The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Since Judge Faulkner always retired early, there was much speculation about a light often seen burning in the turreted room overlooking the river. Perhaps the servants put it there for a beacon, but gossips said it was Iris signaling her lovers. How many egos had she bruised? Ward had escaped because he was devoted to Alison. Gareth only toyed with her at first, but I had reason to believe that he, too, finally succumbed—if only I could forget! Gareth—sweet Gareth…

  At my age I was beneath Iris’ notice. How I had longed for her sophistication! I considered dyeing my hair red, but no dye would have produced her subtle shade of amber. Nor could I assume her air of mystery. Try as hard as I did to copy her indolent casualness, it never came across. So I’d been inordinately excited when she invited me to go canoeing with her that hazy summer day.

  We dropped anchor near a sandbar and let the canoe rock gently in the current as we ate the sandwiches she’d brought. Iris dabbled her hand in the little eddies that swirled around us, her amber hair rippling over the pale skin of her breasts.

  “We’re anchored over the original Peacehaven,” she mused.

  I gazed across the expanse of water toward the present town sprawled along the shore. “This far out?”

  “Farther. It extended over to the opposite shore line. Imagine the people down there in their houses or sitting in their church pews—or in their privies.”

  “But I heard it wasn’t that way at all,” I protested. “No one got drowned when the city sank—it was gradual.”

  “So they say,” she sighed. “It would have been so much grander my way. I can just see the land collapsing and the water rushing in, like it did when a section of bank was washed out from under our house. Of course, I didn’t really see it happen at all. I was sleeping and I dreamed that the river was my lover—that it could take on the shape of a man and come to me. And the next morning when I awoke, there was that big gap under the house, so maybe I wasn’t dreaming after all. He was exciting as no boy has ever been. Father had the house reinforced and we just let the river flow beneath it. The way he took out that chunk of land—all in one night! Nothing can hold him back. I could never understand why he was so gentle with Peacehaven. I’d have drowned them all. Listen! Hear the church bells down there?”

  “That’s a cowbell across the river,” I scoffed.

  “No, no, it isn’t!” she insisted. “It’s church bells—the First Church of Satan!”

  Her voice was hypnotic.

  “The city in the sea!” I burst out.

  “The what?”

  “It’s a legend my mother told me about the city of Ys off the coast of Brittany. Their princess, Ahes, was very wicked. When she tired of her lovers she had them killed—for her one true love was the sea itself. One day she stole her father’s key to the sea gates and when the waters came boiling in, the people were drowned and she became a mermaid luring sailors to their death. They say that when the tide is low, you can see her beckoning in the waves and hear the cathedral bells.”

  I paused, afraid of boring her, but her eyes were glowing.

  “Fabulous!” she exclaimed. “I’d like to have been that princess. The name ‘Ahes’ even sounds like ‘Iris!’ Think of the power she had over people—over men! Only the sea was worthy to be her bridegroom.”

  She stopped. Someone was calling to us from the bank. My cousin Gareth stood there in swimming trunks, the sun gilding his bronzed body. He looked sturdy but I knew—and so did she—that he was still recovering from an appendectomy.

  “Gareth!” she called through cupped hands. “I bet him five dollars he couldn’t swim out to us.”

  “You didn’t!” I cried, dismayed. “He’s not well enough yet!”

  She merely smiled as he poised for a dive. I tried to wave him back—too late. He slid into the water and swam toward us with powerful strokes.

  “Let’s go get him,” I pleaded, trying to reach around her to pull up anchor, but she pushed me away.

  “Leave him alone!” she hissed. “He’d hate for us to make a sissy out of him.”

  Helplessly I watched as the cramp seized him. He struggled to keep afloat, clawed at the eddy that caught him, whirled him around, then sucked him under. Still Iris guarded the anchor. In desperation I tried to throw myself out of the canoe, and swim to him, but she caught hold of my arm and forced me back down. Then she balanced herself delicately, her gold-green eyes glittering, and flashed into the water. I hoisted anchor and paddled toward the spot where I’d seen him go down, but we never found him. She’d come out the heroine, denying the bet and saying she’d held me back to save me from drowning myself.

