Jo Tiddy’s story, Hecate’s Daughter, won the 2023 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition. “A clever story, written deftly and colourfully, showing the cruelty and ignorance (and small kindnesses) of the period,” the judges said. “[We] adored this original and subversive take on a well-worn tale, told in such a vivid and powerful voice that it felt wonderfully fresh and relevant.”
We hope you enjoy it as much as they did.
She brings me breakfast, the sour faced woman who keeps house here, slamming it on the table. She don’t speak. A hunk of bread, a bowl of milk. Dinner is pottage. It looks and tastes like dishwater. I dream of sharp green apples, of samphire, of summer-ripe hedgefruit. I dream of flying through the narrow window and across the northern sea to the Low Countries, where it is said that they are kinder to children.
“What have I done?” The words skitter, trapped mice in my head. They don’t come out.
She won’t say, not her. Just throws me a hard look and locks the door behind her. A prison then, this sober room at the top of the wool-stapler’s house. It’s a big house; it smells of wood-smoke and money. I look out from the garret: at the port, the channel through the patchwork marshes. The wide blue freedom beyond them. I see the ships waiting to escape. I won’t look south towards the church, or the boneyard filled with the dead. There’s a jug of water left always on the table, but I don’t touch it.
Last summer the Sweat took off a load of the villagers. It comes through most years when the haymaking’s done and it leaves orphans in its wake. Had the village scared. Folk murmured it was because the king had put aside his wife to marry that Bullen witch. Our priest called it a judgement from God, because of the wickedness of certain inhabitants.
“Suffer the little children, and forbid them not….” The priest was sermonising every Sunday. Other banalities which mean nowt to those most in need, especially the littlest. Those who are just mouths to feed. The villagers looked at each other. Looked at me, sideways. Did nothing. Those children ended up at Binham, at Weybourne, as servants of the church. It’s a hard childhood, scrubbing away the sins of the Fathers.
They tell me I was lucky, because when Ma died the baker took me in.
“It’s my Christian duty,” he said as he eyed me up and down, like I was a cull-ewe at market. Said I could help out around the house. His wife, all la-di-da, don’t like getting her hands dirty. Sat all day in her front room, she was, sewing and chatting with the other merchant-wives grown fat on wool profits. I had one meal a day and a pallet in the bake house. It was close to the ovens so at least it was warm. It wasn’t too long before the baker came visiting at night.
“I need the comfort,” he said. Didn’t feel real comfortable to me. His hands were rough, scabbed by bake-fires. His mouth, in the dark, stank of rot.
“Don’t say a word.” He’d pinch my cheek hard when he left. He knew I don’t speak. He must have said something though, because the priest came too, sometimes, in the blackest hours of the night, when only Hecate is wakeful. He’d make the sign of the cross above me.
“Jesus loves you and will forgive your sin.” He wouldn’t look at me while he fumbled away. Face and hair of flame, sweating. Afterwards he would pray, words running out like tears. He’d haul me up beside him to share out his sin. The kneeling on the cold floor was worse than the fumbling. It certainly went on for longer.
Now it’s February, and my belly is big. Feels like I’ve swallowed a serpent. When the baker’s wife finds out she goes mad. Howling and screeching, as if possessed by a demon. Baker says nothing, just slid his eyes away, from his wife, from me, from the pious neighbours who hide their smiles behind their hands. I’m hauled before the elders who poke away with their questions. I say nothing, but then I never had words. That’s why Ma kept me close, away from the village kids and their cruel taunts. Most people would have put me out on the heath to die, but Ma would never snuff out a child of her own body. That other women would did not concern her.
“You are precious,” she’d say. “You are beloved.” She’d kiss me and set me running up on the high heath where the air was clear. Up near the gallows, where the memories of long-dead witches linger, living on the dead ground of flint and sand. No one sees them but me. It’s no place for a child to run wild but I like it up there, with just the curlews and the silent witches for company.
Now I am no longer free to wander. The elders lock me up, for my own safety, they say. They suggest that I’m not right in the head, that I cannot be allowed to roam, a temptress loose.
“A viper nourished at my bosom, more like!” says the baker’s wife, chins wobbling with righteousness. The Baker keeps his mouth tight shut, and doesn’t dare to look at his wife.
Priest comes by day, now I’m locked up, telling me to repent. He does it loudly, so the folk in the downstairs rooms can hear him. I don’t know what he’s talking about, I just shake my head at him, give him a hard stare. He knows he won’t get a confession. He looks everywhere except my face. He looks frightened, and I like that. It sustains me during the long and mercifully lonesome nights. The dawns arrive; again, again, again. I look out of the window and dream of sea storms.
