Coven: a dark medieval paranormal romance (Witches of the Woods Book 2) (9 page)

I could feel the heat in my cheeks. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Oh, Ada! For all your dungeon adventures, you are such a prude.” Brunhild turned back to the bush, and demonstrated how she twisted the ripe berries so they fell off in her hand. “Only the ripe berries will come off this easily. Some girls get mixed up because the berries turn black first, then take a few days to ripen. But if you pick them too early, they taste sour.” She wrinkled her pretty nose, perhaps remembering a particularly sour berry.

“Easy,” I said, twisting off two berries and dropping them into our basket. We picked our way along the patch of berries, gossiping about the other girls in the coven as the thorns pricked our skin. By midday we had filled two baskets, and our bond of friendship was sealed. Brunhild showed me how to prune the bushes using the sharp knife she’d brought along. “This helps improve the yield,” she said, as she pulled off a trailing tendril. “And if I plant this further along the ridge, another plant will grow. Then next season we will have even more blackberries to pick.”

I nodded, wondering if I would still be here next season to pick blackberries with Brunhild. The thought wasn’t wholly unappealing, although only if Ulrich were able to join us.

We gathered up the baskets and walked back along the edge of the stream. My good spirits died as soon as we stepped back into the camp. Bernadine sat in the same place I’d left her, hunched beside the entrance to Aubrey’s cabin, her long pipe stuck between her pursed lips and that all-too-familiar scowl plastered across her face.

“Aunt, what’s wrong?” My stomach sank. I pushed my basket into Brunhild’s hand and went to help her.

“She’s not here,” Bernadine murmured, as she sucked on her pipe. Her gnarled fingers clutched at her ancient stick.

“Who? Aubrey?” That was impossible. She should have returned hours ago.

“Of course Aubrey!” Bernadine yelled, spitting out her pipe in disgust. “I’m not sitting around here waiting for anyone else.”

“All right, you don’t have to snap at me.”

“This is all your fault.” Bernadine sighed. “If you’d gone to the village in her place—”

“—then I might be the one missing right now,” I shot back. “And you’d be sitting here feeling just as guilty about it. Or maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you’d be glad I was gone.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Don’t tell me what to be!” I screamed at her. I could feel a hot rage rising through my body. All the pent-up frustration at my aunts that had been building over these last weeks came bubbling to the surface. “You and Aubrey think you have to control everything I do. You act as if I don’t have my own mind, my own ideas, as if I’m still some child you need to coddle.”

“Of course I do,” she snapped back. “You are barely twenty-one years of age, and you seem incapable of doing anything without attracting the most dire of consequences. We send you to the village to sleep with a man, and you end up accused of witchcraft. I had to leave my home, my life, and flee hundreds of miles to this cursed place, all because of your recklessness, your naivety, your reckless pursuit of a man who abandons you here at the first opportunity. And you can’t even use magic to protect yourself. So forgive me if I don’t implicitly trust your judgement.”

“Ulrich didn’t abandon me! He’s doing all of this so we can be together.”

“See?” Bernadine’s eyes flashed. “You only care about yourself, about your precious man. Never mind that we’ve lost our home or that Aubrey is out there, probably raped and beaten to death by some randy highwayman, only weeks after she lost her own lover, a man who had cared for her for years. But as long as precious Ulrich comes back to you, then what do you care for any of us?”

Her words felt like a physical slap across my face. My cheeks stung. My eyes filled with tears, and I furiously blinked them away
. I do not have to listen to this
. I turned on my heel and stomped away down the path.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Bernadine called after me.

“To find Maerwynn.” I snapped back. “We have to go after Aubrey.” See? I wanted to shout at her, but didn’t.
I don’t just think about myself. I’m trying to organize a rescue attempt, while you are just pouting and smoking.

Behind me, Bernadine snorted. I heard footsteps on the steps. “Ada, wait for me.” It was Brunhild.

“Why?” I snapped, instantly feeling guilty. Brunhild wasn’t the one I was angry at.

“Because Maerwynn is in Gussalen’s cabin,” Brunhild replied. “You’re going the wrong way.”

“Oh.” I followed Brunhild up and adjoining staircase, sensing Bernadine’s eyes boring into my back.

