Familiar Spirits (7 page)

“He’d better bring a company, for time will not improve the disposition of this rout,” Arthur said. “We have no weapons but our fists, and precious good they’ll do outnumbered as we are.”

Eyeing the hostile faces before him, Matthew shared

Arthur’s concern. Many of these faces were unfamiliar to him. Now that a riot threatened, his timid neighbors had taken refuge indoors, were shuttering their windows, bolting their doors. At the forefront of the crowd were shabbily dressed laborers and ruffians from the alehouses, opportunists of sorts, spoiling for some ground to legitimize their bilious tempers. Those among them who had not heard of the specter were now being informed of it with many embellishments, and the story grew more complicated and horrific as it passed from mouth to mouth. Matthew spotted the grocer’s apprentice standing out of the way of the main throng and beckoned to him. Fearfully the lad responded to the summons. Matthew gave him a penny to go fetch the magistrate.

Then Matthew went up to the Waites’ door and knocked. It was some time before he had any response, and when it came it was only a voice from within—small and fearful but recognizable as John Waite’s. Fear had taken the edge from the normal curtness of his speech. Matthew identified himself, assured the young man that the door could be safely opened, and presently heard the sound of heavy objects being moved. The door opened slowly to expose a part of John Waite’s anxious face.

He motioned to Matthew to enter quickly, and then shut the door and barricaded it with one of the glover’s counters, explaining as he struggled with this task that the family had been aware of the uproar outside for some time and had barricaded the house for fear of their lives. The nephew had an old sword that he had searched out in a desperate moment, believing, as he explained again, that an invasion of the house was imminent.

“You had good reason to be fearful,” said Matthew, “but I believe you are in no immediate danger. The crowd is hostile enough, but they want a leader and as long as they lack one they’re not likely to do more than stand in the street and shake their fists. They’ll grow weary of that too, come dinnertime,” he concluded, hoping it was all true.

The nephew received these assurances with a skeptical expression but didn’t stay to argue. He led the way into the

back of the house where Margaret and the two servant girls had taken refuge.

Matthew greeted the women, and then Brigit Able confirmed what he had suspected. She had overslept and, opening her little window for the morning air, she had been startled to see the street so full of people. When the woman screamed, she shut the window at once and ran to wake her mistress, who had also lain abed late. Then Margaret apologized for the untidy state of things and seemed more embarrassed for the disarray and her own unsightliness than for the danger presented by the crowd at her door. About that she was much confused. Why had the crowd gathered in the first place, she wanted to know.

“Someone has told them of the apparition,” Matthew said, casting a sidelong glance at Brigit. But the girl showed no sign of guilt. She seemed as surprised as anyone else in the house that the story had got out. “When the woman saw Brigit at the window, she thought it was the ghost again. The idea caught on, and in an instant the crowd was beyond being persuaded otherwise.”

The nephew laughed bitterly, his wonted sneer returning full force. “What did I tell you? Is this not too perfect for words? Why, had a dog made water before the house they would have thought it the Devil in disguise marking his territory.”

Margaret now seemed genuinely alarmed. She was even more so when Matthew informed them that the entire household was under suspicion of witchcraft. She turned deadly pale and was forced to sit down. She was not a well woman, she declared in a weak, pathetic voice. First her husband’s death, now this. She complained of a headache, of palpitations.

Brigit went into the kitchen for a cordial. The other servant, Susan Goodyear, went upstairs to fetch a coverlet for her mistress. John Waite began to ridicule the allegations against his family. He waved his arms threateningly and challenged Matthew to identify the persons who had so slan-

dered him, for he intended, he said, to take legal action against them. “Fools and liars all,” he declared.

“The accusation is common, on everyone’s tongue,” Matthew said. “You would have to sue half the town. It would be futile.”

The conversation was interrupted by a round of loud knocks on the door. Matthew went with the nephew to see who it was. Thomas Crispin and his wife, two other women, and the parson stood waiting. The women had come to help wash and enshroud the body of the dead man, the parson to console the widow. Crispin had been out of town all morning and had only just heard of the uproar, which had subsided considerably. There was still a gawking crowd, but it seemed quieter, less hostile. The ruffians had gone off somewhere for a drink. However, the neighbors were back, watching, and the little party had had to endure their insults.

“They showed small respect for the Church,” the parson said, smoothing his cassock and staring in bewilderment at the improvised barricade and at John Waite’s drawn sword. “Constable Stock, can nothing be done to quell this riot?”

“A greater, more ear-piercing broil has never been seen or heard in Chelmsford,” remarked one of the women, who also objected that her mission of Christian mercy should be so ill-regarded. She was an ironmonger's wife, a woman of some substance and reputation in the community. She had come at the parson’s behest and had never been so vilified in her life, she complained, regarding Matthew with great severity as though he were responsible for the indecencies visited upon her.

Everyone went into the parlor, where Brigit was administering the cordial to her mistress and Susan was tucking the coverlet underneath her chin. Margaret looked up, relieved to see her sister. She smiled wanly. After preliminary conversation and condolences Matthew took a chair with the others. The rude crowd was now forgotten.

Brigit built up the fire while Susan offered a semblance of hospitality. The two servants disappeared, and the parson

commenced a sermon on excessive grief that lasted nearly half an hour by Matthew’s reckoning. This was followed by much talk about the deceased, and since everyone present, except for the parson, had known Malcolm Waite all of their lives, there was a generous supply of anecdote to dwell on. At length the widow made a sign to indicate that the time had come for the body to be laid out. She rose and led the other women into the adjoining chamber.

