Читать книгу The Broken Font - Moyle Sherer - Страница 7

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“White, I dare not say good, witches (for woe be to him

that calleth evil good!) heal those that are hurt, and help them

to lost goods.

“Methinks she should bewitch to herself a golden mine, at

least good meat, and whole clothes.”

Fuller’s Profane State.

While a select few among the maidens and the serving men, who were, to their great contentment, to figure beneath strange dresses and uncouth vizards in the antimasque, and while some neighbouring gentles of quality, who were to take part in the masque itself, were rehearsing in the hall, old Philip, the butler, betook himself to the outer gate, and there sitting down on the porter’s stone, replenished his pipe, and fell a-thinking about Sir Oliver and Master Noble. But the more he thought, the more he was puzzled; and so he opened his vest to catch the breeze from the valley, and smoked with half-closed eyes, too much accustomed to the glorious scene before him to be always moved by its beauties. Below him, in the rich bottom of the vale, flowed the shining Avon. The white foam of the water at Guy’s mill might be seen, and the rush of it might be almost heard.

The cliff of the renowned Guy presented a fine scarp of stone, the summit of which was overhung with knotted and rude shrubs of a fantastic growth; and far away to the left, at a distance of two miles, might be seen the lordly towers, and the tall and ivied wall of Warwick Castle. Such were the objects, which might, we say, have been discerned from the spot where old Philip sate, together with broad and pleasant meadows, well stocked with kine and sheep, and many goodly trees of a stately size, and many a distant coppice of rich underwood. Doubtless the old man had often felt the glad influence of that scene—but now, overcome with heat, tobacco, and the labour of perplexed guesses about the grave mood of his master, he fell fast asleep. Philip was one of those good faithful old creatures whose world was his master’s, and whose greatest sin was the love of victual. This sin was duly punished by black dreams; and now, as he lay snoring against the wall, his indulgence over a rich mutton pie at dinner was visited with the terrors of one of those nightmare visions with which he was deservedly familiar. He dreamed that it was the statute fair, and that they were roasting an ox whole in the market-place of Warwick. The frontlet of the poor beast was gaily gilded, and the horns were painted blue, and gilt at the tips. The mighty spit turned slowly round. On one side stood a fat cook basting the brown loins that the beast might not burn, and on the other a stout and expert carver occasionally stopped the rude spit, and with a long broad knife detached savoury portions for the greedy by-standers, who, on receiving the same, dropped their penny of thanks into the cap of the carver, and, slipping out of the crowd, made way for others. Dreams are to the dreamer realities. Philip’s mouth watered: he thought he had never before seen beef so delicious; fat and lean in their exact proportions; the meat of the finest grain, juicy, and full of gravy; but then his suit, his badge, his pride of place, forbade his wishes: partake of the dainty he could not, but he might go near, just out of curiosity, and for mere amusement. Lo and behold! with an angry bellow forth leaped the furious beast, his eyes all fire, the spit point issuing from his foaming mouth, his carcass smoking and dripping, and half the sirloins cut away. He singled old Philip from the crowd; he lowered his blue and gilded horns; he shook the spit between his grinning teeth; and as he made his rush, old Philip died a thousand deaths in one, and woke into another world—that other he had so shortly quitted. Nor was the object on which his waking eyes first rested exactly calculated to compose his terrors. A crowd of noisy clowns was standing round him; and in the midst of them, upon a hurdle, they bore an old withered and bony woman, crooked and blear-eyed, who was counted the witch of that neighbourhood, and well known by the name of yellow Margery of the Sand Pit.

They set down the hurdle close at Philip’s feet, and called loudly for justice and Sir Oliver. “Hag!”—“Crone!”—“Beldame!”—“To the faggot!”—“To the river,”—“Justice in the King’s name!”—were the various cries by which the impatient rustics frighted all the household of Milverton from their propriety and their pleasures, and brought most of them forth to the gate, and the rest to the hall steps, or the casements. Sir Oliver himself came forth, among the first, loudly rating them. “Why, how now, ye rude varlets; is Milverton a pot-house, and the seat of justice an ale bench? Speak—what would you?—speak, you, Morton—you should know better than to head a rabble rout of this fashion.”

“Why then, troth, Sir Oliver, as thou art a worshipful knight, and a king’s justice, not man, woman, nor child in the whole parish can sup their porridge in peace or sleep o’ nights for this old witch Margery: we’ve crown witness enough to hang, drown, and burn her twenty times over.”

“Not so fast, not so fast, neighbour,” said Sir Oliver, seating himself on the stone from which old Philip had retired melting with fear. “Where are the witnesses, and what have they to say? Let them stand forth.”

