The Vanishing Witch

by Karen Maitland

  Jan was startled. That was the last thing he’d expected the boy to say. ‘No, of course not. She said you thought Mother had been poisoned. Did you say it because Mother told you she’d been poisoned?’

  ‘I said it because it was true. I saw her do it!’

  Adam scrambled to his feet and ran along the bank towards a birch tree that grew between the river and the path. He kicked and pummelled the trunk, lashing out so wildly that Jan was afraid he would slip and fall into the river.

  Pushing himself up, he strode across to grab the boy, but Adam shoved him away. ‘I killed her! I killed her! It was all my fault. I should have protected her. You and Father weren’t there. So it was up to me. I should have stopped her!’ The boy was scarlet with misery.

  ‘Who, Adam? Who should you have stopped?’ Jan demanded. ‘It was Diot, wasn’t it? That’s why you wouldn’t eat the pastry she brought you today.’

  The boy stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Diot? She wasn’t there.’

  Jan gripped him by the shoulders. ‘Then who was it?’

  A fearful expression crept into the boy’s eyes, just as it had in Beata’s. ‘You won’t tell Father, will you?’

  ‘I need to know what you saw, Adam. Tell me!’

  The boy cringed away from him and Jan realised he had been shouting. He released his grip and tried to soften his tone, crouching so that their faces were level. ‘Adam, I swear on Mother’s grave that I won’t let anyone hurt you. But you have to trust me.’

  The boy glanced up and scanned the track, which was deserted. He lowered his voice almost to a whisper: ‘It was one evening, when Father was away and you were still at the warehouse. I was sitting with Mother telling her about school, but Mistress Catlin came in and said I was making her tired. She sent me out. She had no right to do that! If anyone should have been sitting with Mother, it was me, not her. Mother wanted me there. I know she did.

  ‘So when Mistress Catlin went out to the kitchens, I crept back in to kiss Mother goodnight. But when I was in the bedchamber I heard someone coming and hid behind the screen. I could see only a little of the bed through the joint in the screen but I saw her put some drops from her flask into Mother’s posset. I did! But I was too scared to tell anyone in case she told Father I’d gone into Mother’s chamber when she’d said not to. I should have stopped her. It’s all my fault!’

  ‘Mistress Catlin added drops to Mother’s posset?’ Jan said carefully.

  The boy nodded earnestly.

  ‘But you could see only a little of the bed. You’re certain it was Catlin you saw?’

  ‘I couldn’t see her face, but I saw a bit of her gown and her hands. I know it was her, Jan, I know it! She murdered my mother.’

  The boy flung himself at his brother with such force that Jan was almost knocked off balance. Adam wrapped his arms round his brother, burying his head in Jan’s chest, his slender frame shuddering with sobs. Jan grasped him tightly, hatred and grief coursing through his own body in equal measure.

  Above them, the dark clouds burst open and fat raindrops fell, sending circles spinning across the river and trickling down the brothers’ faces. It soaked their clothes to the skin, but still they clung desperately to each other under that vast grey sky, for they had no one else to cling to.

  Chapter 25

  To prevent a new building from falling, the shadow of a man must be secretly built into the foundations, either by measuring his shadow with a piece of rope and burying that or by tricking the man into standing so that his shadow falls on the spot where the foundation stone will be laid. The chosen victim will die within the year, because his spirit has been stolen from him and it will be compelled to guard the building for ever.

  Lincoln

  That vile old crone, Eadhild, is following me. I try to keep her at bay by avoiding the Greesen steps of an evening, even though it deprives me of the chance to meet the other ghosts who loiter there. When the charming Catlin and the beautiful little Leonia are safely abed, I drift instead to the Newport arch through which the Roman soldiers forever march. But they’re hardly good company. I understand little of what they’re saying. The Latin I dimly remember my tutor thrashing into me seems a foreign language to these fellows and, besides, they’ll no more break ranks in death than they did in life. I wonder if they know they’re dead.

