It was mid-morning and I was sweeping the common room floor. Last night was a tale and a half. I was grateful that Gil was home safe. My parents had been one of those families that told stories to frighten children about the Demon of the Standing Stones. To hear that it was real, but didn’t want sacrifices (or anything else for that matter) was somehow reassuring but still unnerving and I had held Gil most of the night.

Mathilda Potter, the petty school teacher and now apparently the nurse for the Vicar, pushed the door open and looked in.

“How is the Vicar?” I ventured.

Mathilda sighed. “Tired. He’s angry at everything and everyone. Do you have anything I can bring him to eat?”

“There’s some stew left over from last night. It’s more vegetables than meat at this point.”

“Thank you.”

“What is he going to do now?”

“I don’t know. He’s furious that there were witnesses that saw him just dismissed by the demon.”

“I get the feeling it’s not a demon” I mused.

“How can it not be? Aren’t all spirits on earth fallen angels?”

“My husband said that it didn’t promise anything and didn’t want anything other than to be left alone as a good neighbour. I would have expected a fallen angel to be making promises and temptations. And I would have expected a fallen angel to have to bow down before the holy relic.”

“That’s what I don’t understand. But my father and the Vicar says there is only good and evil and all spirits are evil.”

Her father was a curate in Kendal, some distance away.

I looked at her like she was one of my younger children. “Not everything our parents told us is true. Besides, the exorcism would have worked if it was an evil demon.”

“Yes. Is there such a thing as a good demon?”

I sometimes wonder if Mathilda has ever learned anything on her own. “How should I know? All I know is it couldn’t be exorcised and didn’t actually hurt the Vicar except for his pride. You didn’t grow up here, so you didn’t have parents telling you stories of the Demon of the Stones. It certainly did not act the way my parent’s stories said. ”

I decided to change the subject. “Is the Vicar going to insist on a church service today?”

“I don’t think he is going to be willing to face the village today. And probably shouldn’t be out of bed.”

Mathilda sat down suddenly at a table and put her face in her hands. After a minute she looked up at me and said.

“Would you dare to go to the Stones with me?”

My heart lept into my throat. It was like we were twelve again playing dare and each was more dangerous than the last. Did I dare? Gil had gone yesterday, leaving me and our daughter with the inn. We had both been scared, but it seemed like he had not been in danger.

“Why?”

“How can we be sure it just wants to be a good neighbour? The men won’t talk to it and I don’t trust it. I want to know what we are dealing with.”

“Let me talk to Gilbert.”

She nodded, and I handed her a bowl of stew for the Vicar. I didn’t bother asking for payment. I knew from prior experience the Vicar wouldn’t pay. Mathilda didn’t have any money, but there would be a basket of vegetables for the tavern from her garden in the next week.

Mathilda smiled. “Thank you. I’ll come by in the evening. I think it’s time to meet the ‘neighbour’.” And she left.

How Gil had described what happened and what we expected was so different. Cait Rede came in with a dozen loaves of fresh bread that she and Brice had just made.

“I saw Mathilda leaving. How is the Vicar?”

“The Vicar is the same as always. Petty, spiteful, angry at the world and everyone else. And exhausted and has blisters, so I don’t expect a church service today.”

“Here’s your bread. Brice told me what Gilbert said last night.”

“Yes. Not at all like the stories my parents told. I would have been less surprised if there was nothing there. Instead, there is something there, but it’s not evil.”

Cait laughed. “My parents didn’t tell ‘Demon of the Standing Stones’ stories. They just said something is up there and if we are kind, we have nothing to worry about.”

“They didn’t say ‘If you are ‘good’ you have nothing to worry about’?”

“No, they said ‘kind’.”

“And if you’re good, but not kind?”

“Then don’t go to the Stones. I like that you know the difference.”

“Huh. The Vicar survived.”

Cait looked down, then back up at me. “Did he? It certainly damaged his ego and status. It has made a idiot of him twice. Maybe it thinks that is enough. But I don’t think the Vicar is going to let it go.”

“Mathilda thinks that since it described itself as a neighbour, we should ‘meet the neighbour’.”

“That’s not a bad idea but we would have to be careful.”

She then asked “Why does she want to get involved? She’s not from here.”

“She doesn’t believe in the possibility of good spirits. I don’t think she believes it wants to be a ‘good’ neighbour’ and since the men won’t talk to it, she wants to see for herself.”

Cait studied her fingers and the slight amount of flour on them, then looked more directly at me. “And you have more of an open mind?”

I shrugged. “I trust what Gil told me. He told Brice and Donnan in the common room that the Vicar was like a kitten trying to attack an ox. He told me later that it seemed like the spirit was responding simply because it was bored. That it was playfully teasing the Vicar rather than cruelly toying with him. If Gil can see that difference between playful and cruel, then I don’t think its evil. We have ‘neighbours’ in the village who would be worse if they thought they could get away with it.”

It seemed like Cait was willing to meet the neighbour.

A couple of hours later, I decided to broach the subject with Gil.

