Of Sorrow and Such

by Angela Slatter

  “Do the holy hounds know you’re here? Unsupervised?”

  “They received word of the woman they hunt and have gone to investigate. Never fear, they’ll return this eve. It gives us time to get to know each other—and if you tell them what happened and I deny it, who will they believe, witch?”

  He touches the back of my neck; I feel the calluses on his palms, digits, can almost smell the salty sea spray. In a flash I see him at the helm of a ship, hands to the wheel, yelling at his sailors, a small child in a harness is hung on the mast behind him, laughing in delight at the rocking motion. In the crow’s nest a man with a swarthy visage and the most magnificent black wings scans the horizon. And then it’s gone, this vision of Cotton’s life, though whether it be past or present I cannot tell. Here, he is cut loose from his usual bonds and responsibilities, from the concern of how others look at him, freed from opinion and censure. Here, all behaviours are open to him. He is freed.

  “You have a daughter,” I say. “You’ll not live to see her again unless you let me go.”

  He stands in front of me and his thick fingers hold hard at my throat. I will neither whimper nor gasp. He puts his face close to mine so he can see the things I cannot control: how I struggle without breath, how tears come unbidden. He grins, then releases me.

  “Let’s have none of that,” he says and as he begins to speak again I summon as much spit as I can and launch it into his open maw.

  “You will not live to see her again, Balthazar Cotton, this I swear.”

  And in his eyes at last is some terror. Yet in my anger I’ve made a mistake: I’ve left him no way out. A witch’s curse from one who’ll soon be dead is not to be ignored.

  His large flat palms rock my head, from one side to the other—open-handed, not punches that might render me senseless again. Then the blows abruptly cease and my ears echo. He leaves and I think for a moment that I’ve won the round, but the reprieve is short. I mistakenly took him for a coward as well as a sadist, but he is not that, or at least not in the usual sense. He won’t back down easily; like a pit bull he will hang on all the more tightly the greater fight his prey puts up.

  The door bangs back against the wall and Balthazar returns, dragging a muzzled Fenric behind him. My dog struggles, his paws scrabbling on the packed earth of the floor, making sounds of panic and rage. If he could he would tear out his brother’s throat.

  Cotton kneels before me, the dog pressed between his knees, the muzzle in his left hand pulled upwards so the throat of my dearest companion is exposed to the blade of the enormous knife in Cotton’s right.

  “Take it back,” he snarls. “Take it back or I swear your mutt will bleed out on your feet, you worthless whore.”

  “You don’t want to do that, unless you wish to be a fratricide,” I say with a tremor.

  “Are you mad?” He begins the sweep that will take my companion’s life.

  The words pour from me: “Your older brother was Gideon Cotton. Your sisters were Anna and Elise, and you all lived in Bitterwood. Your parents and a younger brother died after drinking from a poisoned well. Gideon disappeared one night not long before his wedding to the priest’s niece. You lusted for your own sisters, though I do not know if you ever acted on that lust.”

  “How can you know these things?” he whispers, grip on both knife and dog loosening.

  “I lived for a time outside Bitterwood, in the manor house of the woman Dowsabel. I met your brother and loved him and he loved me, until the night he found out what I was. And then I made him into the creature you now threaten.” I shudder, all my determination to show him no feeling gone. “And I beg of you, do not hurt him, for all our sakes. Look into his eyes and you will see it’s true: for they are Gideon’s eyes and always will be.”

  That’s a lie, but I’ve long learned that folk, men in particular, don’t really look at each other, and a gap of almost thirty years would have blurred any recollections Balthazar might have kept. Memories change and shift, ferment in our minds; they are never the same when we take them out as they were when first we put them in.

  And his own eyes grow wide as he stares at the dog’s golden-brown orbs, his face a mass of conflicted emotions and disbelief. What I’ve told him seems so farfetched that it beggars belief—though they’ve called me witch and fear me, they don’t quite believe it—yet I can see his mind turning the problem over and over: how else could I know these things?

