5. TO THE BURNING FIELD

After conflicting denouncements at a time when punishment for witchcraft was dire, a victim is selected

There was a momentary silence in the Witchfinder’s house. The dozen or so diminutive dwarves paused doing what they were doing, which was binding Jed Cobweb as tightly as they could in lengths of insufferably strong rope, and at the precise moment when the Witchfinder should have said something powerful in convincing legal phraseology, the door was flung open from outside.

Incongruous it might have seen and even jaw-droppingly impossible, but a baby stood there on two sturdy legs, its hair a mass of impossibly long waves and an expression of demonic power on its sweet little face.

“About time too, Janie,” grunted Jed, throwing off those ropes that were still loose enough to be thrown off and leering at the Witchfinder, who was suffering at that precise moment from intense discomfort as yet another pustule popped.

“And you can shut up!” snapped the baby in tones that indicated that it might already have developed a powerful sense of language.

“But Janie...” whined Jed, shocked.

“I have come to report the very worst of witches,” crowed Janie Cobweb, the baby with a superior expression on her almost perfect face.

Jed thought he knew what was coming, and relaxed. Hadn’t he just said it himself? Hadn’t he betrayed Griselda Cobweb to the most powerful man in the nation in the certain knowledge that here, in this testy little village, it was standard practice to burn witches at the stake before they could cast any more spells onto the hapless shoulders of their neighbours.

“She’s right,” he croaked, “and I’m about to compose a madrigal on the subject. A guaranteed number one hit, that’s what it will be. Wait till I see my manager and he’ll sort out any financial adjustment necessary seeing as tonight's show was supposed to be me withering at the stake, and the cast has been modified to include....”

“Aw, shurrup!” shouted the baby in the most unbabyish tones imaginable. “It’s always got to be about you, hasn’t it? Put a couple of words that rhyme together and you think you’re a star...”

“But I am a star!” interjected Jed, “a great big talented star with more number one hits to his name than any other poet, living or dead. I’m even greater than the ancient Greeks, and they weren’t half good.”

“Then let me get on with it,” proclaimed the baby, and she reached behind her and pulled her mother into the room.

“Arrghh!” squawked Griselda Cobweb who, you will recall if you read previous chapters, was the baby’s mother.

The room was silent again as all eyes turned to look at the shaking figure of Janie’s mother.

“I ain’t done nuffin’” she wept.

“See what I mean,” crowed the tiny figure of her daughter, “Did you hear that? It was a confession, that’s what it was, because if she ain’t done nothing it follows that she must have done something, and I’ll tell you what that something was...”

“Dooon’t!” wept Griselda.

“She had naughty congress with the devil, that’s what she did,” grinned Janie, “she lay on her back for him, that’s what she did, and she didn’t close her eyes and think of England and suffer in silence, oh no. She kept those great big eyes open and begged for more, that’s what she did. And look at the result. Nine months or so later I popped out and now that I’ve reached my first birthday I’m quite capable of looking after myself, so I don’t mind her being carted off to the Burning Field and ignited. The folks are all out there by now, waiting for it. Jed here can write a verse or two about the way she died and take it on a tour round the country until he’s fed up with all the adulation and locks himself into a monastery...”

“I would do no such thing!” snapped the poet. “I hate monasteries.”

Of the more than a dozen people in that room, including the dwarves who were standing there enraptured by the sound of the infant’s voice and nodding at the enormous sense her words made, of them all, not one thought how totally unlikely it was for a baby of only twelve months life in a quiet twelfth century village to know words like adulation or ignited.

Janie Cobweb already had enormous credible power.

“Well, jump to it!” ordered the Witchfinder as yet another pustule popped and a nasty greasy yellowy green dollop dripped out and splattered on the floor.

Then he turned to the shaking Griselda Cobweb in her slightly soiled nightdress and wiggled a pimply finger at her.

“Mistress Cobweb, even though I’ve fair fancied a frolic in your bed for as long as I can remember and every time I think of you I get a tingling sensation in my underwear, even though I’ve always reckoned you to be the most ravishing creature in the county and deserve better than the scoundrels you’ve always tended to want to smooch with, I’ve got to listen to the evidence put before me and proclaim that it’s been proven that you are a witch and must be taken hence, even now, to the Burning Field where a stake and kindling awaits you, and sent to your Maker in a puff of smoke and an agonised squeal, so help you God.”

“Don’t you mention him!” spat out Jed.

“I ain’t no witch!” squealed Griselda who was so filled with fear that she momentarily forgot the confession implicit in the use of a double negative.

“Take her away!” ordered the Witchfinder, squeezing something nasty on his cheek as he waved her off.

So the procession began. In the lead was Jed Cobweb as if this drama was all his idea, and I suppose it was. Following him came the dozen or so diminutive men all doing their best to make it seem that it was they, individually, who was prodding their prisoner towards the nearby field, and followed by the Witchfinder himself, a trail of pustule matter making a trail behind him and, bringing up the rear, the baby Janie Cobweb, treading carefully to avoid treading in the aforementioned pustule matter.

It was soon quite obvious that the message had gone round, and seeing that it had stopped raining and the moon had decided to take a peek at what was happening down below, a crowd of locals and a few hundred who had made the journey from adjacent villages where life was never more than boring had already gathered at the perimeter of the Burning Field.

“There’s nothing I like better than a damned good burning,” croaked one elderly spinster who had long given up dreaming of enjoying carnal relationships with anyone and become bitter and twisted.

“It’s the smell that I like,” agreed her friend, who had always fancied her.

“A good meaty aroma,” agreed the first as the sombre party passed them.

Then they all arrived in sober raucousness at the great field.

This patch of ground, this terrible acre of turf, had heard the last squeals of many an accused witch as the flames had bit into his or her evil magical flesh and the night had been enhanced by the melody of agonised death. Yet it looked so innocent if you forget the stake that was erected in its dead centre, and the piles of dry tinder that had already been piled up around it by eager hands in need of entertainment.

“I ain’t done nothing,” wept Griselda, forgetting yet again the implications inherent in double negatives.

“There you go!” crowed her beau, “that means she has some something, and it’s a disgrace.”

“Excuse me,” said a new voice, barging in, “this has quite a lot to do with me!”

It was the priest, unnaturally sober bearing in mind the hour, and carrying his text in Latin, a script that no-one present could read, which was just as well because an honest translation of his tome, in bright red calligraphy, would best have been The Ladybird Book of Fallen Women and Bad Boys, but, as I say, there were none present who could translate it.

Unless you count the condemned woman’s beau, that is.

Jed knew a touch of Latin (he was, after all, a poet) and he looked at the Priest with new respect.

“We must send this wretched sinner back to her devil,” intoned the priest, and then he hummed and hawed before proceeding to address the crowd in a kind of Pidgen-Latin, which Jed heard as “see you later, big boy, in the vestry”

“I’ll be there,” he grinned, and the Priest placed one hand on Griselda’s forehead before she was dragged the last few feet to her stake, and strong leather thongs were tightened round her until she couldn’t move as much as an old fashioned inch, and her tears flowed like liquid diamonds.

© Peter Rogerson 12.11.17