The Winter Witch

by Paula Brackston

  I let him go, and he turns and bounds away through the snowstorm. I hasten to follow, trusting he will lead me back to the farm, turning my back and my mind on Isolda’s phantoms.

  Our descent is speedy if clumsy, and the snowfall does not let up for one minute, so that by the time I trudge through the back door and into the house I am sweating from the effort and coated with snow. The house is eerily quiet. Not bothering to remove my boots I hurry into the kitchen. Cai is in his chair by the range, stirring as I enter. He wakes and sees me, shocked by the state I am in.

  “Morgana? Duw, cariad, look at you! You are near turned to a snowman.” He struggles awkwardly to his feet. “Come and sit by the fire. Mrs. Jones will fetch you some broth. Mrs. Jones!” he calls. There is no answer. “Where can she be?” he wonders aloud, rubbing his eyes. “I am still groggy with that laudanum. Powerful stuff, mind. I recall now, as I was drifting off, she spoke of seeing to the laundry. She would have gone outside to fetch water.” He looks at me seriously now, suddenly fully awake. “You must surely have seen her as you came in,” says he.

  But I did not. I dash from the room, flinging open the back door, all but tripping over a confused corgi in my haste. The fresh fall of snow is fast masking all traces of feet, paws, and hooves, but I can faintly discern stout boot marks leading toward the spring. I hurry to the low wall, still searching the ground for footprints coming away from the water again, but I can find none. A lurching sickness stirs in the depths of my stomach. With mounting dread, I force myself to peer into the pool. The thick, broken chunks of ice set adrift by the lump hammer have been fused together once more by a thin, glasslike sheet of frozen water, which has, in turn, been covered by a fluffy layer of snow. I reach down and wipe the sugary coating from the surface. Gazing up at me are the kind, gentle eyes of Mrs. Jones as she lies submerged and drowned in the dark, still waters of the pool.

  * * *

  Cai emerges from the house into the yard just in time to see Morgana plunge, fully clothed, into the spring water.

  “Morgana! Duw, what are you doing?” He staggers over to the well, the ponies, alarmed by the tone of his voice and the unusual activity, shy away, driven from their hay to stand and snort at the far end of the yard. Bracken leaps up at the wall of the pool, barking frantically. Cai reaches the well and grabs hold of Morgana, who is half submerged and thrashing about in the ice and snow and deathly cold water. Now he is able to see what has driven her to such action. Now he can see she has Mrs. Jones in her arms and is battling to pull her out.

  “Oh, dear Lord!” He grabs at the old woman’s arm and hauls her to the wall. Morgana pushes, and together they heave the sodden, lifeless body from the water, and over the low stones, so that it slithers onto the snow-gripped ground. Morgana falls to her knees beside the corpse, tears streaming. Cai’s heart constricts at the sight of her suffering yet more loss. “She must have fallen in trying to fill the pail,” he says, indicating the bucket sitting half covered in snow nearby. He shakes his head. “She shouldn’t have come out here alone in this terrible weather. She should have asked me to help her.” He realizes how little able he would be to help anyone in his current state. He is wheezing already from the effort of recovering her body, and his limbs are shaking. “I could have come with her, at least,” he says, his own eyes stinging with tears. He sniffs, wiping his face with his wet sleeve, clambering to his feet. “We must move her. Find her somewhere to lie.” He hesitates. The roads are impassable and may remain so for some time to come. They will have to keep her somewhere outside the house so that the cold preserves her body. He looks about him, forcing himself to be practical, to think only of what must be done, not of how he feels, not of what might have been prevented. “There,” he says at last, “we can put her in the end stable. She will be … safe, in there.” Morgana looks up at him, her face stricken. He helps her to her feet, brushing tears from her reddened cheeks. “We must move her, cariad. I need you to help me. Are you able?”

  Morgana nods. She is bending down to take hold of Mrs. Jones once more when she notices something clutched in the old woman’s cold, plump hand. She touches the unyielding fingers, gently prizing them open, to reveal a flat square of slate.

