Short Story: 7th Magpie

Short Story: 7th Magpie

NORTH WALES 1626

She is running now, skirt hem gathered up and pulled between her legs to mimic a man’s breeches then tucked in to her leather-strand belt. She is terrified, fleeing for her very life. She is barefoot, her milk-heavy breasts burning almost as fiercely as the breath that scorches her lungs. The savage barking of the dogs and the jeering voices of the men propel her forward and uphill, towards her only hope for salvation. She stumbles, tumbles and then drags her pain-wracked body back on to her feet to force herself onwards. Sweat stings her eyes, her damp red hair clings to her neck and dread grips her belly, heart and soul like the grasping talons of the devil himself.

The sounds from dogs and men meld into one, roaring behind her, gaining on her. Her once pretty feet are torn by nettles and stones; her chest alive with searing pain, blood thundering in her ears. Even the throbbing of the seeping wounds on her slight body is as nothing, for in her desperation to live she feels only the mix of terror and determination that drives her on. Capture will lead to unspeakable horrors. She must get to the trees for there she will be saved. She believes this to be true; she hopes this with all of her tarnished soul.

Overhead the glowering rain clouds part and a shaft of light stretches out from the heavens to illuminate the three golden-leafed beech trees straddling the hillside in the near distance,

A sign, it’s a sign.

And, heartened by her faith, from some deep reserve within her she finds the strength to continue, spurring herself on harder as her pursuers bellow threats behind her. The side of the hill is cripplingly steep, and the pack is closing fast. Her wounded thighs scream their exhaustion as she claws and clutches at tufts of grass to heave herself onward, upward. Hauling her dissipated body to the brow of the hill, she throws herself at the middle tree and clings to its protective bulk, shuddering panic finally reaching her knees and dragging her helplessly to the ground.

‘Save me!’

The magpie perched on a branch of the third beech tree flicks a wary eye at her as she lays — a bloodied creature in tattered clothing — at the base of the tree, sobbing, waiting for release from her torment.

She looks up at the bird, this sacred creature, mysterious and sly and it appears to be contemplating her predicament, staring back at her.

‘Help me,’ she pleads. ‘Take me now. Don’t let them have me.’

Peace.

She feels the gentle hands of the First Mother upon her and is soothed. A sweet murmuring lullaby, sung in that barely remembered language comes to her from a vanished past and calms her frantic heart. Lost in her reverie, unaware that her downfall is at hand, she waits in silence. She is oblivious to the fact that her pursuers have reached the bottom of the hill and that one man, breathing hard but grinning triumphantly, is unleashing his dog. The beast, sensing its prey, charges up the steep slope, mouth foaming, eyes wild from the excitement of the chase. But as soon as it reaches the summit of the hill, some unseen force stops it from racing forward and it halts just a few feet short of the tree beneath which Mair sits. High in the beech tree the magpie sways on its branch, fixing the confused animal with its hypnotic stare. The dog is suddenly transfixed, unsure and so stands motionless, its body quivering, waiting for its master’s command. Mair’s pursuers, her former torturers, mount the brow of the tor and the dog’s owner angrily slaps it hard across the rump. Startled, the creature lurches forward, only to be grabbed by the neck by its master who delivers a vicious kick in the dog’s ribs that leaves it whimpering.

Moments later, blows rain down on Mair, feet kick and loud foul-breathed voices scream vile words, but she can no longer hear them. An ugly slavering black dog attempts to sink its teeth into her calf muscle, but merely draws blood and is dragged off by the cursing handler.

‘You’ll have to kill it now.’

‘Like hell I will.’

‘Be it on your own head, then.’

‘Drown it,’ says another. ‘If it’s tasted witch blood it has to die.’

‘I’m not killing a good dog ’cause of her.’

She hears this exchange at a hollow, echoing distance, and she feels little as they roughly hoist her up by her long red hair. Mair’s wrists are tied in front of her. Her captures affix another rope to that rope, knots separated one from the other: A bond devised by the ever-vigilant witchfinders, to protect the captors from occult powers as they do God’s holy work. As soon as the men are satisfied with their handiwork, they and their snapping, snarling hounds set off downhill at a pace, the rope tightening as they yank her along behind them. Once led away from the magpie and the healing tree, she is brought back to reality. She has failed; there is no help for her now, no redemption, no retribution, and no hope. She sheds tears.

