Mabel
NERISSA MOORE
April had always been Mabel Blight’s favourite time of year; it marked the return of the bluebells that climbed the green hills and crept into the woods. Each spring, when the flowers raised their bonnets from the earth, Mabel would recall her mother’s voice: ‘Never tread on the bluebells, Mabel; they belong to the fair folk.’ Mabel’s mother had taught her the ways of the earth—how to heal and live gently. But, for generations, the Blight women had been shunned; the church said that the old ways were witchcraft.
Carefully avoiding the delicate rings of bluebells, Mabel made her way to the village. It was market day, and although she rarely had money to buy bread or grain, sometimes a kind fishmonger would throw her scraps of herring. The Butterworth boys sat on cartons below hanging carcasses, slurping marrow from mutton bones, their thick, greasy fingers glistening in the sun. The Turner children clutched fistfuls of freshly harvested spring onions, darting and ducking between the crowds. The women nursed baskets of carrots and potatoes while the men gathered outside the tavern for the weekly cockfight. The bets were placed, and a fiery cloud of blood, dirt, and feathers rose from the pit. Each bird scratched, squawked, and pecked at the other. The men spat and snarled, leering forward, holding their hats to their heads. Mabel watched from a distance, playfully mimicking the dance of death—her fists pressed tightly against her bony hips; her elbows extended outward like wings. She jutted her thin neck in and out while her mouth dropped open, exposing her cracked, corn-kernel teeth. The other women kept their distance but watched as Mabel danced—her unrestrained breasts pooling at her lower belly and her cotton-white hair billowing like clouds in an otherwise clear sky.
Mabel lived in an old worker's cottage on the eastern boundary of the Butterworth farm. Her husband, Mr Blight, had worked on the farm until he died in the fields, turning the winter fodder. Mabel had been allowed to stay in the cottage after his death on the condition that she tend to the hens and collect the eggs for the Butterworths’ breakfast. Of course, Mabel wasn’t permitted to eat the eggs herself, but she did have a small plot for growing her own cabbages and potatoes. The winter had been particularly miserable; Mabel’s potatoes had succumbed to the black rot, and her small cabbage crop had waterlogged and failed. Since Mabel’s husband had died, the cottage was in poor repair—the windows were cracked, and the roof leaked, muddying the exposed dirt floor. The damp seeped into the walls and lingered in the air; the hearth fire was small and dim. Mabel spent her days alone, rarely even seeing Mr Butterworth, but on a cold morning in January, she encountered him at the farm gate.
‘Eggs were late,’ he snapped.
Mabel pulled her shawl tightly around her shoulders and bowed her head. She felt the cool mud of the earth seep into her shoes as her toes instinctively clawed into the ground.
‘Sorry for yer trouble, Mr Butterworth. My old bones caught the chill, and I’d taken poorly. Be sure I won’t be makin’ a habit of it.’
‘The chill don’t stop yer scrambling for weeds for those devil’s tinctures,’ said Mr Butterworth.
‘Not for the tinctures, Mr Butterworth. The bittercress is for my supper, nothing more.’
Mr Butterworth shook his head and went on his way to the farmhouse, leaving a hunched and shivering Mabel sunken into the cold earth. A bitter wind howled and swept over the fields as the morning sky darkened. After heaving her bones from the grip of the mud, Mabel salvaged some fallen scraps from behind the hog’s trough and lit a fire. The night was cruel, and the sharp wind blasted shards of glass from the window into the cottage. Mabel lay curled by the warmth of the fire to survive the storm, but woke to find that the hens hadn’t laid and the black rot had taken to Mr Butterworth’s crops. The leaves had yellowed and curled back towards the earth from where they came; the turnips were blemished black and protruded like split skulls from their graves.
Mr Butterworth relied on the turnip crop over the winter to sustain the livestock, and by early spring the cattle and sheep had grown thin; their milk dried up, and some had stopped producing altogether. As the weeks passed and his livelihood suffered, Mr Butterworth accused Mabel of laying a curse to summon the storm that carried the rot to his crops. The church agreed that Mabel, being a Blight woman, was almost certainly responsible. The clergymen explained an old practice that would determine for certain if Mabel was guilty. Mr Butterworth, sceptical as he was about the method, decided to proceed nonetheless. And so, the men, already gathered on market day, would soon turn their attention from the cockfight to Mabel.
‘There she is! The witch!’ shouted Mr Butterworth. He and Mr Godfrey, a local clergyman, seized Mabel by her arms.
‘Mark yer bets and stake yer bids!’ shouted the bookmaker. ‘We’ll put her in the river—twice, to be sure. If she floats, she’s a witch, and if she isn’t, she’ll sink.’
‘Water is holy,’ added Mr Godfrey. ‘If Mrs Blight is marked by the devil, the river will know it and reject her.’
‘Is all water holy then?’ asked Mr Butterworth. ‘What does a river know of good and evil? Surely it hasn’t a mind to tell the difference.’
‘I assure you that only a pure woman of faith will be taken into God’s holy river. A witch will float,’ said Mr Godfrey.
The men slurped the last of their ale, wiping its milky foam from their lips. The defeated bird lay bloodied and glassy-eyed in the fighting pit as the crowd of men hurried towards the river. As Mabel was dragged along the road, she fell to her knees, the gravel cutting through her skirts to her skin. Spots of blood quickly bloomed into crimson clouds across the fabric, and the stampede towards the river continued. As the gravel gave way to the soft, dewy grass of the riverbank, Mabel’s raw and bloodied knees were soothed. The Butterworth boys fumbled with the rope and tied Mabel’s wrists and ankles together, then looped a larger length around her waist. With a firm push, Mabel tumbled past the tall reeds and slippery rocks into the mouth of the river. Mabel’s nostrils filled rapidly, the brassy water sucking her beneath its surface. She could hear the men’s muffled shouts merged with the gentle ripple of the current as she was hurled back up to land. Mabel lay on the riverbank, quivering, her skin translucent and lips trout-like, gulping for air. The sting of leather boots struck her ribs, and the men’s spit pooled in the sunken hollows of her cheeks.
‘I’ll put her back in, to be sure,’ shouted Mr Butterworth.
The rope tightened again, and Mabel was tossed back into the river. She didn’t float to the surface, as most of the men had predicted. Instead, Mabel sank gently to the bottom, coming to rest on a bed of algae and limestone. And as she died, safe now in the cool womb of the earth, Mabel didn’t think of her suffering. She didn’t know how to read, write, or play the piano; she never learned how to speak French or Latin. Mabel didn’t understand how the machines worked in the big city factories or how the wheels stayed on the horse-drawn carts. But, laying there in the river, she didn’t wish she’d been beautiful or had more money. Mabel didn't long for jewels or the caress of fine silk against her skin; instead, she remembered her mother singing in fields of wildflowers and pouring warm soup into her soft belly. Mabel recalled the first syrupy blackberries bursting on the brambles in summer and the blush of wild roses weaving through the hedgerows. She held the memory of the sweet, earthy crunch of hazelnuts in autumn and thought about how the chickweed still flowers even when the earth is powerless in the stony grip of winter. What Mabel knew for certain was that spring would always come and that every year in April, the bluebells would rush back to their homes on the hill.
Nerissa Moore lives and writes on unceded Wurundjeri land. Her stories are inspired by forgotten histories, wild landscapes, and the ghosts of her Celtic ancestors.
