The Fanatic Read online

  John brought her a bowl of thin porridge. She wished she had some poison to put in it, some root or sprouting thing she might have gathered from beneath the damp leaf carpet of the woods. She would like to have cheated them, to not have to go through the street to where the rope waited. She would like them to come for her and find her already gone, her body lying there empty with a smile on its face.

  Yesterday some minister or other had come to her, late in the afternoon. She’d put on a good display for him. She knew what he had come for, even before he spoke. He wanted to be the first to tell her that her brother was dead.

  At first she let on that she didn’t understand what he was saying, even though she’d been thinking of Thomas about the time they’d be putting the lunt to his fire. She’d been imagining them thrappling him. She’d have liked to do it herself, but she didn’t tell the minister this. Instead she said that she didn’t believe her brother was dead. He had seen it with his own eyes, he insisted. Ah, she thought, but what did you see? Some folk are less easy killed than others.

  Then after a while she asked about Thomas’s staff. Where was it? All his power had been in it, all his wickedness – what had they done with it? It was burnt too, the minister said. It was consumed with him and was no more. Then Jean fell in a raging fit on the floor. She thought of all the words that would appal the minister most, especially if heard from the lips of an old woman, and she let them out in a bubbling burn of filth and blasphemy. When she thought she was running dry she pictured Thomas the first time he had let out his confession at the prayer-meeting, and spouted as much of his efforts as she could recall. The minister was suitably horrified.

  She calmed down a little, and looked imploringly at him. Her face was wet with tears. ‘Oh, sir, I ken he is awa noo. He is wi the divils his brithers. He lived wi them here and noo he bides in their hoose in anither place.’ She haivered on with more of the same for a while, wringing her hands and eyeing the minister as he lapped it up like a glutton. Then she asked him, begged him, if he would be so good as to attend her to her own execution, and help her towards a kindly death. She could tell the man was repulsed and revolted by her. But he was a minister, he had a sense of duty and obligation. Reluctantly, he consented.

  Jean was not sure if that minister had been one of the many who had crowded in to look at her in the days around her arrest and trial. She had felt like a lintie in a cage, surrounded by a cloud of crows. She had peered at them in turn and seen the glint in each eye and understood that there was no mercy to be had there. So like the lintie she began to sing to them. She sang them every tune that she thought they would want to hear: not for mercy or sorrow, but for herself. She knew they would not be able to stop themselves listening, and then repeating what they heard. They would record everything she said and she knew that though this wouldn’t save her, one day it would bring their sanctimonious wisdom down to ridicule, to nothing. Meanwhile she would have gone to her safe, kind place where men like them could not hurt her again.

  The first that she dragged down, further even than he had taken himself, was her own brother Thomas. She owed him that at least. For years he had owned and used her. She had been ignorant at first, she had adored him and let him into her because of the pleasure it gave him. There was a kind of holiness to it too, it was special and secret and unique to them, and Thomas was convinced that God blessed their union. He said he could feel God flowing through him when he was with her. But then their hidden life became something else, a monstrous burden. And Thomas changed, became less gentle. There must never be a child, he said, the world would take such a creature from them and sacrifice both it and them to its jealousy. He produced foul-smelling sheaths made from the bladders of pigs and used them when he drove himself into her. Or if he had none of these, he would force himself into her arse, even though it hurt her and made her bleed. She let him go on because she was feart of him; of his righteousness, of the violence of his passion, feart that he would hurt her more, feart that he would discard her.

  She was tied to him because she had no one else. Their father and mother were dead, their sister Margaret and her family were not rich enough to support her. They came to Edinburgh, and there Thomas thrived. He married Mien Burdoun, the daughter of a merchant, which gave him access to the wealthier levels of society. His military career was successful if not distinguished. He was loved by the godly party: the ferocity of his faith was a thing to be wondered at. Angelical, they cried him: Angelical Thomas. And she was poor Jean, the spinster sister, that hovered in the shadow of her brother, a pathetic, faint, female version of himself. She went to Dalkeith where he would visit, coming, as she later realised, from some lonely byre or from the bed of his wife, his servant or his stepdaughter into hers. He gave her money and strengthened her sagging spirit with prayers. When Mien died she came back into Edinburgh to be his helpmate.

