“Paid John Harris, Lamrest, œ15. Owe him œ235. Owe John Heale œ1000, Mr Challenor œ250, Hugh Jones œ550. Paid Mr Coswarth and his uncle œ50. Owe Wm Gilbert of London, haberdasher, œ26. Mr Siprian of London, farrier, œ100. Paid Mrs Arscott œ15. Owe Her Majesty by the report of Mr Reynolds of the exchequer, œ1,700. Borrowed of Mr Stanes œ200, owe him now œ1400. Owe Anthony Honey, œ150.”
There was a long list of smaller entries, some of them household items of expenditure, some debts, some rents received.
I wandered through the dark passage into the hall, where the servants were now laying the cloths for dinner. Parson Merther was passing down it with his thin ferret face a-tremble.
I said: “How is Mrs Killigrew, sir? Is the baby born yet?”
He gave me a distraught glance in which he scarcely seemed to recognise me and said: “Musculorum convulsio cum sopore.”
I turned and looked after his hurrying form. For the second time since he had gone I wished Mr Killigrew home.
At dinner that day Rosewarne reappeared. He looked thin and still sweaty as if the ague had not yet left him. Mistress Wolverstone had also come down; I heard Aunt Mary say in an undertone to Miss Wolverstone:
“She will not live long unless something be done. The child’s head has descended but these convulsions will kill them both. She is quite out of her mind between the fits, and nothing we can do brings her aidance. I think tis more a spell than a disease. We have rubbed her face with my topaz and given her saxifrage root and motherwort. What John will say when he returns I know not.”
“There is a young woman lives near Penryn,” said Mistress Wolverstone, pulling up her fur collar against the draught. “Has she been asked?”
“None of them will come. They have no fancy for our household while the fever is among us.”
“I am of the opinion Maud should get up, even if it is only to sit in a chair and give her counsel.”
“Have you seen Maud? She can as yet no more put foot to floor than fly.”
I had to go then to my seat because Parson Merther was about to say grace. But after the meal I pretended not to see his beckoning hand and slid away towards where my aunt and my great-aunt and Mr Knyvett and Rosewarne and Jael Job were standing talking together. I knew what they were talking about, whom they were talking about, and I had to hear.
“… I’ve heard tell she is very skilful with medicines and herbs, and if it’s a spell been put on my sister, then this woman is as like as anyone to know the cure. If she would come.”
“Oh, Katherine Footmarker is afeared of nothing.”
“Well might she be afeared of nothing,” said Rosewarne, “seein’ Who she serves. To bring her in the ‘ouse would call down worse misfortune than we now suffer.”
“There’s some as do good as well as harm,” Mistress Wolverstone said, folding her gouty hands. “I was once cured of the stone by a girl witch in Suffolk. It was magic the way she did it. Did Rose ask this woman?”
Mr Knyvett took the toothpick from his mouth. “You may be assured if Rose was sent he went no nearer than to throw a stone. Rose would take fright at the first flap of a black cloak.”
“Twould be true of any of we, sir,” Rosewarne said doggedly. “There’s bad tales of Katherine Footmarker. They say she dance naked in the full moon and if once she touch a youth he be lost for ever.”
“I’ll go for her,” said Jael Job. “If so be as you’ve the mind to send for her. I’m not afeared. I’ll go and ask her if she’ll come.”
Everyone looked at him. Perhaps it was in their minds that he was ready to go because as yet his wife bore the weight of responsibility for what happened in the upstairs chamber, and he would rid her of it. John Killigrew’s return hung over them all.
“I think she should be asked,” said Aunt Mary. “It is the least we can do, and what worse can a witch bring than what those men brought? Foulness and liquor, lechery and gluttony, poison and pestilence. A child dies every time they come to this house. Take someone with you, Job, if you want company.”
“I think, ma’am, Rose would come if I done the talking. Maybe if I go straight away she can be here and gone again afore nightfall.”
Katherine Footmarker came.
I saw her from a window striding up the long approach, a black caul over her hair against the rain. She carried a cloth bag drawn together at the top by a red string. Behind her, at a distance, followed Job and Rose. When she came into the house she must have been watched from all points by eyes as curious and as frightened as mine. All work came to a stop.
What happened I learned later. It seemed that my poor stepmother was still having fits, and the child was as yet unborn. In the fits Mrs Killigrew was becoming violent, and between them she lay like one dead except now and then for a long shuddering sigh. Katherine Footmarker looked over the sick woman thoroughly and in silence. Then she opened her bag and sent Mrs Job for a cauldron of hot water. All this while Mrs Killigrew lay quiet, but at this stage she began to shake with her next convulsion. Footmarker thereupon caused a crystal of salt or nitre or some other unknown element to be inserted in the sick woman’s rectum, and at the same time rags were soaked in the water, a strange yellow flower powdered over them, and wrapped around, and the steaming hot bandage put about her head.
Kate Penruddock said that when this was applied a strange draught came into the room and caused all the candle flames to flutter and darken. At the same moment Mrs Killigrew gave a piercing scream and her struggles began to subside. Afterwards there were strong faecal evacuations before the birth pangs began again. For an hour this continued, then Footmarker sent for a needle and with this pierced the jugular vein, drawing off a little poisoned blood. At about four o’clock Mrs Killigrew came to her senses and asked for a drink of wine. This Katherine Footmarker refused her, but instead she mixed her a posses in which were dissolved some fennel and poppy seed and terrible things out of two bottles that Mrs Penruddock could not bring herself to describe. At five o’clock Mrs Killigrew was delivered of a strong male child, perfect in every part.
A little later, just as darkness was falling, the child went into convulsions of its own and died. They said it wore such an expression on its face as if it was a damned soul.
Much against our wishes we had been herded in by Parson Merther to wash ourselves and tidy for supper, so I knew nothing for a time except that Katherine Footmarker had triumphed. I was full of a strange exaltation as if I had been a party to the magic. After all my fears, this proved that the woman I had been to was good and not evil. I had done no wrong by going to her. I was delighted for Mrs Killigrew that she was through her ordeal. Perhaps if Katherine Footmarker had been summoned earlier she might even have been able to save Paul Knyvett’s life and those others who had died from the fever.
We trooped into the hall a half hour later than the appointed time of six, knowing the meal would not be ready yet; fifteen or so of the servants were standing about in groups whispering, and Mr Knyvett was already seated at the top table waving his toothpick and talking to Rosewarne who was standing behind him.
Belemus had slipped away on the walk downstairs and he rejoined us now and moved into place beside me.
“The child’s dead,” he said.
Then I had a strange and terrible feeling in my vitals as if the fever had struck.
“How? When?”
“Of fits. Of the foulest most fiendish fits ever you saw. They say that as it died its body contorted and changed into the shape of a black dog.”
“… How could that be?”
He looked at me with his craggy face twisted wryly. “I don’t know how it could be, cousin. I only know that that is how it is being spoken about the house. It may be as Rosewarne and others swear that the Footmarker woman is as she is because she’s kissed the naked buttocks of the devil bent over the altar at black mass. Anyway, if she can grow wings and fly, now is the time for her to do it.”