Witch Child (4 page)

The Reverend Elias Cornwell has recorded all this in his Journal. He no longer needs me as scribe, but I still have to report to him every day. He keeps to his cabin, spending his time in prayer and meditation, searching for God’s meaning in all the news I bring to him. We have wandered far from our course and have become lost in an ice-bound wilderness. We must have done wrong, sinned and sinned grievously to earn His displeasure. Either that, or there is a witch on board, a servant of Satan working some malediction. He turns, fixing me with those colourless eyes.

‘What think you, Mary? Could it not be so?’

I feel my blood chill and bid my heart be still.

‘I would have thought,’ I measure my words, trying to keep my voice from trembling, ‘I would think, should the ship founder, she would go down like any other.’

‘Pah,’ he spits, baring his big yellow teeth. ‘That’s what they would have you think, but they can float! They can sail in a sieve away from the ship. The Devil looks after his own.’ He fixes me again with his pale-eyed stare. ‘And who says she? It may be a he. It may be that a warlock ships with us. I will pray that they reveal themselves. Meanwhile I call a day of fasting and humiliation. We must pray for God’s forgiveness.’

I curtsy and leave him. The fasting will be no hardship. Meat comes from the barrel green and stinking; the oatmeal is musty and will not thicken; peas stay hard as musket balls no matter how long they are soaked for and the hard ship’s tack is more weevil than biscuit.

Entry 18

The fasting and prayer are to be followed by a service on deck. A vigil is to be kept until we are delivered from our present trouble. The captain has agreed to the first request, the passengers can starve if they want to, all the more food for him and his crew, but he will not allow the vigil to take place. He says that a great clutter of people will obstruct the work of the ship. His refusal has been greeted with a good deal of protest. There are mutterings even among his crew. Fears and anxieties that have long been set aside, pushed to the back of the mind, are flaring up, even among his men.

All day disquiet and dissatisfaction have been spreading, brisk as fire through bone-dry kindling. Complaints spread from mouth to mouth, blowing hither and thither like sparks in the wind. The vigil has grown in importance until suddenly everything depends on it: the success of the voyage, the survival of the vessel, our very lives.

At the appointed time, Elias Cornwell led his flock up on deck. The sailors watched from the rigging, or ranged along the rails of the quarterdecks. The Reverend Cornwell went to the half-deck which is the captain’s domain. He climbed the short ladder up to where the captain was standing. At first, the captain would not turn. He stood, a squat and powerful figure, legs planted wide apart, hands clasped behind his back. The younger man approached until he was next to the captain, towering over him. The captain turned, scratching at his thick growth of curly grey beard, squinting up through narrowed eyes, as if taking a reading from the sun. Cornwell, clean-shaven and pale as parchment, looked down at him, preparing to say his piece.

Cornwell held his hat, turning the brim in his thin white hands, but his manner was more of telling than asking. The captain’s answer did not come immediately. He paced away to the far rail, hands still clasped, one beating into the other. Then he turned, spinning on his heel, and came back. All eyes were on him, Reverend Cornwell’s, the passengers’, the crew’s. The captain looked to each in turn. It is his ship. His word is law. To give in might be seen as weakness. On the other hand, the captain is a wise man. Agreeing to this would cost him nothing; refusal could cost him his ship.

Passengers and crew packed the main deck so tightly that it was hard to move in the waist of the ship. Elias Cornwell looked down at us from the half-deck. Beside him stood the Elders, behind him stood the captain with his officers. The captain looked uneasy. He was reluctant to agree to this and was probably cursing his luck at having a clergyman on board in the first place.

We stood, hands clasped, heads bowed, and Elias Cornwell’s deep preaching voice swept over us, calling on God’s Providence, asking for His forgiveness, begging for deliverance, beseeching for a sign that we were restored to His purpose. Suddenly the torrent of words faltered. I opened my eyes and looked up cautiously, wondering what the interruption could be. He was standing, head back, chest thrust forward, arms thrown wide. He looked like the etchings I have seen of Christ on the Sea of Galilee.

