Freelance writers admire this story as one of the few unsolicited pieces of fiction Ms. magazine ever bought. It was published in 1976 and was recently passed on to me by a professional storyteller. I listened to his flaming advertisement — “the best short story I’ve ever come across” — looked at his barely legible photocopy of a photocopy and replied, “Then you’re going to have to read it to me,” and he did.
As a writer, I was moved by the skill with which Meghan Burges creates the reader as confidante within a very private conversation, the details told in pauses, in phrases that fit the formality of the eighteenth century. I loved her confession, “Whatever the risk, I will not be less than what my life has made me.”
Ms. magazine did not hear from Meghan Burges again after they published her story, and have no knowledge of her whereabouts.
April had been chilly and stormy this year, soon the first day that truly felt like spring, I was happy to go outdoors in the gentle sunshine to work in my garden. After a long winter under my low, dark roof, it lightened me to see young leaves arching in airy layers overhead. I often paused in my digging to look up through them to the newborn blue sky beyond.
I was shaking soil from a clump of roots before tossing it into the barrow, when the geese began to scurry about their pen with a din of honking. Geese are much better watchdogs than my old shaggy True, who now only raised his head with good-natured interest to look toward the road. If ever the villagers come to get me, the geese might warn me in time to run away into the forest. Still, old True is ferocious against rats and mice, and I would not dare to keep a cat. You never know what small thing might be brought against you later.
Now I too heard the sound of wheels creaking toward my gate. I stood up to look, shading my eyes with my trowel. Whoever it was could only be coming here, for this was the end of the road.
My house is set in a clearing in the woods. There is enough open space to give sunlight for the garden, but the forest crowds in close, right to the fence that keeps deer from eating my herbs. Thus, trees hid the carriage from view until it was almost beside my front gate.
When I saw it was a closed carriage drawn by two fine roans, my heart gave a horrid lurch within me, for I knew of only one such in all the countryside, and it belonged to the Governor. In that first moment, I thought surely he was sending some men after me. I picked up the front of my skirt and half-turned to run before I noticed the shadowy head of a woman behind the carriage windows.
The equipage tilted to a halt, with one wheel in a rut. A driver in Kendal green livery jumped from the box to open the carriage door. A brightly colored figure within furled herself up like a morning glory to fit through the narrow doorframe.
When she had stepped forth onto the roadside, I recognized her from certain descriptions of Parson Wicker to be the Governor’s lady. The coachman opened the gate for her, then leaned upon the gatepost with a frank and impudent interest to watch Milady stroll toward me, herself gazing about curiously.
I tossed my trowel into the barrow and brushed dirt from my fingers as best I could. I wondered what could be bringing me such a visitor. Few from the village dare approach my house by daylight. They don’t want anyone to know they come to me, those dropsical old folk who creep up my path in the gloaming to be dosed with foxglove, or the young girls who come seeking a charm to make someone love them.
Now and again, someone will knock on my door in the night to fetch me to the village. The midwife there is skilled, but the one thing beyond her is a breech birth. At such times she sends for me, for I have the art of turning the baby within the womb, that I learned from my mother.
Whatever their distress, though, the sun is well down before any of these good folk slip from behind the trees toward my house. The sawyer would come by day if he wished, for he fears neither God nor the devil, but as it happens, the moonlight shines down on most of his visits. The sawyer — well, the sawyer has a sickly wife. He is a big man, and his eyes are a very clear dark blue, and that is all I care to say about that.
Parson Wicker is sure enough of his soul’s safety to visit me by daylight. Many an afternoon he sits by the hour at my table, drinking cider and talking to me as I work. I am sure he tells his parishioners that he seeks to cure my own wretched soul by his visits. Perhaps he thinks so himself. I know better.
As we know, the priests of Rome are not allowed to marry. I have sometimes thought it is because they must stay empty in their own lives to keep space within for all the human woe they carry away from the confessional. But Parson Wicker is no priest, and when the weight of all he knows about the villagers grows too heavy for his heart, he brings it to me because he knows it is perfectly safe to do so.
Yes, he has told me much that he should not, that spry little pink-cheeked man. I keep silent, and often find it useful in my work to know more about the village of Starwater than the busiest gossip in it, though I seldom cross the green myself.