  But I must push away such memories—I must remember the good times in Peacehaven; the golden summers, rambles through the woods, muddy excursions in the caves, and riding ponies at a nearby farm. Idyllic—that was Peacehaven in contrast to the clamor and crowding of New York. In Peacehaven, even tragedy was tinged with romance.

  My own recent tragedy was not similarly tinged. After Rowan’s hysterics over Owen’s death, she had withdrawn into herself until Cariad’s posthumous birth gave her a new interest. She forgot her dolls and lavished her affection on the baby to the point of excluding me. Was this revenge? No—I could have fought that—but I felt she was trying to protect Cariad from me.

  Her schoolwork suffered. Was it because I couldn’t afford to give her the things she’d been used to? Cocaine and gambling debts had eaten up much of Owen’s estate. Aunt Bo’s bequest had seemed heaven-sent…

  Yet here I was, staring at the phone, almost a live thing now, waiting to pounce. Well, I’d stop that. I unplugged it and lay back. Just in time. It began to ring downstairs. So let it ring—and ring—and ring—

  My tired body slumped into the bottomless pit in the center of the bed, slipped through—and I was out of it. I cast a swift backward glance at a form lying there quietly and then I was out into the night—

  * * * *

  “There th’art! Where’st tha been, miss? Mun I do thy chores so my daughter can walk out with her fine young gentleman? Be thankful I hanna told thy father about it. His heart be set on thee marryin’ the cooper fellow, if n he bespeaks thee.”

  “Daughter?” Why was she calling me that? And what quaint speech! This wasn’t my mother—this bent, wizened woman with a swollen stomach, lugging a milk pail into a kitchen I’d never seen before. A huge fireplace dominated the room. Suspended by chains from its blackened inner walls were a great cauldron of steaming water and a smaller stewpot. Down on the hearth a haunch of venison was turning slowly, propelled by a counterweighted rope that took all day to unwind. But how did I know that?

  She set the milk down on the table, swatted the flies away and covered it with a cloth, then shuffled over to the stewpot to give it a stir. “Thy sister Becky warn’t as choosy,” she complained, her cheeks reddened and bright from the savory steam. “She be content to be a Goodwife, and mind thee, that man o’ hers’ll be a big landowner someday. But e’en that wouldna satisfy thee. The title o’ Goodwife is nae good enow. Tha’d have a fine house in Dorchester wi’ silver plate and linen and the right to be called Mistress Sto…”

  “Mother, be you silent!” Did I say that? It was as if someone else within me, long asleep, had just awakened. This woman bore no resemblance to my mother, and yet there was something in her voice that was familiar—as were these surroundings—like an old garment hung in a closet and forgotten, then rediscovered and tried on once more. Words came tumbling out of me.

  “’Tisn’t so!” I protested. “I would he weren’t a gentleman. Then might you believe I love him for himself. And he swears he loves me, too.”

  Who was I? And where? I touched my dress—coarse woolen stuff of a dark red. I owned nothing like this and yet it seemed to belong to me. Nor did it seem strange that the long braids falling across my brea
sts were tawny yellow, not my own mahogany color.

  “’S’blood!” she was swearing under her breath. “What has love to do with a good marriage? Like as not he’ll have thy maidenhead and be off with him.”

  “In faith, he could have had that a long time ago if ’tweren’t that he’s for the ministry and all so pure.” The shock in her face made me relent. “Nay, Mother, I wouldna allow that. I’ll be no gentleman’s jade.”

  She tasted the stew, sloshing it around in her mouth critically, then reached for more salt. “’Twere an evil day when he first came to this house,” she complained. “Ye gained a lover and lost a friend.”

  “Dorcas?” I snorted. “She was ne’er a friend and he’d only a passing fancy for her.”

  “I still say it was an evil day,” she reiterated.

