The Cursed Bride

by Camille Oster

  "You horrible woman," Aldine accused, drawing attention to her. "You've been giving me that 'mint' tea since the moment I arrived. All along you were poisoning me. Why?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about. I gave you nothing I didn't have myself, did I? This is simply your mad paranoia speaking. That's all. No one has tried to kill you. No one believes you."

  "And psilocybe are mushroom, producing powerful hallucinations. They can be ground up and put in anything."

  "The vanilla sauce," Aldine stated. "I was the only one who had it."

  "I had some too and it didn’t do anything to me."

  "But you didn't eat it," Weber said. "It was untouched on your plate when I cleared them away."

  "Be quiet, you stupid old man. No one cares what you have to say."

  "But you dumped these in the forest," Wolfgang cut in.

  "Yes, why did you?" Ludwig said, turning to her.

  "Says him. Everyone knows he’s had it out for me from the first day I arrived. No point denying it,” she said, turning to Wolfgang. “It is probably yours. You are the one who has caused all the problems here," Elke said with raised eyebrows as if she was making a point. “You are the jealous one. Have been all your life.”

  Aldine shifted as close as she could. "Why does she hate you, Wolfgang?"

  Everyone turned to him. "Because she tried to seduce me and I wanted nothing to do with it. From the start she wanted to manipulate me to do her bidding, but I never played along, and her regard turned very sour after that."

  Wilhelmina gasped.

  "Liar!" Elke roared. Turning her attention to Ludwig, she walked closer to him. "They're lying. They're all lying. She is the crazy one and they're blaming it on me. I didn't do anything. She is the one doing this. She is mad, ran off a cliff. What was I supposed to do?" Tears were flowing down her cheeks. Deep groves of concern marred Ludwig’s countenance. He wanted to believe his wife, but he had doubts.

  "The scuffle marks of an altercation are quite clear from where Aldine fell," Heinrich added calmly.

  Elke's tears stopped and her face turned cold before she bared her teeth and rushed for Heinrich with her fingers like claws, aiming for his face, but she wasn't strong enough against the grip he took on her wrists. "How dare you accuse me? You’re the one the curse is on. You should have sent her away. Why couldn't you just do as you were supposed to? This is all your fault."

  "You killed Josefina and Luise," Heinrich accused.

  "You killed them," she shot back. There was no mask now, her rage was fully revealed. "You are the one the curse is on, don't you see? It was all you. So arrogant and stupid. You never understood anything. And him,” she said, turning to Wolfgang, “always that raging jealousy. He would have turned on you eventually, all of you. Don’t you see that? He’s responsible. He just now walked into the house with those substances, didn’t he? Had them all along. I won’t let you blame any of this on me. He was the one who pushed that whore off the cliff. Probably’d had enough of her.” Elke positively glowed with righteous indignation, masking sheer desperation.

  "Elke," Ludwig warned, taking her by the waist. “He could not have. He was with me when Aldine fell—was pushed.” Elke looked at him as he had conducted the deepest betrayal. “What have you done?”

  She faltered for a moment. “It was all for you. Don’t you see that? You deserve so much more—we deserve so much more.” Everyone stood in shocked silence, until Ludwig finally picked her up and carried her from the room.

  "I think we had better summon the police," Heinrich said.

  "She will hang if you do," Wilhelmina said. "There will be scandal."

  "She cannot stay here," Wolfgang said disbelievingly. "She murders anyone who gets in the way of her ambition."

  "Which is what, exactly?" Wilhelmina asked.

  "To be countess. She just admitted it. That has always been her goal."

  For a second, it looked like Wilhelmina wanted to argue, but she couldn’t. Elke had just admitted her reasoning. The whole house now had a shocked stillness. Where Elke had been taken, Aldine had no idea. Poor Ludwig. No one had looked as shocked and betrayed as he had.

