Witch's Honour, page 1
WITCH’S
HONOUR
Jan Siegel
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Contents
PerfectBound e-book extras:
Glossary: Names
Black Magic: A Short Story
Epigraph: Prayer
Prologue: Enter First Witch
Part One: Succour
I
It was New Year’s Eve 2000
II
At Wrokeby, the house-goblin…
III
The hardest thing…
IV
Fern left work early…
Part Two: Valour
V
In the city, you…
VI
On Saturday morning…
VII There was little progress…
VIII It was daylight in the…
IX
Luc saw very little…
Part Three: Honour
X
It has forgotten…
XI
Luc woke to find…
XII Fern went to King’s…
CONTENTS
Epilogue: Exit Third Witch
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By Jan Siegel
Credits
Front Cover
Copyright
About PerfectBound
PRAYER
Ah, once I lived my life in every breath,
I gave my first love to a unicorn
and rode the shadows on the edge of death
and pierced my heart with his enchanted horn.
I saw the mountains soar ice-white, cloud-tall,
and moonfoam on an endless waterfall,
and felt the petals of my flesh unfold,
and mountains, waterfalls and heartbeats rolled
down long blue valleys to a distant sea.
Oh Lord, even the pain was dear to me,
if Lord there be.
And now my life is filled with little things,
little moments crowding little days,
my thought has shackles where it once had wings
and narrow vistas overstretch my gaze,
and daily work, and daily growing care
trundle me down the road to God-knows-where
if God is there.
I fear the hour when the world turns grey
and in the hollow midnight try to pray;
mountains and waterfalls have flowed away
leaving leaving me nothing much to say,
nothing but questions, till my thought runs dry –
I ask and ask, but never hear reply:
Is there a dream to set my spirit free?
In all the dead void of eternity
is there a God – and Love – and Phantasy –
or only me?
Is there Another, Lord, or can there be
no God but me?
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PROLOGUE
Enter First Witch
The name of the island was Æeea, which, however you attempt
to pronounce it, sounds like a scream. It was a gold-green jigsaw
fragment of land a long way from any other shore, laced with foam and
compassed with the blue-shaded contours of the sea. Near at hand,
the gold dulled to yellow: slivers of yellow sand along the coastline,
dust-yellow roads, yellow earth and rock showing through the olive
groves on the steep climb to the sky. The central crag was tall enough
to hook the clouds; in ancient times the natives believed such cloud
concealed the more questionable activities of their gods. Nowadays,
the former fishermen and peasant-farmers catered to the discerning
tourist, telling stories of smugglers and shipwrecks, of mermaids and
heroes, and of the famous enchantress who had once lived there
in exile, snaring foolish travellers in the silken webs of her hair.
Æeea was overlooked by the main holiday companies: only the
specialists sent their customers to a location with little night-life and no plate-smashing in the quiet tavernas. Most of the more sumptuous
villas were owned by wealthy mainlanders who wanted a bolthole far
from the madding crowd of more commercial destinations.
The villa above Hekati Beach was one of these. More modern
than most, it had seaward walls of tinted glass, black marble pillars,
cubist furniture standing tip-toe on blood-coloured Persian carpets.
There was a courtyard, completely enclosed, where orchids jostled
for breathing-space in the jungle air and the cold silver notes of
falling water made the only music. At its heart the latest incumbent
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had planted a budding tree, grown from a cutting, a thrusting, eager
sapling, whiplash-slender, already putting forth leaves shaped like
those of an oak but larger, and veined with a sap that was red. The
house was reputedly the property of a shipping owner, a billionaire
so reclusive that no one knew his name or had ever seen his face, but
he would loan or rent it to friends, colleagues, strangers, unsociable
lessees who wanted to bathe on a private beach far from the prying
eyes of native peasant or straying tourist. The latest tenant had been
there since the spring, cared for by an ancient crone who seemed to
the local tradespeople to be wilfully deaf and all but dumb, selecting
her purchases with grunts and hearing neither greeting nor question.
Her back was hunched and between many wrinkles the slits of her
eyes appeared to have no whites, only the beady black gleam of iris
and pupil. The few who had glimpsed her mistress declared she was
as young as her servant was old, and as beautiful as the hag was
ugly, yet she too was aloof even by the standards of the house.