“First, here’s Master Crumble, the clerk; then, afore him, here’s Master Screw, the great witch-finder from Coventry; and here’s Jock, my carter; and old Blow, the blacksmith, and Pollard, your worship’s woodman.”

“Stop, stop, I can’t hear all at once—say thy say, Crumble.”

“Why, your worship, my sow—your worship, my sow is dead: all of a sudden, this blessed morn, as I poured out her wash, down she lay all in the shivers; and if the poor dumb creature had been her own flesh and blood, my old woman could not ha’ taken on more. Says I, directly, ‘This is a bit of Margery’s work; for I see her brush the old sow with her black petticoat at the lane end, Sunday was a week.’ It’s quite a plain case you see, Sir Oliver.”

“Stand back, you silly man.”

“Silly, forsooth. I am thirty-seven year clerk of the parish, come next Lammas, and I say it’s writ on the Bible, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ”

“That is true enough—it is so; but how do you know a witch?”

“Why, I know that a man’s not a witch.”

“That is true, thou art a man and no witch. But how dost thou know one?”

“Why, it is an old woman, not to say any one, but a crook back, with a hooked nose, and a peaked chin like Margery.”

“Master Crumble, I have done with thee, and in the matter of thy sow’s death do acquit Margery.”

“That’s not crown law, nor Gospel charity,” said the old clerk, as he stepped back into the crowd, who muttered and whispered among each other till the next witness spoke out. This was the witch-finder.

“Please your worship, I am ready to make oath that she hath a familiar, always about her in the shape of a brown mouse; for I have seen it crawling about her neck, and playing and feeding in her hand.”

Here there was a mixed utterance of triumph and horror in the crowd, and Sir Oliver himself looked grave.

“What dost thou answer to this, Margery?”

“They say true in that they say I have a tame mouse; and haven’t court ladies their monkeys, and their parrots, and their squirrels, and their white mice—and why mayn’t an old lone woman have her pet as well as they?” As thus she spoke, she held out her open hand, and a lively brown mouse sat up quietly on the palm seemingly quite tame. There was a slight shudder ran through the veins of all present; and Cuthbert Noble, fearing lest this mode of defence might rather hinder than help her, went up to advise her better.

“A warm blessing on you, Master Noble—the blessing of one whom you have saved before, and are trying to save again.”

Here Cuthbert stopped her, and observed to Sir Oliver aloud, that this mouse was but such a pet as a shepherd’s boy might play with, and that the old woman, whose ways were odd, had once told him that when she was a child and her little brother died, she had taken to a field mouse which he had petted, and that she had ever since as one died procured another.

The worthy knight was now for discharging Margery; but Farmer Morton insisted that they should hear his carter’s story. Accordingly Jock stepped forward, and smoothing down his hair said—“Please your worship, I lost my best startups (high shoes) the day before last cattle fair, and precious mad I was; and Sukey Sly told me if I went to old Margery, and took her a wheaten loaf, and crossed her palm with a silver penny, she’d tell me where to find ’em. Well, I went, and the old woman said she didn’t want to have aught to say to me. ‘Look ye,’ says I, ‘Margery, here I be, here’s the bread and here’s the money: I ha’ lost my startups, and you must tell me where to find them; and I wo’n’t budge till you do.’ So with that she puts her mouse down against the loaf, and finely he nibbled away, and she set of a brown stud for a bit, and then told me to wait for the first full moon, and then, exactly at midnight, to walk backwards from the yard gate to the dung mixen, with my eyes fixed on the moon, and that I should find them on the mixen; but if it were before or after twelve o’clock, and if I looked behind me, or took my eyes off the moon, the charm would be broke, and I should never see my startups again; and sure enough I never have seen ’em.”

There was a little titter among the women; and Sukey Sly, whose legs were set off in a pair of new red stockings, could not suppress a laugh at Jock’s story: but the clowns called out for justice, and Sir Oliver had much ado to pacify them. He did so at last, by assuring the old woman, that, on condition she told what was the great charm by which she was said to cure diseases, she should be set free.

