Bones of the Witch

by A. L. Knorr

  “Ah.” She relaxed. “Well, in that case, he was just saying thank you.”

  “Any idea where the phrase originated?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve no idea. It’s been around for as long as I can remember. Could be hundreds of years old. Why?”

  “Just curious.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked away. “I thought I heard some kids chanting something similar across the street earlier, too. They were jumping rope to it.”

  “Really?” Evelyn looked bemused.

  The café door opened again as a couple left and I glanced outside. “They’re gone now. You never sang any songs about Wise when you were young?”

  “Not that comes to mind. You could try the Blackmouth Castle archives. They have a lot of historical documents and stuff, but I don’t think it would be easy to find something like that. It’s just one of those things that’s been passed down through the generations.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s just, that term––Wise––it’s unusual.”

  “It’s just another name for witch. Maybe it’s unusual where you’re from.”

  “Maybe.” But the parallel sat uneasily with me. Was I a witch? I didn’t feel very witchy, but then again, besides what I’d seen in movies and TV shows, I didn’t know anything about real witches. Before last summer, I wouldn’t have believed there were any.

  “I’d better get my coffee and get some work done,” Evelyn said. “It was really lovely talking with you, Georjayna.”

  “You too, Evelyn.”

  “Call me Evie.”

  “Call me Georjie.”

  She gave me a smile and went to the front counter to order herself a drink. I didn’t notice when Evelyn left the cafe. I threw myself into my work and put the final touches on my history paper. Closing my laptop and pulling on my coat, I decided to take Evelyn’s advice and check the Blackmouth Castle library about the colloquialism. Sliding my bag onto my shoulder, I zipped up my jacket and headed for the door, putting my hands in my pockets.

  The feel of paper reminded me that I’d put my father’s note in there. I pulled it out as I reached the door and my eye caught on the trash can sitting beside the coat rack. Holding the note out over the garbage, I paused. My hand trembled a little. Snatching my hand back, I tucked the note in my pocket again.

  I’d throw it out some other time.

  Chapter 7

  Between my physics and history homework the following week, I stole a few hours to search the Blackmouth library, the way Gavin had invited me to do. Only I wasn’t researching the exodus of Scottish people to Ireland. That was interesting, but it had taken a back seat. I was looking for the roots of local lingo, in particular the phrase Lachlan had uttered.

  I found absolutely nothing.

  Frustrated, I slammed shut the book I had in front of me, then got up and took it back to its place on the shelves. Letting out a long breath, I tugged at the neck of my shirt. It was hot and stuffy in the library. It was a circular room in one of the uppermost turrets of the castle, which meant heat traveled up from the lower floors and got trapped here. The room was charming, but not often used. It smelled of mildew and aged wood. I needed a breath of fresh air.

  On my way outside, I popped into the kitchen for a drink of water and found Ainslie sitting at the table with her own steaming mug of something and fanning herself with a magazine. She looked up and smiled as I came in. Her face was a little on the pink side.

  “How’s our wee Canadian getting on? Schoolwork going well?”

  “All good here, how about you? Looks like you had a busy morning.”

  “Every day is a busy day for me, but sometimes the ‘change of life’ gets the better of me.” She laughed at the clueless look on my face. “Menopause. You too can look forward to feeling like someone set a flaming torch under yer arse.”

  “Ah. Sorry to hear that. I don’t recommend hanging out in the library if you’re hot, in that case.”

  Ainslie cackled like this was quite hilarious. “Come sit a spell. Have a cuppa geranium tea. It’s supposed to balance the hormones.” She poked at the squat ceramic pot sitting nearby. “Although, you won’t have to worry about unbalanced hormones for a long while yet.”

  “I’m good with water, but actually there was something I wanted to ask you. Gavin told me you could tell me something about those extraordinary roses in the garden. I wasn’t aware there were roses that could bloom in winter.” I slid onto the bench across from her and took a sip of my water.