What chagrin would have filled the breast of this fine young lady who now approached me if she knew how much I had heard about her! Her great mansion with its gardens and lake, her extravagance in the purchase of table porcelain, her quarrels with her handsome, sulky husband.
She was wearing a long cloak of soft blue wool like a jay’s wing, lined in darker blue. The hood had fallen back from her head. She was so fair that it was hard to see her brows, or where her broad forehead left off and the fine pale hair began.
The path was not very long, yet she seemed to take a long time to reach me, like a boat’s sail you see from afar that looms toward you slowly. When she came closer, I could see a strangeness and strength to the beauty of her face. For all she was so soft and fair, you would hesitate to cross her will.
I made her a curtsy and said, “Madam Governor, how do you do.”
She inclined her head, accepting without question that I knew who she was. I suppose she was used to being recognized by all. She spoke no greeting in reply, but said at once, “I have business with you, Miss. May we go into your house?”
She did not wait for me to answer, but walked straight past me toward the open doorway. My house is such a little gray weathered box; most peculiar it seemed to watch her elegant figure disappear inside, like a doll-lady on a foreign clock.
I followed her inside and gave her the chair to sit on while I took a bench facing her. She settled down with a little shake of her shoulders, as a bird settles its feathers, and gazed calmly about the room for a few moments before speaking. My notice was caught by the delicate shoes she was wearing, of softest pewter-gray leather, as fine as glove leather, with shoe-roses at the instep and scarlet heels. I drew my clogs under the bench and pulled my eyes away.
Sunshine coming in through the open door cast a bright square on the floor planks, and dust motes quivered in the falling rays like a veil of light. Tiny points of light twinkled from the shelves of crocks and jars; otherwise the room was shadowy and cool, with a tang in the air from bunches of dried plants hanging among the rafters.
A long silence fell while the lady scrutinized my face and uncovered head.
“They say,” she remarked in a clear, almost joyful tone of accusation, “that witches have red hair.”
I sat quietly, looking at her. Then I shrugged. “They say,” I answered, repeating her emphasis, “that looking at the new moon in a mirror will drive you mad — but it isn’t so.”
She considered this for a moment with her lips pursed, and then countered, “Well, but I have heard you can read and write!”
“As my mother taught me before she died, Madam. We must be able to read the herbals, and write labels for our mixtures, you see. And I write down new things that I learn, so as not to forget them myself, and to pass on that knowledge to my own daughter when I have one. Many men know how to read — there is no witchcraft in it just because a woman can.”
“Then what do you call yourself if not a witch?” she asked slyly.
“I call myself a green woman, Milady. If anything is wrong with you that plants can cure, I may be able to help you, for that has been my life study.” I paused and searched her face, trying to read her thought. “Are you ailing? Tell me about it.”
She looked down into her lap and sat twisting the wedding band on her white finger.
“I have heard that if a woman is with child and does not want to be, you are able to — well, you know — make an end to it.” She shot me a keen glance from under her fair lashes and looked down again. I frowned, thinking hard.
It is true they come to me sometimes, young girls half crazy with fear, or exhausted young wives with a child in the cradle and one on the floor, and three or four in sizes up from there. How they weep, poor souls, with their heads in my lap. How they have waited and prayed, looking by night and by day for signs that do not come!
They have no fear of me then, no, no. Most gratefully they take the Contessa’s powder. But afterward, when their bodies and hearts are light once more, they draw off from me with strange looks. The devil must be in it, they think, that I can in this manner turn aside from them the hand of God.
Has one of these women now, I thought, been tormenting herself in the night with fears of hellfire? Gone to the Governor, perhaps, and complained of me, so that he has sent his lady here to entrap me with questions?
I took a deep breath and ventured, “I am wondering why such rumors would interest you, Madam Governor, a married lady like yourself, with no children of your own, I believe?”
“That is just it,” she replied. “Three years now, we have been wed, and still no children. I was thinking, you see, that since you know how to make an end, you must know how to make a beginning, too.” She turned up her palms in an expressive gesture of appeal.
“Ah, that is another trouble entirely,” I said, thinking of a certain almost empty jar on the upper shelf. “I am afraid I cannot help you there.”
At these words her fair softness congealed at once into a substance much harder and colder. Her lips set in a line, and the pupils of her eyes were tiny black points in circles of gray ice.