They said she did not lie in the sun, fearing perhaps to blemish
the pallor of her perfect skin, but swam in the waters of the cove by
moonlight, naked but for the dark veil of her hair. In the neighbouring village the men speculated, talking in whispers over the last metaxa
of a goddess beyond compare, but the women said she must be
disfigured or diseased. She had a pet even stranger than her servant,
a huge sphinx-cat hairless as a baby, its skin piebald, greyish-white
marked with bruise-black patches. It had been seen hunting on the
mountain-slopes above her garden; someone claimed to have watched
it kill a snake.
Behind the glass walls of her house, the woman heard the villagers’
stories though her servant never spoke, and smiled to herself, a sweet, secret smile. She still bathed by night, secure in the power of the
moon, and by day she stayed in a darkened room, lighting a cold
fire on the cold marble hearth, and gazing, gazing into the smoke.
Sometimes she sat in the courtyard, where little sun found its way
through the vine-trellised canopy. No cicadas strummed here, though
the slopes beyond throbbed with their gypsy sawing; no bee buzzed,
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or not for long. The hungry orchids sucked up all insect-life in their
spotted mouths. There was no sound but the water. The woman would
sit among the carnivorous plants, dressed in a thin red garment spotted like an orchid, with the black ripples of her hair falling around her
shoulders. Watching the tree. The cat came to her there, and rubbed
its bald flank against her limbs, purring. Will it fruit, Nehemet? she
would murmur. It grows, but will it fruit? And if it does, what fruit
will it bear? And she would touch the leaves with her pale fingertips –
leaves which trembled at that contact, not after but before, as though
in anticipation.
For Panioti, son of the woman who owned the general store and
gift shop, there came a night when the last metaxa was a drink too far.
He was handsome as only a child of the sun can be, high of cheekbone
and brown of skin, with the gloss of youth on him like a velvet down
and the idle assurance of absolute beauty. In the summer, he minded
the shop for his mother and made love to all the prettiest visitors; in the off-season, he went to college in Athens, took life seriously, and
studied to be an engineer. ‘I do not believe in the loveliness of this
unknown siren,’ he maintained over the second-to-last drink, ‘or she
would not hide herself. A beautiful woman puts on her smallest bikini
and shows off her body on the beach. Has anyone seen her?’ But none
of them had. ‘There you are. I won’t take her charms on trust; like any rumour, they will have grown in the telling. I want proof. I want to
see her with my own eyes, swimming naked in the moonlight. Then
I will believe her a goddess.’
grove, down by the rocks. See for yourself.’
‘He would never dare,’ said another. ‘I bet you five thousand
drachma.’
By the last drink, the bet was on.
The cove was inaccessible save by the path down from the house,
so the following evening Panioti swam round the headland, coming
ashore on the rocks in order to leave no footprints, and concealed
himself among the olive trees at the base of the slope. He carried a
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camera in a waterproof case, the kind that would take pictures
in the dark without need of a flash, and a bottle of beer. He sat
under the leaves in the fading sunset, leopard-spotted with shadow,
drinking the beer slowly, slowly, to make it last. The dark had come
down before the bottle was empty and he thrust it upright into the
sandy soil. He waited, impatient of the crawling hours, held to his
vigil only by the thought of his friends’ scorn, if he were to return too soon. At long last his wristwatch showed the hands drawing towards
midnight. Now she will come, he thought, or I shall leave. But I do not think she will come.
She came. He saw her as a white movement on the path, her
form apparently wreathed in a glittering mist, her dark hair fading
into darkness. She seemed to glide over the uneven ground with a
motion that was smooth and altogether silent; he almost fancied her
feet did not touch the earth. The hair prickled on his neck. For a
moment he could have believed her a pagan spirit, a creature of
another kind, whose flesh and substance was not of this world. Then
as she descended to the beach he realised the mist-effect was a loose,
transparent garment which she unfastened and shed on the sand; her
body glowed in the moonlight, slender and shapely as an alabaster
nymph, a cold, perfect thing. She raised her arms to the sky as if
in greeting to some forgotten deity, then she walked out into the
water. The sea was calm and all but waveless: it took her with barely
a ripple. He saw her head for a while as a black nodule silhouetted
against the sea-glimmer, then it dipped and vanished. Belatedly, he
remembered the camera, extracting it from its case, waiting for her
to re-emerge. He half wondered if she would show in a photograph
or if, like some supernatural being, she would leave no imprint on
celluloid. He moved forward, lying along the rocks, poised and ready;
but the swimmer did not return. She was gone so long his breath
shortened in fear and he put the camera aside, braced to plunge in
a search he knew would be hopeless.
