The Witch (The Witch Trilogy Book 1)

by Cheryl Potter

  Now another dawn had broken and beyond the window a pig snuffled irritably among the fowls.

  ‘Water,’ hissed a voice, with a strangled sob, ‘water for God’s sake.’ Kate took a deep breath before braving the terrible stench surrounding the flock mattress. She emptied the dregs of a pitcher into a cup and knelt beside the gaoler’s wife.

  There was no vestige of Rosemary Halliwell, the handsome, plump wife who had brought food to her husband’s gaol. The hazel eyes were bloodshot and sunken in a face, unrecognizable. Her flesh was marred with black blotches, her groin and armpits disfigured with angry boils, her mind deranged by intolerable pain.

  Kate tipped a few drops of water on to the swollen tongue, protruding from cracked lips, and watched helplessly as it dribbled away down Rosemary’s chin.

  ‘Leave me, you devil!’ squawked the sick woman. ‘You’ve taken my babies, isn’t that enough? Dear God‒’

  Kate gently lifted the wasted arms and, untying the compress of oak leaves she had applied, found that the almond-sized swelling in one armpit had grown no larger. The other one, however, had burst, leaking its putrid blackness through the bandages on to the mattress.

  Five days she had hung on. For five days Kate had plied the dying woman with vinegars and compress; herb-Robert and ash, feverfew and oak, knowing that it was a futile battle, unkind to prolong the anguished life. But for the sake of the husband, whose last coherent act had been to spirit her away from the prison, whose numbed senses left him staring aimlessly at the dead grate in the kitchen ever since, for his sake she had pitted her wits, risking infection with every breath she took, snatching what sleep she could.

  ‘She called out?’ Bart Halliwell’s ragged voice startled Kate. She turned to see him stooped under the low doorway. ‘Something about babbies. Barren you know, never could‒’

  The sick woman’s breath came in short gasps. She squealed pitifully, then hooked her fingers on to Kate’s arm. Kate reached for a pad of wadding, dipping it in a bowl of water and laid it across the woman’s forehead, watching a spot of black filth spread across the sheet from another burst boil.

  ‘Aye,’ Halliwell cried. ‘Had love enough in her for a brood‒’ He caught a clawed hand and pressed it with his. ‘Best this way, eh Rosy gel? Better not to have had them than watch them fail this way. Hell could be no worse. Christus!’ He started as his wife suddenly flung herself out of his grasp with a blood-curdling shriek. ‘If it had been a dog,’ he trembled, ‘I’d long since have put it from its misery. You know how, witch, monkshood or some such.’

  Her head buzzing for want of sleep, Kate lifted her gaze to meet his bloodshot stare, and murmured, ‘Death needs no prompting, it is near enough.’ Words sprang to her lips. A childhood prayer forgotten until this moment. ‘And if I should die,’ she breathed, ‘before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul shall take‒’ She pulled the discarded bed sheet back to cover the woman’s exposed legs and lifted the wadding from her head. Bony fingers found her elbow, clenched to make a fist, then there was a gurgling groan and the arm fell limply back to the mattress. And Rosemary Halliwell lay quite still, eyes locked open. ‘She is safe now,’ Kate said. She left him then to be alone, went down to the kitchen and slept.

  Later, Bart Halliwell stood at the foot of the bed watching her first wind the stinking corpse in the soiled sheets, then for want of a shroud, tie it into a blanket. His eyes did not leave her as she washed her hands and dried them on the hem of her coarse prison gown.

  ‘There are guards on the town gates,’ he grunted, ‘no one may leave until the pestilence has done its worst.’

  ‘Let me try,’ she said softly.

  ‘They say you are in league with the Devil,’ he murmured, shaking the parcelled corpse as though to stir it to life. ‘What do I care for that? You came to this God-forsaken place when I dare ask no other, risking yourself and the child.’ He lifted the lifeless bundle into his arms and a deep sob escaped his lips. ‘A strong-willed woman, my Rosy ... would never give in without a fight. Licked you this time, eh girl?’ he shuddered with grief.

  Kate laid a hand on his arm. ‘Wait for the cart, it won’t be long coming – you will hear the bell.’