“Cure diseases! God bless you, Master! why I’m a poor helpless old body, that can’t cure myself, and should starve but for pity,” said Margery. “However, may be, once or so in a quarter there comes some wilful body like Jock, with a tied-up face, and makes a witch of me, whether or no, and will have the charm. Then I take his loaf and his money, and I say—

“ ‘My loaf in my lap,

My penny in my purse;

Thou art never the better;

I’m never the worse.’ ”

This confession was followed by laughter, in which most joined; and, except the clerk of the parish and the balked witch-finder, all dispersed in such good humour, that the poor old crone was released from her hurdle and her troublesome attendants, and, with a basket of broken meat and a bottle of ale, was suffered to hobble back to her hovel in the sand pit, without let or hinderance. It is true that Margery was most justly liable to the charge of imposture in the matter of Jock; and certain that, but for the easy and kind temper of the knight, and the good humour which her own quaint and jocular confession suddenly struck out of the wayward crowd, she might have been committed by Sir Oliver, or half drowned by the brutal and superstitious rustics on her road back to her miserable hovel. But as she lived at a lone spot on the far side of the Avon, and was not often seen in the parish of Milverton, and as the good knight (though by no means free from the prevalent belief in witchcraft, and still doubting whether under the form of a mouse she was not attended by an imp, as the witch-finder had averred,) was a timid magistrate, hated trouble, and sincerely feared doing what was either wrong in law or severe in punishment, he rejoiced to be well quit of the troublesome appeal. Nevertheless, he was not a little secretly disturbed, when, late in the evening, old Philip—in a fear which had not even yielded to the comforting warmth of a cup of spiced ale—related to him his comical dream, with manifold exaggerations, and expressed his stout belief that he had been possessed during his sleep by the evil influence of old Margery.

Truth to say, at the period of which we write such was the fear and hatred of those forlorn and miserable old women, whose unsightly features, infirm gait, and cross tempers, excited among their neighbours any suspicion that they held intercourse with evil spirits, and exercised the powers of witchcraft, as drove forth the unhappy beings to lonely abodes in solitary places. Here again, in the vicinity of some village, remote from the scene of their persecution, their very loneliness, all compelled and oppressive as it was, did most naturally subject them anew to the suspicions of fresh oppressors. So bloody, too, were the laws which at that time disgraced the statute book, having for their end the punishment of witchcraft, so cruel were the modes of trial among the mean and malignant persons who drove a lucrative trade as witch-finders, and so credulous was the ignorant and easily abused multitude, that, upon evidence far less colourable with guilt than that adduced against Margery, unfortunate persons of both sexes were publicly executed without shame and without pity. In numberless instances false confessions were extorted from the hopeless sufferers by torture, and adduced upon the day of trial, or proclaimed at the place of execution. Thus a rooted persuasion of the existence of sorcery and the practices of witchcraft was fixed in the minds of the vulgar, and even infected those of the better and the educated classes. As a natural consequence of this terrible superstition, some of the poor creatures suspected of witchcraft, who found themselves thrust out of the pale of human sympathy—avoided and shunned by some, beaten and set upon by others—did madden, and mumble curses in their gloomy solitude, and at last began to suspect themselves as the servants of unseen spirits, and the partakers of a supernatural power.

In the breast of Cuthbert Noble the vulgar and cruel prejudice concerning witchcraft had no place. His humane and enlightened father had very early instilled into his mind clear notions of the love and care of the great Father of the human families; of the sacredness of human life, indeed of all life, and of the holiness of creation;—and he had, moreover, taught him to regard all particular cases of severe and inexplicable suffering as parts only of one vast and mysterious whole, and subserving, in the great end and issue, some wise, holy, wonderful purpose of divine and universal love. He had taught him, too, that ours was a marred and fallen nature; and how and by what means, and in whose divine person, it actually was restored; and how all the sons of Adam had become capable, through divine mercy, of partaking all the benefits of that restoration of man’s nature—in some degree even in this troubled and probationary state—in full and satisfying perfection in that state which is future and eternal. Hence, to the eye of Cuthbert, every one of human form was an object, though not perhaps of personal interest and affection, yet of wonder and of reverence, as a creature of God, born for immortality—an imperishable, an indestructible being; and, when the crimes and errors of his fellow-creatures stirred up his angry passions to punish and withstand them, the sense of his own weakness and his own sinfulness was ever waiting for him in his heart’s closet, to rebuke and humble him in the calmness of solitude. But Cuthbert as yet had been little tried; he knew not what spirit he was of. He thought that his placid and firm father was the model which he surely followed; but the settled and peaceful joy of that amiable and benevolent and subdued father was as yet unknown to him.

However, the character and the life of Parson Noble will be the better understood and conceived of by transporting our reader to the village in Somersetshire where he dwelt, and where, had it been her good fortune to have been a parishioner of his, old Margery, in spite of her wild and withered aspect, might have lived unmolested and in peace with her neighbours, and would not have lacked such acquaintance with the mercy of the great Redeemer, as it is in the power of a mere human instrument to impart.