meant no offence. It is just what they say ... ’ He shrugged, changing the subject. ‘You do not go with the others?’

  He nodded towards the deck. Voices raised in prayer and thanksgiving rose through the planking.

  ‘No. I prefer it up on deck.’

  ‘I don’t blame you.’ He grinned, showing his white teeth. ‘Stinks down there, don’t it? No wonder you like it up here. I’ve seen you most fine days.’

  ‘And I’ve seen you, too. You’re the boy who cares for Martha’s chickens.’

  Martha had brought her coop of hens with her, and her cockerel. A woman with hens will want for nothing, that was her thinking, but she had not reckoned on thieving sailors intent on stealing them for the pot. Most have survived so far, thanks to this boy’s care of them, but they are kept up on deck and the recent storm has not treated them kindly. They huddle together in bedraggled bundles, eyes filmed over, feathers staring and crusted with salt. They make no sound, not so much as a cluck. If ever creatures craved for land, they do, even the cock has lost his crow.

  ‘That I do.’ He laughed. ‘If it was not for me they would all have disappeared down somebody’s gullet.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be him if Martha found out. I am Mary. Mary Newbury. Martha and I travel together.’

  ‘Jack Gill,’ he
held out a hand. ‘At your service.’

  I shook the hand he offered. The palm was rough and callused. I turned his hand to find the flesh fissured and split. Salt water had got into the cuts and cracks, turning them into white sea sores, preventing them from healing.

  ‘I can give you salve for these.’

  ‘We all get them. It’s no matter.’ He took his hand away, examining a deep fissure in the web of skin between palm and thumb. He jerked his head towards the voices flowing up from beneath our feet. ‘Martha is not kin to you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Nor any of the others?’

  I shook my head again and looked up at him, surprised.

  ‘I thought not.’ He reached and grasped the ropes above his head. ‘You keep yourself separate. More often alone than in company.’

  ‘They were kind enough to take me in, offer me a place, but ... ’

  ‘You are an orphan.’

  I nodded.

  I did not count a mother lost almost as soon as she was discovered.

  ‘Me, too.’ He leaned forward in his rigging cradle. ‘My parents shipped to Virginia. My dad heard there was money to be made in planting tobacco, but he caught a fever and died, my ma alongside him. After that I had to shift for myself.’

  ‘You didn’t think to go home?’

  ‘Back to England?’ He shook his head. ‘No-one would welcome me. I’d be just another mouth to feed. I have no home there, no more’n you have, I’ll wager. I got a place as ship’s lad and this is home to me now.’ He gripped the ropes in his hands and leaned out over the water hissing under our bows. ‘The sea.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘The sea’s the life for me. I’ve been up and down this here coast, trading baccy and Barbados sugar and rum for furs and salted cod. Then over to England and France, the Wine Islands and Spain. It’s a growing trade. There’s money to be made.’

  I looked at him and he smiled as if reading my mind.

  ‘Even for the likes of me. I make a tidy sum carrying packets and letters. When I’ve got enough, I’ll buy part shares in a cargo, timber, furs, rum or tobacco. That’ll be sold in London and the money used to buy cloth, iron, tools, pots and pans and other needful things. Sell them and buy again. So it goes round.’ His eyes shone as he drew a circle in the air, describing the trade. ‘Then, when I have enough from that, I ... ’

  His voice was nearly drowned by a sudden burst of singing surging up from under our feet. They sang a psalm unaccompanied by any instrument, the sound was ragged, fervent and loud.

  Jack laughed. ‘Pious lot though, ain’t they?’ Elias Cornwell’s distinctive tenor warbled above the others. ‘The captain hates a parson worse than a witch.’ He looked round and dropped his voice as if to share a confidence. ‘We got one of them on board.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Strange things have been happening.’

  ‘Like the storm, you mean? But surely there are always storms at sea?’

  ‘I don’t mean that, Mary.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean other things. After the storm a great light settled on the mast,’ he cast a glance to where it stretched up above our heads, ‘setting it all aglow, like a great candle, but the flame gave no heat.’ He held out his arm. ‘Not enough to singe a sleeve. St Elmo’s Fire they called it, and it is rare to see. Some call it Witchfire and say that it’s her in spirit. And not just that. Some say there’s a hare on board, or a rabbit ... ’

  ‘A rabbit! How could that be?’ I laughed. ‘How did it hop aboard without anyone seeing? Where would it live?’

  ‘’Tis serious! Don’t laugh! A rabbit on board is very bad luck!’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ I shook my head, still laughing. ‘It must be the ship’s cat.’

  I’d seen that eyeing Martha’s chickens, a big evil-looking tabby with a scarred nose and ears all torn and ragged.

  ‘Maybe,’ Jack was not convinced. ‘But some say it’s a witch in disguise. Some of the lads are Cornish and they believe there’s something here.’ He frowned. ‘They know a witch faster than a Witch Pricker. They felt us being overlooked from Plymouth to Land’s End, and out beyond the Scillies.’

  His words sank home. I had not been alone in feeling eyes watching from the shore, but only I knew who they were watching for.

  ‘I’ve heard no word among the passengers.’

  I kept my voice merry, seeking to sound light-hearted still, although the mere thought of such talk struck dread deep inside me. I’d hoped to avoid suspicion, had not thought that it might follow me even across the ocean.

