The Witch Queen

by Jan Siegel

  “When you are hungry, there will be another,” promised Morgus. “Eat well, and grow!”

  In her basement spellchamber, she mixed a potion from the sap of the Tree and left a bowl out nightly for the spider to drink.

  Upstairs in the kitchen, Grodda watched over the remaining puppies, stroking them and making inarticulate cooing noises, until one by one they were all gone.

  Ragginbone stood outside a building site in King’s Cross, reading the graffiti on the barrier walls. Among the usual scribblings of the lewd and crude there were signs that he recognized, or thought he recognized, though some were so ancient he was unsure of their meaning. All were freshly painted in various colors; he had a feeling each color, too, had a unique significance. He wondered who had done it. There were many strange creatures lost in the London crowds: werefolk, spirits in human or semihuman forms, a few of the Gifted who, like Moonspittle, had outlived their time and lingered on, furtive and ineffectual, telling fortunes, weaving petty spells, too old to die. But it did not really matter who was responsible. What mattered was that there could be something on that site which needed protection, or isolation, and there were those who had sensed it, or thought they had sensed it, and had taken the necessary measures. Ragginbone walked around the perimeter for some time before seeking admittance.

  “I was hoping to talk to the archaeologists,” he told the guard at the gate. “I am something of an expert myself.”

  The man took one look at his eccentric garb and believed him. Ragginbone followed him through the site to an area crisscrossed with trenches where about a dozen people, mostly of student age, bent or squatted over various inscrutable tasks. Both sexes wore jeans, T-shirts, long untidy hair, and, in a couple of cases, designer stubble. The guard called: “Mr. Hunter!” and one of them straightened up, glancing toward the intruders with a preoccupied air. “Visitor for you. Says he’s an expert on this stuff.”

  The man murmured an “Okay,” and the guard returned to his post, showing no further interest.

  “I don’t want to disturb you,” Ragginbone said, “but I was intrigued when I read about your excavation. You seem to think you may have found traces of something very ancient, or so I gathered. The roots of London run deep.”

  “What’s your interest?” asked the young man. He had a slight American accent, possibly Californian. “You’re definitely not the press.”

  “I am also an archaeologist—of a kind. Purely amateur, I’m afraid. My name is Watchman.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” the young man said. “I’m Dane Hunter. I’m in charge here. Most of my fellow workers are student volunteers. Everyone approves of salvaging our heritage, but no one wants to pay for it. Still, we welcome informed enthusiasts.”

  “I was hoping,” said Ragginbone, “that you would inform me.”

  The young man was actually not so young, he noticed. Perhaps thirty-five or so. The long off-blond hair, pulled back into a disheveled ponytail, and the jeans-and-T-shirt uniform gave him an air of superficial studenthood, but the planes of his face had hardened and there were faint lines around his eyes and barring his forehead. His mouth was slim and set, its seriousness belied by the more quizzical of the lines; his light tan and the muscles in his forearms indicated an outdoor lifestyle and regular physical exertion. But then, Ragginbone reflected, glancing around the site, much of archaeology did take place alfresco, involving digging with pickaxes or dental probes, exploring caves and graves, grubbing among stones and bones. Dane Hunter looked at once the man of action and the man of thought, though the action was undoubtedly careful and considered, his thought processes probably rather more rapid. Ragginbone noticed how the female volunteers glanced around at his approach and took their time before reverting to the work at hand.

  Hunter talked easily about the indications of a building, possibly a temple from the layout, predating the Romans. “We’ve found some fragments of a skeleton or more than one, though they don’t appear to be human. They could point to some kind of sacrifice. There are also a few artifacts: a stone knife, a broken cup or chalice, and some pieces that may have a religious significance. We don’t yet know what religion. There were so many primitive gods around, and we have so few written records of any of them. We think this would have been the altar . . .”

  He stopped beside a rather deeper depression, where stone showed beneath the earth. A youth in his late teens was sweeping a brush across a partially exposed surface.

