“Master Iffley does craft the queen’s gloves,” George acknowledged.
“He made her a single pair of hunting gauntlets two decades ago. That’s hardly enough to make Iffley the most important man for thirty miles, dearly as he might covet the honor.” Matthew snorted contemptuously. “Singly none of them are terribly bright. Together they’re downright foolish. If that’s the best the village can do, we can return to our reading.”
“That’s it?” Walter’s voice was brittle. “We sit and let them come to us?” “Yes. But Diana doesn’t leave my sight—or yours, Gallowglass,” Matthew warned.
“You don’t have to remind me of my family duty, Uncle. I’ll be sure your feisty wife makes it to your bed tonight.”
“Feisty, am I? My husband is a member of the Congregation. A posse of men is coming on horseback to accuse me of harming a friendless old woman. I’m in a strange place and keep getting lost on my way to the bedroom. I still have no shoes. And I’m living in a dormitory full of adolescent boys who never stop talking!” I fumed. “But you needn’t trouble yourself on my account. I can take care of myself!”
“Take care of yourself?” Gallowglass laughed at me and shook his head. “No you can’t. And when the fighting’s done, we’ll need to see to that accent of yours. I didn’t understand half of what you just said.”
“She must be Irish,” Hancock said, glaring at me. “That would explain the spellbinding and the disordered speech. The whole lot of them are mad.”
“She’s not Irish,” Gallowglass said. “Mad or no, I would have understood her accent if that were the case.”
“Quiet!” Matthew bellowed.
“The men from the village are at the gatehouse,” Pierre announced in the ensuing silence.
“Go and fetch them,” Matthew ordered. He turned his attention to me. “Let me do the talking. Don’t answer their questions unless and until I tell you to do so. Now,” he continued briskly, “we can’t afford to have anything . . . unusual happen tonight as it did when Widow Beaton was here. Are you still dizzy? Do you need to lie down?”
“Curious. I’m curious,” I said, hands clenched. “Don’t worry about my magic or my health. Worry about how many hours it’s going to take you to answer my questions after the minister is gone. And if you try to wiggle out of them with the excuse that ‘it’s not my tale to tell,’ I’ll flatten you.”
“You are perfectly fine, then.” Matthew’s mouth twitched. He dropped a kiss on my forehead. “I love you, ma lionne.”
“You might reserve your professions of love until later and give Auntie a chance to compose herself,” Gallowglass suggested.
“Why does everyone feel compelled to tell me how to manage my own wife?” Matthew shot back. The cracks in his composure were starting to show.
“I really couldn’t say,” Gallowglass replied serenely. “She reminds me a bit of Granny, though. We give Philippe advice morning, noon, and night about how best to control her. Not that he listens.”
The men arranged themselves around the room. The apparent randomness of their positions created a human funnel—wider at the entrance to the room, narrower at the fireside where Matthew and I sat. As George and Kit would be the first to greet the man of God and his companions, Walter whisked away their dice and the manuscript of Doctor Faustus in favor of a copy of Herodotus’s Histories. Though it was not a Bible, Raleigh assured us it would lend proper gravitas to the situation. Kit was still protesting the unfairness of the substitution when footsteps and voices sounded.
Pierre ushered the three men inside. One so strongly resembled the reedy young man who had measured me for shoes that I knew at once he was Joseph Bidwell. He started at the sound of the door closing behind him and looked uneasily over his shoulder. When his bleary eyes faced forward again and he saw the size of the assembly awaiting him, he jumped once more. Walter, who occupied a position of strategic importance in the middle of the room with Hancock and Henry, ignored the nervous shoemaker and cast a look of disdain at a man in a bedraggled religious habit.
“What brings you here on such a night, Mr. Danforth?” Raleigh demanded.
“Sir Walter,” Danforth said with a bow, taking a cap from his head and twisting it between his fingers. He spotted the Earl of Northumberland. “My lord! I did not know you were still amongst us.”
“Is there something you need, ?” Matthew asked pleasantly. He remained seated, legs stretched out in apparent relaxation.
“Ah. Master Roydon.” Danforth made another bow, this one directed at us. He gave me a curious look before fear overtook him and redirected his eyes to his hat. “We have not seen you in church or in town. Bidwell thought you might be indisposed.”