  Ainslie’s expression grew sly. “Aye, those are special roses and you won’t find them anywhere else in the world. They’re a hybrid that was crossbred after a dark time in Blackmouth’s history, in celebration that the bad times were over.” Ainslie settled onto her elbows, warming to her narrative. “Blackmouth was named such because at one time the villagers had a very bad habit of deceiving and lying to one another. Pranks and tricks were commonplace, and were not mere jokes but done out of true spite and a wish to harm one another. Children learned the behavior from their parents’ bad attitudes and it went on for quite some time.”

  “How long ago was this?” I asked, my water glass pausing on its way to my lips.

  Ainslie flapped a hand. “Och, a long way back. Hundreds of years. This would have been medieval times. Anyway, there was a ‘cunning woman’ in Blackmouth in those days, and she declined to get involved in the townspeople’s petty spats.”

  “A cunning woman? Isn’t that what they called a witch?”

  “Too right.” Ainslie nodded and paused to take a sip of her tea. “Her name has been lost to history, and a mythology has risen up to surround her story with exaggerations. But mark my words, she was real. As real as those roses out there.” She pointed at the window behind me. “Many people went to her for help, and the stories of her healing abilities were legendary. But she grew tired of all the backbiting and bad behavior and the story goes that she created the rose and dubbed it rós fírinn––the truth rose. She claimed that the scent of them would inspire people to be truthful with one another.”

  The skin across my back prickled at the sincerity in Ainslie’s eyes. “Did it work?”

  “You bet yer bonny wee head it worked. After that, Blackmouth prospered and its people became real neighbors to one another, the way they remain today.” Ainslie leaned forward. “And you know what else the myth would have you believe? That those roses are the very same crop that cunning woman started with.” She nodded, eyes narrowing.

  I cocked my head. “The same…what do you mean?”

  “They don’t die,” she whispered. “In all my days working here, I’ve never had to pluck up an aged or sickly rose. Their heads never wither or drop off. They just close up tight and then reopen again. There’s always heads in full blossom, rain or shine, dead of winter. Nothing can hold those roses back.”

  I took another drink of my water, wondering what to think. If there was anything I had learned from having this new connection to the earth, it was that all living things lived and died in cycles. Then again… Targa claimed that sirens can live for several hundreds of years in a vital state of quasi-immortality. If a living being could have that attribute, why couldn’t a plant? “What happened to the witch?”

  Ainslie shrugged. “I wish I knew. Lost to the past, like so much of our history. There would have been people at that time who would want to shut up a woman like that, so sometimes I wonder what kind of end she came to. I’d thank her if I could. Those roses have seen us through some financially difficult times.”

  “How so?”

  “Let me show you something.” Ainslie got up from the bench, moving stiffly, and crossed the room to a hutch against the wall opposite the fireplace. Opening the uppermost cupboard revealed a row of binders. She pulled one out and returned to the table as she opened it and leafed through it. “Here we are.”

  She lay the binder open in front of me. I began to flip through the pamphlets and certificates of prize
s won at gardening and agricultural shows from Edinburgh to Penzance.

  “The rose has won prizes?”

  “Aye, it’s never lost any exhibit we’ve submitted it for. It wasn’t easy in the beginning, because we had to request the judges come up here. Most shows expect you to bring your rosebush to their event, but we couldn’t do that. So for a few years, our applications were rejected. But when we finally convinced a judge to come see the roses for herself, they made an exception for us. We can’t compete in all the categories, but we sweep the ones we can register for.”

  I looked up in confusion. “Why couldn’t you take the roses to them?”

  “Because they die as soon as you take them out of Blackmouth.”

  My jaw drifted open. “They…die?”

  Ainslie nodded sadly. “Can’t tell you how many people have tried to plant them elsewhere. No one has ever been successful. This is the only place you’ll ever find them.”

  I was completely speechless. My heartrate went up a notch. There was magic in those roses, and the cunning woman who bred them sounded like a Wise. If she was, it was no wonder the terms Wise and witch were interchangeable in Blackmouth.

