KATHERINE

RENFREWSHIRE, SCOTLAND, 1697

A storm raged in the early morning sky, a summer fury that tossed the branches of trees and swept rolling gusts of wind and rain like tumbleweeds down the cobbled streets of Paisley. I could not see it but the sounds that railed in through the grill had me imagining the freedom of the outside streets. It was Monday, sometime in May, and we had been allowed the rare treat of a wash in a tub of water. It was cold but refreshing. The day had dawned to welcome the trial that would determine my fate and it was considered unseemly for defendants to appear in a court of law before judges and jury in a state of uncleanliness.

I stood beside Margaret Lang, in our undergarments, lathering knobs of unscented soap and scrubbing at the crusts beneath our arms and the dirt-stained rings on our necks. The water blessed my body but within only a handful of moments we had turned the fresh water to a muddy soup. Outside we heard the rumble of thunder that shook through the Tollbooth, seeping into our bones, and blinked at the flashes of lightning that jagged down through the high grill.

My razor-sharp shoulderblades poked out from the grey cotton of my underslip, which bore dark yellow-brown stains around the neck and armpits. The grime had settled into my skin so deeply that the water was not strong enough to dislodge it all and I had to scratch out the filth cemented into my folds. I washed so hard that the lice bites were rubbed raw and popped bubbles of blood against my white skin. Dipping my hair now grown back to my ears, I tried to ease the grease out into the water like an oil scum on the river, but the water was too cold to do much more than wet it.

Margaret and I were given rough woollen working dresses, a deep blue colour and coarse enough to raise an itch. I dressed myself, fumbling at the ties, and pulled a white bonnet over my head, securing it beneath my chin. Pale blue stockings that still smelled of the person they last sheathed were pulled up over my rough legs and I slipped on my old, worn boots that were cracked through to my feet. The commissioners had not gone so far as to provide shoes for the prisoners. It was just such a blessing to have a morning free of the fetters for our ablutions.

My face prickled with newfound cleanliness and I felt a good deal lighter after shedding so much grime. The wash, like a baptism, had given me a feeling of hope. Everything felt better, cleaner.

My defence advocate was one justice depute Mr James Robertson but I shared him with all the other accused persons as well. Together we would be taken to the trial being heard on a lower level within the Tollbooth and Robertson would try to work real magic to get us acquitted.

As Margaret and I were led, once again in wrist fetters, from our dank cell, which reeked of sour skin, I felt the bones in my legs go as weak as marrow jelly. The guard who took us from the room remained stony-faced. I did not recognise him and this unnerved me, disorienting me as much as the walking did. I had done no more than pace my small cell for many weeks and my body throbbed with the sudden exertion.

In the dim, bricked corridor we were joined by other guards leading the accused. I slipped a look over the sorry victims of this nightmare and recognised most as Jacobites from my husband’s local chapter. There was the old beggar woman, Agnes Naismith. Her opaque green eyes stood in the centre of her grizzled skull like ponds filled with scum. Her bent bird-like limbs were gnarled and her back hunched almost double so that she looked at the floor as she was shuffled along with the others. She was the only woman present without a head cap. Her white hair was thin, with patches where her scaly pink scalp could be seen. The woman looked not much better than a corpse.

Peg Fulton, another woman of goodly years who I knew from the market and our clandestine Jacobite meetings, was upright, her eyes glinting and her face serene. It was clear to all who looked upon her that she was bereft of mind, which I found strangely comforting and wished such a state for myself. With an absence of wits, there was an absence of fear.

Before us there were the two brothers, John and James Lindsay, known in the crew as the Bishop and Curat because of their loyalty to the cause, overtly Roman Catholic titles that would have fired the wrath of the Presbyterian interrogators and been an indicator that they were Jacobites. Rough men both, with reputations for bullying and making trouble, they, like all of them, had been most sorely condemned by the younger Lindsay brothers, who had sung like birds to gain their own freedom. There was also old Farmer Lindsay. He was surly and walked slowly, not of a mind to go too timidly to his trial, and he wore a clean blue country coat and a dark beret. Mister Reid was the other one. I was certain he had fronted to a Jacobite meeting in the grove but he did not meet my eye.

I tried to appear calm but the rhythmic pulse at the side of my neck betrayed my fear. By my side, Margaret Lang, the well-respected midwife who had brought the ungrateful Christian Shaw into the world along with her five siblings, walked tall, fiercely vigilant and brittle with the exhaustion from her battle against The Big Lie as she called it. The Big Lie was the one that proclaimed she was a witch. She was spiritually content to go to the gallows rather than admit her false guilt. Her pious devotion to God was her strength. My faith was not so oak-strong and I had questioned it often during the lonely dark nights rotted through with regrets and recriminations.

