Weird Sister
Authors: Kate Pullinger
Tags: #Horror, #Fiction - Historical, #Thriller, #Witchcraft
Weird Sister
__________________________________
KATE PULLINGER
Table of Contents
Karen drinks as much as Graeme
Elizabeth and Lolly investigate
Elizabeth and Lolly go to London
Robert shoots his brother in the head
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Anne-Marie Casey
And for the books and conversation, thanks to
Catherine Byron, Steph Mastoris,
Rachel Calder, Anne McDermid, Elsbeth Lindner
and Simon Mellor
Then the Judge grew to sentence and asked old Father Samuel what he had to say for himself why judgment of death should not be pronounced on him; whereat he answered that he had nothing to say but ‘the Lord have mercy on him’.
Then the Judge asked old Mother Samuel what she had to say for herself to stay judgement; whereat she answered that she was with child, which set all the company on a great laughing . . .
. . . After all this the Judge asked Agnes Samuel the daughter what she had to say why judgment of death should not be given her; at which time there was one (being a prisoner) standing by her that willed her to say that she was also with child. ‘Nay,’ said she, ‘that will I not do; it shall never be said that I was both a witch and whore.’
And so the Judge, after very sound and divine council given severally to them all, proceeded to judgement, which was unto death.
. . . And thus ye have the story of these three witches of Warboys, so plainly and briefly as may be delivered unto you.
From
The Most Strange and Admirable discoverie of the three Witches of Warboys
,
arraigned, convicted
,
and executed at the last Assises of Huntingdon
,
for the bewitching of the five daughters of Robert Throckmorton Esquire
,
and divers other persons
,
with sundrie Devillish and grievous torments: And also for the bewitching to death of the Lady Cromwell
,
the like hath not been heard of in this age
.
London, 1593
Agnes arrives
She has a lot of luggage. It matches. As the taxi stops at the Black Hat the bulb in the streetlamp overhead explodes. A shower of sparks falls over the roof of the black hackney cab, fireworks heralding the arrival of Agnes. The driver doesn’t notice; he switches off the engine and climbs out onto the pavement.
The luggage is sleek and heavy and the driver struggles as he unloads it. Rain. She stands beneath her umbrella, expressionless as the driver labours. The narrow pavement is wet and slippery and he is attempting to handle the suitcases carefully; during the long ride from Heathrow – ‘what a fare!’ he will exclaim to his wife at the end of the day – he has fallen in love with his passenger. A kind of love; he can’t quite grasp what is so beguiling about this stranger.
He finishes unloading the cab. ‘Do you know where you’re going love?’ he asks. The streets of Warboys are empty. ‘Are people expecting you?’
She doesn’t reply to his questions. ‘How much do I owe you?’
The driver is embarrassed by the amount. Without blinking, she adds on an enormous tip.
He hands her his card. ‘Just ring that number if ever you need a driver. I can come up and take you down to London, sight-seeing, whatever you fancy.’ He isn’t sure whether or not he is offering these services for free.
‘Thank you,’ says Agnes, and she holds out her pale hand and smiles.
The driver takes it and is shocked by how cold her fingers feel. ‘Get inside, love,’ he says, ‘get yourself indoors.’
The door of the pub swings open. It’s as though the landlord, Jim Drury, has been waiting. Jim looks up, notices that the streetlamp has gone out and feels annoyed. Then he looks back down and sees her. He can hardly breathe.
The taxi driver climbs into his cab, does a U-turn and swings away. He feels full of regret at leaving her in this small, damp village; at the same time he can’t wait to get away, back onto the motorway. Agnes waves as he drives away; he sees her in his rear-view mirror.
Then she turns and offers her cold, cold hand to Jim Drury.
Elizabeth
Agnes Samuel was beautiful, there was no doubt about that. She had the kind of face that you see displayed across the hard shiny pages of one hundred women’s magazines, a model’s face, symmetrical, perfect, and yet somehow indistinct, malleable. Change of hair, change of make-up and she would look completely different. Completely other. But always lovely. Always. It was a kind of power she had, and it was awesome. You wouldn’t want to stand in its way.