  “What is it?” Cai asks. “What have you got there?” She passes it to him, and he studies it, brushing wet mud and dead algae from it until he is able to see that there are symbols carved upon its surface. No, he thinks, not symbols, but letters. “C … T? No, not T, J,” he reads to Morgana. “Look, it has the letters C J written on it.” He feels his innards churn and a chill not brought about by the weather enter his very bones. “My initials,” he says quietly. “Cai Jenkins.” His mouth dries. “You know what this is, Morgana?”

  She shakes her head, frowning, not able to make sense of anything.

  “Don’t you remember Mrs. Jones telling us Ffynnon Las has a cursing well? She believed in such things, see? I used to laugh at her, to scoff … but she was adamant there was truth in the legend.” He rubs his thumb over the dull letters on the slate in his hand. “Seems someone else believed in it, too. This is a cursing stone, Morgana. Someone has used this stone, has used my own well, to put a curse on me.”

  Morgana takes the cold slab from him and stares at it.

  “But who?” Cai asks her. “Who would put it there? Who would want me dead? Who would be capable of doing such a thing?”

  Morgana looks him straight in the eye, raising her palm in a gesture that tells him he knows, that the answer is plain.

  “Mrs. Jones wouldn’t have put it there herself!” he gasps.

  Morgana shakes her head, rolling her eyes in exasperation. She holds her hand up, suggesting someone taller, then makes a shape describing someone thinner. She leans down and uses her finger to write a ragged letter in the snow. The letter I. To underline her point she frowns darkly and spits at what she has written. Now he understands.

  “Isolda? You think Isolda did this?” He is incredulous, but Morgana is nodding emphatically, her face imploring him to believe, to accept what she knows to be true. “I know you hate her. And lately I have seen that she dislikes you also. And Mrs. Jones, well, she never cared for her.” Now he recalls their earlier conversation, when his housekeeper had tried to tell him, tried to warn him how deep the loathing between the two women was. He hadn’t wanted to listen, hadn’t been able to take it in. Why hadn’t she simply come right out with it? Come right out and said Isolda is a witch? Had she seen how frail he was? Had she realized that his fragile hold on what he knew to be real and true was slipping? It had not been easy for him, after all, coming to terms with Morgana’s gifts. With what she was. Would he have been pushed into some dark, unstable place to think Isolda Bowen, pillar of the community, his friend for years, was also … a witch? Now it all makes sense. Now he understands. And, looking at Morgana’s grief-stricken face he understands something more. Mrs. Jones hadn’t told him the whole truth because she had been afraid of what he might do. Of what he might try to do. He was so angry after what happened to Morgana in Tregaron that day. If his housekeeper had named Isolda as the source of all that hatred he would have walked out into the snow, then and there, to find her, to confront her. And the fact was he was too weak to even saddle his own horse. He would have tried to protect Morgana, and the doing of it might well have killed him.

  “Isolda,” he says again, almost under his breath.

  Morgana grinds her teeth and hurls the cursing stone against the wall of the stable, where it shatters, the slivers piercing the snow as they fall. Cai looks at her. For a moment neither of them is capable of moving, as they process what has happened; what has just been lost, and what has just been found. The snow still pelts, swirling, heavily about them. Cai comes to his senses first, registering that he is outside in his shirtsleeves, and that Morgana is wet to the skin.

  “Come,” he says. “Let us put her to rest.” Together they wrestle with Mrs. Jones’s unhelpfully heavy body. They cannot lift her, so are forced
to drag her, sliding her over the snow to the stable door, and then haul her inside over the cobbles. Cai fetches some hay and they lay her gently down. Morgana carefully closes the housekeeper’s eyes, and Cai takes two pennies from his pockets to prevent the lids springing open. He folds his dear friend’s hands across her chest and straightens her skirts so that she might look decent and composed, as she would have wished. He finds that by the time he stands up again he is kitten-weak and shivering. He takes Morgana’s hand.

  “We can leave her now, cariad,” he says. “We must go inside. We must get warm, Morgana.” She looks at him now and, seeing how badly he is faring, nods quickly, and follows him back into the house.