  Still carrying the pouches, Doctor Hagen came up the stairs. There was a heaviness in his step that reflected the mood everyone felt. For Aldine, it also felt as if everything had been uncovered, the festering wound hidden in this house had been revealed.

  Arriving to her, the doctor sighed. "You are lucky to be alive in more ways than I thought. In large enough doses, pennyroyal poisoning can lead to paralysis and death."

  "I think that is how Josefina died. She died of a fever, did she not? And she had had the same fever-ridden dreams I did."

  "There is a good chance, but we will never really know." Taking the handles from Anna, he wheeled her back to her bedroom.

  "I suspect she will continue to blame Wolfgang. It is her only chance."

  "Then she underestimates the bond between brothers," Doctor Hagen said. "There is too much evidence against her."

  "But she did drink the pennyroyal herself. I saw her on many occasions."

  "Perhaps she didn't want to risk becoming pregnant until she knew her ambitions were realized—in case she needed to cut her losses. I suspect if they look into her past, they will find other evidence of her ambition."

  "How could someone kill people for a title—people they sit next to every single day?"

  "It would take a very twisted mind."

  Heinrich appeared at the door and Doctor Hagen took his leave. Anna left the room too.

  "We will have her committed," he said. "It is the best place for her. She will live out her days in an institution where she cannot harm anyone. I agree with this decision. For one, I do not wish any more blood on my hands."

  "You are not responsible for any of this."

  "If I hadn't so willfully ignored what was being told to me, perhaps I would have seen this—perhaps I would have stopped this from happening. Even you were almost taken from me, and throughout I struggled to believe the things you told me. I will carry that guilt for a long time."

  Sitting down on the bed, he took her hand as she sat in the wheelchair. Aldine could commiserate with that guilt. She would feel the same if she had ignored such things—even as she would suspect the person making such claims were mad. It was different when one was the person going through it.

  "Those mushrooms are very powerful. I literally saw and felt the world breaking into pieces, but I knew she was trying to harm me. I was just too addled to stop her. That was perhaps the point. I never wish to know those mushrooms again."

  "Sadly they grow all over the forest. I will teach you which ones are safe to pick, or we will all have an interesting supper."

  Aldine smiled at the thought. God forbid. "It is over, isn't it?"

  "Yes," Heinrich said. "She will not harm anyone again. Ludwig has her locked in her room. He will take her to Switzerland tomorrow, where she will be cared for by professionals. She will never return. He is devastated."

  "Poor Ludwig."

  "I suspect, in time, he will seek a divorce, but I do not know. He will have to decide what to do with her, but we will not desert her completely. We don't have to leave her to the cruelty and mercy of the madhouse—instead an institution where she will be cared for. She is insane—we do not wish for her to suffer."

  Aldine nodded, although she wasn’t entirely convinced Elke wasn’t simply evil. Treating her with kindness was perhaps the right thing to do. Heinrich was always kind and it was the reason Aldine adored him. Leaning over, he kissed her.

  "I must go help with the preparations. In the morning, she will go."

  Aldine nodded as he rose and left.

  Taking a deep breath, she realized it truly was over. The incessant darkness that she had felt encroaching on her was over. The battle had been fought and won. The enemy had been hidden, but she was now uncovered. All this time, the misdirection and the accusation of witchcraft, the constant sus
picion—it was all over.

  Chapter 32

  IT WAS A TENSE NIGHT, but not because of any disturbances to her peace, other than Aldine going over in her mind what had happened and the things Elke had done. They were still incomprehensible.

  She was being taken away this morning. Ludwig was to drive her to Switzerland, where she was to be placed in a better institution than she deserved, because Aldine didn't think she was insane—just callous and ambitions. Evil even. The woman didn't care at all about the impact her ambition had on others. But luckily that ambition had finally been thwarted.

  Out the window, Aldine heard her leave without much fanfare. They simply got into the carriage and drove off. And then the house was quiet. The evil that had dogged the house was gone.

