He built his pine log cabin, dug up and turned over soil for a small garden and hoped never to have to use the only weapon he owned, the musket he'd stolen while aboard the Amaratta on his way to work off his debt in the colonies. He hoped to use it only to hunt for food.
As time passed and Howler reached his dotage, those who wandered too near his cabin were likely to rue the day they were born. The overly fearful and suspicious Howler had no reservations about shooting them dead. The nine bodies that never found their way back home and were buried on the rim of the woods behind his cabin were testament to that.
Winters in Howler's Hollow were viciously cruel. Howler managed to store up sufficient wood to keep his cabin fires burning. His cabin had few amenities, save a hand carved oak table, an elm wood bench and a fireside chair he caned himself. He had no need of light from candles. He rose with the sun and slept as soon as dark of night came.
His cabin remained long after his skeleton was discovered a half mile away nearest the running brook. When the colonies' "forest rangers" found old Liam Howler's bones, they collected them carefully and removed them for burial deep in the woods. The only marker on his grave was a jagged shale rock the rangers found nearby. Over the years, pines needles covered Liam Howler's grave until only a six inch portion of the jagged rock was visible.
Howler would never have wanted to be taken from his forest home. His personal effects, found in his cabin were few: an old watch fob with a timepiece that long ago stopped dead, a five inch long whalebone comb and scrimshaw cameo that must once have belonged to a woman he loved.
There was a handcarved six inch knife fashioned from an old metal file he smuggled off the ship that brought him to Colonial shores.
Forest rangers found documents so old the paper turned russet brown. Clearly, one was an Anglican baptismal certificate with the names and date of Howler's parents and their chosen birth name for him from a church in Cadwith, Cornwall.
The other document showed why Howler left England: By all accounts, Liam Howler escaped England due to unpaid taxes and mounting debts.
"So, this Liam Howler was a runaway, indentured slave," John Harkendale, a forest ranger said.
"Apparently so," Adam Ross, his partner, said.
Forever after, the place where Liam Howler lived and died was always known as "Howler's Hollow."
Perhaps it was a tribute he would have been thoroughly satisfied with. The cabin was the only thing he had ever really owned in the seventy seven years of his unruly, squalid life.
Year after year, come winter's snow and summer's heat, the empty cabin's roof was piled high with pine needles. Almost as if Liam Howler protected it in death.
Then, in 1789, an obstinate, autocratic, religious man named Bronthwin Moughbory and his dutiful and totally submissive wife, Katherine, were run out of the village of Hartley, 200 miles east of Howler's Hollow. Their crime was proliferating a rabid, gravely distorted form of the Anglican religion.
Bronthwin and Katherine looked for a place where they could hide. They found Howler's Hollow only as a result of losing their way while trekking as far from Hartley as they could manage.
On the day they found Howler's cabin in November 1790, the wind was atrocious and the skies threatening snow. Bronthwin and Katherine knew they had wandered too far into the woods to go on.
"God always provides Katherine," Bronthwin said.
"Let us pray He does very soon," Katherine replied.
"Katherine! Have a care for your words! God may hear your blasphemy!"
One half hour later as the two kept walking, they saw the form of a cabin ahead of them.
"Thank God for this shelter!" Bronthwin said.
As soon as they entered Howler's cabin, Katherine started a warm fire with the few scraps of wood old Liam left behind the day he died.
"This should do us nicely," Bronthwin said.
"We have few provisions for dinner left in our bags," Katherine said.
"We will make do and praise the Lord, Good Wife."
That evening the two slept close to the fire with the sound of the owls in the distance.
"Husband, what is that sound?" Katherine asked, sleepily.
"Tis not but a few owls."
Moughbory and his wife resurrected Howler's cabin. They had no worries of being found. Those two forest rangers were long dead and the cabin was believed too dilapidated and uninhabitable, except for the woodland animals who had found it useful.
The following spring Katherine realized she was with child.
"Let us pray for a son to carry on the Moughbory name," Bronthwin said.
"It will be as our God commands," Katherine replied.
For the outside world, 1791 was unkind to Pennsylvania. Mining explosions killed coal miners. Bronthwin and Katherine had begun to feel safe and secure. Yet, Bronthwin knew his duty to his Lord was apostolic and hidden away in Howler's Hollow would not procure converts.
Katherine saw her spouse's restlessness and thirst for converts.
"Could it be possible to bring a flock here?" Katherine asked.
"I should think so. But, would they come to such a remote place?"
"Your sermons always captivate souls. Bring them and they will come," Katherine said.
"Yes. And perhaps, they will stay and our secluded life will end," Bronthwin said, wistfully.
"Tis either we do God's work or we live in the sinfulness of self satisfaction," Katherine said.
Bronthwin knew his wife was right. He glanced over at her swollen body.
"Not so many months from now, we shall have our first born son," Bronthwin said.
Katherine worried that her husband would be angry and disappointed should their first born be female. Female children were considered a burden to men of these times.
Over the oppressive heat of summer, the tall pines seemed to trap humidity even as they forbid the sun to provide light.
When the first cool breezes of September arrived, Katherine harvested from their small garden and stored canned supplies for winter. Bronthwin hunted frequently and smoked or salted what meats he could gather. Fortunately, Howler's Hollow was full of deer and the streams full of fish.
In October of 1791, Katherine sensed her child labor was going to be difficult. For weeks, she felt the weight of her unborn child upon her small frame. Tears filled her sable brown eyes for the wracking pain she felt. She quickly wiped them away lest her spouse see her cry. It was a wife's duty to bear the pain of child labor and birthing without complaint.
There would be no midwife. Katherine hoped her spouse could provide some assistance with the birthing.
In mid month, Bronthwin held his first prayer assembly in a makeshift lean to he built. He managed to convince two women and their spouses to come share the "spirit of God" with him.
He even took the trouble to make sure the ambiguous path to Howler's cabin was clear enough for horses to travel.
Katherine, though in great pain, was thrilled at the success of her husband's first prayer assembly. The voices of six people echoed through the forest silencing birds and other animals' usual cacophony.
After prayers, Katherine prepared tea from dried sassafras leaves for their new congregants. Bronthwin was not happy with this gesture; but, warmed to it when he realized it might mean the four congregants would return.
Katherine discovered one of the women, Ida Doran, helped birth babies for years. Seeing the size of Katherine's abdomen, Ida told Katherine she could call on her if she needed birthing assistance. Bronthwin insisted he could manage to bring his firstborn into the world without outsiders' help, even if they were members of his tiny religious sect.
On the eve of Halloween or All Hallow's Eve as it was known in remote villages around Howler's Hollow, Katherine began her day in grave pain. Bronthwin reminded his spouse to offer up her suffering for her sins.
She barely managed to finish preparing their evening meal without doubling over in pain, all of which Bronthwin largely ignored.
"Husband, I believe it is my time," Katherine said.
"Take to your bed then and await my assistance," Bronthwin said.
Bronthwin Moughbory believed that the pains of childbirth were expiation for the sins Eve brought upon Adam in Genesis.
When he came to her bedside, he read several verses from his Bible while Katherine screamed in agony.
When she could bear no more, she begged Bronthwin to call for Ida. He refused.
Thus it was that the tiny infant Jane Moughbory was born with a large misshapen skull and a curious brown birthmark on her left shoulder.
When Bronthwin it, he was aghast.
"Tis a devil's child!" he bellowed.
"See there? That's the mark of the devil! Satan be banished from this home and take this child back with him!" he yelled into the night.
Bronthwin ran out of the cabin into bright moonlight in the barest opening in the tall pines. He fell to his knees and prayed that he would not be smited by "the Lord God for bringing such an evil child into the world."
Katherine lay in her bed with the infant at her breast. By morning, Katherine's suffering ended her life. Bronthwin Moughbory carried her body to a place in the woods and interred her lifeless body.
"From dust thou came and now to dust you return," Bronthwin said, over her grave. He placed as flat a marker on the grave as he could find in hopes the falling pine needles would cover her grave site and he could forget his loss and grief more quickly.
As usual, he took liberties as he would come to do most often with the Bible citation Genesis Chapter III, Verse 19.
When he returned to the cabin, the devil's child was squalling loudly, no doubt hungry and thirsty. Bronthwin hated the obligation to observe the sixth commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." He tried in vain to reconcile that with the belief his wife spawned a child of the devil, a force of evil that must be killed.
Bronthwin was certain taking Katherine's life and leaving him with a devil's child was God's wrath upon him. At first, he hoped that he could ignore the hungry infant's cry. With no wet nurse for the infant to feed upon, Bronthwin barely kept the child alive with sassafras tea and only because he feared greater wrath if he "disposed" of the child.
He hated the sight of the child as much for the infant being female as he did for the large skull and devil's mark.
Somehow, Bronthwin managed to see the infant through its first year of life, his deep fear and resentment notwithstanding.
Once the child became mobile, he loathed having to keep it safe. Tiny toddler Jane more than once was burned from hot bits of ash from the fireplace. This was more than Bronthwin could bear. Not only was there so little time for his religious group which even after Katherine's death numbered only four, his yearning for a larger religious membership ate at his soul.
How am I to go out into the world and convert if I am lodged here with a small child? He wondered night after night on this thought.
He considered inviting his "flock" once more to a prayer meeting. He walked the mile long pine needle path toward Uncton village where the four members lived. He tucked Jane in the makeshift bed of pine wood and left her alone in Howler's cabin.
The child slept peacefully amid the sound of owls, insects and other creatures in the woods. Only one night, did the little child awaken while Bronthwin was gone.
She was scared awake by the sound of a rabbit captured by hungry vultures at twilight. The rabbit's screams were so shrill that the little child thought it was her own voice. She began to scream loudly. Her tiny voice grew hoarse when after an hour Bronthwin finally returned to the cabin.
He commanded her to be silent. When she would not, he grabbed both of her arms and turned a willow switch on her backside.
"Be silent Devil!" Bronthwin bellowed.
Then, he threw the child onto the makeshift bed and raised his hand when the child shrieked so loudly even the now dead rabbit could have been resurrected from death. The sound of the child's loud shrill cries pierced Bronthwin's ears so that he believed he had angered Satan. He ran out of the cabin and fell on his knees begging for mercy.
For some reason, the child was silenced. This only confirmed Bronthwin's suspicions that Jane was the devil's child. She was sound asleep when he returned to the cabin. Ever after, he slept with his Bible in his hands to prevent the devil from taking him in his sleep.
Bronthwin knew he dare not expose the demon child to his flock. Villagers in these rural areas were hugely superstitious by nature. They have a full menu of ways to keep Satan at bay. One glance at Jane and Bronthwin knew his plans for a larger religious community would fail. Even in the 1890s, the more remote the villages, the more likely there were peculiar occult practices, all in the name of religion.
By the time Jane was five years old, Bronthwin decided to spare himself from damnation and hell fire, he would keep the child busy with work. Mostly, it was work he didn't want to do. At age eight, Jane was already able to heft an axe to chop fire wood. It was clear she was going to be tall. Her legs were already more than half of her torso. Her arms dangled oddly when not at work. Like two limp willow branches after a terrible storm.
Her raven hair wasn't the only thing that gave Bronthwin pause. Her eyes were too dark. They appeared to have no pupils. What her father hated most was Jane's curious second sight. It was almost as if she could see what was going to happen before it did. Bronthwin knew this was a sign of the devil.
He spent most of his time trying to bring more people from the village into his group. Since Katherine's death, he wasn't very successful which raised an internal rage in him only hours of prayer for forgiveness on his and Jane's knees could atone for his sin of anger.
By the time Jane was ten years old, her misshapen skull seemed to make her dark eyes bulge more prominently. Over those ten years, the shape of her skull had elongated from its original swelling at infancy. It didn't help that Bronthwin abused the little girl the minute she was within sight.
He blamed the child for the loss of his wife, the lack of interest by villagers in his sermons and prayer meetings and the entire downturn of his life.
One autumn day, Jane was busy with her chores. Bronthwin had but to raise a dark eyebrow for the child to know she needed to work harder. In truth, Jane was given most of the jobs Bronthwin Moughbory, now a middle aged man, should have been doing.
"My work is more important than hauling pails of water, chopping wood and hunting for food," he told the child.
Jane rarely spoke. This was another sign of the devil to Bronthwin. He feared she might have been struck dumb and deaf at birth until he heard her humming a strange tune while she worked.