  But Eadhild has found me, sliding her rotting hand between my thighs and tilting her head coquettishly to one side, asking if I wouldn’t fancy a stroll through the graveyard. I don’t know how she died or why she haunts the Greesen, and I’m afraid to ask in case she thinks I’m interested in her, which, most emphatically, I am not. But I’d warrant she’s been searching for a bed-fellow to share her grave for many centuries and I shudder at the thought.

  I was considering where else I might hide to escape from the foul hag as Mavet and I were passing Mistress Catlin’s door late one night. A youth, posing as a linkman, was leading an elderly gentleman up the street by the light of a burning torch, assuring him that it was the quickest way to the inn where the old man had lodgings for the night. As the gentleman chattered away, the youth signalled to a slattern of a girl who was lounging against a wall further along the street. In a flash of skirts she was gone, doubtless to alert those lying in wait in a dark alley that a plump pheasant was being led straight into their trap.

  I contemplated whether it would be more amusing to watch events unfold or intervene, but I felt sorry for the old man, who was earnestly thanking the youth for his help and seemed to think the nasty little blowfly was doing him a favour. Mavet, who’d had no sport all day, needed little encouragement to swarm up the youth’s leg and nip him where he most deserved it. The lad squealed, dropped the burning torch and, clutching his cods, sank to the ground, where he rolled around in the filth, shrieking as if he were possessed. And that is exactly what the elderly gentleman must have feared, for he scurried away with more speed than I would have thought possible.

  Chuckling to myself, I was about to set off with Mavet again, when the gate to Mistress Catlin’s yard opened and a plump figure waddled out, a lantern in her hand, its light half hidden by the voluminous shawl that enveloped her head and shoulders.

  She turned towards the lower part of the city. She’d removed the wooden pattens from her shoes and soft leather made little sound on the muddy track. Intrigued, I glided after her, but then I saw she was not alone. Someone was keeping pace with her, someone considerably more agile than the old woman.

  A man was darting in and out of doorways, shrinking back whenever she half turned her head and running to the next corner when she disappeared from view. An experienced cut-purse never draws attention to himself. He strolls along as if he merely happens to be passing down the street on his own business. But anyone glancing from a casement would have spotted at once that this man was trailing the old woman.

  Jan had not expected to see anyone leave Mistress Catlin’s house at this hour of the night. For several days and nights now, he’d spent every spare moment watching it, hoping he might find something he could use to convince his father that the widow was not the angel Robert thought her. His father would not listen to tales of poison, as he’d already found to his cost, but if Jan could prove she was seeing another man, he’d certainly take notice of that. Nothing would anger him more.

  But so far Jan had seen nothing he could use as a weapon against her. No man entered her house, and when she went out, it was always with one of her children or Diot. But now, for the first time, he felt he might be close to discovering something. Diot must be carrying a message for Catlin. Why else would she leave the house in the middle of the night?

  Of course, it would never have occurred to a young man like Jan that a woman as old and fat as Diot might be sneaking out to meet her own lover, for the young are convinced that the old have no such appetites, but then he’d never had that withered hag, Eadhild, flirt with him.

  Jan ducked into the shelter of a doorway as Diot paused to glan
ce up and down the street. Satisfied she was unobserved, she turned abruptly into a narrow alley that ran behind a row of butcher’s yards. Jan dimly remembered the passageway from his childhood explorations of the city, but he’d not had cause to go down it for years: it led only to an ancient postern gate in the south-east corner of the city wall, which was kept permanently locked. But Diot made straight for it. Raising her lantern, she let the light fall on the great ring in the old wood and twisted. To Jan’s surprise, the door creaked open.

  Turning sideways, Diot squeezed her massive bosom through the arch and tugged the door closed behind her. Jan darted forward and pressed his ear to the wood, trying to hear if she was moving away. He didn’t want to open the door too quickly and walk straight into her, but he couldn’t risk tarrying too long or he might lose her. He’d have to take a chance.

  Now that Diot’s lantern was on the other side of the door, there was not a glimmer of light in the alley. He ran his hand over the wood, feeling for the iron ring and suppressed a yelp of pain, as he drove a large splinter into his palm. He pulled it out with his teeth, and sucked the wound, then tried again, more gingerly this time, until his fingers connected with the cold rusted metal. He twisted and pushed the door open, just an inch or two, peering through the gap.