  Ainslie gathered up the binder and returned it to the cupboard. She closed the door and returned to the table to down the last of her tea.

  “Back to work for me. You going to check on those boys?”

  “Yes, that was where I was headed, actually.” I took Ainslie’s teacup and deposited it into the sink along with my drinking glass. “Thanks for sharing that story with me, Ainslie.”

  She nodded. “It’s nice to have something happy to share with tourists when they come. Our history is so full of darkness and murder, it’s refreshing that Blackmouth has something positive to contribute.” She headed for the door. “See you at supper.”

  Setting the dishes to drip dry, I went to the back door and donned boots and a jacket. The day was fresh and there were even a few slivers of sunshine trying to make their way through the bank of clouds drifting slowly overhead. I took my time passing through the garden, appreciating the scent of the truth roses and their extraordinarily resilient beauty. Was I capable of manufacturing an immortal rose? If I was, I didn’t have the know-how. And why did the roses die as soon as they were taken out of Blackmouth?

  A nasty thought struck. What if some of the accused who were burned during the witch trials, had actually been Wise? My heart bled at the thought.

  Passing through the maze and toward where Jasher and the others were working, I heard the mix of concerned male voices. Entering the clearing, I saw that all work had ceased. Jasher was on the work phone he’d been given by Gavin, while Will and Lachlan stood nearby, muttering softly. They all looked serious.

  “Look at the progress you’ve made,” I said as I approached.

  The thorns had been uprooted, finally, and the clippings and roots had been burned in a pit beyond the grove. With the ruins now exposed, I realized they were more extensive than first imagined. Crumbling stone walls as thick as two feet snaked about the grove at right angles to one another. Old stone floors were cracked and full of weeds as nature reclaimed her territory.

  The men greeted me. Jasher looked up and gave me a nod, but he didn’t smile. He went back to the conversation he was having on the work phone, his voice low and thoughtful.

  “Progress stops once again,” Lachlan said, “and you won’t believe why this time.”

  “Why?” But no one needed to tell me. Once I was close enough to the ruin, I saw for myself.

  There, within the thick stone and mortar of the ruin, lay an upright skeleton, with enough skin and muscle tissue remaining to cross over into mummy class.

  “Whoa,” I breathed. “Is that real?”

  “Aye, we believe so. It’s lucky it wasn’t destroyed completely before we noticed it, because we were meant to demolish and remove all of the remaining walls today. When Jasher pulled away the stone covering its…face, he gave a frightful yell.”

  “Gavin should call the job off,” Will said, uneasily. “If those stupid thorn bushes were any sign, that thing doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  My insides gave a lurch of disquiet. I didn’t know if Will was being serious, but I was a supernatural. His suggestion was completely within my realm of belief.

  “Feeling a bit superstitious are you, Will?” Lachlan knocked him on the arm with a fist, but his smile was also troubled.

  The skull stared out at us from hollow sockets. A line of wrinkled skin framed the bare teeth, leaving only a hideous grin. A long, tangled mat of fibers on either side of the skull suggested hair, and rotten cloth draped over the shoulders suggested clothes. Below the chest, the body was still trapped between layers of stone and cement, while the layer which had covered the face and neck had been pulled away. It sat there like a sleeping nightmare, trapped on all sides.

  “I wonder who she was?” Lachlan murmured as we stared at the body.

  Will’s eyes darted up. “She?”

  “Sure, look at the long hair.”

  “There have been times in history when men had long hair, too,” Will pointed out.

  “True.” But Lachlan sounded doubtful.

  I couldn’t help but think about the story Ainslie had just told me about the cunning woman, how she wondered what kind of end she’d found. But just because the body was in close proximity to the roses didn’t mean anything, and I was most likely linking the two because the story was fresh in my mind.

  “Who is Jasher talking to?” I asked, my voice sounded paper dry.

  “The police,” replied Will. “That’s a murder, right there.”