As we prisoners were walked though to the courtroom we all stalled and baulked for a moment, reeling back at the spectacle that lay before us. There was a sudden hush from the crowd of gawkers and then everyone started talking loudly and at once. Familiar faces poked through the haze, lingered and then faded away. I imagined that I saw my own sister Isabel and felt sick to the belly thinking of her betrayal. What a gaggle of hate-filled superstitious fools, I thought bitterly.

It was a great hall made smaller by the swell of bodies within it. The room was grand with dark-panelled walls and a podium to one side. A platform was raised at the far end of the room with benches where the commissioners, the judges and peers of the investigation sat. Other benches ran like pews in rows across the body of the space and the spectators were filling them until the guards forced the swell back and shut and bolted the double doors.

My head was spinning from the sudden noise. After months of silence and only growled questions hissed through a veil of pain, I found the din to be deafening and the fear was shining from my eyes, hot and wet.

A man with a tall rod in his hand called for silence with a bang on the floor and the ferocity in his voice had the crowd roll down to a cough and sneeze within seconds. In the witness stand I could see young Christian Shaw, the girl who had started the whole sorry business, looking like an angel in white lace and ribbons, her honeyed hair coiled in ringlets down either side of her peach-cheeked face. The girl would not meet my eye but looked down into folded hands on her lap, piously, serenely. She sat with her parents, who would also give evidence. Beside them was Reverend James Brisbane sitting alongside a dashing man with a similar jawline and hawkish eyes and I guessed him to be the eminent Glaswegian doctor. Others, familiar and unfamiliar, sat in the rows around them.

The train of prisoners was shuffled into a wooden cage where we were locked within and made to stand facing the hostile room.

Alexander Stewart, fifth Laird Blantyre, the head of the commission, was then introduced. The white-bearded man in official dress stood and bellowed out the prisoner’s names and then some background to the charges. The other commissioners rested back in comfortable chairs and hung their thick hands on their bellies to listen to the proceedings.

‘In this complicated case, the primary victim, young Christian Shaw, claims that she has been tormented for many months by a group of local witches who caused her to become possessed. There have been eyewitness accounts given of murdering children through magical strangulation, the sinking of a ferry causing the drowning of one man and the murder by possession of a minister, Mr Hardie. Much of the testimony is derived from children who claimed to have been possessed and tormented by these same witches.’

He then read out the charges, which included demonic possession, maleficium, implication by confessed witches and the murder of at least four persons, a charge that brought theatrical gasps from the gallery.

The three men who made up the prosecution team were introduced and they took it in turns to paint a picture for the audience. They described a district rotten to the core with a coven of witches, those in the dock, who plotted in moors and groves to murder babies and others such as the minister and the ferry-man for Satan.

I scanned the crowd looking for one particular person, but it was not until my defence advocate took to the floor that I saw a flash of John’s face from the back of the room. He was there, hanging on the periphery.

James Robertson was sallow and baggy-eyed with a crooked moustache and a mane of grey hair, shifty as a river-rat. He addressed all present and shot a look to the back of the room where I saw a glimmer of something pass between him and my husband. My belly leapt with a secret thrill that some flag of evidence or reprove or clemency might be in the wind.

‘The parliaments of France and other judicatories are no longer trying people for witchcraft because it is impossible to distinguish possession from a disordered nature. Some people have fancies and are highly suggestible, particularly children,’ he said, pleading for rationality, although his voice was flat and lacked any enthusiasm. ‘Your Lairdships, these poor souls cannot be given the benefit of the doubt if the maladies suffered by young Christian Shaw are considered possession without relevant weight given to some more natural complaint or cause. It may be some new diagnosis unseen before.’

To my great distress, the evidence given by the leading medical practitioner was convincing and the ripple of assent through the crowd testified that he had persuaded them, at least, that the girl was suffering not from a worldly disorder but a supernatural one.

‘I have seen naught like it in all my years and with all my extensive experience,’ he told the room.

The Reverend James Brisbane gave his evidence of having witnessed the strange behaviour of the girl almost from the beginning until it stopped recently when each of the seven accused were imprisoned. He described it as very demonic and unnatural behaviour. He produced a handful of the pins and hair as evidence, and speaking as a man of the cloth with fire and brimstone at his disposal, he roused an emotional and passionate plea to the good and pious folk of Paisley and those from outer Renfrewshire, telling them that he had never felt more in the presence of true evil than he had during this case.

On the heels of Brisbane’s delirious rant, a minister delivered a fiery sermon to the commission, which was common enough during a trial of witchcraft. He spoke with emphasis about the clear and unarguable presence of the witches’ marks on the bodies of the accused. He gave the examples of myself and my mark between my back blades and Agnes Naismith who had two: one each on her right arm and leg. I felt myself blush as they discussed my body so openly.

James Robertson called two other doctors to the stand and questioned them until they admitted that there may have been more natural explanations for such marks and for a moment I felt a tingle of hope.

