A Lifestyle to Die For

It was unfortunate for Isobel Graves to have been born into sixteenth century Britain. It was, for most people, a harsh and cruel place. Lives, spent on long days of hard physical labour in all weather were often cut short by violence, ailment or fatal prejudice.

Society, clustered in small towns and villages, was suspicious of strangers, especially those, like Isobel, who lived outside the conventions of family life or tribal hierarchy.

She shared her simple woodland dwelling in Somerset with her black cat, Shadow, named for the way that he was always with her and always on her dark side, furthest from any bright light. Her chosen way of life was that of a healer. Cultivating rare plants in her small garden and foraging in the surrounding countryside, she gathered berries, leaves and roots to dry in her kitchen. Combining these ingredients, she prepared potions and poultices that were administered in a ritual fashion involving arrangements of candles, the burning of fragrant herbs and the calming tones of simple instruments. Her knowledge of folk remedies and kind, sympathetic manner were well respected and brought her a steady living from local people lacking access to physicians with no better medical knowledge who reserved their treatments for taking advantage of the gullible wealthy. Charging only modest sums, Isobel’s willingness to trade goods or services for her help also endeared her to grateful clients. 

In short, Isobel’s life was, to the modern eye, unexceptional. To the fanatically religious leaders of the population and those who made their living as witch hunters, she was a conspicuous threat.

It is not known who made the first complaint against her but it seems likely to have been a local dignitary. Exactly why he did is also unclear, but he certainly stood to gain prestige with his peers and superiors by publicly denouncing a sinner. Rumour among his staff at the time suggested that he had made the accusation as a diversion from his own fascination with the occult. Another line of speculation was that he had visited Isobel on several occasions seeking a cure for complaints linked to his libertine lifestyle and felt vulnerable for having trusted her with his intimate secrets. Referencing contemporary gossip, it also seems possible that Isobel, not recognising his droits de seigneur, had rejected his extra marital advances and he had responded with the most dreadful spite.

Especially damaging was the timing of Isobel’s denunciation as a witch. Coinciding with the worst crop failure in several generations, the local people, faced with starvation, looked to the church to explain why the god they worshipped had chosen to punish them. Unable to explain the fickle unreliability of weather and its affect on agriculture, and unwilling to admit divine malice, their priest nominated the unconventional single woman and her experimental approach to herbalism as the reason for their imminent hardship.

A touring, self appointed witch finder was summoned. His reputation in his field was excellent in that accused women presented to him were always confirmed as witches but, as he was only rewarded for positive identification, his judgement cannot be taken as impartial. A trial was quickly arranged in the local town hall and, as Isobel had neither defence or jury, the verdict could only go one way. She was found guilty of all the charges against her and sentenced to death at the end of October.

Fiercely denying being a witch, but unable to disagree that her lifestyle featured many of the elements associated with one, Isobel was condemned to be burned by purifying fire.

Recruited from his workforce by the same man who had made the original allegations, labourers drove a straight trunk from a young ash tree into the ground on nearby common land. Dry brush and seasoned logs were piled around its base, arranged in a loose pyramid that created a sinister staircase to a point roughly a third of the way up the central stake. Overseen by the witch finder, local judiciary and clergy, Isobel was manhandled to the summit of her Calvary and lashed, with unnecessary brutality, to the post. Wearing a plain smock she been given during her imprisonment to replace the provocative patterns and colour of her usual dress, she chose to disappoint the revengeful onlookers by remaining silent. Thinking it better late than never, her accuser silently mouthed repentance for his part in her undeserved fate, but she denied him any sign of forgiveness by gazing serenely into the distance.

Trailing sparks through the crowd, a cluster of burning twigs was fetched from the kitchen of a nearby house and the fire was lit. Bats, disturbed from their nests in clefts in the tree, took flight and circled in the first wisps of smoke. Shadow, unwitnessed, had been following Isobel since her arrest and stood hissing at the mob, his back arched, his eyes flashing green in the nascent flickering.

Feeling the rising heat, Isobel tipped her head back and drew her final breath. Lifting her gaze to the empty heavens, she closed her eyes against the lachrymose fumes. As the flames reached her, the flimsy cloth covering she wore vanished, momentarily exposing her flawless normality, prompting a coarse cheer from a minority of drunkards, quickly silenced by the shame of the majority.

It was, perhaps, compassion from workers who had been helped by Isobel that motivated them to make the fire well using good dry wood. It burnt immediately with a clean, intensely hot flame, so it is likely that her end came quickly. 

Fascinated by the horror, the morbid but respectful gathering stared as her body rapidly transformed from living flesh to a blackened roast. Being closer to the fire, her legs were first to incinerate, followed by her hips falling away to further stoke the blaze. A brief but intense gust of wind blew the pyre into a roaring furnace that tore into her open torso and, needing an exit, seared upwards through her neck and into her skull.

No pictorial record was made of the event, but all those present swore, many of them crossing themselves as they did so, that the final manifestation of Isobel Graves was a charred skeleton with its eyes, mouth and nose incandescent with a ghastly brilliance.

Apart from a few references in arcane publications, Isobel Graves remains anonymous. But indirectly, she is remembered. As religious restrictions lifted in the south west of England, locals, hearing the story of her execution, took to carving mangelwurzels into an effigy of her last moments, with a candle in its hollowed centre shining through cutouts of a garish wide mouth and staring eyes.

So, as the sadistic death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is commemorated with chocolate eggs, and the evisceration of Guy Fawkes by tasteful pyrotechnics, the barbarous fate of Isobel Graves has, as its memorial, a witchcraft themed show of black cats and bats and the display of carved pumpkins.