"Stop that!" Bronthwin yelled, upon hearing the tune.
With each year she aged, Jane grew less and less obedient and was beaten by her father until her skin was red and raw.
When Jane's raw skin broke out in blisters, that was all Bronthwin needed to prove she was the devil's child. He saw her mixing together roots and berries for a salve for her wounds. She hummed the tune to avoid screaming in pain when she applied the salve.
Having no education, each time she was flogged by her father, she didn't know some of the vines in the woods where she picked mushrooms and berries would cause a rash.
Over time, between Bronthwin's beatings and cruelty, Jane seemed to welcome the pain. To his horror, Bronthwin realized Jane had begun to enjoy being beaten. Jane often deliberately did things she know Bronthwin would consider evil.
Then, she would grin slyly and wait for what was to come.
"You're a demon seed! You are! You are a disgrace to my name! I cannot stay here any longer with the devil's own," Bronthwin said.
"Father, you enjoy seeing my blood pour from my wounds. Did you beat mother too? " Jane asked brazenly.
That was the last straw. Bronthwin reached for a short log near the fireplace and brought it down on Jane's back. The girl doubled over in paid but refused to let her father know. Instead, she looked up at him from where she'd fallen and began to laugh hysterically.
"Aieeeeee! The Devil! The Devil!" Bronthwin screamed, as he ran from Howler's Hollow for the last time.
Jane was barely thirteen years old when she was left to her own devices. That blow from the log upon her back didn't heal properly. She had laid in her bed for nearly a month before she could stand erect again. Whatever the blow had done, Jane's back was now permanently bowed and she walked with a slight limp.
As the years passed, the path to Howler's Cabin disappeared under the heavy blanket of pine needles once more. Jane managed to keep herself fed on whatever the forest provided. She learned to make a stew of greens she found in the overgrowth atop pine needles. When she could, she caught a rabbit or a squirrel and prepared that as the only meat she had available to her.
Bronthwin was never heard from again. Nor was Jane especially hoping for his return. In fact, she now studied the shape of the sassafras tea leaves in her cup, imagining she saw the future.
She made sure the woodshed had plenty of wood for the cold winters and taught herself how to fire that old rifle Bronthwin left behind. She had to use the ammunition sparingly. So, she used it only to take down a deer who wandered near the cabin.
Jane grew used to the many forest animals and they to her. Sadly, by the time she was a young woman her skin had many scars from Bronthwin's beatings, some with tissue that appeared raised. She used a bow and handmade arrows to scare away unwanted animals rather than the store of bullets for her father's gun.
I don't think of him as my father. I never knew my mother. I am as fate would have me...alone and safe from harm.
As always happens when individuals are left alone for too long, Jane began to study other things in her surroundings, like the phases of the moon, stars and the seasons. She knew these well enough to predict when wild turkeys would be plentiful in season.
She even began to study the flames in the fireplace to "read" their messages. This was the only conversations Jane had to keep her mind from faltering into darkness.
At the end of each summer, Jane marked the anniversary of her father's leaving by building a small campfire where Katherine once canned vegetables to store for winter. In truth, Jane feared that one day her father would return and her life of misery would begin all over again.
She practiced a chant while sitting beside the fire.
"To the devil with the devil my father is," Jane repeated over and over.
Sometimes, Jane would stand upright and limp around the fire, circling it as she cursed her father,
"Bronthwin Moughbory be damned! Bronthwin Moughbory be damned!"
She repeated this curse as if to erase the memories of the father who had tormented her so viciously.
On the night of Halloween, Jane saw how very still the forest sounds became. Only the rush of the wind in the pines was heard. To Jane, the wind sounded like those screams she learned to keep silent during her beating.
"I'll show him!" Jane said aloud.
She ran into the house and returned to the campfire with her father's Bible. She burned it and the flames seemed to dance red, blue and green before her eyes.
Such was Jane's fury and anger boiling inside her.
She would awake on what her father called "All Souls' Day" feeling as if she had released her own demons. For now.
Winter was coming to Howler's Hollow. Jane prepared for it as she had since she was a child. On a trip into the thick of the woods, she heard a sound she hadn't heard before...voices. At first, she thought she imagined them. Then, the sound became more distinct. Men's voices. She was sure of it.
She hurried back to Howler's cabin as fast as she could. She reached for the bow and arrows. She waited to see if the voices grew closer to the cabin. All she saw were two men with rifles hunting crossing what was once the old path.
She watched from the cabin window. The two men disappeared.
"They'll be back. An old, run down cabin is never ignored by men," Jane said.
Over the years of absorbing so much physical and mental abuse by her father, Jane's soul hardened to the fact that she didn't just fear men, she hated them.
"If there are two men now in my woods, there will be more. There always are. I've got to think of a way to stop them before they destroy all of this," Jane said, as she sat in the old fireside chair.
Ironically while in her fury, she burned her father's Bible, there was still another treatise on the proper allegiance of Bronthwin's congregants to God. When Jane found it among her father's papers, she thought she might throw it into the fire. It sat beneath her father's other books on Satan and his evils.
Bronthwin used these as inspiration for his sermons and also to "teach" Jane how to behave according to "God's will." All Jane learned from his teachings was that she hated that God of his and anything that had to do with religion.
As a young child, with tears streaming down her face, Jane often wondered how this "God of Mercy" would allow her father to "beat the devil" of out her when she tried so hard to comply with his demands.
In her rebellious teen mind, she vowed she would do precisely the opposite of what was in her father's lessons. Now, as an aging woman living alone in the only world she ever knew, Jane was drawn to using her father's religious books to live just as she pleased and to refuse to follow any religious beliefs.
From season to season, Jane learned little "tricks" she picked up from the wild animals who roamed past Howler's Hollow. Every day, she wandered and roamed through the woods finding food, water and clues from nature that gave her greater power over her squalid existence.
One day, shortly after those two men wandered past the cabin, Jane realized she had found a small cave in a part of the woods obscured by thick trees and mountains of dried and decaying foliage of years past. She wandered farther than she planned and yet felt no fear of being lost.
She scooped away the leaves at the entrance to the cave and heard a strange sound from inside. She called into the cave, "Who goes there?" There was no response other than the odd humming sound and a bit of rustling. She poked her head into the entrance. Frogs began to leap out of the opening.
"Just frogs. I should have thought so."
She delighted in the sight of the spotted green frogs with their huge dark eyes. She tread softly to get nearer to one of them as it hopped back inside the cave.
"You think you have escaped little one. I shall make pets of you," Jane said.
Jane always took great care to ensure her tracks in the pine needle path were covered..."just in case a man got an idea of finding her."
Jane began to surround herself with "pets" she managed to trap and cage in her tangled and twined vine cages. She kept them just outside the cabin door. She caught insects to feed the frogs, seeds from nearby bushes to feed two caged crows and a red fur fox she fed bits of the remains of squirrel.
Jane's life was fairly routine. She hunted for food, stored as much of it as she could and then chopped firewood for winter or the campfire she loved to build as summer turned to autumn.
There was something about autumn that excited Jane's senses. Not having any schooling, she had only her instincts to guide and protect her. She learned to read only because Bronthwin forced her to read the Bible at age three. Now, she used his religious books as a way to defy him and his hateful, fearful brand of religion.
By the time she was five years old, she'd memorized much of the Biblical passages. She got a beating for laughing when she read the passages in the Old Testament about Adam and Eve prancing around the Garden of Eden naked. She learned not to laugh about the talking serpent that "tempted" Eve with an apple. That was always the passage where Bronthwin stressed why women were so evil.
The strange rituals of the people in the Bible Jane had read about as a child began to become twisted in her mind. Was it really possible for a bush to burn of its own accord?
Jane tried to debunk that by nearly setting the entire cabin on fire. Then, she hid at the rear of the cabin to avoid another of her father's evening Bible readings that went on for hours. She hid behind a bush and lit a fire. She found a small twig, twisted a hole in the center using another twig and then placed bits of dried grass atop it. Once it ignited, Jane threw it onto a nearby bush and laughed as if the bush had burned itself.
She cackled so loudly that Bronthwin came round to the rear of the cabin and saw what she'd done. He used his own jacket to douse the flame.
Jane knew her punishment would be severe as it always was. This time her father yanked her by both arms, pushed her up against the trunk of a tree and tied her arms and hands around the trunk. Then, he flogged her and to remind her never again try to use the Bible as an excuse for Satan's work, he placed the iron fireplace poker into the fire and burned her back until she screamed for mercy.
"I'll burn the devil out of you if I must!"
As Jane sat by the campfire, she recalled these horrors inflicted on her and the hate within her grew to such proportions she felt only a lust for blood. Her kills for food always the day after were savaged. She once killed a rat about to pounce by tearing at its throat with her teeth. Then, she threw the remains to the two crows who feasted upon it.
"Seems fitting to keep these pets starved. They devour what food I give them with greater force."
On one trip past the cave she found, something flew past her with amazing speed. She couldn't make out the shape because of the speed of its disappearance. Jane knew it made its home inside the cave. The next time she visited the cave, she brought a lantern with her. The minute she entered the cave, she heard the humming sound and then, the flapping of wings.
Trying to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness, Jane saw what looked like a black wall from whence the humming sound came. Bats! Hundreds of them. Her silent footsteps didn't around them.
She took a single step and heard a hissing sound from a rather large snake. Jane was fascinated not just by the sound of the hissing. She watched as the reptile slithered toward her, reared its head and then sprang forward, missing Jane's leg by barely a half inch.
She hurried out of the cave, causing the nocturnal bats to stir. Her daylight sight once outside the cave distorted her sense of direction and she fought her way through bramble, bushes and another shocking sound...human voices.
She remained behind the copse of skinny tree trunks and saw men and women in the village of Uncton. Jane had no idea such a place existed. Bronthwin Moughbory saw to that. She was fascinated at the movement of the villagers. Children playing and not working hard? Jane couldn't conceive of such a thing.
One little girl spied Jane Moughbory from her place in the copse.
"Mama! Look! An old woman in the trees!" Abatha Martin yelled.
Lucretia Martin and several other women stood in a circle chatting.
"Mama! See there? An old woman!" Abatha yelled again.
Lucretia Martin and the other women turned in horror. They saw the shadowy figure of Jane Moughbory running away.
"Tis a witch! Hurry! We must inform the Vicar. He will know what our men should do," Lucretia said.
Vicar Bronthwin Moughbory founded his parish two decades earlier. He appeared in Uncton Village one day with all the fire and brimstone expected of a holy man of God. He kept his small congregation of fifteen Uncton families under constant vigilance and they kept each other under the same watchful eyes.
When Good Wife Martin and the other women sought out Vicar Moughbory, their children in hand, he was lying prostrate before the altar. Vicar Moughbory's small church had had hewn pews, painted white to match the walls and white marble altar.
The vicar was quite adamant that no popish icons adorn the interior of the church, save a ghoulish version of a crucifix, quite contrary to strictest Anglican prohibition of idols. The face of the image on the crucifix had strange, shiny glass eyes with a gaze that seemed to follow one everywhere inside the church.
There was an oak lectern for the Vicar on which to lay his Bible and two long candles on either side of the lectern, more for light, than spiritual enhancement.
"Vicar Moughbory, we have just witnessed the most frightful sight," Lucretia said in a soft voice that echoed in spite of her attempts to try not to annoy a vicar in prayer.
Moughbory rose and faced the group of women.
"What is this nonsense you say Good Wives of Uncton?" he asked.
"Vicar, we, all of us, have seen a witch in the woods just beyond the edge of the village. My own child, Abatha was first to notice the witch," Lucretia said.
The vicar paced slowly for a few minutes.
"If there is witchcraft among us, we must take very severe measures to destroy it," he said.
"But Vicar, how shall we do that?" Ida Doran asked, meekly.
Ida and her husband, Simon, were the first of Moughbory's congregants along with Ezekiel and Lucretia Martin, long before he fled Howler's Hollow.
"I will call a meeting of our council tonight. Inform your husbands to meet here at the vicarage promptly at seven this very night," Moughbory said.
Moughbory's rise to vicar of Uncton was a result of there being no real church or established religion in the village. When he fled Howler's Hollow and left his only child behind, Bronthwin saw an opportunity in the village. There being no protestations to his starting a small congregation of villagers, his only opposition came from a handful of men who just needed to see "reason" and join Moughbory's church.