  She knew all the things he did. At Carluke he used to talk to her of the dealings he had with the beasts. God had ordained the use of them for man, he said. The pagan Romans, when they massacred the Christians in their arenas, would set rampant dogs and donkeys upon young Christian women in heat, but that was an abomination, an inversion of nature. It was man’s right to master and pacify the beasts. He would tell her this as he turned her on her face in the straw and mounted her.

  She knew also that he lusted after the women of Edinburgh, the ones who doted on him and were inspired by his holiness. He would go out at night and call on them, though she never knew if he got what he wanted, for by then he did not confide in her. But when he could get no other woman, not the lush saintly wives nor the widows plump as paitricks, sometimes he would still return and skail himself into her as before.

  The ministers and others in the Tolbooth listened with gaping mouths to whatever she told them. The ministers tried to prevent her from speaking of the bladder sheaths but the other men were intrigued – she could see their minds lighting up with the possibilities. She told them that Thomas was over his head in devilry. They would go together in a fiery chariot that called in the dead of night for them, and drive through the countryside to Dalkeith and Inveresk and Musselburgh and anywhere else they might wish to go. None but themselves could see this coach; sometimes they were alone in it, sometimes a dark stranger, a friend of her brother’s, would accompany them. She said the staff was a gift from this friend some years ago. With the staff Thomas could do anything. She used to hide it and found that he was powerless without it. But always he would rant and curse at her, and threaten to reveal their incest to the world unless she gave it back.

  She too had got powers from the Devil, and like her mother she had the mark of him on her forehead. By this mark she could discover any secret that was being kept from her. The gathered men shrank back from her, but one asked her to show them the mark. It was in the shape of a horseshoe on her forehead: she put back her mutch and frowned at them all, and the shoe appeared in her wrinkles, perfectly shaped and with dark spots like holes where the nails would go. She could hear the horror being sucked in with their breath.

  When Thomas realised that he was not of the elect, he fell into a black despair. He would not even look at Jean. But he told her, speaking with his back to her, that they were both doomed: they had been fooled by God and bought by Satan and would be carried off to his kingdom when the time came. And that time might as well be now rather than later. Why hide the awful truth? Why prolong the agony and shame? He would declare their sin at the next prayer-meeting.

  Jean listened and said nothing. She had been with Thomas more than sixty years: there was no point in arguing with him. But a wave of anger went through her at his selfishness: he had kept her as his accomplice all this time, and now he decided that when he threw himself to the wolves he would take her with him. For a brief moment she thought of the joy if he confessed only to his bestiality: he would be taken away and hanged, and she could live out her last feeble days alone in front of the fire. But then she saw the impossibility of
that. Once Thomas got started on his confessions, nothing would stop him till he had poured himself out entirely. Seeing him there, turned away from her because she affronted him, she thought about snatching up the fire-iron and beating him to death with it, but she understood that by this she would only martyr him and make herself into something worse than what she was. Nobody would believe anything she said: she was mad Jean, he was Angelical Thomas. In that moment she saw that she was indeed doomed. The best she could do was to make the worst of things for her brother.

  She knew where he kept his siller, for example, hidden away in pokes and parcels all over the house. When the bailies came to take them to prison, they asked Thomas if he had any money to secure. None, he said. Then Jean piped up, and kindly showed them all the panels and neuks where it was hidden. Even in his agony, she could see she was laying more pain on Thomas. The money was useless to him now, but still it hurt him to see it removed. She made sure that the bailies carried his staff away too, and kept it apart from him. If he should get hold of it, even for a minute, he would drive them all out of doors, she said. She looked at the broken, bowed figure of her brother and the thought of him driving anybody anywhere against their will ever again almost made her laugh out loud. So she did. If she was mad she might as well prove it: she let out a long insane cackle of laughter, and at intervals all the way to the Tolbooth she practised it until she had the guards quaking and pishing in their boots.

