The Return of the Witch (15 page)

When he looked puzzled I tried to explain. “You have to remember what has gone before … William does not know I have wandered the earth for over three hundred years. He does not know what you are. All he knows is that I fled from this place accused of witchcraft, and that in some way Gideon helped me. Now here I am again, with a story he knows cannot be the truth, and I am asking him to help me fight against a dark and terrible magic. Witches are still hanged, you know that. And so, sometimes, are those who protect them. Let me talk to him on my own.”

After considering this for a moment Erasmus nodded. “Very well, but I insist on helping you remove Tegan from that house. Gideon may well be there…”

“We will have to be very certain he is not, for there is no way we will succeed in taking her unless we do so while his back is turned.”

“It seems we need a diversion.” Erasmus raised his eyebrows.

“Yes,” I agreed, though I did not want to, for I knew what plan he had in mind. “And what better way to hold Gideon's attention than for him to be busy talking to me?”

“Precisely so. As soon as you are sure we have William's assistance, send word to Gideon that you wish to meet him to discuss whatever it is he wants in return for Tegan's freedom. He won't be able to resist the opportunity to see you beg.”

“How true that is.”

“Send word to me also of the time you arrange to be with him. I will meet William and whomever else he trusts to assist us at the house in Batchcombe at that same hour.”

I snatched up a shawl and started toward the stairs. As I reached the top I paused and turned to Erasmus.

“You know there will be no small danger involved in seeking to outwit Gideon,” I said. “I am aware that this is not your quarrel.”

“I am your Time Stepper. I brought you here. My ultimate aim is to safely return you to your own time. I recognize that you will not leave the girl you came here to save, Elizabeth. Allow me to help however I can.”

“Thank you,” I said, my voice breaking a little. “I…”

He held up a hand, uncomfortable with the threatened show of emotion, his habitual defense of an easy smile returned. “Please, save your thanks for when I have actually done something helpful. I like to feel I have earned a woman's admiration.”

I made the journey to Batchcombe Hall on foot, skirting the woods, resisting the urge to run. By the time I came within sight of the towering chimneys I was flushed and breathless. My route, the shortest, brought me not to the front of the great house but to the stables at the rear. I was passing the run of smart stalls, all constructed of the same warm brick as the Hall, when a figure stepped out in front of me. His appearance was so sudden and so unexpected I almost barrelled into him. The familiar face of the William's groom and driver, Keanes, regarded me closely.

“Did I startle you, mistress?” he asked, his voice gravelly from decades of stable dust. His body was bent and had lost its straightness, not merely as a result of passing years and a lifetime of hard work out of doors. I detected arthritis riddling his joints and bones, and wished fervently that I had the time and the wherewithal to make him a healing concoction to ease his pain.

“Good day to you, Keanes. I apologize for marching through the stable yard. I have some pressing business to discuss with his Lordship.”

“Aye, I can imagine you have,” he said cryptically.

I expected him to step aside and let me pass, but he did not move. Instead he seemed to be considering some course of action. He scratched his stubbly grey chin and then said baldly, “Come in here. I've something mibben you could use.” Without waiting for my reply, he disappeared back through the nearest stable door. I was reluctant to be diverted from my goal, but there was something about Keanes, something about the way he looked at me, that made me choose to follow him. I could not be certain, but I had the feeling he recognized me. He knew who I was, and yet he had not denounced me, had not cried
witch,
had not, as far as I knew, sought to alert anyone to my true identity. Indeed, my witch senses tingled in his presence. There was a benign force about the old man that I believed it would benefit me to trust. The heavens knew, I needed friends if I were to stand against Gideon.