  Cotton rises, and sheaths the knife. He considers the animal with a strange regard, and when he leads him from the room he is gentler. I’ve bought Fenric time, but condemned myself. No doubt can remain about the truth of what I am.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Charity Alhgren looks worse than I feel and that’s saying something.

  “They’re setting the pyre,” she said as soon as she got in the door, didn’t wait for the clerics to leave the room. The men didn’t bat an eyelid as they passed; her words might as easily have been taken for a triumphant crowing as for a warning. She carried a tray and I could smell the warm porridge in the bowl, hear the splash of liquid in the clay jug beside it. I’ve had nothing to eat or drink in almost two days; my stomach feels as though it will feast on itself soon, and my throat is the dried-up bottom of a pond in high summer.

  Charity pours water and holds the cup for me to drink. Ambrosia. I smack my lips for more. When I’ve had my fill and she’s slowly fed me the oats, made on milk and butter, with sugar and cream on the top—though how she managed to get this luxury past the watchdogs is beyond me—she dabs a handkerchief into the jug and gently works at the hard brown crust that’s been keeping my eyelid sealed. It softens and the russet fluid runs down my cheek. Charity then wipes the cloth over my whole face, is careful with the split and swollen lip, and it comes away brown and grey and black from blood and dirt, and sweat and spit and tears. I blink and find even the dim light of the torches here is painful.

  Charity steps back and examines me critically. “Should have brought a brush, your hair’s a mess.”

  I laugh at that, almost choke myself. When I can speak again I say, “I hardly think that will matter when they burn me.”

  She’s undeterred and begins to finger-comb my tresses, starting at the bottom and untangling knots as she moves upwards. The sensation is oddly soothing. I close my eyes for an oh-so-brief moment before she whispers, “Doctor Herbeau has come.”

  No wonder she looks so unwell. I suppress the thought that I have enough to worry about. “Did he make you take anything, Charity?”

  “No. He’s here for you, but I fear he’ll get to me soon enough.”

  “Take the remedy I gave you. Do it as soon as you leave me, Charity. You should be well enough . . .” The look in her eyes makes me feel bad. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Pastor Alhgren . . .” she begins.

  “What? The pastor what?”

  “He’s done with me. I heard him talking to the doctor this morning. Asked for a last thing, a finisher.” She licks her lips. “I’m too scared to eat or drink.”

  I push out a breath of air and blink. “I would you’d listened to me before, my dear.”

  She stops grooming me, and winds around and around the strands that have come loose, coiling them between her palms until there’s a thick ball of dark hair. She rolls it into the cloth stained with my blood and tears and sweat and spit, and stuffs it into the pocket of her apron. “I do too. I thought . . . I just thought he’d . . .”

  “Charity, take what I gave you. If I can help you further, I will. I expect the same promise from you.”

  She looks me straight in the eye and gives a strange smile, then nods. As she picks up the tray she leans close and I whisper, “When Ina brings you what I asked for, dry it by the fire and then grind it to a fine powder. We shall talk again.”

  In a normal voice that might be heard by anyone listening at the door, I say, “And why is Doctor Herbeau here?”

  “To see how many you’ve killed by your so-
called healing,” she replies with the same volume, the timbre stronger than I’ve ever heard from Charity Alhgren. It confuses me: has she achieved some task or does a sense of hope swell within her? For myself, I feel one part uneasy, the other lighter, as if I might see a chance of salvation—or if not that, then at least the opportunity to wreak havoc before and after I’m turned to ash.

  “Your potions,” says Doctor Herbeau as he steadfastly refuses to look at me. I think I offend his discerning taste in my current state. I definitely offend his nose: with no chance to bathe, still tied to this chair, I’ve soiled myself more than once and have no shame in it. I refuse to feel any more humiliated than a cow kept in a byre or a pig in a sty—this plight has been forced upon me.

  “Yes?”

  “Your potions, where do you keep them?”

  “If you have been to my home then you’ll have found them in the workroom next to the kitchen. In the kitchen itself there are canisters with the herbs I use most commonly. You have everything.”

