Pirum

They said I blighted the pear tree. Well, I did. I meant to blight the whole damned orchard, not that it would have made much difference if I’d succeeded. The fruit those trees produce is as small and sour and mean as the nuns who grow it, and I wouldn’t give a pin for the perry it gets turned into.

I told Isabella so, when I came to the side gate to deliver the washing. She may be Sister Something-or-Other now, but to me she’ll always be Isabella Steward, the stuck-up, golden-haired girl who sulked when I was made the Summer Queen instead of her. To be fair, that really was her only chance ever to be young and pretty and free. She already knew her parents planned for her to take the veil the moment she turned sixteen. Too many girls in that family to marry off, and too bad for you if you were one of the younger ones, like her.

Isabella was the first to call me a witch, but I wasn’t one then. That came later, when—

What was I saying? Oh, that’s right. The pear tree.

I blighted the tree—fire blight, they call it, where the twigs rot and turn black and curl over at the tips like a shepherd’s crook, and then the fruit dries and shrivels into something without the slightest drop of juice left in it. (Not unlike both Isabella and myself at this season of our lives, to be quite honest with you. It’s been some time since my Summer Queen days.) It was splendid, if I do say so myself; a riot of decay and destruction. What’s more, it was exactly what Isabella deserved, for the way she looked down her nose at me as I stood there with the washing basket and said, I’ll pray for you, Avice.

She was lucky that the tree was all I blighted, after that.

I was pleased as could be with my work, and I intended to do the others just as soon as I could make up the charms for each of them. Some fuss goes into it, with herbs and special words, and then you’ve got to bury the thing at the tree’s roots when the moon is right. I ought to have got them all on my first midnight visit to the orchard—in bulk, as it were—but I hadn’t worked this magic in a bit and wanted to be sure I had it clear before I went to so much trouble. And when I knew I had, I went home and started preparing, and the next time the moon was dark, I was ready.

Perhaps you’re wondering how I knew the way to do these things. That came from Isabella too, in a fashion. When she started blabbing all over town that I was a practitioner of the black arts and in league with the Devil and I don’t know what else, I began to develop a certain reputation. Some people spat at me on the street and made warding-off signs and pulled their children away. Others came creeping to my door late at night, bearing gifts of cheese and cakes and sugared almonds, and sometimes even a coin or two if they had it, in hopes that I might help them with a bit of magic for luck or health or love. So I thought, if I’m to be called a witch anyway, why not become one? Why shouldn’t I give them what they want?

It wasn’t hard to find an old woman who could show me a few charms. They’re ten for a penny if you know where to look. I paid close attention and learned all that she had to teach, and then I struck out on my own, Avice the Witch from that day forward. I knew enough to get by, and what I didn’t know I invented and embellished from what I did. And if I had to make ends meet here and there with a little washing or floor-scrubbing—well, we all do what we must, even witches.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have blighted that pear tree, though.

Isabella was the one who told about me, I know it. Sister What’s-Her-Name; of course they believed her. That’s why those men set upon me in the orchard the second time, while I was burying the other charms, and why they dragged me off to prison. I know it was her, even though she was there under the pear trees too, carrying a holder with a candle that spat and guttered in the night breeze.

They didn't believe her then; no, not then. She’d come running with some of the other sisters, and her headdress was all askew so her hair showed (clipped short, and grey now instead of gold, a shame), and she was insisting over and over that I wasn’t a witch, not really. That the blighted tree had been sickening for a long time, and was nothing to do with me. That I wasn’t right in the head and should be pitied, not punished.

Such a liar, that Isabella.

The truth is that I am a witch. I know it. I can see the results of my work this very minute, from where I stand on this rough wooden platform with the rope tight and chafing around my neck. There is the little orchard just the other side of the convent wall; there are the pear trees, just their tops, with the ruined one still drooping beside its companions.

They ought to cut it down before the blight spreads to the others. I don’t want them to die now. I want them to live.

I want to live too. I want to see Isabella again and tell her I’m sorry, and that I wish she had been Summer Queen instead of me all those years ago. Her hair was prettier than mine. I’ll even drink a cup of that awful perry with her, just to show her how much I mean it.

They said I blighted the pear tree.

Well, I did.

——

*Pirum: Latin; a pear