It was true that Moughbory based his religious beliefs and practices on the old Anglican tenets of faith. However, he was now above bending those tenets to secure his desired goals. Such as offering those irreligious men a place on the council. He knew that Simon Doran and Ezekiel Martin, already faithful believers, would be a drawing agent for the rest of the men in the village.
Bronthwin grew quite comfortable referring to himself as the "Reverend Vicar Moughbory of the Assembly of Christians" even as he duped Archbishop Stratton into believing his "congregation" was strictly following those Anglican tenets.
Bronthwin relied on his booming voice to maintain attention and order among the all male religious council. As the men filed into the church, Bronthwin assumed his position in his black robe at the lectern, ever present Bible in hand.
"Gentlemen, It grieves me to inform you that this day your Good Wives witnessed the sight of a witch in the woods just beyond the village. We must take action to remove this evil from our midst," Bronthwin said.
"Sir, can it just be a child's imagination?" Thad Barnston asked.
"I think not. Good Wife Martin herself saw this evil creature," Bronthwin said.
"What will you have us to, Vicar?" Simon Doran asked.
"We will form a posse and seek out this witch. She must be punished according to the Bible," Bronthwin said, slamming the Bible hard on the lectern.
He raised the Bible into the air.
"Sir, What if there be a coven?"
"All must be dealt with. Uncton must not fall to the devil!" Bronthwin bellowed angrily.
Bronthwin chose Ezekiel Martin, a six foot three inch tall man of mountainous build to lead the rest of the Churchmen to the woods.
"Ezekiel and you men await the cover of darkness. That is when witches are most likely to reveal themselves," Vicar Moughbory said.
"But, the witch was seen at dusk by my own goodwife, Vicar when some daylight was still upon us," Ezekiel said.
Vicar Moughbory had no explanation for that. Bronthwin Moughbory was not a scholarly man by any means. Thus, his usual strategy was to change the subject of conversation when he was expected to come up with sage responses to inquiries from his congregants.
"We must not concern ourselves with any but destroying this evil," he said.
So, it was that on All Hallow's Eve, the male congregants, with lighted torches in hand left their Uncton cottages to destroy the evil witch in the woods. Each man warned their good wives to remain indoors, shutter windows and lock doors.
The parade of angry men with raised voices grew louder and louder as they made their way through the forest.
Vicar Moughbory remained at the rear of the group. Obadiah Crichton was first to notice Howler's cabin in the distance. So, did Moughbory.
"Sir, see the old cabin ahead?" Obadiah yelled to the Vicar.
"It is abandoned," Moughbory said.
"Nay, there is the smell of smoke. The witch may be within," Ezekiel said.
Moughbory knew that cabin all too well. He also knew it was, in fact, occupied by his own daughter, Jane. Now, he realized it was Jane that Goodwife Martin and the child, Abatha, had seen late that day.
Inside the cabin, Jane's keen sense of hearing alerted her to the sound of leaves crackling beneath the heavy footfall of several men. As she knew, they had returned. She knew she had to hide from them or they might force her out of the only place she had ever called "home."
Thinking fast, Jane doused the dwindling fire in the fireplace, covered up all signs of her presence and even scrambled the pine needles in the makeshift bed she slept in since she was a child.
There being only one door to the cabin at the front, she listened carefully and realized the sound of their footsteps was still a few yards away. She pulled her ragged clothing and an old dirty blanket over her head. Then, she slipped out the door and around to the rear of the cabin.
She would take to the cave she found. She'd already lopped the head off of the snake inside and wasn't worried about the bats. At the dark of night, she knew they'd be out of the cave.
Bronthwin Moughbory was not pleased at having to return to the cabin he and his wife Katherine lived in. The anger rose inside him like bile.
Ezekiel, Simon, Thad and Obadiah entered the cabin as Moughbory watched. He hoped Jane was inside. He would have reason to see she was killed so no one would know she was his own kin.
"Sir, the cabin is empty. The witch has escaped," Ezekiel told upon returning to the others.
"The witch escaped and now we, none of us, are safe from her evil," Vicar Moughbory said.
"Does she abide in the cabin for certain?" he asked.
"It appears so. Shall we burn it down, sir?" Obadiah asked.
"I think we best not. The cabin is not Uncton property. It is too far away from our village," Vicar Moughbory said.
"Sir, is this not the cabin where once you and your good wife lived? Where you first began your calling?" Ezekiel Martin asked.
"That is true. When my good wife succumbed to death, I fled this cabin. I felt then something evil surrounded this cabin," Vicar Moughbory said.
Bronthwin hope that neither Ezekiel Martin or Simon Doran would recollect their church meetings outside Howler's cabin.
The momentary silence was broken by Obadiah Crichton.
"My own grandfather told me stories of this cabin. He said that an old man Liam Howler lived and died in it."
"I also heard that story. It was said by the old folks Liam Howler lived all alone but cursed the place when he died," Thad Barnston said.
"We must return here on the morrow. We cannot allow a witch to do evil in our midst!," Vicar Moughbory insisted.
The men buzzed among themselves as they returned to their homes.
"The witch has been destroyed, Husband?" Ida Doran asked.
"Sadly, no. She lives in that old dilapidated cabin in the woods," Simon said.
"What must good wives and children do? That witch may rain the devil on all of us," Ida said.
"Do not fear. Vicar Moughbory and the good fellows return tomorrow. We will seek her out at twilight before she can escape," Simon said.
Jane Moughbory waited until the woods went deadly silent, save for the howling of owls. The cold October night air chilled her to her bone. When she entered the cabin, she saw nothing had been touched.
So they think they have found me? If they return again, I will escape to the cave.
Jane had no idea her own father was with that posse. She assumed he was dead. Decades had passed without word from him. If he wasn't dead, Jane knew he has slithered away like a snake. She cursed him nearly every day of her life since he left.
She awoke at first light the next day. Taking all of her cues from her father's old books, Jane set out to dig small holes and cover them over with leaves all along the path to the cabin. Then, she hung several dead birds from the low lying trees along the path.
I will see to it they are scared and break their legs for them!
Thanks to living with a fanatical father, Jane knew all of the ways she could scare these men away. She knew they believed in the devil. Jane had no such belief. To her, Bronthwin Moughbory was the devil and he had forced hell upon her.
She spent the next morning inside the cabin making devilish omens like twigs she turned into crosses to be dangled upside down from hanging vines or placed them at the base of tall trees.
Abatha Martin and other village children spent their free moments during their school days discussing the "witch" Abatha had seen. Their imaginations began to run wild; although they kept it to themselves lest Vicar Moughbory chastise them.
School mistress, Agatha Lindley, knew her students well enough to know they'd chatter among themselves about the witch Abatha had seen.
"Students, we must not divert our attention away from our school tasks," Mistress Lindley said.
Agatha Lindley had caught the Vicar's eye. But, Bronthwin Moughbory was not to her liking, even though she knew a Vicar's wife had many advantages in the village.
The Vicar resented her rejections and constantly warned her about "making more of herself." In truth, Agatha Lindley was a strikingly beautiful young woman of twenty-six. Her distaste for the Vicar was mainly that he was as old as her father, Malachy Lindley.
Bronthwin believed it was Malachy who dissuaded his daughter from becoming his wife. As such, Malachy Lindley was not as welcome a member of the congregation as others. Bronthwin would have favored the practice of shunning Malachy had it not been for the fact that he kept his options open in the hope Agatha would change her mind.
"Mistress, What if the witch comes into our village while we are asleep?" Abatha Martin asked.
"You have no need of fear. Your fathers are hunting the witch. When they find her, they will destroy her," Agatha said.
Abatha Martin, all of nine years of age, felt such a rush of excitement at the thought of a witch in the village. Like all children of good wives and good fellows, Abatha was obedient and gave them no cause for sending her for discipline to the Vicar.
Still, the little girl's curiosity was almost overpowering. She hoped she would see the witch again. So much so, that while Good Wife Lucretia Martin tended to her chores, Abatha slipped away as quietly as she could. She knew where she was going. She just had to see this evil witch once more.
Strangely enough, Abatha was a child with few fears, a result of such a cloistered village lifestyle. She skipped along the path, knowing that any singing and dancing was forbidden other than that allowed by the Vicar in church meetings.
The rustling of leaves, the chill wind and sound of owls and woodland animals piqued her curiosity even more. She stopped suddenly when she came upon an old cabin a few yards ahead. Then, she saw the evil witch!
Jane was about to search for kindling for the cabin fireplace when her ears pricked up.
"Who goes yonder?" Jane called.
Abatha Martin, frightened the witch had sensed her presence, began to run. Jane ran faster and caught the little girl and dragged her back to the cabin.
"What are you doing here child?" Jane asked.
"I ...uh..I..think I am lost," Abatha said.
"Where is your mother? Your father?" Jane asked.
"My father is working in our village and my mother is doing her chores," Abatha said.
"You are a witch! You are evil! The Vicar will punish me for finding you!"
"The Vicar is my father!"
"No Witch! That cannot be. The Vicar has no Good Wife of his own. He has no children. Vicar Moughbory is a holy man!" Abatha screamed.
"Holy? Holy?" Jane repeated.
She cackled that same laugh she had as a child, scaring the little girl.
"Now, I wonder. What shall I do with you, little girl? I think I should like to keep you for a while," Jane said.
"No! Please witch, I must return home. If my mother finds me missing, she'll have all the village men looking for me and the Vicar will punish me," Abatha said.
"The Vicar is a sick man!" Jane said, tapping her left temple.
Abatha didn't understand Jane's meaning that Bronthwin Moughbory was a vicious, cruel man and sick of mind.
"No such thing! The Vicar is a holy man," Abatha said, again.
"Let us see just how holy, your Vicar is. If he is so holy, he'll find you and save you, will he not?"
Abatha eyed the witch. She saw Jane's ragged clothes and her now graying, strawlike hair. She wanted to glance around the cabin to see if she could run out of a door.
"So you think you will escape me?" Jane asked.
Abatha's glance darted toward the door. Jane caught it. The little girl tried to run; but, Jane lunged forward and put both arms around the girl's waist.
"Do not try to escape again. I will release you when I am ready," Jane hissed.
"I cannot stay here. You are evil!" Abatha screamed, as tears fell from her eyes.
"I have been here a long, long time. Before you were born, no doubt. If I am evil now, you have none to thank but your "holy" Vicar. He is NOT holy. He is the devil. Now, you will stay here until I am ready to let you return to your village," Jane said.
The little girl was horrified. Captured by an evil witch and without anyone in the village knowing where she was. Abatha was frightened. As darkness fell, Jane offered the child the stew she prepared earlier that day.
Abatha refused it.
"Eat child. You look as if you are half starved. Doesn't your Good Mother feed you?" Jane asked.
Abatha remained silent. She wouldn't dare eat anything prepared by an evil witch. It might be poisoned.
The little girl was adamant.
"Suit your own whim," Jane said.
Jane cackled as she ate heartily.
"You will eat my stew when your stomach groans in pain," Jane said.
As night obscured the light, Jane saw the little girl was fighting sleep. Jane had never seen any young child in her life. To Jane, Abatha was a curious anomaly filled with the hateful religion of her own father.
Abatha slumped over and was soon sound asleep. Jane kept vigil over the child lest she try to run away. Jane saw the potential for the little girl to be a bargaining chip should village men try to destroy her.
She learned over and covered the little girl with the only blanket Jane had in the cabin, a heavy dark and now, mostly dirty woolen blanket her father left behind many years ago.
"Sleep little girl. For tomorrow, I shall want news from your village," Jane whispered.
Abatha sighed in her sleep and turned toward the warmth of the fireplace. Jane threw several more logs onto the fire to keep them warm.
Jane slept in the fireside chair as she often did when she thought she heard unwelcome strangers in the woods. It usually was nothing more than small animals looking for food. She learned years earlier to keep these critters away from the cabin, she left food a few yards off.
Watching the child as sleep took over, Jane realized how many years it had been since she was a child. She tried never to remember those years of her father's abuse and cruelty. Now, she had this little girl to get even with him.
She listened to the child's rhythmic breathing and noted the petite, oval shaped face with its porcelain skin and tendrils of chestnut hair framing her face.
She has no idea what being here in this cabin will mean when HER father finds her...IF he finds her. I just might decide to keep her hear and hide her when they come looking for her. My father will just find a way to abuse her as he did me. I can almost hear his fiery words claiming this child was tainted by an evil witch and she must be punished severely.