Inside all was gloom after the bright sunshine of the day, and it took awhile for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I saw a long row of stalls, each separated with paneled wooden divides bearing fine wrought-iron fitments. Along the front of these ran a high rack for hay and a deep stone manger for feed. The floor was cobbles, swept spotlessly clean. Only three of the stalls were occupied by horses. One was a somewhat plain riding horse, another a passable carriage horse, and the last was a workaday brown mare who might more ordinarily be found on a farm. A sign of the times, I thought, recalling the fine carriage horses and riding thoroughbreds that William and his family used to keep. Keanes moved with surprising speed on his crooked legs. He had already walked the length of the stalls and beckoned me to follow him through a wide door. This, I discovered, led into the tack room, where all the gleaming bridles, saddles, and carriage harnesses were stored. I inhaled the smell of clean leather, dubbin, and polish. Everything was hung neatly on racks or stored on slatted shelves, high enough to deter mice and rats, low enough to be lifted down with relative ease. The war might have diminished the lives of so many in so many different ways, but evidently there were still standards to be upheld.

Keanes opened a large wooden trunk which housed tightly rolled tail bandages and folded rugs for the horses. He delved beneath the layers of wool and jute and pulled out a small cotton bag, its top tied tight with a drawstring. He straightened up, his arthritic joints creaking as he did so. After a few more seconds of hesitation he thrust the small bag at me.

“'Ere. Take it,”he said gruffly.

For an instant his gnarled hand grazed mine as I accepted the bag from him, and I experienced a curiously charged sensation, almost as if I had received a small electric shock. There was magic of some sort in this man. Perhaps that was why he had not given me away. I undid the string and tipped the contents of the pouch into my hand. Something the size and shape of a pebble landed warm against my palm. It was lighter than a stone, its substance not as hard. I turned it over, examining it carefully, aware of a deepening heat where it touched my skin. There appeared to be nothing about it that could generate warmth, and yet it was increasingly hot, so that soon I had to tip it from one hand to the other to avoid being burned.

Keanes chuckled at my discomfort. “You feel its heat! Aye, you would do. Not everyone does, but you would do. Do not fight it so, mistress. It won't 'arm you none. Mibben it will aid thee.” His language began to slip into that which my family used, at least when not in the presence of their betters, or when not required to be formal. Suddenly I felt the air rushing against my face. It stirred my hair, tugging tendrils from beneath my cotton cap. I looked about me, but there was no door opened, and nothing else in the tack room was disturbed. Keanes watched me, amused at my bewilderment. At last he asked, “'Ave you not seen foal's bread afore, mistress? One such as thee should know of such things.”

Of course! Now I knew what it was I held in my hand, and it was something of great rarity and value. I had never seen one before, but I had heard of them. My mother had told me of the strong medicine, in truth, of the magic, contained within these seemingly plain and drab little lumps. Foal's bread, or
hippomanes
, their more scientific name, are smooth, roundish shapes found on the outside of the placenta in which a baby horse develops. Scientists and veterinary professionals will tell you they are no more than accumulated deposits of allantoic fluids and mineral. Wise folk, those who know horses and who know magic, they will tell you something different. These insignificant-looking lumps are tiny storehouses of powerful magic. Their potency is such that they change hands for more than their weight in gold in some cultures. Many shamans and spellcasters around the world count them as a vital part of their magic armory. And their most important quality is that they cannot be used to do harm, for their sole purpose is to offer protection. Protection against illness. Protection against magic. Protection against evil.

“Keanes, I could not possibly take this from you. It is too precious.”

He waved my protest away. “You 'ave need of it, Mistress Hawksmith. Mibben thee'll give it back to me someday.”

His use of my real name took me by surprise to such an extent that I was lost for an answer. He gave me no time to argue further, nor to comment on who he thought I was, but turned and vanished back into the cool dusk of the stalls. I put the foal's bread back into its bag, tied it tightly, and then secured it by its string to my petticoats beneath my skirts. This was not something I would risk losing. I was honored to have been entrusted with it, and deeply grateful for the degree of protection I knew it could offer me.

 

11

As I crossed the yard to the house, William appeared at the door and hurried out to greet me.

