Daughters of the Witching Hill Read Free

a right nuisance. When I went begging for a mere bowl of blue milk or a handful of oats to make water porridge, the Hargreaves and the Bannisters and the Mittons narrowed their eyes and said my hard lot was God's punishment for my sin of bearing a bastard child. Mean as stones, they were. Little did they know. Liza, my lawful-begotten child, was deformed because her father, my husband, gave me no pleasure to speak of, whilst Kit, my bastard, borne of passion and desire, was tall and beautiful and perfect in form as any larch tree. Ah, but the Puritans would only see what they wanted to see. The most so-called charity they doled out was to give me half a loaf of old bread in exchange for a day laundering soiled clouts.
    But I'd even forgive them for that if they hadn't robbed my life of its solace and joy. In the old days, we'd a saint for every purpose: Margaret for help in childbirth, Anne for protection in storms, Anthony to ward against fire, George to heal horses and protect them from witchcraft. Old King Henry forbade us to light candles before the saints but at least he let us keep their altars. In the old days, no one forced us to go to church either, even for Easter communion. The chapel nave belonged to us, the ordinary people, and it was the second home we all shared. Dividing the nave from the chancel with the high altar was the carved oak roodscreen that framed the priest as he sang out the mass. We didn't stand solemn and dour during the holy service, either, but wandered about the nave from one saint's altar to the next, gazing at the pictures and statues till the priest rang the bell and held up the Host for all to see, the plain wafer transformed in a glorious miracle into the body and blood of Christ. Just laying eyes upon the Host was enough to ward a person from witchcraft, plague, and sudden death.
    When I was twelve, they finished building the New Church of St. Mary's in Goldshaw to replace the old crumbling chapel of ease where I'd been christened. The Bishop of Chester came to consecrate it just in time for All Souls' when we rang the bells the whole night through to give comfort to our dead.
    Back then we still had our holidays. Christmas lasted twelve days and nights with mummers and guizers in animal masks dancing by torchlight. The Lord of Misrule, some low-born man, lorded it over the gentry to make poor folk laugh. The Towneleys of Carr Hall used to invite all their neighbours, rich and poor alike, to join their festivities. Upon Palm Sunday everyone in the parish gathered for the processions round the fields to make them fertile. After dark the young folk would go out to bless the land in their own private fashion. Everyone knew what went on, but none stood in our way. If a lass and her young man had to rush to the altar afterward, nobody thought the worse of them for it. I went along with the other girls, arm in arm with my best friend, Anne Whittle, both of us wearing green garlands and singing. Cherry-lipped Anne loved to have her sport with the boys, but mindful of my own mother's fate, I did nowt but kiss and dance and flirt in those days. Only went astray much later in life, when I was a married woman and sore unsatisfied, seeking my pleasures elsewhere.
    In my youth, upon May morning, we arose before dawn to gather hawthorn and woodruff. We'd dance round the Maypole and drink elderflower wine till the very sky reeled. At Midsummer's, upon the eve of the feast of John the Baptist, we carried birch boughs into the church till our chapel looked like a woodland grove. Bonfires blazed the whole night through. Some folk burned fires of bone, not wood, so that the stench might drive away evil wights from the growing crops. Most of us gathered round the wake fire of sweet apple wood where we danced all night, collapsing upon the grass at sunrise. On Lammas Day the reapers crowned the Harvest Queen and one year, by Our Lady, it was me, a lass of fifteen, crowned in roses and barley, the lads begging