A Witch In Winter

by Ruth Warburton

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Well …’ Usually I brushed this conversation off with some stock responses and people backed away from intruding on grief, but I felt I couldn’t do that in the face of Seth’s honesty about his dad. ‘She disappeared when I was a baby – I remember that she was declared legally dead when I was about seven, but that’s pretty much all I know. I’m not really entitled to miss her or anything. I never knew her.’

  ‘Of course you’re entitled to miss her,’ Seth said quietly. He shifted gear, his arm brushing mine. Heat rose up my cheeks. This was getting out of hand; OK the guy was seriously good-looking and, in spite of what June had said about his reputation, he seemed pretty nice too, but he was also seriously taken. I wasn’t about to start my life in Winter by stealing someone else’s boyfriend – even in the unlikely event that he wanted me.

  The atmosphere in the truck felt too charged for comfort so I tried for a laugh, which came out more wobbly than I would have liked.

  ‘Sorry, this is a bit heavy for a Friday morning, isn’t it? We should be talking about what we’re doing over the weekend or something.’

  ‘Hey, it’s fine.’ Seth stopped the truck and I suddenly realized we were in the school car park. He turned to face me and gave me an awkward half-hug across the seat. ‘It’s nice,’ he said intom he saio my hair. ‘I haven’t talked about my dad for a long time. It’s good to talk to someone else who knows what it’s like.’

  To my dismay I felt a sob begin to rise up inside me. It wasn’t my mum – it couldn’t be. I’d never known her enough to grieve for her. It was everything – the strain of starting at a new school, losing all my friends, being constantly alone. But mainly, it was how nice Seth was being. He must have felt the tremor of my chest because he hugged me harder, and I felt a complicated welter of emotion curl in the pit of my stomach. I was uncomfortably aware of his arms, warm around me, and his unshaven cheekbone rough against mine. Outside there was a rumble of thunder and I jumped.

  ‘Seth, I’m so sorry.’ I pulled away and wiped my eyes in the wing mirror. ‘I really don’t know what’s wrong with me – it must be PMT or something.’ Yuck! I mentally smacked my forehead, what was I doing? Talking about PMT to an attractive bloke – I’m sure that wasn’t in The Rules. Luckily he grinned.

  ‘Well that’s all right for you then. What’s my excuse supposed to be?’

  I laughed and got out of the truck awkwardly. It was higher off the ground than I was used to and I dropped my bag, spilling the papers all over the place once again. By the time I’d picked them up Seth had been swept off by his crowd, all shrieking and laughing and swapping plans for the weekend.

  Only one person was left. Seth’s girlfriend, Caroline, was standing in the car park with her arms folded, looking at me through narrowed blue eyes. As I straightened up she ground her cigarette out under her heel, staring at me all the while. Then she turned and, with a toss of her long, silky hair, disappeared inside the building after her friends.

  ‘What are you doing this weekend, Liz?’ June asked as we set out our books for Classics.

  ‘Oh, trying to finish my essay on Greek vases, I expect. How about you?’

  ‘I’ve got to do some serious mucking out up at the stables. What about you, Anna?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘My dad’s off to London, but there’s no room for me.’ I didn’t mean it to sound as forlorn as it came out.

  ‘Oh my God, you’re going to stay alone in that spooky house?’ June shrieked. Mrs Finch gave her a meaningful look and she lowered her voice. ‘Won’t you be scared?’

  I shrugged half-heartedly. ‘Dad did suggest that I should get some people over to stay but …’ I trailed off, then something about her friendly, open face made me ask, ‘I don’t suppose … would you two like to … ? I mean don’t worry if you’re busy but—’

  ‘I’m not busy!’ June said instantly. ‘In fact it would work really well. I could go straight up to the stables on Sunday and it would save me a walk. Could I ask Prue too? Then we could both make an early soine an eatart.’

  ‘Sure!’ I said, delighted at her enthusiasm. ‘How about you, Liz?’

  ‘Oooh, why not? I’m always up for a night in a haunted house.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ Dad asked for the millionth time as he hovered in the doorway, his bag on his shoulder. ‘I know you’ll be fine, but I really don’t like you being here without any access to the phone.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said firmly. ‘I told you, I’ve got three girlfriends coming over and we’ll have a great time.’

