The Difference Between Witch and Wise

Words by Jonathan Helland

Art by Yaleeza Patchett

Yorkshire, 1602

Someone was knocking on Audrey’s door, and it was most unwelcome. Not only because she’d been sleeping through the midday heat, and not only because she wanted no company. It was also because whoever was at the door would want to speak with the widow Charity and they could not.

Who it was, was a girl. A girl old enough that some men would choose to see her as a woman when it suited them, but a girl, nonetheless.

“I need to see the widow Charity,” the girl said without introduction.

“What’s your name, girl? You from the village?”

“Joan. Aye, from the village.”

Audrey looked her over. “I know all the girls from the village, but I don’t know you,” she said.

“I’m expected back soon,” the girl said by way of not answering. “May I please speak to the widow? I have coin.”

Audrey had rarely dealt in coin; barter was far more common among the villagers. And she had never dealt with a coin like the one the girl held. A gold noble and, by the looks of it, not a grain had been shaved off. Audrey could buy a large clutch of chickens for that. Or a healthy young milk cow.

“Best put that away, girl,” she said, setting aside dreams of a larder full of butter and cheese to sell at the market on Saturdays. “you didn’t come from the village with no gold coin, and I can’t afford the trouble that will follow from where you took it. Besides,” she added, “the widow is dead.”

“Oh.” the girl paled. “Oh, no.”

Audrey wondered if the girl had known the widow to react so. But no, if Charity had known the girl, then Audrey would have too. They’d scarcely been out of earshot of each other these past twenty years. Which meant the way the girl was looking now, like she was halfway across a bridge and had just heard the timber cracking beneath her feet, had nothing to do with the death of the widow. And, damn it all, Audrey had a feeling she knew what this was about.

“I guess you’d best come in,” Audrey said. She turned her back on the girl and left the door open. The inside of the widow’s cottage, Audrey’s cottage now she supposed, was humble but clean. The dirt floor was recently swept and pounded flat, the wooden bowls and clay jars stacked neatly on the shelves, and plenty of wood was stacked neatly by the fireplace where a cast iron pot of perpetual stew simmered.

“I’m—I’m sorry to hear about the widow,” Joan stammered. “I asked after her just today. Nobody told me.”

“Well, she only up and died on Friday.”

“Oh! My condolences.” The girl considered this for a moment, “I’m sorry to pry, but there was no service for her on Sunday.”

“Aye, there couldn’t be. The widow Charity was excommunicated.” Audrey appraised the girl and paused for emphasis before adding, “for witchcraft.”

The girl flinched, which was what Audrey had been going for.

“She was to be executed, too. Said a prayer on the gallows, correct and pious as you might to prove she weren’t no witch.”

“So … they spared her?”

“No. The priest said prayer was no proof and ‘the devil may quote scripture’ and such. The widow Charity was hanged. We haven’t got a gallows, village this small, so they hanged her from the thickest branch of an old ash tree. She swung from that branch ‘til her eyes bulged and her tongue turned blue, but then the branch broke. The father wanted her strung up again, but the old law says you can’t hang nobody twice, and nobody would have stood for it. I’m surprised you haven’t heard this story. Coming from the village and all.”

“I’m … I’m new here. From the south.” Which explained precious little beyond how the girl spoke.

“Anyway, this was thirty years ago. Charity didn’t set foot in the village in all those years. She wouldn’t’ve been welcome. But that didn’t stop better’n half the village coming here to ask her help, one time or ‘nother. The priest that hanged her is dead now. Still, you can’t bury a convicted witch in the churchyard, no matter how many ailments she’s cured and crops she’s saved, so I buried her out by the garden in a spot of shade she liked.”

The girl sat quiet so long Audrey started to twitch and fidget.

“Are you a witch too,” she finally said.

“No. Nor was the widow Charity, neither. You have to learn, girl, the difference between witch and wise. That priest didn’t know it, but those who wouldn’t let him hang her a second time did.”

“What is the difference?”