I probably kid myself when I say I was in the way, I am perhaps giving myself too much credit.
When Agnes Samuel, and her beauty, came to Warboys, our little village nestled low on the grey fenland, something was bound to happen. It was as though she was too big for us; we were too small. She was American, of course, and that was something to reckon with on its own. We’re not on the tourist trail, and so we’re not accustomed to strangers. Sometimes when I watch the news on telly I get the feeling that the whole world is on the move, entire populations getting up and shifting, spilling out of boats, straggling over mountains, wedging themselves onto trains. London is full-up with strangers, it’s a city of strangers, it has always been that way. Warboys – well, in Warboys we keep to ourselves. Some of us go away from time to time but we nearly always return. Agnes herself was making a return of sorts although we didn’t recognize it at the time. I didn’t recognize it, although now I see it very clearly.
Agnes was an incredibly angry person. I’m not saying that with hindsight – from the moment she arrived it was evident to me that she was very angry. And she controlled that anger, like she controlled everyone around her, perfectly. In a way her anger was bigger than she was, bigger than all of us. And I think it’s what made people love her; her hatred was so complete, so all-encompassing, so passionate. We are all attracted to passion, we don’t often think to examine its source. In these muffled times we long for big emotions, it’s the big emotions that make our hearts beat. Agnes hated us, and she hated Robert most of all. How could I hope to compete?
Robert
I fell in love with Agnes Samuel because she was beautiful. There was no doubt about that. When I met her I realized that I’d never really been in love before. I’d had girlfriends of course, lots of them, I’d even contemplated getting engaged a couple of times. But it hadn’t felt right. It was as though I was waiting for someone and when she came along I knew it. It was her, Agnes. From the moment I met her, I knew.
And despite everything that has happened, I still love her. I know I should not say those words or, at the very least, I should whisper those words under my breath, mumble them to myself in the bathroom late at night, because everyone would be appalled – angry – to hear them. But I say them anyway.
Agnes. My best, my beloved, my girl.
Weird Sister
Some villages are earnest about the past so earnest they forget about the present day. Forever trotting out the town crier, ladies costumed as milkmaids, blokes in battle dress, arguing about the role their village played in history. Some towns have long memories. Not Warboys. It is as though the village woke up one morning and looked on itself with shame. Grotesque, they said, not worth the telling. Not worth remembering.
They were wrong of course. Awful stories are always the most thrilling.
But people forget. People have forgotten. A few generations on, as little as one in some cases, and the memory stops. As though the events never happened. The Throckmortons of Warboys have forgotten. After all, many generations have passed since they last met Agnes Samuel. Ask them about their family history and Robert might say something about the Gunpowder Plot – wasn’t one of their number, from the Warwickshire branch of the family, involved in that? He isn’t sure. Perhaps if they’d had more money the family memory would have been better preserved, catalogued, archived. Instead it has been corroded and erased by daily life, left to moulder and brew like the decaying old house in which they live.
But some people do remember. Some never forget. Like Agnes Samuel. In Warboys they say it is as though for her the past lives as vividly as the present. They say it is because of the past that she is here today. And yet decades, generations, centuries, have passed between then and now; it is more than four hundred years since Agnes Samuel last met the Throckmorton family.
Agnes hasn’t forgotten.
Robert meets Agnes
Curtains are closed tight against the cold in every window in the village and the icy moon hangs low. The only light for miles radiates from the good pub, the Black Hat. (Around the bend on another corner stands the Marquis of Granby, but it is dark, even when it is full of people it is dark.) In the Black Hat the carpets tend toward the grimy, but the proprietor is forgiven for that, because otherwise the pub is stellar, absolutely gold star, with its wine list full of chardonnays and its Sunday lunch menu of roast lamb and mint sauce and potatoes dauphinoise. In the middle of the village stands the clocktower; on top of it the weathervane swings quietly. No one notices anymore but the weathervane depicts a black witch in a black hat on her black broom. She points north until the wind swings her south, west, east, and everywhere she points, that’s where evil goes. This is Warboys, a small village, unsuspecting.