Caress of a Witch, page 7
part #1 of Darkness Rising - Three Series
‘I rarely remember.’
‘Pity,’ Isabella replied, and turned her head on the pillow to observe Kate once again.
Kate was silent. In the pause, her thoughts wandered back unbidden across the years to find the half-forgotten dreams that used to send her night after night to the safety of her parents’ bed. She had barely thought of them in years, but the face of the old man who had stalked her was vivid again before her now – intense grey eyes and a leer about his mouth. She shuddered at the memory, and other images she thought she had forgotten began to play at the edges of her mind.
A hanged man, a graveyard, a yew tree, a dog.
She swallowed, confused, and aware of Isabella’s eyes intent on her face.
‘Are you remembering now?’
In her confusion she was almost tempted to confess all she saw. But some inner core of mistrust stopped the words in her mouth. She shook her head, and Isabella’s face grew hard.
‘Do not lie to me,’ Isabella said. ‘I promised to show you your past but if you hide what you know I cannot help you.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Kate insisted. ‘Merely blurred images from childish dreams, nothing I can put words to.’
Even as she lied, she wondered why she did so. She had left all she had known behind her and given her life into this woman’s keeping in search of knowledge – it seemed absurd to hide the memory of childhood dreams. And yet, some warning force inside her kept her silent: knowledge is power, her father once told her, and she had never forgotten it.
Isabella observed her for two more breaths then rolled out of the bed with a sigh that betrayed her irritation. Drawing her robe around her, she crossed the silent rug to the hearth and crouched to poke at the fire, although it was already drawing well: the flames crackled merrily, heedless of the small drama playing out in its light.
‘Go back to your room,’ she said, without turning. ‘We will talk again.’
Kate hesitated, aware she was being punished. Isabella’s bed was warm and soft, and her own was hard and ripe with damp. She wanted to stay.
Isabella stood up and turned from the hearth. ‘Go,’ she said.
Kate slid from the bed with reluctance and picked up her clothes. With the thought of the cold beyond the door she remembered again her own neat chamber in the attic at home, clean and bright and safe. It beckoned brightly across the sea. Then, clutching her dress before her, she slipped from the room, padded silently along the passage and into the unwelcoming dark of her chamber.
7
My troublous dreams this night doth make me sad
In the morning Kate emerged from a tangled web of dreams that her mind groped to recover. But the images slid away even as she chased them down, until all that was left to recall was the hanged man from the dreams of her childhood, and a graveyard. She sat up, holding the covers close against the chill. The room was dim in the morning light; the narrow window looked out towards the backs of other houses built close by and they blotted out the sun.
Looking around her chamber, there was no trace now of the shadows that had so frightened her. It was just a damp and tatty room with old furnishings that were chipped and worn, and a much-faded quilt on the bed she could see in the light was badly frayed at the edges. A basin of water and a jug had been set on the dresser and she refused to let herself wonder who had put them there, and when.
With a sigh of reluctance she clambered out of the bed, found the chamber pot beneath it, then dressed hurriedly, skin bubbling as the cold air touched it. Her bodice and skirts were sticky with damp and she wished she had taken the time to bring others: although Isabella had promised her a change of clothes she had yet to make good on her word. The splash of icy water against her face refreshed her a little. Then, squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath to prepare herself for whatever the day may hold, she opened the door and went downstairs.
The place was empty, and she neither saw nor heard another soul as she wandered through to the kitchen. The house was eerily quiet, as though it were cloaked against the noise of the city she knew was humming just outside its walls, and the silence sent a quiver up her spine.
In the main chamber, someone had left bread and cheese and a jug of small beer on the sideboard, and she ate it standing up, examining the room as she did so. In the dull morning light she could see that the furnishings were no longer so fine as they once had been, chips in the dark wood of the sideboard and the chairs, cushions and rugs wearing thin. It seemed the war had not been kind to Isabella. A Royalist, paying the price for choosing the losing side, she supposed, and wondered if the Prince of Wales, living in comfort at the Binnenhof Palace, understood the sacrifices made on his behalf. Then she wondered which way she would have fallen herself if she had needed to make the choice. It was easy to support the King from the safety of The Hague, harder amidst the harsh realities of war.