Three years ago the sea rose and took Pa. “Twas a storm called up by a witch!” folk say still, as if they haven’t got enough troubles in the here and now to be thinking of. Always harking back to the past. Always remembering wrongs from long ago. But that storm, it was something to remember. The wind howled in from the north and drove the waves over the shingle bank that separates marsh from sea. It flooded us out. Big skies meeting endless sea, and only the shingle to protect us. The boats in the harbour were smashed to kindling, the houses drowned. Many died, swept away by the wild waves or tugged underwater by new and treacherous currents. Pa, out on the boat, was lost. I dream of it sometimes. And I dream I’m flying free over the marshes, away. Me, who has never been much further than Salthouse. They have the higher ground, and a big church set into the side of the heath. It’s closer to heaven, they reckon. Pa washed up there and we went to collect his body from the shore and carted it back to a pauper’s grave here in Cley. Once he’d been tamped into the ground, snug-like, Ma had asked our priest if he would say some prayers, and he had laughed in her face.
“No coin, no prayers”.
Ma strode away, dragging me with her, though I’d wanted to stay close to Da for a little while more. Her mouth was tight, her voice fury.
“Piss on all churchmen.”
When he came to our cottage on the heath edge later, she didn’t turn him away. He sidled up like a fox at dusk.
“Go and gather ransomes,” said Ma, and her eyes said, don’t argue, even though the wild garlic grows only in Kelling Wood and it would be dark before I got home. When I got back the priest was gone, and Ma was wrapping up her hair into its heavy coil. Pa was mentioned in prayers that week, and the weeks after. Where she got the coin from I don’t know.
It wasn’t the Sweat what did for Ma. She died from pushing out a baby. I was there, frightened silly by the screams and the muck. I wrapped the bairn up real tight, covering its hair so no-one would see. It were dead anyway. Then I ran for help. Ma wouldn’t stop bleeding. Midwife came, took one look and shook her head. Then she went back to the village, gossiping and spreading ill-will. Ma, with her last breath, said to me, “Watch that red-haired devil.” She never warned about the baker. I had to learn that for myself.
The villagers took to muttering. Ma was a wise woman, good with herbs and potions. She’d let me help, with the picking and the drying and the pounding together of bits of this and that. The goodwives of the village were happy enough to creep up to our cottage with their ailments, or when they needed a child loosening, or a love potion. When she died of the bairn though they said “Witch,” and looked sideways at their husbands. Nobody admitted to the baby, and they buried them both outside the churchyard, with the unbaptized and the bastards. Tossed them in a hole in the ley, with not a single prayer. The priest sermonised about Jezebel, about harlots, and the weakness of Eve. The women of the parish looked at me and made the sign of the horns.
Now my stomach hurts. My back hurts. I want to scream, but the screaming won’t come out. Suddenly there are women here, all crowding round me. Goodwives from the village. The useless midwife who wouldn’t save Ma. All here to help, they say, all here to witness my humiliation.
“Hold her down,” says the midwife, as I endure, and their hot hands are on me, pinching, leaning over me so I cannot breathe, cannot do anything to prevent the flood of tears that accompanies the pain.
“These are the wages of sin,” says one of the women, crossing herself. She can talk, sanctimonious cow. Her brats who look nothing like their father, or each other. I seen her walking out at nights, with other folk’s husbands while her own is out on the boats.
“She didn’t sin by herself,” says another, darkly, and she squeezes my hand, which for a moment, is comfort. The midwife spits, turns away. She’s not interested in measuring out blame. A crest of pain, and I think I must die, and I squeeze my eyes shut and plead silently for God’s forgiveness.
When the baby comes they examine her for signs of deformity, for signs of the Devil. They see her flaming red hair and exchange sly looks. One, kinder, shows me how to give suck, cleans me up, combs out my hair. She hums a quiet tune under her breath as she does so, and slowly I come back to calmness.
“You must eat, child,” she says. “You need your strength for the babe.” She hands me an apple from her pocket. “I will bring more,” she promises. She lays a hand on the baby’s head, a benediction of sorts. Then they leave us alone.
The thing is, I know more than they think. They think I am simple, but I understand plenty. I see things enfolded in people’s hearts, dark things, hidden things. I hear snatches of conversation as if carried by the breeze. I get a feel for what people are thinking. The voices of the goodwives whisper along the wainscoting; they murmur that the King’s Men are up and down this coast, looking for wickedness, carrying out inspections; churches, Priories, and Abbeys. The House of the Lord stands on shifting sands these days, and change is coming. There’s a lot I could tell them, if I only had the words. Would they even listen?
Time passes. I dream of storm clouds rising, of a Queen falling. They leave me and the bairn alone, except for feeding. Don’t let us go. Strange men in rich clothes come. They huff and puff up the narrow stairs and gaze at me from the safety of the doorway. These are the men sent by the King, to inspect, to judge, it appears, me.
