The Witch (The Witch Trilogy Book 1)

by Cheryl Potter

  Kate lay listlessly watching Cassy as she bustled around the infant. A lullaby drifted in through the window. And words long ago imprinted on her mind, came back to her now: Lully, Lulla thou little tiny child....

  ‘Little tartar,’ cooed Cassy. ‘Naught to boast but that dark crop of his.’

  ‘And a name,’ Kate murmured, fighting to stay awake.

  Cassy plumped down beside her with the baby in her arms. ‘What name?’

  ‘François,’ said Kate.

  Shadows

  Sir Hilary Grafton, barr.

  Candlewick Street, London

  Deare Father,

  May this find you well and the gout at bay. It grieves me to have seen you not this twelvemonth, being kept away first by the bewitchment of my children – thank God overcome – and latterly by the scourge which choosing not to evade by coming to us in the country, you did with His gracious help escape.

  There is, sadly, no news of our profligate ward and niece, Barbara. I wrote last that my man traced her latest elopement to Berwick on the Scottish border. For the sake of her father, my poor dead brother and your son, we can but pray that the Almighty will prick her wanton heart for she is beyond all other influence.

  Wife Ellen and young Cissie have been much troubled with a quartan ague. You may imagine what fear their illness struck into our hearts. In this, we are once more indebted to the redoubtable judgement of the physician in our midst, Matthew Marsden, who at once settled our minds as to the question of plague and whose chemical physic has driven the ague from them.

  It came as a great heaviness yestereve, to learn that after so many months under our roof, Matthew is recalled to the capital on Royal business. We shall all feel his loss, Caroline most keenly, but comfort ourselves in the certainty that our loss is His Majesty’s gain.

  I commend this man to you, sir, knowing full well your solitary ways permit few guests but pray you, make exception for this gentleman, until such time as he can establish himself in another safe house. He takes his leave of us two weeks hence, to be in London for Easter Sabbath, the fifteenth inst. God willing, I shall bring my grateful thanks to you in person within the month.

  Your respectful son, Samuel.

  Apescross April 1, 1666.

  ‘How soon is Easter Sabbath?’ grunted Sir Hilary, tossing the letter and his eyeglass on to the gate-legged table, next to his bath chair. The question was directed at the white-smocked blur for whom he was sitting. Nathaniel Taylor, a contemporary of Sir Peter Lely, was a portrait painter of repute and like Lely, favoured with royal commissions. His hooded eyes glanced up from the canvas, accustomed to the irritable severity of the old man.

  ‘Why, sir, this very day. You may recall I came here directly from the mass in the Queen’s Chapel. Such music!’ He set his brush aside and wiped his fingers on his smock-coat, ‘And you sir, are expecting a visitor from Gloucestershire.’

  ‘Visitor be damned! A stranger foisted upon me by my blackguard son!’

  ‘Fie sir! Is this not the day our Saviour was resurrected? A day for rejoicing and sweet temper?’ He untied his smock and ignoring the old man’s sullen protests, pushed the wheeled chair into the bright light of an oriel window. ‘Out there’ – he gestured expansively over the rooftops of London, ‘the pestilence is but a memory. His Majesty is back in the capital, the sun shines and God is surely in His Heaven! The sitting is done, sir. I am away to the house of my Lady Castlemaine and, unless my eyes deceive me, the coach drawing up bears the Grafton arms.’

  In the street below, Marsden pushed the carriage door shut and waited for the driver to unload his baggage. Across the cobbled street, through a stableyard arch, he glimpsed the steelyard. It was an area he recognized; the Mansion House and Royal Exchange but a side street away, the Boar’s Head Tavern just around the corner.

  ‘Master Marsden?’

  He turned on his heel to see a courtly figure – radiant in green silk tunic and lace-trimmed knickerbockers – emerge smiling from the Grafton residence. Marsden inclined his head.

  ‘A safe journey I trust, sir?’ The artist said, saluting him. ‘Sir Hilary regrets that he is unable to greet you in person, sir, and t’would seem the servants are away with their families. But come in do, he awaits you in the chamber with the oriel window.’

  Marsden tipped his head again. ‘My thanks to you, sir.’

