‘Dame Magda?’
A jarring return to the bench, once more an old woman wrapped in layers of wool, hair bound. She had known Einar would be wakeful, but could not resist the swim.
‘I will leave in the morning,’ he said. ‘Unless you feel you need me–’
‘Thou art better off without Asa.’
He planned to stay in the city with Janet Fuller, assisting her and Brother Michaelo in seeing to the victims of the sickness. In the autumn he would leave on his quest. He had asked whether Magda would accept him as a student were he to be drawn back to her.
‘Magda and thee will talk more before thou dost depart.’
‘But will you?’
‘Magda has not rejected thee. Only advised thee to be certain.’
‘How old was Yrsa when you returned to your people?’
‘Five turns of the seasons.’
‘Then I may be away a long while. Will you–’
‘Be here? Alive? If not, thou wilt find another teacher. Perhaps thou wilt find them in another place.’
‘I cannot imagine.’
She smiled at that. ‘Thou art attempting to control rather than accept what comes. Be at peace. Thou hast a good heart. Thy way will be true.’
He bowed to her. ‘I don’t expect to sleep, and both of you need your rest. I will spend the night at Old Shep’s and leave from there.’
‘Take the bag Magda packed for thee.’ Powders and unguents for the sickness. She touched his cheek. ‘Courage. Trust thine own heart.’
When he left, she joined once more with the dragon, diving down into the silken depths, warmed by the fire within.
It was a hideous vision of Alan with burning eyes melting his face, bat wings protruding from his back, thick thorny vines spilling from his mouth and hands, crawling with spiders and rats. In Asa’s characteristic way the vines crept insidiously over the page entwining animals and people, crushing or strangling them. Owen crumpled the paper in his hand. He had thought to show it to Magda. But it would be enough for him to describe it.
‘Asa drew that?’ Lucie asked, her voice sharp with horror.
‘Alan Rawcliff’s soul, I think. She’d kept it in her scrip. I imagine she had meant to show him.’
‘That and the poppet. She was taunting him.’
‘I will burn it.’
‘Yes, do. But not in the house. The brush pile in the garden. I will ring it with angelica.’
The smoke rose, curling into the soft summer sky. A sudden draft caught it, pulling it away.
‘God’s grace is upon us,’ Lucie whispered.
‘Amen,’ said Owen.
Clasping hands, they prayed a Hail Mary, ora pro nobis peccatoribus …
‘She never understood the purpose of her drawings,’ said Owen.
‘And now it is too late? She will lose all use of her hand?’
‘She has lost the hand itself, I think.’ He had dreamed it in the night, a terrible price.
He stayed in the garden to work on the trench, working up a healthy, healing sweat, letting his mind go quiet, this simple task his most ambitious goal for the morning. The early June sun was warm overhead when a familiar voice called to him.
Peter Ferriby stood beneath the linden. Leaned against it, wiping his forehead.
Tossing his spade aside, Owen went to him. ‘Are you ill?’
‘Old, that is what I am. A long ride, then the walk here, and my legs are ready to give out in protest. But I wanted to bring news.’
Owen was drawing him to the bench beneath the linden when Lucie hurried out from the workshop, her lovely face set in a determined smile. ‘Benedicite, Peter. I pray your family are well?’
‘Yes. They all love the country. Yours as well. I have brought news of all three.’
‘Come. Sit with us,’ said Owen. ‘I will fetch some ale. But first – our children are well, you say?’
‘God help me. These old bones,’ said Peter as he lowered himself to the bench with a wince. ‘Well? Bless me, yes. More than that, thriving. Gwen and Hugh are daring adventurers. You will have your hands full with that pair. A jester and a fine hawker, your son. She enjoys the hawks as well, and is a fine rider. Both my boys have declared their undying love for Gwen and spend their visits vying for her attention. Emma tumbles about all the day with your steward’s children, a riotous brood.’
Lucie took Owen’s hand, pressed it. ‘That is good news.’ Her voice husky with emotion. ‘I am grateful. Dine with us?’
‘Gladly. My nephew’s told me of his exploits in your service. I take it the burning of the bedding was the least of the happenings next door.’
‘Oh, indeed,’ said Owen. ‘It is quite the tale.’
Author’s Note
For many years Joyce Gibb, a friend with a keen eye for character and continuity, worked closely with me as I wrote the first drafts of my books. She died after a long stretch of declining health on Christmas Eve 2019. A few months earlier I told her that the next Owen Archer would be the book she requested time and again, a Magda tale, one in which the Riverwoman played a central role, one in which I would delve more deeply into her past, her origins. I regret that I waited so long that she read only a very early draft of the first chapter. I dedicate this book to her.
In the first months of 2020, as the world became aware of a new, dangerous, highly contagious virus, I panicked. I had set the book in the midst of a recurrence of the bubonic plague. Now I would have the discomfort of writing about a frightening pandemic in the midst of one. My first instinct was to change the setting. But the atmosphere played to my purpose, a time of raw fear that stirred superstitions and fears of hellfire, a perfect backdrop for the people’s ambivalence about Magda Digby, a woman who seemed a mythical being, not a Christian, a woman they sometimes feared yet relied on for her skills as a healer and midwife. So I stayed the course. As it turns out, the writing gave me an outlet for my own anxieties, and being in Magda Digby’s head and heart provided comfort in an unsettling year.
Who is Magda Digby? She has been a part of this series from the beginning, first manifesting in a brief scene in a graveyard in The Apothecary Rose, a character stepping out of the pages of medieval romance to mourn the death of her son. In later drafts her role grew as I realized her potential. She was the archetypal elderly woman living on the edge of a village/town/city/wood, a healer, a wise woman, with a mystical aura, ever an enigma. A counterpoint to the pragmatic Owen Archer. Mystical or other-worldly elements were unexceptional in medieval romances, a mix of Christian and old folk beliefs. Richard Firth Green’s fascinating and highly readable Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) discusses this at length, with wonderful examples. By the late fourteenth century fairies were increasingly demonized by clerics, which saddens me. Imaginations open to mystery seem far healthier than those cramped by clerics with ink-stained fingers desperate to demonize all but Church doctrine. No wonder Magda Digby had no time for them. As you see, although she began as an archetype, Magda quickly deepened into a unique individual.
Is she a witch? What is meant when labeling someone ‘witch’, not in the sense of name-calling, but when claiming that someone practices ‘witchcraft’, depends on when and where it occurs, and who is doing the labeling. So what was going on with the idea of a witch in Magda’s time? In England in the late fourteenth century neither the concept of witches nor the burning of witches was yet well formed. The precursor in the Church was the accusation of heresy. But how had the country women with a deep knowledge of healing herbs, roots, barks, fruits, long accepted as important for the health of the community, come to be considered heretics? What was contrary to Church doctrine about plant lore? Abbeys boasted extensive herb gardens. Was it because the occasional charm was included? How did that differ from the birth girdles or saints’ relics people sought for protection during childbirth or illness, or the holy water priests sprinkled on fields to bless the crops? And who would their accusers be? As a crime writer one of my first questions was, who benefited from the downfall of these women? Certainly not the community who depended on them. Perhaps particular members of that community who had no need of them? One group came to mind: the members of religious communities with their own infirmaries (and medicinal gardens). But why did they care?