A Vision of Light (33 page)

Dust and thirst bothered me considerably that day, and hunger, too, as I waited in the hot sun with my hands tied behind me, watching him sit in the shade, eat and drink, and dispense justice. It had to be a dream, didn’t it, that by the evening my feet would be burned to the bone, and I would be carried, screaming, to lie in jail for a week before my execution? These things happen to other people, not to me—not to somebody nice, like I am. It seemed very unfair. What is the good of seeing Light, and thinking you have some special task from God, only to find out that it’s a degrading and painful death that is what was waiting all along? My friends had obviously taken the safer course and left in a hurry. I didn’t blame them. It’s probably what I would have done myself.

But who had done this to me, and why? I thought of the rich lady, so fat and pompous. In my mind her rings and chains glittered and—wait! Hadn’t I seen her before? Walking—walking with her husband, the one who looked like Lewis Small. It had to be only one thing. That
was
Lewis Small! This was the way he thought, the way he acted. If he were wed again, he must have supposed me dead. Now he was a bigamist and must get rid of the evidence. How simple it all was. He was a creature of perfect, merciless logic. I would never escape him, never. I wished that I could cry. I would have felt better. But it was all over for me, Lewis Small had found me and killed me a second time. This time for good. I knew him well: he would come to the ordeal. He enjoyed other people’s agony. I suppose I didn’t give him enough agony the first time, I thought bitterly to myself.

By this time the flames were dying down, leaving a bed of red-hot coals. A crowd had gathered, for this promised to be the best sport of the fair. I could hear them talking.

“Don’t push! I got this place first!”

“Make way, make way, let the children sit down in front.”

“Young, isn’t she? These witches get younger every day—youth has no respect anymore, I say.”

“I say they don’t too—so you quit blocking my view.”

“Why isn’t she crying?”

“Witches can’t shed tears, you booby.”

On they went, gabbing and poking at each other and goggling their eyes at me. If it were another place, I’d have been embarrassed to tears. But now it was different.

I felt bad in a very strange way. How crude of God, I thought, to send all this Light and then end it. I felt like the victim of a practical joke. Didn’t Hilde say that God’s main characteristic was a sense of irony? Still, the Light was a wonderful feeling. It made me feel so much bigger and better than I really was. If it’s going to be all over for me, let me say good-bye to the Light and feel it all around. But I was being badly distracted. The coals were ready, and the priest was sprinkling things around the way they do, and saying prayers. They took away my shoes and hose, and then my dress and belt, leaving me in my undershirt with my braids hanging down.

Why must these things always be done in one’s undershirt? Mine, thank goodness, was a nice one, a remnant of my former marriage. It was a loose shift of white linen, prettily sewn and reembroidered in white around the neck. It had long sleeves and fell, nicely hemmed, midway below the knee. I had washed it not so long ago, so it was clean—not a thing you can say about everyone’s undershirt, if they have one. Penances and begging pardon—you always need a decent undershirt and good calluses on your feet. I suppose they do it for the spectacle, and the humiliation. And if it’s winter and you get sick, they say it’s God’s judgment. In the old days I’d have wondered if God wore an undershirt, but now I know that God is bigger than that.

I didn’t search the faces of the crowd when they led me before the coals; I was suddenly too frightened. They cut the rope on my wrists, and a sergeant held me at each elbow while they dropped a scrap of tinder on the coals to see if they were hot enough. They glowed cherry-red under a thin coating of white ash. With a puff the tinder was a blazing, floating shower of sparks that vanished almost instantly. Several men with pikes stood by to push me back into the fiery mass if I tried to flee.

It is an odd thing about fear; it grabs you like a big fist and shakes you terribly, and you feel like an entirely different person than you ordinarily are. My knees didn’t work like proper knees anymore. They quivered and folded as if they were made of jelly. I slumped, and they held me up by the arms. My chest felt as if it were being pressed by weights. My face, hands, and feet felt like ice.