“If I were in your place, I should think very carefully before refusing,” she said. She leaned forward in her chair and added almost in a whisper, “It has been a long, long time since we have had a witch’s trial in these parts.”
A hush fell between us now that almost had a thickness to it. It was like the moment when you drop a stone down a well and wait for the sound of its striking.
“To make a life,” I mused. “As I told you, that is another thing, much harder than the other. Suppose I do try to help you and nothing comes of it?”
“A long, long time,” she repeated. “Since your grandmother’s day, if I recall correctly.”
I showed my teeth at her in a grin or a snarl, she could take her choice. “You use strong persuasions, Madam. I hope your rewards are equally weighty!”
“Oh yes, I will pay in gold,” she assured me, her voice becoming lighter, almost eager, as she felt sure her will had pierced through to me.
“All right,” I said slowly. I went on to question her at some length about her health and habits, to get a better idea of what might be amiss. At last I added, “You will have to give me some time to make up the medicine. A week, say. Shall I bring it to you, or will you come back here?”
“I will come back here, I think. It would be as well for my husband not to know of this.”
I nodded. A memory came to mind of the one time I had seen the Governor. He was walking into the inn, but paused on the steps to turn around at someone’s call. He was a handsome fellow, though just inclining to stoutness. The glistening salt-white of his shirt and his suit of fine black serge well became his pale complexion and glinting dark eyes. (I also recalled Parson Wicker’s complaint that the church might install a new pew each year with the money the Governor spent on linen alone.) A certain droop of the Governor’s mouth and the lackadaisical manner of his turn spoke of a constitution perhaps not altogether virile.
“Just a moment,” I said as Milady rose to leave. “There is something I want you to take with you.”
I went to the shelves, took down a jar, and began to spoon some of its contents into a small packet for her.
“Starting from today, try to have your husband take some of this each day. Make it up into a tea for him, a spoonful to the cup.”
She laughed shortly. “It would be quite a trick to make my husband drink anything but ale. Yes, one would have to be a magician, I think.”
“Put it in a toddy, then, with rum and honey, and give it to him for a bedtime drink. It will work just as well that way.”
“Yes, that he would take. What is the stuff?” She looked curiously at the jar I was restoppering.
“Oh, sarsaparilla and other things. It is a tonic.”
“And might I take it too?”
I smiled. “No, just your husband. It is in my mind that the press of office might be fatiguing the Governor. This will build up his manly vigor.”
A curious half-smile crossed her face and was gone. I could not guess its meaning.
“You do look pale,” I observed. “Perhaps your blood is thin. Take some molasses every day to strengthen yourself. I will have your other medicine ready when you come back.”
She took the packet without further question and began to saunter toward the door. “I shall return next Wednesday, then. My, what a great stack of firewood you have, and you with no man around the place. Do you have to cut it yourself?”
“No, the sawyer brings it to me from the mill.”
“Ah, the sawyer. I have seen him, I think. A big man, with blue eyes?” She stood still, gazing at the wood in a deep reverie, then pulled herself up with a shake of the head, as if gnats were pestering her.
“Good-bye for the present, then,” she said.
I bowed to her in the doorway but did not follow her outside. I stood and watched her walk away down the path toward her waiting carriage. Above her head, a jay flew down from the treetops to perch on a lower branch. He called at me with his jeering cry.
“Haw!” he seemed to be laughing. “Haw-haw!”
When the last rattle of carriage wheels had died away, when the sheltering woods were once again silent of all their own sounds, I turned away from the doorsill and sat down in the chair with my grandmother’s old handwritten herbal in my lap. It was a long, narrow gray book with “Journal” printed on the cover in dull maroon letters. I myself had pasted new cloth along its spine to reinforce the binding. I did not trouble to open the book at first. I suppose I just wanted to hold it in my hands to feel the healing presence of that little aged creature whose bright face I can barely remember.
My mother and I had searched through the book so many times before, searching for this particular formula, but it was one of the very few grandmother had not written down. Nor did she, before they came to take her away, show my mother how it was made. Perhaps she herself had bought the mixture from somewhere, as I must buy stoneseed from the Indian trader and the Peruvian bark from the apothecary. If that were so, she may not have known how to compound it herself; I don’t know.
