My father did not have the gift. As written, he was born of the sun and from God in heaven. Whereas those like me were born of the night sky – a term used to infer that my art comes from the dark depths of hell, with powers strongest when the moon is full. I did not want to be different. It had been my ambition to live the simple island life I had then.
‘Marek!’ My father called me from the beach. He was carrying a branch. He held it out to me proudly. ‘White wood! Perfect for building boats.’
Ricco had higher aims for me. He believed that boats were being built with unsuitable wood, which failed to withstand rough seas. It had been his dream that we could sell ships to the north and profit from it, and perhaps purchase some land of our own on the mainland. He did not see our island surviving. He said that one day there would be an earthquake so big that our island would crumble and fall into the sea. Gildoroso would be wiped off the charter maps. Once he said this to other men and I believe it was one of the reasons why some of the fishermen avoided us. They did not like this talk. They were superstitious of theory and prophesy and anyone with the audacity to speak these opinions out loud.
Ricco, realising he had drawn too much attention from such a speech, took me to the public drinking house once a month to take part in conversations and eat with the men. It was important that we do that, said my father, because people always make up stories about those who do not mix, and the longer we are away the more exaggerated the stories. It was also a good opportunity to enquire and gain more work.
‘Did you hear me, boy?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Your head is not here. Are you off dreaming again?’
‘Yes, Father. Dreaming of pretty dancing girls in flowing skirts in faraway lands – the ones the men talk about at the osteria.’ I lied for I wanted the fear and worry in his eyes to go away lest he know I was dreaming about my craft. ‘And I was thinking that what you’re holding is the healthiest looking piece of dead wood I’ve ever seen.’
Ricco smiled. It was exactly what he wanted to hear. ‘Then let’s go, boy.’
We went to an area of island where this wood was plentiful, and we chopped and carried timber back to the workshop behind our house.
That night we dined with Silvia, a middling woman and a friend of my father’s. She had become a mother of sorts, always stitching me new clothes from some of the linen she spun to sell.
Silvia updated us on the goings on in the town: which wife had run off with which husband, who had eloped, difficult births, who had lost all their coin to drink and gambling. However, the gossip was very different this night. Something very strange had happened and she whispered as if it might have been bad luck to say it out loud, or worse, someone might have overheard her. But what I noticed most of all about her news was the fact she was directing it at me and not my father, her eyes never leaving mine.
‘You know, very rarely do we get visitors but our latest has caused much concern. The fishermen in the cold dead of night found a woman, a sea hag they are calling her, just off shore floating on a raft. They caught her just as the waves did. She near drowned but the fishermen are regretting their find. They say they wished she’d sunk.’
‘Why is that?’ my father asked but Silvia continued to answer to me.
‘Well, she is near dead anyway and covered in disease. She keeps whispering things to the air around her as if she is talking to unseen people. They say it is eerie speak. No-one wants to be near her, not even the apothecary to whose house she was taken. He wants to get rid of her though no-one quite knows what to do.’
I hated the injustice of such talk. ‘But surely she is just an old woman who has lost her way or lost her mind. What harm can she do? Everyone has a right to be treated and cured.’
‘I would expect you to say as such for you are too young to understand that not all share your own good intent. The men and their wives say that she talks witch speech.’
My father laughed but I could see through it. He wanted this conversation over with.
‘Tell me more Silvia,’ I urged. For the subject of witches seemed to dominate my thoughts since I saw the book.
‘They say she should be dead. She has travelled far from the north with Gildoroso in her sights. She planned to come here.’
‘Does she have a name?’
‘You’re an inquisitive boy,’ she said jovially, and with much affection, viewing me curiously over her beaky nose.
‘He’s not a boy anymore,’ said Ricco interrupting the conversation and keen to turn the subject. ‘Why, look how tall he is getting!’
‘Yes,’ said Silvia kindly. ‘He is a man-child but still a boy to me. See how he reddens with such attention.’
I was embarrassed but I could not let their words distract the main story here. ‘So can we see the woman?’
Silvia frowned and shook her head. She looked almost regretful and I witnessed a worried glance between her and my father. We finished our peppered fish pie, and Silvia laid out small honey cakes. I wolfed down several, which were hot and buttery and burst in my mouth.
As we headed back home, Silvia called Ricco back. I was told to head on home and felt offended by this gesture. If I was a man and could enter the osteria, then why was I still being sent away from certain grown-up discussions?
Later that night I asked my father what was said. He grunted for it was clear he did not want to discuss anything.
‘Am I a witch, Father?’ I asked, expecting a slap across the ear. But the response was even worse than I imagined. I was met with only silence.
I went to bed restless and dreamed of my mother. She was grabbing my arm and pleading with me. However, it was moments before I realised that it was not a dream but my father who was pulling at my arm to wake me. The hearth had burnt down to just a glow, illuminating the room in flickering shades of orange.
He was reluctant to speak at first as he stared at the light, his eyes rimmed with red, and watery.
‘It is the woman. The one they found in the water?’ From the way Ricco pulled at his short beard anxiously, it was clear he was tormented of mind and unsure whether to voice his thoughts.
‘I thought she was talking gibberish.’