“Please,” I whispered, “let me be here just a minute more until I can stand. Then I’ll step out by myself.” The big fist of fear seemed to loosen its hold a little. I stood by myself, but I was trembling all over. I couldn’t hear anything, even their answer—just a rushing noise in my ears.

Let it all be the same, I thought to myself, the Light and the fire. I pulled my mind away from fear and shame and put it in the Nothing, which quivered silently all around. With my eyes closed I felt a sort of humming glow through my mind, which was no longer me, but part of something else. I, that is, the little me of every day, was gone. Then I felt something strange trickling up my spine. Something glowing and noisy like a crackle, which was also a voice. The Voice was deep, inside and outside of my head at the same time. The Voice said, “There is no fear. There is no fire. Do not look down. Think that you step on cool stones under the waters of a river. Fix your eyes only on the Light.”

I opened my eyes, but I could see nothing. In place of the blackness behind closed eyes, I saw instead only pulsing shades of light that seemed to tear through me. I was quite blind. My eyes staring blankly, I stepped out onto the fiery coals and strode across them as I would a ford. Because I could not see, I walked in a semicircle on the glowing bed, staggering off nearly where I had begun. I could hear my heart. It made a dull sound that seemed to shake the universe. Someone pulled me by the arm, and I reeled and fell. Still I could not see. I could feel the crowd pressing closer.

“Look, she doesn’t see!”

“She’s blind.”

“Look at her feet, let’s see them.”

My feet! As I sat there on the ground, my sight slowly came back. A figure in black was leaning over me, holding the bandages in one hand. Why couldn’t I feel my feet? Were they burned off? Does one not feel that?

“Why, look at this, there is not a mark on her feet. This is clearly a miracle!” said the astonished priest, holding one of my feet up for general view. What on earth had happened? I still faintly felt a strange crackle in my spine.

“A miracle! A miracle!” the crowd murmured, and drew back. I could see people crossing themselves.

“She was falsely accused!” cried a voice.

“Yes, she even looks innocent. I always said it,” said another.

“Where is the accuser?” a big man shouted. I looked around me. Close by the opposite end of the bed of coals, a richly dressed man in green hose and dark scarlet gown was trying furtively to slip away in the crowd. I stared, trying to see who it was. Even though it was summer, there was fur trimming his gown, fur on his surcoat—it had to be Lewis Small. The head turned, and I saw the even-featured face that had long given me nightmares. The curls—as perfect as ever, but now tinted with a faint bit of gray. And he’d grown a little beard. Someone had probably told him that it was fashionable.

“That’s him, that rich devil there!” a voice called out. Was it one of the sergeants? The crowd blocked Small’s path. “Let me through, you rabble, can’t you see I’m a man of worth? You’ve made a mistake!” But the hint of fear in his voice gave him away.

“We saw him, we saw him, he’s the one,” called out an old woman, and the crowd surged around him so that I could barely make out a thrashing, fur-trimmed arm. I could hear his voice rising shrilly as he tried to break through the crush of bodies. I could see his wife, standing apart at a distance, her eyes wide with fear, before she hid herself in the crowd. Now I caught a glimpse of her fleeing, headdress askew, fighting her way in the opposite direction of the crowd.

“That’s him! That’s him! Tear him apart!” The crowd was milling and riotous.

“Let’s see him do it. He’s the one that’s working for the Devil!” A rough hand grabbed Lewis Small by his fur-lined surcoat, and he either tripped or was shoved onto the fiery bed of coals. He fell and cried out as his hand was singed, scrambling up and frantically trying to get away. His gold chains rattled and glittered. He had lost his plumed beaver hat, which lay smoking on the coals, before it suddenly burst into flames. It was an ugly hat, a nasty dark thing with a jewel on it and a little brim. In all this time he still had no taste.