We found Maerwynn and Gussalen crouched together on Gussalen’s bed, their heads bent in murmured conversation. “I’m busy, girls.” she said grimly when we approached, waving us away with a flick of her wrist. “I’ll come and find you later.”

“Aunt Aubrey hasn’t returned,” I blurted out, and as the words fell from my mouth, the fear I’d been holding back seized me. She hadn’t gone that far from the Haven, the nearest village wasn’t even a day’s ride away. So where was she? What could keep her from returning, except something truly awful—

I tried to say something else, but all the came out was a strangled sob. Brunhild cupped my face to her shoulder, her soft hands patting my back. I sobbed into her shoulder, my fear finally overcoming me. “Ada and Bernadine feel she should have been back yesterday,” Brunhild explained to Maerwynn, who was no doubt staring at my display with the same look of scorn Aunt Bernadine often visited upon me.

“I wish you had told me sooner.” Maerwynn said sternly. “I could have notified our scouts to be on the lookout for her. Do you still have your powers?”

“Bernadine says so,” I sniffed.

“If you have your powers, that means she has been successful. Perhaps she is simply spending more time with her lover?”

“Aubrey wouldn’t do that. She’d know that we’d worry. What can we do? Should I go look for her?”

“I’m not sending anyone into the village yet, least of all you. Need I remind you there is a price on your head? There could be many factors accounting for her delay, none of which are sinister. I suggest you and your aunt take turns waiting up for Aubrey. If she’s not back by the morning, then we will look for her.”

“But—”

“None of that,” Maerwynn said sternly. “I have spoken. You must have patience. Your aunt is a grown woman, and a powerful witch. She knows how to look after herself.”

I could not imagine my kindly Aunt Aubrey faring very well against an unsavoury attacker, but I didn’t dare argue with Maerwynn.

I was perfectly happy to leave Bernadine to her angry vigil, but I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do. Besides, despite her acidic demeanour, I did still love her. I didn’t like being angry with her. She was my mother’s sister, and I felt certain my mother expected me to be kind to her. Feeling sheepish, and childish for my outburst, I slunk back up the path toward her.

“Maerwynn says we must wait through the night for her,” I said. “She will send a party out in the morning if Aubrey has still not returned.”

“Harrumph.” Bernadine turned her head away, and sucked at her pipe. She didn’t say another word. I couldn’t tell if she was still angry with me.

“Right,” I backed away. “Well, I’ll leave you here, then. I will return after dinner, and relieve you of your watch so that you can sleep.”

Bernadine didn’t reply, nor acknowledge me in any way.

D
inner came and went
, and still there was no Aubrey. I took a bowl of delicious rabbit and blackberry sauce up to Bernadine, and pressed it into her gnarled fingers. “You go down to the fires and eat and stay warm, and then get some sleep.” I told her, keeping my voice even and kind, the way Aubrey often did when she was talking to Bernadine. “I will stay up and wait for Aubrey.”

But of course Bernadine refused to go to sleep. “I’ve not slept a full night through in thirty-five years,” she croaked. “And I don’t intend to start on the night my sister is missing.”

“Fine,” I slumped down beside her chair, drawing up the corners of my cloak around my body to keep off the chill. “Then we shall wait together.”

A wind blew bitter cold through the valley. I watched the fires roar below us, as the other women of the coven danced and conversed. Bernadine and I sat in silence at our vigil, women apart. We didn’t really belong here. Even though I loved the community Maerwynn had created here, and especially Brunhild and Ryia, I knew that we weren’t really part of the coven. Was this what Bernadine was feeling, was this
otherness
upsetting her? I wanted to ask her, but our harsh words from earlier hung between us, keeping us in stony silence.

The moon rose through the trees, reflecting dappled light from the surface of the river. In pairs and threes, the women abandoned the fires and returned up the paths to their beds. Brunhild waved and smiled as she went by, and I nodded in response. Soon, the night belonged only to Bernadine and I.

Finally, I could take the silence no longer. “Why do you hate me so?”

“Where did you get an idea like that from? I do not hate you.” Those words, said softy, would be an untold comfort to a heartbroken child, but Aunt Bernadine spat them back at me as if they were some kind of weapon.