  In the kitchen the fire is still burning in the hearth but the coals give out insufficient heat to combat the intense cold Cai has begun to feel. Morgana has turned horribly pale and her teeth chatter.

  “You are soaked through,” Cai says. “Here, take off your wet clothes. Stand by the fire.” He drags himself upstairs to fetch her nightclothes and warm towels and blankets. On his return he finds she has removed her coat and boots but nothing more, merely standing, her whole body convulsing with the shock of the cold, and the shock of the awful discovery of Mrs. Jones in the well. She looks dreadfully chilled, not just white-faced, but somehow faded, as if he is watching the life freeze within her. He has seen a man die of cold once, when he was a young boy. He had gone on the mountain with his father and an uncle to gather the herd and icy weather had caught them out. In their haste to descend his uncle’s horse had slipped and thrown him, leaving him with a badly broken leg. Cai had been left with the injured man whilst his father rode for help. The cold had helped staunch the flow of blood from the wound, but then it had gone on stopping his blood until it stopped his heart, too. Cai had spent three long hours on the hill with his uncle’s corpse, and the pallor and bloodless appearance he had been forced to watch for all that time he recognizes now in his poor, young wife. He must bring warmth back to her body, and he must do it quickly if he is to save her. He snatches up a small chair and dashes it against the flagstones, using all that is left of his strength. It splits and splinters, so that he is able to pull it apart and pile the wood onto the fire. There is a moment’s smoldering and spitting and then the dry waxed pine bursts into flame, giving out an instant, ferocious heat. Cai undresses Morgana as quickly as he can, taking off his own soaking shirt, too. He takes towels and rubs her body vigorously, until at last he begins to see some life return to her eyes, some color revisit her face.

  “That’s better, cariad. Soon have you warm, see?” he tells her, keeping his voice level, not wanting to let his own fear for her show through. “Too cold for a dip in the pool today, my wild one.” She wriggles into his arms, snuggling against him, so that he leaves off drying her and pulls a warm plaid blanket around them instead. “There now, that’s better, isn’t it?” He kisses her wet hair, breathing in the smell of her as the fire begins to make them both steam, chasing away the water and snow from the pile of clothes at their feet, and from their own damp bodies. Her soft flesh feels wonderfully smooth and marvelously alive with her inner heat and energy as he holds her close. He kisses her face now, her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her chin, and then her mouth, long and slow. He gazes into her dark eyes.

  “All will be well now, cariad,” he tells her. “I know, I know, my heart is breaking for dear Mrs. Jones, too. She was a good woman. A kind, gentle soul. We will both miss her sorely.” He shakes his head. “You know, I think she went looking for that cursing stone. She must have got the idea into her head that someone had put it there, that that was what is wrong with me. And now, thanks to her, thanks to you, it is over. The curse is gone.” Seeing she is unconvinced, he manages a grin. “I feel better already. Truly, I do.” It is the first time he has ever lied to her, and it hurts him to do so, but at this moment his concern is that she recover, that she be herself again, that he is able to do anything he can to help her get over what has happened, and to reassure her about the future.

  He kisses her once more and feels her nipples harden against his chest. He knows it is no longer the cold that is affecting her body. Morgana nuzzles close to kiss his throat, her lips cool against his hot flesh. Soon he is aware of his own state of arousal, of his own desire. A part of him is appalled that he should be capable of lustful thoughts when a good friend has just lost her life. But it is as if the proximity of death serves as a reminder of his own mortality and drives his desire. As if the only way to triumph over the terror of human frailty, of the fragility of life, is to engage in an act of procreation, an act of passion and of vigor.

  He turns, swinging Morgana round, laying her down on the long table, pushing candlesticks and mugs away, not caring that they fall clattering to the floor. She pulls him down on top of her, eager for him, wrapping her naked legs about his body, responding to his need with her own, every bit as ardent, every bit as hungry. As he enters her he feels more powerful, more alive, than he has done in many long, dark weeks. She clings to him, her mouth against his ear, and he listens to her ragged breathing, to her gasps that are so nearly words, so nearly speech. But then, he thinks, they have no need of talking now, not when they are like this. They are as one being, linked physically, emotionally, in every way that matters.