“Well, she never met the devil in the dark woods, nor swore to serve him. She prayed to the same God you do. She never blighted crops, spoiled milk, or turned into no animal. She never brewed no poisons and what she did brew were for the health and help of those what needed it. She was a woman who knew those things that many women know. Things about herbs and healing and good luck charms and the right prayers to say to St. Agnes, St. Brigid, and St. Mary. She just knew a bit more than most and had no husband telling her not to spend her time picking herbs in the forest.

“But I’m neither wise nor witch, me, so don’t you look so hopeful.”

The girl’s eyes flooded like the river in the spring, but she held her expression.

“So, you can’t help me then?” her voice barely cracked and that’s what made Audrey sigh and give in.

“Well … not like Charity could. But I lived with the widow for twenty-some years, and when I wasn’t tending the sheep or the garden or doing the cleaning up, I was right here when she was helping out. It might be I could remember much of what she said and did for them that had a particular problem. I make no promises, but you might as well tell me what the trouble is, and I’ll tell you what I think the widow would’ve said.”

The trouble, no surprise, was that she was with child and wished to be without. One of the most common requests the widow had gotten from the women of the village, especially from those unmarried or too poor to afford another mouth. It was something easily done; Audrey knew the right herbs to purge the girl’s womb. She was early enough along it would hardly be more dangerous than a particularly rough monthly. Her lingering hesitation stemmed from the fact that, should she do this thing for one woman of the village, in short order the others would be coming here expecting the same. She was the widow’s widow, in her way, and the villagers would try to make her the new wise woman whatever she willed. It was a job she neither wanted nor knew enough to do well.

Yet, the girl was so young. The same age Audrey would have been married had she not run away to avoid that fate.

“I’ll help you. But tell no one. Anyone asks, anyone you told, say the widow has died and you could get no help, but things sorted themselves out on their own.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve told no one.”

“Good, that’s good.”

Audrey picked the herbs from the garden, careful to pick just as much as she had seen the widow use, and brewed the tea.

“Drink this. You’ll feel cramps and start to bleed by mid-afternoon. You can stay here, so I can help you if the bleeding doesn’t stop as it should.” In truth, Audrey didn’t know what she would do if that happened. Only once or twice had the widow’s cure caused a woman to bleed too much, and each of those times Audrey had been sent to fetch water.

The girl drank the tea down in a few deep droughts, which must have burnt her mouth terribly.

“Thank you, but I must go. I’m expected, and it will not go well for me if I’m late returning.”

The girl rushed out the door and Audrey let her. In truth, her relief far outweighed her concern.

* * *

Three days later, Audrey saw the girl again. She was on her way through the village, the gold coin heavy in the hidden pocket she’d sewn into her skirt. She didn’t like the idea of explaining to any who knew her where she had gotten a golden noble, so she planned to walk to the market in Troughbrok, though it would mean walking all day and sleeping the night in someone’s field.

She also brought a basket heavy with edible herbs and cabbages to sell. Not heavy enough to explain coming back with a milk cow, but she doubted even the most irredeemable of gossips would care enough about her comings and goings to notice. She was nobody, after all. Just the spinster who had, until recently, lived with the widow Charity and tended to her sheep.

It was a good plan, but it crumbled to ash at the sight of the girl. Audrey didn’t recognize her at first because of the branks she wore. The branks, or “scold’s bridle” was a metal cage that wrapped around the girl’s head and locked beneath her jaw. Its cruelest feature, and its primary purpose, was the tongue of iron inserted into the victim’s mouth, preventing speech. It had cut the corners of the girl’s too-small lips, and Audrey couldn’t help but imagine how it must have felt forcing her tongue down. How it must have tasted, how it would have hurt to try to swallow, how she might have gagged on it and panicked. Audrey’s hand went unbidden to the corner of her own mouth, to the small scar there left by her father’s fist the day she’d left home for good.

The scold’s bridle was supposed to be a punishment for women who nagged their husbands or gossiped too much. The definitions of “nagging,” “gossiping,” and “too much” were, of course, entirely up to the husbands to decide, though it helped to have a magistrate on your side, especially if your wife has a living father or brothers. The punishment hadn’t stopped there, though; she had also been chained to a post by her wrists for the whole village to see her shame.

Maybe that was why she had taken that chain and wrapped it about her neck, just under the bridal, and strangled herself.