  ‘I’ll not have her handled by any old Jack!’ he flared hugging the bundle. ‘We’ve come this far together – I’ll carry my girl to the pit.’

  ‘I shall be gone when you get back,’ she told him.

  ‘Take the path down to the river,’ he said throatily. ‘Go with the flow a mile, two maybe; there’s a boat up there, else you could try your luck swimming across.’ He kicked the door open and easing himself and his bundle under the sagging lintel of the kitchen door, grunted, ‘You’ll get nowhere in them prison rags – find something in the chest, she has no more need of them.’

  Kate heard the kitchen door slam back against its latch and moved to the window. She watched him scatter fowls and dust, before lifting his load over a rickety stile. As he jumped the last foot down to the town road, she caught his eye. And in his empty stare, saw death ... no more than a glimmer; a sweat-glistening corpse, lying in wet meadow grass – but death all the same, and soon.

  She watched until his bowed shoulders disappeared behind the hawthorn hedge, then threw back the lid of Rosemary Halliwell’s clothes chest.

  The man stooped, slump-shouldered, over the crackling logs of an open fire. Twilight shadow was stealing over the boards of the hut. No more than an abandoned hovel when he came on it that fateful night; rough-boarded, leaky and verminous, but a safe place, buried deep in the woods. A place apart for a man apart. For a restless, wandering man who once had a home, a family, a position of respect and had lost it all.

  He coughed and spat a gobbet of phlegm into the nettle patch outside the door. His fingers found the raised scar tissue around his throat and scratched the itching flesh. Outside, trees whispered and the dead things shuddered in a sudden breeze. They hung by foot, by claw, from the crude fencing he had built; hares, rats, shrews, a magpie, a mole, a mistle-thrush, a squirrel and a cat. Some for food, others as warning to wood wildlife. Begone, for here lies a man of stealth and keen-edged blade.

  There was satisfaction in a killing well done, in methods honed until there was no longer need of intricate traps and nets. There was satisfaction too in imagining every startled cry, every death squeal to have come from the lips of the shepherdess.

  Surprise, he knew, was the only way to take a wily prey. And the witch was as wily and devious a creature as ever stalked among men. Yet even she could not know that William Kerry had survived the noose, that he had regained consciousness lying in a hand-barrow beside a shallow pit; weighed down by a shovel, grit from the barrow biting into his face and lips. The cold had set into his bones, so long had he lain there half-naked.

  He shivered and held his hands closer to the smoky fire, remembering. A loud belch had drawn his attention to the grave-digger who sat back facing him not two yards away, swilling down a pie dinner and a pot of ale. His climb from the barrow had been a clumsy affair, limbs stiff and trembling. He could only think that the grave-digger had been deaf, for not once did he turn. Not once suspecting that the corpse of William Kerry would lift the heavy spade and let it fall on his balding head. And more. That a dead man would strip his unconscious form of clothes and feast on the remains of the pie before scaling the gaol-yard wall and fleeing to the outskirts of the town.

  At first he could not understand why he had been spared, when everything that he had ever held dear was gone forever. When all that was left to him was a limbo existence. But slowly the answer had dawned on him. The witch had seduced him, just as she had beguiled Matthew Marsden. She, who had cold-bloodedly sacrificed a young woman to her devil master and bedevilled the Grafton children, had singled him out because he had suspected her from the moment she found that spike in the Prince’s hoof. The witch-whore had enslaved his body and mind with sorcery, so that he had accepted the blame for the murder and provided her with a ruse for escape.<
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  Pregnant, the turnkey had told him, on the eve of his execution. Pregnant with his child, the man had said, and because of it her execution stayed. Stayed to give her time, for a plague to set her free. For the Devil to loose her and her spawn on to an unsuspecting world.

  Understanding had been slow in coming. But he knew now why he had been spared. Surprise was the only way to take a wily creature. Rising to his feet, he stamped out the fire.

  The Dawning ...

  It was a sultry night, made warmer by the effort of following a river path grown over with bramble and hog weed, in shoes meant for a smaller foot. Kate found the boat a good hour after setting out from the gaoler’s cottage, but it was moored beneath the shifting branches of a willow on the opposite bank of the Frome.