Jane didn't want to think about what her cruel father might inflict on the little girl. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that the child would be in more danger returning to her village.
If she remains with me, I can teach her how to survive here in the woods. I can teach her all of my remedies and even, how to make the campfire and fire inside dance with the colors of the rainbow.
It was true that Jane had none but to learn to survive since Bronthwin Moughbory abandoned her. Yet, she felt no true remorse of being abandoned by such a vicious, cruel man. Jane couldn't help feeling that the child would provide much news of the village, villagers and the "vicar."
Vicar indeed! Just when did a self appointed minister ever manage to become vicar of an entire village? Jane wondered.
All through the night, even as her eyes were heavy with sleep, Jane refused to succumb to that nether world of sleep where no human had control of their dreams. She knew if she slept the village men might come for the child she intended to keep with her.
On the next morn, Jane shook herself awake when she heard Abatha Martin stirring and whimpering.
"Oh please witch, please let me return to the village," Abatha said.
"No! Do you not realize if you return, your "vicar" will punish you more severely than he ever punished me? He will place upon your head the same lie as he placed upon mine," Jane said.
"I don't believe you!" Abatha said.
"See then the scars upon my back where he burned me those many years ago!"
Abatha saw rivulets of deep scars, more from Bronthwin's beatings than those dark burn marks that now looked more like a map of years of torture.
"The Vicar would never!" Abatha screamed.
Jane wondered what she could do to prove to the little girl that the vicar was her father. Then, she remembered the books of faith he left behind. She walked over to the small wooden chest to the right of the stone fireplace in Howler's Cabin.
"See here? These books belong to your "vicar. Now do you believe?" Jane asked.
Jane opened the first book to the first cover page where Bronthwin had signed his name and noted a Biblical verse. She opened the next book where a small slip of browned paper contained a sermon Bronthwin had planned for his congregants at that first meeting around the outdoor campfire.
"You wrote these things!" Abatha protested.
"Would an evil witch write Bible verses?" Jane countered.
The child looked confused.
"You are trying to confuse me!" Abatha said.
"I tell you truth. Your vicar is my father. He is a cruel, heartless man. If you return to the village now after being with an evil witch all night, you will be cast out of his church congregation," Jane said.
"What will you do with me?" Abatha asked.
"Well, as this is still early morning light, I will see you are fed. I have dried wild berries and some thrashed wild oat kernels," Jane said.
"It is poisoned! You will poison me!"
"Child, if I wished you dead, you would already be so, would you not?"
There was a long silence between them. Jane knew the petulant child wouldn't eat if she believed the food was poisoned. Jane scooped up some of the mixture and ate.
"Now, you will see this is not poison," Jane said.
"You are a witch. You know how to trick me," Abatha said.
"Yes. It is true I can trick you. Not because I am an evil witch. Because I know much and have far vision, much farther than those in your village," Jane said.
Jane walked toward the fireplace to put more logs on.
"Where do those logs come from?" Abatha asked, eyeing the oats and berries again.
"Why the fallen trees in the woods. My father left behind his tools when I was a child just about your age. I chop it myself and I keep the axe blade sharp using flint rock."
Abatha found herself speaking to Jane just as she might her school mistress, Agatha Lindley.
"Tell me of your village," Jane said.
"Children are taught by our school mistress after Vicar Moughbory gives us the morning Bible lesson," Abatha said.
Jane's eyes narrowed upon the child's face.
"I should not be surprised that your vicar would make certain you receive Bible lessons before your other lessons," Jane said.
"Why do you hate the Vicar so?" Abatha asked.
"He makes of me an evil thing. Do you think I was born evil? Is that what he tells his congregation? That his daughter had to be destroyed because she was born evil?"
"He has no daughter. He told my mother and father he had a wife who died early when they were wed," Abatha said.
"And did the vicar name his dead wife?" Jane asked.
"No. I overheard my mother say the vicar choked up when he mentioned her," Abatha said.
"His wife, MY mother, was Katherine. She died giving me life," Jane said.
Abatha's face screwed up in a contorted way that made Jane cackle. Abatha responded with fear.
"See? You must be a witch! All witches laugh as you do," Abatha said.
"And you know that "all" witches laugh as I do because you've heard many witches laugh?" Jane said.
Abatha didn't like it that the evil witch seemed not so very evil.
"Then, if you are not an evil witch, why is your face and head shaped so?" Abatha asked.
"It is not a discussion for one so young. I imagine I was born as my mother was forced to give birth without any assistance," Jane said.
"Where are all of your clothes?" Abatha asked, noting the ragged condition of Jane's frock.
"I had but one frock only. I sewed it together myself. Your vicar would not allow me to buy more than one. He said such desires for abundance was a sin," Jane replied.
"And so it is. I have only one frock. My good mother takes it from me and washes it before I awake each morning and she dries it on a twine line outside our cottage," Abatha said.
"What do you wear in winter when your frock would freeze in the cold?"
"Mother dries it by our fireside," Abatha said.
"Where is your mother's grave?" Abatha asked.
"I will show you when we gather more firewood," Jane said.
"I cannot help you. To do so would be to help a witch," Abatha said.
"Would you prefer we freeze in this cold then?" Jane asked.
Abatha didn't respond.
"Anyway, the Vicar is planning to marry again. I am sure he will want to rid the village of an evil witch first," Abatha said.
"Marry? Whom?"
"Oh, I am sure it will be my school mistress. She is young and quite fetching. I overheard my mother telling Good Wife Doran and the others that Mistress Lindley would make a good vicar's wife," Abatha said.
"Quite fetching? You mean pretty? Not ungainly as I am?" Jane said.
"Her eyes are not dark with evil as yours are. Her honey colored hair is always neatly pulled back at the nape of her neck. She dresses modestly as the Vicar demands of all of the women in his congregation," Abatha said.
"I'm certain of that. Let us get out to the woods to gather firewood and kindling," Jane said.
Jane rarely paid attention to time, other than to make sure she went out to the woods in late afternoon. As it was not yet afternoon and the sun was still fairly high in the sky, Jane realized that the village men were probably laying in wait for her and the child to leave the cabin.
She knew the path at the rear of the house was obscured by thick bushes and bramble. She dallied in the cabin until the child grew restless.
"We will make our way as quiet as field mice. Even if the village men lay in wait, they will not take the chance to shoot you. You will follow my footsteps quietly. Do not try to run. There are animal traps that will break the bones in your legs like match sticks."
Poor little Abatha felt as if she already was caught in a trap...a witch's trap. Her eyes well over with tears even as they searched and listened carefully for the sound of village men coming for her.
She couldn't know the vicar she so admired and respected had already warned Ezekiel and Lucretia Martin their daughter would need to be segregated from the rest of the villagers, lest Abatha taint them with the witch's evil.
Unbeknownst to Ezekiel and Lucretia, Vicar Moughbory had already called off the search for the child. If the Martins questioned it, he would tell them, she had been carried off by wolves.
Lucretia Martin knew not to show her terror and loss of her child. Such was the power the Vicar held over the villagers. None dared miss his church meetings or his sermons.
Jane Moughbory knew her father's trickery well enough to consider that he already had cancelled the search for Abatha. Now, Jane realized she was stuck with a young child to care for if the village men had given up their search. Abatha would not be a bargaining chip as Jane planned.
As the child picked up kindling, Jane eyed her.
Perhaps, I could teach her how to survive. I could teach her how to find wild herbs and plants for food and how to hunt animals and protect herself from the wild ones.
After about a week, Abatha knew no one was coming for her. Or so she thought. When a full December moon was high in the sky, Jane saw how distraught the little girl was and thought to distract her with a huge bonfire outdoors.
She bid the child toss more and more wood onto the fire.
"More child! We will dance around the fire and be as warm as the flames!" Jane said.
"The Vicar doesn't allow singing and dancing," Abatha said.
"The Vicar isn't here. Is he? What the Vicar can't see or hear, the Vicar can't forbid!" Jane replied.
Abatha stopped tossing wood to consider what the witch said.
"You mean I can do just as I please now? I can sing? Dance?"
"You may be certain. I've told you the Vicar is a cruel man with no soul. You are free as a bird. Listen. Do you hear the owls in the night? Some of them screech as if they are in pain. Others sing a long, low song. They are free. So are we," Jane said.
"What song shall we sing?" Abatha asked.
"None your Vicar would approve of. We can sing like the owls, frogs or even the howl of the wolves in season," Jane said.
So the two began to sing "Hooo Hoooo Hoooo" like the owls and "oomla oomla oomla" like the frogs, followed by the eerie cry of wolves.
The two sang and danced around the fire, Abatha holding her skirts and Jane writhing in ecstasy. Abatha imitating Jane's movements as best she could.
Abatha loved the excitement of the bon fire, the singing and dancing so much Jane obliged the child's whims until one evening the pines swayed wildly and a light snow began to fall.
"What shall we do if we are snow bound?" Abatha asked.
"I am never snow bound, child. We have stored up plenty of firewood for the cabin and it will keep us warm. Our meats are dried and stored just outside the cabin. We will manage just fine," Jane said.
When the first snow storm came at December's end, Jane saw the child growing restless from idleness. She never had to concern herself with keeping anyone but herself occupied.
"Child, come here. I want to show you how to weave straw into dolls."
Jane plucked a handful of the straw she used for her bed and began to make small figures with it. Abatha was awed.
"It's a doll! Oh but, I've never had a doll before," Abatha said.
"Yes. I know. The Vicar?" Jane asked.
Abatha rolled her eyes and then grinned.
Now, at least the child had something to keep her mind occupied. Jane was amused when Abatha's collection of dolls grew to a half dozen.
"Before we are sleeping on the cold hard floor from lack of straw for bedding; perhaps, I best show you how to make the flames in the fireplace sparkle like stars," Jane said.
Abatha was fascinated when Jane took a pinch of powder and threw it on the flames. At first, the flames soared high in changing colors of green, bright red and even purple. Then, as the flames died away, they turned pale yellow.
In truth, Abatha wasn't surprised the witch could make "magic." After all, hadn't the Vicar told them about the wicked magic evil witches could do?
Years earlier, Jane discovered that a certain woodland plant when dried to a fine powder, suddenly made fire crackle and change to a rainbow of colors. Jane spent the rest of the winter tutoring Abatha in the use of various plants.
By the time spring arrived in Howler's Hollow, Abatha was fairly resigned to her new life. Yet, in her heart, she longed for her mother, father and brothers, Albert and Thomas. She wondered how her village friends and Mistress Lindley were.
Jane observed Abatha and knew the child could run off at any minute. So, she reminded her that if she returned to the village all of the freedoms she had would disappear and she would once again be forced to obey the Vicar's harsh rules.
"If the Vicar truly is your father, why do you hate him if you are now free of him?" Abatha asked.
"Child, there are only two kinds of men in this world. Those, like my father, who believe in their own divinity and those who are just and fair."
"But, a Vicar is divine. Is he not?"
"Evil cannot also be divine," Jane answered.
Lucretia Martin knew to steal away to try and find her lost child was against the Vicar's rules. But, her motherly instinct told her the child was alive and she could be found, even though the Vicar said Abatha was carried off by wolves.
There was one place that was forbidden to all village women: Howler's Hollow. To enter Howler's Hollow would be to admit to practicing witchcraft.
On a foggy night in early spring Good Wife Lucretia Martin could stand her heart ache no longer. She waited until the village went silent and Ezekiel and her sons were sound asleep. She rose from her bed and set off for the one place she knew Abatha might be: Howler's Hollow.
She wrapped her cape around her shoulders and took an unlighted lantern and flint to light it after she was out of the range of the village. The woods were only a few years ahead.
Lucretia couldn't understand why the Vicar forbade anyone to enter Howler's Hollow when years earlier he lived there with his wife and even held his first church meetings there.
Lucretia wondered if the Vicar fled Howler's Hollow because he had been terrified by some evil he encountered. What if she also encountered the same evil? Something down deep inside her told her to press on.
She walked into the woods for nearly a half mile when she smelled the odor of smoke. She strained her eyes to search for the bright flames of fire. What if the woods were afire? How would she explain her presence in discovering it?
The more she walked, the stronger the odor became. Then, she heard two voices in the woods near Howler's cabin.
I thought the Vicar said the cabin had burned to the ground. But, there it is!
