Hexenhaus

by Nikki McWatters

  In those moments that seemed so unreal, I desperately scanned the crowd and then looked back to the others being herded along behind me across the grass to the scaffolding. The old woman, the pious woman, the mad woman and the three sombre men. My bonnet was coming loose and some stray hair fell out over my face. I saw Christian Shaw looking like a horrified ghost beside her parents. They had front-row seats. The girl looked as spooked as me and I saw her try to mouth something to me. It might have been the word ‘sorry’.

  ‘I forgive the child for she was possessed by something far more evil than a witch,’ I screamed out to the crowd. ‘I wish you a prosperous life, Christian Shaw. You are a victim of this madness as well as all of us.’

  My strong words gave me a gust of courage and I felt a power suddenly surge into my bones and forge me into something metallic and strong.

  As I was restrained by the men and held up and onto my feet, the hangman draped a loop of rope about my neck, fixing it with his gloved hands, I felt myself quivering like a feather in a strong breeze. My whole body was convulsing and I could not stop it. My heart rattled so fast and I could not feel my face or my hands. Something was tied tightly about my wrists behind my back but it felt like a distant thud as if I had already left my body. I looked out at the crowd.

  There were children hiding behind their mother’s skirts, looking up at me as if I were some monster. I felt the sun on my face and looked up at it and imagined I could see Mammie and Granaidh smiling from Heaven, welcoming me. But I did not want to go. I wanted my John. I wanted a cottage in the hills full of beautiful bairns. A loom. I wanted to grow into my white hair and slip away in my sleep. The rope began to tighten about my hands. The noose around my neck tugged at me like I was a fish on a rod. It was happening. It was real. I shook afraid. I shook angry. This was not my fault.

  With my last big breath I roared. I would not whisper out of this world. I saw out of the corner of my eye a torch being lit, the fire catching and licking a devilish red. I roared through the rope about my neck and felt all the fire of the world in my belly.

  As smoke filled the air, with my last words on this earth, I, Katherine Campbell, glared defiantly at the spectators from Paisley, Bargarran and surrounds and to the grandstand with the Shaws, the commissioners and the Reverend James Brisbane.

  ‘If I must die a witch then I curse you as a witch. May your fortunes wither and those of your blood after you. For what you do here today in Paisley is an abomination. I curse you all!’

  And then it was done. I slipped away to the smell of smoke and the thunder of voices and I went in search of my mammie’s warm and loving arms.

  PAISLEY

  BUNDANOON, AUSTRALIA, PRESENT DAY

  There is the sound of a man playing guitar and singing reggae, and he has a haiku written in red chalk on the sidewalk in front of him. I give him a smile and fling two dollars into his red, green and yellow upturned hat. Further along, a reed-thin man is at work, wearing a top hat and frockcoat while juggling three sticks in the air. Bundanoon is filled with people. So many faces have flashed before my eyes that by dusk I have lost my sensitivity for the passing parade.

  Many people have been enlisted to help on roadblocks for the procession and to take tickets for the entertainment down at the big oval. Ben and I have run around like blue-arsed flies all day, ensuring the smooth running of the festival and, touch wood, no dramas yet. Emily and Brent are taking over for the nightshift so that Ben and I can finally relax and actually enjoy the chaotic splash of colour and noise and people, people everywhere.

  We woke early this morning to good weather, for which my mother, I’m sure, gave thanks to the great Goddess or the beard of Zeus or any one of her pantheon of deities. But it is cold, so very cold, that I have on my best anorak over my long dress, faux mink-lined gloves and a beanie pulled down over my ears. Even still, my nose is as pink as a possum’s and has a permanent drip.

  ‘The fireworks are all set for seven-thirty,’ Brent tells us and his breath comes in smoky cold billows, obscuring his face. ‘My uncle Lou is pumped and looking forward to it. They’ll last for ten minutes because that’s all that the budget covered. They’re really expensive and there was the insurance and everything. You know how it is.’

  ‘All good,’ I nod. ‘There are a few readings and healings going on in the hall but they need to be out of there by nine and you need to lock up.’ I pass the keys to Brent and we smile at each other.

