The Prisoner

by James Darke

  The carnage to his central nervous system caused his body to thrash and jerk for some seconds, fingers and feet moving convulsively. The yard filled with the stink of dying and bladder and bowels opened uncontrollably. The breath still rasped in his throat and blood gouted from his smashed nose.

  A darker thread inched from the corner of his open mouth.

  ‘Ferris!’ The voice was an animal shriek. Coming from the opened casement immediately above his head.

  John turned and looked up, seeing the face of Robert Monk, glaring at him. There was a cocked pistol in the hand of the Witchfinder. In that frozen moment Ferris also saw the silhouette of a woman’s head, in the room with Monk, but there was no chance to identify her. It was probably Liza Hail or some local drab.

  But John’s only concern was for his life. The range was so close that he knew he had little chance, but he tried. Diving to his left, but his foot slipped in the pool of blood from Mendoza’s mouth and he fell.

  Saving his life.

  The boom of the pistol and the cloud of powder smoke simultaneous with the crack of the lead ball gouging at the earth less than a foot from his head.

  He crawled across and reached for his sword, hearing the barn door crashing back on his hinges and a yell of anger from one of the Mendoza brothers.

  With all hope of surprise gone his only chance was to flee, and that was his course. Sprinting across the garden of the inn, vaulting a low hedge, and running as fast as he could, through the bushes and trees, across fields, to where Morgana was tethered. For some minutes he heard the noise of pursuit, and then that faded away and he knew that he was safe.

  Two days later he was in Romney, circling the small town and approaching it from the east. Only to find that there had been no need for his precautions.

  Monk was gone.

  Been and gone.

  It took only the most casual inquiries. Any man on the streets would tell you about the arrival of the eminent Witchfinder with his company. Two hulking men, swarthy, like Spaniards or gipsies. A woman, into middle-age, smoking a pipe and looking out of sorts with the world. She had opened up a baker’s face with her whip when he attempted a casual jest.

  ‘And a younger woman?’

  But nobody had seen Mary. Though the wagon had been kept laced up, the canvas cover undisturbed. The local magistrate had assumed that Monk had come in reply to his letter and had sallied forth to meet him. Only to find that the Witchfinder had been and gone. Heading on to the coast.

  John Ferris walked on the shingled beach, watching the sun sinking over the sullen water. There was a rain-storm out across the Channel, mist beneath the darkness, with the fiery orb dipping into the red tinted waters below it.

  The tiny pebbles crunched under his feet and his eyes were set over the rolling waves. Towards France. A local fisherman had taken them there the previous dawn.

  ‘Three men and two women.’

  That was all he’d noticed.

  Except that two of the men seemed in a fine temper and were all for staying behind. The third man, the oldest of them, would have none of that and insisted on a speedy sailing. Neither of the women had made much impression on the boatman, though he’d seen that one was young and one not.

  That was all.

  ‘There will be time, Robert Monk,’ swore John Ferris. ‘You will return, and by Mary and Joseph I shall await you here. Though it takes for ever and a day. Vengeance shall be mine, I swear it.’

  The sun was nearly gone.

  I shall not suffer a witchfinder to live,’ he whispered.

  Finally, the light was quite gone and darkness covered the beach.

  But John Ferris knew that one day there would again be light.

  THUS ENDS BOOK ONE OF THE WITCHES