  I stood in the doorway, waving him off as the car bumped down the rutted track. Soon I couldn’t see him at all, just hear the crack and crunch of branches in the lane. Then the sound of the engine fading as he disappeared down the main road. Then … nothing. I was alone. Alone in Wicker House.

  The heavy front door swung shut, and suddenly the house was full of small sounds, almost as if it was waking up, stretching, yawning. A clock ticked; pipes expanded, clunking and dinging; floorboards creaked; the wind shushed and moaned in the maze of cavernous chimneys. The house was coming to life.

  ‘OK,’ I said aloud, and my voice sounded small and lonely in my own ears. ‘Better get started.’

  I’d warned them about the state of the bathroom so I hoped they’d all remembered to shower before they left, but I tried to scrub the worst of the green slime off the tub anyway. Then I made a huge batch of brownies, changed Dad’s sheets so they’d have somewhere to sleep, and unrolled the futon on the floor of my room.

  I was just adding extra logs to the living room fire when I heard the sound of tyres in the lane outside. Looking out I saw that dusk had fallen and Prue, June and Liz were bumping up the lane in Liz’s battered Land Rover, waving cheerily out of the window as they saw me. I flicked the switch on the outside lamp, wincing as it fizzed and sputtered under my hand.

  ‘O. M. G!’ June said as they came into the hall, breathing frostily into the cold air. ‘This place is amazing.’ She peered into the living room. ‘Your dad must have worked miracles. It’s soooo beautiful, like something out of Vogue Living!’

  Dad had packed a lot into his week of decorating. He’d painted the walls a kind of dark cream and the floor had been waxed and polished. Now it gleamed in the firelight, reflecting little flickers of light from the irregular panes of the leaded light window. The intricately carved fireplace had been scrubbed, and you could see the strange animals and plants that twined and coiled over the stone surround.

  It still wasn’t a patch on our lovely house in London but, seeing it through my friends’ eyes, I realized again how hard my dad was working to try to make a home for us. Still, I only said, ‘Well don’t speak too soon – wait ‘til you see the bits of the h="bits ofhouse he hasn’t decorated.’

  Liz and June wanted to go around the whole house straight away, but Prue said, ‘We’ve got pizzas from the takeaway – they’ll get cold. Shouldn’t we eat first?’

  So we sat around the kitchen table and ate slice after slice of pizza, swapping gossip about Winter and all its inhabitants.

  ‘It’s the kind of place that unless your grandparents were born within sight of Winter Castle they still refer to you as “the incomers”,’ Prue explained round a mouthful. ‘Everyone pretty much knows everyone, and most of the people have roots in the fishing industry if you go back far enough.’

  ‘How old is Winter, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh it goes right back to the Domesday book and beyond,’ Liz said. She was very keen on history, I’d discovered, and her shyness disappeared as she began to talk. ‘There was a settlement up on the cliffs in Roman times. But they didn’t settle down in the harbour until the Middle Ages – I suppose because of the risk of attack from the sea, or perhaps because of the floods.’

  ‘Does it ever flood these days?’ I asked.

  ‘Not any more. There’s harbour defences.’

  ‘There was a d
readful flood in the seventeenth century,’ Prue said with relish. ‘Loads of people died. It was supposed to be caused by a witch and the villagers burned her for it.’

  ‘They didn’t burn her,’ Liz corrected. ‘They stoned her and drove her away, and she was caught in the flood and drowned.’

  ‘Let’s face it, it’s all rubbish anyway.’ June started to fold up the pizza boxes for recycling. ‘She wasn’t a witch, was she? Probably just some poor old biddy with a squint and nasty neighbours.’

  ‘It was all drugs, according to this book I read.’ Liz began to sweep crumbs off the table. ‘They rubbed something on to their broomsticks – belladonna or something – and it gave them illusions they could fly.’

  ‘Just goes to show there’s nothing new under the sun,’ said June. ‘All Mr Harkaway’s doom-monger predictions about the youth of the town wasting their education to drugs, and it turns out they were all at it back in the seventeenth century anyway.’

  ‘Yes, you haven’t had the treat of one of Mr Harkaway’s assemblies on the Evil of Drink, have you?’ said Prue.