‘Sorry now, eh?’ jeers one of the men, glancing back at her.

‘Always sorry when they’re caught.’

‘I’ve done nothing,’ she shouts at them.

‘That’s rich,’ they laugh. ‘No need to run then, was there.’

Pulled along behind this mindless, superstitious rabble, she knows there is some comfort for her in their beliefs; for she is less than a woman to them, now she belongs to the parish. If she were a mere thief on the run, these louts would throw her on the ground and rape her, no doubt, but their dread of the supernatural keeps their fear-shrunken manhoods in place. Still, safe though she may be from violation she dare not stumble nor falter in her steps for she will be beaten senseless and dragged along on her knees. She keeps up with them as the landscape of untamed fields turns to the tilled and planted, the wretched wooden hovels assembled as shelter by the poor of the parish gradually give way to stone-built dwellings. And further on, beyond the woods, to the far side, closer to Cardigan Bay, grand half-timbered houses appear as the outskirts of Aberdyfi draw into view.

Familiar faces from the town have congregated on the dusty road, leering, jeering, all on the lookout for thrills and excitements. A woman wearing a maid’s cap hurls the stinking contents of a piss pot at the young red-haired woman being dragged along behind growling curs and triumphant men. A bent crone chucks a handful of dirt. A stone, thrown by a young boy standing atop a grassy hillock and laughing with his two besmocked apprentice friends, hits the back of the captive’s head. Another stone grazes her forehead, her naked injured feet leave a trail in the dirt and a grubby-faced, toothless man urinates on the blood spots.

As this dishevelled spectacle enters the town, the gathering mob howls, shouts and taunts. Those who may have cheerily greeted her when they saw her out and about, now curse her as unholy, turn their faces from her as she passes, only too willing to claim that they always knew she was a bad ’un. Others grip prayer books tightly in their white-knuckled hands or wave them at her whilst they spit obscenities; sanctified swearing, self-righteous hooliganism. Amidst this hail of ugliness, that condemns her even for her once-revered but always-envied beauty, she is hauled towards the town square, a sharp tug on the rope and muttered curses propelling her forward should she falter.

The day-to-day familiarity of the place only serves to heighten her terror as she sees it ahead of her, her fate, and her inevitable horrific end atop a pile of wood, strapped to a stake. She has heard that at such times people are strangled or stabbed before the flames reach them, but she sees no kindly murderous face here. She sees only that damned priest standing alongside her treacherous lover and her own foolish sister clutching the baby boy to her barren breast. At least they had not have brought the girl to see her mother die in such a manner and the babe would not remember.

Gwynn Madog, tall and dark-haired, turns to see Mair being hauled to the green, to the place that will ignite her from this earth, an act which, he prays, will cleanse his soul and take from him the guilt of mortal sin.

His sweet-faced wife Edith stands beside him, cradling her foundling son, the child who has his birth mother’s green eyes and his father’s black hair.

For those with enough of a clear mind and sight to behold the only too obvious truth, this infant is no foundling. But Edith sees only the god-sent babe who replaces the one that withered in her belly. The son she birthed in such agony, only to watch his wizened face, crippled back and tiny misshapen limbs convulse as he struggled for the breath that did not come. She can still hear the midwife’s gasp of dismay and horror at the first sight of such a monster and the deafening whispers that followed the birth, all declaring suspicions of curses and witchcraft. So even if anyone in the town of Aberdyfi harbours alternative theories as to this foundling boy’s origins, there is, and will remain, a silence unto death.

‘Must I watch this?’ Edith implores the priest.

‘Turn not your face from this, my child. For God is with us, and He will give us strength to endure, to see an end to this abomination.’

‘But she’s my sister.’

The priest is unmoved. So she turns to her husband.

‘Gwynn, please.’

‘You are a good soul, Edith,’ Gwynn says, his dark eyes dulled with pain and regret. ‘Even after what she did to our son...’

‘You believe she was the cause of that?’

‘Who else? How else?’