With a grimace at the bitterness of the ale, she drained it down regardless. Briefly, she wondered where Isabella might have gone and when she would return, but the thought slid away almost as soon it arose. Without Isabella watching over her she was free for a while, and the knowledge of that freedom blossomed in her chest as excitement. She was alone for the first time since she had left the palace at Isabella’s heels, and with a quick glance once more upstairs to be sure, she gave herself a smile. Then, fetching her cloak from where she had left it hanging, she swung it across her shoulders, fastened it tightly at the neck, and stepped out through the front door, locking it behind her with the key that had been left on the sideboard.
The street outside assailed her senses. It was alive with racket – the knocking of hammers, shouting, wheels on mud, the grind of some kind of machinery she could not see. A dog was barking with regular insistence, and somewhere close by a small child began to wail. The stench almost brought her to her knees and she was half tempted to turn back inside to the peace behind her. But she had not travelled so far to sit inside and wait for permission like an obedient child, and so she forced herself forward, treading carefully through the rutted mud, lifting her skirts clear of the filth that littered the street. No one paid her any mind as she picked her way over the channels of dirt, too busy with their own concerns. An old woman sat on a stool before a smouldering brazier, and her gaze never strayed from the flames, as though she might find the answers to the mysteries of the universe if she could only stare for long enough. Kate couldn’t tell what it was she was burning, only that it gave off an acrid smell.
In the clear morning light, she could see more clearly the true poverty of the neighbourhood. Crumbling tenements that were black with mould and grime, windowless; beggars in swathes of rags and barefoot, men with missing limbs, children glassy-eyed with hunger. She had never seen such desperation before, and the sight of it appalled her. Was it the war that had brought so many so low? This was her world now too, and the fear that she could end her days in such want and desperation began to threaten the curiosity that had led her here. With a shudder, she quickened her pace, seeking escape. Her past seemed unimportant now, her witchblood an irrelevance.
Winding through the maze of lanes, she remained wary. Blank eyes watched her pass, hands held out in automatic desperation. Ragged children tugged at her skirts but she shooed them away, wishing she had coins to give. The streets all seemed the same – filthy, rank, dark, and just when she had begun to believe that all of London was rotten, she spilled out of the maze at last and onto a wide main thoroughfare that was lined with inns and shops and well-to-do houses. A press of horses and carts and weary-looking travellers were headed towards the river, and she realised she had stumbled onto the street that led to the great bridge across the Thames and the city of London itself. She watched, considering if she should fall in with them, but when a rough-looking man with bad teeth and a pockmarked face leered towards her she twisted away in sudden fear and headed south, in the opposite direction.
She kept walking, hoping he had not turned from his path to follow, and only when she was sure he was not behind her did she slow her steps and start to take in all that was around her – the row of inns, the shops, and more people than she had ever seen in one place in her life. She stayed wary, unused to such crowds, and mistrustful.
Seeking a quieter road, she turned off the main street on a whim into a lane that ran alongside one of the inns. It was narrow and overshadowed by the buildings either side of it, and as soon as the High Street behind her faded into silence, a trickle of foreboding crept over her skin, prickling. She had been safer with the crowds, she realised, and instinctively she flicked a glance behind her. There was no one she could see but the feeling that someone was following was hard to shake off and so she quickened her footsteps, careful not to slip on the icy ground.
The way narrowed still further, high walls on either side until it was only just wide enough for her to pass through; a bigger man would need to turn his shoulders. But the light at the end of it beckoned and by the time the lane tipped her out into the street, she was almost running. Stopping abruptly, she squinted in the sudden bright light, a low sun warming the road. When her eyes had adjusted to the change, she looked about her.