“You do a very good job of pretending, then.” I stared at my feet. “All I’ve ever tried to do is please you, and yet you act as though my very presence is an annoyance to you. It has been this way since I was a child. I thought it was just your way, but now I am starting to wonder if there is not something more to it?”

Bernadine sighed. She said softly. “Very well. What do you know of your mother, child?”

“Only what you’ve told me.” I said. “Which is not much. I know her name was Ysmay, and she was beautiful. I know she was a witch, and that a man took her against her will, and that was how I was conceived.”

“Perhaps it is time you learned the truth of what happened.”

My heart pounded. The truth? I’d always believed what my aunts had told me about my mother. Which was very little, for they did not speak of her much, just the occasional memory when they were feeling pensive or had taken to drink. Sometimes I would ask about her, but I never got very far; Aunt Aubrey’s eyes flooded with tears at the very mention of her name, and Bernadine would simply shut down the conversation. I always wanted badly to know more about her, about the woman that had died giving birth to me, the woman that had grown up with Aubrey and Bernadine as sisters. But I didn’t want to upset my aunts, so I kept quiet. It was yet another important part of my life that I had let my aunts control. But no more, no more.

“Yes.” I said firmly. “It
is
time.”

Bernadine sighed, then fell quiet for several minutes. I thought perhaps she had fallen asleep, but when I turned to look at her, I saw a river of tears flowing unchecked down her wrinkled face. “Aunt?” I asked softly, reaching out to clasp her hand. She waved my away.

“Ysmay was our younger sister, as you know. What you do not know is that she was the best of us three: hauntingly beautiful, skilled in the craft, and impossibly kind. All my life I’ve felt responsible for my sisters, but especially for Ysmay, for she was so trusting of the goodness in others that she often got herself into trouble. She was a lot like you in that respect.

“We were part of a coven that practiced in secret about 20 miles west of our village,” said Bernadine. “The three of us lived together there in a camp not unlike this one, and worked magic with our sisters in relative peace. We were the last generation in a long line of witches, although our numbers had dwindled over the years, ever since our grimoire has been stolen.”

“What is a grimoire?”

“It is a book of spells,” Bernadine said harshly. “All the witches write their potions and rituals in it. It is passed down from generation to generation. But ours had been stolen some years ago, long before I was born. We were rebuilding it, writing out the spells and knowledge we accumulated, but it wasn’t the same. Without our grimoire, we were not as strong as we once were. And many of our number felt this inferiority keenly.”

“Then, a great schism came. One of the witches married a man- a powerful male witch. He had a coven of his own, and they combined with us in order to do more powerful magic. For a time, this was extremely beneficial. We could cast powerful spells to shield our activities. Many women in our coven found companionship with these men. Children were born, passing on our magical skills. But it was not to last.

“The scharfrichters were growing weary of the amount of influence the various covens had over the land at the time. They were recruiting more numbers and becoming more vicious in their methods to extract witches from their havens in the woods. We were concerned about keeping safe, and power was the only weapon we had against men like Ulrich’s father, who was a young scharfrichter at this time, desperate to make a name for himself.”

I wanted to remind her that Ulrich wasn’t like his father, he’d never killed a witch, nor tortured one. But I had just learned more about my mother’s life than I’d ever heard before, and I didn’t want Bernadine to stop, so I kept silent.

Bernadine continued. “The man who led the coven – our new High Priest – had a dark soul, twisted by lust for power, very much like the man who had first cursed our family. He decided the only way to fight the scharfrichters was to take away their political power. He corrupted the others, convinced them to cast spells to manipulate judicial proceedings, rig elections, to place the men in his coven into positions of power.”

“Why not the women?”

“What position of power has a woman ever held?” Bernadine scoffed. “As I was saying, this man began to insert his own men amongst the highest ranks of our land. For a while, this worked in our favour. But some of the women did not approve of the spells the men were having us perform, especially when it became clear that the High Priest was using his powers to manipulate himself into the most powerful position of all, a position he still holds today.”

“But that would mean…” I stared at her in horror. “Lord Benedict. Are you telling me he is a witch?”