  The artist pressed himself against the portals, to let Marsden pass. ‘An eccentric old bat!’ he whispered, flicking his eyes towards the upper storey. ‘Too long with his own company‒’

  Marsden lifted his broad-brimmed hat and swept in. Dropping the hat on a newel post he stood in the dimness of the hallway while his luggage was carried in. Above oak wainscotting the walls were arrayed with a collection of swords and pikestaffs. A dented bugle commanded a shelf between two closed doors and over the entrance door, a frayed banner flapped draughtily. Dust motes hung in the light from an eyebrow window part way up the stairs. Dust and tarnish enveloped the staircase and ornaments. Everything seemed to be steeped in the must of insular old age.

  ‘I’ll be on my way, if you please, sir.’

  Marsden produced a coin for the hat-doffed coachman. He watched the servant leave, then took the stairs two at a time.

  ‘Lock the door after him!’ Marsden checked in mid-flight and squinted up through the shafts of sunlight to the chair-bound figure peering at him over the landing banister. ‘You are not in the country now, sir; do as I say and bring the key up to me!’

  With a slow but gracious smile, Marsden retraced his steps and closing the front door, noticed for the first time the lock plate – an elaborate work decorated in high relief with the figure of a man on a gallows. As he withdrew the key, the figure dropped symbolically, concealing the escutcheon. Somewhere, he knew, there would be a spring to reverse the procedure. He fingered the bosses inquisitively until he discovered one on the right-hand edge which gave under pressure.

  ‘Three bevelled spring bolts and a night latch!’ boasted Sir Hilary.

  ‘A master locksmith,’ asserted Marsden, ‘with no uncertain views about thieves.’ He gave a wry laugh and mounted the stairs.

  ‘Place is awash with scoundrels and whores,’ grunted the old man, clipping the key to his belt. ‘In here‒’ He led the way, grunting with the unaccustomed effort of turning the wheels of his chair, into a room lined with bookshelves and paintings. It was a large chamber made small by the crush of furnishings; a bed low and without hangings, a wash basin and chair strewn with towels, a lectern, a desk piled high with documents and dusty tomes, a cabinet, a painter’s easel and a gate-legged table set with covered dishes. The shrunken world of a gouty old man.

  Marsden wandered past the easel to the oriel window, aware that the old man had picked up an eyeglass from the table and was watching him. He unbuttoned his coat and turning from the bustling street scene to the lip-fast scowl of his host, remarked, ‘The gaiety of Londoners, it seems, is irrepressible. The mortality bill is still in its hundreds, I am told, yet the streets I passed were filled with smiling faces.’

  ‘Intoxicated with their hymns and prayers and the thought of the Easter feast,’ said Sir Hilary sourly.

  ‘Ah!’ breathed Marsden, gauging the old man’s mood. ‘The plague was an act of God, they will say, an anger loosed but now spent. Let us rejoice in the risen Lord – in the God of justice and mercy.’ He spoke with unmistakable contempt.

  The old man snorted ironically, ‘No die-hard Christian, are you Marsden?’

  ‘I have faith in myself alone.’

  ‘An arrogant doctrine, sir!’ spluttered Sir Hilary.

  ‘I do not deny it.’

  ‘But, I suspect honest enough,’ conceded the old man, shifting painfully in his seat. ‘As for religion, I have come to the conclusion that only a fool would hanker after a God so indiscriminate in His judgement that he would destroy so many honest lives and yet leave unscathed the infestation of common prostitutes, street criers and
impudent drunkards....’ He caught his breath with sudden pain, clutched his left knee, then slowly lowered calf and stockinged foot back on to the inclined step of the chair. ‘And the court is no better!’ he grimaced. ‘By all accounts squandering its energy on frivolity and mistresses when it should be raising funds to support the fleet. Deuce take them all!’

  He had no need to name the king personally, or the much publicized birth of his third child by mistress Castlemaine, it was more than implicit in his tone. Marsden was well aware too of the state of the fleet, that it had put to sea, a rag-bag of officers and victims of the press gangs, with little enough money to supply the ships, let alone pay wages. It had been a favourite topic of dinner conversation at Apescross. How King Charles had tried to dissuade Louis XIV from honouring France’s treaty of alliance with Holland. Tried and failed. So that the fleet had of necessity been divided; part under Prince Rupert, to patrol the French coast, the main body under George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, to take on the Dutch fleet.