“She done it in the night,” a soft voice said, “or else we would’ve stopped her. What ‘ere she done, ‘tweren’t worth damnation.”

Audrey recognized the speaker as old Euphemia, whose son and daughter-in-law ran the local tavern. It hadn’t occurred to Audrey before that the girl would be damned now for suicide, on top of everything else. She would be buried outside the village in unconsecrated ground, like Charity.

“I wish they’d let us take her down,” Euphemia continued, “but she’s to stay here for the rest of the term of her punishment. As a warning, you know. To the other wives.”

“What had she done?” Audrey asked. What she meant was, what could she possibly have done to deserve this?

Euphemia shrugged, “No one knows. Or them that does won’t say. It’s a crying shame, anyway. She had been such a beautiful bride, and so recently, too.”

Audrey noticed for the first time the girl’s gown. Muddy and torn, but so much finer than the plain linens she’d worn to the cottage looking for the widow. Suspicions were beginning to form about what had happened to the girl, and why. Worst of all was the suspicion that Audrey bore some responsibility for it herself.

“Who was her husband?” she asked.

“Don’t you know? His lordship, of course!”

That would be Sir Mayhew, the lord of the village and owner of all the surrounding land on which his peasants toiled. He was a widower and almost sixty. No crueler than any other lord, as far as Audrey had heard. No less cruel, either, though.

“Married her right in this church not two months gone.”

Charity had been sick then, Audrey had rarely left her side and only then for essentials. She was behind on her gossip, to her detriment.

Audrey stared at the girl. No. She would call her Joan now, even to herself. Joan had not died a girl, certainly. Perhaps if Audrey had seen past her youth, she would have made different assumptions. Why would a newly married woman, married to a knight no less, want to end her pregnancy? Surely, she knew that nothing could have brought her kinder treatment and greater freedom than giving Sir Mayhew the heir his first wife hadn’t.

The old woman Euphemia said farewell and went on her way, but Audrey kept staring at Joan trying to understand the why of it all.

What she wanted to know was whether she had killed her. Had her husband learned she had ended her pregnancy and taken revenge? She didn’t know. She’d assumed the girl laid down in the woods or among the wheat fields with some boy from the village. An act of rebellion, exploration, or adolescent passion that she shouldn’t, in a more just world than this, have to suffer for. She couldn’t have known, when a scared girl knocked on her door in the middle of the day, that she was married to a powerful man who doubtlessly wanted an heir more than he wanted a living wife.

What she did know was how much Joan must have hated her husband to refuse to carry his child despite all she’d been raised to believe. Audrey knew the many reasons why a woman might hate a man that much. The type of man who would warrant that kind of hate was exactly the type of man who would relish the pain and humiliation he had caused her with the scold’s bridle in the last hours of her life.

Audrey wondered if he mourned her now, if he felt regret. She decided she didn’t care.

Once she made up her mind about what she would do, she hurried away before anybody else could see her caring too much about what had happened to Sir Mayhew’s late wife.

* * *

How much did intentions matter, Audrey wondered, in telling the difference between wise and witch? Or was it just the consequences that mattered? Had she been wise when she led Joan down the path to her death? Because the consequences had been worse than if she’d given the girl poison with her own hand. She was dead and damned and Audrey would be damned, too. If not for what she had done than for what she was going to do.

She had heard once from a learned Benedictine she’d known that wise men argue about whether people make their own choices or if their destinies are written for them from the moment they’re born. If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, the monk had suggested, He must know the fate of every soul and could change it if He wanted. The only real question was whether God was the cause of evil, or whether He merely permitted evil to occur.

It had seemed so frivolous to her, then. Had learning letters and theology and such pushed the sense from his head? She had few enough choices in her life then, fetch water or go thirsty, work in the garden or starve, but choices they were and nobody else was making them for her.

But now she was beginning to understand better. It felt like her life had been out of her control since Joan came to her door three days earlier. Maybe earlier. When Charity had died? When Charity took her in and gave her a home when she had nowhere to go but back home to marry a man she loathed—a man with no higher qualities than that he was a friend to her drunken bastard of a father? Could she have done that? Taken a life of suffering and misery? Many other women did. Most did. But she could not have, not the way God made her.

