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By Mary Johnston


 HAGAR.

 THE LONG ROLL. The first of two books dealing with the war between the
 States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH.

 CEASE FIRING. The second of two books dealing with the war between the
 States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH.

 LEWIS RAND. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN.

 AUDREY. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN.

 PRISONERS OF HOPE. With Frontispiece.

 TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. With 8 Illustrations by HOWARD PYLE, E. B.
 THOMPSON, A. W. BETTS, and EMLEN MCCONNELL.

 THE GODDESS OF REASON. _A Drama._


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

[Illustration:
  (p. 154)
“GOOD-BYE, MISTRESS FRIENDLY-SOUL!”]




                               THE WITCH

                                  BY

                             MARY JOHNSTON

[Illustration: LOGO]

                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK

                       HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

                     The Riverside Press Cambridge

                                 1914




                   COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY MARY JOHNSTON

                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

                       _Published October 1914_




                               CONTENTS


                I. THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER                    1

               II. THE CAP AND BELLS                     10

              III. THE TWO PHYSICIANS                    24

               IV. THE ROSE TAVERN                       37

                V. THE ROAD TO HAWTHORN                  54

               VI. THE MAN WITH THE HAWK                 69

              VII. JOAN                                  82

             VIII. THE SQUIRE’S BROTHER                  97

               IX. THE OAK GRANGE                       109

                X. IN HAWTHORN FOREST                   124

               XI. THE PLAGUE                           136

              XII. HERON’S COTTAGE                      151

             XIII. HAWTHORN CHURCH                      165

              XIV. NIGHT                                176

               XV. NEXT DAY                             188

              XVI. MASTER THOMAS CLEMENT                204

             XVII. MOTHER SPURAWAY                      218

            XVIII. THE GAOL                             235

              XIX. ADERHOLD AND CARTHEW                 246

               XX. THE WITCH JUDGE                      260

              XXI. THE WITCH                            272

             XXII. ESCAPE                               281

            XXIII. THE ROAD TO THE PORT                 298

             XXIV. THE FARTHER ROAD                     312

              XXV. THE SILVER QUEEN                     327

             XXVI. THE OPEN BOAT                        342

            XXVII. THE ISLAND                           351

           XXVIII. FOUR YEARS                           362

             XXIX. THE SPANIARDS                        376

              XXX. THE ISLET                            387

             XXXI. THE HOUR-GLASS                       404

            XXXII. A JOURNEY                            420




                               THE WITCH




                               THE WITCH




CHAPTER I

THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER


IT was said that the Queen was dying. She lay at Richmond, in the
palace looking out upon the wintry, wooded, March-shaken park, but
London, a few miles away, had daily news of how she did. There was
much talk about her--the old Queen—much telling of stories and
harking back. She had had a long reign—“Not far from fifty years, my
masters!”—and in it many important things had happened. The crowd in
the streets, the barge and wherry folk upon the wind-ruffled river,
the roisterers in the taverns drinking ale or sack, merchants and
citizens in general talking of the times in the intervals of business,
old soldiers and seamen ashore, all manner of folk, indeed, agreed
upon the one most important thing. The most important thing had been
the scattering of the Armada fifteen years before. That disposed of,
opinions differed as to the next most important. The old soldiers were
for all fighting wherever it had occurred. The seamen and returned
adventurers threw for the voyages of Drake and Frobisher and Gilbert
and Raleigh. With these were inclined to agree the great merchants
and guild-masters who were venturing in the East India and other
joint-stock companies. The little merchant and guild fellows agreed
with the great. A very large number of all classes claimed for the
overthrow of Popery the first place. On the other hand, a considerable
number either a little hurriedly slurred this, or else somewhat too
anxiously and earnestly supported the assertion. One circle, all
churchmen, lauded the Act of Uniformity, and the pains and penalties
provided alike for Popish recusant and non-conforming Protestant.
Another circle, men of a serious cast of countenance and of a growing
simplicity in dress, left the Act of Uniformity in obscurity, and
after the deliverance from the Pope, made the important happening the
support given the Protestant principle in France and the Netherlands.
A few extreme loyalists put in a claim for the number of conspiracies
unearthed and trampled into nothingness—Scottish conspiracies, Irish
conspiracies, Spanish conspiracies, Westmoreland and Northumberland
conspiracies, Throgmorton conspiracies—the death of the Queen of
Scots, the death, two years ago, of Essex.