‘Yes, she does, except she keeps repeating a name.’
My stomach tightened for I feared that it would be something I did not want to hear.
‘She says your name repeatedly, Marek. She asks for you.’
I would have considered it a mistake except that my Eastern name is distinctive from others on the island.
‘For me?’ I had just reached seventeen years and failed to see why anyone would want to speak to me. I was nobody, a son of a carpenter. Though even as I thought this I knew it was not entirely the truth.
Ricco confirmed. ‘She knew you’d be found sooner or later.’
‘Who are you referring to? What do you mean found?’
My father could not talk. He left my bedside agitated. There were things he wanted to say but could not bring himself to it. Why all the secrecy? I decided that the only way to get my father to talk was to threaten. ‘I will go then.’
He stood in front of me blocking the doorway. ‘I do not think it is a good idea. She will be dead soon and it is best you do not know her. It is best you do not know anything.’
‘Then why wake me to tell me what she said?’
‘I do not know.’ He rubbed his head. I had never seen him so erratic. His manner until that day had always been deliberate and purposeful. ‘I am torn.’
‘You have held so much from me already,’ I stated angrily. ‘Isn’t it best to get to the bottom of this? It will probably be nothing. And, if I go, I can tell everyone it is just a mistake. That she is indeed talking gibberish and looking for someone else; otherwise, if I do not go, there will always be suspicion since no-one here shares my name.’
My father thought for a moment then stepped aside. He indicated for me to follow and we headed down the grassy hills towards the town.
Curiosity was quickly replaced by foreboding, along with the belief that should I wish to turn back, fate would not allow it.
The apothecary’s house was on the far edge of town. It was sometimes used as a place of quarantine for people with disease or sickness. The apothecary greeted us at the door with some reluctance before passing us each a cloth mask. Tonight his infirmary had one patient and we were met with the overpowering stench of sulphurous concoctions, burning fibres, and rotting flesh. I suspected that if there had been others who were sick here, they would have been removed.
The woman lay facing the wall. Her breathing was shallow and I noticed her bare forearms were blistered from the sun. Her shabby skirts were high enough to see her skinny ankles and withering feet. When she turned, I was pleased to be wearing the mask for I would not be able to hide my revulsion.
Her face was bloated and purple, covered with weeping, pus-filled sores. The lower lids sagged so that raw flesh showed beneath her blood-soaked eyes. It took her a moment to focus on me and then those pools of blood widened.
‘Marek.’ Her voice was raspy and she said my name with a thick accent. I felt like the walls were closing in on me and we were the only ones in the room, and if I had not seen her lips move, I might have sworn she had been speaking in my head.
‘Who are you? Why do you ask for me?’
‘I was asked to come. I have travelled a long way to find you.’
‘Why?’
‘Your sister needs your help.’
‘I do not have a sister.’
The woman laughed with a high-pitched squeal and my eardrums felt as if they would burst. ‘Humans lie! They have been lying to you your whole life. I can see your father did not even warn you that you were special.’ She looked over my shoulder. I followed her gaze to see my father standing still and expressionless. He was focused on something on the wall. At the time I thought him to be angry, though later I would learn why he did not step in and take control, as he usually did in difficult situations.
She continued: ‘There are many of us, Marek. You must come and join our circle.’
‘Why?’
‘We need the power of other witches to stay strong. We are forced underground because we are feared and persecuted!’
‘Should you be feared?’
She responded with her laugh again and did not answer my question directly. ‘Some of us, I regret to say have resorted to…certain rituals that are not looked upon favourably.’
‘I do not believe you. It sounds like a story to scare me. And I have no sister.’ I turned to leave for I had had enough of this delusional woman.
Without warning she gripped my wrist fiercely, her long spindly fingers biting into my flesh like strips of hard leather. Her squinting eyes looked into my very soul and I felt suddenly weak. ‘Listen brat! Your sister said you could have trouble believing. I have been beaten by moronic villagers, pelted with rocks and then hung by my feet – all this to get to you. When I was close to here and barely hanging on to my existence, others stole my raft and threw me in the sea.’
‘Is my sister so important that you would risk your life?’
‘It is not just for your sister. It is for the cause and I must obey. With every new blood, our circle grows stronger and wider.’ Again the shrill sounds of her mirth pained my ears, but this time it was cut short by a raspy cough and she released my arm to hold her stomach. Pink spittle foamed around her mouth. The very smell of this pitiful woman was making me nauseous along with a feeling of being confined: the walls and ceiling closing in around me.
‘I cannot help you.’ I stumbled out of the door, her words trailing after me. ‘You have no choice. You must be with your own kind. Cross the waters east, and enter the Black Forest where your true family lives.’ Then there was more coughing followed by movement and grappling. I went back to see my father and the apothecary dragging her back to bed, her body limp. It had taken the last of her energy to follow me and I was sure she would die that very night.
The apothecary looked at me suspiciously, scratching his head while my father took me roughly by the shoulder and pushed me out the door and along the street, anxious to leave the hut far behind him. We travelled back across the town and home before he explained. He said that from the moment I walked towards the woman, he felt shut out, like floating in a kind of limbo, and heard none of our conversation. The other man must have experienced it too, perhaps worried then that he was tainted with black magic. To be tainted meant that you were marked and watched. Suspicious persons would be wary, and looking for other strange signs.