She was standing in a broad street that ran north to south. Buildings of all kinds lined both sides – traders mostly, their shop fronts open to the day. It was a more prosperous neighbourhood than the one she had come from, and the hammer and clatter of tools and voices drifted across the morning. Half-timbered houses nestled between the workshops, and across from where she stood, a young servant girl was kneeling to scrub a stone step. Kate observed her as the girl paused and sat back on her heels to wipe her forehead with a soapy hand. The two women locked eyes for a heartbeat until Kate slid hers away, embarrassed to have been caught watching. Hurriedly, she turned north and began walking again.
She had not gone far when she found herself outside a graveyard. Her footsteps slowed of their own accord and her breathing quickened – she had never much liked graveyards, fear of them fuelled by her nightmares and a visceral dread of what they may hold. Her thoughts flitted to the memory of her father’s grave in The Hague where the headstone was still bright and new and the grass had not yet grown across the mound. A wash of grief crashed like a wave in her guts so that she had to rest a hand on the gate of the graveyard to steady herself against the desire to howl out loud with sorrow.
Not here, she scolded herself. Not now.
Forcing herself to dry-eyed attention, she ran her gaze across the unkempt collection of graves before her. The place was familiar to her somehow, as if awaking a half-forgotten memory, and she hesitated, frowning as she ransacked her memories to track down the recollection. Then the shadow of her dreams fell across her thoughts, and she remembered. Here, she knew without a flicker of doubt, she would find the grave of her nightmares. Here was buried the hanged young man. Trepidation rippled through her blood, and her fingers tightened on the rotting wood of the gate, knuckles white. What force had brought her here? She wanted to run, and the rush of longing for the safety of home that billowed through her almost took her breath away.
For long moments she waited as the urge to flee warred with her curiosity. Her innards churned and her throat was dry. How could this place be before her now in reality, when she had seen it so many times in her dreams? Some strange magic she did not understand. Casting another glance behind her to reassure herself she was alone, it was still hard to brush off the suspicion she was being watched. Then, obeying an instinct she would have preferred to ignore, she slid through the gap between fence and gate and into the yard within.
Inside, she saw at once that it was a resting place for the bodies of the poor and unloved, the sinners and thieves. The graves were unkempt and overgrown, and few bore any marker to say who lay beneath. But as she wound her way between them away from the road, a sense of tranquillity descended, a sense of lives lived, and souls at rest with no more hardships to face in this world. The rapid patter of her heartbeat began to slow as she wandered amongst them, sidestepping the thistles and clumps of nettles that caught at the hem of her skirts.
The morning was bright and cold with a watery sun that rested low above the rooftops, and she let her feet guide her as they chose along the ill-kept tracks while her gaze searched across the scattered graves for the path she used to follow in her dreams. Then a bank of cloud rolled in front of the sun, and a sudden chill crept once more across her skin, a sense of foreboding deep in her bones. Had she been followed after all? She scanned the graves around her, peering through the gaps, but there were few places where a man might hide and she could see nothing but the mounds of earth and weeds, the brambles and bushes against the wall. She was about to persuade herself she was imagining things when a movement caught at the edge of her eye, something shifting near the furthest wall where the thicket was most overgrown. She turned towards it, holding her breath. Saw it again – a dark shape, indistinct. It was too small for a man, and she froze, aware once more of the rapid patter of her heartbeat and the dryness of her mouth. The chill of the morning was quite forgotten in her fear, until finally the shadow emerged from amongst the weeds.
It was a dog.
She almost laughed with relief until she realised it was the exact same dog that used to appear in her dreams: black and powerful, with sombre yellow eyes that were regarding her now. The laugh died in her throat, but it was not exactly fear that replaced it – she sensed the animal meant her no harm. Combing her memory, she recalled the dog in her dream had shown her the way, taking her where she needed to go. Was it here to guide her now?