  “It’s too old for the police to care about it,” Lachlan shifted his weight from one foot to the other and lifted his spade to point. “That person would have been buried in the walls when they were first built, so it’s been there for over three hundred years. There won’t be a murder investigation. Whoever did it died ages ago.”

  Will had begun to pace, his hands tucked into his armpits. He threw disgusted glances at the skeleton, never allowing his gaze to linger for very long.

  Jasher said goodbye and ended his call. “The Chief Inspector is on his way.”

  “Really?” Lachlan looked surprised. “They aren’t going to send a constable?”

  “Only because he’s not far away and he’s curious to see it for himself.” Jasher gave me a tremulous smile and came to stand beside me.

  We looked down at the skeleton, standing shoulder to shoulder with our backs to the others.

  “Looks like the dead still have a way of finding me,” he said quietly.

  I took his hand and squeezed. I could feel his muscles trembling under my hand. “Sorry, Jasher. What a nasty find.”

  “It’s all right. Just threw me for a bit of a loop, pulling a stone away and seeing that thing grinning up at me like a Halloween party decoration. Dealing with the remains is way better than dealing with the spirit. Though, I’d be able to tell her story if I was able to communicate with the dead still.”

  I didn’t miss his reference to a female, and I had to admit, I was already thinking of the body as ‘she.’ “They’ll have other ways of figuring out who she was.”

  Jasher nodded. “I’d better go out front and meet the inspector. He won’t know how to find his way down here.” He turned and disappeared into the trees.

  We stood around in low conversation and in stretched-out silences until Jasher returned with a tall, pale man with red hair and a wide stomach. He was dressed in uniform and wore a serious expression to go along with it. He introduced himself as Chief Inspector Hamilton, not shaking hands but sparing each of us a nod. He wheezed a little as he knelt near the find. He took several photos and made notes.

  “Are you going to investigate this as a murder?” Will asked.

  Inspector Hamilton snapped his notebook shut and tucked it into his pocket, bracing a hand on the stone wall to help him rise.

  “Of course not,” he repli
ed testily. “I’ll have to call in a mortician to remove it. Once it’s in the morgue, an osteoarcheologist will see what can be made of it.” He made eye contact with each of us. “You’ve not disturbed it?”

  Jasher shook his head. “Only when the stones in front of its face fell away, the head kind of fell to the side and stayed like you see it now. Otherwise, we haven’t touched it.”

  “Good,” the inspector replied. “Don’t touch anything else until it’s been removed.”

  “Are you sure we should remove it, Inspector?” Will’s voice quavered a little. “I mean, disturbing the dead and all.”

  “What, you want to build your new cottage around it? Leave it for a good luck charm?” Inspector Hamilton gave a patronizing chuckle.

  Will looked abashed. “It’s bad luck to move it.”

  “Says who?” the inspector barked and Will looked down, embarrassed.

  Jasher and I exchanged glances. I felt sorry for Will.

  “We follow protocol,” the inspector went on. “This is an archaeological find. It’ll be documented, studied, and in this case”—the inspector swung his eyes to the skeleton again—“buried. There’s no room for superstitious nonsense…”

  “…in the law,” Lachlan finished, sounding tired.

  “That’s right,” the inspector said. “I’ll make the appropriate calls. Like I said—”

  “Don’t touch anything,” Jasher and Lachlan replied simultaneously.

  “Yeah, we won’t,” Jasher finished.

  Jasher left with the inspector while Will grabbed his stuff and gave Lachlan and me a hurried goodbye.

  “Poor fellow,” Lachlan said once Will had gone. “Whole thing has disturbed him a bit.”

  “Well, it is disturbing.” I glanced uneasily at the skeleton. “She was murdered.”

  “Whatever happened here is part of Blackmouth’s story. There’ll be a way to learn who she was and why she was killed.” Lachlan lowered his voice. “And I fancy Will was right. That bloody spook of a thorn bush had something to do with her.”

  “You think so?”