  ‘But I forget,’ growled the old man defiantly, ‘you sir, are an agent of the king.’

  ‘Merely His Majesty’s servant,’ Marsden corrected. ‘Not a spy.’

  Weary of peering through the eyeglass, Sir Hilary laid it aside and manoeuvred his chair under the table, knocking awkwardly against the oak legs. He lifted a silver cover from a dish and poked at the blotched red shell of a lobster through a mound of prawns. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony, man, join me – there’s wine in the cabinet; the key is in the lock.’

  Marsden availed himself of the washstand and towels before drawing up a chair and unstopping a Bordeaux. Sir Hilary shovelled lobster claws and a handful of prawns on to a plate and pushed it at him. ‘So, if you’re not a spy,’ he barked, picking his teeth, ‘what are you, eh?’

  Marsden let the dry wine linger in his mouth before he swallowed. ‘I am occasionally called on to aid certain negotiations,’ he answered with an enigmatic smile.

  The old man dismembered a prawn. ‘You will not be pinned down, I take it?’

  ‘In short, sir, no.’

  ‘No,’ echoed Sir Hilary, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Ah well, it seems you have more than impressed my son with your medical skills and in the matter of the witch ... Gunney, was her name?’

  ‘Katharine Gurney.’

  ‘Damnable affair, all that jiggery-pokery with the grandchildren.’ He pursed his lips wryly. ‘Never thought to see it in my own family.’

  ‘You have come across cases of witchery, though, before the war,’ Marsden ventured. ‘By all accounts you presided over an impressive number on your circuit.’

  ‘Forthcoming, my Samuel,’ grunted Sir Hilary, rough cutting a slice from a breaded ham. He sniffed. ‘I recall few cases these days, but I suppose I sat out my share of witch trials ... came in fits and starts. A bind, as I recall. So much hearsay – confessions denied. Never clean cut, more a mess of ignorant tittle-tattle, muddied the waters, you know. From the moment I clapped eyes on a woman my gut told me whether or not she was guilty.’

  ‘A definable quality?’ asked Marsden, with interest.

  The old man drew a deep and ponderous breath. ‘A certain hardness about the eyes, I can’t say for sure, but unmistakable and unlike the hardness of a thief who knows he must hang.’

  ‘Malignant defiance, perhaps?’

  Sir Hilary cut another slice and dropped it on to Marsden’s plate. ‘Perhaps,’ he agreed, ‘saw it often enough.’

  ‘Was ever a woman who passed through your court, acquitted of witchery?’ pressed Marsden.

  ‘Can’t say that I remember,’ muttered the old man, gulping at his wine. ‘Safer to hang the devils.’ He cut a cube of ham and lifting it to his mouth on the point of his knife, suddenly checked. ‘As you mention it, there was one ... name escapes me, ah ... sat at Gloucester. That was it! A woman found guilty; youngish as I recall, condemned by her own brat.’ He paused to pick his teeth with the knife, drawing together the white bushiness of his eyebrows in thought. ‘One and only time a ruling of mine was overturned – meddlesome fools.’ Chagrin gave way to a flicker of amusement. ‘Hanged her for all that; diligent sheriff you know – the pardoner couldn’t force his way through the throng at the execution!’ Sir Hilary barked a laugh.

  Marsden lay awake listening to the bubbling crackle of far off thunder. The boon of sleep, Virgil had described it. A boon he was granted less and less it seemed. Good wine and a rigorous coach journey had given him but an hour or two of oblivion. He had been awake again to hear the pendulum clock on the landing strike one, to see the small bedchamber momentarily spotlighted by the first lightning flash.

  He turned and the mustiness of the unaired mattress assaulted his nostrils. Another flare of light brightened the room, showing up furniture shrouded in dustcovers, his bag unopened under the window. He swallowed to ease his mouth, parched by the dryness of the wine and wondered where in the capital the shepherdess was this night.

  He did not doubt she had come – that she was alive. She had grown strong since he first found her on Blackwood Top. Strong and lucky. Who else would benefit from a plague, not once but twice? Not only had it provided her with the opportunity of escape from gaol, but also allowed her to be swallowed up by the melting pot of London; into which no constable would dare follow, even if he suspected it to be her hideout. And none had.