  ‘Oooh! Talking of which,’ I suddenly remembered, ‘Dad said we could drink one of the bottles in the fridge. Do you want to?’

  In the end we drank all three, two of cava and one of rosé wine. We ate nearly the whole tray of brownies plus a tub of icejusa tub o-cream, then swapped rude jokes and commiserated about each other’s love lives. Liz and June were going to the Young Farmers’ May Ball in a few weeks, and they were both very pessimistic about finding a partner.

  ‘I went with Mark Pargiter last year,’ Liz said, ‘and it was awful. He just ignored me all night and spent the whole time talking to my brother and eating canapés. Then at the end he said “Are you going to let me do tongues or what?” Honestly. What. A. Tit.’

  ‘Why don’t you just not go?’ I asked.

  Prue rolled her eyes. ‘You may well ask.’

  ‘Look, it’s just not that simple,’ June moaned. ‘Mum and Dad are on the committee so I can’t just sod off for the night. And there’s always the faint, faint hope that Philip Granger might get over himself and ask me.’

  ‘Why don’t you just ask him, woman?’ Prue said, her words slurring slightly. ‘The boy’s got such a stiff upper lip it’s become a medical condition. He’ll never unbend enough to ask you – you’ll have to ask him. It’s no reflection on you, he’s just constit …’ She hicupped. ‘Constit-tit … Consert …’

  ‘Liz is no better with James,’ June shoved in crossly. Liz went scarlet and shook her head violently.

  ‘Completely different, June, and you know it.’

  ‘I know he’s going out with someone else, but personally I think you just pick these unattainable types to moon over so you don’t actually have to do any asking.’

  ‘I think I might be sick,’ Prue said abruptly, at which point the lights went out.

  ‘Oh arse, it must be a power cut.’ June’s voice was suddenly very sober in the darkness.

  ‘Hang on, I think there’s a torch on the window sill.’ I groped my way over to the kitchen window and felt along it. It was all unfamiliar in the dark – strange lumps and bumps, dust under my fingernails. No torch. Just the intense darkness of the countryside pressing in on me, so thick it was almost palpable. Air so dark was hard to breathe somehow.

  Then my fingers touched a bit of scrap paper, rough and thick, like a torn bit of wallpaper. I felt my way along the counter to the cooker and lit the edge of the paper on the gas ring. It flared into life, illuminating the room just long enough for me to see the torch, right where I had thought it was. I grabbed for it, just as the paper singed my fingers, and I dropped it. As soon as I had the torch safely lit I bent down and picked it up.

  ‘I hope this wasn’t anything important.’ I peered at it in the torchlight.

  Prue looked over my shoulder.

  ‘Is it a letter or somethtster or hing?’

  ‘I have no idea. Oh no!’ I suddenly realized what it was. ‘It’s a piece of Dad’s cookbook.’

  ‘A cookbook?’ Liz looked at it, the torchlight glinting off her glasses. ‘It doesn’t look like a cookbook. What does it say?’

  ‘The rest of it’s here.’ I showed the bundle of charred scraps. ‘Dad found it while he was redecorating. He thought it might be an old book of recipes but it’s half burnt.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s recipes,’ Liz said slowly, leafing through the pages. ‘It looks more like a spell book to me.’

  Prue snorted.

  ‘You’ve had too much cava, my dear. On top of all that talk about burning witches.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ Liz said mildly. ‘Look at this if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I can’t see anything by torchlight,’ said Prue. ‘Let’s go into the living room – it’ll be lighter by the fire.’

  The fire had died down to embers but there was still enough light to see by. We all knelt around the hearth trying to make out the crabbed, spidery writing. It was headed ‘Harm gainst the Fayling Gripe and seemed to be a list of ingredients, most of them illegible or burned, followed by an incantation in what looked like Old English.

  ‘Wow!’ Even Prue was impressed. ‘It really is a spell book. Let’s have a look at the rest of it, Liz. I can’t say I’m particularly bothered by the Gripes so perhaps there’s something more useful. Hey, Anna, does your dad have any more cava?’