At once John Waite resumed his complaints about the town as though he were talking with one of his London friends and not Chelmsford residents, characterizing the citizenry as a rude, credulous lot of busybodies, drunken louts, and villains, predisposed to riotous assemblies and ignorant of logic and reason. He spoke of the last two abstractions as though they were special intimates of his.

Matthew and the other men endured this diatribe impatiently; however, since no one seemed willing to defend the town at the moment, the nephew was allowed to rave on. When he finished, the men began to speculate about how the word of Ursula’s apparition had spread. Matthew confessed he suspected Brigit or Susan.

“Most likely,” said John Waite with a supercilious sneer. “Both are saucy wenches whom my aunt would do well to put out-of-doors now that her husband is dead. It was he who favored them, not out of any unwholesome lust, but rather a simpleminded charitableness and a weakness of will when it came to disciplining servants.”

The parson looked to be on the verge of defending charity when the women came filing back into the room. At the same instant, Susan entered to say the undertaker’s men were at the door. Margaret told her to show them in. Presently heavy footfalls could be heard on the wooden planking of the shop floor and the two men entered. They were shabbily dressed and dour; they eyed the room curiously, walking heavily with their load, the empty coffin. Margaret showed them to the room where her husband’s body lay, and wept into her handkerchief when, moments later, they returned with the body inside. It was clear from the expressions of the

men that their task, unpleasant in the best of circumstances, was the worse for the present case. They had heard the commotion in the street, the whispers. They regarded the widow with obvious caution and seemed eager to be gone.

Outside, the appearance of the undertaker’s men and their burden caused another stir among those who had lingered during the noon hour. Neighbors explained to newcomers in hushed tones whose body it was that was being carted away and how the man had died. Matthew had accompanied the men outdoors, watchful of further trouble. Since things seemed calm enough now, he sent Arthur Wilts home to his dinner, asking him to return afterward to resume his watch. Then Matthew went into the parlor, where a discussion of funeral arrangements was in progress. The parson was expressing concern about the possibility of further demonstrations. He said he hoped no unruly gathering would desecrate the holy precincts of the church. The remark set poorly with both Thomas Crispin and John Waite, and a heated exchange followed, the conclusion of which was the parson’s stalking out with the ironmonger’s wife and her friend, all in very ill humor and mumbling about the ingratitude of those whose deserts were in grave doubt, given the circumstances. After this, attention was paid the widow, who had been made very upset by this dispute. Matthew took the opportunity to inquire of the nephew if he might speak to the two servants.

“Upstairs they went,” said the nephew moodily. “Speak to them as you will, Constable.”

•
FIVE
•

The
upper story of the house consisted of a dark, narrow landing opening into three rooms—the great bedchamber, in which the glover and his wife had slept, and two smaller rooms, one of which was being occupied by the nephew during his stay. The floors were strewn with fresh rushes, but the rooms themselves were meanly furnished. The walls were bare and cracked. There was also a tiny closet that contained a steep flight of stairs leading to the attic. Even as Matthew ascended, he could hear the two girls whispering.

The whispering stopped before his head emerged into the open space. The attic, which sloped with the pitch of the roof, was lighted by small square windows on either side, tucked under the eaves as an afterthought. Against a wall stood a trundle bed, hardly more than a cot, and on this single piece of furniture the two servants were sitting.

He greeted them pleasantly, but they did not return his greeting. They both seemed nervous, and it was obvious that the younger of the two, Susan Goodyear, had been weeping. He told them he had come to speak to them about their master’s death—with Susan first.

At this, Brigit rose, cast an uncertain glance at her companion, and said she would go downstairs to see if her mistress wanted anything.

When Brigit’s descending steps had faded away, Matthew walked to the tiny window where earlier he had observed the startled face of Brigit from the street below. It was a simple

casement without glass, a commodity too expensive to be wasted in an attic window. He opened the casement and peered down at the street. Traffic moved as normal for the time of the day. Arthur Wilts stood talking with a man Matthew didn’t recognize. He closed the casement and turned to the girl on the bed.

Like her fellow servant, Susan Goodyear was a plain girl of undernourished figure. She wore a little cloth cap that tipped slightly to the left ear, and beneath this her small face with its long jaw and discolored teeth reflected the meanness of her existence. She had testified at the trial of Ursula Tusser, and this earlier experience of interrogation seemed to Matthew the cause of her anxiety in his presence. She fidgeted nervously and stared at him with wide, fearful eyes.

Matthew felt a surge of pity for her plainness. “I mean you no harm/’ he said kindly.

“I’ve done nothing wrong, sir,” Susan said in a tearful voice.

“That’s good—I did not think you had. I want to ask some questions of you.”

“Of me?”

He explained he had not been at Ursula’s trial, had not heard her account. Would she tell him what had transpired between them, how Ursula had bewitched her?

She made no objection to telling her story. In a thin, uncertain voice she explained how she had become one of Ursula’s circle. She had come to work for the Waites a little over a year earlier—about Michaelmas or so, she said, computing the date in her mind with great earnestness and difficulty, as though the moment of her first employment was not only germane but crucial. The association and, ultimately, friendship of the two girls seemed inevitable. They were of the same age, both servants. They dwelt in adjacent houses of kinsmen. Comings and goings between the two families were constant. In her first month of service, Susan had been homesick beyond endurance. Her mother—a poor widow with a large brood to care for—lived in Colchester. Susan had thought of running away. Then Ursula, a quiet girl like her-

self, had made signs of friendship, bringing her nosegays, which Ursula had found in the meadow, and once a funny black kitten, who had unfortunately died the same day. As Susan continued to describe her relationship with Ursula, it was clear the Crispins’ servant had taken the place of an older sister for Susan.

“What of Brigit?” Matthew asked.

“Oh, she was not yet come. Then I was the only servant. Philipa Carey had died of the fever a week before I came.”