The Witch (The Witch Trilogy Book 1)

by Cheryl Potter

  ‘I’m listening Marsden,’ he said quietly.

  Marsden dug his fingers into the prominent veins of the old man’s temples and squatted beside his head. ‘Where are you?’ he breathed, grinding his fingers hard through skin to scalp.

  Sir Hilary shuddered with suppressed pain. ‘Where the bloody hell do you think?’

  ‘Go with my voice, float with it ... where are you?’

  ‘Bloody purgatory!’

  ‘Where is the pain?’

  ‘All over!’ growled the old man. ‘Ears, back, groin, leg.’

  ‘Can you move?’

  ‘No.’

  Marsden rolled a pillow up and wedged it under the base of Sir Hilary’s skull. Then he snuffed the candle. And walked around the bed.

  Through his agony it came, a voice gossamer light, yet strong. Distant at first, no more than a soughing on the fringe of his mind, of his hurt. But little by little it drew strength, words clear yet incomprehensible. Words of no substance yet filling his ears, spinning their filigree web around his pain. And drawing it in; from his limbs, his head. Stronger yet and the net tightened, sucking the hurt from back and thighs. Pain exquisite, concentrated in calf and foot, in foot and toes ... in the joint of his big toe.

  A moment’s suspense.

  And then it exploded from his extremity; a shower of crimson putrescence. Its vile stench caught the breath in his throat, depleting the air in the chamber, threatening to suffocate him. The voice wafted across his new terror, refreshing the air with meadow scents and coolness. He gulped its fresh purity, suddenly conscious of a sobbing ... a venting that came from himself; aware too of the lightness that was his body, of the absolute lack of pain.

  And the silence of the chamber.

  Sir Hilary lay quite still, listening to the bumping of his own heart. There came a sharp click and a flare of light. He skewed his head round and saw Marsden, tinderbox in hand, lounging in the wheelchair.

  ‘Where are you now?’ asked Marsden.

  The old man pulled himself up on the bed to face him. ‘Will it come back?’ he asked hopefully, then quickly added, ‘No, I don’t want an answer, I don’t even ask how you did it.’

  ‘You can help yourself by leaving off the brandy,’ suggested Marsden. ‘Drink watered wine instead. And put the weight on your legs more often.’

  Sir Hilary shuffled himself off the bed and tentatively tried his legs. Swinging his right leg forward, his left buckled slightly, so that he snatched at the bedpost to steady himself. The next attempt though was surer and by clinging to the furniture, he managed the door and staggered back again.

  ‘Lord knows how long it is since I tried that,’ he murmured. He lowered himself on to the bed and laid his hand on Marsden’s shoulder in wordless gratitude. ‘It seems you are a sorcerer, Marsden.’ He shrugged a laugh and rolled his weary head onto the pillows.

  ‘Not a sorcerer,’ breathed Marsden. ‘Not that....’

  Sir Hilary Grafton though, was already asleep.

  Kate put her basket down between the surface roots of a new-green ash tree. She had set off, an hour before, to walk through Moorfields with François. An early mist had given way to clear blue skies and a sapping noonday swelter. She spread her cloak on a carpet of daisies and ground ivy, and sat down beside the basket, stretching her legs out in front and easing off her buckled shoes.

  A young couple in courtly dress, paused to steal a kiss within feet of where she sat. Seeing Kate over her lover’s shoulder, the girl recoiled with a coy giggle. Unabashed, the lover promptly pulled off her shoe and made great play of shaking out a troublesome stone before refitting it. Then with a wink at Kate he escorted the girl away.

  As they moved off, arms linked, Kate smiled and leaned over the basket. François lay on his side, his sucking thumb glistening with saliva where it lay, fallen from his sleep-parted lips. She leaned back on her elbows, gazing up through a cloud of gnats to the tree. It was hours before she was due to go to the Fat Saddler’s warehouse. Time to herself; answerable to no one but the dark-haired bundle beside her.

  She sighed contentedly, closing her eyes and relaxed into a rare inner quiet. She was drifting towards sleep when suddenly her mind veered off sharply‒

  And she was engulfed in terror – clinging frantically to hands that had her neck in a vice hold, to arms which held her writhing body above the earth. She plucked at them until her nails splintered, forcing the dregs of a scream through her constricted throat. She blinked away the watery blur from her eyes and recognized ... Dear God! The lambing sheds, the yard and her cottage. And him, his eyes intense with effort.

