The King's Witches

This is a slightly fictionalized retelling of several real events that happened around 1600 in Scotland and Denmark. The author wove together witch trials, the storm that delayed the arrival of Anne of Denmark in Scotland, the writing of a pamphlet about witches by King James IV of Scotland, and his involvement in the North Berwick witch trials.

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He believed it. He accepted that his amulet is cursed. I am stunned. But he is a superstitious man. A paranoid man. He is ripe to believe anything. Och, I might be a daftie. I might believe in sprites and pray to the selkies, and have been stupid enough to end up where I’ve ended up, but a carving of a plant won’t stop a baby from being conceived. If that were true, we cunning women would have a much easier life.

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It’s annoying to read about the way men were able to get away with almost whatever they wanted: rape, slander, abuses of power, and accusations that could lead to a woman being burned at the stake.

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It seems to have been ubiquitous that men pressured young, not-wealthy women into sexual stuff and would threaten them if they refused.

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I think of Princess Anna floating like kelp, surrounded by drowning servants. I flip the foreign name of her home over and over in my mouth, like a fish turning in the tide. Is she hanging on tight to the last shards of her ship? She’s just a bairn, but she’s got the world at her feet. Is she mibbie dead already?

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Certainly, not every single woman who was accused of being a witch between 1400 and 1782 was killed but, in Europe, 40,000 - 60,000 women were, for all kinds of reasons: from talking to her cat to refusing to allow a man access to her body.

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It’s despicable what happened, and it lead to a real loss of knowledge about plant medicine, natural childbirth, and ways of working with nature.

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It’s tiresome to read about the intentional disempowerment of women of times gone by, which made the unexpected ending of this book refreshing.
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Women helping women, women who just want to live their lives without male intervention, and love are the central themes of quasi-historical novel.

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