Caress of a Witch, page 3
part #1 of Darkness Rising - Three Series
Kate said, ‘There was a fortune teller in the kitchens at the palace. She read my palm.’
Unconsciously she regarded her hand for a moment before her eyes slid back towards her mother’s face.
‘What did she see?’ Mary asked. She kept her voice carefully casual, but a fine thread of dread was creeping up from her gut, a fear that long-hidden knowledge might yet come to light.
Again, Kate hesitated, running the tip of her tongue across her lips before she answered. ‘She said,’ she began, dropping her eyes away now, watching the flames, ‘that I have witchblood in my veins.’
In spite of herself, Mary’s breath came in a sharp snatch and her skin crawled with a sudden chill that owed nothing to the winter damp beyond the window.
‘She said from my father most of all.’
Mary swallowed, panic rising. She had hoped she would never have to explain the past to her daughter, trusting they had left it far enough behind them, buried. Long ago, when Kate was small, she and Toby had talked of it sometimes, but as the years had passed she had put it out of her thoughts, allowing herself to believe all that had happened was forgotten. So now no words came to mind and she could think of no explanation for the fortune teller’s claim. Kate was watching her, gaze intent and demanding as Mary scrabbled in her head for an answer.
‘What fortune teller?’ she stalled.
Help me, Toby. Please.
She made a silent plea. In the first weeks after her husband’s death she had called to him over and over, hoping for some sign of his presence, a sense that his spirit still lingered, but he had never once answered her, not even in her dreams. And though now she had all but given up hope of ever feeling his presence again, desperation drove her to plead anew.
Please, Toby. Help me.
But the hoped-for answer did not come and she realised she must face this trial alone. Turning away from the accusation she saw in her daughter’s eyes, she searched the street below the window for the right words to say. In the lane, the gossiping neighbours had moved away and an oxcart was trundling over the cobbles in their place, its load swaying dangerously as the wheels jolted across the ruts.
‘Mother?’ Her daughter’s voice sounded close by her shoulder.
Mary jumped, startled by Kate’s sudden presence close by her side at the window. She hadn’t heard her approach. She swallowed, still groping for an answer. It was tempting to deny all knowledge. She could simply dismiss the woman as a fraud, and for the space of three long breaths she considered it before she let the possibility slide away. Kate deserved more than such a lie. Besides, Mary knew from experience that once disturbed the truth had a way of being heard. Kate might believe a lie today but there would be other times, other questions, that might not be so easy to explain away.
‘Your grandfather,’ she heard herself begin – though why she chose to name Tom before his cousin Sarah, she could not have said. Loyalty perhaps, to the woman who had helped her and set her on her own path? ‘Your father’s father.’
Kate turned to her mother in surprise. So she had been expecting a denial after all, Mary realised. She could have lied and Kate would have believed her. But now she had opened the box and the lid could not be closed again.
‘What about him?’
‘He was a witch,’ Mary said simply. In the end the words were easy to say. But then, she had never known Tom and he had been dead a long time, so his secrets were easier to betray. Her husband’s name, though, she would guard with her life – no one could ever know the darkness the two of them had shared.
‘What kind of a witch?’
Mary lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘I couldn’t say. But he was hanged for it. Before your father was born.’
For a moment Kate was silent, taking in this new knowledge that must surely shatter her world. Then she rounded on Mary, eyes vivid with fury. ‘Why have you never told me this before? It changes everything!’
Mary almost smiled. ‘What does it change?’
Kate ignored the question. ‘And father?’ she asked instead. ‘Was he a witch too?’
Mary shook her head. But an image of Toby’s book of magic, hidden away in the attic, precious and rare and imbued with a power that was dangerous to wield, pawed at her thoughts for the first time in years. Had he ever consulted it in their life together since they fled from Bankside? Had he conjured in secret, searching for arcane knowledge the same as his father before him? If so, he had kept it hidden from her, and she was glad. She would have been afraid to know, aware that to meddle with the spirits was to flirt with death. They had walked that path together when first they met and people had died because of it. It was one of those deaths that had forced them to flee to Holland.
