Witchmark
Daughters of Hecate ~ Prequel
Meredith Medina
FireHive Media
Copyright © 2017 by Meredith Medina
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Available Now ~ Daughters of Hecate
Chapter 1
My story starts the same way they all do. Well, maybe not exactly. One of my earliest memories is of my aunt teaching me to read. She taught me about herbs, and the good and evil they could do to the body. She was a healer, a midwife, a comforter and confidante who also happened to bring babies into the world. Turner women had been midwives and healers for as long as anyone could remember. My grandmother had been a healer, and her mother before her. My sister and I would take over their herb gardens when they were gone. When I was nine that didn’t seem like the most thrilling of careers, but before that I had wanted to be a pony when I grew up, so it was something at least.
I didn’t have to ask about my father, he was gone before I was born, but it was better this way. My mother taught my sister and I everything we needed to know to help her in the work she shared with our aunt. All that mattered was that we had each other.
Well, that and keeping our mouths shut about what we really were.
My sister, Hannah, had a temper, and if she had been able to remember that one simple rule, my life might have been very different.
* * *
I know what you’re thinking, midwives in a small English town at the height of the witch hunting craze, of course we were witches. And you’d be right. We were. All of the Turner women were Daughters of Hecate. Men came and went, and my mother and aunt were very open about it. They had lovers, but never married. It had been this way for centuries... and every so often someone would get wise to what was going on. That’s why my grandmother brought my mother and aunt here in the first place. Someone got wise and they left before shit went sideways. We didn’t get that lucky.
It started quietly enough, as these things always do. My mother took a lover. Unfortunately for him, he was already married. His wife was a frail thing, but she was also the daughter of the magistrate. She had heard whispers in the market about her handsome husband and Ellyn Turner. Rumors spread like windblown fire in towns like ours. Leaping from house to house as the fire smoldered deep in the thatch.
The rumors started as something small, just a comment here and there. Things said in passing over the purchase of some eggs. A snide remark taken out of context... and the familiar suspicion that always followed unmarried women. Especially unmarried women who looked like my mother.
To anyone who asked, she always said that my father was dead, killed in a farm accident. People would nod sadly and pat my head, offering their condolences and prayers for his soul. My sister and I always found it funny, but we knew better than to giggle at their unnecessary comments.
Unfortunately for us, Sarah Hawkins had big ears, a big mouth, and a short temper. Her father’s money and position in town had purchased her husband for her, and she knew it. It didn’t take much for the seed of jealousy to be planted either. A casual question from one of the other women about Jacob Hawkins’ ailments is what started it all.
Nosy bitches.
“That Jacob of yours spends a fair amount of coin on the Turner woman’s herbs. Has he taken poorly, Sarah? I hope you haven’t been cooking for him yourself...” the woman who sold mead was a busybody, everyone knew it, but she was always the one with the best gossip too.
“Jacob is just fine, I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of our business,” had been the tart reply. Sarah Hawkins was as precious about her cooking as she was about her husband’s whereabouts. But after that, Sarah Hawkins watched our house so closely that it began to make my aunt nervous.
“If she walks by again, I swear I’ll throw a bucket of slops in her superior face.” My aunt dealt with her emotions like I did. “What is she looking for?”
“Proof, I suppose,” my mother had replied calmly. She didn’t care who knew that she was dallying with Jacob Hawkins, but my aunt had another reason to worry.
“You should be more careful, Ellyn. You heard in the market, just like I did, that a priest is traveling through the country... burning witches.”
My mother had scoffed and waved her hand, “We Turners have survived worse than Sarah Hawkins.”
Famous last words, right?
* * *
Sarah Hawkins haunted our doorway for weeks, and my mother took every opportunity to make a show of greeting her brightly and attempt to engage her in conversation. Hannah felt the same as my aunt, and Sarah Hawkins’ stares and constant surveillance were starting to make her upset.
We had been taught since a very young age that we weren’t allowed to use our magic to punish each other, and especially not others. Sure, we broke that little rule every so often when we were fighting with each other, but even though I don’t want to place blame, if Hannah had been able to keep her magic to herself, things might have been different.
Sarah Hawkins was on her usual route from the market to her house, with a detour to peer through our windows and Hannah decided that she’d had enough. As Sarah Hawkins turned her pinched face away from our kitchen window, I felt... no, I heard my sister send out her magic against the jealous woman. With a strange cry, Sarah Hawkins fell on her face in the muddy street.
Someone ran over to help her up, and I remember my heart hammering in my chest as Hannah giggled uncontrollably.
“Hannah! Be quiet!” If she didn’t get control of herself, and Sarah Hawkins heard her laughing...