  She dropped the bundle of provisions she had brought and turned to look back at the city that had intended she never leave it. The same city that years before had hanged her mother, then burned and scattered her ashes to the four winds. It was suffering now, that pestilent place. Over it the orange glow of well-stoked braziers permeated the night, signalling its distress, and Kate was glad. Her eyes trailed the eerie nimbus over its outline, then turned to the waning moon, with its own misty halo, and smiled.

  She waded into a bed of rushes, through the cool of the lapping water, then rolled on to her back to keep the bundle dry as she paddled the short stretch to the opposite bank. She lingered a while midstream, savouring the sensual flow of water over her clammy flesh, then pressed on to the bank.

  Kate was not aware of having drifted, until her head struck the wooden hull of the boat. She rolled over and grabbing the boat rail, waded into the stiller water of a reed bed, dragging the dripping bundle behind her.

  The sudden shriek of a coot as it exploded from the disturbed reeds, startled her. She staggered back against the boat rail with a gasp. But no sooner had her fingers found the wooden ledge than something heavy slammed down on them.

  ‘Thought you’d get away, eh witch?’

  Kate jerked her attention from the fist that had trapped her fingers, up to the moon-glazed eyes of William Kerry.

  ‘Thought I was a stiff, eh?’ he hissed, grinding her fingers harder still. Kate took in the gaunt cheeks, the scar-shadowed neck, and said nothing.

  ‘Well so did they,’ he grunted, nodding towards the orange glow. With a ghastly laugh he added, ‘Aye, they did that, body snatchers they said ... or the Devil come to collect his own ... only it isn’t true, is it? The Devil, he protects his own, don’t he witch?’ The fist came up savagely and caught her jaw. Kate hung on to his arm but it locked around her neck and hauled her into the swaying boat. Kerry dropped to his knees, pinning her to the bottom and slammed his fist against her swollen belly.

  ‘Believed you when you said it was mine!’ he gasped. ‘Saved your whoring neck!’ He clamped his hand on her throat, forcing her head back and strangling her cry. ‘T’was a benighted day I fetched you up to Grafton’s horse. Then you knew I would, didn’t you, sorceress?’ He jerked her neck, snatching up her head and let it crack down again on to the planks. ‘More than you bargained for, eh? Me, getting away? To make sure you didn’t ... oh no, not while William Kerry breathes.’ His fingers gouged at her windpipe, choking her cries.

  Kate’s eyes frantically searched the sky, instinctively knowing she must find the moon. It emerged from behind a stagger of dark cloud, framed with iridescence. And at once its misty tranquillity spread across the havoc of her mind, calming her flailing limbs. Its embrace lifted her through the planes of her being, further even than she had gone with him. And every cell in her body suddenly thrilled with vital energy.

  She became aware again of the pressure on her throat; of Kerry’s crazed grunts. She skewed her head down against his hand, stared up into his bloodshot eyes, and channelled her energy at him.

  Kerry’s eyes widened in terror. For what had been a woman under his hands now seemed to him a writhing, shimmering coil of serpents. ‘Sweet Jesu!’ he squealed, recoiling in horror as the scaled bodies swelled beneath him, lifting him out of the boat. He shook his head rapidly, spraying saliva through the air; pushed his arms out against the tongue-flicking head that had parted from the rest; gave a strangled scream as it flung its heavy body around his neck, preventing his leap into the water. And the rippling muscles coursed round and round the soft neck flesh, squeezing out the dregs of a scream. Kerry convulsed as it slid across his lips. His hands jerked upwards, clawing vainly. He could not check the relentless spiral. The turgid body crawled across his sight and Kerry’s neck cracked....

  Kate stared at her hands, still white knuckled around the dead man’s throat. She looked dispassionately at the petrified features; at the rolling head and sightless eyes. And then in the corner of her eye a shadow beckoned her attention.