Bidwell shifted on his feet. The leather boots he wore squelched and complained, and the man’s lungs joined in the chorus with wheezes and a barking cough. A wilted ruff constricted his windpipe and quivered every time he tried to draw breath. Its pleated linen was distinctly the worse for wear, and a greasy brown spot near his chin suggested he’d had gravy with supper.
“Yes, I was taken sick in Chester, but it has passed with God’s grace and thanks to my wife’s care.” Matthew reached out and clasped my hand with husbandly devotion. “My physician thought it would be best if my hair were shorn to rid me of the fever, but it was Diana’s insistence on cool baths that made the difference.”
“Wife?” Danforth said faintly. “Widow Beaton did not tell me—”
“I do not share my private affairs with ignorant women,” Matthew said sharply.
Bidwell sneezed. Matthew examined him first with concern, then with a carefully managed look of dawning understanding. I was learning a great deal about my husband this evening, including the fact that he could be a surprisingly good actor.
“Oh. But of course you are here to ask Diana to cure Bidwell.” Matthew made a sound of regret. “There is so much idle gossip. Has the news of my wife’s skill spread already?”
In this period medicinal knowledge was perilously close to a witch’s lore. Was Matthew trying to get me in trouble?
Bidwell wanted to respond, but all he could manage was a gurgle and a shake of his head.
“If you are not here for physic, then you must be here to deliver Diana’s shoes.” Matthew looked at me fondly, then to the minister. “As you have no doubt heard, my wife’s possessions were lost during our journey, Mr. Danforth.” Matthew’s attention returned to the shoemaker, and a shade of reproach crept into his tone. “I know you are a busy man, Bidwell, but I hope you’ve finished the pattens at least. Diana is determined to go to church this week, and the path to the vestry is often flooded. Someone really should see to it.”
Iffley’s chest had been swelling with indignation since Matthew had started speaking. Finally the man could stand it no more.
“Bidwell brought the shoes you paid for, but we are not here to secure your wife’s services or trifle with pattens and puddles!” Iffley drew his cloak around his hips in a gesture that was intended to convey dignity, but the soaked wool only emphasized his resemblance to a drowned rat, with his pointy nose and beady eyes. “Tell her, Mr. Danforth.”
The Reverend Danforth looked as though he would rather be roasting in hell than standing in Matthew Roydon’s house, confronting his wife.
“Go on. Tell her,” urged Iffley.
“Allegations have been made—” That was far as Danforth got before Walter, Henry, and Hancock closed ranks.
“If you are here to make allegations, sir, you can direct them to me or to his lordship,” Walter said sharply.
“Or to me,” George piped up. “I am well read in the law.” “Ah . . . Er . . . Yes . . . Well . . .” The cleric subsided into silence. “Widow Beaton has fallen ill. So has young Bidwell,” said Iffley, determined to forge on in spite of Danforth’s failing nerve.
“No doubt it is the same ague that afflicted me and now the boy’s father,” my husband said softly. His fingers tightened on mine. Behind me Gallowglass swore under his breath. “Of what, exactly, are you accusing my wife, Iffley?”
“Widow Beaton refused to join her in some evil business. Mistress Roydon vowed to afflict her joints and head with pains.”
“My son has lost his hearing,” Bidwell complained, his voice thick with misery and phlegm. “There is a fierce ringing in his ears, like unto the sound of a bell. Widow Beaton says he has been bewitched.”
“No,” I whispered. The blood left my head in a sudden, startling drop. Gallowglass’s hands were on my shoulders in an instant, keeping me upright.
The word “bewitched” had me staring into a familiar abyss. My greatest fear had always been that humans would discover I was descended from Bridget Bishop. Then the curious glances would start, and the suspicions. The only possible response was flight. I tried to worm my fingers from Matthew’s grasp, but he might have been made of stone for all the good it did me, and Gallowglass still had charge of my shoulders.
“Widow Beaton has long suffered from rheumatism, and Bidwell’s son has recurrent putrid throats. They often cause pain and deafness. These illnesses occurred before my wife came to Woodstock.” Matthew made a lazy, dismissive gesture with his free hand. “The old woman is jealous of Diana’s skill, and young Joseph was taken with her beauty and envious of my married state. These are not allegations, but idle imaginings.”