  She did not see Thomas again until they were brought to trial. She did not speak in the court-room when spoken to by the lawyers. She knew very well what was the usual course of trials where witchcraft was alleged. If you spoke at all it was only to condemn yourself and accuse others. Whatever you said, that was how they interpreted it. They had not tortured her beforehand, but that was only because with the incest they had enough reason to kill her already. So she stayed silent. She did not look at Thomas, and he did not look at her. And she had not seen him since.

  The next day, the Sabbath, the flown man had come. Him that had called in the night all those years ago, and gone away to Holland. She would like to go to Holland herself. It sounded like a dull, quiet, safe place. But there was no point in thinking on that. The young man’s name was James. She could not mind his second name now. He had looked in on her, pretending to be her nephew Sandy. There would be a reason for that but she could not work it out. Was it to be a comfort to her, since she knew that Sandy would not come? But he had not comforted her. He had glanced in and then, though she had said her nephew’s name, had stepped away again, and John Vanse had let him out of the prison.

  Yesterday the ministers, the provost and a number of other self-important fools had come again. They had gone to see Thomas, then they had visited her. She muttered and slavered and laughed to their confusion. When they prayed she interrupted them. ‘Whit for are ye prayin for me? I am bound for Heaven the morn. Where are ye bound for yersels?’ She would not show her fear to them. She knew when she was going to die, which was more than they knew.

  Now it was morning. She would be dead in a little while. But before they came for her John Vanse was back. He brought a man into her cell. She was pleased to see it was James again. Mitchel, that was his name. She wouldn’t speak it out loud. He had killed a bishop, she seemed to mind. That was why he was in disguise. She liked that, being somebody you weren’t. A good ploy. And killing the bishop was a good ploy. She wished he would kill a few ministers as well.

  ‘James,’ she said, ‘are ye back sae sune? Ye’ve no been tae Holland and hame again awready?’

  The man said nothing. Jean smiled at him.

  ‘Is it yersel ye are the day? Or is it Sandy Weir? I ken aw aboot ye, Sandy Weir. I ken ye wouldna come tae see yer faither. John said ye’d come on the Sabbath, ye’d begged him tae let ye in. But when I saw ye it wasna you. I’d kent it wouldna be and I was richt. It was Maister Mmmmm.’ She closed her mouth and made a pantomime of stopping the sound coming out. ‘I’ll no say it. Mm-mm.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m dumb. I ken yer secret. I ken awbody’s secrets.’ She smiled at him. ‘But naebody kens mine.’

  ‘Ye can say the name,’ said the visitor. ‘If I wasna Sandy wha was I? I was in Holland, did ye say?’

  She laughed. ‘Och, ye ken ye were. I saw ye leavin. Eftir they hingit the ither laddie. Ye tellt me tae gang hame, James, back tae him. But he’s deid noo. I’ll no gang back tae him again.’

  ‘Whit laddie was it they hingit, Jean?’ said the man. She looked at him harder. How did he not ken?

  ‘The bonnie yin, the bonnie yin. Oh, I forget him. But ye had tae gang, ye had been oot wi the saints at Pentland – as he had. Ah, but he was bonnie. Every step he took up the ladder wi his puir broken leg was ae step nearer tae God. D’ye no mind that? Ye watched him and syne ye cam tae us and syne ye flew awa ower the sea. But ye must hae been seik for hame. Ye cam back again and ye sh –, ye sshhh!’ She put her finger to her lips and wheesht him. ‘I’ll no say it, James, whit ye did. You hae your secret, and I hae mine.’

  He looked at her knowingly.

  ‘Whit is yer secret, Jean?’ he said. ‘You ken mine. I should ken yours.’

  All this time he had stood just inside the door. Now he approached and sat himself on the bench that ran along one wall. He gestured to her, and she shuffled over and sat next to him.

  Then she saw that it was not him at all. This was a younger man, better dressed, his face less lined and weather-beaten. The face of a richer man.

