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Authors: Bernardine Evaristo
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witchpricker to see if she could bleed, had her shack searched for a pile of stolen, moving penises that fed on oats or corn (as they do); failing all of that, a few days of good old-fashioned torture would have seen her confessing to flying on poles, changing into an animal, taking part in witches’ Sabbaths and having sexual intercourse with the Devil.
But so many of us owed our lives to Old Sarah that when malice-laced gossip began the rounds-that she was the reason for the Copplestones’ mysteriously diseased cow, or the latest Durridge child’s freakish sixth toe, or the surprise storm that struck young Jennet Briggs down stone dead in the middle of summer-there were many to defend her.
She died in her sleep long before I could get to thank her.
They searched her body after her death, but no unusual markings or extra breasts were found, to the disappointment of some.
When Pa came home after my birth, he gathered me up and took me outside, and, as was the Scagglethorpe family tradition, held his latest swaddled bundle up to the heavens with outstretched arms.
It was dark but there was a full moon, which shone directly onto me, providing a luminous, otherworldly glow, apparently.
“I name you, my dearest, treasured new daughter, Doris Scagglethorpe,” he said, his voice throaty with emotion.
“Doris Scagglethorpe-behold the only thing greater than yourself.”
T en years later I was “it” in a game of hide-and-seek, and Madge, Sharon and Alice were singing out that my days were numbered.
I’d given them the slip and was hiding behind some bushes at the end of the field. I remember peeping from behind the bush to see if they were making their way up to me when an arm hooked itself around my waist and carried me into the fringes of Coppice Forest, which bordered the fields.
It was so unexpected that before I had time to struggle or scream I was in the forest and a sack was slammed down over my head. I felt myself being lifted up again and flung over a brawny shoulder so that my head hung down over his back and the sackcloth grazed my cheeks.
Then he was running. I’d not seen my assailant and no one had seen me leave. I couldn’t breathe properly, my hip bones dug into his shoulder, my head filled with blood that began to stream out of my nose. I remember that I wet myself.
It was as fast and shocking as that.
DAYLIGHT ROBBERY
W hen I had gone some distance slung over my kidnapper’ s shoulder, bouncing like a ball against the hard muscles of his back, my woolen dress and petticoats ridden up, his coarse hands clasping my knees so firmly the blood stopped flowing, he suddenly stopped and dumped me on the ground like a sack of beets.
I lay there crumpled in a heap, not knowing my arse from my elbow, quite literally, while he untied the sack and dragged it off my head.
I rubbed my giddy eyes and adjusted to my head sitting back on top of my neck, where it belonged, and clutched a stomach that had not, miraculously, turned itself inside out. My kidnapper started unraveling a chain from a leather pouch. I heard the grating of the links as they scraped against each other, and snuck a look at his face. A rusty old iron helmet was pulled down over his eyes, and his beard was busy with gray streaks. His face was vivid with crimson blotches, his nose covered with the red veins and blackened pores of the old drunkards who lolled about on the village green while their wizened wives begged for alms outside the church. I could see he needed a drink now because he kept twitching, the same way they did, as if flies were landing on different parts of his anatomy, which he tried to shrug off.
He appeared like a giant to me. Surely he wasn’ t a man at all but one of those evil ogres in the legends Pa loved telling us around the hearth on winter nights.
I recognized the muddy green-and-yellow checked kilt worn by the Border Landers. When he finally spoke, it was in the thick brogue of that foreign tongue. He
But so many of us owed our lives to Old Sarah that when malice-laced gossip began the rounds-that she was the reason for the Copplestones’ mysteriously diseased cow, or the latest Durridge child’s freakish sixth toe, or the surprise storm that struck young Jennet Briggs down stone dead in the middle of summer-there were many to defend her.
She died in her sleep long before I could get to thank her.
They searched her body after her death, but no unusual markings or extra breasts were found, to the disappointment of some.
When Pa came home after my birth, he gathered me up and took me outside, and, as was the Scagglethorpe family tradition, held his latest swaddled bundle up to the heavens with outstretched arms.
It was dark but there was a full moon, which shone directly onto me, providing a luminous, otherworldly glow, apparently.
“I name you, my dearest, treasured new daughter, Doris Scagglethorpe,” he said, his voice throaty with emotion.
“Doris Scagglethorpe-behold the only thing greater than yourself.”
T en years later I was “it” in a game of hide-and-seek, and Madge, Sharon and Alice were singing out that my days were numbered.
I’d given them the slip and was hiding behind some bushes at the end of the field. I remember peeping from behind the bush to see if they were making their way up to me when an arm hooked itself around my waist and carried me into the fringes of Coppice Forest, which bordered the fields.
It was so unexpected that before I had time to struggle or scream I was in the forest and a sack was slammed down over my head. I felt myself being lifted up again and flung over a brawny shoulder so that my head hung down over his back and the sackcloth grazed my cheeks.
Then he was running. I’d not seen my assailant and no one had seen me leave. I couldn’t breathe properly, my hip bones dug into his shoulder, my head filled with blood that began to stream out of my nose. I remember that I wet myself.
It was as fast and shocking as that.
DAYLIGHT ROBBERY
W hen I had gone some distance slung over my kidnapper’ s shoulder, bouncing like a ball against the hard muscles of his back, my woolen dress and petticoats ridden up, his coarse hands clasping my knees so firmly the blood stopped flowing, he suddenly stopped and dumped me on the ground like a sack of beets.
I lay there crumpled in a heap, not knowing my arse from my elbow, quite literally, while he untied the sack and dragged it off my head.
I rubbed my giddy eyes and adjusted to my head sitting back on top of my neck, where it belonged, and clutched a stomach that had not, miraculously, turned itself inside out. My kidnapper started unraveling a chain from a leather pouch. I heard the grating of the links as they scraped against each other, and snuck a look at his face. A rusty old iron helmet was pulled down over his eyes, and his beard was busy with gray streaks. His face was vivid with crimson blotches, his nose covered with the red veins and blackened pores of the old drunkards who lolled about on the village green while their wizened wives begged for alms outside the church. I could see he needed a drink now because he kept twitching, the same way they did, as if flies were landing on different parts of his anatomy, which he tried to shrug off.
He appeared like a giant to me. Surely he wasn’ t a man at all but one of those evil ogres in the legends Pa loved telling us around the hearth on winter nights.
I recognized the muddy green-and-yellow checked kilt worn by the Border Landers. When he finally spoke, it was in the thick brogue of that foreign tongue. He
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