  I took the torch and went out to have a look. There was no more cava and I wasn’t about to venture down into the cellar in the dark, but there was a bottle of whisky in the kitchen cupboard. The wind was howling in the chimney in a way that sent a shiver down my spine, and the torch made a shadowy cavern of the high kitchen ceiling. Something moved stealthily up in the rafters and I shuddered, longing to get back to the company of the others. I took the whisky, trying not to run as I made my way back.

  ‘Sorry, only this.’

  ‘Yuck,’ said Prue. She gave a ladylike belch. ‘Well, better than nothing I suppose. Pour away.’

  ‘The book seems a bit too burned to be useful,’ said Liz, ‘but while you were occupied we did manage to find something a bit more to the point than the Gripes. Look at this!’

  She held out the page slightly less charred than the rest, and I saw the heading Charm to Kepe A Hufband: to kepe a Hufband Faithfull both in Oath and Heart, let Þe wyfe take a little of her Blod and in secrette mix to his Wine. He will never quitte her.

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘When I get married I’ll be sure to do that. No doubt my huff-band will be thrilled.’

  ‘And look at what Prue found – an incantation to bind an object of desire! You should try it on Philip, June.’

  We all craned round to look at the page. Prue looked up, her broad face shining wickedly in the firelight.

  ‘Go on, let’s try it out! Listen.’ She began to read haltingly, stumbling over the crabbed letters and unfamiliar spelling: ‘To bind an object of desire, close as flesh to bone, as fish to sea, as flame to fire. When the moon waxeth, let the witch hold in her heart the beloved, even while she speak aloud the words of power.’

  She held out the book and we bent our heads, silently reading through the short phrase. The strange words reminded me of doing Beowulf at school. Tréowlufu – I knew lufu was love, so perhaps tréowlufu was true love. Ferhþ I didn’t recognize – I thought perhaps it was either faith or forever or something of that kind. Sáwol I had a feeling was something like soul. I couldn’t suppress a shudder. What were we asking – or promising – with these words?

  ‘Come on, let’s do it!’ Prue urged. Her face was shiny and scarlet with wine. I wondered if she had someone particular in mind. ‘We’ll all do it together.’

  ‘Oooh … go on then!’ Liz took another slosh of whisky.

  ‘I’ll do it if it’ll make Philip ask me out!’ June giggled, and then gave an almighty burp.

  ‘Anna?’

  I didn’t want to. I really, really didn’t want to. There was something sinister
about the burnt-up book with its scratchy, spidery writing. I kept wondering who had last held it, and why they’d sealed it in the bread oven. Had they been trying to conceal it – or destroy it? Either way, someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to keep it away from prying eyes. And now we’d unburied it, opened its blackened pages, and read the words hidden and silent for so long. I had the strong feeling of meddling with something we shouldn’t.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. The fire flared up, casting tall wavering shadows on the walls and ceiling, and the flames reflected back at me from the window panes and the polished surface of the furniture, until it seemed as if Wicker House itself were burning.

  ‘Oh come oooooooooon,’ begged June in an exaggerated tone of pleading. ‘I thought you said you weren’t superstitious?’

  I had said that. And it did seem stupid to be afraid of a few words on a bit of charred paper. It wasn’t like I was being asked to drink eye of newt. I looked around the ring of faces, their glittering eyes all urging me on, and that strange, tense feeling welled up inside me again. It felt like some creature inside me trying to get out, trying to escape.

  ‘Scared?’ Prue said, and her voice was taunting. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to be the prissy cry-baby from London either. The trapped thing rose inside me, suffocating me. There was no way out.

  ‘Oh … OK,’ I said. My voice sounded strange and hard in my ears and my face was hot.

  ‘Hooray!’ said June. ‘I think we should join hands; circle of power and all that, you know.’ We knelt on the hearth and joined hands in the flickering light of the fire. I was opposite Prue, her hair sticking up and tousled around her face. In the dim, shifting light she looked positively witchy, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a crack of thunder or the screech of an owl break across the quiet night.

  ‘OK, can everyone see the page?’ June asked. Everyone nodded.

  ‘We’re to hold in our minds the image of our beloved and say the incantation. Ready?’

  I wasn’t intending to think of anyone in particular. But as the strange, rolling words bubbled from my mouth an image came into my mind involuntarily. It was the face of Seth Waters.