The times we needed to give out such a medicine, and these came but seldom, Mother and I always just took from the jar the small amount needed. As the level sank down, we grew ever more cautious and thrifty about measuring it. Even so, the last full dose we could eke out had been given three years ago, and since my mother died, I had not even admitted to even knowing such a cure. What was left in the jar were just flakes that you could hold in your palm — so old that there was probably no power in them any more, for virtue cannot last forever in plants, no more than in women.
The rest of that day and part of the next, I read through all the ledgers that had been handed down to me from those two wise women now gone from my life: Grandmother, whose manner of death I do not dare to think of right now, and Mother, who died quite young of a tumor not all her mandrake extracts could diminish. Partly, as I said, I just wanted to feel their company — to bring back a sense of their real persons, which handwriting seems to call up so strongly. But partly I hoped one formula or another might jump together in a pattern to give me a new idea.
I took down the jar with its few leaves, and spread them out on a piece of paper to smell them and taste them. I carried them over to a good light by the window and looked at them under my mother’s strong glass, with the gold bumblebee for its handle, that the fine gentleman gave her so long ago.
The mixture contained motherwort, of that I was sure, and wormwood. There appeared to be water nerveroot, and water betony also, and something else that might be black horehound. I remembered that when my mother gave out the cure, she did not give the dried mixture itself, but boiled it up in water and strained off an infusion.
Still, I was ringed about with unanswered questions. The time of year when herbs are gathered often makes a difference in their properties. Was I to use the leaves, the roots, the stems? And most important, in what proportion must I mix the different kinds?
One late afternoon while I sat at table with pen and paper writing out a receipt for possible use, Parson Wicker arrived for a visit, announced by screaming from the geese. I could tell he was troubled, for he did not sit down with his usual eagerness to sip and nibble at the little meal of cider, bread, and cheese that I rose to set out for him. Instead, he walked about the room, and stood by the window, thoughtfully tapping his teeth with his forefinger. When he spoke, it was in a manner he had when ill at ease, adding a little humming sound before certain words: “How have you been? I hope you are hmmmwell?”
“I am well enough. But you seem restless today. Are you upset about something?”
“Truth to tell. I am a little. Mrs. Jacob Taylor tells me that the Governor’s lady drove past their farm Wednesday in her carriage. So, she must have come here — there is no other house beyond the Taylors’.”
“That is true. She was here.”
“Oh dear,” his ruddy face puckered unhappily. “And I suppose she wanted you to hmmmtreat her for some ailment?”
“No it was just a sociable visit,” I replied lightly, but the poor man was altogether too heavy-minded to understand pleasantry. A struggle to imagine the Governor’s wife paying a social call to the likes of me began to warp his features into the most comical expression, so I quickly added, “I’m teasing, I’m teasing. But you must understand I cannot tell you why she came to see me.”
“Oh, I think I can guess that. Not long ago she was lamenting to me about her childless state, and at the same time, she questioned me very closely about your skills. That is why I am so sorely troubled. To think I may have been the cause of her coming here!”
He fiddled with the handle of his mug in silence for a time, and then burst out, “Why can you not give this up? You shall only end by being hanged or burned one day. Can you not set aside these magics and medicines and live like ordinary folk?”
I thought of the village green, that pleasant oval, with the little houses set around it. There people smiled when they met in the road, and the women called greetings to each other while they hung out their linens to dry in the sun. Thinking of such friendly neighbors made me pull a wry face at the Parson.
“And will I have a kindly welcome, dear sir, when I move into my little cottage on the green? Will the good and trusting folk of Starwater rush to buy the pies I shall bake from my famous secret receipts to earn my living? Will the good wives invite me to tea?”
His eyes rolled up to the rafters to avoid meeting mine.
“Well, but this is not the only village in the world,” he demurred. “You could go to another where nobody knows you. You are young still, and hmmmpleasing to look at. You might even marry if you could learn to bridle that sharp tongue of yours.”
“We do not marry,” I told him haughtily.
“And why not, I should like to know?”
“I don’t know. It is a tradition. In a way, I suppose we are like the priests of Rome — we have to keep our own lives empty to be free to cure others.”
“Hush, woman! What blasphemy!”
“Well, you asked me,” I murmured, smiling to turn his mood. “As for going away, we have been living in this house since time out of mind. Am I now to be run off like a homeless dog because the fine lady might take a whim against me?”