  ‘Nor will you. Sailors have their own superstitions, different from landsmen. What’s strange to us, ain’t so to you, like a parson on board or a woman whistling. Ships is odd places. It’s not just wind and weather causes upset. Captain’d come down hard on any found spreading rumours. They’d get a lashing. Besides,’ he shrugged, ‘things is going well at the moment.’ He grasped the wooden block above his head and gazed out at the fine day; just the right amount of wind in the mainsail to send the ship scudding over the spray. ‘It’s when things ain’t that folk look about for someone to blame for it.’

  I was wrong. Word had reached the great cabin of strange happenings during the storm, Martha told me, and there had been a ripple of talk of some kind of wild creature on board. But what Jack said was right. Fears ebb and flow, surging like the waves beneath us. When we were becalmed among the ice, the Reverend Cornwell’s mind ran to witchcraft in a trice, and who knows what would have been said had the storm raged for much longer, but now the sun shines and land is in sight. The winds are set fair to bring us safe to harbour. God’s eye looks kindly upon us. We bask in His Providence. I am safe. For the moment.

  Entry 24

  I have the power, none may doubt it. Whatever I may have hoped, I cannot escape my destiny. What happened today has served to prove that to me.

  The day was fine and I was up on deck talking to Jack. I do not seek him out (whatever Martha might think) but neither do I avoid his company. His work was slack and we were conversing about this and that, when suddenly there was yelling from up in the rigging. Someone fallen overboard, that’s what I thought, for from over the side of the ship came the sound of loud splashing.

  Jack took me by the hand, laughing at my alarm. He led me up the sloping deck, bidding me to ‘Come and see.’

  At first, I could see nothing, just a great turmoil in the water. Then I saw something dark just below the waves. It was so vast I thought it must be an island. The massive shape seemed to rise towards me and I could see clusterings of what looked like small white shells on the front edge of it. I remembered what he said about a treacherous coast and started back from the rail, taking this to be a rock. If we were to hit it, we would surely be lost.

  Free from the mass of the sea, water streamed away down the shiny black humped surface and suddenly there was a strange trumpeting hissing noise and a mist shot up, so fine that a rainbow shone through it. There was a strong fishy stench and I saw a great mouth, curved into a permanent leering grin, then the creature was gone as quickly and mysteriously as it had appeared. A leviathan. A great fish, like the one in the Bible that swallowed Jonah. It looked big enough to swallow us, ship and all. Another Great Wonder for the book Elias keeps.

  ‘It will not harm us.’ The great tail paddled the water and Jack leaned over the side to watch the creature descend into the emerald depths. ‘There is no need to fear. Look yonder. There are more.’

  I followed out where he was pointing and, sure enough, great fountains of water spouted up from more of the enormous creatures. Despite their huge bulk, they could leap right out of the water, landing with a great splash and a slap of their powerful curving tails.

  ‘I have never seen such fish.’

  ‘They are not fish,’ he said. ‘They are whales. Their blood is hot. They do not have gills. They breathe like you and me through the holes in their heads.’

  ‘I do not breathe through a hole in my head.�
��

  ‘What is your nose? What is your mouth?’

  I laughed. I had not thought of it like that.

  ‘One day, I mean to hunt them.’ He mimed picking up a harpoon and flinging it over the side. ‘I mean to have my own ship and I will hire men to go after them, for they are here in abundance and there is great wealth to be made from them ... ’

  He leaned on the ship’s rail and stared out at the great creatures swimming around us. Maybe it was the sea glittering beneath him, but his eyes seemed full of coins.

  The sun was hot above us, and the ship quiet, except for the creak of canvas and the hiss of the sea below. I, too, stared down at the water and the shimmering surface seemed to act just like the scrying bowl my grandmother used to tell the future. People would come to consult her and she would set up a bowl of clear water. She would stare down into it and visions would come unbidden; some showed the past, some showed what was to come. I had never tried it, although she thought I had the sight, so this had never happened to me before. As I looked, I saw.

  Scenes came in a jumble, not ordered by time.

  A boy, scarce more than a child. He is standing at the open door of a rough wooden hovel. His face is sad. His fair hair is dirty and unkempt, falling into blue eyes stripped of all merriment. He stays for a moment, uncertain. He glances back into the dark recesses of the hut, then he squares his shoulders and sets out down the dusty red path. He walks head down, looking neither to the left or the right as he passes through fields full of strange plants with big flopping leaves. The plants grow taller than him and are spaced apart in rows. Although I have never seen them before I know that they are tobacco. Through the leaves a great river gleams. A small narrow boat is tied to a little dock. It rests like a toy on a tarnished mirror. The boy gets into the craft, casting the rope off, and the river takes the boat, twirling it like a twig drifting on the current.

  The image fades and now I see a young man grown. He is dressed in a dark coat, buttoned to the neck, fur at the collar. He is bareheaded, his cap of bright hair shining in thin winter sunlight. He stands next to another river. The water is grey, slow-moving, sluggish and cold. This river flows through a great city. Buildings tumble down to the shore and crowd the bridge that crosses to the opposite side. He laughs, his white teeth shining, his breath curling in the air. In his hand he holds a purse bulging with gold.