‘Get down, you evil old woman!’ yelled a meat porter. ‘Clear off or you’ll go the same way as Theophania Lawrence!’
Lucy ignored them all and continued to shout her defiance and pleas for understanding. ‘Why are you suddenly against us, when we have done nothing to harm you? We respect the Church and are good Christians, which is more than can be said for some of you intolerant murderers!’ She gripped the rough wood of the cart’s head-rail and shook herself against it in a paroxysm of emotion. ‘Do not persecute us so unjustly — we are the same people that you have lived alongside all your lives. Unscrupulous people are using you as a tool for their own purposes and you let yourself be led by the nose like sheep to the knife!’
This really annoyed the more bellicose of her antagonists in the street. ‘You cheeky old bastard, keep a civil tongue in your head or we’ll cut it out for you!’ yelled a red-faced shopkeeper, who was a verger in St Pancras’s Church.
Someone threw a rotten cabbage that he picked up from behind a booth. It missed Lucy but disintegrated against the side of the cart. As if this were a signal, the verbal battles between citizens flared into brawling and several men began slugging it out with others over their differing opinions on cunning women. Old ladies began screaming and young mothers hastily gathered their children to their skirts and tried to get out of the way of the scuffles that were breaking out across the street. From their lair behind the Guildhall just up the street, the two constables heard the uproar and hurried down to Carfoix, but two men armed with staves were ineffectual against the spreading mêlée that confronted them.
The anti-witch faction were in the majority and more ambled out of the nearby alehouse, attracted by the noise, adding their drunken prejudices to the disputes that were raging. Osric, the lanky constable, rapidly summed up the situation and again wisely decided not to try to quell the developing riot, but to try to remove the cause.
‘Let’s get the old woman out of here, before they hang her too!’ he hissed to Theobald, who was more slow-witted than the Saxon.
Together, they edged their way around the shouting, brawling throng to reach the ox-cart, where Lucy was still waving her arms and declaiming the innocence of her sisters and herself, though no one could now hear her above the tumult in the street. Osric reached the back of the cart without many in the crowd taking any notice of him and he rapped on the floorboards with his staff to get her attention. She turned at the noise, without breaking off her repetitive speech, but when she saw who it was she turned her back on him again.
‘Come on, woman!’ he called urgently. ‘Get yourself away from here or they’ll string you up, just as they did Theophania.’
He reached out with his staff and ungallantly poked her in the back with its end. She turned again, looking uncertainly at him this time. ‘I have business to attend to, man. I care nothing for this rabble.’
‘You’ll do little business dangling at the end of a rope, so come on, damn you!’ he said desperately, as he saw some of the truculent crowd staring at them, some even breaking off their wrestling and shoving to see what was going on at the cart. Theobald had seen it too and he clambered up on to the wagon and grabbed the bearded hag by the arm. ‘Lucy, they’ll kill you if you stay here. Come away now, for pity’s sake!’
The little tableau on the back of the dray and the sudden cessation of her strident voice began to attract attention and more faces were being turned towards them. ‘There’s the root of the trouble!’ yelled a florid-faced pie-man from Butcher Row, shaking his fist at Lucy.
Others took up the cry and part of the crowd began moving towards the wagon, abandoning most of their scuffles with the other faction.
‘Pull the old fool off, Theobald!’ hissed Osric, fearful of a repetition of the awful event down in Bretayne. The other constable grabbed Lucy’s other arm and with some ripping of the rotten fabric of her cape pulled her protesting to the tailboard. Another missile, this time a small turnip, caught her on the side of the head and this decided Lucy that it was best to run and fight another day, if she could. She half fell from the cart, being caught by Osric, and with the two constables dragging her, she hobbled across to the mouth of High Street. Her two protectors shouldered their way through a gathering crowd whose hostility was increasing, and hands stretched out to try to grab her, as insults and curses were thrown at the old crone. One wild-eyed young woman, who seemed already to be in some sort of hysterical frenzy, screamed abuse at her and grabbed a handful of her hair, until Theobald roughly pushed her away.
Barging their way forward, the constables forced a way through the main ring of protesters and hurried as best they could up the street, pulling the old woman by brute force, as her legs would not support her at that speed, especially as she had lost her stick.
‘This is the wrong way to get me home to Exe Island,’ she gasped. ‘Where are you taking me? To gaol?’
Theobald shot a sideways glance at Osric. ‘Just where the hell are we going, anyway?’
The other man had not really thought about it; all he had wanted to do was to get her off the cart and away from the angry crowd, who were now trailing after them, resentful at having their prey snatched away from them so abruptly.
‘What about our shack? Can we put her in there until we get help from the castle?’ suggested Theobald.
‘This mob would kick it to pieces in minutes, the mood they’re in now,’ grunted Osric, panting with the effort of half carrying the smelly old woman.
‘The crowner!’ she said suddenly. ‘Take me to the crowner’s house. He promised to help me.’
Theobald began to protest at this liberty, but Osric, mindful of the angry mob almost on their heels, was in no mood to argue, especially as Martin’s Lane was now only a few yards away. As a few more old cabbages, turnips and a stone or two were hurled at their backs, together with a rising clamour of indignant abuse, he stumbled along with the other pair, pushing aside more curious onlookers in the main street, who were not yet aware of the cause of the disturbance.
When they came to the narrow entrance to the lane, he dragged Lucy around to the right and dived down the alley towards the second tall, narrow house. As they reached the blackened oak door, the horde of witch-haters appeared in the throat of Martin’s Lane, but slowed down as they saw that the constables were beating on the door of Sir John de Wolfe. Most of the citizens of Exeter were somewhat in awe of the coroner, not only out of respect for his office and his reputation as a soldier, but because he was also a tall, grim authoritarian, who did not suffer foolish or impudent behaviour gladly and was likely to respond with a heavy cuff from his large fist.
As they hesitated, the door was opened by Mary and before she could open her mouth Osric had bundled Lucy across the threshold into the vestibule. ‘Call the crowner. This old woman is in danger from that rabble!’ he snapped, then pulled the door shut and stood outside it alongside Theobald, their staves at the ready to defend the house.
The crowd advanced cautiously, the red-faced verger and the pie-man in front, the rest pressing behind, uttering threats and recriminations against the evil women who, with the aid of Satan, rode broomsticks and roasted babies.
‘Get away from here, you’ll not repeat what happened at the Snail Tower,’ yelled Osric.
‘That was none of our doing, though it was well intentioned,’ retorted the pie-man, brandishing a large knife. There was no way of telling whether he had been with the lynch-mob down in Bretayne or whether this was a spontaneous demonstration, fanned into activity by the parish priests and possibly other agents of the witch-hunting canon.
‘Get her out of there, we want to teach her a lesson or two about curses and spells, the evil old hag!’ bellowed a massive black-bearded fellow, who worked in the tannery and smelt far worse than Lucy.