All agreed that the Queen had had a stirring reign—all but the latter
end of it. The last few years—despite Irish affairs—had been dull and
settled, a kind of ditch-water stagnation, a kind of going downhill.
Fifty years, almost, was a long time for one person to reign....

On a time the Queen had been an idol and a cynosure—for years
the love of a people had been warm about her. It had been a people
struggling to become a nation, beset with foreign foes and inner
dissensions, battling for a part in new worlds and realms. She had led
the people well, ruled well, come out with them into the Promised Land.
And now there was a very human dissatisfaction with the Promised Land,
for the streams did not run milk and honey nor were the sands golden.
As humanly, the dissatisfaction involved the old Queen. She could not
have been, after all, the Queen that they had thought her.... After
crying for so many years “Long live Queen Elizabeth!” there would come
creeping into mind a desire for novelty. _King James,—King James!_ The
words sounded well, and promised, perhaps, the true Golden Age. But
they were said, of course, under breath. The Queen was not dead yet.

They told strange stories of her—the old Queen; usually in small,
select companies where there were none but safe men. As March roared
on, there was more and more of this story-telling, straws that showed
the way the tide was setting. They were rarely now stories of her
youth, of her courage and fire, of her learning, of the danger in which
she lived when she was only “Madam Elizabeth,” of her imprisonment
in the Tower—nor were they stories of her coronation, and of the
way, through so many long years, she had queened it, of her “mere
Englishness,” her steady courage, her power of work, her councillors,
her wars, and her statecraft. Leaving that plane, they were not so
often either stories of tragic errors, of wrath and jealousy, finesse
and deception, of arbitrary power, of the fret and weakness of the
strong.—But to-day they told stories of her amours, real or pretended.
They repeated what she had said to Leicester and Leicester had said to
her, what she had said to Alençon and Alençon had answered. They dug
up again with a greasy mind her girlhood relations with Seymour, they
created lovers for her and puffed every coquetry into a full-blown
_liaison_; here they made her this man’s mistress and that man’s
mistress, and there they said that she could be no man’s mistress. They
had stories to tell of her even now, old and sick as she was. They told
how, this winter, for all she was so ill at ease, she would be dressed
each day in stiff and gorgeous raiment, would lie upon her pillows so,
with rings upon her fingers and her face painted, and when a young man
entered the room, how she gathered strength....

The March wind roared down the streets and shook the tavern signs.

In the palace at Richmond, there was a great room, and in the room
there was a great bed. The room had rich hangings, repeated about the
bed. The windows looked upon the wintry park, and under a huge, marble
mantelpiece, carved with tritons and wreaths of flowers, a fire burned.
About the room were standing women—maids of honour, tiring-women.
Near the fire stood a group of men, silent, in attendance.

The Queen did not lie upon the bed—now she said that she could not
endure it, and now she said that it was her will to lie upon the
floor. They placed rich cushions and she lay among them at their feet,
her gaunt frame stretched upon cloth of gold and  silk. She
had upon her a long, rich gown, as full and rigid a thing as it was
possible to wear and yet recline. Her head was dressed with a tire of
false hair, a mass of red-gold; there was false colour upon her cheek
and lip. She kept a cup of gold beside her filled with wine and water
which at long intervals she put to her lips. Now she lay for hours very
still, with contracted brows, and now she turned from side to side,
seeking ease and finding none. Now there came a moan, and now a Tudor
oath. For the most part she lay still, only the fingers of one hand
moving upon the rim of the cup or measuring the cloth of gold beneath
her. Her sight was failing. She had not eaten, would not eat. She lay
still, supported upon fringed cushions, and the fire burned with a low
sound, and the March wind shook the windows.