And could she have told Joan “no”? Sent her on her way without helping her? Audrey didn’t imagine that she could have done that either. And now she was going to kill Sir Mayhew. She would be hanged and damned for it, in that order. Could she decide not to? Could she ignore her feelings and live a quiet life in which no one ever knows she tried to help a suffering girl who’d had even less control over her life? Could she confess her sinful thoughts and receive absolution and then live her life in the same world with Sir Mayhew? She could not. Not the way God made her.

So, she went seeking the devil.

* * *

The place to find the devil has always been in the wilderness. It’s in the forests and on the moors that witches hold their Sabbaths, kiss the devil under his tail, and sign his black book. That’s what Audrey had always been told, and she’d heard of many witches who had confessed as much under the unkind attentions of the knives, vices, pincers, and other devices used to force witches to confess.

The cottage Audrey had shared with the widow Charity was out of town, near the woods. So, there was no one to notice or question when she wandered into the dark of the forest in the middle of the night. She had no doubts she’d find the devil, because she wanted to find him and surely he would want to be found by a good woman willing to forsake salvation. She was even beginning to plan what she would do when she became a witch. She wouldn’t blight the crops or spoil the milk or do anything else to hurt the hardworking people of the village (at least, she hoped she wouldn’t, but maybe she’d feel differently after signing away her soul.) What she would do was fly at night into Sir Mayhew’s bedchamber, through window or chimney, and sit on his chest to draw his life’s breath out through his mouth. She would become a night hag and, as he drowned in his own bed, she would tell him it was because of what he did to Joan.

But the forest at night was darker than she had imagined. She could see the light of the moon through the summer leaves, but it didn’t reach the forest floor, and the simple candle she had brought wasn’t bright enough to illuminate her own feet. Every dead tree with a broken trunk looked like it might be Lucifer himself in his common disguise as a tall man in black. She was worried she would become lost, and she worried about what would become of her if she found a pack of wolves or outlaws instead of the devil.

Her foot caught on a root or a stone (it was too dark to tell which) and she fell. The candle fell from her grasp and she cried out in fear. Without its flame, finding her way back home in the shadows would be a nightmare beyond imagining. Mercifully, the candle continued to burn with a faint, sputtering light. She scrambled to her knees, brushed the dirt from her hands, and reached for it. She stopped. The flame, moments from dying, had illuminated a patch of small white mushrooms. They looked innocent enough, but she thought she saw a tinge of green beneath the white, and perhaps a slight pink tinge to the gills. It was impossible to tell in the candlelight, so she picked one and held it to her nose. Just the slightest odor of cat-piss. She knew what they were.

A moment later, she snatched up the candle and held it upright to save the flame. Then she gathered up every single one of the death cap mushrooms and held them in a basket she made of her skirt.

She got lost trying to find her way home from the woods—she didn’t see her cottage door until after the sun had risen—but she didn’t care. She was alight with purpose. Sometimes, Audrey realized, when you meet the devil in the woods in the dark of night, the devil you meet is in your own heart.

* * *

Some of the mushrooms hung from her window, threaded through with twine, the way she’d prepare any edible mushrooms to dry if she wanted to save them for a winter soup, but she wasn’t sure they would keep their poison that way so she kept some fresh in a bowl out of the light where they might last for a few days. The rest she brewed into tea. Then, she boiled the tea down to concentrate it, though it meant she’d have to throw that kettle out when she was finished.

It was something she’d seen Charity do for various medicines and poultices to increase their potency, but the death caps themselves were no part of Charity’s wisdom. The widow had known every plant in the forest that could help or heal and she had known plenty of the poisonous plants too, so she might learn their antidotes. But the death cap mushroom had no helpful use, it could not heal, and it had no antidote. It had been Audrey’s job to find food for their table, and when the garden didn’t yield and they had nothing to trade at the market, she had to find it in the woods. It had been her job, not Charity’s, to know which mushrooms were safe to pick and which would kill.

* * *

First, she tried to gain employment on Sir Mayhew’s estate. Stupid. She hadn’t thought how many local daughters of peasant farmers were desperate for a place in his lordship’s household, even as a scullery maid. For all that Sir Mayhew had no reputation for generosity or kindness, many still saw a position serving on the estate as a far better future for their children than one spent trying to coax a life from the soil.