  ‘See you over the track for the music. The two bands are all set up and ready to go. The hotel is jam-packed,’ Em calls from behind us.

  Some of the market stalls are still operating up and down the main street and the takeaway place is doing a roaring trade. Every motel and bed-and-breakfast in town is booked out and what has been the most magical part of this incredible day is that everyone attending as guest or vendor or seer, has dressed up in some alternative new-age way. I’ve seen witches in britches and many little Harry Potters. Men stalk about with staffs and fake beards and blue capes with bells. I’ve seen imps and elves and fairies with fish-scale wings everywhere. The day has been truly celestial and now that night is descending upon us, the sunset a rose-gold hue, the daylight minutes hurtle away, travelling fast to the other side of the planet.

  A breeze picks up and carpets me in gooseflesh and the Milky Way appears as a smudge in the night sky above. I am really, really hungry, not having had a moment to stop to pick up some market fare for lunch.

  ‘What do you feel like eating?’ I ask Ben.

  Most of the food stalls have packed up and gone home with the light. I’d loved seeing the foodie vendors sitting behind pyramids of oiled organic shiny vegetables, filling recyclable bags and throwing in a ribboned bouquet of coriander or thyme for free for every full bag. Everyone had seemed so happy, unnaturally happy, filled with the sort of happiness that should soak into every corner of the world but doesn’t, except for exceptional days such as today.

  After a quick look at what is left we settle for a lentil burger each, mine with a dollop of hummus and Ben’s, chilli.

  ‘Lentil burgers would be so much better with a little meat, maybe bacon,’ he says, sighing before taking a big bite. Then his eyes widen as he chews in slow melodramatic crunches. ‘Actually, this is good.’

  I eat as politely and slowly as a ravenous person can without looking like a fox in a famine. ‘You’re a bit of a maths head,’ I say to Ben, and he is a bit of an academic, compared to me. ‘Pythagoras, the God of Mathematics, was a vegetarian.’

  ‘So was Hitler.’ He grins through a mouthful of ground legumes. ‘Just sayin’.’

  I dwell on that for a moment. It’s a valid and surprisingly deep observation for a seemingly innocuous throwaway line. Many people become vegan or vegetarian for ethical reasons because they abhor animal cruelty, and if you’d seen some of the documentaries that I have seen, shown to me by my mother from the tender age of three or four and then constantly ever since, you’d be horrified and swear off meat, too. But if someone like Hitler can be a vegetarian it goes to show that you aren’t necessarily what you eat because he was a monster and monsters are made of meat not quinoa or chia seeds. Likewise, you can go to church every Sunday and bow your head and pray and be a monster just the same.

  ‘Mrs Hooper was all set for some stupid picket-line protest.’ I laugh. ‘I’d been warned with hate mail that they were going to stage it today, but when Isaiah came out with the true story, well, I guess they would have just looked stupid. Poor kid. I invited him to come along tonight.’

  ‘All the other fools complaining about your mother are suddenly in hiding and looking pretty stupid, hey?’ Ben says.

  ‘Yeah, they were as weak as water.’ I shrug. ‘Really silly copycat stuff. Dad says the police were never even close to charging Mum with anything. It was all hysteria over nothing. Just one poor kid with some major issues.’

 
; We cross the open train track and on the other side, looking in at the hotel, we can see people singing badly along to the jukebox and laughing way too hard.

  My father has taken Mum to the festival and is staying with us tonight, in the same house as us, under the same roof, in my mother’s room presumably, like we’re a family, and it is going to be weird.

  ‘So my parents are really taking this getting-back-together thing seriously,’ I tell Ben.

  I’ve given the bare bones of the story to Em and Ben and they’ve been really positive about it. I must admit, Dad is not at all like the person I used to see. I think that what has changed is not Dad so much but the way I am seeing him.

  ‘So is Isaiah coming then? Tonight?’ Ben asks. ‘Frankly, if he comes to the band later his ears will bleed because isn’t rock ‘n’ roll the devil’s music?’

  ‘Something like that.’ I shrug, wiping the last crumbs of my delicious burger from the corners of my mouth.