But as he looks at her pale, stricken face, so small and sensitive, almost childlike beneath her modest white coif, he feels his own resolve weaken and so reaches out for the comfort of God the avenger; ‘Father David believes this to be the case,’ he assures her, and himself.

The pasty-faced, bent and crow-like priest wipes the beads of sweat from his top lip, for he is here to do God’s work, this is no time for the failures of mortal flesh.

But, still...

Oh, how Mair writhed and spat when he confronted her, lashing out at him as he beheld her heavy breasts engorged with milk from giving suckle to demons, to the devil himself. He imagined the gnarled hands of Beelzebub tugging at those swollen white orbs, milking her, drinking of her, mounting her, rutting with her. His own arousal at such thoughts disgusted him yet she was the one on whom blame fell for had not her rounded, lascivious body conjured them. She was not married, she had no child, and so what more evidence did he need? He had her brought before him, had her stripped naked and flogged, the whips cutting into the folds of her white flesh, her auburn pubic hair mirroring the glowing mane on her head.

Even in such an unkempt state she tempted men, for the faces of the hired tormentors were warped into a sweaty, unholy fusion of hatred, fear and desire. And the priest despised her for that too. All the more proof of her pact with Satan, he reasoned, his own flaming temptation fueling the fires of her condemnation. So he had her taken to a hut outside of the town and tortured, whilst he observed. Yet even as her cries of pain thrilled his ears and sent lust coursing through his veins, still she would not confess.

Then she had escaped. The torturers had gone to the local tavern for their supper and a young lad had been ordered to stay behind to guard the hut. A fire had been set in the clearing to keep him warm in the approaching night and he crouched by it, nervously casting an eye at the wooden door and waiting anxiously for the men to return. He later told of whisperings inside the hut and as he had opened the door just a crack to see to whom Mair was talking, a white hare had rushed past him and hurtled off into the countryside. Then when he looked inside, he said, Mair had disappeared.

‘Transmutation!’ declaimed the priest ecstatically as he twisted the ear of the terrified, simpleton of a boy. Further proof of her evil nature! The priest cried out to his God for vengeance and ordered her hunted down. Her tormentors were hustled out of the tavern, their ale abandoned and their suppers half-eaten. The men collected their snapping hounds and, cursing, they headed out to give chase.

‘Devil, devil, I defy thee!’ the priest raged, shaking his fist at the gathering dark.

****

‘Confess!’ the priest shouts up at Mair while her captors tie her to the stake.

‘Confess!’ the crowd echoes.

He approaches the place of burning. ‘In the name of God save your mortal soul and confess your sins before you die.’

‘Burn her!‘ the mob demand, ‘Burn, burn, burn...’

Mair turns her face from her sanctified tormentor, time slowing to a drowning crawl. Mair’s foundling status had never concerned her as a child. The Griffiths had always treated her and Edith as equals; the girls had grown happily up as sisters. But since Mair’s capture and the accusations, there had been rumours circulating in the town about her origins. Her slavering torturers had called her ‘Llandonna witch’ as they poked and probed, sliced and pricked. It had long been thought that those strange folk on Ynys Mon had been killed off by the plague. Now it was claimed that she was one of them.

So say this howling crowd, faces distorted with hatred yet ashen with fear.

How did we not recognise a witch amongst us?

Mair is staring at the face of her lover now, Gwynn Madog, the man who swore to love her forever whilst he took her virginity, as she so willingly gave herself to him. It was a mutual love made in heaven. They both agreed this as they lay in the long summer grass together, planning how he would speak to his parents and they would be married, very soon. And her heart sang then.

But Edith being the only true child of the Griffiths family and not a foundling like Mair, would inherit the property, and the Madog family wanted them joined to consolidate their lands. So Gwynn Madog married Edith Griffith and this ill-fated dance began. For even after he married her younger sister, Gwynn still came to Mair with desire in his heart and she did not refuse him. How could she, for she loved him, wanted him, yearned for him.

‘Edith is cold,’ he whispered in her ear as he raised her skirts and entered her body. ‘She spurns me. She is plain, I do not wish to lie with her. You are beautiful and it is you I love.’

And she believed him. Until the news came from the big house that Edith was with child.