  “My love,” he whispers. “My love.”

  His pleasure is startlingly intense, more so than any he has known. Morgana arches her back, throwing back her head, exposing her slender, white neck, moving with him, as fervent and passionate as he is, so that he soon calls out her name, losing himself completely in the moment.

  Later, Morgana lies on cushions, wrapped in blankets on the settle, and Cai sits opposite in his chair, unable to take his eyes from her.

  “You are very beautiful, Mrs. Ffynnon Las,” he tells her.

  She gives a small, sad smile, and he knows she is allowing herself to think of Mrs. Jones now, and to begin grieving. How he wishes there were more he could do to ease her distress. At least now that the curse is lifted, he can start to get better, to be strong again, to be whole, to work the farm, and to look after Morgana. The thought has no sooner formed in his head than he suffers a terrible, searing pain in his stomach. It is so fierce and so unexpected that he is unable to prevent himself crying out.

  “Argh! Dear Lord!” he screams, falling from his chair onto the floor, clutching at his stomach, his legs drawn up against the agony. “What can it be?” he yells as Morgana throws off her blankets and drops to his side. “Will I never again be well? Is there to be no end to this suffering?” He screams now, a terrible, despairing sound that frightens even him. Morgana helps him back into his chair. She dashes off to fetch the laudanum from the dresser and holds out the bottle to him. He shakes his head. “No! It will make me stupid. I will not lie here senseless while you sit alone!”

  But Morgana insists, removing the stopper from the bottle and holding it to his mouth, tipping it so that he might take one large swallow of the bitter liquid. She lets his head fall back against the chair, puts down the bottle, and observes him closely. Soon his breathing steadies.

  “That is better,” he says. “Be at ease, cariad. The pain has passed. I am better.”

  He meets her gaze and wishes he had not, for the look on her face clearly asks but for how long? The unspoken thought hovers in the air between them. Why is the curse not lifted? He tries to find words to comfort her, to reassure himself, but he is too dazed from the pain, too weary. His mind becomes dull, a blackness descends, and he falls giddily into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  I watch until I am certain Cai will not stir. My body is recovered from the cold, but a chill grips me still when I think of poor dear Mrs. Jones lying cold and lifeless in the stable. How can I have let this happen? How could I have been so slow, so blunt in my wits, not to see that she was in as great a danger as both Cai and me? She must have considered the possibility of Isolda having placed a cursing stone in the well and
gone to look for it, knowing that to do so would be risking the witch’s wrath. Why did she not wait for me? And now the stone is removed, but Cai suffers still. The curse is not lifted. I cannot say I am surprised, for I have long known that the creature will not stop until one of us is dead. And between now and then she means to kill everyone I have ever loved.

  It will not do. Really, it will not.

  * * *

  Cai surfaces from the depths of his drugged slumber to find Morgana in the chair opposite him. He is a little alarmed to see that, though she is apparently asleep, her eyes are open. Her hands are clasped in her lap and she looks serenely composed and still. There is a quality to her stillness that is odd, that unnerves him. He rubs his eyes, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it. He pulls himself from his chair with some difficulty and kneels in front of her.

  “Morgana?” He speaks her name softly, but she does not smile, nor move her head, nor nod, nor in any way respond. He leans forward and slowly waves his hand in front of her eyes. They are open, but do not flicker. It is, he decides, as if she has entered some sort of trance. At her feet, Bracken sits up, intently watching his mistress, occasionally whimpering. Cai thinks to shake her gently to rouse her from this unnatural state, but he recalls that a person found walking in their sleep should never be disturbed. Merely watched over. Instinctively, he knows that this is not some random condition, not some ailment which has visited his wife. Rather it is a state she has entered willingly, consciously. For what purpose, to what end, he cannot begin to guess. He sits back in his chair, fatigue, sadness, and worry working with the opium to render him exhausted. He must trust her. Her ways may sometimes be strange, but they are her ways. He will watch over her, and wait for her to come back to him.