  Shortly after, steps approached her room and Heinrich appeared. "She is gone," he said. He still looked troubled by these latest events and revelations.

  "Hopefully there will be peace in this house."

  "I believe Ludwig intends to continue traveling after. This has all been quite a shock to him."

  Was it horrible to say she was glad? He had been such a strong detractor, attacking her character and sanity. At some point he would come back, but she would have to deal with that then.

  "There will be awkward questions about her whereabouts. It worries mother," he said with a note of exasperation.

  Was it horrible that she wasn't overly concerned about Wilhelmina's worry about social consequences either? Although she could imagine Wilhelmina squirm when Lady Thainor asked what had happened to Elke, not that the woman had ever really cared about Elke. Aldine remembered how dismissed Elke had been by the lady. Perhaps that dismissal was what drove someone like her to murder people around her. A shudder went down Aldine's back.

  "She is a bit lost for words at the moment," he continued. "She can't understand how she didn't see it."

  "Elke was good at hiding herself and her intentions. I never saw it either until she pushed me off a cliff."

  "You are lucky to be alive. I am so relieved you are alive. When I saw you down there, my heart sank. I was devastated. But when we got to you, you opened your eyes." Leaning over, he stroked her cheek. "It is inconceivable what she took away from me—and tried to. I am not sure I can forgive her."

  "I suppose it is too much to ask for you to forget her."

  "But we must be happy," he stated.

  Aldine smiled. That was exactly what she wanted. "Then let's be happy."

  Rising, he kissed her. "I will go build our bed," he said and left.

  *

  It took weeks for Aldine's leg to heal, but it finally did. Their existence was peaceful, especially since Wilhelmina had decided to visit her sister for a while. She had been quiet and introverted since Elke’s proclivities had been revealed.

  Now it was only the two of them in the house and for the first time, Aldine felt as if it was truly her and Heinrich together. It was a bit lonely during the days, but she loved missing him, and then he would come home and they would eat and sit in the salon and chat until it was time to go upstairs. Even the house felt peaceful. The dark decor inside didn't seem so oppressive; it was more comfortable.

  Today, though, it was a nice day and Aldine felt restless. She hadn't walked much for a while and now she felt like she needed to get out of the house, so she walked along familiar paths, staying away from the cliff from where she had fallen. She wasn't ready to revisit the place and the awful, terrified feelings she'd had there.

  Instead, she walked the narrowing path to that place few people ever went—to the witches' cottage. There was still a question praying on her mind. What had been real and what had been induced by the substances Elke had given her? The fever and the feelings of fire were explained by the pennyroyal, but the dreams, the betrayal, the heat—that had felt different.

  Part of her accepted that it were the mad ravings of a person under the influence of mind-altering substances, but another part of her had trouble shaking the things she had seen in her dreams. It felt as if something was unanswered.

  As she approached the hollow where the witches' cottage was, she saw a different place than before. It had entirely fallen down, as if whatever had been holding it up had given. There was just a jumble of mossy bumps on the ground. The witches' cottage was no more.

  It wasn't them that had tried to kill her or the two women before her—that had been Elke's very real ambition. In fact, Elke had been the one talking about a curse to rear fear and worry. She had used it to generate the kind of neurotic behavior she’d wanted.

  Taking a last look at the remnants of the past, she turned back. That feeling of heaviness wasn't here anymore either, but unfortunately Aldine couldn't tell what was Elke's influence and what was not. The story of the witches and what had happened to them wasn't a lie. The trials had happened and the women who had lived here had been persecuted.

  She had seen that witch being burned in the painting and she would bet her life it had not been there before, and that was clearly before Elke had started feeding her those hallucination-inducing mushrooms. Their effect was never in question, and until she had seen that addition to the painting, she had never seen anything of her fears manifested. But then, it could be that Elke had painted it there when the room had been left empty.

  With a deep sigh, she started to walk back the way she had come. Even the forest held no fear for her now. The last time she'd come here, the feeling of unease had been palpable—now it felt almost comforting.