  Intuitively she knew that the sisters had come. They were ranged all around her, in the reeds, on the water. Polly Trenshaw, the face of her visions, was there among scores who had no name. And at her shoulder the face she had last seen long ago, through the dingy haze of a courtroom. A breeze lifted her mother’s loose brown hair as, with a sweep of her hand, she took in the others. Kate acknowledged them with a nod. And in that moment a hundred voices filled her head, each unfolding its own moving tale to her. Accents known and unknown, old and young, words tumbling, blending disjointedly. Lives long untold, vying for attention. Then, from the confusion of murmurings one voice emerged clear and soft:

  ‘For us all, Daughter‒’

  And then they were no more. The faces, the voices melted into the night, leaving Kate alone under the moonlit sky, with the shifting reeds and the distant glow of braziers ... and the limp body of William Kerry still in her hands.

  She buried her hands in the sweat-soiled armpits of his shirt and heaved his dead weight into the swelling river.

  Kate stopped to rest at the foot of Blackwood Top. She dropped wearily into a cushion of dewy fern and eased the shoes off her blistered heels. But there was no rest.

  On the eastern horizon the first glimmers of daybreak were permeating the leaden sky. This was the chosen time, she knew. Every step of her night journey had been directed to this place, for this dawning time; for her communion with the spirit of the cunning man.

  She put aside the still damp bundle of food and pewter she had brought with her from the gaoler’s cottage, and let the oversized gown slide off her shoulders. Then she padded barefoot through the damp grass, keenly aware of the quickening child, and the heaviness in her legs.

  The sound of Jack’s welcoming yaps spurred her on up the last steep stretch. She did not wonder to see the tail-curled sentinel, she knew he would come. And the warmth of his lean body as he nuzzled against her naked legs – the glad proof that he too had come – restored her flagging energy.

  She followed the dog’s lead through bramble and thistle to the appointed place. And there bid him be still, while she waited for the fingers of dawn to cleave the slumbering sky....

  He came to her through a bank of vermillion poppies. No more than a black dot at first, obscured and revealed by the dancing flowers; a tall man, and heavy and he carried no baggage. And as aurora brightened the sky, so dawned the hour of her enlightenment.

  Kate stretched her arms upwards, emptying her mind in readiness. She closed her eyes as energy, raw and elemental, coursed in through her fingertips, as knowing filled the void.

  Upon the rustling of aspen leaves in the spinney below, a voice with a foreign accent boasted of its apostasy – taunting her with the deeds of its hatred – unlocking for her its terrible secrets.

  A lifetime of secrets.

  ... She saw the tear-stained face of a boy, his dark hair pressed into the sober skirts of a woman; a cold and beautiful woman, her glossy black hair swept back into a coil ornamented with tiny ringlets, her dusky complexion unblemished around glazed red lips and dark-lined eyes. She saw the mother’s eyes flick from the child to a bustle of impatient nuns; felt the chi
ld’s perceived betrayal as hands tore him away – as the mother receded abandoning him to wimpled gloom.

  On the voice whispered, through the incestuous infatuation of youth; years rankling with yearning and self-conflict. She saw a man-boy kneeling before a statue of the Virgin, mouthing ritual words, but seeing only worldly flesh and blood-red lips....

  A first crackle of thunder resonated the hilltop under Kate’s feet. And the images tumbled into her mind.

  ... A chilly graveyard, beside a stream, a stone set apart carved with rough lettering: Ignotus ex aquis. A body unknown trawled from waters far removed from the land of its birth. A body hinted at with childish awe, dead and yet undead ... the body of the dam.

  She saw again the tonsured priest grappling with venal ecstasy upon a tombstone; a younger face but his face still, overshadowed by the bell, book and candle of excommunication. She heard his cries of orgasmic baptism, of death and rebirth; witnessed the moment of realization and shifted perspective – the old order renounced, the new boundless and all-powerful. She saw too the river-bloated face of the girl who had brought him to it. ‘First blood,’ boasted the whisperer....

  And lightning cut a jagged edge through the sky.

  ... Down the years they came to her, bodies abused and broken. From peasant cottage to battlefield. His strength ever growing, mastery built on knowledge gleaned, onwards and upwards. His goals, power and wealth and status but most of all freedom. Freedom from the dam, from her haunting shadow.

  Thunder jarred the air, as its echoes reflected back at her from woods below, Kate glimpsed once more the chilly graveyard, and the inscription;

  Ignotus

  Ex Aquis