He surfaced through the smoky haze; unflinching, patiently waiting. Kate rose to her feet and stared down. A rushing stopped her ears. Flame crowned the edges of her sight. And energy coursed from her fingertips and toes, inwards and upwards. Lightning streams of it, cohered and converged through the lenses of her eyes – on him.
His shoulders slumped forwards with a shudder. His jaw slackened and his face puckered into a frown. He dropped his outstretched arms and with a yell, hurled himself at the steps.
Kate’s eyes followed him, every nerve in her racked to keep him in direct focus. She barred her mind to the terror that was rocking the steps beneath her, intent on her destruction. She held her focus, groaning aloud with the effort, snatched breath and held it until her chest ached.
He was halfway up when he fell against the crumbling wall – when with a startled scream, he dropped to his knees and ripped at his jacket and shirt.
Trembling with effort, Kate sank to her own knees on the wooden platform. She watched his fingers claw from one baluster to the next in a desperate bid to get to her. An arm’s length away, he squealed with pain; chest heaving, hauled himself up and swayed before her.
A bluish flame issued from the loose skin under his ribs. With grim rapidity it seared upwards into the hair of his chest, downwards into his loins. The enveloped torso writhed. The courtyard reverberated with its pain. Then with a tortured scream, he slumped towards her.
‘No!’ Kate wailed, pushing him away. Consumed from neck to knee, he hung for a moment, his eyes wide and staring. Then he crashed back through the rail, burning arms flailing the air as he fell towards the cobbles.
Kate crawled to the edge of the platform and pressed her face between the balusters. She watched until the last scream died in his throat; transfixed until the last blue flame flickered and died on the pile of smoking cinders, and the smell of charred wood was masked by the sickly stench of burnt flesh....
‘Merciful God, I see her! Over there, look!’
Kate turned blearily towards the street opening and saw coughing figures pelting across the courtyard. Soldiers, she guessed, vaguely recalling the one in the street. They drew nearer and in the light of their torches she saw the gleaming buttons of wet tunics draped over their heads.
The first stumbled through the pile of greasy cinders below the steps. He stooped down lowering his torch.
‘Sweet Jesu!’ he cried, leaping back.
Two others leaned over the spot. ‘There’s naught left of the poor sod, save half a skull,’ one said grimly.
‘Look here!’ gulped a younger one. ‘Fingers! Three of them!’
Kate eased herself to her feet and began a shaky descent.
‘Where’s the rest of him?’ squawked the young soldier.
‘Bits of bone,’ said another, gingerly poking the heap. ‘Never seen bone crumble to ash before‒’
‘Good God, he’s all here!’ yelled the first, sniffing the yellow grease on his fingers. ‘Pah! If that ain’t mortal fat, my name’s not Edgar Hutchinson.’
Kate stumbled into the courtyard and kicked the knife he had dropped during his final assault, across the shadowy cobbles. All at once the tiredness went from her and she was oblivious to all pain. Intent on the grisly heap, the militia did not challenge her as she walked around them towards the stable door. She paused on the threshold, eyes and nostrils tightening in the singeing heat. Then stepped into the conflagration....
‘Sergeant Hutchinson?’
Edgar Hutchinson glanced up at the dirt-streaked features of King Charles. The king folded his hands into his reins and with a backward glance at St Paul’s blazing dome, gave a weary sigh. ‘You speak of a man burnt to dust, and a woman who walked unscathed through a furnace to retrieve her child.’ The lean face creased into a tired smile.
‘Not me alone, Your Majesty,’ stammered the sergeant. ‘Corporal Lutchins and Infantryman Stacey.’
The king inclined his head. ‘Indeed,’ he said absently.
‘Lutchins, he saw her go inside. Well we pressed close as we could to the door. The heat held us back, blistering it was.’ Hutchinson twisted his hat in his hands, beginning to doubt his own recollection of the scene.
‘You saw her walk through the flames?’ prompted the king.
The sergeant nodded vigorously. ‘With my own eyes – a good ten feet in, she went.’
‘And this incombustible creature re-emerged carrying a naked infant.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty. Straight past us as if it were naught strange. Aghast we was. But I shouts after her “Who was he?” meaning the ash heap. And she turns and stares straight into my eyes and says, “A Son of Solomon.” Well I’d have gone after her but the door atop the steps suddenly blowed ... it was as much as we could do to save our own skins.’
The king stared for a moment into the soldier’s earnest face, then turned his horse’s head. ‘The blast unnerved you, Sergeant, rest awhile. The City needs every man if she’s to be saved.’ He moved away and the royal entourage closed ranks. Trotting towards Ludgate, the king enquired, ‘What is known of the Sons of Solomon?’
Out of the ashes....
On a hilltop overlooking the burning metropolis, Kate paused to rest. She sat on a small bundle of belongings, pulled the strings of her chemise and put the child to her breast.
As the toothless palate found its goal, she stroked the downy head and quietly hummed a tune remembered of her mother. And her quiet mind drifted back to an August night on a hillside far away with Jack by her side.
‘You came to me there, François,’ she murmured, smiling as she imagined fields dotted with stooks of oats and a scattering of black-eyed poppies. Time to feed up the ewes, ready for tupping. She laughed softly at her own foolish hankering.
She had willed the sun to set on the old life. Had chosen the evening. She pressed her lips against the gently pulsing fontanelle, and whispered, ‘Just you and me now, François.’
And turned her face up to greet the dawn.
The End
THE WITCH is the first book in the trilogy by Cheryl Potter:
THE WITCH
THE WITCH’S SON
THE SORCERER
By the same author:
THE MORTAL WIFE
Visit Cheryl Potter at Amazon
or Cheryl Potter(@rosiebelle10) on Twitter
The Witch’s Son
Ah Kate, did you think me gone?
1683: seventeen years have passed since Katharine Gurney – the one they called the witch – emerged with her infant son François from the flames of burning London. Quiet years, lulling years....
But one shade has never gone away, has watched her children grow, waiting for the chance to strike back at her.
The second part of the Witch Trilogy is the story of François – his passage from youth to a manhood made potent by hardship and the supernatural powers he has inherited from his mother.
It is the tale of a mother’s love, and of a man’s struggle against injustice and slavery: of his fight against the legacy of evil that has pursued him from beyond the grave.
By the same author:
The Mortal Wife
And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of heaven, saw and lusted after them. Rebel angels descended and the fruit of the union betwixt the fallen and their mortal wives were called the Watchers....
The whole of Ruth Madigan’s adult life has revolved around the care and wishes of her disabled mother. When her mother dies, Clara, an elderly and otherwise reclusive resident of the Laurels rest home, befriends Ruth. It is a friendship that will transform Ruth’s world. But there is a dark side to Clara, a legacy she must pass on before her mortal life is done.
The Mortal Wife is a story of loneliness and manipulation, of murder and transformation. It is a tale of mortals caught up in the final throes of an age-old rebellion. And of the souls in the balanc
e.
Contents
Part 1: Terra
He Comes ...
The Absolution ...
Possession ...
The Familiar ...
Part 2: Aer
Gifts...
Gull-Catching ...
Shades ...
Part 3: Aqua
Discoveries ...
Watching ...
The Cunning Man ...
Maleficium ...
Rebirth ...
The Dawning ...
London ...
François ...
Shadows
Encounters ...
The Rouge Route ...
The Witness ...
Witchcraft ...
Sons of Solomon ...
Part 4: Ignis
Fire ...
And Consummation ...
The Witch (The Witch Trilogy Book 1) Page 21
