CELIA’S BONFIRE

The girl Celia meets a clever old woman in the forest...

It was an age of superstition, a time when every man and woman and even child knew that evil swirled with autumn fogs and tarnished every other season with Satan’s darkest poison as he waged war against their God. It was as real as the sun rising at the dawning of the day and the moon shimmering through misty clouds at night. And more: it was obviously true in much the same was as God being in His Heaven and Satan in his Hell were obviously true. There could be no doubt.

Celia had been told that from before she could understand even the simplest of words.

“Be on your guard, sweet chide of mine,” whispered her mother as she stroked the long braids of her hair, “watch out or th’ divil will snatch ya!”

And Celia didn’t want to be snatched by anyone, least of all by someone as evil sounding as a divil.

Until, that is, when sauntering though the forest that nudged against the churchyard at the edge of her village she met a divil.

Contrary to contemporary tales this divil was in the shape of an old woman, and she had some fine tales to tell the unsuspecting Celia.

She would point with huge enthusiasm at this or that blossom poking its floral head between turves of weedy grass,

“See that weedy flower, Blossom?” she would ask, choosing to call the child Blossom rather than by her proper name, which, in truth, she didn’t know.

“Yes,” replied the child.

“A fusion of those pretty petals in sweet vinegar and boiled for an hour will cure the pox and leave the skin unblemished,” she explained, “and see over there, that moss the wise call Swan’s Neck, rub it with vigour on a red itch of the skin and all will be well.”

“That’s wonderful,” sighed Celia, and she rubbed some of the green moss onto her skin where there was no itch but where there might be sooner or later

A few years were to pass and Celia remembered what the old woman had shown her, which was just as well because the Great Plague made one of its periodic returns to her corner of the land, and it was their own Lord of the manor, Sir Bingley, who first attracted it.

By then she was in her teens and living with Joshua, a handsome young man with, he claimed, his brains in his trews. And he demonstrated his worthiness by joining the lord of his particular manor’s private army as they waged a secret war against Lord Elderswan of the next county. However, Lord Elderswan was no more interested in any kind of war than he was on just about anything because he was suffering from the plague with great acrid buboes appearing all over his skin and terrifying free men and servants equally when their eyes fell on them.

Prayers and even chanting by innocent boys and their sweet soprano voices were tried, but to no avail, and in disgust and still lusting for battle, Lord Bingley’s small village army returned home the very next day. Unknown to them, though, it was during their impatient waiting for bloodshed and battle that a far more dangerous army, that of fleas, settled on the clothing of half the small force.

Back in his great hall Lord Bingley fell ill, and Joshua, who was on first name terms with him, had an idea.

“My lass has studied the ways of the wild,” he explained, “and it might be that she can help you in your agonies, sire,” he added.

By that time Sir Bingley was willing to try anything and Celia was summoned to the hall. She was clever, and could immediately see what the problem was: Sir Bingley had the pox, for that was what the villagers called the Great Plague, and she had a solution of the small floral wild plant that the old woman, years ago, had taught her about.

The rest of the story might be guessed.

She brought a vial of her concoction smelling of sweet vinegar, and rubbed it gently on the dying man’s skin, wherupon he stopped being a dying man and became a very alive man

And so Sir Bingley recovered, his buboes fell off, barely leaving a mark on his skin, and the first thing he thought of was that he must have been cured by witchcraft.

When he was completely cured, and a dozen or so of his small army also healed, he decided that something must be done about the evil in his village.

It was clear that Satan was involved because only Satan had the magic to move against his God in such a way. In his mind his God had claimed him and his men, and the force that had worked upon his flesh via the fingers of the slip of a lass that lived with his soldier Joshua had woked contrary to god’s will.

There was only one thing for him to do.

He declared that Celia must be a witch, must be in league with the devil, and the proof was her wicked familiar, a moth that fluttered back and forth while he was condemning the girl to death by fire on the village burning field. She was, he confirmed, the very worst and most evil of witches, and he took no notice of her tearful pleas for forgiveness.

Such was the danger of gratitude a few centuries ago.

© Peter Rogerson, 10.06.22

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