When I was clear of them I sat on a boulder and looked down on the roofs of the town from which a few lazy whorls of smoke curled upwards like a fire that is almost out. A woman with a dog was picking flowers among the stumps of trees to my right, and beyond her four men were cutting down another scrub oak.
One thing I greatly missed in my new life was the sense of being up with events. Ships were always putting in to the Fat with news which had not yet reached London we were their first landfall and the constant coming and going of people great and small with tidings from Court or from the Indies made Arwenack something of an exchange and a clearing house. Here in Truro I was cut off from everything but the gossip of the town.
I got up from the stone as the woman with the dog came towards me. It was Katherine Footmarker.
She had already seen me, so I could not turn away. “Maugan Killigrew! I didn’t think to find you here!”
Perhaps it was the sun, but her sallow skin seemed to have flushed. She was wearing a cloak with the hood thrown back, and her hair was half down in a coil that disappeared under the cloak. Stumbling I explained.
“Well, so we are neighbours then, or more or less. I have a little place near the foot of the hill. Are you walking my way?”
It was hard to think of en’ excuse, so I turned and went with her. I felt again she had this spell over me, because sight of her had made my heart thump.
“After you played saviour to me I thought the mill might grow perilous with all your father’s strubbers roamin’ the countryside; so I came to Truro. Things would have gone hard with me here had I not been taken in by a friend, Mistress Larkin, who blows hot and cold in her friendship for me, and this, praise be, was one of the hot times. Alas, it was her last exercise in charity for in April she died, and I live in her property now, a small matter on sufferance since it is not accorded a good sign that my friend should pass away so 107
sudden but at least I am not molested or have not been as yet. And there are enough brave folks in the district who will come and buy my simples.”
She asked about Arwenack and how Mrs Killigrew was; what my father had said when he came home. She asked why I had been apprenticed to a pinch-purse like Chudleigh Michell who must she thought have been pock-marked from birth as a prophecy of what he was to become. When we got to her house, which was a tiny cob cottage built for support between two trees, she said:
“Will you come in, Maugan?”
“I have to go back. I must be back by five.”
“Since we’re neighbours and strangers in this town, will you come and see me again some time?”
“… Mr Michell is strict about his hours.”
“I believe that …” She put her basket down. “These will cure warts, and, suitably mixed with other ingredients, will avert chill bladders, strangury and colic … D’you still think I am a witch, Maugan?”
I did not know where to look.
“My father was an apothecary,” she said. “I have cousins who are apothecaries still. But my father taught me more than he ever taught them. There are ways and wisdoms that can only be passed from man to woman and woman to man. He learned me these before he died. It is perhaps a small kind of magic; but I don’t think it is witchcraft. I don’t feel myself a witch. I fail utterly to fly or to change my shape. I have experimented to try to change Moses, here, into a toad, as I was accused of doing in Penryn, but again I failed. I don’t think you will come to harm associatin’ with me. I have never wantonly harmed anyone in my life, and I certainly would not harm you. If you are lonely ever or in need of help, will you come?”
“Yes.”
“After all,” she said, “I am in your debt. Never forget that.”
Perhaps I was more lonely than I knew, for I saw her again, once or twice by accident and then once or twice by design. Deep down I still did not know whose design-it was, mine or hers no more did I yet know whether I had released her at Arwenack of my own choice. But I found my visits a break from the monotony of book-keeping and letter copying. They helped to keep my wits alive.
She lent me books. The Most Pleasant History of Tom-a—Lincoln, the Red Rose Knight. The Noble Birth and Gallant Achievements of Robin Hood; in Twelve several Stories. These were books of a kind I had never seen in Arwenack, where all reading under Parson Merther was a drudgery. She lent me The Delightful History of Reynard the Fox and Rey-nardine his Son, every Chapter illustrated with a curious Device or Picture representing to the Eye all the material Passages. And she lent me The Compleat Book of Knowledge, compiled by Erra Pater, made English by W. Lilly, a heavy volume full of information on Astronomy, Medicine, Weather, History and Cooking.
With my twopence a week spending money I bought rushlights and read far into the night.
One day in her cottage I told her that the eldest Michell child had burnt her fingers on the stove and she said: “I’ll give you some salve to take back with you. It’s a simple diaculum and will take away the hurt. If you soothe the pain out of a wound it is halfway to healing.” She went to a shelf. “Perhaps you’d like me to show you how I make it, then you can assure the Michells lest they think the ingredients unholy.”
“I have never told them I come here.”
“They’ll mislike it?”
“I don’t know.”
But I soon did know.
“Where?” said Mrs Michell cupping her ear. “Where did it come from? Who? Foot-what? Footmarker? … That woman! If she be a woman. No one be safe from her! Put that on my Emily’s fingers! Sooner I’d thrust ‘em in the fire ‘gain! Fire be where she did ought to be if Christian men and women knowed their duties! Toss ‘n out of window, boy … Nay, nay, come to think on it, fire is best. Wait now while I stir ‘n up, get a reg’lar blanze. Now then, toss’n in.”
“There’s no harm to it,” I said. “I saw it mixed. It is all clean herbs, pounded and blent.”
“What say? What? Green? Clean? Clean! Naught can be clean that she’s touched! She’s supped wi’ the Devil, sure ‘rough, and them as touches pitch … Throw it on the fire Maugan, if I tell Mr Michell ‘bout this …”
“You burn it if you want to,” I said.
“What? Whattre ye mumbling for? Speak up. Here, if ye’re feared to do it I will! “
Mrs Michell picked up a pair of tongs and with them gingerly clasped the pot I had brought. She dropped it and it rolled under a chair, but with a cry of fright and rage she 109
pursued it and caught it up again and at last dropped it into the fire. There it slowly turned black while the pot broke up and then suddenly flared into coloured flame.
“There!” she shouted in fear and triumph, waving the tongs in my face, while three of her babies cried piercingly. “There! What did I tell eel Eh? What d’you say? Mr Michell shall ‘ear of this!”
Chudleigh Michell said cautiously, picking at a pimple on his cheek: “Not as we’ve proof positive against she, but tis dangerous work, Maugan, tampering wi’ such like. What I say is, them as is not against Satan is like to be for ‘im. Witchcraft and such like is no call for ‘elf measures, and Mrs Michell’s rightly afeared for the mites. Five little souls we got in our charge, Maugan, and a sixth conceived lately. It don’t do to take chances, and I’ll thank you to keep away from such like. I’ve only had cause to beat you twice, Maugan, for lateness and such like; but this is devil’s work, and tis my duty not to spare the rod lest evil have got into ‘ee. Take off yer shirt.”