Sarah’s Hawkins’ face was covered in thick brown mud, her pale blue eyes wide and staring directly at us. I was frozen in place, trapped by her watery gaze, but at seeing her victim’s shocked face, Hannah’s laughter overtook her.
I whirled around and pushed my sister around the side of the house and into the garden where our aunt was tending the herbs.
“Aunt Sybyll, Hannah pushed Sarah Hawkins... I felt her do it, you must punish her!”
I was very concerned about justice in those days; I’ve lightened up a little since then.
My aunt’s face paled under her summer tan and she took my sister by the shoulders and shook her gently, her brown eyes wide. “What did you do, Hannah?”
“I hate that woman! She is always peeking in our windows and saying rude things to Mama. I just pushed her a little... I didn’t mean for her to fall. I’m sorry.” Hannah didn’t look the least bit apologetic, and I probably wouldn’t have been either, Sarah Hawkins was terrible and deserved more than the mouthful of mud she’d just eaten.
“Oh, Hannah. Sarah Hawkins does not need any help in believing the worst about us. Let’s hope that she believes that she tripped...”
I wandered back to the garden gate, curious to see if Sarah Hawkins had taken herself home, but she was still standing in the street, covered in mud, surrounded by a small knot of women. She was gesturing wildly, pointing at our house.
“That little witch, she pushed me! I felt it, like two little hands on my back. Pushed, I tell you!” I’ll never forget the way her voice sounded. Angry and frantic... but there was something else. She sounded happy.
She turned, her pale eyes settling on me. “There, there she is! Little witch!” Her mud co
vered hand pointed at me, and several faces turned in my direction. I shrank back against the side of the house as my aunt came to pull me away towards the herbs.
“Ophelia, you sit here with Hannah,” she directed me sternly, pushing me down beside my sister. “I will take care of this. Your mother should be here.”
I don’t know what my aunt said to the women who had gathered on our doorstep, but I was too scared to move. Even Hannah was quiet, and that never happened. She was six years older than me, and she was always reminding me of it. But in the face of what she had done, she was scared, just like I was.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” I whispered. I was really good at stating the obvious... that’s a habit I should have grown out of by now, but I can’t seem to shake it.
“Hush. I did not mean to do it, I just wanted to make her walk faster, but she fell. Clumsy cow.”
I could hear my aunt talking to the women who were no doubt crowded around our front door. That is, I could hear them talking, my aunt had a way of using her powers subtly to diffuse difficult situations, or to put nervous mothers at ease, but it didn’t seem like it was working.
We waited nervously together, but when my aunt returned, her face was drawn and pale, and I wasn’t so sure that Hecate’s gifts had come in handy in whatever conversation she had been having with Sarah Hawkins.
She said nothing about Hannah’s actions, but led us inside to wait for my mother to come home. When she did finally arrive, Hannah and I waited by the empty hearth while my aunt argued with her elder sister. They tried to keep their voices down, but we Turners weren’t known for being able to keep a cool head, and Hannah and I heard almost everything.
To spare you the details that I can’t quite remember, Sarah Hawkins was childless, and she was blaming us. My mother specifically. My mother, of course, found this hilarious and she brushed off my aunt’s dire warning about ending things with Jacob Hawkins.
I may have a shitty memory for important details, but I will never forget the next morning.
* * *
We were woken by the front door being broken in.
Angry shouts filled our small house along with the sound of breaking crockery and splintering wood as our things were overturned and destroyed. They were looking for something, but I didn’t know what.
I was nine.
I was terrified.
“Ellyn Turner. Sybyll Turner. Hannah Turner.” A man I didn’t recognize was shouting at us as we cowered together on my mother’s bed. My mother’s hands clutched at me tightly, and I could feel the power inside her as it boiled through her veins. She couldn’t lash out at these people, it was against Hecate’s laws, but I could feel her straining to keep it under control.
“You stand accused of witchcraft. Of using spells and witchery, of bedeviling the good people of this town and turning them away from God,” the man’s monotone voice was loud and echoed in my ears, but I didn’t understand what he was saying. “You have written your names in the Devil’s book and take your dark power from him.”
Of course we were witches, of course we used magic in our herbs and ministrations... but I didn’t know anything about the Devil’s book. We went to church with everyone else in town; we just didn’t drink the wine or eat the stale wafers.
“Who accuses us?” My mother’s voice was strangled; she hadn’t planned for this. My aunt looked terrified, and her eyes were wide and shining.
“The name of your accuser is not important...”
The sound of more crockery being broken in the kitchen made my mother flinch.
“I found it! I found it, the poppet they’ve been using to witch me!”
Sarah Hawkins. It could be no one else.
She burst into the room, a small fabric object clutched in her hand. She held it over her head triumphantly, her expression crazed.
My mother recoiled, her nails digging into my shoulder.
“This woman has bewitched my husband, taken him from my bed, you have taken the child from my womb...”