‘No.’ She answered her daughter’s question. ‘Your father was no witch, though the blood was in his veins.’
‘And you?’ Kate was observing her mother with a new interest, searching for facets she had never suspected till now. ‘The fortune teller said the blood came from both sides.’
‘A little herblore, as you already know,’ Mary said. Learned from Sarah, Toby’s mother and Tom’s cousin. But she made no mention of the prayers she had learned to say to Hecate under the changing moon nor of the spells they had cast. She had called to the goddess now and then across the years but the connection had waned over time – Mary could hardly remember the last time she had even thought of her.
Kate glared, pretty mouth clamped tight in a sullen pout, disbelief clear in her eyes as her gaze wandered towards her mother’s six-fingered left hand. Mary waited, uncertain where Kate would take the argument, though she knew the battle had only just begun.
‘Why did you and Father leave England?’ Kate demanded. ‘What brought you here?’
‘A new beginning. A change.’
‘But why?’ her daughter persisted. ‘People don’t just forsake a whole life to start anew without good reason.’
‘Someone offered your father a share in the business here,’ Mary lied. ‘It seemed like a good opportunity. There was nothing to hold us in England. No remaining family.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Kate’s arms were folded across her chest and she was glaring out of the window, jaw tight with anger and determination.
Mary shrugged. ‘’Tis the truth. What do you think brought us here? Do you think we flew on broomsticks? Is that what you want me to say?’
‘Tell me about my grandfather,’ Kate demanded, swivelling her gaze briefly to sweep her mother with derision. ‘I know you know more than you’re telling me.’
Mary moved away from the window, depression at the grey winter morning outside settling on her shoulders: Dutch weather, a Dutch street. She crossed to the hearth where the fire was drawing well – the flames were bright and the room was cheerful in its glow. It was a good house, she thought, with its dark wood panelling and the Turkey carpets she remembered choosing long ago with Toby. Happy memories, a life she had never thought to have. She lifted her eyes to her daughter, who was outlined now against the light behind her with her face in shadow, and thought that the girl had become a stranger.
She said, ‘His name was Tom Wynter. The story goes that his cousin Sarah was accused of bewitching a young man, and he took the blame to save her.’
‘So he wasn’t actually a witch, but she was?’
‘I’ve told you – I don’t know much about it. What does it matter, anyway? It’s ancient history.’ She was regretting she had opened the box, aware Kate would never now let it go. But so far she had revealed precious little and she promised herself to say no more.
‘What does it matter?’ Kate’s voice rose in echo.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Mary snapped. The words would carry to anyone in the shop below. But Kate wasn’t listening.
‘I have the blood of a witch in my veins – of course it matters. I want to know more. Am I a witch too? Is that how it works? Will the blood find a way to be heard?’
Mary sighed. She was weary, tired of a life without Toby, and it was hard to summon the strength to argue. She wanted to lie down and rest her aching head.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think that’s how it works. You have a choice. You always have a choice about the path you follow. Nothing is ever set in stone, whatever the fortune teller may have told you.’
‘She told me my future lay in the past,’ Kate said.
Mary was silent. She could think of nothing more to say, no wisdom to impart. She wished again that Toby was there – he would have known what to say and Kate would have listened: they had shared a closeness Mary had often envied.
‘I need to know about the past,’ Kate went on. ‘And if you cannot tell me I will find someone who can.’
‘Who?’ A terrible presentiment crept over Mary’s skin.
‘The fortune teller,’ Kate snarled, and with a swing of her hips she was gone, the door slamming hard behind her, vibrating with the force.
Mary stared for a long time at the empty space her daughter had left behind, and wondered what would happen now.