  It dawned on her then, why her feet would not reach the ground. He had her suspended over the lime pit, over the hole she had dug to dispose of dead lambs and vermin. On fear-founded strength she flailed and fought but her blows were as nothing against his cruel strength.

  The crack when it came was like the snapping of a dry twig; sharp, clean and sickening. Her arms clung for a moment, then fell away. The death struggle lost; her body insensible though her mind was yet acutely aware of his gritted gasps and sweat-streaked temples. And the rush of air as she dropped....

  It crawled around her, the half-rotted squirm of the pit. It first found the exposed flesh of face and hands, then burnt through her clothing. And her upturned eyes watched passively as he reappeared on the brink above her, a sack in his hands; fixed on broad hands which curled back the hessian sacking, then began to shake a white powder into the air above her. She continued to stare – though the powder had burned the sight from her eyes – until her quivering body became one with the squirm. Until broad hands filled the pit with shovelled earth.

  Kate’s eyes snapped open. She had rolled off the cloak and lay face in the grass, her nails bleeding and clogged with earth, her vitality drained by the vision. Slowly she eased herself on to hands and knees, breathing away the residual terror.

  In the basket François was stirring, his tiny fingers reaching out for a passing butterfly. With trembling fingers she lifted him out and bracing her head against the rough bark of the tree, held him tightly.

  How much more suffering must there be? How much more death before the demon she had evoked on Blackwood Top, was himself destroyed? She banged her forehead against the tree trying to erase the horror. She had seen through her eyes, shared her experience of fear and pain right up to the moment of death and then she had stood apart and looked upon the marred beauty of her one-time enemy, Barbara Canard.

  Encounters ...

  Jenkins had been a witness to it yet he still found it hard to believe. In his four years of service at Candlewick Street he had seen Sir Hilary leave the house exactly four times. Four times he had been wheeled or carried through the front door, slinging insults and cursing the physician who had insisted he should make the journey to the spas of Bath. The manservant scratched his head and, absently wiping his hands on a boot rag, stepped out on to the front steps in time to see the carriage disappear into Fish Street.

  Not two nights ago, the old man had been howling with pain. Now he was off gadding about town with Marsden. ‘Jenkins, polish my boots,’ he had ordered at breakfast. ‘Marsden and I intend to take a boat up to Whitehall this morning. No buts if you please.’ No buts indeed! He scarcely knew where to look for the boots they had been so long unused. And would have gambled his last shilling that the old man would neither get them on, nor walk in them if he did.

  It was as well there had been no one to take the bet. With his own eyes he had watched the old man walk unaided downstairs and out to the carriage he had ordered from the Boar’s Head. What was more, the old tartar had actually managed a laugh at some ribaldry from the coachman. Jenkins shook his head bemusedly and went back in.

  Poking her head around the kitchen door Sally, the laundress, gave an awed whistle. ‘Blow me down! Did you see that?’

  ‘What do you think you’re gawping at?’ he snapped, locking the door behind him and pocketing the key.

/>   ‘It’s a bloody wonder though, ain’t it?’ she persisted. ‘Us thinking he’s about to kick the bucket, then up turns Marsden like a genie.’

  ‘A shady character if ever I saw one,’ grunted Jenkins.

  ‘Enough to give a body the creeps those dark eyes of his.’ She gave a shiver of pleasure. ‘A real gentleman though.’

  ‘Don’t you go getting any ideas, Sally Cade!’

  ‘Why ever not?’ she giggled, shrinking behind the door as he crossed the hall towards her.

  ‘Because,’ he said, shrugging off his leather apron and capturing her wrist, ‘I’ve ideas enough for us both!’

  The manservant’s expression had tickled Sir Hilary. It had been worth the pained effort of walking downstairs to see his wan disbelief. The old man’s chuckles had filled the coach, spontaneous as the resting of his hand on Marsden’s thigh.