“There was no child to steal, Sarah Hawkins, you will be barren until the sun rises in the west and sets in the east…” my mother’s words were bitter and the women in the room recoiled in horror.
“Even now she curses me!” Sarah Hawkins’ voice was shaking, but she didn’t sound terrified, she sounded justified, and it made my blood run cold.
We had heard about other accusations in other towns, but none of those women were Daughters of Hecate. My mother had often scoffed about the accusations, saying that they rarely got it right.
Sometimes they did.
* * *
Overseen by the magistrate and a beaming Sarah Hawkins, my mother, my aunt and my sister were dragged from the house to await the good justice of Elias Maycotte. His name had been whispered in our house, he was a Witchfinder, traveling the country seeking out the Brides of the Devil.
It sound ridiculous to say it now, but that was a serious business back in the day. We all knew that he took bribes to make the accusations stick, and gleeful neighbors, jealous of success would fling their accusations and watch innocent women burn. As they pried my mother’s fingers from my shoulders, she muttered an incantation that only I could hear. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but now I know that it kept me hidden from the gaze of those who sought to hurt me.
It was the only way to explain how I was overlooked and abandoned in the destroyed remains of our house while my family was ripped away.
Chapter 2
I spent the next few days trying desperately to clean up the house. My mother would be back any minute, I was sure of it. I repaired the slices in the mattresses with my big clumsy stitches and burned pot after pot of whatever I could find to eat.
Give me a break, I was nine and I didn’t have any coping skills.
I swung on the garden gate, listening to the people talk as they drifted out of their way to walk past our house to gossip.
“Elias Maycotte is coming.”
“I heard he’s only a few towns away.”
“I heard he’s leaving ashes behind him wherever he goes.”
“Serves them right.”
Serves them right? The woman who had said that had taken ill last winter and my aunt had stayed by her bedside to nurse her back to health. Saved one of her children too. Who needs loyalty when piety is on display? The good wives and mothers were the loudest in their refusal to believe that my mother and aunt were innocent. These women envied my mother’s beauty, my aunt’s free way of speaking, the way that we were able to live without the protection of a man.
* * *
The day that Elias Maycotte came to town, the streets were filled with people, watching and waiting. Eagerly anticipating the trials, they had heard about for so many months. Finally, something exciting was happening. There was talk of other trials, how the accused had screamed curses, and sent out their spirit birds on their accusers, how they had babbled their regrets and their secrets as the fire was lit beneath them and began to lick at their toes.
They had all been innocents, poor women with nothing magical about them save their natural gifts. My mother had been sure that none of them bore the same birthmark that all of Hecate’s Daughters did. Witchmark they called it. Men like Elias Maycotte looked for witchmarks, and my aunt told us that when the mark couldn’t be found, it was simply drawn on with charcoal and taken as authentic.
We all had it. The touch of the goddess that set us apart from other women. A small crescent moon on the back of my left thigh marked me as a part of the tribe. My mother told me that when I had been born she had looked for it frantically, terrified that I would be born without the gifts of the goddess. My sister used to tease me and say that that if the mark had not appeared our mother would have left me on a doorstep for some other poor wretch to adopt. She was probably right, but it hurt to remember all the same.
Elias Maycotte’s wagon was a fine one, drawn by four of the most beautiful horses I had ever seen. Some people
applauded his arrival, a few cheered. The older widows, women who counted my mother and aunt as their friends shrank back. They had avoided the house as well, but had left small things by the garden gate for me. Loaves of salt bread and sausages, small apple cakes, little things that kept me from going hungry but did not single them out as supporting an accused witch and her family.
He was tall and slim, sitting tall in the wagon, with silver hair that spilled over his shoulders. His peaked hat gave him the impression of being even taller than he was, and to someone my size, he was terrifying. He had pale green eyes; the pupils tiny pinpricks, giving him a ghostly look that unnerved me and left me feeling hollow. Thanks to my mother’s glamor, he did not see me, and my face would only appear in his memory as a smudged blur. Hiding in plain sight.
Sitting on a bench in the back of the wagon was a hooded figure. I could see long tendrils of dark hair trailing over the nondescript grey woolen dress the woman wore. Her hands were long and pale, and I could see that her fingers were stained almost black, with charcoal or ash, and with a shiver, I remember wondering who she was.
So much time has passed, since the first day I saw them, but some things are seared into your memory, whether you want them to be or not.
Seared is probably a poor choice of words, but there’s no other way I can describe it.
The market square was full of people; prominent citizens crowded specially built seats to separate them from the press of the lower classes who clamored for the trials to begin. I didn’t watch, but I heard the platforms being built… the stakes and the gibbet that waited for my family.
“These trials are not to prove guilt or innocence,” my mother always said.
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