4
There is a world elsewhere
Kate almost fell down the stairs in her haste to be gone, grabbing at the banister to steady herself as she stumbled, heart pounding in her chest. At the bottom of the steps she lifted her cloak from its hook and strode along the passage to the back door and into the garden where the herbs were struggling for the winter sunlight and the trees were leafless and forlorn. The weeds had been neglected these last few months, and she lifted her skirts free of the wet, boots squelching on the damp carpet of leaves. Then she was in the lane that ran between the rows of houses and striding towards the palace once more.
Her mother was lying, she thought. She had seen the hesitation, the reluctance even to admit as much as she had, so Kate knew without a doubt there was much more to be told. But what? And why had Mary refused to tell? Not so long ago she had thought they were close, but now it seemed she had lived her whole life within a web of deception – her parents with unknown stories, an unknown life. Was it witchcraft that had led them to begin a new life across the narrow sea in The Hague? Had her father been a witch in spite of her mother’s denial, true to the blood that flowed inside him?
She paced swiftly, growing warm despite the chill that hung in the air. She could feel the sweat gathering in the small of her back and the trickle down her spine but she hurried on, too impatient to stop and take off the heavy wool cloak, and reluctant anyway to have to carry it. Turning a corner in her haste, she had to sidestep abruptly to avoid a collision with a merchant who was rushing in the other direction.
‘Hey! Watch where you’re going,’ he shouted, though it was as much his fault as hers. She ignored him, simply lowering her eyes and striding on, her mind too full of other thoughts to spare even one for the merchant. She could hear him still railing at her as she walked away but she paid him no mind.
Childish images of witchcraft circled in her mind – the weird old women of half-remembered folk tales, working their dark and dangerous magic. Then she remembered the news of the recent witch-hunts in England, and the scores of poor women who had died on the gallows for their craft. Women accused of consorting with the Devil, giving themselves to him in ecstasy and sin. No wonder her parents had kept their secret close. Would she end the same way, she wondered, her life cut short at the end of a rope?
Shuddering, and her guts heavy with dread, Kate’s footsteps briefly faltered. She should go home, she thought, and make peace with her mother, instead of stirring up the secrets of a hidden past. A dangerous past. They had known enough grief already.
But when the great palace loomed before her again she did not pause, drawn onwards by some strange force she could not deny. Fear that she had tarried too long quivered inside her: the fortune teller might not have waited for her to return and she would discover no more after all.
The door to the kitchen was unlocked, and inside, the place was just as she had left it, ripe with steam from bubbling pots, the aromas of roasting boar and venison, the sweet-sour scent of sauces. A host of workers moved in concert, each one’s role defined and only the rare misstep. Kate peered through the fug, searching for the figure of the fortune teller and when she spied her at last, still at her place on a stool in the corner, she sucked in a deep breath; she hadn’t realised she was holding it.
For a moment Kate hesitated, observing the woman who sat with such stillness, apparently gazing beyond the walls of the palace, undisturbed by the activity around her. She had shed her cloak, and the pallor of her breast gleamed in the firelight above the low-cut dress. Dark silk, Kate noticed, trimmed with lace. She was expensively dressed for a fortune teller, Kate realised, in skirts of fine blue wool with a velvet jacket over her bodice: the robes of a gentlewoman. Kate’s innards lurched again – she knew nothing about this woman, and a sense that she possessed knowledge far beyond the reading of palms filtered through Kate’s mind, leaving a residue of unease. Her grandfather had hanged for his witchcraft – was the same fate awaiting her? Was it wise to disturb the ghosts of the past? Perhaps her mother had been right to conceal the truth.
For two quick breaths Kate paused, half tempted to turn away, and forget it after all. What did it matter anyway, whose blood flowed through her veins? She was a tailor’s daughter, fated to live out her life by the plying of her needle. Nothing would change that, not even sewing shirts for a prince. She should leave, she thought again, and think no more on the fortune teller’s words.