  That had knocked the dullard Jenkins off his laurels! That and his request, the night before that a truckle bed be moved into the oriel room so that Marsden would be on hand during the night. In the privacy of the coach, his hand lingered on the muscled leg, familiar, but not as bold by daylight as it had been during the night.

  It had not been pain which kept him awake last night, rather a strange tension which he had not at first recognized. So long had his body been beleaguered by pain, so long his one desire to be free of hurt, that the return of his libido had taken him by surprise. He had lain awake in the darkness, unable to sleep for a poignant sense of the potency lying in the bed beside his. Listening for Marsden’s steady breaths, detecting with pleasure the male smell of him. Recalling the heady days of his youth and the soft-featured captain to whom he had yielded his virginity. Piquant thoughts which had finally induced him to reach out in the darkness. There had been a moment of danger and uncertainty; excuses forming in his mind, lest his advances caused offence.

  But there had been no offence.

  Instead Marsden’s hand had found his in the gloom, had drawn it down to his naked breast. Without a word, he had climbed up beside him, knowing his need, embracing his passion, teasing it until he had no sense of his mortal frame, of the aching baggage he had accumulated with age. And the sublime moment had been a kind of death, an exquisite release and renewal, such as he had never before known. Pleasure he had taken for granted in his youth, craved for as lost in latter years, was stunning in its rediscovery.

  And the sleep which came after was the deepest, most refreshing, his memory would allow. His appetite for breakfast the keenest for years. Matthew was not merely remarkable, he was a phenomenon. A physician who had no need of physic, a man who understood his need better than he did himself.

  ‘This house is suffocating you,’ Matthew had announced over breakfast. ‘It is time we ventured out.’ The we made anything possible, even leaving the safe familiarity of Candlewick Street.

  The coach drew up to let a dray pass, then trundled over uneven cobbles into the yard of the Old Swan.

  ‘Well ‘pon my soul!’ breezed a rugged figure, dipping his head under a sagging lintel and hurrying across to the carriage where Marsden was helping the old man down the folding steps. ‘Bless me if it isn’t Judge Grafton!’ he exclaimed, clasping Sir Hilary’s hand and shaking it vigorously. ‘Last time you took a morning draught here, sir, I do believe the place was hot with news from Edgehill.’

  ‘So you thought I was pushing up the daisies, eh landlord?’ grinned the old man, straightening his coat.

  ‘Well sir, such times as we’ve had....’ The landlord bit his lip gravely. ‘Ah but it’s good to see the old faces!’ he perked. ‘What can I do for you good gentlemen? A jug of house ale? We’ve a fine sack, or porter if you prefer. A plate of beef perhaps? There’s a game of billiards going in the back‒’

  ‘A jug of buttered ale, if you please,’ instructed Sir Hilary. ‘My companion and I intend to take the river to Whitehall.’

  ‘Of course, sir; I’ll send the lad to enquire at the jetty for you.’ He dashed a raindrop from the tip of his nose and glancing up at the leaden sky, led them towards the shelter of the inn.

  They had been more than an hour in the gaming room before a boat was procured; had watched the vain attempts of several challengers to wipe the smug grin off the face of the local billiards champion. But none had matched the stocky boatman’s accuracy with the mace; his studied strikes which knocked the ivory balls cleanly through the hoops and into the pockets beyond. As they rose to leave he was still raking in the pennies.

  Even an hour’s wait, it seemed could not secure them the pair of oars ordered by Sir Hilary. The innkeeper’s lad scudded along the jetty ahead of them. ‘There’s not a scull or a wherry to be had this side of noon,’ he gasped apologetically. ‘It’s this or naught!’

  This was a flat-bottomed hoy carrying a cargo down to Lambeth. The only seat was an upturned crate and that was occupied by the boatman; a weasel-faced character who sat in the gangway draining a tankard of Swan ale. Assured by the lad that there was nothing better in sight they climbed aboard and waited for the indifferent boatman to stir himself.

  Nothing, however, seemed to dampen Sir Hilary’s spirits, not even the rain which began to drop with heavy directness, pitting the murky water of the Thames. They settled on makeshift seats made from the cargo of flour sacks, sheltering beneath an oil-cloth while the boatman steered away from the jetty.