She reappeared quite suddenly, within yards of the rocks where he
lay. He thought her eyes were wide open, staring through the night
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with the same dilated gaze with which she must have pierced the
darkness undersea. She began to swim towards the shore – towards
him – with a sleek invisible stroke. Then abruptly she rose from the water; the sea streamed from her limbs; her black hair clung wetly
to breasts, shoulders, back. For the first time, he saw her face, dim
in the moonglow but not dim enough – he looked into eyes deep as
the abyss and bright with a lustre that was not of the moon, he saw
the lips parted as if in hunger . . . He tried to move, to flee, forgetful of the camera, of the bet, of his manly pride; but his legs were rooted.
The whisper of her voice seemed to reach into his soul.
‘Do I look fair to you, peasant?’ She swept back her hair, thrusting
her breasts towards him, pale hemispheres surmounted with nipples
that jutted like thorns. ‘Look your fill. Tell me, did you feel bold
coming here? Did you feel daring, sneaking among the rocks to
gawp, and ogle, and boast to your friends? What will you say to them,
when you return – if you return? That you have seen Venus Infernalis, Aphrodite risen from a watery grave, reborn from the spume of the
sea-god’s ecstasy? What will you say?’
Closer she came and closer; his spirit recoiled, but his muscles were
locked and his body shuddered.
‘Nothing,’ he managed. ‘I will say nothing. I swear.’
‘I know you will say nothing.’ She was gentle now, touching a
cold finger to his face. ‘Do you know the fate of those who spy on
the goddess? One was struck blind, another transformed into a stag
and torn to pieces by his own dogs. But you have no dog, and the
blind can still see with the eyes of the mind. So I will blank your
mind, and put your soul in your eyes. You came here to see me,
to behold the mystery of my beauty. I will give you your heart’s
desire. Your eyes will be enchanted, lidless and sleepless, fixed on
me forever. Does that sound good to you?’ Her hands slid across
his cheeks, cupped around his sockets. His skin shrank from the
contact.
‘Please,’ he mumbled, and ‘No . . .’ but her mouth smiled and her
fingers probed unheeding.
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In a velvet sky the moon pulled a wisp of cloud over its face, hiding
its gaze from what followed.
The next morning a rumour circulated the village that the woman
and her servant had left in the small hours, taking the hairless cat and uprooting plants from the courtyard. The taxi-driver who had driven
them to the airport confirmed it, though his tip had been so generous
he had got drunk for a week and was consequently confused. For
some reason, the house was not occupied again. The owner left it
untenanted and uncared for, the blood-red carpets faded; only the
orchids thrived.
They found Panioti’s body two days later, borne on the sea-currents
some way from Hekati beach. He had not drowned and there was no
visible injury on his body, save where his eyeballs had been plucked
out. But that was not a story they told the tourists.
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PART ONE
Succour
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I
It was New Year’s Eve 2000. The ancient house of Wrokeby
normally brooded in silence under the eaves of the Wrokewood,
a haphazard sprawl of huddled rooms, writhen staircases, arthritic
beams and creaking floors, its thick walls attacked from without by
monstrous creepers and gnawed from within by mice, beetles, and dry
rot. English Heritage had no mandate here; only shadows prowled the
empty corridors, draughts fingered the drapes, water demons gurgled
in the plumbing. The Fitzherberts who built it originally had, through
the vicissitudes of history, subsequently knocked it down, razed it, and built it up again, constructing the priest’s hole, burrowing the secret passages, and locking unwanted wives and lunatic relatives in the
more inaccessible attics, until the family expired of inbreeding and
ownership passed to a private trust. Now, it was leased to members
of the nouveau riche, who enjoyed decrying its many inconveniences
and complained formally only when the domestic staff fell through
the mouldering floorboards and threatened to sue. The latest tenant
was one Kaspar Walgrim, an investment banker with a self-made
reputation for cast-iron judgement and stainless steel integrity. He
liked to mention the house in passing to colleagues and clients, but
he rarely got around to visiting it. Until tonight. Tonight, Wrokeby
was having a ball.
Lights had invaded the unoccupied rooms and furtive corridors:
clusters of candles, fairy stars set in flower-trumpets, globes that spun and flashed. The shadows were confused, shredded into tissue-thin
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layers and dancing a tarantella across floor and walls; the glancing
illumination showed costumes historical and fantastical, fantastical-