  Dane said: “We’re hoping for an inscription. That would at least give us the language, which would be a starting point.” He added, politely: “You said you were an expert. Have you any ideas?”

  “Yes,” said Ragginbone, “I have. But I think for the moment I shall keep them to myself. I trust you won’t object if I return from time to time?”

  “No,” said Dane, clearly slightly nonplussed. “I don’t object. But—”

  “And if you find an inscription,” said Ragginbone, “I should like to see it.”

  He did not go straight back to the shop that never opened but made his way instead to Fern’s flat, walking south through the park, taking his time. London flowed past and over him, a river blended of many million lives, many million stories. His tale was just one droplet in the flood, a single strand in a vast embroidery, and somehow it comforted him to think of this, to catch in faces anxious or hopeful, vivid or closed, a glimpse of the wider spectrum of existence. In the country, it had often calmed him to watch the ever-changing sky and think of Keats: “Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,” but here Man, even more than nature, set him in his place in the world. He reflected with the philosophical outlook that comes from great age that if they lost their particular battle, it might matter for a little space, a moment of eternity, but somewhere else, someone would win.

  But he knew Fern would not see it that way.

  She was home from work when he reached Pimlico. Whether his journey was long or short, fast or slow, he had acquired the knack of arriving at the right time. Maybe it had something to do with the Gift he had lost.

  “I haven’t seen you for a week,” she said. “What have you been up to?”

  “Walking. Thinking. I visited a building site today. I think you should come and have a look sometime.”

  “At a building site? Why?”

  “Rescue archaeologists are at work there. They have made certain discoveries, not much yet, but there may be more. My heart tells me this is important.”

  “What have they found?”

  “Something very ancient,” said Ragginbone. “Maybe a temple. It smells of death. Old death, long gone. But the runes on the outer wall were new, scribbled among the graffiti. That in itself is an indicator. Someone thinks the place is in need of occult protection—or isolation. Death connects with death: it may once have held a link to the dark kingdom, the source of Morgus’s invulnerability. There could be some clue—”

  “I have been to the dark kingdom,” said Fern. “Remember? It’s empty now, a waste of vacant caverns, full of ghosts. There were no clues.”

  “Nonetheless,” said Ragginbone, “it would be foolish not to check.”

  “I’ll check,” said Fern, with a hint of tartness.

  Later, they sat down over a salad supper, discussing their researches. “Gaynor rang today,” Fern said. “She got a colleague in Cardiff to e-mail her the photofiles of some manuscripts they have there. Very obscure mythology predating the Mabinogion. Unfortunately, they’re in Welsh, and he forgot to e-mail the translation. She said she’d get back to him, but . . . I can’t really believe we’re going anywhere with all of this. I think . . .”

  “Yes?” Ragginbone encouraged. “What do you think?”

  “I have this feeling the real answer must be something very simple—something so obvious that we’ve overlooked it. That sounds like a whodunit, I know. Only this is a howdunit, and I’m the murderess, and the crime has yet to be committed.”

  “The crime is being committed,”
Ragginbone pointed out. “Dana’s soul is imprisoned; her father may well be subject to some kind of mind control. What Morgus is doing at Wrokeby we can only speculate. You said she still dreams of ruling Britain. Her thoughts are limited by her past; she cannot look beyond old ambitions. But that does not limit her power. She could do great harm. Save your conscience for after the deed.”

  “I know,” said Fern. “The native hue of resolution gets sicklied o’er by the pale cast of thought. And all that. I will try to stop thinking.”

  “How do your relations progress with Lucas Walgrim?”

  “Relations? We don’t have relations. Just dinner. Sometimes.”

  He saw the doubt in her face, the holding back. “What troubles you?”

  It was a while before she answered. “I dream about him. He dreams about me. He dreamed long before—of things that touch my life. He dreamed of drowning . . .”

  “You said he was Gifted. The Gift may reach out, mind to mind, binding two people together long before they meet.”

  “You said the soul returns. That if I truly loved, I might find Rafarl again—someday. I’ve always wondered: when is Someday?”