From the group of men by the fire stepped softly, not her customary
physician, but another of some note, called into association during
these last days. He crossed the floor with a velvet step and stood
beside the Queen. His body bent itself into a curve of deference, but
his eyes searched without reverence. She could not see him, he knew,
with any clearness. He was followed from the group by a grave and able
councillor. The two stood without speaking, looking down. The Queen lay
with closed eyes. Her fingers continued to stroke the cloth of gold;
from her thin, drawn lips,  cherry-red, came a halting murmur:
“_England—Scotland—Ireland—_”

The two men glanced at each other, then the Queen’s councillor,
stepping back to the fire, spoke to a young man standing a little apart
from the main group. This man, too, crossed the floor with a noiseless
step and stood beside the physician. His eyes likewise searched with a
grave, professional interest.

“_Navarre_,” went the low murmur at their feet. “_Navarre
and Orange.... No Pope, but I will have ritual still....
England—Scotland—_”

The Queen moaned and moved her body upon the cushions. She opened her
eyes. “Who’s standing there? God’s death—!”

The physician knelt. “Madam, it is your poor physician. Will not Your
Grace take the draught now?”

“No.—There’s some one else—”

“Your Grace, it is a young physician—English—but who has studied
at Paris under the best scholar of Ambroise Paré. He is learned and
skilful. He came commended by the Duke of —-- to Sir Robert Cecil—”

“God’s wounds!” cried the Queen in a thin, imperious voice. “Have I
not told you and Cecil, too, that there was no medicine and no doctor
who could do me good! Paré died, did he not? and you and your fellow
will die! All die. I have seen a many men and matters die—and I will
die, too, if it be my will!”

She stared past him at the strange physician. “If he were Hippocrates
himself I would not have him! I do not like his looks. He is a dreamer
and born to be hanged.—Begone, both of you, and leave me at peace.”

Her eyes closed. She turned upon the cushions. Her fingers began again
to move upon the rich stuff beneath her. “_England_—”

The rejected aid or attempt to aid stepped, velvet-footed, backward
from the pallet. The physicians knew, and all in the room knew, that
the Queen could not now really envisage a new face. She might with
equal knowledge have said of the man from Paris, “He is a prince in
disguise and born to be crowned.” But though they knew this to be
true, the Queen had said the one thing and had not said the other, and
what she said had still great and authoritative weight of suggestion.
The younger physician, returning to his place a little apart alike
from the women attendants and from the group of courtiers, became the
recipient of glances of predetermined curiosity and misliking. Now, as
it happened, he really did have something the look of a dreamer—thin,
pale, and thoughtful-faced, with musing, questioning eyes. While
according to accepted canons it was not handsome, while, indeed, it
was somewhat strange, mobile, and elf-like, his countenance was in
reality not at all unpleasing. It showed kindliness no less than power
to think. But it was a face that was not usual.... He was fairly
young, tall and well-formed though exceedingly spare, well dressed
after the quiet and sober fashion of his calling. Of their own accord,
passing him hastily in corridor or street, the people in the room might
not have given him a thought. But now they saw that undoubtedly he
_was_ strange, perhaps even sinister of aspect. Each wished to be as
perspicacious as the Queen.

But they did not think much about it, and as the newcomer, after a
reverence directed toward the Queen, presently withdrew with the older
physician,—who came gliding back without him,—and as he was seen
no more in the palace, they soon ceased to think about him at all.
He had been recommended by a great French lord to the favour of Sir
Robert Cecil. The latter, sending for him within a day or two, told
him bluntly that he did not seem fitted for the Court nor for Court
promotion.

