Curls of fragile blackness, like snowflakes, fall gently on the village.

There is a catch-breath silence – no mortal person dare to shake it.  The slow-falling fragments contain essence of wood stacked to burn her, clothes spun to keep her warm and decent, yet ripped aside to add theatre to her final moments.  Flakes fall unhurriedly in the autumn sky, the bleeding sun an engorged, and knowing eye ready to rupture secrets of ages upon ages.  The smutty peels hold elements of her sun-stripped brown hair, her freckled skin, the green glow that made a barrier between the flesh that she was, and the wider world that killed her.   But she lives.  In the heart-stopped silence and the never- to- be-spoken words.  In the guilty, too-painful-to-be-exchanged glances.  In the promises to be better, less pious, less cowardly and blood-thirsty.  In the realisation that the next witch to be burned could be her, or hers, his darling, or his heart.

*

 

Thomas Phillips has the large, straining belly of a swine.  Violet channels of veins make maps upon it, coarse hair bristles on it as he heaves and sweats, his meaty hands on Sarah’s breasts, working painfully away, grunting to the rhythm of his own goal.  Dun woven slacks crumple at his ankles and the dimpled rumps of his buttocks quicken.  He is oblivious to her distress and her disgust. 

            ‘Liking that, are you?’  His breath is like black peat or rot.

Needless to say, Sarah is not liking it at all.  She looks towards the cows that she knows so well.  Here is the brown and white splattered one, three summers old, the one that provides the creamiest milk.  The cow’s large docile eyes connect with Sarah’s own, and there is a wordless moment.  ‘Yes,’ says the brown and white splattered creature, through the subtle changes of colour in her liquid eyes.  ‘Yes, we are beasts, to be used, to be handled.  Yes.  I know your pain.  I thank you for your gentle hands.  I will help you.’

The other six cows recognise this wordless promise.  They shift a little, in the only way that their confines can allow.  They form a seven pointed star of sorts, eyes gazing dolefully, nostrils flaring.  There is a crackle, a spurt, a drumming of cloven hooves, and Thomas Phillips is suddenly on the ground, bucking and twitching like a newly caught blowfish. 

She is a weaver, of baskets and jugs.  She is a weaver of the essence of things – the art of magic and creative purpose is very similar to weaving, Sarah finds.  

She breathes deeply, adjusts her clothes, layering her slip and smock, re-arranging her engorged breasts.  Her pregnant belly is too large for the restrictions of her dress and Thomas Phillips’ baby protests, kicking her brutally from the inside.  Sarah’s ribs hurt, she feels nauseous, and a burning sensation snatches her breath away.  Her heart heaves, she feels dizzy with pain for her friend, Eleanor, who is the rightful wife of Thomas Phillips.  Eleanor with the reflective face, the finely threaded grey and black hair.  Eleanor, stuck inside a locked and bolted room bristling with vermin, crusts and prayers her only comfort.  Eleanor is a witch awaiting trial, and Sarah a mistress awaiting wifehood.  Neither friend looks to the future with anything but dread.  The sun sheds blood into the evening sky and fleecy clouds arrange themselves to quickly soak up the haemorrhage. 

*

The night draws in sooner these days, always strips of the sky are rouged, bruised purple and grey.  Rooks circle and wood pigeons coo softly, calming, soothing.  The familiar voice of the wood-pigeons helps to settle Sarah.  The message that she hears is that things are well for now, in this moment alone, calm is guaranteed.  No more than that, but what more could she ever be righteous enough to ask for? What God would listen to the prayers of a pregnant mistress as she visits a fellow witch?

Moisture soaks from the rabbit grass to her stockings.  She has a basket with damsons, pears and dark rye bread.  Two charred pigeon’s legs are wrapped in muslin cloth.  There is also a small, sharp knife, perfect for paring flesh, and a pewter vial of clear liquid. 

Sarah moves through the locked door like a shadow.