As she tiptoed as quietly as she could, she saw two figures dancing and singing around a large bon fire just a yard from the old cabin.
Oh My Lord! It's the evil witch. But, who is that with her?
Lucretia saw that the second figure was smaller in height and weight than the tall, ungainly witch. She silently prayed that the smaller figure was not one she knew all too well.
She hid behind a tree not more than five yards from the cabin and watched. Her eyes narrowed so that she could see the face of the smaller figure more clearly. She dare not look at the face of a witch. The Vicar would cast her out of the village for witchcraft.
As the smaller figure finally rounded the bon fire with her face toward the woods, Lucretia nearly fainted.
She knew now for certain Abatha was bewitched. She heard the child singing and dancing as the two rounded the bon fire.
"Child! Hush. Did you hear that?"
"It's just the owls," Abatha said.
"I think not. Let us hurry back to the cabin. Quickly douse the fire with the bucket of rain water," Jane said.
Lucretia saw the witch and her own dear child enter the cabin.
My child has been gone nearly one year. Now, she can never return to our village. The Vicar would never allow it. Not after what I've seen this night.
As Lucretia turned to go back to the village, Jane hurried to the cabin window and saw a figure moving away toward the path. The next day, Jane and Abatha inspected the footprints in the muddied pine needle path.
"A woman's?" Jane wondered aloud.
Abatha shrugged her shoulders.
"Yes. It is a woman's boot," Jane said.
"No village woman would enter Howler's Hollow. The Vicar would banish them from his church," Abatha said.
Jane knew the child was right. Oddly, Abatha seemed to be adjusting to her new life as a "child witch." This amused Jane. Abatha, on the other hand, began to realize that Jane was not really evil at all. She just didn't fit into the Uncton village or the Vicar's way of living.
Abatha had begun to call Jane, "Miss Jane." This was a sign to Jane that the child she had abducted to use as a weapon to get even with her father and those in the village casting her as an evil witch, was suddenly an important part of Jane's daily life.
"Miss Jane? You know something? You really are not evil. You are just like the birds...free."
"And you do not mind being free now that you see the difference between what the Vicar preaches is righteous and living free as a bird?"
Abatha was still reticent to answer truthfully.
"Do you think you could ever really go back to Uncton Village now after you have lived here in Howler's Hollow?"
It was true that Abatha had learned to make friends of woodland animals she would never be allowed to approach. In fact, she knew that the woods were off limits to all unless the Vicar approved it. She learned all of the things well "Miss Jane" taught her about plants that were useful and those that were lethal or could cause illness.
Abatha felt an odd kind of resignation to her new life even as twinges of memories of her mother, father and two brothers flooded back occasionally.
"Abatha, sometimes our decisions are very difficult. If I were to demand you return to your village right now, how would you feel about that?" Jane asked.
Jane saw immediately the look of fear in the child's eyes.
"Oh Miss Jane! I know you are not evil. I know what you tell me about the Vicar is true. I don't want to lose my soul. You told me what might happen if I return. The question I thus put to you is, "How can I return now? My father would beat me for not trying to escape. My mother and brothers have forgotten me!" the little girl wailed.
Jane felt the strings of her heart tug seeing the tears streaming down Abatha's face.
"If your father and brothers have forgotten you, it is the fault of my father, your Vicar. He has no doubt insisted you are dead. But, you may be sure your mother will never forget you."
"How do you know that?"
"Because even in death, I know my own mother is with me always. She is the reason I am still alive. Even when we lose those we love, they live inside us," Jane said.
"So, what shall I do with you?" Jane asked.
"I will stay here with you. Everything you say goes against what the Vicar preaches. And yet, what you say is simple and free. You have never once beat me as the Vicar would do," Abatha said.
Jane shuddered in horror at the thought of one of her father's beatings.
"Has the Vicar beat you?" Jane asked.
"Just one time when Mistress Lindley told the Vicar I wasn't paying attention in school."
Jane remained silent.
"The Vicar said he had to make an "example" of a sinful child to all in the village. He tied me to a tree and whipped me with a willow branch. It hurt some awful; but, I dare not cry out in pain. Later, when he finally set me free, the lashes hurt so badly. My Good Mother wanted to put salve on it, but the Vicar forbid it. He told her that proper justice must be meted out with the reminders of pain," Abatha said.
"What did your father say?"
"He could say nothing. He is on the Church Council. The Vicar would remove him," Abatha replied.
Perhaps, it would have been better had not the little girl told Jane of her public beating. The fury rose in Jane like a bon fire.
"So, you see Miss Jane? We both know I can never return. My punishment would be more severe," Abatha said.
"Revenge is sweetest when it is allowed to take root and blossom," Jane responded.
Abatha didn't understand Jane's meaning; but, she would come to very soon.
The fury Jane felt hadn't dissipated. She decided to try to help Abatha forget her sadness and loss. Abatha felt more confused than ever. Half of her mind wished she hadn't been captured and the other half realized there was no evil in her captor.
In the heat of the summer, the two found much to keep them busy. Jane taught Abatha how to find roots for tea for healing insect bites. She taught her how to know which mushrooms could be eaten and which must not be touched for their poisons. Feeling more trust in the child, she took Abatha to see the cave.
"Be careful. Cold blooded animals lurk inside," Jane said.
"Miss Jane? What kind of cold blooded animals?"
"Those that fly and those that slither on their stomachs," Jane said.
"Then should we not stay out of that dark place?"
"No place is forbidden when you are free. A dark cave can be protection, should you need it," Jane said.
So, the two became expert spelunkers. They cut flint from the cave's rocks and found pretty white flowers that seemed to glow in darkness.
"Miss Jane, aren't they lovely? Why you can see them even without light," Abatha said.
"We will dig up their roots. Let us call them "moonflowers" because they like darkness just like the moon," Jane said.
They planted the little white flowers in the darkest shade of the pines where little sunlight penetrated. Jane and Abatha discovered that they would flower only after dark of night came. Abatha smiled broadly. Jane who rarely smiled allowed the barest hint of a grin to cross her lips.
As soon as autumn returned, the gathering of supplies for winter kept the two busy. At night in late September, they heard Uncton villagers praising God in spiritual songs and chants for a good harvest.
"They celebrate Harvest Home," Abatha said.
"We will celebrate too. Let us build a bon fire and fill mother's cauldron with pine sap and "sparkle powder. We will light up the forest and celebrate with singing and dancing. But first, let us make up masks for our faces with earth paints," Jane said.
"Paint our faces?"
"Yes. If we want to celebrate, we must paint our faces. Go into the cabin and find the earth paints... berry, henna and ash powders."
Abatha felt an unusual excitement. She'd would never paint her face in the village. It was true what Miss Jane told her. In the woods, nothing is forbidden because they were free...of the Vicar, his rules and his angry sermons.
The child wondered as naturally curious children always do what really was the difference in chanting religious prayers over and over and Miss Jane's funny chanting around the bon fire.
They had such fun painting each other's faces.
"Face paint to hide how ugly my face is," Jane cackled.
"Miss Jane, why do you think you are ugly?"
"I have been misshapen since birth. I am too tall for a woman and as an accident at birth, my skull is too long and my brow too high and wide," Jane said.
Abatha reared her head back to try and see what Jane was describing.
"I just a woman with face paint," Abatha said.
Jane looked at the paint on Abatha's face and they both roared with laughter. The gloomy feelings Abatha had earlier seemed to have abated.
"Miss Jane?"
"Yes?"
"What is the difference when we chant like frogs under a moon than the villagers chanting spiritual prayers?"
"Well, I suspect the Vicar would call your question "blasphemy" for ever asking. But, really? Nothing. I like to hum tunes and sing. Is that not what our voices are for? Is it really do evil to imitate the sounds of nature around us?"
"No. But, to what end?"
"Little girl, I've lived in these woods alone. After my father abandoned me, I had only the birds, bugs, wood creatures and tall pines for friends. You had your school mistress and village friends. When you are alone, really alone, you want to be a real part of the world you live in. It is natural for humans to be one with nature," Jane said.
Abatha was learning much more about "Miss Jane" than she realized possible.
"Come, Miss Jane! Let's dance and chant like the owls," Abatha said.
They danced around the bon fire, Jane screeching like the screech owls and Abatha like the hoot owls. Then, they fell onto the ground laughing and laughing until the realized how much darkness had come.
"Shhhhhh....Miss Jane. Did you hear that?"
"No, child. What did you hear?"
"Twigs breaking."
"I don't think anyone from the village would break with their Harvest Home ritual to enter Howler's Hollow at this time of night," Jane said.
She was wrong. Lucretia Martin stole away as soon as the Vicar ended his blessings on the village and his long winded prayers for an abundant winter.
Lucretia saw the witch and Abatha dancing with painted faces and chanting absurd while animal cries. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her daughter was lost to her forever. Bewitched by evil and now her soul was as dark as the witch in the woods.
Lucretia's shoulders sagged and her body heaved with sorrow. If only there was a way to take Abatha back to the village without the severe punishment she knew the Vicar would inflict on her child.
As she hurried to return to the village, Lucretia felt intense hatred for Vicar Moughbory and even more so for her own treason against him for her hateful thoughts. Her self loathing was becoming outwardly noticeable by her spouse, Ezekiel and Goody Ida Doran, who, like Lucretia was one of the Vicar's first congregants.
Lucretia remained stoically silent at the Good Wives prayer session. Her mind was far off in Howler's Hollow and the images of her child with painted face dancing and singing with an evil witch.
After the prayer meeting, the Good Wives always met in the church's ante room where the youngest children were taught their Bible lessons while adults were at prayer with the Vicar.
Abigail Barnston, Thad's Good Wife poured tea as the other women worked on their present for the Vicar...a quilt with a religious theme. Lucretia's heart was just not into gifting anything to the Vicar. She felt like a traitor to all the Vicar had taught them.
"Goody Martin, are you not well?" Ida Doran whispered.
"I...no. I feel oddly weak. No matter. I know my duty to our Vicar," Lucretia said.
Ida Doran was the oldest of the Good Wives. Her salt and pepper hair defied the truth of her actual age which was fifty-six and six months. Ida had always kept secret her true feelings about the Vicar mainly to please her husband Simon.
Abigail Barnston was the youngest of the Good Wives at age twenty-four. Most of the others were at the median age of thirty-five or thereabout. The only unmarried woman was Mistress Agatha Lindley, age thirty eight and the most attractive of the village women. Mistress Lindley was allowed to be among the Good Wives only due to the Vicar's insistence that she not be left to "her own devices."
Of these women, Ida Doran and Agatha Lindley were the only two who hid their sinfulness as if it was in a sealed jar of precious honey.
Ida's sin was one of indulgence. Now, a rather plump woman, she often ran her fingers into the jams and jellies she made from local wild berries to taste of their sweetness. Agatha Lindley's sin was knowing more than a good woman should. She was sent to Uncton to be school mistress by the state. She hoped for an urban school, not the small rural village to which she was appointed.
Vicar Moughbory made a point of always reining in Mistress Lindley's tendency to steer her students to "slightly free thought."
The Good Wives and Mistress Lindley worked on the Vicar's gifts not realizing some of them felt an internal rebellion they dared not expose to each other, their spouses or, worse, the Vicar.
"Mistress Lindley, is there no good fellow who piques your interest," Ida dared ask.
"Good Wife Doran, there are only five unmarried good fellows in Uncton village, as you know. All of them are ten years my junior. I may be condemned to spinsterhood for the rest of my life. Anyway, if I marry, who will teach your children?"
The women whispered among each other and nodded in agreement. When the quilting time was over, the women began to leave the meeting room.
"Good Wife Martin, I know you are not well. Christian women always help each other as the Vicar has taught us," Ida Doran said, as the women spilled outside the church doors and started for home.
"Good Wife Doran, I..." Lucretia began, as tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Lucretia, let us dispense with the facade of our religious demands. We have known each other for a very long time. Something is wrong," Ida said.
"Good Wife Doran, Ida...I have witnessed something that I cannot seem to erase from my mind," Lucretia said.
Ida Doran knew that keeping her silence and swearing an oath was wrong by the Vicar's standards. But, she also knew it was important to discover whatever was causing Lucretia Martin such stress.
"I have seen my child!" Lucretia whispered.
"Abatha is alive? But, the Vicar told all of us she was likely carried off by the wild animals in Howler's Hollow," Ida said.