  Back at the house, she stopped by the workshop where their bed was almost finished. Heinrich wasn't there—instead at the mill, seeing to the work there. Wolfgang was gone. Aldine hadn't seen him in days. He ate supper with them quite often, but he rarely stayed otherwise. Heinrich suspected he had a sweetheart somewhere in the village. Aldine hoped so.

  Absently, she put her hand on her belly. Her monthly had not arrived, but she didn't feel sickly like some said she would. If by next month, she still hadn't bled, then she would tell Heinrich. He would be beside himself. Children running around the house was something he dearly wanted, and how things were now, they would make a wonderful family. Hope surged in her, but she guarded herself against disappointment. In her heart, though, she knew there was a child growing inside her.

  A gentle breeze rustled through the leaves and the sun shone. It really was a lovely day. Away from the house, Weber was pottering around in the herb garden. Anna was probably in the kitchen with the cook. They kept to themselves if they weren't needed, and everyone seemed happy that way.

  There were no feelings of foreboding when she walked into the house. It was just a house, but something drew her attention, told her to pay attention. Drawing her back at the painting, a market scene. Nothing moved, nothing terrifying was there, but the hair on the back of her neck stood up. In the very distance was the tiny depiction of a pyre and a woman burning.

  Aldine stared at it for a moment. She was sure it hadn't been there before. "I swear," she said through gritted teeth, "so much as a peep out of you and I will burn every painting in this house."

  There was no response, no shift in temperature or atmosphere. No currents of heat. All was like it had been before. A clock ticked gently from the hallway. There was nothing. The small depiction just sat there as if completely forgotten and unnoticed by the townspeople in the market.

  "Weber," she called and it took a moment for the man to arrive. "Do you see that?" she asked, pointing to the tiny pyre in the picture.

  Looking closely, he squinted. "I never noticed that before. They were different times back then."

  "Yes," Aldine said, not quite sure what to think. It had been many weeks since Elke had been taken away, but there hadn't been so much as a peep of anything untoward in the house. Nothing scary or ominous. No fiery dreams or hot currents. Everything was peaceful. Perhaps the witches just wanted to tell their story—an echo of the atrocities of the past.

  Either way, Aldine would keep an eye
on them and if they stepped out of line, she would act. Somehow, though, she had the feeling they had told their story to her already, and there were worse things to fear in the world than long-dead witches. "Behave," she said firmly.

  The End

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  Other books by Camille Oster

  The Curse at Rose Hill - The glittering and bright regency society of Montserrat, a Caribbean Island, exists only because of the miserable toil of some. The accepted unjustness of it jars Miss Emmeline Durrant who arrives from Boston to be a companion to a Mrs. Thornton, but being alone in the world, it is an opportunity she cannot afford to pass up. Even so, her welcome proves less than earnest and secrets emerge from every shadowed corner as she takes up her new position at the Rose Hill plantation.

  https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Rose-Hill-regency-Caribbean-ebook/dp/B071LFKH4Q/

  The Governess - Traveling beyond England hadn’t come into Estelle Winstone’s mind when she received a response to her advertisement for a position as governess. That she would have to travel all the way to Hungary sent nerves twisting inside her gut, as would meeting the mysterious count who would now be her employer. Unable to speak the language or with much to guide her, she found her new home nestled in remote mountains where hungry wolves prowled outside a dark and drafty castle scared by a long history and recent tragedies.

  https://www.amazon.com/Governess-classic-Victorian-gothic-romance-ebook/dp/B01M6ZO371/

  The Discarded Wife - Victorian London is a cruel place for a divorcee, but with the death of Sophie Duthie’s beloved second husband, she is now a widow, and independent for the first time in her life. She might not have much in terms of means, but with the help of her music shop, she can support herself and her son, Alfie. Even though her second marriage was happy, Sophie is done with husbands. Her first marriage taught her well that fairy tales are nothing more than illusions.