And here we all are.

The torches are lit.

‘In the reign of our sovereign king, James the First, in this year of our Lord 1626, Mair Griffiths has been condemned to death by fire,’ the priest incants with cold, fearful loathing in his black heart.

Torches are thrown onto the pyre, dry wood and kindling ignites, the screams of the condemned woman searing the souls of all who are gathered there to encourage the deed. Her clothes and hair suddenly flare, red, yellow and blue, her body tossed this way and that as she struggles in vain against her bindings. The crowd gasps in horror when the flames shrivel her white skin away. Even the most callous observers cry out in disgust as they hear her young blood hissing, dripping into the all engulfing fire while the crackle and stench of human fat frying engenders waves of revulsion in all who stand witness.

Although, under the Penal Witchcraft Act of 1563-1736, over four thousand women would be burned at the stake for witchcraft in Scotland and England, no more were to be put to death this manner again in Wales.

The abject horror of that day would stay with the mob that surrounded her. They would bay for blood until the reek of her seared flesh sickened them, and they dare not eat meat for months after for fear of retching; some never would again. Mair’s high-pitched screams and cries of suffering, echoed in their nightmares for the rest their lives – until they too were released unto death and lowered into the ground.

For she had not confessed! And her confession would have bought absolution for them all.

Mair however did confess, quietly in her hate-filled soul, but not to any god of their making,

First Mother, you know what I have done in the name of love. My

jealousy knew no bounds; I believed he had not relations with my sister

until she was with child.

Our daughters were born on the same day. Mine in a field, hers in a

mansion. Mine to bitter tears, hers to rejoicing.

I went to the room of her child when ’twas but three hours old, a

mewling, sickly thing. I smothered it, replaced it with my own daughter

and buried the baby’s body outside the church wall.

My heart ached for my daughter, so I cursed my sister’s soul, laid spells

to poison her belly, then took her husband to my bed in spite and

loathing, sucking his fierce seed into my womb. My sister and I were

soon once more with child.

My own son, born in secret whilst they quickly buried the malformed

creature she spewed forth, is dark like my love and strong like my hate.

My son is here today, sleeping in my sister’s arms. But my soul shall rise

from these ashes and enter him, and he shall always know that his

mother is not the one who offers him a lifeless pap but the one who died

so he should live.

And Gwynn, who could have saved her from the fire had he told the truth, had been devastated with grief by the death of his legitimate son. He broke in to Mair’s modest little house in the dead of night, stole her newborn and gave the child to gentle, grief-stricken Edith, saying he was a foundling from the next village. The next morning he went straight to the priest to condemn his son’s birth mother.

‘Have you seen her suckling demons?’ the priest asked, licking his lips.

‘She is a witch. She cursed my son.’

For surely she must be such, Gwynn told himself, for had she not seduced him time and time again, enchanted him away from his legal wife’s bed and forced him to fill her witch’s belly with a bastard?

So each of the players in this violent, brutal and tragic scenario justified their actions and a once beautiful young woman died in gruesome torment.

The magpie from Three Beech Hill saw the smoke and lazily swooped towards the plume. Attracted by the glinting gold and red fire, it flew through the flames as Mair’s last breath left her ravaged flesh. And, some whispered, took the witch’s soul as she died.

Another legend states that at that very moment, up at the grand house of Gwynn and Edith Madog, their little two-year old red-haired daughter howled like a wolf and foamed at the mouth. And, as her nurse tried to restrain her, the child bit her. The nurse died of the bite, they say.

And the witch’s grave in Aberdyfi, where Mair was immolated and her charred bones buried in a sealed box, has never grown so much as a blade of grass in over three hundred years. Or so they say.

Gwynn Madog and wife Edith had no more children. But Mair’s offspring, red-haired and spirited Elin and dark, brooding Ifor prospered — each beginning a dynasty, which sustains across the centuries and, indeed, the world.

The priest died of the pox, which he swore with his dying breath, was the result of the witch's curse. A lie, of course, as the young shepherd’s lad would attest, had the priest not buggered and murdered him, then buried his ten-year-old body in the crypt of the church. A crime not discovered at the time. Nor indeed, even to this day.