  “’Twere a rainy one, I’ll allow.” I luxuriated in the memory of it. His horse had thrown a shoe in the rain and he hadn’t been able to journey on that night. I remembered casting shy glances at the tall, slender, young man seated on the inglenook. He was still in mourning for his father, so he said, though he had died five years past fighting the king back in England. I suspected the son wore his somber habit not so much out of deference for the old man, but because it suited his taste. Yet, firelight did elfin things to his deep-set eyes and his long, narrow face. This was the first time we’d met, but I’d heard about him from Dorcas, who said he’d been coming to our village to oversee some of the properties he and his older brother Thomas had inherited.

  “I didna mean the rain, though to be sure, it might’ve held off a day or two, so he wouldna ha’ spent the night under our roof,” the woman grumbled. “Faith, I know not why any maid would take to such a moody chap. He’ll be a strict un, I’ll warrant. As if our lives weren’t gloomy enow with all this piety. Many’s the time I wish for the old days when we could dance around the Maypole and celebrate Christmas with the Yule log and the Lord o’ Misrule and—”

  “Mother, you talk like a Papist!” I cried, peering out the window to make sure no one had been listening. “If people were to hear you, ’twould go ill with you.”

  She stood with her arms akimbo, the spoon dripping a thick, brown liquid on the floor. A long gray cat dropped down from the windowsill and began to lap it up.

  “The time will come,” she said distantly, “when one belief will understand another, and the sooner the better, but we’ll ne’er know it. And the time will come, too, when no woman will be a Goodwife, and there’ll not be the gulf ’twixt yeoman and gentleman—but that’s a long time a comin’. Mary, m’lass, I see nought but black around thy young gentleman. I know not what it means, but I fear for thee.”

  “His grandfather was no more than a country parson.”

  “But a younger son of a baronet! He’d ha’ done better in Papist days. Then he might ha’ been bishop.”

  “’Tis better to be a poor parson with a wife and children than a bishop in a lonely palace,” I said pompously.

  “’S’nails!” she exclaimed irreverently. “Think ye the bishops and cardinals didn’t have their doxies?”

  Anything was to be expected of Papists, even to horns sprouting out of their heads! Oh, I’d gotten her to bristling for sure!

  I felt a pang of remorse as I watched her bend down painfully to pet the cat. This baby was sure to be a boy, it taxed her so.

  “’Twas only teasing you I was, Mother. My young gentleman’s in Cambridge and won’t be here for a fortnight. I went out to return those eggs we borrowed from Goody Tompkins, and ’twas a fair thing I did, for now I know she’s no friend.”

  She looked up at me through black slits. “Aye, I believe it. My Grimalkin’s been a spittin’ at her. There’s my little love—thou didst try to warn me,” she crooned to the gray shadow rubbing against her leg. “Now tell me, what has that busybody got up her sleeve?”

  “She and her gossip, Goody Stebbins, will be here this afternoon with a squash pie they baked.”

  She wiped her hands carefully on her apron. “I’faith, that might be called Christian charity, but methinks I like it not. Do thee tell me what tha knowst—and how is it ye spy on our neighbors?”

  “Not spy!” I protested. “As I came along the fence to her backyard, I heard voices on the other side. She and Goody Stebbins were chucklin’ like a couple o’ magpies about how they put an old broken scissors in the pie. When they give it to you, if you drop the pie or show fear o’t, they’ll cry out on you.”

  She snorted. “So they’d have me for a witch, would they? ‘Iron,’ they say, ‘no witch can abide by iron.’ Thankful Tompkins is a fool. Thinketh she I can stand o’er my iron kettles day after day and then be afeard o’ her silly scissors? Albeit, I like not iron—‘tis not a seemly metal. ’Tis hard and ugly and full o’ death. Only today my paring knife turned on me.” She showed me a long, jagged cut on her thumb. “I thankee, m’girl, for warning me. Oh, ’twill be like needles going through me, but I’ll not be frighted, for I be ready for it.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Ah, Mary, I’ve been a burden to ye, but th’art a good lass.”

  “’Tisn’t you this time, Mother,” I said slowly. “Dorcas is Goody Tompkins’ niece and methinks she put her up to this to spite me.”

  “Aye, it may be, yet there are many who fear me—e’en though they’ve ne’er proved nought.”

  “Nor shall. I know you to be a Gospel woman, Mother.”