  She started back, but he grabbed her wrist. ‘Dinna fear,’ he said. His voice had not changed. It was not a threatening voice, and although he kept hold of her wrist he relaxed his grip. There was something calming about him. She wondered if he was simply in another disguise.

  ‘My name is John Lauder,’ he said. She was impressed. He said it as if he meant it. ‘I’ll no hairm ye. I ken wha ye thocht I was. He was here, was he no?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Aye. We’ll no mention him again. Tell me yer secret, Jean.’

  They were staring into each other’s eyes. He let go of her wrist and took her hand. She was old enough to be his grandmother but she felt giddy like a young lass. Could a man change his appearance so completely? It occurred to her that he had come to rescue her. To take her away. Was he an angel? She felt something like peace coming over her, a vague, hopeless happiness.

  She put her other hand up to his face and touched it, as if to check that he was real. Then she brought it back and felt her own dry, runkled cheek. And the sadness rushed back into her. They were real right enough, both of them. Everything was real. The day was real. In a very short time they would make her climb to her real death.

  ‘I amna a witch,’ she said. She began to greet, then stopped as suddenly and said it again but with more deliberate emphasis. ‘I amna a witch.’

  He smiled. That is yer secret?’

  ‘Aye. They say I’m a witch and they’ll hing me for a witch, but I’m no yin.’

  ‘I ken,’ he said. ‘But they’re no hingin ye for that, Jean.’

  ‘Aye they are. The Major dee’d for the ither things. But they want me deid for a witch, and I’m no yin. Am I no wyce?’

  ‘But ye confessed tae the sorcery. Ye said aboot meetin the fairy queen, aboot the endless yarn ye could spin …’

  ‘Aye, and aboot breengin aw ower the countryside in a muckle black cheriot that naebody could see. Whit tales I could tell! Fleein on besoms and turnin intae a hare – there’s naethin a witch canna dae.’ She broke off. ‘Whit’s yer name again, son?’

  ‘John. John Lauder.’

  ‘Listen, John Lauder. Ye’re no daft like me, I can tell. Ye’re a clever laddie, gettin yersel in here pretendin ye’re Sandy. Look at me. Dae ye hear thae stories and aye believe I’m a witch? Would a witch tell such things against hersel? Na! But they believe me, the ministers and the lawyers and the ithers. They say I’m a witch, even though they canna prove it. Ye’re no a minister, are ye, John?’

  �
��No, Jean, I’m no.’

  ‘They’re gaun tae kill me the day, John. Disna maitter whit I say or think or dae, they’re gaun tae kill me. So I mey as weill be a witch, then, eh?’ She gave a huge grin and laughed, a triumphant, warm chuckle rising out of her.

  ‘First ye say ye arena, then ye say ye are. Whit game are ye playin, Jean?’

  ‘A game? Is it a game then? Ye would need tae be mad tae play in a game like that. D’ye think I’m mad, John?’

  ‘I dinna ken.’

  ‘Aye. Nor I. I’m auld gettin, I ken that. I’d be gaun tae God sune onywey. D’ye believe there’s a God, John?’

  ‘Aye, I believe that.’

  ‘Aye, me and aw. And I’ll be there wi him this day in Paradise. Like the pursepick on the cross. I believe that tae.’ The grin was still playing about her lips. ‘Whit’s yer idea o Paradise, John?’ He shrugged, but she didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’ll tell ye mine. A place where awbody’s safe, and naebody’s feart. A place where there’s nae witches.’

  ‘There’ll be nae witches in Heaven, Jean,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Then hoo will I get there? I must no be a witch! Then whit for are they killin me? For I’m a witch! There’s somethin no richt here, John.’

  ‘Aye, Jean, there’s somethin no richt.’ His voice sounded old, weighted down. ‘Ye arena a witch. Ye’ll get tae Heaven.’

  ‘Na, that’s minister’s talk, I dinna believe ye. I dinna want tae gang if I hinna tae be a witch tae get through the yett. There’ll only be nae witches if witches can get in. For if there’s no a witch in Heaven, somebody’s sure tae find yin oot. Am I richt, John?’