The March wind roared through London and over Merry England and around
Richmond park and hill. It shook the palace windows. Within, in the
great room with the great bed, the old Queen lay upon the floor with
pillows beneath her, with her brows drawn together above her hawk nose.
At intervals her mortal disease and lack of all comfort wrung a moan,
or she gave one of her old, impatient, round, mouth-filling oaths. For
the most part she lay quite silent, uneating, unsleeping, her fleshless
fingers keeping time against the rich cloth beneath her. Her women did
not love her as the women of Mary Stuart had loved that Queen. Year in
and year out, day in and day out, they had feared this Queen; now she
was almost past fearing. They took no care to tell her that the carmine
upon her face was not right, or that she had pushed the attire of hair
to one side, and that her own hair showed beneath and was grey. They
reasoned, perhaps with truth, that she might strike the one who told.
She lay in her rich garments upon the floor, and the fire burned with a
low sound beneath the wreathed tritons and she smoothed the gold cloth
with her fingers. “_England—Scotland—Ireland.... Mere English—...
The Pope down, but I’ll have the Bishops still—_”




CHAPTER II

THE CAP AND BELLS


THE inn was small and snug, near Cheapside Cross, and resorted to by
men of an argumentative mind. The Mermaid Tavern, no great distance
away, had its poets and players, but the Cap and Bells was for
statesmen in their own thought alone, and for disputants upon such
trifles as the condition of Europe, the Pope, and the change in the
world wrought by Doctor Martin Luther. It was ill-luck, certainly, that
brought Gilbert Aderhold to such a place.

When he lost hope of any help from Cecil, the evident first thing to
do upon returning from Richmond to London, was to change to lodgings
that were less dear,—indeed, to lodgings as little dear as possible.
His purse was running very low. He changed, with promptitude, to a
poor room in a poor house. It was cold at night and dreary, and his
eyes, tired with reading through much of the day, ached in the one
candlelight. He went out into the dark and windy street, saw the glow
from the windows and open door of the Cap and Bells, and trimmed his
course for the swinging sign, a draught of malmsey and jovial human
faces.

In the tavern’s common room he found a seat upon the long bench that
ran around the wall. It was a desirable corner seat and it became
his only by virtue of its former occupant, a portly goldsmith, being
taken with a sudden dizziness, rising and leaving the place. Aderhold,
chancing to be standing within three feet, slipped into the corner. He
was near the fire and it warmed him gratefully. A drawer passing, he
ordered the malmsey, and when it was brought he rested the cup upon
the table before him. It was a long table, and toward the farther end
sat half a dozen men, drinking and talking. What with firelight and
candles the room was bright enough. It was warm, and at the moment of
Aderhold’s entrance, peaceable. He thought of a round of wild and noisy
taverns that he had tried one after the other, and, looking around him,
experienced a glow of self-congratulation. He wanted peace, he wanted
quiet; he had no love for the sudden brawls, for the candles knocked
out, and lives of peaceable men in danger that characterized the most
of such resorts. He sipped his wine, and after a few minutes of looking
about and finding that the cluster at the far end of the table was upon
a discussion of matters which did not interest him, he drew from his
breast the book he had been reading and fell to it again. As he read
always with a concentrated attention, he was presently oblivious of all
around.

An arm in a puffed sleeve of blue cloth slashed with red, coming flat
against the book and smothering the page from sight, broke the spell
and brought him back to the Cap and Bells. He raised his chin from
his hand and his eyes from the book—or rather from the blue sleeve.
The wearer of this, a formidable, large man, an evident bully, with
a captious and rubicund face, frowned upon him from the seat he had
taken, at the foot of the table, just by his corner. The number of
drinkers and conversers had greatly increased. There was not now just
a handful at this especial table; they were a dozen or more. Moreover,
he found that for some reason their attention was upon him; they were
watching him; and he had a great and nervous dislike of being watched.
He became aware that there was a good deal of noise, coarse jests and
laughter, and some disputing. Yet they looked, for the most part,
substantial men, not the wild Trojans and slashswords that he sometimes
encountered. For all his physical trepidations he was a close and
accurate observer; roused now, he sent a couple of rapid glances the
length and breadth of the table. They reported disputatious merchants
and burgomasters, a wine-flushed three or four from the neighbouring
congeries of lawyers, a country esquire, some one who looked pompous
and authoritative like a petty magistrate, others less patent,—and the
owner of the arm still insolently stretched across his book.