  “Did you truly love? You were still only a child, after all.”

  “I don’t know. That’s just it. I don’t know anything. I can’t properly remember his face. Rafarl’s, I mean. He had a tooth missing from his lower jaw: I remember that. So has Luc. Does that mean something?”

  He thought she looked suddenly very young and unsophisticated, almost pleading with him, her expression naked.

  He said: “We have no answers. Only questions. Maybe there are no answers to find. Some things you have to take on trust. But beware of sentimentality.”

  “Thanks,” said Fern, relapsing into a smile. “You have, as usual, given me contradictory lines of advice. Both a warning and an endorsement. There are times when you behave exactly like the best wizards of fiction. It’s a pity you don’t have their power.”

  “The greatest fiction is always founded on truth, if not fact. I used to meet a man in a pub in Oxford, many years ago. He was an academic, a scholar of ancient languages. I remember he wanted to create a mythology for Britain. We talked a lot about this and that. He struck me as intelligent and imaginative, a Catholic as I once was. Perhaps that was why I gave him one of my Italian names: Gabbandolfo, Elvincape in English. I believe he was a genius, in his way. His stories have the true magic, the Gift that holds the reader. A story is only another kind of spell.”

  “In that case,” said Fern, “you have not lost all your power. That is the best story I’ve heard from you yet. But is it gospel, or apocrypha?”

  “It is as real as your tale,” said Ragginbone. “But whether the man learned from me, or even remembered our conversation, that is another matter. He was probably too wise for that.”

  “False modesty,” Fern said. “Not a wizardly quality. You haven’t helped, you know—but you’ve given me something to smile about, in the night watches. Whether it’s true or not.”

  Ragginbone’s face—an old man’s face, tough as oak and not always entirely human—scrunched into a thousand lines, brightening with unwizardly mischief. “Good,” he said. “Then fact or fancy, it isn’t wasted.”

  I visited the prisoner yesterday. Even without the nightmares, his condition had deteriorated. Being only semihuman he can go a long while without nourishment, but since his return I had instructed Grodda to bring him food each evening, and he was daubed in his own filth, his hair hanging over his face, clogged with a thick grease that seemed to be made from a mixture of dust and urine. It was as if his self-disgust required a physical manifestation, the need not merely to loathe his own being but to wallow in that loathing. What little dignity he once assumed was long abandoned. He stank. I mocked him from a distance, savoring his torment, but in truth he was almost too far gone for me to take further pleasure in my revenge. It was the man in him whose suffering I could appreciate, and now he was all beast. Vengeance is satisfying in its completeness, but I had hoped to delay that end a little longer, and play out my games with him, and watch the pain behind his eyes. Last night, I did not want to get that close.

  “He has paid the price of betrayal,” I told my friend. I had taken her head out of the jar and stood it in a shallow basin of the preserving fluid, which continued to seep upward from the neck and permeate the whole fruit. Regular periods of immersion were still necessary to stave off decay, but in the basin, she could talk to me.

  I am not sure this is an advantage.

  “What of your treachery?” she shrilled. “You hold me imprisoned in this state, fruit of the Eternal Tree, prolonging my torment, keeping me from both death and the chance of further life. Find me a body, a vessel to inhabit. You have the power, and such things have been done before. You know the long-lost words spoken from beyond the grave: The damned are not forever lost. That girl you have stolen must be young and strong. Give me her physical being, and let her soul wither, bodiless.”

  “I do not have her,” I explained. “Her body lies in a hospital; only her spirit is mine. Still, the idea is interesting. I might find you a body of another kind, say, that of some animal, maybe a pig. That, too, has been done before.”

  “Do not taunt me!” she hissed. “Remember: we were as sisters. We shared everything.”

  “I had a sister once,” I said, “a blood-sister, Morgun, my twin. We too shared everything. Our first pleasure was in each other’s arms, our spirits were interwoven, our minds had a single bent. But she was wayward and seduced by her own lusts. She gave up the way of witchkind and the pursuit of power for the chimera of love and the forgiveness of men. She turned against me—even me—in search of something she called redemption, and she died in bitterness, and hung on the Tree cursing my name. That is the nature of sisterhood.” The cat Nehemet purred as I spoke, a soft throbbing sound not altogether pleasant to hear, and rubbed her naked flank against my legs.