“I spied you from the window. I was surprised to see you coming from the direction of the stables.”

“Did you think I would have forgotten the shortcut between our homes?”

We went inside and in the hallway we found Richard, William's manservant. I recalled meeting the youth in the garden and once again was struck by his sorrowful countenance. Given what William had told me about his family, he could be forgiven for wearing such a perpetually glum expression. He greeted me cordially and with his practiced bow.

“Shall I send to the kitchen for some refreshments, Sir William?” he asked.

“Please do not do so on my account,” I put in.

“As you wish,” said William. “Let us sit awhile in the morning room. It has become my refuge of late. Richard, I will call if I need you.”

He led me to a comfortable room to the left of the grand reception room ordinarily used for receiving guests. I recalled the last time I had been in the house. It was the time I came and begged William to help save my mother. He had received me in a much more formal reception room, where I had been compelled to plead my case in front of his new fiancée. I believe he would have assisted me if he felt it were within his power to do so, but he did not. He had not dared stand against the authorities. The only help he had been able to give me was money, which I used to bribe the jailer so that I might spend a few final, precious moments with my dear mother.

The memory was no doubt sharp in William's mind, too. As he offered me a high-backed chair beside the unlit fire he said, “I scarcely use the greater part of the house. I have no need for grand rooms, nor so many of them. There is only me. In truth I wonder why I stay here, but then, one has to be somewhere.”

“It would be hard to give up your family home.”

“What keeps me here are living people, Bess, not ghosts. The servants and their families—Keanes, Picton the gardener, my housekeeper Mary-Anne, and Tillie the kitchen servant. And Richard, of course. If I left, if I shut up Batchcombe Hall and went away, what would they do? Where would they live? I have a responsibility to them.” He paused, running a hand through his light brown hair, and then added, “Besides which, I would miss them. They are my family now.”

“You are fond of the boy, I think?”

“Is it that plain to see?” His voice cracked as he spoke. “Richard was near starving when I found him and brought him here. That was two years ago. He is a little rough hewn, and impetuous. Anger drove his survival and he is angry still. But he is quick to learn, and has become a … comforting presence.”

“I'm glad. For both of you. You have both lost so many…”

He searched my face. “You never married, Bess? Never had children of your own? Forgive me for asking, I should not have let my curiosity override good manners.”

I shook my head. “We are old friends, you and I. It is natural you should wish to know. You are right in thinking I did not marry,” I told him, “but the girl I am here for, well, she is the closest to a daughter I have ever had, or will ever have.”

“Then I understand why you took the risk of returning to Batchcombe. For it is a great risk, Bess.”

“But a worthwhile one. I have found her. Tegan is being held in the town, at a merchant's house a little way from the high street.”

“But this is excellent news!” He sprang to his feet. “Let us collect her at once. I will have Keanes bring the carriage.”

“It is not such a simple task.”

“You fear that loathsome creature, Masters, will stand in your way? Concern yourself no further on that score, Bess. I will have the magistrate deal with him if necessary.”

“And what will you say to the good magistrate? That a condemned witch who slipped free of her noose all those years ago has returned to the town and wishes him to assist her in removing the niece of a respectable merchant from his home?”

“Niece? You did not say … and Gideon Masters is by no measure respectable! I do not understand.”

“There is a great deal you cannot be expected to understand, not until I have explained it to you. Please, William, sit. There is much I must tell you, and most of it will sound like madness to your ears.”

So we sat and, slowly and carefully, with many interruptions and questions from William, I told him as much as was necessary for him to know, and no more. I told him how Gideon had schooled me in magic, and how I had used that magic to free myself from the town jail and escape my captors. I told him how I had turned away from Gideon then, and that by rejecting him I had made a dangerous lifelong enemy. I did not tell him how long that life, thus far, had been. It was sufficient that he be faced with the reality of my witchcraft; I would not ask his mind or his affection for me to stretch to even greater, unfeasible lengths.