She managed, instead, to get into Sir Mayhew’s kitchens under the pretense of bartering with the cook. She offered herbs from her garden for coin or whatever the cook had too much of that wouldn’t spoil too quickly in the summer heat.

“I can’t eat them fast enough now that the widow Charity’s dead and I’m alone at the cottage.”

“Aye? I hadn’t heard the widow died!”

“Nay, you wouldn’t have. I didn’t really tell nobody. She weren’t allowed in the churchyard, you know, and I hadn’t the heart to walk into the village just to let tell everyone she were buried in her own garden.”

This last bit made the cook glance askance at the herbs.

“Not under the herbs, of course,” Audrey added.

“Of course,” the cook said with no sign her suspicions had lifted.

Ultimately, the cook took the herbs and gave Audrey a jar of beef tallow.

For a dozen ear-pounding heartbeats, Audrey stood unobserved next to a simmering pot of oniony stew. Her hand twitched toward the bottle of reduced death cap tea tucked into her skirts. She could have her revenge right now.

But who else would eat this? The cook, certainly, would taste her stew before serving it, and how many others in the household would eat it? Could Audrey poison innocent servants to kill Sir Mayhew?

She could not. She’d come here and talked her way into the kitchen for nothing.

But then she saw the scullery maid. She was just a girl, but at an age where men might take her for a woman when it suited them. She looked nothing like Joan but she was small and pretty like she had been and Audrey thought she saw something in her face. It was, she thought, the face of someone who has been afraid for so long she had learned to hide it. It was the face of someone who felt as Audrey had felt before she’d run away from her father and a husband-to-be who was altogether too much the same kind of man her father had been.

Audrey waited for her by the well, knowing the scullery would have to draw water sometime during the day. She wanted to talk to her alone. Audrey started conversation slowly, with the weather and the coming harvest, and only gradually built up to asking the girl, whose name was Anne, what she thought of Sir Mayhew.

The girl’s answer was diplomatic: “He’s a fine master and an important gentleman.” It sounded practiced and was an obvious lie.

“I think you hate him,” Audrey said.

“No, ma’am. I would never. He’s a fine master and …”

“He scares you, girl. Has he laid hands on you? You can tell me, he won’t find out. I won’t tell a soul.”

The girl said nothing. Her eyes darted back and forth.

“I hate him too,” Audrey said, palms out, trying to calm the girl. “For what he did to Joan.”

At the mention of Joan’s name, the girl changed. Her wariness remained, but she no longer looked like she was ready to run away.

“We’re not supposed to say her ladyship’s name. His lordship forbids it.”

“I’m not surprised. But who’s to hear us? You’re right to be cautious, you can’t tell a gossip by looking. But you can trust me because I’m trusting you.” Audrey leaned across the well and whispered, “I want him to suffer and die.”

The girl flinched, but she didn’t run off, which Audrey took as a good sign.

“There, now you hold my life in your hands. Imagine what he would do to me if you told him what I just said.” Anne nodded. “Joan wasn’t actually a scold or a gossip, was she? It doesn’t seem like her.”

Anne took another look around to see they were alone and shook her head.

“She was innocent, then,” Audrey continued. “He treated her badly, didn’t he? And then he all but murdered her. I’d bet he treats you badly too, or he wants to.”

She decided then, whatever help she got from the scullery maid, she would not see her murdered too. She couldn’t ask this girl to poison her master, even though she might have better reason to than Audrey herself.

“Can you get me into his chambers? Sometime when he’s not there? Without anybody seeing us?”

“Maybe,” she said, shyly, still unsure.

“Tonight, while he dines—most of his household will be with him, the rest will be busy in the kitchens, yes? Can you let me in and guide me through whichever passages will be unused?” Audrey let the sunlight reflect off her gold noble, “I can pay you. And I will make sure all blame for what happens will fall on me.”

The girl stared at the shining coin and then at Audrey. She looked around again, checking for what must have been the twentieth time that nobody was watching them. Then, finally, she nodded.

“The east door. Not the one by the kitchens, but near where the laundry hangs.” And then she ran off, or as nearly ran as she could with a pail of water on her shoulder.