  “You’re lying,” he says tightly.

  I raise a brow. If he thinks I’ll tell him where to find items like gallowberry, what to do with troll-fat distillations and elf-breath leaves, how to make aqua nocturna with tears of nightmares and gravedust, then he’s mad. He cannot read Wynne’s great book, written in the language of witches; he’s already demanded I translate it. As if I will give up such secrets; bad enough that Balthazar Cotton already has my deepest and darkest, though it seems he’s keeping it close to his heart. I’ve not seen him again and the churchmen have made no mention of it. I wonder if he fears what they might do to Fenric. Or if he is merely contemplating which path to take? Might he ask me to turn his brother back?

  I query the good doctor. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I can find nothing lethal there!”

  “Oh. Doctor Herbeau, that is because I do not use anything lethal in my healing. And I will point out that no one under my care has died this past six years in Edda’s Meadow.” I do not mention Flora Brautigan, for I did not kill her by the means he has in mind. “Or is it that you’re looking for something to use for your own ends?”

  His thin face drains, then flushes with outrage and his nostrils pinch in as if an invisible hand has hold of his nose. He opens his mouth to draw in a breath that he will propel out with a yell.

  “Charity Alhgren looks unwell again,” I say smoothly. “I cannot help but notice that she always suffers after your visits.”

  Herbeau splutters and stutters. He gathers his dignity as he turns to the men in purple who’ve been waiting quietly during his attempted interrogation. “I will not give this creature any more of my time and have my reputation impugned thus!”

  He marches past them and throws the door open—or rather tries to. The gesture would be more impressive had he not missed the handle on the first and second attempts. The churchmen exchange glances, and the conciliator approaches.

  “It doesn’t matter, you know. None of this. It doesn’t matter if you say it or not.” He smiles and it might be mistaken as kindly. “Simply confess how you worship and obey Lucifer, the fallen one.”

  “You fool. I worship none, and what woman with a brain in her head obeys anyone, let alone a failure?”

  “We have the book, that will be enough to light the flames beneath you. And Miss Brautigan will bear witness that you had reason to kill her dearest sister-in-law.”

  “Flora, who was undoubtedly a witch—I’m told you witnessed her transformation yourself.”

  “We will burn you one way or the other, witch.”

  I return his smile, feel one of my canines wobble loosely. “Then what incentive for me, hound of God? Get out. Go and build a pyre, then see if you can set me on it,” I hiss. “Let us see who dies, priest, thee or me?”

  They scurry from the room like terrified mice and it makes me laugh a little madly. They don’t need my confession, no, but they want to hear it. No matter how they extract it, they will sleep better if the words come from my own lips, if I condemn myself. It will ensure them a dreamless and righteous sleep. How curious.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The archbishop’s men have sent Pastor Alhgren in, as if he might have some influence. If I weren’t so weary I’d laugh, but as it is all I can manage is a glare; that seems to be quite sufficient. He’s frightened of me, no doubt; I can smell it on him as surely as if he’d shat himself.

  “It will go easier for you if you confess,” he stammers the words they’ve told him to say; he walks back and forth, wearing a path in his cellar floor.

  I raise a brow. “How so?”

  “God will be kind,” he says a little more firmly, as if he’s on familiar ground.

  “I doubt that. Everything I’ve ever heard you shout from the pulpit, Pastor, is precisely how many times damned a witch shall be, and the sorts of torments that will be visited upon her in the hell of your God’s choosing.”

  He looks stunned. Someone actually listened to all those sermons he slaved over and delivered with such wearisome delight, his face shining with crusading light as he thought upon the injuries that would be done to women who did not conform. How sad for him that that someone was me. Has he ever hoped his own wife might show signs of witchcraft? Give him an excuse? Yet who would ever believe a creature as timid as she would have anything of the sorceress about her? She’s as untouched as my poor Gilly, and more’s the pity. No witch would have put up with the conditions Charity Alhgren has; no witch would have put up with this sort of husband.

  “So, Pastor, what else might you offer one who’s been promised a fiery road to eternal damnation?”