“Since you met the whatever it is on the hillside yesterday and it seems safe, a couple of us are thinking about going and seeing it for ourselves tomorrow.”

“There’s nothing to see.”

“I know. But since it described itself as a ‘neighbour’, we should have a better understanding of what we are living next to.”

“We’re not living next to it. It’s a three-hour march uphill. Don’t you think you should leave this to the men of the village?”

“Did you talk to it? Or just overhear what it said to the Vicar.”

“I didn’t actually talk to it.”

“So who is going to talk to it? Are you going back?”

“No, of course not.”

“So you men won’t talk to it, even though it wants to be a neighbour.”

“Well…”

“Mary’s Mercy! If you want something done around here, you need to leave it to the women.”

“I just don’t think it’s safe.”

“You don’t think what’s safe? Talking to an invisible voice that can’t do anything?”

“I need you here at the tavern.”

“You left me alone here with Jenefer yesterday.”

“That was because I had to go with the Vicar.”

“You could have refused!”

“You can’t refuse the Vicar!”

“The thing up there did!”

“What happens if you get lost?”

“Gil. Are you scared for me or yourself?”

“I’m scared for you that the Vicar will find out and accuse you of witchcraft. You’ve heard the stories from travellers about the witch-hunts going on in Northumbria.”

“Northumbria’s a long way away, but you’re right. He accused poor Sussana Beckworth last year on the stupidest of claims by Laetitia Forgell. Do you think he will return to Carlisle?”

“No. He told the Bishop he was returning to the village of his birth, and this isn’t it. I don’t know what he is going to do.”

“I’ll talk to Mathilda and Cait and get Mathilda to back off. Cait doesn’t think it is dangerous, but she wasn’t thinking about the Vicar. Mathilda knows the Vicar better than the rest of us.”

Mathilda had said she would come by the tavern this evening, so I decided to chop more vegetables and chunks of lamb for the stew and moved the pot closer to the fire.

“Marion.” Mathilda called as she came in the door.

“Good Evening.”

“Well?”

I looked around at the dozen or so people in the room and decided to move the conversation to the storeroom.

“You know the Vicar better than anyone. If he finds out we’ve gone to the Stones, he’ll denounce us to the witch finders.”

She sighed. “True. He’s already playing a dangerous game with the Bishop. I don’t know how he is going to get the holy relic back to the Cathedral. He already has a fever. I noticed it when he arrived two days ago, and yesterday’s exertions only made it worse.”

“He didn’t demand we all show up for church services today.”

“That’s because he didn’t get out of bed.”

“We haven’t done anything yet. Cait seems interested as well. Maybe we wait a couple of weeks and see what the Vicar is going to do.”

“Alright. But at some point, I’m going up that hill.”

I saw Cait in the morning.

I told her “Gilbert is afraid we might get lost. What do you think of your brother Hume or Ruderfurd accompanying us?”

“You mean going to the Stones? It’s not a bad idea if they can. But we have to ask when.”

“Gilbert and Mathilda are both concerned about the Vicar denouncing us to witch hunters if we do it and he finds out.”

“Hmm. I suppose you are right. You will have heard more news at the tavern than I would, and Mathilda knows the Vicar. So we aren’t going?”

“Mathilda says the Vicar is really sick. Sicker than he was when he arrived. Fever and chills.”

“Contagious?”

“No. Mathilda said he admitted to gangrene before they cut off his leg. So it might be from that. And his traipsing all over the hills three days ago didn’t help.”

“So we wait and see?”

“Yes.”

The Vicar died today. Gil read his diary to the rest of the village. Everyone is talking about the entry that the Vicar had stolen the holy relic from the Cathedral and, since it had no effect on the whatever it is at the Standing Stones, the Vicar decided it was a fake. No one knows what we should do. We can’t keep a holy relic, but if it’s fake, then it isn’t a holy relic. Do we tell the Bishop or not?

Gil is suggesting we burn the diary, send a letter to the Bishop saying that the Vicar died here and asking what to do with his things without saying what is there. That way, if the Bishop wants them, we return everything untouched, and if the Bishop doesn’t want them, we hide what may or may not be a holy relic inside the church somewhere.

Luke Rawson, the blacksmith, and Brice Rede think we should hide the diary with the relic.

After much arguing at the inn, it was agreed to send the letter to the Bishop and hide the diary and the finger bone.

We buried the Vicar today.

I think the Beckworths came just to make sure he was dead. They are still angry that he accepted Laetitia Forgell’s false accusation that their daughter Sussana was a witch.

Gil led a few prayers, but everyone was there mostly because it was expected. The man was an ass while he was alive, and the whole finger bone/relic situation is making us all nervous.

Cait caught Mathilda and me after the burial and said she had talked to her brother Hume (Valcar). He would take us to the Standing Stones the day after tomorrow. Lucy, his wife, would also come so that there wouldn’t be any tongues wagging in the village. She hunts as well so she knows the hills, is a friend of Cait, and about as talkative as a stone. Just like her husband.

Next - Sussana Beckworth (July 23, 1643)

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