            ‘You came,’ says Eleanor, voice cracked with gratitude.  At once the younger woman is on her knees, cradling her friend’s head in her arms. 

            ‘They will examine you tomorrow.  It will be bad, Eleanor.   Do you have any marks?  Anything that they could point towards?  Do you understand what I mean, Ellie?’

Eleanor looks downwards towards her navel.  With the tenderness of a lover who cares, Sarah moves aside Eleanor’s dishevelled clothes.  Underneath, the linen garments are cleaner – Sarah moves the shift to one side.  In the half light, the mark is visible.  It is a raised red stain, like spilled port, furred with the softest black hair.  Around and partly within Eleanor’s navel, this innocent mark that curls and leads to the deepest part of her could point directly to her death.

            ‘Eat first,’ Sarah tells her friend, ‘and then we must cut it away.  Do you see?’

Eleanor nods, her eyes are dry due to the maltreatment that she has suffered at the hands of her husband and his associates.  Her being denies the wasted resource of tears.  Sarah gently places the items in her friend’s mouth, careful to allow time for chewing and swallowing.  Last are the pigeon legs.  She peels the pink flesh from the delicate bones, thread by thread, and places the meat in Eleanor’s mouth.  There is no hurry.

            ‘Take some of this,’ Sarah tells her friend, holding a vial of spirit to her mouth.  The spirit burns Eleanor’s parched lips, but the warmth in her throat and belly is a welcome feeling.

            ‘Now here,’ Sarah pours more of the spirit onto the muslin cloth and holds it to the birthmark on Eleanor’s navel.  She looks into her friend’s eyes, careful not to promise too much, and then quickly, deftly, cuts away the raised mark and a slither of flesh beneath it.

            Eleanor gasps, but adds no voice to the sound.  With the nimblest, gentlest of hands, Sarah quickly pads the wound, applies more soft muslin, and replaces the accused’s clothing.

            ‘I must go now, my sister.  We will do all that we can, understand?’

            ‘Thank you,’ Eleanor whispers, and lays back down in the dark.  

 

*

 The village committee decide to burn Eleanor anyway – a bloodied wound can be considered the devil’s mark, as can a birthmark, a wart, a bruise or a rash.  Sarah watches silently as her friend writhes and suffers.  The baby within her seems excited by the show, it leaps and quickens.  Sarah presses down on the infant with both hands, mutely scolding her unborn, willing it to decency.  She looks across the blushing, fire warmed faces of the crowd.  She sees traces of lust, of glee, she sees rotting teeth bared like weapons, ruddy faces in rapture, beads of salty sweat reflect the heat and the horror.

            ‘As the witch burns, I claim my new wife!’ Thomas Phillips announces to the crowd, holding Sarah’s hand aloft.  There is a ripple of appreciation, a whistle or two, a crackle from the dwindling fire.  So it is done.  The witch is dead. 

Sarah looks into the blue, porcine eyes of Thomas Phillips. 

            ‘I will be a good replacement for this witch,’ she promises quietly, withdrawing her hand from his, and stroking the mound of her belly.

            ‘You will alright,’ leers her betrothed, reaching out to stab at the join of her two legs with his fat, hairy hand.  ‘You will give me a son, which is more than that devil’s abettor ever did!’

Sarah looks to the fire, where logs shift to glowing dust, shapes that were the body of someone she loved smoulder and glow.

            ‘I will give you your son,’ she says to Thomas Phillips.

 

*

On the day of her marriage Sarah dresses simply, in a cream laceless smock and green woven shawl.  There is purple heather in her plaited hair, and a small, sharpened knife in the folds of her sleeve.  The voice of the priest drones on for an age, promising, threatening, and crafting the conventions of her new rank.  Thomas Phillips’ grip on her wrist does not slacken once throughout the ceremony.  She is an owned thing now, part and parcel of her groom’s estate. Where a spoke of heather has been too roughly inserted, a single tear of blood slides down the side of her head, making a slow, meandering track from temple, to ear to jaw. 