  He splutters on a reply that doesn’t quite make it.

  “And tell me, God’s best beloved, what might you give to be rid of your wife?”

  He stops in his pacing, one foot raised in the air as if frozen midstride, taken off-guard. His eyes glaze, mistaking my questions for an offer, then he looms over to whisper in my ear.

  “My very soul,” he hisses. “Will you divest me of her? But say it and I will save you from the churchmen!”

  No you won’t, you hideous little man. You’d have me kill your wife then let them feed me to the flames all the same. But I know now that his passion to be shot of an unwanted woman burns so hot that he would throw in his lot, however briefly, with a true witch.

  He’s too cowardly to do anything himself, beyond commissioning his wife’s demise, but he does not wish to have any actual blood on his hands. That would make him an actual murderer and condemn him to the hell he’s preached. But perhaps he can justify it if Doctor Herbeau or I do the deed, can convince himself forgiveness will be easier to gain once he’s acquired a newer, younger, prettier wife. But newer, younger, prettier wives are not for the likes of Pastor Alhgren, had he but the wit to see it.

  “When will they burn me?” I ask quietly.

  “Tomorrow at dawn,” he breathes.

  “I cannot help you, but I will tell you this: you’re a fool to trust the good doctor. Why would he kill his golden goose when you pay him every month for nothing more than making Charity ill? Your wife’s not so strong, Cornelius, that she’d last all these years.” I run my tongue over his name as if I find it somehow melodious. I know I am not without attraction despite my current appearance, and I still have a lovely voice; above all, knowledge of a man’s desires is the key to his mind. I see the spark in his eyes that shows he notices me, that he would have done so sooner if my fresh young Gilly-girl hadn’t been sitting beside me on the church pew all that time.

  “You’re wise though you’re damned,” he says.

  It hurts every part of my face, yet I smile. I’m sowing seeds as far and as wide as I can. Seeds of discord, seeds of hope, praying that one will take, will flower, will save me, will destroy my enemies.

  Balthazar Cotton shows himself not long after Pastor Alhgren leaves. Has he been gathering his courage?

  “Where’s Fenric? Is he safe?” I ask.r />
  “How did you do it?” He ignores my question. “Make him into . . . that.”

  I shrug. “Does it matter? I did it, that’s all that counts.”

  He crouches and peers into my face, seems to find something strange there.

  “Is Fenric safe?” I say softly.

  “Thus far.”

  “You’ve not told them.”

  “No . . . I do not know what they might do . . .”

  “But you’ve not asked me to change him back,” I say.

  “When my brother disappeared, everything he had became mine. I missed him, for a while, certainly, but I benefitted from his absence. You did me a favour, in many ways, removing him so I did not have to.” He stands, turns away, hands clasped behind him, but the fingers fidget, slap into the palms. “You’ve misunderstood: I’ve not not told them in order to protect him, but in case they think it’s a sign of witch blood in my family. These priests, they’re quite insane, you know.”

  I swallow. He’s been thinking during his absence, weighing what he has and what he might lose if Gideon were to return.

  “I married his betrothed, though she didn’t last long. Weak. I inherited his goods and chattels, the money, the reputation, the holdings. All of it. I married again, another weakling, though this one managed to live long enough to give me an heir, though she’s only a girl.” He gives a fond smile at the mention of the child, then looks at me as if I am stupid to have thought things might go any other way. “Everything I have is because Gideon was gone—and I should thank you for that. Why would I want him back?”

  He tells me this because he believes that tomorrow I’ll be ash, because he thinks it doesn’t matter how many of his secrets I have because all the things I hold in my heart and mind will be nothing more than soot on the wind soon enough. I wonder at this man who has such contempt for women, yet such a softness for his daughter. I wonder at the daughter, what stripe of woman she might become if her life were no longer lived beneath his hand. Then I recall the gaze he used to bestow upon his own sisters; I think of Karol Brautigan and his love-hate for his own sister; I think of these men and the suffering they heap upon us all to hide their own shame, and I feel sick.