“She is a danger; never doubt it. Did you know that she works her farms and gardens with prisoners’ labor? Yes, and has them flogged at her displeasure. A heart of marble, truly.”
He hunched his shoulders and looked so wretched that I reached out and patted his hand.
“Please don’t distress yourself so. It is true that I sometimes think with longing of the life you describe, to be safe and sheltered, and part of a friendly, homely world. But it always comes back to this, that what I know cannot be unlearned. Nor would I wish to know less than I do. Whatever the risk, I will not be less than what my life has made me.”
I paused to look at him earnestly, and added, “It is my own choice, you see. However, it turns out, there is no reason you should feel accountable.”
He sat looking down at the table for a short while, and at last nodded his head several times in acceptance. Without further word or look, he rose and, picking up his tall hat that was covered with road dust, walked slowly out the door.
The next days were long and weary for me. Although many useful plants grow in my home garden — sage, poppy, foxglove, and the like — I also make daily use of wild herbs from the woods and meadows. It may sound like dainty work to wander about with a willow basket, picking flowers and rare greens, but remember, I must go in any weather. Dusty and sun-scorched, or windy and raining ice, no matter. Sometimes I must walk many miles to find what I am looking for, and still there is the day’s work to do when I get home.
For some of life’s needs I can barter. I keep no cow, for instance, since the farm wives of our district pay me in butter and cheese. But there is much I must do for myself, and living alone as I do with no one to help, just the chores of staying alive pare many precious hours from my day.
The only work I truly hate, though, is hunting the bogs for water plants. There, my flesh crawls with the nearness of snakes I cannot see. I am always in dread of a false step on that quaking ground, which would suck me down slowly, screaming, into the ooze. Sometimes I wake up in the night, drenched in sweat but also shivering cold, having dreamed of that.
So it was good, after a day spent in the bog late that week, to have the sawyer’s company in the night. I was drying plants on a screen over the fire when he came in. My hair was sticking to my face in tendrils from the heat, and I felt tired and unkempt, but I was glad to see him. I smiled a greeting and fetched him a mug of ale to sit with while I finished my work.
Later, when all had been tidied away and the hearth swept, I took up the ale jug and carried it to where he was sitting. He threw an arm around my knees.
“Do you know what I like about you?” he muttered, nuzzling his face against my belly. “You make me feel that it pleases you to feed me and love me. I hate that feeling that everything I need wears a body to death.”
Surprised and touched, I cradled his dark head in my hands. It was seldom he was so tender. That night he was a gentle breeze lifting me up, not the wild wind or bluff gale I was accustomed to. At some point the thought came to me to worry about all the mixtures I had been tasting, and a fear jumped in my gullet like the sudden leap of a frog. But then, almost as clearly as if she had been there, I could hear my mother’s firm voice in my ear: “Dear heart, it is time you had a daughter of your own.” At these words, a pure well of peacefulness filled within me, and I feared no more.
Just as she had promised, in the afternoon of the seventh day, Milady once more approached my house with her slow, swaying walk like a boat at anchor or a wind-tilted bell. I had already set out for her on the table a stoneware bottle containing the potion I had brewed for her. Seeing it, she picked it up at once and turned it curiously in her hands.
I made her reckon up her monthly dates, which she had trouble remembering. Then I made some calculations on a piece of paper, while she watched me with uneasy interest, as if I were writing sorcerers’ signs.
“Here is what you must do,” I told her, when I finished writing. “From the time the moon is in its last quarter you must not have anything to do with your husband. If he presses you, pretend you are ill. In the dark of the moon, begin to take this liquid. Take half a wine goblet both morning and night. From the third day after the new moon, lie with your husband as often as he will for a few days. Can you remember that?”
“Yes.”
I stood up so that I could look down on her.
“Now, my pay for this. I want two gold pieces now and three more when you find yourself full.”
“When?” she repeated with mocking challenge. “You are so sure, then, of your merit?”
I gathered up all the strength of my being and fixed my eyes on her like a mighty beam of light. Pressing the heels of my hands on the table, I leaned across it toward her and asked in a measured, chiming voice:
“Do you now believe I have powers to do it?”
She swallowed and bent her head.
“Then trust what I tell you.”