I thought it likely the body of the old crone would be burned quickly that night, dead or alive, and her ashes buried somewhere deep in the island. They would not have been scattered out to sea, as the fishermen would not want their fish cursed by disease.
I waited until after our evening meal to tell my father about the strange exchange with the diseased woman.
For several minutes my father gave no response, his bulky arms strangely graceful as he completed his cooking task. I rubbed my foot against the floor, anxious for his reaction.
Although it was past midnight, Ricco served us both cups of warm meaty broth, perhaps to calm his nerves. He nodded for me to sit down and, while he chewed the small chunks of meat deliberately and thoughtfully, his eyes never met mine. Our house remained silent of voices until I could take it no more.
‘Well, Papa. Is there more you should be telling me?’
‘It would be foolhardy to listen to the word of a demented crone.’ He turned to the tasks of removing his clothes and preparing for bed while I waited for more. ‘Don’t just sit there, get back to bed,’ he said gruffly. ‘It is a busy day tomorrow and we will be up before sunrise.’
His lack of response was not out of character for he had always been a man of few words. He was also perhaps regretful of taking me to the crone, but all I could see at the time was the injustice of his silence. His indifference made me thump my fist on the table.
‘I hate you,’ I shouted. ‘You have been lying about everything. You have told me nothing about my mother. For years you have kept me in the dark about her. Then you tell me about the crone and then you say nothing as if all this will be gone tomorrow. I am sick of you, old man. I am sick of your silence.’
My father sat down, his bones creaking into place. As he looked up at me, I suddenly noticed how very old he had grown, the skin under his neck sagging. I was racked with guilt. Had he not taken good care of me my whole life? Had he not forsaken many evenings of rest, after a day’s heavy work, to teach me words and other skills, while many of my peers remained so ignorant of such?
I sat next to him draping an arm around his shoulders. ‘Papa,’ I said, softly this time. ‘I did not ask for this gift.’ I used the word ‘gift’ at the time, as it would not be revealed until later that it was indeed a curse. ‘I do not know what I’m doing. I have this craft that I know nothing about. After healing you I have felt like a misfit. And now I find I have…had a sister.’
‘Marek. I have kept you in the dark for your own good. I thought that if you did not use your special skills, the same healing gifts you inherited from your mother, then you would be safe. But I have been riding this hope on borrowed time. Your mother said that there is no escaping it, despite my efforts to prevent her from using it. She was strong of mind, and heart, your mother. And she continued to use her gifts for good, for healing, even when it was dangerous. It was using this gift for good that got her killed…’ My father’s voice broke apart.
‘Please continue, Father,’ I pleaded. ‘I need to understand.’
Defeat was written on Ricco’s face. The past was about to catch up with me after years of wondering.
‘I met your mother, Marissa, when she was just a girl in Genoa. She was not originally from the town. She had travelled from the east looking for work in the Mediterranean warmth.’
I said Marissa over and over in my head. It was the first time I ha
d heard her name.
‘She was living with her young daughter and selling medicines at market stalls. At first I believed her to be simply a healer, mixing herbs to help ease the ailments of the sick. As I spent more time with her it became apparent that she was much more. Her herbs would cure diseases that physicians could not. But it was after we were married that I discovered her real skills.
‘On our way back from the markets one evening, we stopped to deliver a gypsy baby on the side of the track. The infant was stuck in its mother’s womb, and the woman near death. Marissa had closed her eyes and felt for the baby. She had known straight away that the umbilical cord was twisted around the baby’s neck, and she reached and loosened its grip to guide the baby out. And your mother asked for nothing in return.’
‘But surely doctors have done such things to save a woman.’
‘No, Son. That baby was born dead. I saw it myself. We took its lifeless body back to our house to bury. Whilst I was asleep your mother spent all night with the dead baby. In the morning the girl child was alive. When the mother and daughter were gone I was angry. I did not like her playing with life and death. She said that with the infant so new there would be little to show that it was altered…’
‘Altered?’
Ricco brushed at the air dismissively and briefly explained how my mother had prayed that the new soul placed in the infant, to replace the one that had moved on, had not been a bad spirit using the child’s body as a way of entering our world. At the time I did not fully absorb this explanation so distracted I was with the fate of my mother. Later, however, these words would come back to haunt me.
‘I believe the reason she played God,’ continued Ricco, ‘was that she did not have the heart to tell the mother her child was dead. Marissa could not have borne it, especially since you were already growing in her belly.
‘We fought about her curse because I was scared for her. We were hearing that witches were being rounded up and burned. Most of her clients were so indebted to her they did not divulge her practices and whereabouts to the authorities. There were rewards of gold for those who did. Then one day a poor farmer came to our door. He had lost all his crops from an insect plague the year before. This year his crops were diseased. If he did not have a good year, his family would starve. Already he had lost two children through the winter when they did not have enough food to put flesh upon their bones. Your mother, of course, never refused anyone.
Marek (Buried Lore Book 1) Page 2