The crowd had closed in around him now, and someone’s cudgel knocked him back onto the coals. He struggled up, frantic with pain, his eyes wild. This time his clothing smoldered and then caught fire. There was a dreadful stink like a singed cat, and I could see him clutching his burnt hands, the rings glistening on the blistered flesh. As the flames crawled up his back, he began to scream hideously and run. The crowd pulled back from him as the flames broke out in his hair, converting it into a sort of infernal wreath. Running fanned the flames, and the people cleared a wide path before him as the fire leapt from the dry stuff of his gown. Now he was clawing at his face and head, as if he could somehow stop the burning, and the blackened flesh and ashy beard cracked so that the blood flowed beneath the stubs of his fingers.

The crowd gazed with a sort of fascinated awe as the nearly unrecognizable, but still screaming, human torch ran insanely in an eccentric circle about the coals. Blindly he crashed into the tree behind the judge’s bench and fell on his back. Somehow the smoking arms and legs still worked, moving mindlessly, like a dying insect’s. Cinders and shreds of blackened clothing scattered about him on the ground, and I could see the white of bone. The crowd watched silently as the flames died around the blackened mass writhing and moaning on the ground, greasy black smoke still rising from it. I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t even move. My God, the man burned! I’d thought he’d emerge from the flames like a devil, still smiling his horrible smile. Don’t let him, don’t let him, I thought in terror. But the face—it wasn’t there. That blackened crust couldn’t make that awful smile ever again. The moaning—did it sound like my name? Never, dear God, never! Then the mass gave a convulsive shudder, and I could see one hand, all cracked and black like a burnt claw, pointing hideously in my direction. Dead, dead. I wanted to prod him with a stick, to make sure.

“Come away quickly, while they’re not looking.” Brother Sebastian’s voice was urgent as he threw my cloak over me and grabbed me up from the ground. With his arm around my back he pushed me into a run. Mother Hilde and the others were waiting a discreet distance away, packed and ready to go.

“Put on your shoes, child. But don’t stop to put on the rest. We have your clothes, you can put them on later. Tell me, just how is it your feet weren’t burned?”

Mother Hilde handed me my shoes, which I put on without hose.

“I don’t know, really. My feet are hurting right now from the stones we’ve run over.”

“Never question a perfectly good miracle, I say,” intoned Brother Sebastian. “And now we must away. As I always say—”

“Light feet and light hands!” the whole party chorused together.

Once a distance of a mile or so was between us and Sturbridge, we stopped so I could finish dressing, and put away my cloak, for it was a warm day. I had to show off my feet, which were bruised and not altogether clean, but certainly without burns, and that cheered everyone up greatly.

“We stayed to see if we could recapture you, Margaret,” said Hilde. “But we thought at best we’d have to load you up and hide you until your feet were well. And at worst—well, we won’t think about that.”

“You stayed for me? Just for me? Thank you, thank you, my true friends.” I sat down and cried, because I really couldn’t believe how good they’d been to me. But they embraced me and said they had expected it was more likely that I would have had to help Brother Sebastian flee, and that next time there was trouble I could make it all up to them.

“And now,” said Brother Sebastian, waving his arms, “a song to speed us on our way in merriment.” Tom and Little William began to sing:

“Young men, I rede that ye be ware

That ye come not into the snare,

For he is brought into much care

That has a shrew unto his wife.”

Then Brother Sebastian and the others joined in:

“In a net then I am caught,

My foot is penned, I may not out;

In sorrow and care that man is put

Who has a shrew unto his wife.”

Then they began a song about spring, which suited me better. We passed several happy miles in this way, until we stopped for supper at an alehouse in a village on the road. As it was quite crowded, we were lucky to find seats together in a corner. Merchants and travelers going to and from Sturbridge had given the owner very good business. We could not help overhearing the heated discussion going on at the table next to us.

“And Peter Taylor says that he saw a host of angels there lift her by the arms bodily over the fiery pit!”