The Witch’s Daughter (4 page)

MARCH 2, 2007—MOON ENTERS VIRGO

Heavy rain carried on an icy wind has rendered outdoor tasks unpleasant. Still, I am able to continue with the aid of an old sou’wester and rubber boots. Tegan came straight from the school bus stop to my house this afternoon. One glance told me her face was not reddened merely by the weather. Her eyes brimmed as she stood beside me by the hissing remains of my bonfire. She stared disconsolately into the smoke but did not say what had reduced her to such a state.

‘Have you had a difficult day?’ I asked, not wanting to pry but happy to offer the opportunity to talk of what was troubling her.

She merely shrugged.

‘A nasty chill in the air today,’ I said. ‘You should have a hat on. Keep those restless brains of yours warm.’

Two tears slid down her cheeks and dripped from her chin. She did nothing to stop them. She looked suddenly so childlike, not a young woman at all, just a sad little girl with a pain she did not know how to share.

‘Wait here,’ I told her. I slipped into the house and went to my store cupboard. I selected a small blue bottle of oil of bergamot and returned to the now-extinguished bonfire. Tegan barely seemed to have registered my absence. ‘Here, take this. Put a few drops on your pillow and one on your heart before school tomorrow.’

She took the proffered phial, staring at it for a moment, frowning, before looking up at me. At last she grinned.

‘Thanks. Thank you,’ she said. ‘Is it…?’

I did not let her finish.

‘Off with you,’ I said. ‘It’s too bleak to stand here idle. I’ve things to do.’

MARCH 4, 2007—THIRD QUARTER

I have no one to blame but myself, which only serves to make my temper worse. How could I have been so foolish? What was I thinking? I hear myself trying to justify my actions, a simple response to the suffering of another by one who could help, but it makes the results no better. Tegan fair flung herself into my garden this afternoon, eyes bright, the light of joy and amazement shining out of her. She jumped about in front of me, waving the blue bottle under my nose with so much vigor I had to tell her to stop.

‘But it worked!’ she cried. ‘It actually worked. You’re bloody incredible. How did you do it? Tell me what was in it. What else can you do? I knew it, all along, I just knew you were special. There was something … Can you do love spells too? Can you make people fall in love, even if they don’t want to?’

I hardly heard the rest. She rattled on while I sought to make sense of what I could have done that could have caused such excitement. At last I raised my hands and spoke sharply.

‘Enough! Take a breath and tell me, slowly and clearly, what has happened.’

‘Well, I did exactly what you told me—put some of this stuff on my pillow and a few dabs on my heart. Well, quite a lot actually. Yesterday and today. I thought maybe it was a love potion, you know, something to make Michael fancy me.’

‘What?!’

‘Obviously it wasn’t. I see that now. It was something so much better! How did you know? About Sarah-I’m-So-Perfect-Howard? I didn’t tell you she’d been bullying me. I never mentioned what she did to my coat, or what she wrote on my locker, or the gross dead frog in my bag, did I? Suppose I might have said something about her teasing me about Michael. Not that she’s the only one who does it, but she’s the worst. Cow. The others copy her. But not anymore!’ She started waving the bottle about again.

I shook my head, ‘I’m sorry, Tegan, I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying. I gave you bergamot oil. It helps build confidence and strengthen resolve. That is all.’

She ignored me.

‘Glandular fever! Genius or what?’ She all but jumped up and down. ‘She’ll be off school for weeks, months even. Maybe the rest of this term and half the summer. You have no idea how much I’ve prayed for something like this to happen. But I never really thought … and then you came along. The answer to my prayers.’ She gazed at me, the most admiring and adoring expression I have had aimed in my direction for decades. My mouth felt curiously dry as I forced myself to speak. This was going to take some undoing.

‘Tegan, what do you think it was that I gave you?’

‘Dunno exactly, just something to get rid of Sarah Howard.’ She shrugged.

‘A magic potion?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘And why do you think I would have something like that?’ I watched her search for the answer somewhere around her feet. ‘Tegan?’ I persisted.

‘Sounds sort of silly now, saying it out loud, but, well, because you’re a witch, aren’t you?’

She could not have imagined the impact her words had on me. I was relieved she was momentarily unable to meet my eye, for she would have found fear there. How could she have seen so much when I saw so little? I had dangerously underestimated the girl. The rain had become heavy again now, and the two of us stood, a few feet and several hundred years apart, the sound of the raindrops loud in the charged silence. Slowly Tegan looked up and I saw wonderment on her face. It was of the variety only ever found in those young enough to yet have minds as open as the oceans and hearts longing to have proof of magic. If only she knew what proof stood before her.

‘Come inside,’ I said, and together we went into the kitchen. I bade her sit at the table while I fetched parsnip soup from the stove. I handed her a mugful, and she cupped it in her hands, never taking her eyes off me.

‘Watch out for the leg of toad,’ I warned.

Her eyes widened for an instant, then she laughed and the tension in the room evaporated with the steam of the broth.

‘What do you know of witches?’ I asked.

‘Oh, usual stuff. They make potions out of herbs. Cast spooky spells. That sort of thing. I know there are lots out there nowadays, well, lots who call themselves witches. It’s all the New Age rage, isn’t it? But I bet there aren’t many like you. Not many that can actually do stuff.’

She blew into her mug.

I opened the fire door of the stove and pushed in another log. The soft wood cuttings from our work of the previous week were sappy and unseasoned and spat crossly but gave out a reasonable heat. I pulled my chair closer and gestured to Tegan to do the same as I rearranged the cushions behind me for more comfort.

‘What time is your mother expecting you?’

‘She’s not. I mean, she’s on nights. She won’t be home till morning.’