“As a man of God, Master Roydon, it is my responsibility to take them seriously. I have been reading.” Mr. Danforth reached into his black robes and pulled out a tattered sheaf of papers. It was no more than a few dozen sheets crudely stitched together with coarse string. Time and heavy use had softened the papers’ fibers, fraying the edges and turning the pages gray. I was too far away to make out the title page. All three vampires saw it, though. So did George, who blanched.
“That’s part of the Malleus Maleficarum. I did not know that your Latin was good enough to comprehend such a difficult work, Mr. Danforth,” Matthew said. It was the most influential witch-hunting manual ever produced, and a title that struck terror into a witch’s heart.
The minister looked affronted. “I attended university, Master Roydon.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. That book shouldn’t be in the possession of the weak-minded or superstitious.”
“You know it?” Danforth asked.
“I, too, attended university,” Matthew replied mildly.
“Then you understand why I must question this woman.” Danforth attempted to advance into the room. Hancock’s low growl brought him to a standstill.
“My wife has no difficulties with her hearing. You needn’t come closer.”
“I told you Mistress Roydon has unnatural powers!” Iffley said triumphantly.
Danforth gripped his book. “Who taught you these things, Mistress Roydon?” he called down the echoing expanse of the hall. “From whom did you learn your witchcraft?”
This was how the madness began: with questions designed to trap the accused into condemning other creatures. One life at a time, witches were caught up in the web of lies and destroyed. Thousands of my people had been tortured and killed thanks to such tactics. Denials burbled up into my throat.
“Don’t.” Matthew’s single word of warning was uttered in an icy murmur.
“Strange things are happening in Woodstock. A white stag crossed Widow Beaton’s path,” Danforth continued. “It stopped in the road and stared until her flesh turned cold. Last night a gray wolf was seen outside her house. Its eyes glowed in the darkness, brighter than the lamps that were hung out to help travelers find shelter in the storm. Which of these creatures is your familiar? Who gifted you with it?” Matthew didn’t need to tell me to keep silent this time. The priest’s questions were following a well-known pattern, one I had studied in graduate school.
“The witch must answer your questions, Mr. Danforth,” Iffley insisted, pulling at his companion’s sleeve. “Such insolence from a creature of darkness cannot be allowed in a godly community.”
“My wife speaks to no one without my consent,” said Matthew. “And mind whom you call witch, Iffley.” The more the villagers challenged him, the harder it was for Matthew to restrain himself.
The minister’s eyes traveled from me to Matthew and back again. I stifled a whimper.
“Her agreement with the devil makes it impossible for her to speak the truth,” Bidwell said.
“Hush, Master Bidwell,” Danforth chided. “What do you wish to say, my child? Who introduced you to the devil? Was it another woman?”
“Or man,” Iffley said under his breath. “Mistress Roydon is not the only child of darkness to be found here. There are strange books and instruments, and midnight gatherings are held to conjure spirits.”
Harriot sighed and thrust his book at Danforth. “Mathematics, sir, not magic. Widow Beaton spotted a geometry text.”
“It is not your place to determine the extent of the evil here,” Iffley sputtered.
“If it’s evil you’re seeking, look for it at Widow Beaton’s.” Though he’d done his best to remain calm, Matthew was rapidly losing his temper.
“Do you accuse her of witchcraft, then?” Danforth asked sharply.
“No, Matthew. Not that way,” I whispered, tugging on his hand to gain his attention.
Matthew turned to me. His face looked inhuman, his pupils glassy and enormous. I shook my head, and he took a deep breath, trying to calm both his fury at the invasion of his home and his fierce instinct to protect me.
“Stop your ears against his words, Mr. Danforth. Roydon might be an instrument of the devil, too,” Iffley warned.
Matthew faced the delegation. “If you have reason to charge my wife with some offense, find a magistrate and do so. Otherwise get out. And before you return, Danforth, consider whether aligning with Iffley and Bidwell is a wise course of action.”
The parson gulped.
“You heard him,” Hancock barked. “Out!”
“Justice will be served, Master Roydon—God’s justice,” Danforth proclaimed as he backed out of the room.