  The door appeared to open into a small boatyard, dimly lit by the ruddy glow from a fire burning in one corner. Several broken craft, piled one on top of another, concealed the entrance from the view of anyone passing on the river, but the boats were just far enough from the door to allow someone of Diot’s girth to squeeze through. A good route for getting stolen goods or contraband in and out of the city, Jan thought grimly, remembering their own losses. He crept through the arch, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Jan knew the river well enough to realise he was in Butwerk, a festering midden of cottages and huts that squatted just outside the city wall. He was used to the curious fragrance of fish, sheep’s wool, ox dung and imported spices that perfumed the wharf, so much so that he didn’t notice it until visitors remarked on it, but Butwerk had a distinctive odour all of its own. Rotting offal and human excrement mingled with the acrid smoke of the small cooking fires on which the inhabitants burned old bones, dried water-weed and any noxious waste they could find, wood being too scarce and precious to waste as fuel. Most of the fires burned outside the hovels, thickening the air with smoke and lighting the uneven ground with a hellish red glow, from which the huts rose up like jagged black rocks.

  Jan, trying not to cough, peered through the haze and glimpsed the light from Diot’s lantern bobbing up and down as she picked her way across the small boatyard. He followed, stifling a curse as his foot plunged into a deep puddle. Squelching unpleasantly, he trailed behind Diot as she wove between the lopsided huts. Their doors, or the pieces of sailcloth that served as doors, were closed and all were in darkness. A few people, rolled in blankets, were sleeping around the fires outside. Dogs lifted their heads, but didn’t trouble to bark. Only the cats were awake, stalking the mice rustling in the reed-thatched roofs or hunting frogs beneath the rank weeds. Surely Widow Catlin would not have taken a lover from this quarter, unless Diot was to deliver her message to another go-between.

  Diot waddled round the side of one of the huts and Jan followed, jerking back only just in time before he banged into her. He crouched down. His knee touched something wet and sticky, which soaked through his hose. He tried not to imagine what it might be.

  Four women were sitting around a blazing fire. Two looked older than Diot, certainly more haggard and dishevelled. Beside them, caught in the firelight, was a girl, scarcely more than a child, with a dirty face and a wild tangle of hair, huddled close to a hollow-cheeked woman, who might have been her mother or sister.

  Diot lowered her great hams onto a rough stool set ready in the circle round the fire. One of the old women offered her a wooden bowl, from which she took several deep gulps, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, then handing it to the younger woman. Jan could hear nothing of what was said, only the low babble of their voices. But he was afraid to move closer, for even another foot would bring him into the light cast by the flames.

  One of the two old women nodded to the girl. She obediently rose and padded, on bare feet, into the hut. A few moments later she emerged with a small iron pot, which she suspended over the fire on an iron tripod. She filled it with a yellowish liquid from a tall clay jar. Then she carried a piece of sacking to the old woman, laying it carefully in her lap. It was heaped with an assortment of dried herbs and roots. The crone sorted through the leaves and fragments, holding each in turn close to her eyes and sniffing it, before handing her selection one by one to the girl who dropped them into the pot. A cloud of noxious steam rose and the girl coughed, wiping her streaming eyes. The old woman chuckled and sent her back to the hut. She returned, carrying a small pot, blackened with soot.

  Leaning heavily on a stick, the crone levered herself to her feet. Digging her wrinkled talons deep into the pot, she dragged out a handful of greyish powder, which she flung into the heart of the fire. At once the flames prowling around the cooking-pot turned from yellow and orange to blue and green. She plunged her stick into the pot, stirring three times to the right, then three to the left, then handed the stick to the woman next to her. Each of them in turn, including Diot, rose and stirred the pot as the first had done, chanting as they stirred. Steam curled up into the ink-black sky, first white then gradually turning green.

  Something was taking shape in the steam. As Jan watched in growing horror, he saw a great viper’s head, with acid-green eyes and a long forked tongue that vibrated between the fangs as it savoured the foul air. The snake’s head turned and its tongue flicked towards the place where he was concealed. His skin crawled, as if a thousand tiny vipers were slithering over him.