  It had been left to him to discover that she was gone. And that not until the plague had died down and the gaol had been empty for three weeks or more, with a red cross daubed on its studded gates. Instinct had taken him to gaoler Halliwell’s cottage on the edge of the town. He had found the creature, propped against a stile in the garden. The tokens were on him and he could barely speak for his swollen tongue. Halliwell had affected ignorance of the shepherdess at first. But his reticence evaporated when a stick was jabbed against the swelling in his armpit. The words had fought over each other then, squealing for freedom. She had taken the river path, had spoken of London, dear God take me to Rosy!

  She was leading him a dance was Kate. But even her luck had limits. She could not elude him forever – her or the child, if it had survived the birth. And when he tracked her down she would rue the day she had run from the scaffold.

  He rolled on to his back and linked fingers behind his head. It was meet she should have drawn him to London. He had been set on returning to make his mark here, sooner or later. Besides, he had outgrown the challenges of the provinces, his appetite demanded more than whey. And in London was to be found the cream of the land; the monied, the influential. Here the stakes were high, so too were the pickings.

  A ripple of thunder, more distant now. And in his mind’s eye, he saw the dam; her hands around the bone-handled knife, the darkest of blood welling between her tight-clenched fingers. How many years ago? His wafting brain could not decide. It might have been yesterday the memory was so vivid. And only streets away from where he lay. She had followed him to England, tracked him down, determined either to have him or else break him on the back of the vintner’s daughter. And her hold had been too deeply ingrained to walk away. Her very existence drained his. So he had chosen freedom.

  His mother ... the shepherdess. Yes, it was fitting that Kate had drawn him to London, for just as here he had gained supremacy over the dam, so here he would destroy her too. Almost of their own accord, events had assumed a gratifying symmetry.

  His drifting consciousness conjured a new image, this time a crowded green and Elizabeth, the mother of Kate, being hustled into position over the trapdoor of a scaffold. He pictured a man tearing his way through the crush, waving the pardon aloft; saw the two drawing closer and closer.... But the key was withdrawn and the figure dropped, just like the one in the Grafton lock. There had been no escape then for the woman they called witch. Nor would there be.

  He started from dream-ridden sleep, rudely awoken by a resounding bellow. It came again, ragged with torment, and he knew it was the old man. Swinging his legs over the edge of th
e bed he snatched open the door and stepped on to the landing. He was met at the top of the stairwell by a bleary-eyed manservant. Jenkins, had returned to Candlewick Street earlier that evening after a visit to his family in Clerkenwell – in time to serve supper and dress Sir Hilary’s leg before retiring. Tucking his shirt into his breeches with one hand and holding a candle in the other, he squinted up at Marsden.

  ‘I’ll take care of the master, sir. Naught to trouble yourself about – his leg’s been at it for days.’ Standing across the door to the oriel chamber, his hand resting on the doorknob, he stifled a yawn. From within came subdued squawks of pain.

  ‘In that case, Jenkins, your treatment to date has been ineffectual.’ Marsden snatched the candle and pushed the servant aside. To Jenkins’ stammer of protest he replied, ‘Go to your bed, I am a physician.’

  ‘With respect, sir, the master’s own physician says there’s naught to be done but bleed him and dose him with‒’ He checked, unnerved by the glowering threat in Marsden’s eyes. Checked and stepped back a pace. Marsden opened the door and locked the bemused servant out on the landing.

  He moved to the bed but found Sir Hilary sprawled across the floor. His face was pushed down against a rush mat, his gasping breaths overlaid with moans. Marsden set the candle down on the hessian-backed wheelchair and turning the old man towards him, lifted his racked frame across the bed. Despite the old man’s screams, he unwrapped the tightly bandaged left leg and let it swing down from the knee joint to rest against the valance. He moved then around the bed and began to knead the taut muscles under Sir Hilary’s chin.

  ‘Who‒’

  ‘Marsden.’

  ‘B-brandy!’

  ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘Now, damn you! Now!’

  Marsden struck him sharply across the chin. A spray of saliva shot from the old man’s mouth. ‘Listen to me now, or die of it.’ There was a pause. Sir Hilary’s throat muscles relaxed then tensed again.