Free Familiar Spirits by Leonard Tourney

hangman, the hostility of the crowd, the furor of the law. And yet in her vengeful smile Matthew had sensed
    the evil of which she was possessed. He had not fully recognized the cause of his unease then, thinking it merely his doubts about the justice of her execution. But it had been more than that. Surely Susan was telling the truth about  this —the images and concoctions, the familiars and the demonic prophecies. If these things were not the substance of witchcraft, what was?
    He told Susan to find Brigit and send her up to him. While he waited for the older girl, he went to the window on the opposite side of the attic and looked out on the back parts of the house. He knelt down on the splintery floorboards, and the barn appeared within his view. He thought of the witch’s circle. Of Susan and Brigit. Of Malcolm Waite and Margaret. Of Mrs. Byrd, who had been the first to denounce Ursula. And he thought of Ursula—pale, thin Ursula—with new respect. What power she must have possessed that such a self-willed woman as Margaret Waite would seek her counsel. It was all passing strange.
    When he heard Brigit mounting the stairs, he rose and faced the stairhead. Her head emerged. She stared at him with an expression suggesting that she knew what questions he would put to her and that her resolve was firm to answer only the questions that pleased her.
    The brief interview that followed plowed much the same furrow, only deeper and more irregularly. Like Susan, Brigit had first been drawn to Ursula’s company by the other girl’s proffers of friendship. Once the friendship had been established, Ursula had introduced Brigit to her various arts, beginning with the relatively innocent fortune-telling and then moving to the more arcane and forbidden areas of necromancy and magic. Brigit denied that she herself conjured, denied seeking familiar spirits or the employment of images on her own behalf. She claimed that it was not until she felt herself bewitched that she became aware of the satanic origin of Ursula’s powers. Like Susan, she was unable to specify just what manner of bewitchment had been visited on her. Matthew was able to determine, however, that the alleged bewitchment happened after Mrs. Byrd had complained of Ursula’s
    conjuring to the authorities. This made him even more certain that Brigit’s bewitchment, like Susan’s, was a desperate effort to divert attention from her own participation in Ursula’s craft. It was equally clear to Matthew that Brigit was as terrified of Ursula’s apparition as was Susan, and yet Brigit made no denial that the apparition was real.
    “Do you believe it was Ursula’s shape your master saw in his window?” he asked.
    “I believe it was, sir,” said Brigit with quiet conviction and a noticeable shudder.
    “What do you suppose she wanted?”
    “In coming to the window?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why, to show the mistress she could not be got rid of so easily. She’ll be coming to me and Susan soon, I fear. There’ll be no stopping her. Not my mistress—not you, sir, not even the magistrate. Not the Queen herself. There’s no shackles upon the dead,” she pronounced gloomily.
    The light in the attic was bad; it came only from the tiny windows, and Brigit’s narrow, pinched face, pale with fright at her own words, seemed corpse-like. The attic was cold too, cold as though Ursula Tusser were already making her presence felt, not as a visible shape but as a draft of chilling air. Suddenly, Matthew had a great desire to get out of the attic and of the house. Had her terror infected him?
    As he descended the stairs, he took a last look at the girl. She sat transfixed in a thought There was no need for her to tell him what the thought was. If she had lied about being Ursula’s victim at the trial, her testimony had ironically become true. She was Ursula’s victim now. Brigit had seen the specter herself. Matthew was as certain of that as if