  “Ah, but I can do things they can’t,” she sighed, lowering herself down on the inglenook. Grimalkin sprang to her shoulder, and one worn hand caressed him gently. “Things they say come from the Devil—but I’ll swear, Mary, ye’ll not find the name o’ Goody Towne in the Black Man’s book.”

  “Goody Stebbins says you turned yourself into a black cat and pounced on her bed, Wednesday night last.”

  She spat into the fire. “Like as not she’d been at the ale again, and I don’t need the Sight to know that. But ’tis too free I’ve been with my remedies. Is’t wrong to cure where the leech has failed? Yet folks be ’feared of my powers. My willow and dandelion tea healed Ezra Herrick’s rheumatism. Since Mistress Conant’s been taking my foxglove tea, her ankles no longer swell and her sinking spells be gone—and that after Dr. Endicott could do nought to help her. But ’twas foolish o’ me to warn Matt Hubbard, where others could hear, that he’d be killed by Indians if he went hunting afore Michaelmas. I see’d it so plain, him lyin’ there with the arrow through him. And when it happened the tongues started waggin’. But when they need me, they still come. When her man got took wi’ back pain, Goody Tompkins came for my birchbark remedy, but then his urine turned to blood and she vowed I’d poisoned him. These things do not work in a day.”

  Grimalkin glared at me with narrowed eyes as I took the hand that had been stroking him, and yet I cannot think he had much pleasure in that hand, so gnarled and rough.

  “Do not fear,” I said softly, “those two gossips willna dare cry you out. Your birch bark will work—he’s been takin’ it on the sly. When Goody Tompkins returns home, she’ll find her Goodman’s passed the stone.”

  Her eyes gentled and she cupped her hand under my chin. “Mary, m’lass, th’art the one o’ my children who has the Sight.” Her face compressed into a thousand wrinkles. “Aye, but keep it close. It can cause thee nought but harm. Those who have it not think it be from the Devil.”

  “Think you it might?”

  She shook her head. “Nay, ’tis from the Old Ones. And if tha’st read the Scriptures, tha’ll see Our Lord had it, too. Now get on wi’ thy chores. Isaac is coming to call on thee tonight.”

  I drew my breath in sharply. “How do you know?”

  She touched her hand to her head. “That is how I know. Right now he hurries his work so he’ll be through in time.” She winced. “Och! I knew it! There be a blackened nail for me
to treat tonight. Nay, I’ll let thee do the treatin’. Tha hast a better balm for him.”

  “I prithee, Mother, do not make me. Belike he’ll take it for a sign o’ love, and if he bespeaks me, I know Father’ll give consent. But I shan’t marry him. I do not love Isaac. He is good and kind, but that is nae enow to make me want to bear his children.”

  There was sorrow in her eyes. “Mary, ye’ve e’er been the headstrong one, though I might say little Sarah is some’at like ’ee. Ye look too high. Do not try to wed out o’ thy class.”

  I flung back my head. “I ken my William loves me and that’s all that matters!” I took her hand again. “Tell me what you see! Nought? Know you not your own daughter’s future?”

  * * * *

  But I was talking to nothing. There was no woman, no hearth. I was dissolving back into the quiet form on the bed and sinking into a deep, deep sleep.

  Chapter Three

  Much as I had longed for my own bed, I was dismayed when my furniture was delivered ahead of schedule the next morning. I had just stumbled back to bed after giving Cari her morning feeding when the van arrived, squealing its way into the drive. With the party scheduled for tonight, this was all I needed! I hadn’t brought a lot of furniture with me, but I could imagine the whispers about any changes I’d make in the house. One relative, it seemed, couldn’t wait for the party. Charity appeared just as the movers were carrying Aunt Bo’s dresser over to Dana’s house.

  “Careful of those marble tops!” I panted, hurrying after them, and coming face to face with my cousin.

  “So you’re tearing it apart already!” Charity motioned to the men to set it down. Slight as she was, there was command in her presence. She ran her hand over the smooth marble. “I see you don’t appreciate things like this. My house is all Victorian. Aunt Bo said she wanted me to have this, but I take it she forgot.”