  He lumbered to his feet. His shoe slipped in the liquid he’d been kneeling in and almost sent him crashing to the ground. But he managed to regain his footing and fled, trying desperately to retrace his steps towards the yard and the safety of the gate.

  A man peeled himself off the wall of the hut against which he’d been leaning and hopped into the middle of the track in front of Jan, using a single crutch to balance himself. A length of cloth was wound round his head and over his face, with holes cut in it for his mouth and eyes. It was so stiffened with dirt that it looked as if it could never be peeled off.

  ‘Now, what would a fine young man like you be wanting here, I wonder?’ the muffled voice said. ‘Looking for a lass, are we? Keg of wine, going cheap? You just tell Pizzle what you fancy and I’ll see you right. You don’t want to go trusting the thieving toads round here.’

  He took another hop towards Jan, extending a filthy, rag-covered paw. ‘You come along with Pizzle, young master. I know someone who’d like a word with you.’

  Was he a leper? Jan didn’t relish finding out. He whirled round and ran across the small clearing in front of a hut, leaping over the embers of a fire and jumping sideways to avoid the snapping teeth of a snarling dog, which lunged and strained against the rope that tethered it. As he dodged between the huts, Jan found himself running straight for the river. His heart was thumping, but he tried to calm himself. Look for the city wall. Where is it? But though you could hardly miss the towering bulk of it in daylight, now it merged into the night sky, as if it had melted away.

  If the river’s in front of me, the wall must be to the right. A stitch stabbed his side, but he dared not stop. He stumbled along a narrow path that twisted between the huts, tripping over bits of old rope and stones. Between the hovels, he glimpsed snatches of the black river. Reflections of red flames darted across the water as if fires were burning deep below. Dogs leaped at him, men hidden beneath blankets reached out of the darkness to grab his ankles, and the jagged huts reared in his path, slithering towards him, herding him into the black water.

  He felt as if he’d been blundering around for hours before he found the door at the back of th
e boatyard, grasped the metal ring and hauled himself safely back into the city. He groped his way up the dark alley until he reached the street at the end. There, his legs gave way. He slid down the wall of a house until he was crouching on the ground, gasping for breath, his body soaked in icy sweat.

  Eventually his heart stopped pounding and he felt strong enough to stand. He was levering himself up when he heard the creak of the postern gate behind him. He peered round the corner of the building. Diot was waddling up the alley towards him. He’d been too shaken to form any plan, but at the sight of her, fear turned to rage. He stepped out in front of her, trapping her in the narrow passageway. She shrieked, throwing up a hand to protect herself, almost dropping her lantern.

  ‘So, Diot, will you tell me what happened to my mother?’

  ‘Master Jan?’ The old woman took a pace closer. ‘Why, it is you.’ She clutched at her massive chest and gave a nervous giggle. ‘Gave me such a fright. Shouldn’t leap out at a body like that. It’s a wonder I didn’t drop dead on the spot. What brings you here? Chasing after some lass, I’ll be bound. Our Edward’s the same. Out till all hours.’

  ‘I was following you,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Why would you do that? Was there something you wanted, Master Jan?’

  ‘I want,’ his jaw was clenched, ‘to know whether it was you or your mistress who murdered my mother.’

  ‘Murder?’ Diot staggered sideways, throwing out an arm to steady herself on the wall. ‘Whatever put such a wicked idea into your head, Master Jan? Your mam died of an overheated liver. I heard that Master Bayus say it himself. Course, I know the poor creature was raving all kinds of wildness at the end, but you can’t pay no heed to that. She’d no notion what she was saying.’

  ‘Except that my . . .’ Jan caught himself just in time. If Catlin had poisoned his mother and discovered there had been a witness to her crime, Adam’s life would be in grave danger. ‘Your mistress was seen putting drops from a flask into my mother’s posset. I thought she was acting alone until I saw you tonight at your witches’ coven, casting spells with those other hags. Who were you trying to kill this time? Me?’