Galore - Michael Crummey [36]
He listed the curses she’d thrown about as she left his property as best he remembered them but there was no one he could call to confirm what was said. Not a soul among the servants who knew the woman would speak against her. He had to haul out of the courtroom and grab a fifteen-year-old taken on the spring he fired the servant girl, a stranger to the witch’s influence and more likely to listen to reason. He gave the youngster a quick study in the evidence required as they walked back to the storeroom and let him know what would become of him if he refused to give it.
Yes, the boy testified, he’d seen his master’s sorry condition and other people ill around him, though he’d not taken sick himself. He looked to King-me a moment before he went on. Yes, he’d seen the defendant down at Spurriers’ Rooms of a night before the sickness struck them and she was putting out Sellers’ fish to cure in the moonlight. And she was saying some words over the flesh besides to poison it.
The chaplain said, You heard her speak?
—Not that I could understand, sir. She were talking some black language that were beyond me.
The youngster managed an admirable job of it to start, adding the bit about the black language of his own initiative. The captain and his clergyman were whispering on each other’s shoulders and King-me had a moment of premature elation come upon him, to see the servant girl at his mercy suddenly, certain the game was won. He straightened in his chair as the captain turned back to them.
The captain said, You observed the defendant place a black spell on the household’s fish?
—I did, sir, yes.
—Did you tell anyone about what you’d seen?
The boy glanced at King-me, a look of uncertainty creeping into his face. —I don’t believe so, sir.
—Did you or did you not?
—I didn’t, sir, no.
—You observed the food of your master being poisoned by a witch and told no one, is that correct?
—I suppose that’s the truth, sir.
The captain smiled then and King-me felt the floor fall out of his stomach.
—You allowed your fellow servants and your employer to partake of flesh you had seen being poisoned?
The youngster only gaped. He was shaking so severely King-me thought he might soil his trousers.
—One might conclude from this evidence, the captain said, that you consented to the misfortune that befell Master Sellers.
—No sir, the youngster said.
—One might even argue that you were a conspirator in the event, a party of equal guilt to the defendant.
And with that the boy commenced to bawling. —I never saw it but from a long ways off, he sobbed. —I never heard a word, I was that far off. I don’t know for certain if it were she were out there in the dark, that’s the truth of it. It might be it were someone else were out there. I might have seen shadows and thought it a person on the wharf.
—Thank you, the captain said. —That will be all.
The officer turned his attention to the defendant after the Irish youngster left the room and King-me stared at the floor, not willing to see the look on her face. She spun some yarn about being owed wages upon dismissal and helping herself to a laying hen as payment while Master Sellers was at his store, but she denied doing anything to cause the cow to lose her milk. She denied curing his fish in the moonlight or speaking black words over the flesh or even setting foot in Spurriers’ Rooms after her position was terminated.
—Are you in any wise responsible, the captain asked, for the afflictions described to us by Master Sellers?
There was a pause before she answered and he could feel her staring at him. —If I caused Master Sellers’ head to swell twice its normal size, she said, it was through no deliberate action on my part. And I’d wager it was not the head on his shoulders that was so afflicted.
King-me pulled furiously at the cow’s teats against the memory of that moment, the milk coming sharp against the pail. Maddening bitch of a woman. Even the chaplain smirking into his chest. Maddening, maddening bitch of a woman. The cow bucked suddenly and knocked him off his stool into the filthy