“The girl is a fool.” I hear one mutter. “Can we burn a fool?” Another is thinking only of his dinner, of roast capons and suckling pig, of a good Rhenish to wash it down.
“You’ll get no sense from her,” says the woman who brings me apples. “She has no words.” She means it kindly enough. She pats the baby’s cheek and smiles at me. “Pretty child,” she says. It is not enough.
They load me onto a cart me one cheerless Saturday. I clutch my baby girl tight, swaddled and wrapped. Apple woman has unbound my hair and it flows darkly down my back. She weeps as she grasps my hands. “God bless you.” Then she is gone, swallowed up by the tide of people that line the quayside. I hope she runs far away from what’s coming. The cart follows the procession of churchmen down the street. We roll down to the green, beside the church, the chantry chapels bestowed by wealthy woolmen. “God loves a cheerful giver,” they think, as if money, hard coin, could save their souls. I see it clearly, our glorious church, blasted and roofless in times to come.
The people press closer. There are more of them crowding the green. Strangers. They must have come from Blakeney, from Wiveton, lured by the promise of a spectacle, a good day out. Though I think that the folk I have known my whole life are strangers now. I see the stake, pointing to heaven, I see the wood piled around it. I see the plush King’s Men ranged like holy statutes in front of the churchyard wall. “Witch, Devil’s spawn,” the people call out as I pass. God ripples away from them like a breeze across the barley field.
A rough rope is looped around my waist to fix me to the stake. They uncover my child and bind her to me. I see the devil, genuflecting before me. I see him looking at our daughter, with her flame-red hair, and I bare my teeth at him as his pale face gets whiter and he tries to reach for her.
The crowd roars. It’s an animal in pain, a wave of noise. They drag the priest away, and someone tosses a flaming brand onto the kindling. The fire is set. Heat tickles my toes and smoke curls ups like a snake. I turn my head and feel the rage begin to burn in my breast.
Finally, at last, I find my voice. After these years of silence, the words fill me like holy water into an empty vessel.
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“Oh! Great Worm!” I howl. “Oh! Demons of Hell. He had my mother. He had me!” I point at the priest, cursing. I catch sight of the baker, shimmering through the rising smoke haze. “And him too!” Baker is shuffling backwards through the throng fast as he can. He knows too well the memory of fire, of skin blistered by hot coals. The goodwives of the village stop him. They pen him, pinch and pummel him. He’ll get what’s coming to him. Priest will too, he’s being bundled up and dragged towards the King’s Men. Maybe they’ll burn him. I hope they burn him.
“I call on you, Oh Satan. Avenge your daughter!” The crowd are shifting backwards, silent now. I laugh at them. “Your churches will fall. Your children will shrivel in the womb. Your kine will drown and your harvest will rot. Your ships will die on the waves and your sons will choke on the salt waters.” Flames rise. Like a holy miracle the rope that ties me to the post falls away, and we are flying, sky-borne, my baby and I, out across the marshes, out across the rising waves. I look down at the smudge of smoke, at folk scattering like foolish chickens when the fox gets in, and I scream with joy. I call up a witch’s wind. I raise a storm.
Jo Tiddy is a bookseller at an independent book shop in Thame. She is currently working on a novel and is represented by at Penny Holroyde at Holroyde Cartey. Her work was shortlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize in 2022.
Read more about the six HWA Dorothy Dunnett shortlisted writers.
The 2024 Short Story Competition will open for entries in the Spring.
Read the stories that won the HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Prize in past years:
2022: Collapse by Chrissy Sturt
2021: His Mother’s Quilt by Naomi Kelsey
2020: The Race by Alice Fowler
2019: The Daisy Fisher by Kate Jewell
2018: Nineteen Above Discovery by Jennifer Falkner
2017: A Poppy Against the Sky by Annie Whitehead
You can buy the six best stories from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019 as ebooks or print-on-demand paperbacks.
You may also enjoy:
Witch’s Mummy: corpses and cure-alls by Naomi Kelsey
A charmed life: childbirth and superstition by Martine Bailey
An absence of presence: domestic records and The Familiars by Stacey Halls
Broomsticks and Orgies by Karen Maitland
Images:
- A witch burning in Derenburg, 1555 (detail): Wikimedia (public domain)
- Anne Boleyn, c1550, Hever Castle: Wikimedia (public domain)
- A baker putting bread into an oven, illustration from a French book of hours: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, via Picryl (public domain)
- The North Berwick witches from Newes From Scotland: Wikimedia (public domain)
- A midwife assisting in a birth: Wellcome Collection (public domain)
- A midwife washes a baby: Wellcome Collection (public domain)
- Visit to the tenants (detail) by Jan Brueghel, 1595–99: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Martyrs burning in St. Peter’s Port: Wikimedia