  Cocooned in a mist of rain, the barge hugged the built up north bank, past Paul’s Wharf and Blackfriar’s Stairs, by Somerset House and the Savoy Palace. As it veered southwards with the river towards the half-mile sprawl of Whitehall, the sky began to brighten and the rain slackened. Pausing only to find an angel for the drenched riverman, Marsden hoisted Sir Hilary on to the Whitehall stairs, then followed, splashing up the puddle steps to a dry colonnade.

  The steps drained what little strength there was in the old man’s legs. Rubbing his stretched thighs while he paused for breath, he ruefully relinquished his independence and accepted Marsden’s arm. Together they strolled through the labyrinth of galleries and gardens, Sir Hilary making verbal note of various apartments they passed, dovetailing what he remembered of the place with the snippets of court news brought to him during his sittings by artist Nat Taylor. He took for granted that a servant of the king like Marsden would know the ins and outs of it all. And Marsden’s nonchalance reinforced the notion, though in fact he had never set foot in the palace before.

  ‘Ah yes,’ mumbled Sir Hilary, stopping between stone columns to stare across a quadrangle ablaze with spring blooms. ‘Over there, close by the bowling green, is the residence of the king’s brother, James, Duke of York.’ His pointed finger swung a quarter turn to the right. ‘And tucked into a quiet corner, past King’s Street and the king’s beloved tennis courts, the lodgings of his naval counterpart, Lord Albemarle. ‘Am I correct thus far?’

  Marsden smiled indulgently. ‘Doubtless.’

  ‘According to Taylor, the Castlemaine’s apartments are now to our right, though they were once by the bowling green.’

  ‘Closer to the banqueting house and the king’s privy chambers.’

  Sir Hilary sniffed censoriously. ‘If our Sovereign Lord directed a little less of his energy towards the Castlemaines of this world and a little more towards his Portuguese queen‒’ He broke off in midsentence as a woman, prim in high-collared black, emerged from a side door, steering the unsteady totters of a very young child. As nurse and child moved slowly past them, the child’s eager blethering echoed across the quadrangle. The two men bowed.

  When the tight-lipped woman was out of earshot, Marsden picked up Sir Hilary’s remark. ‘You suggest the king’s virility would be better employed in getting a legitimate heir?’

  ‘Castlemaine produced a third last Christmas, yet in six years of marriage to Queen Catherine, nothing!’

  ‘Then perhaps the lady is either unwilling or unable‒’

  ‘Unwilling was never a problem and if the woman is barren, as is said,
he’d do better to marry his mistress; it was good enough for brother James....’

  Engrossed in his own ideas, the old man seemed unaware that the conversation had lapsed into a monologue; that leaning against the stone pillar, Marsden was having to strangle the urge to laugh into his face. Bigotry, bias and buggery; that was all he was this one-time circuit judge. A fumbling fart who abused the respect granted to the opinions of old age. Unwilling was never a problem, he coughed to smother his amusement, trying in vain to imagine old Grafton raping any woman. He had hanged a good many in his time but it would have to be flaunted in front of his face before his codpiece was undone.

  ‘...then I never expected any better of Barbara,’ rattled on the old man. ‘Had a wayward streak in her since a child. Her fool mother, you know, wouldn’t have her strapped.’ Marsden’s straying attention snapped back.

  ‘It was not her first attempt at elopement,’ he said carefully.

  Barbara ... foolish Barbara to have chosen such a night to drag him into her manipulative games. The blood had been on him, triggered by Caroline’s nightmare.

  You will be there Marsden, won’t you? Caught up in the thrill of slipping past Jessie Harris, of riding away with him into the early hours, she had had no sense of the danger in him. That had been her downfall. We are two of a kind, she had said. And the empty-headed impertinence of her words, of the attempt to trade flesh for a hold over him, might have been laughable but for the rawness of his nerves that night.

  ‘No Grafton blood in her,’ the old man was saying. ‘Canard died at sea you know. I suppose the little hussy went after you, eh?’ He sniffed. ‘Enough gall even for that!’

  Marsden concentrated on the bubbling water of a central fountain. The colonnade was beginning to hum with footsteps and voices. They moved on towards the Stone Gallery, hugging the stone columns. ‘Country life was too dull for Barbara,’ he said pointedly, ‘she sought her amusement where she could.’