Within ten minutes, idle gossip had passed through rumbling discontent into open hostility, a mood that fed upon itself and turned uglier by the minute. Edward Bigge, who knew that his purse had become appreciably lighter since spending the weekend drinking the apothecary’s money, had enough sense left within his fuddled brain to see an opportunity to recover his funds if he aided Walter Winstone’s scheme even more.
‘I know where she lives, this scandalous bitch who summons up spirits from Hades,’ he yelled thickly. ‘We should confront her with her evil deeds and get her to repent!’
He pushed himself from the wall against which he had been leaning and stalked unsteadily up Smythen Street, shoving his way through the now fevered crowd.
‘You needn’t tell me where she lives,’ screamed a toothless woman. ‘I live in the next lane. She put a curse on my son so that he was born with one leg shorter than the other!’
‘Ay, ask her what she has to say for herself!’ shouted another.
‘Don’t ask her, just hang her!’ screamed another, who had drunk almost as much as Edward Bigge.
Almost as if it were a living entity in itself, the crowd flowed behind Edward, who was closely followed by the man alleging that his infidelity was due to Theophania’s curse. As it moved along, more people attached themselves to its margins. Most had no idea what was going on until they were sucked into the hysteria by the exaggerated explanations of the inner core. By the time the mass of people had wheeled left through a lane and emerged into Fore Street, there were more than half a hundred shouting and gesticulating citizens, with a penumbra of excited urchins and barking dogs. Crossing the main street, several horsemen and two ox-carts were forced to stop, until the mob flowed into another lane on the opposite side, below St Olave’s Church, and slithered into the stinking lanes of Bretayne.
One of the town constables heard the tumult from as far away as Carfoix in the centre of the city. It was Osric, the skinny Saxon, and he hurried after the tail of the crowd as it vanished into Bretayne. Grabbing a boy who was capering along behind them, he yelled at him to discover what was going on, but got little sense from the lad.
‘They’ve found the Devil down here, they say! They’re going to hang him!’ he gabbled and twisted free from Osric’s hand to run after the mob.
Having unsuccessfully tried to stop Alice Ailward from being arrested a few days before, the constable had a sudden foreboding that even worse trouble was going to come of this and that again he would be powerless to prevent it on his own. He turned around and ran as fast as his long thin legs would carry him, back towards Rougemont Castle.
The crowd flowed inexorably on through the mean lanes, oblivious of the debris underfoot and the filth that ran in the gutters. Many of the locals appeared from hovels and alleys to discover what was going on and while some joined the mob, others violently defended their neighbour Theophania. Scuffles broke out on the periphery but had no effect on slowing down the shouting and chanting vigilantes.
As they reached the house where she lived, Edward Bigge threw up a hand dramatically and pointed at her front door. ‘In there it was!’ he yelled. ‘That’s where she conjured up Satan and, for spite, put a spell on me. Since then, I’ve not been able to satisfy my poor wife. This witch took all the manhood out of me!’
This new accusation had been suggested to Bigge by the other man’s claim that Theophania was the cause of him cuckolding his wife. The clamour increased and a burly youth, who had not the slightest interest in witchcraft but who enjoyed a good fight, dashed forward and with a mighty kick, smashed open the flimsy door.
There was a scream from inside and, as several men fought to get through the door, Theophania was seen cowering at the back of the room. As if it were not enough that fate already seemed set against her, it so happened that she was in the process of changing her kirtle to put it in the wash. She stood cringeing in her thin chemise, her long grey hair unbound and uncovered, hanging down lankly over her shoulders. To cap it all, at that moment a black cat jumped from a chair alongside her and with a squeal of fright, wisely took off through the door and vanished behind the house.
‘A witch, a naked witch! With a coal-black cat!’ screamed the mob, in transports of delight at this confirmation of their hysterical suspicions. A surge of bodies pressed against the doorway, with Edward Bigge yelling, ‘Beware of Beelzebub — she’ll set the Devil upon you!’
In spite of several of Theophania’s neighbours punching out ineffectually at the edge of the rabble, the leading men and several wild-eyed women burst into the room and seized the screaming old dame, who had collapsed into a corner.
With frothy spittle at the corners of his mouth, a fat man who was the sexton at St Petroc’s Church, frenziedly waved his arms in the air and repeatedly howled at the top of his voice, ‘The testaments demand that thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! Obey the word of the Lord thy God!’
Osric the constable nearly burst his heart in his haste to get help from the castle and the last few yards up the hill to the gatehouse had reduced him to a gasping wreck by the time Sergeant Gabriel came out of the guardroom to meet him. When his laboured breathing allowed him to speak, he gasped out his news and the leader of the garrison’s men-at-arms wasted no time in getting a posse together. Turning out the four men playing dice in the gatehouse, he yelled at another three, who were passing across the inner ward. After sending the man on sentry duty at the gate to alert the coroner upstairs, he set off with his men at a fast trot down towards the town, leaving Osric to recover his breath. By the time his heart had slowed sufficiently, John de Wolfe and Gwyn had clumped down from their chamber and the burgesses’ constable was able to tell them what he had seen.
It was pointless going for their horses for such a short distance, so they all loped after Gabriel’s detachment and caught up with them outside Theophania Lawrence’s cottage.
‘No mob here, Crowner,’ panted Gabriel. ‘But this man says they’ve dragged her off somewhere.’
Several of her neighbours were looked apprehensively through the shattered door into her dwelling, where the sparse furniture had been overturned and all her pots of lotions and bundles of herbs had been stamped into a mess on the floor. The neighbour, a rough-looking man with a fresh black eye and bloody nose, had obviously been one of those who had tried to defend the old dame.
‘They took her that way, Crowner, towards the city wall!’ He waved his arm vaguely downhill, towards the western corner of the city.
De Wolfe wasted no more time on questions, but set off in that direction, leading Gwyn and Gabriel at a lope through the twisting, narrow alleys between a motley collection of small houses, huts and semi-derelict shacks. Faces peered fearfully from doorways and around corners, although the ubiquitous urchins danced around in their rags, hugely enjoying this diversion from their normally sordid existence. Lean, mangy dogs barked excitedly at the running men, who slopped and slipped through the running sewage as the lanes became steeper when they approached the slope down to the river. The top of the town wall was in sight over the roofs of the huts when they came upon a bedraggled figure climbing towards them. He wore a black monk’s habit, although his loud cursing would have done credit to a Breton fisherman.