‘We asked for a sign. Now we have that sign. Look, my brethren, look!’

I saw it in his eyes, in the eyes of those standing by his side. I turned and others turned with me.

‘The Burning Spears!’

‘The Merry Dancers!’

‘The Northern Lights!’

Each place names them differently. I had no name for them. Neither had the girl standing next to me. Her eyes grew saucer wide, her hand leapt to her mouth. The sight was new to many others besides. Puritans do not kneel, but many sank to their knees in awestruck wonder. All around me, fingers plaited against magic, hands flicked a quick criss-cross, mouths muttered prayers to the Virgin. Such strangeness caused many to lapse back to their old beliefs.

Coloured lights shone right across the northern sky, leaping and flaring, spreading in rainbow hues from meridian to zenith: blood red to rose pink, saffron yellow to delicate primrose, pale green, aquamarine to darkest indigo. Great swathes and veils of colour scarfed the heavens, rising and falling as light seen through cascading curtains of water. Streamers shot out in great shifting beams as if God had put his thumb across the sun.

‘Don’t you see? My people, my brethren, don’t you see?’

Elias Cornwell was crying, colours shifting and changing across his cheeks made into mirrors by his tears. Where
we
saw lights,
he
saw something else entirely. He saw the Celestial City.

‘I see it! I see it plain before me!’ Somewhere between choking grief and wondering laughter his voice cracked.
‘
“And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.
”
So says St John the Divine! And so it is! All set about with light, with gates of pearl and shining walls great and high! And the walls are garnished with precious stones, jasper and sapphire, chalcedony, topaz, beryl and amethyst! And beyond the walls I see shimmering roofs and golden cupolas and glittering spires ...

‘
“... and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald ... And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal ... ”

‘I can look no more!’

He cowered back, putting his arm up to shield his eyes, as if he really could be blinded. The lights raged and many rushed to the side of the ship, hoping for a glimpse of the vision which held him in its grip. Some cried out that they could see it too, still others stood as if rooted and were taken by a kind of ecstasy, shivering and shaking like Quakers.

The captain viewed all this with growing alarm. A good proportion of his passengers seemed to have been seized by sudden madness and so many rushing to one side threatened to capsize the vessel. He ordered his sailors to their stations and the passengers below decks. For a moment it seemed that all were set to ignore him, but the sailors jumped to and those not moved by the spirit persuaded the others to go below before the captain ordered force to be used.

Entry 19

All the talk is of what we have seen, and what it could mean. Elias saw the Celestial City, but even for those not blessed with his vision the lights are a clear omen: of war, of disaster, of plague and pestilence. But for whom? To Martha the interpretation is obvious. We left a country torn by war from top to bottom, a country where, each summer, plague threatens one place after another. It is plain enough.

To her.

Not to me.

My grandmother taught me to read auguries and to me the sign is not so clear. The lights spanned the whole of the sky, from east to west, west to east. Where would the death and destruction fall? On the world we have left, or the one we sail towards?

Jonah Morse has no truck with omen and visions. He has seen the lights many times on his travels. He names them Aurora Borealis, Lights of the North, and as such well-known to travellers and seafarers and dwellers in northern countries, as natural a part of the heavens as the sun and the moon and the stars.

He is not slow to tell others his opinion, and they listen politely, but I can tell by their eyes that they do not believe him. He is fast losing any friends he might have made with his potions. They think Master Morse too clever for his own good and do not like being classed as credulous fools.

The talk was set to go on into the night but, all of a sudden, conversation stopped. A wind had sprung up. Above us canvas snapped, cracking like gunshot. Sailors’ feet drummed the deck and the air was filled with shouted orders. The ship heeled and turned and we heard again the steady hiss against the side as the vessel cut through the water. Master Morse lost his audience. Voices rose all around him, giving thanks for this deliverance. Are we not the Chosen Ones? Did not Elias Cornwell see the destination promised? Hands clasped in confirmation. Many believe the wind to be the very breath of God.