  Ben puts his strong arms around me as we walk along the last bit of Erith Street, heading north under the swinging streetlights with the crush of people going the same way like a school of fish moving through the shadowy darkness. When he looks at me I can tell that he really, really does like me and the feeling is very mutual.

  At the oval where the local football and soccer teams train, people have gathered on picnic rugs and lie, sit and huddle, waiting for the inaugural Bundanoon Winter Solstice Festival fireworks. Families hold dancing torches and little children frolic between groups, chasing each other and squealing with delight in the darkness while parents scurry to keep track of who belongs to who.

  ‘Paisley!’ I hear Mum’s voice and, following it, I see the shadow of a long arm waving back and fro like a person drowning, calling for help.

  Ben and I pick our way across to them and bend down, kneeling and then rolling into a cross-legged sitting position.

  ‘You’ve done such a marvellous job, Paisley, and you too, Ben.’ My father leans out and across from Mum.

  I laugh in a bubbling snort. My father is dressed as some kind of mad hippy or Druidic master. He has a long wig on, haloed by a wreath of flowers and little round John Lennon glasses. There is a peace symbol around his neck and he’s wearing something that might be, looking through the echo of light from a nearby torch, might be, tie-dyed.

  ‘And you said a leopard can’t change its spots.’ Mum laughs, looking, as always, like Mum – a watery land-living mermaid or a sprite that fell out of the pages of a fairytale book.

  ‘Hang on,’ Dad says. ‘This is a one-off blink-and-you’ll-miss-it routine. Tomorrow I’m back to the one suit in three different shades of boringness – black, grey and navy.’

  ‘You look great.’ I smile.

  ‘Hey, look!’ I point through the throng at the bouncing tiny lights that look like glow-worms in the dark. ‘Is that Isaiah?’

  ‘Yeah, it is,’ Ben says, squinting. ‘And who’s he with? Look, the girls have him, Sophie and Bec. Good on them.’

  The others in town, far from shunning Isaiah Hooper, have just accepted him and are pretending the drama never happened. We all understand how hard his life has been, now, and we’re all doing what we can to welcome him into our community at his own pace. Better late than never. The fact that Isaiah is at the festival with girls, at night, unchaperoned, means his folks must have eased up a bit. Isaiah looks over to us and gives a wave and we nod and smile back.

  You know, for all the heartache and drama of the last few months, the accusations, the catastrophic blow to Mum’s business, the graffiti, the gatecrashing, the online trolls, something good has come of it all.

  My mother has always been looking for a husband, for that one true love. She is attracted to mystery and the distance it offers. She loves the idea of love, the idea that out there, somewhere in the distance, is the real thing. She is always safe while it is in the distance. But my lovely mother, who wears dresses as soft as bird wings and whose hair parades through all the colours of the plumage of a macaw, now realises that she’s known her true love all along. She was looking for another dragonfly but Dad is a rock. He doesn’t fly or float or sleep perched on a rock. He is the rock. And she, more than anyone I know, needs that grounding. In saying that, my dad needs a woman who can love him with fairy dust. I have never, ever seen Mum so happy, and that makes me happy. My dragonfly has found the perfect river rock to call her home.

  I think back to the day Dad turned up. I’d felt like Mum had thrown a ball at my face and yelled ‘catch’, but now I wonder as I look at us, so happy in this magical setting, if perhaps she had some kind of knowing all along that this was how it would play out. She gives me a smile and a wink from over Dad’s shoulder and I laugh. It is as if she has read my thoughts.

  We watch as the fireworks begin. Red tinsel stars boom and flutter overhead. Silver diamantés, fronds of green and the smell of gunpowder; burst after burst of showering colour and noise. The children have fallen silent in awe of it, eyes skyward, riveted, mouths slack and open, enthralled.

  As it finishes and the last grey shadows of smoke spiral through the air I look across at Isaiah who is laughing and then back to my mother’s eyes glittering at Dad. I feel the heady warmth from Ben’s arm and I wonder about it all. The meaning of life.

