Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

‘It’s Nesta from the Bush. I need your advice.’

The old crone shuffled farther out of the hut to peer more closely at her visitor. She was draped in shapeless, drab clothes that were little better than rags.

‘Ah, the Welsh woman. The crowner’s whore.’

Nesta bit her lip to stop an angry retort to the old woman’s insolence — she needed Lucy today. ‘Can I come in? I’ll not keep you long.’

The old crone cackled, but held aside the sacking with a gnarled hand.

‘I suppose you want what they all want, my girl.’

With distaste, but driven by necessity, Nesta pulled her skirts closer and edged sideways past the old woman into the dim interior of the shack, which was little bigger than her pigsty back at the Bush. It smelt about the same, too, and she was thankful for the gloom, such that the coarser details of the dwelling were obscured. She skirted a small fire-pit on raised clay in the middle of the floor, filled with dead ashes and reluctantly lowered herself on to a small stool which, apart from a rickety table, seemed to be the only furnishing other than a long box like a coffin against the far wall. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the walls and a perilously slanted shelf held a few pots and pans.

‘So tell me about it, Welsh woman,’ said Lucy, in her high-pitched, quavering voice. She aimed a blow at a mangy grey cat that sat on the long box, which had a few grubby blankets spread on top and obviously served as the old woman’s bed. The cat squealed maliciously and fled through the door, letting Lucy sit down, her joints creaking almost audibly as she lowered herself slowly on to the box.

‘I think I am with child,’ said Nesta, in a low voice.

‘You don’t need to come here to discover if you’re with child,’ said the hag, tartly. ‘A score of wives inside the town walls could tell you that. So you must think that I can help you to get rid of it, eh?’

Nesta flushed with sudden shame, but stuck doggedly to her mission.

‘That all depends,’ she replied in muted tones.

Lucy’s sparse eyebrows rose on her lined, dirty forehead.

‘That makes a change! On what can such a dangerous matter depend?’

‘I wish to know for how long I have been pregnant.’

The crone nodded knowingly. ‘Ah, I see! You’re not sure who the father might be, is that it?’

Nesta was unable to meet the old woman’s clouded eyes, but bobbed her head briefly. Bearded Lucy hauled herself painfully to her feet and held out a shaky hand, the finger joints knobbled like pebbles.

‘Let’s have a look at you, then, my girl. Open up that kirtle, I need to look at your dugs.’

Reluctantly, Nesta unlaced the front of her bodice and shrugged it off one shoulder. In anticipation of what she would have to endure, she had left off her thin under-chemise, so one of her ample breasts was exposed. The old woman brought her head so close that her hooked nose was almost touching the skin, to give her poor sight the best advantage. With one of her claw-like hands, she grabbed the breast and squeezed, testing the firmness of the gland.

‘Is it tender yet, girl?’ she demanded. Nesta flinched as the rough massage continued, but murmured, ‘A little tense, but not tender.’

Lucy shifted the open bodice to look at the other side, peering closely at the nipple, then pulled the woman’s neckline together and stepped back.

‘The teats are darkening a little,’ she muttered. ‘You’ve not had children before?’

Nesta shook her head and pulled at the lacing to cover up her exposed skin. The hag turned and indicated the grimy blankets covering the box-bed.

‘Lay yourself down there and we’ll find what’s to be found.’

With even greater reluctance, Nesta sat on the bed and swung her legs up on the end. She was already regretting the impulse that had driven her to Exe Island.

‘Lie back, this won’t take long.’

Lucy hovered over the innkeeper like some huge dishevelled bat, feeling her belly at length through the thin material of her summer kirtle. Then, like the midwife in Priest Street, she examined Nesta internally, a process that the tavern-keeper endured with gritted teeth and screwed-up eyes. In an age when cleanliness and hygiene were usually thought irrelevant, she was unusually fastidious. Nesta washed almost every day and, in the fashion of the Welsh, even cleaned her teeth with the chewed end of a hazel twig dipped in wood ash. It was anathema to have to lie on a flea-infested blanket and have the grimed fingers of an old woman, who had probably not washed since old King Henry was on the throne, pushed into her most private parts.

But she endured it, as she had little choice if she was to learn what she urgently needed to know. Bearded Lucy, still muttering to herself, rummaged about inside her with one hand, the other digging into Nesta’s belly just above her crotch. Like all women, the innkeeper wore no underclothing around her hips, so the hag needed only to reach up under her skirt.

After a few moments Lucy grunted and withdrew her hand, wiping it casually on the sleeve of the rags she wore.

‘You are with child, girl, no doubt of that.’

Nesta pulled down the hem of her kirtle and swung her legs to the floor, rising thankfully from the grubby bed.

‘But for how long?’ she persisted.

The old woman rubbed her fingers over her wispy beard, a gesture that irrelevantly reminded Nesta of Gwyn of Polruan.

‘About three months, that’s as near as I can tell you. These things are never exact.’

A cold hand reached into Nesta’s chest and seized her heart. This was the news she dreaded, though it was half expected.

‘So it could be before early April?’

Lucy wagged her grotesque head. ‘It’s now past mid-June, so they tell me — so certainly you conceived not later than the middle or end of March. You may be able to tell that better than me, if you can remember when you rode the tiger around that time!’ She cackled crudely.

Nesta ignored her and sank down on to the stool, which at least was wooden and free from obvious filth.

‘There can be no mistake?’

‘Yes, within a couple of weeks, either way. But if your crowner friend wasn’t rogering you for a month or two before mid-April, then he’s not the father.’ She had astutely guessed Nesta’s problem.

The younger woman stared blankly at the floor for a few moments.

‘I need to be free of it, God help me,’ she said in a hollow voice.

Bearded Lucy stood over her, hands on hips.

‘God can’t help you, dear — and I’m not sure I can, though so many women think otherwise.’

Nesta raised her head slowly and her eyes roved over the bunches of dried vegetation hanging around the walls. ‘Some of them think rightly. Will you try for me? I have money I can give you.’

‘I can be hanged for that, Welsh woman. Even for trying.’

‘But will you do it? I’m desperate, I cannot have this child. Not for my sake, but for that of a good man.’

The old crone considered for a moment. ‘He came here once, that man of yours. He was not unkind, like some who would see me hanged or worse.’

‘Then you’ll do it?’ Nesta’s voice carried the eagerness of desperation.

Lucy raised her crippled hand.

‘Wait. I’m not doing anything. The days when I could put a sliver of slippery elm into the neck of a womb have long gone. With these poor fingers and my failing sight, I’d as like kill you as cure you.’

Crestfallen, Nesta looked at her pathetically.

‘But you can help me some way? Give me some potion or drug?’

Sighing, the old woman shuffled over to her shelf and took down a small earthenware pot.

‘You can try these, but never say that I am trying to procure a miscarriage for you. I am only trying to bring back your monthly courses, understand?’