The latter now removed the arm. “So ho! Master Scholar, your
Condescension returns from the moon—after we’ve halloaed ourselves
hoarse! What devil of a book carried you aloft like that?”

Aderhold decided to be as placating as possible. “It is, sir, the
‘Chirurgia Magna’ of Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, called
Paracelsus.”

The red and blue man was determined to bully. “The Cap and Bells has
under consideration the state of the Realm. The Cap and Bells has
addressed itself to you three times, requesting your opinion upon grave
matters. First you deign no answer at all, and finally you insult us
with trivialities! ’S death! are you an Englishman, sir?”

“As English as you, sir,” answered Aderhold; “though, in truth, seeing
that I have lived abroad some years and am but lately returned, my
English manners may have somewhat rusted and become clownish. I crave
pardon of the worshipful company, and I shall not again read in its
presence.”

A roisterer addressed him from halfway down the table. “We’ve got a
ruling—we that frequent the Cap and Bells. You’re a stranger—and a
strange-looking stranger, too, by your leave—and you must wipe out the
offense of your outlandishness! A bowl of sack for the company—you’ll
pay for a bowl of sack for the company?”

The colour flooded Aderhold’s thin cheek. He had not enough in his
purse or anything like enough. To-morrow he expected—or hoped rather
than expected—to receive payment from the alderman whose wife, having
fallen ill before the very door of the house where he lodged, he had
attended and brought out from the presence of death. But to-morrow
was to-morrow, and to-night was to-night. He told the truth. “I am
a poor physician, my masters, who hath of late been set about with
misfortune—”

The red and blue bully smote the table with his fist.

“What a murrain is a man doing in the Cap and Bells who cannot pay for
sack? Poor physician, quotha! I’ve known a many physicians, but none so
poor as that—”

One of the lawyers, a middle-aged, wiry man in black, raised his head.
“He says true. Come, brother, out with thy gold and silver!”

“When I shall have paid,” said Aderhold, “for the malmsey I have drunk,
I shall not have fourpence in my purse.”

“Pay for the sack,” said the lawyer, “and leave the malmsey go.”

“Nay,” said Aderhold, “I owe for the malmsey.”

The red and blue man burst forth again. “Oons! Would you have it that
you do not owe the sack? Call for the drink and a great bowl of it,
aye! If the host is out at the end, he can take his pay with a cudgel
or summon the watch! Physician, quotha? Now, as my name’s Anthony Mull,
he looks more to me like a black seminary priest!”

Aderhold leaned back appalled. He wished himself in the windy street
or the gloom of his lodgings, or anywhere but here. Was it all to
begin again, the great weariness of trouble here and trouble there?
To thread and dodge and bend aside, only in the end to find himself
at bay, bright-eyed and fierce at last like any hunted animal—he
who wanted only peace and quiet, calm space to think in! He groaned
inwardly. “Ah, the most unlucky star!” There came to his help, somewhat
strangely, and, though none noticed it, upon the start as it were of
the red and blue bully’s closing words, the Inns of Court man who had
spoken before. He took his arms from the table and, turning, called
aloud, “William Host! William Host!”

The host came—a stout man with a moon face. “Aye, sir? aye, Master
Carnock?”

“William Host,” said Carnock, “it is known, even in that remnant of
Bœotia, the Mermaid Tavern, that thou ’rt the greatest lover of books
of all the Queen’s subjects—”

The host assumed the look of the foolish-wise. “Nay, nay, I would not
say the greatest, Master Carnock! But ’tis known that I value a book—”

“Then,” said the other, “here is a learned doctor with a no less
learned book.” Rising, he leaned halfway over the table and lifted
from before Aderhold the volume with which he had been engaged. “Lo! A
good-sized book and well made and clothed! Look you, now! Is’t worth
thy greatest bowl of sack, hot and sugared? It is—I see it by thine
eye of judicious appraisement! I applaud thy judgement!—I call it a
Solomon’s judgement.—Furnish the doctor with the sack and take the
book for payment!”