            ‘My wedding gift to you,’ says Thomas Phillips, grinning like a happy boar.  He produces a thin, silver ring of three parts, plaited.

            ‘And mine to you, Thomas Phillips,’ Sarah says.  She extracts her knife, slices through the bodice of her dress, through the taught flesh of her belly, releasing a gush of bloodstained birthing water.  As she neatly clips the umbilical cord, the blotchy red child falls to the ground, clumsily. 

Thomas Phillips is a slow man.  His eyes are locked onto Sarah’s, his slack jaw hanging and fat tongue lolling.  As the crowd gasps and shrieks he can do little but ask a vague muted question with his round blue eyes.  Sarah smiles slowly as he eventually looks to the dappled new-born. 

            ‘My son.’ Says the Overlord, stooping to pick up the infant.  A son it is indeed.  Though confused at the manner of delivery, Thomas Phillips cannot help but to smile.  A son!   A living, breathing son!  He cradles the naked baby.  He holds it aloft.  The smile freezes on his hog’s face as his child turns charcoal black and becomes a child-shaped effigy of dust in his hands.  The dust falls away, insubstantial as ashes, and Sarah slides to the floor, open and bleeding and consumed with uncontrollable laughter.

            ‘Witch, witch witch,’ chants the crowd.

            There are tears in Thomas Phillips blue eyes.  He wipes them away, and smears his fat chops with the black dust of his vanished child.

            ‘Burn this witch!’ he roars to the crowd.

                                                                                    ***

 

For the second time that month, wood is gathered and stacked.  Sarah, stomach roughly sewn and bound, dressed in her bridal finery, is tied to a wooden cross, her thin, white arms secured behind the long stake with rope.  Sunlight reflects on the hair of a young girl.  Her hair is exactly the colour of a field-mouse, thinks Sarah, as she smiles warmly at the youngster.  The girl smiles back, though her brow is furrowed with concern.  The sun’s rays are individually visible in the clear, autumn sky.  Sarah takes them with her eyes, she weaves them, she plaits them, she forms substance from nothing at all. The crowd, as one, bays for her blood.

Sarah knows that there are compassionate individuals here in the gathering, she has witnessed many small acts of kindness from the people in this village.  A clutch of gull’s eggs left at the door of a sick man, a waived debt, an exposed heart tenderly soothed.  But she sees that the tenderness of the singular is trampled by the many footed beast that is a crowd.  Only the young girl with the silky field mouse hair looks to Sarah and sees a human being, the rest see only a sacrifice, atonement for a multitude of sins, a slaughtered goat, who’s spilled and pooling blood marks a period of peace and safety.

The kindling is lit, and Sarah breathes deep of the sharp wood smoke.  It is not entirely unpleasant.  The newly lit twigs hold no heat yet, but before pain can visit, Sarah takes the essence of it, just as she takes the pliable fronds that she uses to make baskets.  She takes the pain and bends it backwards, towards the crowd that eagerly anticipates her agony.

Sunlight reflects on her magic, picking out the invisible and alluminating the energy of her work.  Only the mousey haired girl is spared.  Sarah selects a barrier of vibrant green from the many colours of light, and her shield glows around the girl like an aura.

Otherwise, pain is everywhere.  As the fire greedily gobbles up the dried, crackling wood, catches the hem of Sarah’s wedding gown, scorches the peachy softness of her flesh, every eager member of the crowd feels the flames invisibly lick at their skin, brand the meat of their bodies, and scorch their bones.  The wailing and howling can only be born of absolute torture, but Sarah and the Fieldmouse girl feel nothing at all.

             A dozen questions brim in the smoke-rouged rims of the girls eyes.  With a smile, Sarah gives words to the questions, which fall like light, soothing rain directly into her mind.

            ‘How do you burn and feel no pain?’

            ‘Because I am a witch, as accused.’

            ‘And how does a woman know that she is a witch?’

            ‘Because we all are, my love.  We all are’.