The Bible Class our parents forced us to attend every Sunday morning was so mind-numbingly boring that Trinity and I spent our time there trying to make each other giggle while Miss Glory rattled on about sin. One day we watched a large spider dangle from her shoulder to the back of her chair then slowly wind its way up again. Despite our hands clamped on our mouths we couldn’t contain our burst of hysteria. Miss Glory glared at us and asked what on earth we thought we were playing at. We told her she had a spider on her back and that it was huge. She swiped at her back, saw the spider drop to the floor, and screamed. Trinity and I fell off our chairs, laughing.
After the roasting we got from Miss Glory, we decided our best strategy was to make her like us so that we could more easily steer her away from talking about sin. She knew we were working on local history projects for school and we knew she loved telling stories about the history of our village. She always beamed when anyone asked her questions which signalled their interest in the topic. So we told her we’d been exploring the cemetery and reading the names and ages of families who were buried there. We were so intrigued by the graves, we said, especially the ones with whole families buried there after the plague. Miss Glory nodded and told us how the plague had decimated our village in the 14th century and we could see that by counting those plague-related graves in the cemetery. Now we’d got her off the topic of sin and onto the topic of tragic deaths we told her that our teacher said women accused of witchcraft in the sixteenth century had been buried in the cemetery, but when we’d looked at the gravestones we couldn’t find any that mentioned witches. Miss Glory closed her eyes. When she opened them again she said in a quivery voice it was because those poor women had been buried in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery.
She explained the meaning of unconsecrated and told us nobody was allowed to go into that part of the cemetery. On the wall that closed off the unconsecrated part, she said, there was a notice that made it clear that nobody was allowed to enter. We started to ask her why, but she held her hand up and said there were good reasons and that’s all we needed to know. So naturally we kept pushing her to say more, knowing that eventually she’d give in. Sure enough, she gave an exasperated sigh and said those poor women had been drowned, hanged, or burned alive for no good reason and there was an old superstition in the village that before the women had taken their last breath, they had cursed their accusers and all their accusers’ descendants.
She paused, blinked, swallowed, then said, ‘One of my own Glory ancestors who lived in that period was involved in the witch trials.’
This last statement intrigued Trinity and me and we asked her where this information came from.
She hesitated then said, ‘Stories were passed down through the generations. Most people in this village have ancestors that were involved in one way or another.’ Another pause. ‘But it’s best to stay well clear of that subject. There are plenty of other local history projects you can explore. Go to the library and ask the librarian to point you to the right books.’
Trinity and I looked at each other and wore our good-girl faces for the rest of class.
Next day after school, we headed straight to the library and asked the librarian where the records of the witch trials were kept. The librarian looked at us suspiciously.
‘It’s for our school local history project,’ we said. ‘Our teacher suggested we research the witch trials.’
The librarian arched her eyebrows. ‘Really? An odd choice.’ But she climbed a ladder to a high shelf and pulled down a book. ‘It’s all in here,’ she said.
Two hours later we had the information we needed. We were disappointed to find there were no names recorded for the women who were accused, but Trinity’s ancestor Ben Cartwright, and my ancestor Rupert Halliday were right there on the page as accusers, along with the names of some of our relatives and neighbours.
‘Does this mean we’re cursed because we’re descendants of those accusers?’ whispered Trinity.
I shook my head. ‘Miss Glory said that was just superstition.’
Trinity frowned. ‘She said one of her own ancestors took part in the witch trials, but there’s no Glory on this list.’
We scrutinised the list of accusers again.
‘So maybe her ancestor wasn’t called Glory,’ I said.
‘Maybe,’ Trinity said slowly. ‘Unless her ancestor was…’
I pushed her. ‘Don’t be stupid!’
‘Just a thought,’ complained Trinity, rubbing her arm.
We left the library and ran over to the cemetery. We walked past neatly mown grass verges and graves covered with flowers until we reached the high wall at the back that separated the well-tended part from the untended part. We found the PRIVATE PROPERTY DO NOT ENTER sign, climbed over, and stumbled our way over tree roots, nettles, tangles of ivy and long grass. No grave markers anywhere. We explored the whole sad, neglected area, making up stories about the women who were buried there, imagining who they were, how they had lived, who had loved them, how they had died. We made up stories about our ancestors, Ben Cartwright and Rupert Halliday, and wondered what part they had played in sending those women to their deaths. We wondered what kind of curses the women had put on them and if those curses had really had any sort of effect on Cartwright and Halliday descendants and how we would find out, given the reluctance of people to talk about that period of history. We decided to write down everything we’d found out at the library, but also to flesh out the known facts with our imagination to make a more gripping narrative. We finally left the cemetery and got to our bus stop just in time to see the bus pulling away.
Next morning when I picked the newspaper off the floor in the hall I saw a photo on the front page. It was the bus Trinity and I should have taken home. There was a short piece below the photo describing how a truck had crashed into the bus, overturning it, after which it burst into flames killing everyone on board. I stuffed the newspaper into my schoolbag so I could show Trinity on the way to school.
I pulled the newspaper out of my bag and thrust it into Trinity’s hands. Her eyes widened when she saw the photo. Just as we stepped off the pavement she stopped walking and talking and started reading the article aloud. Len and Matt, two boys from the class above ours, elbowed us out of the way and charged across the road, whooping and yahooing. We stared in disbelief as a car barreled into them. Someone phoned an ambulance and a crowd gathered around the boys. Police arrived and ushered us on our way.
‘Len and Matt’s ancestors were on that list,’ gasped Trinity.
‘Coincidence,’ I told her.
‘It could easily have been us lying there, if they hadn’t pushed us.’
‘No such thing as curses. That’s what Miss Glory said.’
‘She didn’t say it like that.’
‘That’s what she meant.’
Every evening after school we met at Trinity’s house to work on our project. She was a talented artist so she drew pictures to illustrate our booklet. The pictures included women burning at the stake, being ducked in the village pond, and hanging from a scaffold. The final sketches were of the unconsecrated part of the cemetery with its overgrown memories of forgotten women.
When all the local history projects were handed in they were judged by three teachers and to our amazement they announced in assembly that Trinity and I had won Best Project. All the projects were displayed in the school hall and the local newspaper sent a reporter to take photographs. Our project made the front page with pictures of our illustrations. Some people in the village congratulated us on ‘exposing a tragic part of our history’, but some said we shouldn’t have ‘stirred things up’.
When we went to Bible Class the following Sunday, we saw Miss Glory sitting in her chair as usual, her head bent over her Bible. She looked up as Trinity and I walked through the door. Her face was white and her eyes red and puffy as if she’d been crying. ‘Oh girls,’ she whispered. ‘You have no idea what you have done.’
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