"I tell you I have seen her."
"If you have seen your child, it can only be a vision. It cannot be real. She's been gone three years. She would be nearly grown now," Ida said.
"She is taller. Yes. But, she is alive and seems well. She is no vision or my imagination," Lucretia said.
"Lucretia, please tell me you have not been out to Howler's Hollow," Ida said.
"I will not tell you that even though it is true. I trust no one. If the Vicar knew what I'd done, I'd be punished."
"When did you see Abatha?"
"During Harvest Home. I waited until my Good Husband was asleep and Albert and Thomas were well asleep in their beds after our church meeting. I stole away to the woods and I saw Abatha and the witch with their faces painted, dancing and singing around a bon fire and chanting like animals."
"Oh heaven save us all!" Ida said.
"Ida, I must swear you to secrecy about this. It wasn't the first time I saw my daughter. I don't know why or how I knew she was alive. So shortly after she disappeared, I stole off to Howler's Hollow. That's when I first knew the Vicar was wrong, Lord forgive me."
"It isn't the Lord you need concern yourself with, Lucretia. It's the Vicar. I have no desire to see you flogged or shunned in our church community. You may be sure you have my sworn oath on all that I keep holy I will not reveal what you have told me this night," Ida said.
The two women walked slowly back to their homes. Ida entered hers, but watched as Lucretia detoured to the path to the woods. She knew where Lucretia was going. It was as if Goody Martin was possessed and couldn't be prevented what Goody Doran knew would enrage the Vicar.
Goody Doran silently left her home and followed Goody Martin into the woods.
I'm an old woman now. What can the Vicar do to me? Surely he can punish me harshly. Should he do that, he would only incur wrath among others in the village.
Ida stayed a distance behind Goody Martin. When Lucretia reached the perimeter of Howler's cabin, she saw that Abatha and the witch were sitting quietly around the bon fire under a bright autumn moon.
Ida could conceal her presence no longer. She walked up close to Lucretia.
"Judas Priest! Ida! What are you doing here!" Lucretia whispered.
"I followed you to see if you imagined your daughter," Ida said.
"See there? The two? Abatha and the witch? Likely planning some evil act," Lucretia said.
In fact, Jane was teaching Abatha how to read sassafras tea leaves in their wooden tea cups.
"Do you see shapes yet?" Jane asked.
"No, Miss Jane. I do not. What do you see in yours?" Abatha asked.
"I see that change is coming. See here? Look at how the leaves refuse to disperse evenly in my cup," Jane said.
"How do you know it means change?"
"Because when these leaves stack upon themselves to the side of the cup in such large numbers, it isn't normal. Is it? Let me see your cup. Oh my! Child look! See how your leaves form a "rise?"
"What does that mean Miss Jane?"
"Shhh...Let me study upon it."
Jane suddenly went deadly still and silent. From their vantage point in the woods, it appeared Jane was in some kind of ecstasy.
"See Goody Doran? She is going into fits!"
Jane held her hands to her head and closed her eyes while she swirled her body in a circular motion. Abatha watched closely. She knew she needed to remember how to do what Miss Jane called "studying."
The girl's eyes widened so that the whites of her eyes seemed to glow in the darkness of Howler's Hollow.
"Oh my Lord! Look Goody Martin. Your daughter's eyes! They are aglow!"
In truth, there was a strangeness about Howler's Hollow pertaining to light fracturing in odd prisms. Perhaps, it was due to the canopy of pines over the Hollow that emitted limited light from the sun and moon. From a distance, moonbeams in the Hollow fracture into barely visible prisms, noticeable only when artificial light like firelight is added to the eerie realm.
Ida Doran understood Goody Martin's curiosity and instinctive inclination to want to know what was happening to her daughter, even though Abatha had been gone for so long.
"Goody Martin, we best get back to our village before we are discovered by these evil people," Ida Doran said.
"My Abatha is not evil! She has been bewitched! I am certain the Vicar can cure her of that," Lucretia said.
"Oh, my dear good woman. I would not go so far as to mention that we have seen this eyes with our own eyes. It would mean uncertain punishment by the Vicar!" Ida said.
"The Vicar! The Vicar! He used to live in that cabin. You well know of it, Goody Doran. We both know he was a cruel man to let his wife suffer such excruciating pain of child birth. You know he refused to allow her your midwife assistance!"
Ida knew Lucretia was right. Before the Vicar came to Uncton Village, he had a wife for sure. A wave of terror ran through Ida's body.
"Goody Martin! Have a care for what you say about the Vicar!"
"Ida, let us not pretend we do not know the Vicar lusts after Mistress Lindley. If she is forced to marry him to avoid being a spinster for the rest of her days, she will be with child and suffer as Katherine Moughbory did...possibly even death," Lucretia said.
"Good woman. The evil we see before us must not enter our souls. We will be damned for all eternity as the Vicar has told us," Ida said.
"Why did you follow me, Ida Doran? You more than any in the church congregation have feared the Vicar the least," Lucretia said.
"This is truth you speak. I have no fear of the Vicar's punishments. Would that he had the power to punish me so severely that I should meet my Creator, I would not hesitate for a moment to defy him," Ida said.
"Well then, why did you follow me into Howler's Hollow?"
"Because I knew what you saw was no vision. Let me tell you what I've have kept to myself since we first met the Vicar and his wife," Ida said.
Lucretia remained silent, while her eyes focused on her daughter and Jane.
"I know the Vicar's daughter is not dead. I have known it for a very long time. The dark secret he keeps is that his daughter is alive. You see her there before you. She is the one we call the evil witch in the woods," Ida said.
"It cannot be. You know what the Vicar said. You would indict him for abandoning his only child of his wife Katherine? But, why?"
"Look at her. She is now an aging woman. But, I got lost many years ago here in Howler's Hollow. I saw a young child playing in the stream. I could not see her face. But, her features were coarse and frightening. I ran as fast as I could and never spoke of her to anyone," Ida said.
"So you think that is the Vicar's daughter?" Lucretia asked, feeling disoriented.
"I tell you I am certain it is his daughter."
"But, how could a small child survive all of its own in such a dark, dangerous place?" Lucretia asked.
"As children always do...they abide even when the world is crashing down around them."
"I do not believe that possible," Lucretia said.
"Look there. Your own daughter is alive. Does that not prove to you that amid dire circumstances, your child survived? The Vicar left his child to the animals in this Hollow. He hoped she would die," Ida said.
"How do you know this?"
"I know the ways of men who are cruel and inhuman," Ida said.
"But, Good Fellow Ezekiel is not cruel or inhuman."
"And, I praise and thank the Lord for that every day! It is the man with the blackest soul who believes in his own divine powers to the exclusion of human feelings," Ida said.
"What shall we do? If we return to the village, how will we hide this discovery?"
"We both know there are other women in the village who fear the Vicar's wrath and punishment. We must watch carefully for those we can trust," Ida said.
"To what end?"
"To take back our power over such an evil man!"
"You describe a witches' coven, Ida Doran. Have we strayed so far now into darkness of evil ourselves?"
"Does your daughter look unhappy? Does the Vicar's daughter? To my vision, they appear to be quite free."
Lucretia Martin knew what Ida Doran was suggesting was rebellion and blasphemy if the Vicar found them out. Yet, she felt a temptation to agree with Ida. Abatha didn't look like an evil witch. She looked profoundly free of the chains of rules imposed on Uncton village by the Vicar.
"I must admit one other thing to you since we now share a very dangerous secret. I have seen the Vicar's child more than once. Just as Abatha had and you. She was peering from behind a tree several years ago. She appeared gaunt and her face was frightening. A too large skull and through her ragged clothing, I saw a brown birthmark in the shape of bat's wings. She ran off. I pretended I didn't see her. I was terrified if I reported it to the Vicar, I'd be punished severely. When Abatha impulsively told of seeing the witch, I was relieved."
"As the Bible says, "Out of the mouths of babes, Ida?"
"Aye, Goody Martin," Ida said.
"Ida, let us be frank now as we have never before been," Lucretia said.
"If we dare break with the Vicar to save my child, we will be cast out of the village. Some of us have other children to consider," Lucretia said.
"Not all of the women in the village should be told of our findings here in Howler's Hollow. I am certain Mistress Lindley would be certain to join us. She wants no part of marrying the Vicar. We both know he will not be discouraged from taking her for a wife. When you think about it, we are actually saving her," Ida said.
"But Ida...All we hold holy ends if we go forward," Lucretia said.
"Do you see anything in what the witch or Abatha have done tonight as particularly evil or dark?"
Lucretia had to agree that from a distance the singing, chanting, dancing and bon fire only looked evil because it is what the Vicar described as evil.
"What if the Vicar knows his daughter is alive? What if he demonizes her to keep us from learning the truth? Does that not make of him as evil? Does it not defy all he preaches in his sermons?" Ida asked.
Lucretia had to agree. Perhaps, it was Lucretia's longing for her daughter or rebellion over the Vicar's growing encroachment into villagers' lives that inspired these doubts cast by Ida.
"Let us slip quietly back to our cottages for tonight, Goody Martin. We will meet at the river on our wash day. We can discuss quietly who we feel we should take into our confidence," Ida said.
"But Goody Doran, a witches' coven?"
"No such thing. "A Good Wives Rebellion" to save our children from a Vicar's tyranny."
Bronthwin Moughbory was not a man to suffer the loss of power among his congregation. His beady eyes maintained scrutiny that began to add to his power. This included the women speaking to each other out of his hearing distance while doing their chores.
At the next meeting on the Sabbath, he used a Bible citation to support his newest "Thou Shalt Not" to the women in the village.
"Good Wives must work in silence. Labor is an offering to God. It cannot be done in an air of sociality. Therefore, Good Wives must work in total silence among each other," Bronthwin declared.
Good Wives Martin and Doran furtively glanced at each other with lightening speed. Ida Doran lowered her black bonnet as a signal to Lucretia Martin that they must meet sooner than later.
On the night of the next last quarter moon, the two met and decided on who of the other Good Wives they should take into their confidence. They chose those with whom they felt closest to in the congregation. Both immediately chose Agatha Lindley and decided it should be Ida who would speak with the school mistress.
They chose Abigail Barnston, believing her younger age was to their advantage and Naomi Crichton, Obadiah's wife as the first to meet with.
"These Good Wives must be sworn to secrecy...in blood, if necessary," Lucretia warned.
"A blood oath from Good Wives? I am certain the Vicar would find a Bible citation against that too," Ida laughed.
To the surprise of both Good Wives Martin and Doran, all of the women they chose agreed to meet with them...in Howler's Hollow.
"Should we meet where we saw Abatha and the witch?" Ida asked.
"I've told the Good Wives to leave their cottages as quietly in twos as they can manage," Lucretia said.
"What is our purpose for bringing these women together?" Ida asked.
"You know well the Vicar's lies must be confronted...one way or another," Lucretia said.
"We can only dispel the Vicar's lies by confronting him with the truth," Ida said.
"You mean bringing Abatha and his daughter to a church meeting? What if the rest of the village shuns us or worse, punishes us horribly?" Lucretia asked.
"It is a risk we must take if we are not to be ruled by a hateful tyrant. There...I've spoken my true feelings about the Vicar. Will you punish me now?" Ida asked.
After a very hot summer and the first cooling days of autumn passed, the Good Wives kept their secret until the first October full moon. They feigned their ardent religiosity during Harvest Home and worked as the Vicar demanded silently among each other. Their facial expressions became almost telepathic.
They learned which of the Good Wives they could trust and which they knew would expose them to the Vicar.
The Good Wives in their trust planned to meet secretly in Howler's Hollow on the night of All Hallow's Eve while Jane Moughbory and Abatha Martin prepared to celebrate Jane's birth date.
"Miss Jane, you were born on All Hallow's Eve? How do you know?" Abatha asked.
"Your "vicar" reminded me of it with punishment for being the devil's child. Of course, he blamed me for my mother's death and tried in vain to put me into my mother's grave," Jane said.
"Shall we thus visit your mother's gravesite then? You once said you would show me. But, I then believed helping you to gather firewood was helping an evil witch. I know now you are not."
"Can we not prepare a birthday celebration?" Abatha asked.
"Your Vicar would not approve!" Jane said, with a wide grin.
"I have no Vicar. I have only you now," Abatha said.