* * *

Audrey did nothing for the following hours but wait in the shade of an elm tree near a creek where she wouldn’t be seen by anyone from Sir Mayhew’s estate, or from the village unless some child came to shirk their daily work. It was a lovely spot, and peaceful while the shadows lengthened and painted mythical beasts across the burbling surface of the water.

Since she wouldn’t be eating dinner, she scooped her finger into the jar of tallow and licked it clean. It was rich to the point of being nauseating, but she soon felt her hunger ebb.

Across the bank some thistles bloomed a royal purple. They reminded her of her home in the north and of the rare happy days there. Days when she’d been sent after an errant goat or on some other chore that took her away from her home and her father. Days she could wander the heath and take her time making it back. This remembering itself reminded her of how many more happy days she’d had since running away and moving into the widow’s cottage. The widow had declared her a cousin orphaned by the plague, a fiction they maintained until she was also an old maid and beneath speculation.

A bird landed on a branch, then. A small, ordinary bird with feathers the color of a hare in summer. Yet, not so ordinary, for Audrey was suddenly sure she’d never seen this particular type before. What a marvel, to live such a life in this world, to live most of it in this very countryside, and only on this day to see a new species for the first time!

She marveled until the shadows grew so long she was sure Sir Mayhew would be starting to dine, then she left that creek with a light heart and headed for her murder.

* * *

Audrey half expected to be met by the magistrate and half Sir Mayhew’s men-at-arms, but it was just Anne, as she’d promised. She led her through empty halls while the low sounds of talking and clinking cutlery echoed from the floors below. Audrey walked with her hands clasped to keep them from shaking.

Once in Sir Mayhew’s chambers, Anne took the chamber pot—Audrey guessed so she would have some reason for being there if caught—and left without a word.

Standing still in that room, Audrey felt as if she’d been running up a hill. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe deeply enough to fill her lungs and slow her heart. She noticed how hard she was gripping that small jar of death cap tea and suddenly worried it would break in her hands. She looked around. Did he have a cup or a jar of wine, something he might drink later when he returned to his rooms? No. A bowl of apples should he grow hungry in the night? No. But there was a basin of water for washing his face and a pitcher to refill it. Maybe he rinsed his mouth out when he washed his face. Maybe drank from that pitcher if he was thirsty. She poured some into each of them. There was a small bowl of what she took to be tooth cleaning powder, but she didn’t see the scrap of linen used to apply it. She dripped some of the poison into it and panicked when it immediately and obviously clumped up. She ran across the room to a writing desk, grabbed a quill and used the feather end of it to bury the clump in the powder. It worked, so she dripped some more in the power and stirred with the quill until it was invisible. She considered the quill. Did he chew on the nib when he wrote? Would he write tonight? She dipped it in the poison.

Anne returned with an empty chamber pot and the two left together, silent once again. Only when Audrey was back outside did she turn and give Anne the gold noble.

“Thank you,” she said. “If they catch you, if they accuse you of something, say I witched you.”

* * *

That night was spent worrying that it had not worked. She did not even try to sleep, but paced back and forth in the cottage. Had Sir Mayhew rinsed his mouth, cleaned his teeth, written a letter and chewed on the nib of his pen? If had done any of these things, had he done them enough to take in a deadly dose of the poison? She knew a single mushroom was enough to kill a man, and she had made tea with more than a dozen. But what if it still wasn't enough?

Had she failed? If she had, what would she do next? Could she try to poison him again? Would Anne help her again? Could she possibly ask that girl to take such a risk?

She started to pray then remembered herself. She was a witch now—God would surely ignore her prayers. Especially when she prayed that she had, in fact, successfully committed a murder. So, instead, she prayed to the devil.

Remembering the stories she’d heard, she went out, naked in the night, to the woods where he lived. Her prayer was simple and direct, spoken to the black trees that formed a wall of darker night under the cloud-covered sky.

“Lucifer, if that’s how you wish to be called, I don’t know much about witching, but I think you love evil, and it’s evil I’m trying to do. So, if you make sure the man is dead, I promise I won’t go to no confession, I won’t ask for no grace. I’ll be damned, just like you want.”