Aderhold thrust out a long and eager arm. “Nay, sir! I value the book
greatly—”

“If you are not a fool—” said the lawyer with asperity.

But the physician had already drawn back his arm. He could be at times
what the world might call a fool, but his intelligence agreed that this
occasion did not warrant folly. He might somehow come up with the book
again; if the alderman paid, he might, indeed, come back to-morrow to
the Cap and Bells and recover it from the host. When the first starting
and shrinking from danger was over, he was quick and subtle enough in
moves of extrication. He had learned that in his case, or soon or late,
a certain desperate coolness might be expected to appear. Sometimes he
found it at one corner, sometimes at another; sometimes it only came
after long delay, after long agony and trembling; and sometimes it
slipped its hand into his immediately after the first recoil. Whenever
it came it brought, to his great relief, an inner detachment, much as
though he were a spectator, very safe in some gallery above. Up there,
so safe and cool, he could even see the humour in all things. Now he
addressed the company. “My masters, Cleopatra, when she would have
a costly drink, melted pearls in wine! The book there may be called
a jewel, for I prized it mightily. Will you swallow it dissolved in
sack? So I shall make amends, and all will be wiser for having drunk
understanding!”

The idea appealed, the sack was ordered. But the red and blue bully was
bully still. Aderhold would have sat quiet in his corner, awaiting the
steaming stuff and planning to slip away as soon as might be after its
coming. At the other end of the table had arisen a wordy war over some
current city matter or other—so far as he was concerned the company
might seem to be placated and attention drawn. He was conscious that
the lawyer still watched him from the corner of his eye, but the rest
of the dozen indulged in their own wiseacre wrangling. All, that is,
but the red and blue bully. He still stared and swelled with animosity,
and presently broke forth again. “‘Physician’! It may be so, but I do
not believe it! As my name’s Anthony Mull, I believe you to be a Jesuit
spy—”

The sack came at the moment and with it a diversion. Cups were filled,
all drank, and the lawyer flung upon the board for discussion the
growing use of tobacco, its merits and demerits. Then, with suddenness,
the petty magistrate at the head of the table was found to be relating
the pillorying that day, side by side, of a Popish recusant and a
railing Banbury man or Puritan. All at table turned out to be strong
Church of England men, zealous maintainers of the Act of Uniformity,
jealous of even a smack of deviation toward Pope or Calvin. At the
close of a moment of suspension, while all drank again, the red and
blue bully, leaning forward, addressed the man of justice. “Good Master
Pierce, regard this leech, so named, and put the question to him, will
he curse Popery and all its works.”

It seemed, in truth, that this was Aderhold’s unlucky night. That, or
there was something in the Queen’s declaration, there was something
about him different, something that provoked in all these people
antagonism. And yet he was a quiet man, of a behaviour so careful that
it suggested a shyness or timidity beyond the ordinary. He was not
ill-looking or villainous-looking—but yet, there it was! For all that
he was indubitably of English birth, “_Foreigner_” was written upon him.

The present unluckiness was the being again involved in this
contentious and noisy hour. He had been gathering himself together,
meaning to rise with the emptying of the bowl, make his bow to the
company, and quit the Cap and Bells. And now it seemed that he must
stop to assure them that he was not of the old religion! Aderhold’s
inner man might have faintly smiled. He felt the lawyer’s gaze upon
him—a curious, even an apprehensive, gaze. The justice put the
question portentously, all the table, save only the lawyer, leaning
forward, gloating for the answer, ready to dart a claw forward at the
least flinching. But Aderhold spoke soberly, with a quiet brow. “I
do not hold with cursing, Master Justice. It is idle to curse past,
present, or to come, for in all three a man but curses himself. But I
am far removed from that faith, and that belief is become a strange and
hostile one to me. I am no <DW7>.”

The bully struck the table with his fist. “As my name’s Anthony Mull,
that’s not enough!”

And the justice echoed him with an owl-like look: “That’s not enough!”

A colour came into Aderhold’s cheek. “There is, my masters, no faith
that has not in some manner served the