"What shall we do for a "birthday" celebration?" Jane asked.
"Well, once the Vicar described how some evil people celebrate their birthdays and other events by engorging themselves and even making cakes decorated with evil colored sugars. May we not do the same?"
"If that is what you wish. In the early morn, we will try to use corn flour to make a cake. We can use the dye from berries to make "colored sugars" from dried honey," Jane said.
"Miss Jane, how do you know all these things?"
"If you wish to survive, you pay attention to all things large or small," Jane said.
"May we also have a bon fire and decorate the cabin with dried herbs and flowers?"
"If you wish. Child, I have never had a birthday celebration. I know as little as you, nay, even less than you about such things," Jane said.
Jane felt a strong bond with this child. Abatha had gone from a fearful linear mind to a young girl who learned much from Jane's teachings. And yet, there was much Abatha knew that Jane did not.
"Child...I suppose you are no longer a little child. Should we not choose to call each other by our birth names?"
"I am not sure I can call you just "Jane."
"Why is that?"
"Well, I like calling you "Miss." It makes me feel you are smarter than I," Abatha said.
Jane laughed.
"Alright then. I shall call you Abatha from this point on and you can still call me "Miss Jane" if that makes you feel best," Jane said.
The next morning, the two left Howler's cabin to forage for their needs for their birthday celebration that evening. Jane suddenly stopped near the stream.
"Look there! It is a grave marker," Jane said.
"Your mother's?"
"No. I've seen it before and have always puzzled about it. I noticed the jagged rock peaking out from beneath a deep bed of pine needles when I was just about your age. I'd seen it many times before. But the previous winter began with a downpour of hail that must have reduced some of the pine needles, thereby exposing more of the jagged rock beneath. That was when I realized it was a gravestone.
The rock of that gravestone is too old to be that of my mother's. When I found my mother's resting place, it was as if she reached out from her grave to trip me over her gravestone," Jane said.
"Please Miss Jane. Can we not see where your mother is laid to rest?"
The two walked toward a dense copse of trees with so little sunlight they had to adjust their eyes to the darkness. As a young girl, Jane had planted a wild holly bush at the head of the gravestone so she would be able to find it and visit whenever she liked.
Now, Jane headed for the holly and brushed away pine needles with her shoe.
"How pretty! Those red berries. What are they Miss Jane?"
"They are called wild holly. They only produce those bright red berries late in autumn. You have seen me make small wreaths from them to decorate the cabin door and attract those pretty scarlet birds to them," Jane said.
"Yes. I have seen them on the cabin door. How smart of you to make food of the berries for birds when winter makes their food supply scarce," Abatha said.
"Here lies my mother, Katherine Moughbory."
There was a long silence between the two women. Abatha thought she saw Miss Jane's eyes well over with tears.
"Do you have nothing of your mother's belongings?"
"No. If such things ever existed, my father removed them in his anger over her death," Jane said.
"Can we bring a sprig of this holly bush back with us?" Abatha asked.
"Just a small one. These are delicate, even though they are wild. Injury to this plant in cold weather can cause it to die. I would not be able to find my mother's gravesite without it," Jane said.
Jane reached down and snipped a small sprig of the holly from its base.
"You cut from the bottom where there is little sap and where the cut is least likely to injure the rest of the bush," Jane said.
They headed back home in late afternoon, busied themselves with preparing for Jane's birthday celebration and when Abatha felt the cabin indoors and out was ready, Jane prepared the bon fire.
"It feels as if we may see the first snowfall. Best that we bring in wood for the cabin fireplace before we "celebrate," Jane said, mildly mocking the idea of a "birthday celebration".
This not missed by Abatha.
"You know Miss Jane? In a way, this is your "first birthday."
"How do you come to that?"
"Well, you have never had a birthday celebration. So, this is your first birthday," Abatha said.
Jane considered this with an expression of appreciation she had not felt ever. She dare not tell her young companion this.
With the corn cake decorated and the bon fire lit, Jane and Abatha wrapped themselves tightly in their blanket cloaks and began to sing and dance around the fire as they had once before.
Jane nearly bumped into Abatha who had stopped dead in her tracks.
"What is it? A wolf?" Jane asked.
"Voices!" Abatha answered.
"Voices of the village men? Hurry we must douse the fire and head inside the cabin," Jane said.
"No. Voices of women," Abatha said.
Jane now could faintly make out the sound of women's voices.
"It cannot be village women. They would never disobey the Vicar's rules," Abatha said.
"No. Of course not."
"Perhaps, a band of women who have lost their way, then?" Abatha said.
The words had not fully fallen from her lips when she saw a familiar figure amid a group of several other women.
"Miss Jane! It is the Uncton Village women. What can they want at so late an hour alone in Howler's Hollow?" Abatha asked.
"Something dreadful must have happened in the village. Let us see if they approach nearer," Jane said.
Ida and Lucretia stood shoulder to shoulder when they and the other women decided to dare to venture near to the bon fire.
"Miss Jane? Shall we not let them tell us what they want?" Abatha asked.
Jane felt divided about Abatha's suggestion. But, she knew the women were not armed, nor would they be.
"Agreed. I cannot fathom what they can want and why they even dare come near Howler's Hollow this late at night," Jane said.
It was Ida who spoke first.
"We come in solidarity and peace," Ida said as the women fairly walked on tiptoe toward Jane and Abatha.
"Come forward then," Jane allowed.
"We have business we wish to discuss," Lucretia put in.
"Business? The Vicar's Good Wives of his congregation? What business can you have?"
"The business of stopping the Vicar," Ida said.
Jane and Abatha looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders in expectation of what the women had in mind.
"I have long known your companion is my long lost daughter, Abatha. Is that not so?" Lucretia asked.
"Yes. Tis true enough," Jane answered.
"Why did you steal my daughter away?" Lucretia asked.
"To get even with my father...your "Vicar." Jane replied.
"I do not understand," Lucretia said.
"Mother, Miss Jane is not a witch. The Vicar left her when she was just a very young child. She has fended for herself here in Howler's cabin ever since," Abatha said, excitedly.
"I erred in taking your child. I was no older than she is now when I did that. I thought if I could use one of the villagers as a hostage, my father would be exposed for what he is."
"I thought the Vic...your father a cruel man early on. I kept silent because I feared his punishments," Ida said.
"As I also feared them and endured them," Jane said.
"I erred in taking this child, but it was she who realized she could never return lest my father cast her out of the congregation and worse, punish her for venturing off into Howler's Hollow," Jane said.
Lucretia saw that her daughter didn't protest what the witch said. To Lucretia, Abatha appeared well cared for. Tears streamed down Lucretia's face as she stared at the now young woman before her.
"No need for tears. I am not my father. I took care of Abatha," Jane said.
"So you are the child of Katherine Moughbory, then?" Ida asked.
"Child...no. Woman born of Katherine Moughbory, yes."
"Mother, you realize none of you can return to the village now?" Abatha said.
"We come to seek your special powers to rid us of the Vicar. His punishments grow ever more vicious. Abatha, I offered to help bring you into the world. It was your father who refused my midwife skill. Your mother was as thin as a reed and I knew childbirth would be painful for such a slight woman," Ida said.
"You remember my mother?" Jane asked.
"You would not remember, of course, but Goody Martin and I and our Good Husbands were your father's first church congregants right here in Howler's Hollow," Ida said.
Jane was fascinated hearing her mother's name spoken so openly.
"Miss Jane, may we offer these ladies the warmth of the cabin fireplace and perhaps a cup of tea?" Abatha asked.
The wind in Howler's Hollow had begun to grow wild as it breezed through the pines overhead.
"Ladies? I trust you realize I have no special powers over the Vicar. Nor, can I offer much more than some herb biscuits and tea. You needn't worry the tea is "witches" brew," Jane said.
The women had all wrapped their shawls tightly around their shoulders for cold wind.
"Come...before the snows begin," Jane said.
The women entered Howler's cabin slowly as if they feared some trap. They relaxed when they saw the warm fire in the fireplace.
"I have not much furnishings. You are welcome to make yourselves warm by the fire. The straw rug is now woven. Abatha has learned how to wave strands of straw into braided rugs and other things," Jane said.
Lucretia saw the braided straw rug and was amazed. Abatha poured tea from the old metal pot on the hearth.
The women were impressed at the sparseness of Jane and Abatha's living quarters and yet they had begun to feel more relaxed in their presence.
When the women finished their tea served in small carved wooden cups, Jane knew it was time to find out precisely what the women really wanted.
"Lucretia Martin, shall I begin?" Ida Doran asked.
"Yes."
"We are here because some of the village women fear the Vicar will force Mistress Lindley into a marriage she does not want. He has also begun to beat some of our village sons for small infractions of his rules and has made several of the women feel most uncomfortable being alone in a room with him," Ida said.
Jane was not surprised.
"What would you have me do about these things," Jane said.
"We thought because he has denied your existence most vociferously, that you are the only one who can expose him. Your presence in the village would expose his years of lies," Lucretia Martin said.
"Oh Miss Jane..." Agatha Lindley began.
"I just cannot bear to be near him. He has made suggestions that a spinster is a serious offense to God and unless I marry him and submit to his "needs," I am damned to hell," Agatha said.
"Mistress Lindley, you may call me Jane. No need now for such pretentions of purpose," Jane said.
Jane listened after each of the women stated their experiences with their Vicar. There relating of these things brought back memories she thought she had released from her mind long ago.
Abatha realized Miss Jane had been correct about what would have happened to her if she was returned to her village. The Vicar had grown far more powerful.
"I cannot help but ask what do the village men say about all of these things the Vicar does?" Jane asked.
"His influence over our Good Village Men is so powerful as to be a kind of bewitching unto itself. When first I saw you in the clearing near the village, I daren't tell the Vicar for fear he would punish my Good Husband," Ida said.
"It was my own child who saw you. We reported it to the Vicar. From that day forward, he damned the witch in the woods and began to make laws for all of us to follow. I knew then that my daughter was lost to me for good. But, my heart was breaking for her loss," Lucretia said.
"Mother, what did the Vicar say about me?" Abatha asked.
"He said you had been carried off by wolves and warned no one should enter Howler's Hollow under pain of severe punishment. He said this as he eyed me particularly as a warning not to find you," Lucretia said.
"Mother, what is your plan then?" Abatha asked.
"First, we must set things right with the Vicar. We are all God fearing people. Our village has always before the Vicar came to power been peaceful and loving. His ideas of religion are extreme and carry him too much power," Ida said.
"I am not simple minded; nor am I as learned as some of you. I do not know what you wish me to do about my father," Jane said.
"We want him punished in a way that will make him realize his power over our village has gone too far," Lucretia said.
"If you all return to the village now, I fear what he may do to all of you. Are there other women in the village who might support your actions?" Jane asked.
"None who could be trusted now to disclose our disobedience to the Vicar," Agatha Lindley said.
"We would all be known as evil witches," Abigail Barnston said.
"I also fear what the punishment would be for me and my Good Husband," Naomi Crichton said.
"Tomorrow is All Hallow's Eve," Jane said.
"I feel such a sense of vengeance," Agatha Lindley said.
Suddenly, the other four women all felt the same.
"What do you propose we do? We cannot just march into the village and drag the Vicar out of the vicarage by his heels and force him to admit he lies and his punishments are extremely cruel," Jane said.
"Why can we not?" Abatha asked.
"Dear young girl, what of the village men? Do you not realize they would punish all of us?" Jane replied.
"I am not so sure of this. Our men will be gathering and storing supplies for winter. They do not know we have stolen away to Howler's Hollow as yet," Ida said.
"I have an idea. If you stay here the night in Howler's Hollow, they will reckon you are gone and in the morrow search for you. We will keep the bon fire lit and be ready for when they discover you. It is likely the Vicar will lead them on in the search," Jane said.
"Miss Jane, do you think the village men will believe their wives came to Howler's Hollow of their own accord? Or, will the Vicar convince them you bewitched them?" Abatha asked.
"It's of no matter. If the village men come, we may use some distraction to scare them away and then wrest the Vicar from their midst," Jane said.
The six women sat warming by the fire. Naomi Crichton, Abigail Barnston and Ida Doran's eyes were heavy with sleep. Lucretia Martin and Agatha Lindley sat in a semi circle around Abatha wondering how much of her village days Abatha remembered.