She took a step towards it. Then another. The dog lay down and rested its great head on its paws, tail thumping gently on the grass. Kate picked her way through the weeds until she was close enough to touch. Squatting down, she held out her hand and the dog lifted its nose and sniffed at her fingers before it turned its head away with a deliberate movement. Kate followed the animal’s gaze towards a yew tree against the wall that stood close by and saw a small headstone there, just visible amidst the weeds.
She stepped towards it, holding her skirts free of the nettles and grass with one hand, and when she reached it she saw the block of granite marked an overgrown grave. Surprised by the presence of a headstone, she crouched to brush the dirt away with her fingers, grit catching in her fingernails, cold and damp. When at last she could read the name that was engraved there, her heart seemed to stop in her chest.
Tom Wynter, she read. Died 1607.
Her grandfather. The man who had hanged as a witch.
She ran the tip of her tongue across her lips – they were cold and growing numb in the chill of the morning.
Was Tom Wynter the hanged man who had haunted her dreams? Had he led her here? He must have, she decided. How else could she have discovered him? In all of London’s maze of streets and lanes, how else would she have found her way to this very spot? The thought of it made her smile – the connection reaching through the generations. Perhaps she would find her answers after all. And without Isabella’s help.
Lifting her head, Kate noticed a matching headstone beyond Tom Wynter’s – the same dark granite, overgrown with weeds. She moved towards it and pulled at the tall grass until she had cleared it enough to make out the name. Her fingers ached at the toughness of the stems.
Sarah Chyrche. Died 1632.
The grave of his cousin? The girl he had died to protect? Perhaps. Kneeling between the two graves, Kate wondered what she should do with this new knowledge. She was grateful for it, amazed that she had found so much so soon, but uncertainty gripped her now. Briefly, she closed her eyes and let her mind’s eye linger on the visions of her dream. Slowly, the hanged man’s face sharpened into focus, and for the first time she saw the likeness to her father. The pale eyes, the high cheekbones, the wave of hair. But the eyes before her now spoke of knowledge from beyond the grave, unknown depths she could not hold. She shivered, acutely aware of his presence, as if he were there in flesh and blood, and abruptly, she opened her eyes.
‘Tom Wynter?’ The name left her lips as a whisper, unbidden, and a part of her felt absurd, talking to an image from a dream. ‘Grandfather?’
Instinctively, she reached out, and as soon as her fingertips brushed the soil of the grave, a wash of feelings roiled through her in a riot of emotion that almost felled her; she had to brace against it to stop herself from tipping.
Connection, grief, passion, belonging, regret.
All of these things swirled like a storm in her blood but it was the connection she felt most of all, her soul bound to the power she had touched. Her vision began to darken, and as her body seemed to fall, weightless, her hand jerked of its own accord away from the grave.
Tom Wynter, reaching out to her from the realms of the dead?
She was aware of the sound of her breathing in the silence of the graveyard, ragged and shallow. Glancing towards the road, she saw a couple of young women in gaudy gowns talking together close by the wall. One of them was telling the other a story, her hands drawing pictures in the air as she spoke. Most likely, they hadn’t even seen her. Kate turned her attention back to the grave. Did she dare to touch it a second time? Twice, she reached out her hand again and withdrew it at the very last moment, afraid of the force that awaited. Then, with a sense of trepidation, she lowered her palm once more to the grass and dirt that covered Tom Wynter’s body and braced as the same feelings flooded through her. But this time she was ready, and she welcomed them in so that they did not overwhelm her as they had before.
‘What is it you would tell me, Tom Wynter?’ she murmured, and though she received no answer, the sense of connection pulsed sweetly like a letter from a faraway, long-missed home. Sitting back, she let her hand slide away from the earth atop the grave and breathed deeply, gazing around her to bring herself back to this morning, this place, anchored in her waking world.