But with a sinking heart I listened as the commission gave the final word to the preacher.

‘These doctors may say such and such things of these witches’ marks. The truth, however, is that we know not upon what ground they came to be. It may be that the doctors have been budded and bribed to say such things.’

The people in the stalls let out a storm of applause at the clergyman’s words and had to be brought to silence once more. I looked about the faces, searching for any jot of sympathy or doubt at the charges but I found none and could not see John who had been swallowed up by the crowd. The room was filled with superstitious anger, a bonfire lit by the clergyman’s fuse.

The head of the commission called Christian Shaw, who walked to the witness box alone and with her head held high. She answered the questions gently delivered to her with grace and poise and spoke well. She was adamant that she had been visited by the accused in spirit form, all of whom had begged her to kill her newborn sibling and demanded that she deny her baptism. She explained that her faith in God had given her the strength to resist the demands. I noted that the girl’s eyes were occasionally given to drifting toward the Reverend Brisbane for encouragement. It was overt and despicable. The child was clearly his puppet and with my eyes I implored for my defence to address this and the pamphlet from Salem that had been read to the girl before all the nonsense began. He stayed silent and would not meet my eyes but delivered another nervous look toward John at the back of the room.

As the girl left the stand and walked back to her seat she shot one small penetrating look at me. I held it for a moment and examined it. I was absolutely sure that the tiny gem of a look contained a grain of remorse, a peppercorn of guilt, and I knew in that kernel of a moment that Christian Shaw was trapped in a game from which she could not escape. The girl knew in her heart that I was not a witch. She knew I was innocent!

The day was long and hard and hot. Testimonies were read. The three children, Elizabeth Anderson and the two Lindsay boys, did not appear but their loose-tongued and foolish testimonies were read to the rapt audience. They told of flying through the air, eating babies’ livers, making wax effigies and sticking pins into them. The fury and anger and hysteria was thumping like a panicked heartbeat in the room and by the close of the day I felt that there could only be one outcome, one verdict. With such hostility poisoning the proceedings and every little lie compounding another, the contest was anything but even. Not one of us accused was permitted to speak in defence of ourselves.

The final address from the prosecution came with a tail of fire, like a comet, always an ill omen.

‘To the jury we say that if you acquit these defendants you will be an accessory to all the blasphemies, apostasies, murders, tortures and seductions whereof these enemies of Heaven and earth shall hereafter be guilty when they get out.’

The crowd began to holler and whoop and the tipstaff banged his rod on the wooden floor loudly, stopping proceedings and threatening to have them all arrested if they did not maintain silence. Once they had settled back to a rustling calm, the defence gave a lame summation of his case. He was putting no backbone or any muscle into the chore. As I knew that John was wallowing in new wealth and could have outbid any bribe the man was offered, this was unsettling. He had not bought my freedom and I had the sinking feeling that he had not even shared the pamphlet evidence with the defence counsel.

The jury of fifteen, a simple mix of local villagers, left the room to confer. It was late afternoon, warm and airless in the crowded courtroom and as the jury filed back in within a small fist of minutes, giving a group nod to the men sitting on the commission, a still and expectant hush fell over the room. There had been little or no deliberation. It would be a unanimous and uncontested verdict.

I found John’s face, framed between the shoulders of two other men at the rear of the room, and our eyes met. A cage full of his loyal supporters, those who had kept his name and identity a secret, even under torture, stood awaiting their fate. We were proud Jacobites who had not been broken down. Only the very innocent Margaret Lang was free of that secret charge. Did John feel any shudder of guilt, I wondered? Did he feel responsible for any of what had befallen us? Did our loyalty mean anything to him? Did I mean anything to him or was he in the court, not to support us but to be certain that none of us broke down and named him as our own ‘grim leader’? Was he simply there to ensure that his own flesh was safe from the execution pyre? Although I did not want it to be so, the brutal truth taunted me and left me feeling like a foolish girl who had been used as a plaything and was now a body shield, a sacrifice, to ward off the attention from himself. He had betrayed my heart with such cruelty that it made the tortures I had endured in the Tollbooth pale.

I watched the members of the jury take their place as one of them went to the Laird Blantyre to deliver the verdict. Not one eye or face turned toward us, the accused, trembling in the dock, and that’s when I knew for sure. I held onto Margaret’s hand, my bladder filling with terror as the verdict came down in a booming voice.

‘All of the accused. Guilty. Of all charges. And in accordance with the law they are hereby sentenced to be executed by being hanged and burned on the Gallow Green on June tenth of this year 1697 of our Lord between the times of two and four in the afternoon.’

There was nothing. Cold. I saw John Erskine slip out through the heavy double doors, giving a nod to the guard who saluted him as a nobleman and I felt myself dry retch, bending double, producing nothing more than acidic spit. I knew then for certain that I had made a mistake in loving John Erskine, Earl of Mar.