Or at least, that was what she assumed he wanted. The sermons she’d heard about Satan had never been very clear on his motivations or why he’d care if mortals sinned or not. She didn’t know much about the devil, for a witch.

“I’d sacrifice a black cockerel for you if I could,” she added. “But the only one I have is mostly white with a little brown. But I guess I’m trying to sacrifice a knight, and I think his heart is blacker than any bird I’ve seen, so I hope that’s enough for you.”

She stood for a while as a chill wind blew on her bare back. It was the first time she’d felt cool during this long, hot summer.

* * *

They came for her in the morning. The magistrate and some of his men, some men-at-arms from Sir Mayhew’s household, and Father Thomas himself to represent the interests of the church. That’s how she knew it had worked. She didn’t ask of what she was accused, she didn’t pretend her ignorance. She’d been seen nosing around Sir Mayhew’s manor, she was a known associate of a known witch. Escape had never been her plan.

* * *

The torture was exactly what she had expected, and it was worse than she could have possibly imagined. She was good at imagining sights and sounds—she could stand in a part of the woods she had never been to before and picture how it might look in winter or in spring with budding wildflowers, and sometimes she would remember an herb or a meal, and for a moment she would be able to smell it again—but pain was different. Even her memory failed to recall the pains of her past in their full agony, what chance had her imagination had?

She wasn’t brave. In the first hour of her torture she no longer cared what had happened to Joan and wished with her whole heart she had ignored the whole thing.

She would have told them the truth. Without hesitation, in a heartbeat, she would have told them everything. She would have even betrayed Anne. But they didn’t ask the right questions, so instead she confessed to everything they asked.

Had she cursed Sir Mayhew with dark magic? Yes. Had she flown into his room on a willow branch and sucked the life out of him as he slept? Yes. Had she met with the devil in the dark of the woods and pledged herself to him? Yes. Had she kissed Lucifer under his tail and fornicated with him. Yes, yes! Had she sacrificed to him? Yes. What had she sacrificed? A black cockerel, of course.

Once in a delirium of pain she called out that she should have bought a milk cow. Father Thomas leaned in close, curious. “Why a milk cow?”

“For butter,” Audrey admitted, “and cheese.”

The priest turned back with a “bah” and stormed off. Only then did it occur to her that he had been expecting to learn of some new Satanic perversity involving a milk cow that he could then share with the rest of the church. She imagined other priests asking other, future witches, “and did you wish to buy a milk cow?” in the same deadly serious tone with which they’d asked her a hundred equally absurd questions. She laughed then. Chained naked to a table in a smoky chamber of damp stone, her body aflame with countless cuts, bruises, blisters, and rips, she laughed.

The priest turned back. “What is funny!”

“You think the devil is only a dark man in the woods with horns and a tail. You think a witch is only a woman who flies on a willow branch and kills with curses. But I’ve met the devil in a fallen candle, in a cool wind. He’s already with us! He’s in you, too, father!”

A flaming brand below her ribs turned her laughter into screams and the priest all but ran away from her.

Even through her screams she called after him, “Every man is a devil, Father! And every woman a witch!”

* * *

They left her then. After the priest was gone and the magistrate after, there was no one to write down her confessions and therefore no reason to torment her. For a while, her only torture was the heat, the damp, the chains chafing her wrists, and the dull throbs from where she had been whipped and burned.

She had no way of knowing how long she lay there. Long enough to lose control of her bladder and long enough for her hot piss to turn cold beneath her. She wondered if there was blood in it, but no matter how she craned her neck she couldn’t see.

When the priest and the magistrate returned along with his lordship’s men-at-arms, a new figure joined them. Darkened by shadow, the torchlight at his back, moving with the slow caution of the very old or recently ill, she didn’t recognize him at first. But he wanted her to know him, so Sir Mayhew came to her side and leaned over her. His face looked hale and well-colored, for all his stiffness.

“You’ve failed, witch,” he hissed. “The Lord has favored me and saved me from your black magic. I wanted you to see my face before you hang. I wanted you to know that I lived, and you died having achieved nothing!”

Audrey, who knew the effects of the death cap, asked, “Did you feel favored by your Lord when you were shitting yourself last night? Did you make it to your chamber pot every time, or did some poor servant have to change your bedclothes like a babe?”