She was about to turn away when Isabella’s gaze shifted and her eyes caught at Kate’s. The look that passed between them quashed all her doubts in an instant – it was a look that offered the world, a look that could not be gainsaid. With a little lift of her shoulders, Kate picked up her skirts and wove her way across the kitchen to take up her place on the stool once more.
‘You returned.’
‘You knew I would.’
The woman smiled, the stern face softening for the first time. ‘I did.’
‘How could you know such a thing?’
‘You are young and curious. And if your mother wanted you to know about the past, she would have told you long ago.’
Kate swallowed, a sense of trepidation sliding through her. She set her face as best she could, hoping to hide the onslaught of feelings behind a mask. But even as she did it, she doubted there was much she could hide from this woman.
‘You wish to know where you come from?’
She nodded, no longer trusting her voice to speak.
‘What are you prepared to give in return for this knowledge?’
Kate hesitated. She had not thought till now beyond the knowledge itself. She should have expected there would be a price to pay for its finding.
‘I have nothing,’ she managed to breathe, lifting her empty hands. It felt as though the ground had shifted under her. She was stepping into a different future and the realisation both scared and excited her.
‘Everyone has something.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She felt foolish suddenly, and judged.
‘Are you prepared to give this up? This life?’ The fortune teller gestured with an elegant hand around the kitchen. A blood-red jewel on one of her fingers caught the light and glimmered. ‘Are you willing to leave it all behind to find out the truth?’
Kate’s breathing quickened and though she ran her tongue across her lips, her mouth was dry. Could she? She had never thought to have such a choice.
‘What would you have me do?’ she asked, and the words were hard to form in a mouth that felt like sawdust.
Isabella leaned forward and placed a hand on Kate’s wrist. Her fingers were hard and cold despite the warmth of the kitchen, and Kate quivered with her touch.
‘Come with me,’ she said, ‘and I promise you will find what you seek.’
Kate swallowed again, past the lump in her throat, and forced herself to meet the other woman’s eyes. They were watching her, waiting, and though Kate wanted nothing so much as to believe in her, her whole body prickled in warning.
‘Go with you where?’
‘Trust me,’ Isabella whispered, as though she were inside Kate’s head. ‘Trust me.’
For the length of a heartbeat Kate said nothing. She already knew the woman was not to be trusted. Already knew the danger. But in spite of the doubts and the voice in her head that was screaming no, she still heard herself say, ‘I will go with you.’
The other woman’s face broke into a delighted smile that did nothing to quell the quiver of fear in Kate’s veins, nor the sense she had struck a bad bargain. But even so, she could not bring herself to walk away.
‘Wonderful,’ Isabella purred, rising to her feet. ‘Wait here – there is something I must attend to.’
Then she turned and left.
Kate waited as she was told. In the heat and bustle no one paid her any mind but it was hard to be patient when the future lay just beyond her fingertips; she yearned to race towards it. Excitement and terror tumbled in equal measure inside her and she had to fight against the urge to pace in the corner, forcing herself to sit and be still, hands clasped lightly on her lap, fingers twitching.
She could scarcely believe the path she had chosen to follow, and her mother’s voice, practical and scolding, sounded over her thoughts. Kate’s innards lurched again: what was she thinking? She knew nothing of this woman and yet she had placed her fate in her hands. She should go home and make her peace with her mother, she decided, who might yet be coaxed to part with the truth, given time. But still, Kate made no move to leave, unable to bring herself to back away.
Examining her hands, she traced the lines of one with the fingertips of the other, searching for the secrets hidden within them. How could a person tell so much from a palm? Surely there must be some sorcery in it? Or was it guesswork merely, and the woman was a liar and a charlatan? Kate shook her head against the doubts, reminding herself of the truths Isabella had spoken and that her mother had already confirmed. This was her one chance to walk a different road and escape the humdrum life she had been born to – from birth to death as a seamstress, her world bounded by the neighbouring streets, and all that lay beyond them forever unknown to her. More than anything, she wanted to know the world in all its chaos and beauty, and she was willing to take the risk for the knowledge.