I let the aftertones of my words circle out in the silent room until they died away. Then, resuming my normal voice, I said, “Here, I shall wrap your bottle in a bit of cloth to guard it against breaking. Keep it somewhere cool at home, for heat will rob its power.”
She stirred in her chair. Opening a little netted purse, she took out two gold pieces and placed them on the table, meticulously pushing them side by side with her tapered forefinger. As if the act of payment had restored her proper rank, she too now rose and looked about her with an arrogant tilt of her head.
“More firewood!” she exclaimed. “The handsome sawyer treats you well.”
“Yes, he is good to me.”
“You are so fortunate.” She gave a little laugh, sharp as broken glass, and walked away. “Good-bye, then. I hope your potion works as promised. For both our sakes, eh?”
Once she was gone, I should have felt some ease. I should have been able to say to myself, “It is done now. There is nothing more but to wait.”
There was something, though, an unnameable shadow in my mind that would not let me settle. During the next days, if I were at sweeping, I would stop and lean on the broom, staring with vacant eyes. Digging in the garden was the same — I would start out of a dream and find that I had been idly drawing lines on the ground with the edge of my trowel.
Thus driven by unrest, I paced and thought. I wished for the wisdom of King Solomon himself, to tell me what else I should do to preserve my life and the one perhaps to come. At length I called to True and set out on the road toward the sawmill.
When we had come near to the bridge, I took a side path through the woods and stood among trees on the edge of the stream, just across from the sawmill. He was working the big saw that is run by the waterwheel, and the noise of it drowned out every other sound in the world. I wondered how he could abide such a din in his ears all day. I waited until I was sure he had seen me, then withdrew into the woods to sit on a stump until he should come. The sound of the saw faded in a dying whine, and before long the flicker of his blue shirt showed through the underbrush.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, for I had never before approached the mill.
“No, I just have a favor to ask, and I wasn’t sure when you might come back to my house.”
“Ah,” he said, squatting down with his back against a tree and reaching out to scratch the dog’s head.
“I need some white Solomon’s seal to make up a salve, and the nearest place to find it is Vannevar’s Lake. It must be eleven miles to walk there. Will you take one of your horses and ride over to get it for me?”
He raised his head and gave me a curious look, without answering for a moment.
“Don’t you want to take the horse and go yourself? How can you be sure I would get the right plant?”
“I couldn’t do that. Everyone in the countryside knows the sawmill horses by sight. Do you want to scandalize your name?”
That made him twitch. I pressed on: “I can show you a picture of white Solomon’s seal in an herbal before you go. It is not hard to recognize. And I will show you how to pack it so it will stay fresh.”
“Vannevar’s Lake is on the Governor’s land. Suppose he has me up for trespass?”
“Go to the mansion and ask permission of the Governor’s lady. Ask her pleasantly and I’m sure she will not refuse you. The stuff grows wild in the woods there, after all.”
He looked up at me in pure male mischief.
“The Governor’s lady, eh? She has a wanton look in her eye, that one. Suppose she will be following me into the woods?”
I smiled. “Well, if the Governor will not do his duty, I’m sure you can make up the lack.”
He scowled. “And wouldn’t you care?”
“Of course I would care!” I cried out, and then recovered my light tone. “I am just wise like King Solomon, who knew that true love will bear any cost to guard the child.”
“You talk riddles,” he said impatiently.
“But will you go?”
“All right, then.”
“And one thing more. Can you arrange your work to make the trip next Monday? Tuesday at the latest? The time of the moon is very important in these matters, you see.”
Again he gave me a peculiar look, but made no objection. And so we parted, after a brief embrace. When he turned his back and started to walk away, though, I felt such a wave of desolation that I followed a few steps after him in spite of myself.
“John!” I called. He turned around, puzzled. “You will come back to me, after?”
A smile creased his cheek, and his blue gaze steadied my heart.
“How could I not?” he said simply, and was gone.
So now I have come back to my house all alone. This week I shall turn out all my drawers and cupboards to tidy them. Such a pastime will keep my mind busy. Besides, if they should be coming to get me soon, I do not want the virtuous women of Starwater to be clucking over my housekeeping afterward, saying, “Look, what a sloven she was.”
But there is no need for me to worry about that. I have staked all the skill of my mind, and thrown my heart’s dear desire in after it. Now there is no more to be done, indeed, but to wait and see what tidings the full moon shall bring.