He hit her then, swung his fist down on the center of her face. Her eyes watered and blood flowed back into her sinus and throat causing her to sputter and choke, but he was no trained torturer and, in the balance, a broken nose was nothing next to all she had endured.

“I do not care for anything you have to say,” he said, though Audrey saw by his anger it was otherwise, “but only this: which of my enemies has trafficked with hell to send you against me? Tell me that and you will be hanged immediately, with no further torments.”

She had no reason to lie to him. Nothing further to gain. So, she told him the truth.

“It was Joan. From beyond the grave she sent me for revenge.”

He hit her again, despite his promise, and stormed off with a forced attempt at vigor: “String her up. Immediately.”

* * *

They had learned their lesson with the widow, and did not hang Audrey from a tree. Rather, she was surprised to see they had erected a gibbet while she was being tortured. It wasn’t a proper gallows; there would be no drop. Rather, it was a simple wooden beam planted in the center of the village with another beam nailed cross-wise from which to hang a rope.

There will be a market here tomorrow, she thought as they put the noose around her neck. There was a small group of young men at hand ready to pull the rope and lift her into the air, and a simple iron ring where the rope could be tied to keep her there.

“Audrey Gude,” Father Thomas said, not to her, really, but to the small gathering crowd, “you have confessed to the crimes of heresy, witchcraft, and murder. For these crimes you will be excommunicated from the church and forbidden all rites and sacraments.”

The magistrate spoke next and tried, unsuccessfully, to imitate the priest’s stentorian tone. “For, uh, the crimes of witchcraft and attempted murder you will also be hanged until dead.”

A few of the young men, overly eager, started to pull on the rope, then, but the magistrate signaled for them to wait.

The priest spoke again, “If you do not confess your sins, renounce your lord Satan and all his devils, and ask God for forgiveness, you will surely be damned. Do you wish to do so now?”

The whole thing reminded her of a pageant. She looked at the crowd. Anne was there, looking at her feet, and a good many other good people with whom she’d never had a quarrel. She thought of Charity then, of how the widow had said a prayer aloud to show she wasn’t a witch. Audrey couldn’t do that, for she had made a promise.

She saw Sir Mayhew in the crowd. Come to gloat or to just to be seen, she did not know. He no longer looked hale. He looked nauseous and jaundiced, his skin was almost the color of primrose, but paler, sicklier. He was trying to hide a bloated belly under his doublet and his hand wandered to the pain in his side. They were symptoms Audrey and the widow had seen with chronic drunkards sometimes, right before the drink killed them, but in this case she knew what it was.

The false recovery, so common with mushroom poisoning, was over. He was dying.

“I will not ask for forgiveness,” she said, “for I promised the devil I would not, and he has fulfilled his end of the bargain. Sir Mayhew will be dead before the week is out.” She had the gratification then of seeing the terror of realization on his face.

“Would that all cruel husbands remember—”

They pulled on the rope then, and Audrey’s words were cut off. Through all the agonies of the hanging—the rope cutting into her throat, the whole weight of her body stretching her neck, the blood being painfully forced into her head, the pressure building behind all her eyes—through all that, she almost wanted to laugh. Wouldn’t it be funny, she thought, if the rope broke? They couldn’t hang her twice, after all.

About the author

Jonathan Helland lives in Vermont where he works in higher education. When he's not reading, writing, or teaching, he can be found enjoying the outdoors and practicing HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts). He has published essays in The Writer's Chronicle, The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies, and The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror. You can find more of his fiction forthcoming from Daily Science Fiction and Flash Fiction Online.

About the illustrator

Yaleeza Patchett has been creating whimsical art and illustrations since a child; her inspiration comes from the cartoons, comic strips and animated movies she grew up with. In 2016, Yaleeza began expanding her art into her own business named Rowan Ink. It began with a simple pair of hand-painted, custom-made shoes for a friend’s birthday. Through her artistic journey she has expanded into different art mediums, but her true passion is sketching, illustrating and painting. Yaleeza currently resides in the south side of Indianapolis with her husband, her dog, and her cat. You can find her current artwork at Rowaninkstudio.com.