Only the sound of the owls in the woods remained as all of the women finally succumbed to sleep. As usual, Jane was first to arise. Ida Doran noticed the scent of something she didn't recognize.
"What be that which you prepare?" Ida asked, wiping sleep from her blue eyes.
"I learned to make a brew from maple sap to add to the ground cornmeal biscuits," Jane said.
"Where did you find corn for that?" Ida asked.
"The birds. Some years ago, one of them must have filled their beaks with dried corn kernels. I scooped them up from the forest floor. I taught Abatha how to make a small garden at the rear of the cabin. There is a little sun there in warmer weather," Jane said.
Ida was amazed. Jane Moughbory learned to draw sap from trees, forage for seeds dropped from the heavens by the birds and even taught herself how to weave from straw.
"With nothing, you make much," Ida said.
"Come, I'll show you our honey jars," Jane said, directing Ida to a small rough hewn pine cabinet.
"Where does the honey come from?"
"Wild clover. Bees thrive on clover buds. I save the small bits of honeycomb they make from it," Jane said.
When the other ladies were finally awake, Abatha hurried to finish her usual chores. Lucretia helped her gather kindling wood and mushrooms.
"How do you know these mushrooms are not poisonous?" Lucretia asked.
"Miss Jane taught me how to know which are good mushrooms, and which are poisonous," Abatha said.
"How did Jane learn that?"
"She would feed it to fish or small woodland animals. If they became ill or died, she knew the mushrooms were not to be picked," Abatha said.
Lucretia wasn't certain that was too humane for the animals and fish involved.
"Mother, did you really try to seek me out before you and the other village women joined you?"
"Yes, I did...at least twice."
"And my brothers? How are they?"
"They would not know you. They speak of you only in the privacy of our cottage lest that offend the Vicar. But, when they do speak of you, it is as if you were still a little sister."
"Are they not old enough for marriage?"
"Yes. But, the Vicar must arrange that," Lucretia said.
"The Vicar!!! Has his power become such that he choose spouses for the young village men and women?"
Lucretia realized living with Jane Moughbory had endowed her daughter with an unusual sense of freedom and independence. The small child who had been gone for almost a decade was now in her own right a young woman Lucretia hardly knew.
All Hallow's Eve would prove to be a busy day for the four village ladies. They worked with such timing and synchrony that Jane was awed by their diligence and the willingness to help.
For the early morning hours, the women paired off and foraged for dried herbs in the woods, pulled water from the stream in deer skin pouches, collected roots and tree bark and when they returned to the cabin, Abatha had already begun to start the bon fire.
"What distraction shall we use to separate the men from the Vicar?" Naomi Crichton asked.
"They believe I am a witch and that I have bewitched Abatha and possibly all of you," Jane said.
"We know now you are not a witch. Your misshapen face and skull are not your fault," Ida said.
She saw Jane's quizzical expression.
"Your mother must have suffered horribly giving birth. That is why your skull was misshaped. I've seen it before. In a strange way, you are not a witch but a miracle. Babies who are born with such disfigurements of the skull do not usually take their first breath," Ida said.
"And this terrible brown mark?" Jane asked, lowering the fabric from her shoulder.
The women gathered around Jane to get a closer look. The birthmark was in the shape of a smallish crescent moon.
"That is not the mark of the devil if that is what your father told you," Ida said.
"Tis nothing more than a birthmark as often happens when a baby is born in such stress to its mother," Ida said.
Jane, Abatha and the women devised a plan that very evening of All Hallow's Eve. First, Abatha would watch for the sounds of the men coming to Howler's Hollow. She would signal to Abigail who would alert Jane waiting to scare the men by releasing her pet raven from his cage. The bird would then scare the men and cause them to disperse.
Lucretia, Naomi and Ida would then take the Vicar in hand and bring him back to the bon fire.
It amused Jane that the women seemed overly excited about their plot to capture the Vicar. Abatha, Abigail and Jane would return to the other women before the men. When the village men returned again to rescue their good wives, they would see the Vicar, with hands tied behind his back standing helplessly with the three women guarding him from escaping.
"Oh Goody Doran and Martin, how very exciting this is!" Naomi whispered.
Jane told Abatha and Abigail to prepare three torches to make sure the men kept their distance from the Vicar.
There they were, six women waiting for the moment when their plan was in progress.
Abatha heard the men's voices growing nearer. She waved her shawl toward Abigail who did the same to Jane. Jane made her way forward to where she knew the men would appear. As soon as the men saw Jane, she screamed, "Out with you my pet!"
The bird flew toward the Vicar first and then weaved back and forth between the six other village men. Fearing the bird's attack, the men scattered into the trees like the dropping of pine needles to the forest floor.
Jane grabbed the Vicar by the hand and Abatha tied his hands with vine rope.
"Wicked! Wicked! Evil!" the Vicar yelled.
"Be Silent! Holy Man! Your fate awaits you!" Jane yelled into the Vicar's face.
He struggled to free himself for the next five yards until the three women waiting for Abatha, Jane and Abigail saw the Vicar yelling, "Witch be damned!"
To his shock, he finally began to realize the women were from his own congregation.
"You shall be punished for this!" Bronthwin Moughbory yelled.
"I shall burn the devil out of all of you!" he yelled.
"Yes, yes, Father, I am sure you will. Like you burned me as a child?," Jane asked.
"I am NOT your father!"
"You abandoned me when you realized I would never allow you to see me cry or feel your cruel punishments, no matter how often you beat me," Jane said.
"I am NOT the father to a witch!"
"Vicar, I do recall your wife, Katherine was with child when we attended your first church assembly meeting, right here in Howler's Hollow," Ida Doran said.
"Yes, Vicar. I also recall that Katherine was near the end of her term. What happened to that child?" Lucretia Martin asked.
Bronthwin Moughbory felt as if he was captured by a coven of witches. He decided to try a different tone.
"Good Wives, you have been bewitched. I will not punish you for what this evil witch has done," he said.
Ezekiel Martin, Simon Doran and Obadiah Crichton, seeing no danger from the witch returned to find the Vicar. The other men ran back to the village. The three village men remaining feared their Vicar had been captured by the evil witch and they agreed they must find him.
As the walked on toward Howler's cabin, they saw the flickering of flames from the bon fire.
"See there, Good Fellows? The witch may be conjuring a curse on all of us. We must find the Vicar so he can dispel the curse," Ezekiel Martin said.
It was Bronthwin Moughbory who first saw the three men heading toward the cabin. He remained silent. Jane's keen sense of hearing was first to detect the men's footfalls.
"Good Wives, the men have returned!" Jane said.
"What shall we do, Jane?" Agatha Lindley asked.
"We are more than three...and we have "something" they want...your Vicar," Jane said.
When the three men approached and saw their wives gathered around the witch in the woods, they were convinced the witch had placed a spell on them.
"See there...our own good wives are under the witch's spell," Simon Doran said.
Almost as if on cue, an owl began a long, low call that echoed through the tall pines.
"Tis the call of evil upon our heads," Obadiah Crichton said, his body shaking in fright.
"We are good men of God. We must stand strong against the powers of the witch," Ezekiel said.
Simon yelled from within a few feet of the blazing flames of the bon fire.
"Good Wives, you are under the witch's spell. Return with the Vicar to our village now!" Simon Doran shouted.
"No, Good Fellows. We cannot return the Vicar. He has betrayed us in evil ways. This is no witch! This is the daughter Vicar Moughbory abandoned as a child. His cruelty to our sons and all of us must end, lest we remain separated from you and our children of the village," Ida Doran said.
"My dear spouse, say the witch has not cast a spell upon you," Simon said.
"She has cast no spell. Simon and Ezekiel, do you not recall this cabin? And the Vicar's wife, Katherine, with child? Did he not tell you his child was dead? Look hear Good Fellow Ezekiel, your daughter, Abatha has been cared for well by Jane Moughbory," Ida said.
Abatha and Lucretia moved closer so Ezekiel might see through the flames the face of their daughter.
"No! Our daughter is dead! The Vicar..." Ezekiel started.
"The Vicar has lied so we would not know his own child was abandoned and left for years to fend for herself," Lucretia said.
Bronthwin Moughbory was the kind of man for whom dire situations called for extreme measures.
"I tell you this witch is NOT my daughter!"
"Wicked man, I have proof!" Jane yelled.
She felt the anger blazing as hot as the bon fire. She raced into the cabin and collected the few belongings in the cabin that had been her father's...the treatise of allegiance he wrote to extract total loyalty to his teachings.
She raced out the door of the cabin with the volume in hand.
"See there! The witch can fly!" Bronthwin yelled.
"Good Wives, I show now my father's own writings in his own hand. Is it not familiar to all of you?" Jane asked, passing the treatise among them.
"It is as Jane says. Written in the Vicar's own hand," Abatha said.
"No! It is a trick of a witch. A witch can use her spells to steal my own hand from me!"
Abatha passed the treatise to her father.
"See the Vicar's own signing, Father?"
Ezekiel backed away fearing his daughter was bewitched. But, after a long pause reached for the papers.
His dark eyes widened when he recognized the words written.
"Good Fellows. Tis the same words we have all witnessed in the treatise the Vicar uses to keep villagers loyal," Ezekiel said.
Obadiah and Simon peered at the work over Ezekiel's shoulder.
"Vicar, what say you about this treatise. It is in your hand. The paper may be browned from age but your signing is not," Simon said.
"All of you be damned! All!" Bronthwin screamed.
"Vicar why did you lie? Why did you plot such a scheme to deceive?" Obadiah asked.
Bronthwin Moughbory felt fear such as he had felt only once before when he was run out of the village of Hartley.
"Vicar, how did you come to Howler's Hollow lo those many years ago?" Ezekiel asked.
"I am a man of God! I must bring souls to God!"
All eyes turned toward the woods when they hear the crackle of breaking twigs. It was Thad Barnston. He approached the other men.
"What Jane Moughbory says is truth!" Thad said.
"How do you come by this truth?" Simon asked.
"Some months ago, I ventured to the village of Hartley to repair a broken farm tool. While there, I met on the way, a holy man, Archbishop Stratton. I beg his indulgence to inquire about Vicar Moughbory's teachings. His Right Reverend informed me that our Vicar was teaching his own tenets of faith, not those of the Anglican Church," Thad said.
"Why did you not inform the men of the church council of this?"
"Would you have believed me? Would the Vicar not punish me severely?"
"He lies! I tell you all! Thad Barnston is a sinner and should be punished for his lies," the Vicar said.
"Enough! My father has deceived all of you as he deceived many before. The only punishment to be meted out should be by all of us he has so cruelly treated," Jane said.
The men and women all chattered among themselves in agreement.
"What should the Vicar's punishment be, Miss Jane," Abatha asked.
"The same punishment as he would mete out to any of you," Jane said.
The men and women all looked at each other puzzled at Jane Moughbory's meaning.
"Cast him out of Uncton village in a remote place in Howler's Hollow to fend for himself without any provisions. It is fair and just."
But, the crowd was already on the edge of an angry frenzy.
"First we must make sure he bears the mark of an evil man. Miss Jane, bring the poker from your fireplace. We will brand Bronthwin Moughbory so now one else is ever fooled by him again," Thad Barnston said.
"I cannot be witness to such cruelty. You are all angry because you were deceived. If he is cast out in a place where he can never again practice his own form of faith, he will have to survive of his own wherewithal," Jane said.
"First, we must return him to the village so the other villagers may know of his deceptions," Ezekiel said.
Jane stood by watching the men and the Good Wives return with the Vicar to Uncton Village. Only Abatha remained behind.
"Will you not go wit your mother and father, Abatha?" Jane asked.
"I will of a moment. Will you not come with us?" Abatha asked.
"You know I cannot. I have been too long alone in these woods and village life would frighten me. Too much has changed. You are young enough to take in their ways. I cannot."
"So you will remain the "witch in the woods?" Abatha asked.
"I suspect so. As the young children grow and wander as you did, I am sure they will believe I am a witch. Besides, the sight of me would frighten the villagers," Jane said.
"But that is not your fault! Strange is it not? If your father had allowed Goody Doran to assist with your birth, your deformities might not have happened," Abatha said.
"Life is strange. Some are born to be "witches" with deformities and others, born to be evil, like my father."
"Will you allow my visits to you?" Abatha asked.
"I do not think your future spouse would welcome that. But, if you wish it, you may visit the witch in the woods, most certainly," Jane said.
