The Green Witch

Chapter Eighteen

     October the Twelfh came at last. The day of the testing.

     The Tanner family, including Tala, spent the first part of the morning doing the daily chores that absolutely had to be done. Everything else could be left until they got back from Ellford or, if the testing took longer than expected, the next day. None of them gave voice to the fear that they were all feeling, that one or more of them might not be allowed to return.

     For Tala the fear was that she might be found out, but the others were feeling a slightly different but no less powerful fear, that one of the women might be falsely accused. Obviously it would be a mistake, because they all knew for an absolute certainty that there were no witches sleeping under the roof of the Tanner house, but what were the chances that the Knights would believe that? Nobody had ever heard of an instance in which an accused woman had later been found innocent. After all, how could you prove that you couldn't talk to animals, or fly on a broomstick or strike a man dead with a single glance? The fact was that the moment the accusation was made the woman was as good as dead and the only question left was whether she could be made to incriminate other women before she was put to death.

     There was none of the usual laughter and playful banter as they performed their tasks, therefore. Instead, an uncomfortable silence hung over the farm as they mucked out and fed the livestock. Even the animals themselves seemed to be subdued as if they could sense that there was something wrong with the humans, although eavesdropping on their conversation told Tala that it was nothing more than her own mood shaping her perceptions. The animals were as happy and contented as they'd always been and she found herself envying them. They had all their needs provided for. They could just eat and poop and sleep their whole lives. Until they were sent to the slaughter, of course. The thought gave Tala a moment of dark amusement.

     At half past ten Drisco hitched the horse to the buggy and the whole family squeezed aboard, the men as well as the women. Drisco, Dougal and even nine year old Brian wore grim, serious expressions. Expressions that told the world that, if the Knights had a problem with any of their women they would have the men to deal with. It made Tala fear for their safety. There had been occasions when villages had erupted into violence to protect an accused woman, she remembered. The half dozen Knights had been driven away by crossbows and pitchforks, but a few days later they had returned with a hundred soldiers of the regular army to deliver justice on the witch an1d punish the men who'd tried to defend them. When it had happened in Denby, thirty miles away, twenty men has been carried away in chains to serve time in the dungeons of Shelder Castle. For all she knew, they were still there.

     Arriving in Ellford, the men were separated from the women, who were directed to stand in the field where the dance had taken place just a couple of days before. A dozen chairs stood in a row in front of the courthouse facing a wagon whose windowless sides hid what was inside. The first twelve women were picked out by the Knights and told to sit in the chairs while the others, a hundred yards away, watched with mingled curiosity and apprehension. One of the Knights, a brutish looking man with angry red hair, entered the wagon and, a few moments later, the others began watching the women carefully, studying their faces as if looking for a particular giveaway facial expression. After a couple of minutes the Knight Captain raised a hand to scratch his nose and the other Knights seemed to take it as a signal to examine the women even more closely. Whatever they were looking for, though, they apparently didn't find it because after a few minutes the women were told they could leave. They fled in gasping relief and the Knights chose another twelve women.

     Tala watched as one group of twelve after another was subjected to the mysterious ritual, and as the day progressed she noticed something strange. The Captain would always raise a hand to scratch his nose after the women had been sitting for a minute or two. Maybe he's just 1got an itch, whe thought, but she couldn't rid herself of the thought that she was seeing something important.