  “I was a different kind of sister,” insisted the head, fear-pale. “I never failed you, or cheated you.”

  “Ah, but not for the lack of wishing!” I said, half teasing, seeing in her fear that it was true. I stroked her cheek, still young and full in the first ripeness of the fruit. “Do not trouble yourself, Sysselore my beloved; I will treat you only—always—as you deserve.” I knew she would have flinched from me, if she could, but I would not harm her, not yet. Her company is still sweet to me, for all the sourness of her tongue.

  In the kitchen, Grodda was nursing a baby. I had wanted a human child, but these days such things are difficult to obtain. There used to be many babies, wanted and unwanted—the peasants bred like rabbits—but now they have pills to stave off conception, and venomous creams, and sheaths to contain the male secretions, and then women complain that they are barren and go to the doctors as once they went to witches, begging a spell or a philter to fulfill their dreams. The future is a strange place. There are more people but fewer babies, and the infants are so watched and cared for that even the maimed and sick grow to a gibbering adulthood, and are nursed and nannied into age. But Grodda had found a calf, I did not ask where; no doubt some farmer would miss it, even as the mother misses her child. It was twig legged and doe eyed, its soft ears lay back, and it suckled milk from a bottle. It would do, I said. I looped a cord about its neck and led it to the conservatory.

  The guardian was waiting, its pale body, shadow mottled, lost among the eerie patterning of moonlight and leaves. The Tree stirred at my approach, rustling, or maybe it was the rustling of crooked limbs uncurling across the floor. I released the calf, and it stood there, emitting the mewling noises that small creatures make when calling for their mothers. Then moonspots and shadows seemed to gather together, bunching into a spring, and the calf was blotted out. It screamed once—a curiously human sound, touching me with pleasure—but the second scream was stifled into a whisper, and then it was silent. There were scrapings and scratchings as something was bundled up and drag
ged away to be consumed at leisure. Later, from a corner, I heard nibbling and crunching. When I went back in the morning there were only a few of the larger bones and a shell-like fragment of skull, picked clean. I could not even smell the blood.

  He was lurking behind some giant pots, in an undergrowth of untended plants. After careful scrutiny I could make out a protrusion shaped like a claw, and a splinter of eye peering through the foliage. I wanted to coax him out, to see how big he had grown—in the dark, it had been impossible to tell—but I sensed the smallness of his mind brooding in the swollen body, a tiny insect mind focused on hunger and survival, and I knew it would be better not to disturb him. I had no fear of him, but I did not wish to have to kill in order to protect myself.

  The Tree, too, was growing: its trunk was as thick as my waist, and its spreading leaves darkened the daylight. I walked in its gloom, caressing quivering branches, listening to its whispering voice. And then I found what I had sought for so long, a small green thing like a misshapen crab apple, without flush or feature. Fruit. At that sight, my blood quickened to the Tree’s quickening, my heart beat with its pulse. I touched the rind very gently, though it was firm and hard, willing it to swell and ripen, trying in vain to discern what form it might take. The heads of the dead grew on its Eternal progenitor, but the fruit of my Tree might take almost any shape. My imagination shivered at the possibilities. Already it seemed to me there were lumps on the little globe that could develop into nose and browbone, cheekbones and chin. I must have stood half the morning, watching it, as if I might actually see it grow. No sun penetrated this green cavern, but it came from a dimension without the sun, where day and dark sprang from the will of the Tree, and I knew it would ripen even by night. “Guard it well,” I told the creature in the corner.

  Later that day, I brought him a bowl of the potion mixed with tree sap to drink. He was large enough to eat a calf, and quickly, but I wanted him large enough to eat a man. Neither ape nor urchin, Adam nor Eve would steal my fruit from me.