Entry 20

Too much wind is as bad as too little. The wind strengthens until it screams in the rigging, howling like a live thing. It has strengthened beyond any blessing sent by God. We are lifted up by mountainous seas, thrown down into valleys so deep they seem to stretch to the ocean’s depths. The
Annabel
lurches and judders as one huge wave after another thuds against the forward bow, jarring the length of the ship. Icy water cascades through every crack and crevice. Above our heads the sailors’ feet race from one side of the deck to the other, their cries and shouts all but lost in the roar of the wind. People huddle together in the fearful darkness, shivering in terror and dread that, at any moment, we will be overwhelmed and swallowed up. The floor cants at angles which make it impossible to walk and everything that is not secured is thrown about. We are turned and turned like butter in a churn, at the mercy of the sea, as helpless as a leaf in a mill-race.

The whole world reels and we have no way of knowing how the ship fares or what is going on above decks. We listen, trying to hear what the sailors are doing, but the hatches are secured and the voices coming down to us are snatched by the screaming wind, thinned to a sequence of cries as meaningless as the call of seabirds. The cabin is filled with the groaning of timber and the crash and boom of water on the hull.

At the height of the storm, a most eerie silence fell about us. Even the children were quiet and the babies ceased from wailing. The hush lay unbroken, except for a muttered prayer here and there, and stifled moans and the sounds of sickness. The cabin was full of listening and waiting for the final rending crash and inundation which would mean the end for us.

Suddenly a scream ripped the silence, rending it like a cloth. A woman’s cry, followed by a sob. Then a space of time, then another groaning cry, and another. A woman in labour. Even the children knew what it was.

Rebekah Rivers came weaving towards us, staggering to find her balance against the ship’s jolting movement. She was the girl who first saw me, but I have not had occasion to be much in her company. She is naturally reserved, and has been much occupied with helping her mother. Mistress Rivers has suffered cruelly with the seasickness and she is near her time, big with child, so care of the family has fallen on Rebekah. She approached Martha, putting a hand out to her.

‘The baby’s come untimely, Mistress,’ she said, her thin hand trembling, her large hazel eyes wide and terrified. ‘My mother’s in need of you. My father asks if you can come quick.’

‘Of course I can, m’dear. I’ll just gather my things.’ Martha bustled, collecting what she needed, turning to Rebekah when she was ready. ‘Don’t you worry. It will go fine with your mother.’

The girl cast a look at the chaos raging round us. Her features are handsome, almost boyish, set in a face which hovers between beauty and ugliness.

‘I hope so, Martha.’ She smiled, tipping the scales to beauty.

‘’Course it will, never fear. Now, we will need water and clean linen. Go and ask for what they can spare.’ Martha turned to me. ‘You can help her.’

I followed Rebekah, asking fellow passengers, friends, neighbours to give us what linen they could. Water is too precious for washing clothes and every garment had been worn for weeks, but most people had something hoarded to wear fresh for when they left the ship. Their beliefs might be narrow, but in other ways they are generous, open-handed people. They knew the cause and freely parted with shifts,
shirts and underskirts. We soon had more than enough.

‘Thank you for your help.’ Rebekah looked at me over the linen heaped to her chest.

‘She’s not finished yet.’ Martha called me to her side. ‘My hands are not what they were, especially in this cruel cold and damp.’ She held up fingers reddened and thickened, rheumatic at the joints. ‘You can help with the birthing.’

Rebekah’s broad brow creased in a frown.

‘You have the skill?’

‘M – my grandmother taught me.’ Something about this tall grave girl made me blush and stammer. Her straight look demanded honesty, and even though what I said was no lie, in my mouth it felt so.