  And I reach the conclusion that magic is real and love is as close as we can come to a miracle.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  Veronica’s story

  The letter penned by Johannes Junius (1573—1628), the mayor of Bamberg, to his daughter, Veronica, is the only known letter to have been smuggled from the infamous Hexenhaus in Bamberg and it gives an account of the tortures that went on there. The letter now rests in the Hanover College in Germany. More information about the letter’s contents can be found here: summerlands.com/crossroads/remembrance/victims/jjunius.htm

  The Hexenhaus (also known as the Malefizhaus) was built specifically for the torture of accused witches. It only stood for three years and was pulled down at the order of the Pope. It is believed that the house of torture was the inspiration for the gingerbread cottage in the Hansel and Gretel fairytale. More about the Hexenhaus can be found here: malefiz-house.blogspot.com.au

  The character of Frau Berchta represents the pagan Goddess worshipped by the Upper German in the middle ages. Her name means ‘hidden’ or ‘covered’. Jacob Grimm suggested that Berchta, as a Goddess, represented the guardian of the beasts and appears in folklore as a white-haired old woman. She was at the root of the Santa Claus legend, which became masculinised with the spread of Christianity. More about the legend of Frau Berchta can be found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchta

  Katherine’s story

  The Paisley witches (who are also more accurately known as the Renfrew witches) were executed on the Gallow Green on the 10 June 1697, known as the Jacobite White Rose Day. A horseshoe lies over their burial place in the town and Paisley locals still speak of the curse that hangs over them.

  The romance between Katherine Campbell and John Erskine, who went on to become a pivotal Jacobite rebel in later life, was fictionalised, although both characters are historical figures.

  The girl at the centre of the witch furore, Christian Shaw, went on to become one of the earliest successful businesswomen in her own right in Scotland, introducing the pattern we know as ‘paisley’, named after the town where she operated her fabric factories.

  More about the execution of these alleged witches can be found here: picturebritain.com/2012/08/the-renfrewshire-witch-hunt-1697.html

  The witch-hunting craze that swept the world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a time of widespread terror, but the public’s fear was fanned by the hysteria created by the state and the church and had very little to do with the small isolated cases of people engaging in pagan ritual magic. It is estimated that more than sixty-thousand people were executed for
being witches during this period. Eighty-five per cent of them were women.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  They say it takes a village to raise a child. In so many ways a book is like a child and, yes, it does take a village to turn it from a glint in an author’s eye into a book you can hold in your hands.

  Hexenhaus is my baby and I want to thank the wonderful midwifery team at UQP: Kristina Schulz for believing she could breathe life into my manuscript and Kristy Bushnell for watching over Hexy so carefully while keeping me up-to-date with tales of her magical bean orchard. Also, thank you to Alexandra and Madonna and all the UQP team. Huge thanks go to Jody Lee, my supernaturally gifted editor (or fairy godmother), for helping me nurture my little baby and keeping a vigilant eye on her. Thanks also to Jo Hunt for the cover and dressing my baby in lovely clothes. To Jo Butler, my agent, thank you for keeping me on an even keel and for fanning my confidence when I was doubting myself through the long gestation period. And thank you to the wise word-women, Nicole Hayes and Kate Forsyth, who gave Hexenhaus their blessings.

  Thank you to the beautiful Fiona McCowan for being the first to get to know Hexenhaus and loving her; to Gemma Ward, Hexenhaus’s crazy aunt; and to Mum and Dad for instilling in me a deep love of storytelling. Thank you to my extended family because I love you all: Bob Amor, Anne-Marie and Rachel McWatters; and Dan Owens; David and Patsy Del Valle-McWatters; Benjamin Buick; Charley Mason; Toby Buick; Greer Gardner; Harrison Black; Madelaine Humphreys; Jason Rumble; Pepper; Mia, Thomas and Oscar Humphreys; Stephanie, Col and Carol-Anne Humphreys; Michael, Tracy, Kathleen and Anthony Humphreys; William Blake Coglin; Christine and Tessa Coles; my amazing cousin Mark Ballenger and the lovely Sheree; Joan and Jim Ballenger; Ayesha and Rohin Knight; Lynette and Ross Stagg; Rhoni and Andrew Stokes; and Natalie and Brian Powles.