Not for the first time I was struck by the solitary nature of the young girl’s life. It seemed cruel. Not deliberately neglectful but cruel nonetheless. I closed my eyes for a moment and did my utmost to still my whirling mind. There existed only two options. Denial, ridicule, making light of events, accepting no argument, and thereafter firmly distancing myself from Tegan. This was surely the more sensible course, but it saddened me, built as it would have to be upon lies and half truths. The other path, however, was one not to be taken without care. It was a journey once started that would require thought and time and consideration, for there would be no turning back. Somewhere deep in my being, I felt a spark of excitement, a scintilla of hope. Could it be, after all this long, long time, that I was going to share my secret with someone? That I would no longer be forced to hide the truth from everyone? This innocent girl had seen through my defenses in a way that no other had, so that now I felt an overwhelming desire to have her know me, to have her understand. And to visit again the events that have brought me here. I opened my eyes.

‘If you will listen,’ I said, ‘I will tell you a tale of witches. A tale of magic and love and loss. A story of how simple ignorance breeds fear, and how deadly that fear can be. Will you listen?’

‘Yeah, cool! Bloody right I will.’ Tegan nodded energetically.

I held up a hand, ‘Really? Are you truly able to be still and quiet and listen?’

She nodded once more, slowly and deliberately this time. I sighed, a long exhalation, a letting go.

‘Very well,’ I said, ‘let me tell you what it means to be a witch.’

Batchcombe, Wessex, 1627

1

That year the harvest was good. Rain early in the season had given way to a dry summer under a fruitful sun, and the last cut of hay from the top meadow was the finest Bess had seen. She pushed up her shirtsleeves, dark wisps of hair from beneath her cap coiling into the curve of her warm neck as she stooped. Her brown skirts skimmed the mowed grass, snatching up stray stems as she gathered armfuls of hay. Ahead of her, her father, John, worked in swift, practiced movements with his fork, digging deep before flicking the hay high onto the rick, apparently without effort. Atop the stack stood Thomas, at sixteen a whole year older than Bess and a head taller, deftly working the hay into the shape required to repel the weather and hold firm through autumn winds. He shared his sister’s coloring and angular body, both inherited from their mother, Anne, as was the seriousness that he wore like a cloak about his shoulders, but his practical way of being in the world, his measured habit of facing life, those were qualities handed down to him from his father.

Bess paused, rubbing the small of her back, straightening to stretch tired muscles. She enjoyed haymaking: enjoyed the sense of completion of another cycle of planting and growing, of a successful crop gathered in, of the security of fodder for the beasts and therefore food for the family for the coming winter months. Her enjoyment did not stop her body complaining about the hard work, however. The heat was fatiguing. Her sweat-wet skin was gritty with dust and itched from a thousand grass seeds. Her nose and throat were uncomfortably dry. She shielded her eyes with her hand, squinting toward the leeward hedge. Two figures approached. One tall and lean like herself, striding with purpose and containment; the other a small bundle of energy, dark, nimble, skipping over the ground as if it were too hot for her dainty feet. Bess smiled. It was a smile only her little sister could induce. The child was a constant source of joy for the whole family. This was due in part to her happy disposition, her prettiness, and her sweet laughter that no one could resist. But it had also to do with the painful years that had preceded her birth. Bess and Thomas had been born quickly and without difficulty, but later siblings had not been so fortunate. Twice Anne had miscarried a baby, and two who had survived to birth had dwindled in her arms. Another, a rosy-cheeked boy, Bess remembered, had lived to the age of two before succumbing to the measles. By the time Margaret arrived, the rest of the family were steeled for further loss and grief but soon saw that here was a child who would grasp life with both of her tiny hands and live every day of it, however many or few there might be.

‘They’re come,’ Bess told the men.

They dropped their forks without a second bidding, more than ready for their food after a long morning’s toil.

Margaret squealed and ran to greet her sister, leaping into her arms. Bess spun her round and round until they both collapsed dizzy and giggling onto the hay-strewn ground.

‘Bess!’ Her mother’s voice pretended to be stern. ‘Have a care.’

‘Aye.’ Her father dusted down his shirt front with roughened hands. ‘The mare won’t eat her feed if it’s had the flavor pressed out of it.’ His attempt at rancor was even less successful.

Together, the family made their way over to the nearby oak and settled themselves in its friendly shade. Anne placed her basket on the ground and began to lift out the meal she had brought for the workers.

‘We made oatcakes, Bess, look.’ Margaret thrust a cloth bundle beneath her sister’s nose, tugging at the corners to reveal the treats.

Bess breathed in deeply, savoring the aroma of the warm cakes. ‘Mmmm! Margaret, these smell good.’

‘Good?’ John laughed as Anne passed him the stoneware jar of cider. ‘Why, Bess, doesn’t thou know the finest oatcakes in all of Batchcombe when they be under thy nose?’

Margaret jumped with delight, performing clumsy cartwheels of celebration. Bess watched the whirl of skirts and petticoats tumbling across the biscuit-dry ground. The oatcakes tasted of the day itself, of sunshine, and plenty, and loving hands. She wished that it could always be just this time of year, the lazy height of summer, the strong sun, the long bright days, the ease of warm weather and abundant food.

‘Why can it not always be summer?’ she asked of no one in particular.

‘That makes no sense.’ Thomas spoke through a mouthful of cheese. ‘If it were always summer, there would be no rain, no time to plant, no fallow seasons, no rest for the land, no gathering in. Farmers would be all in a caddle.’

‘Oh, Thomas’—Bess lay flat, her hands behind her head, eyes closed, watching the sun’s brilliance dance on the back of her eyelids—‘do you always have to show such good sense?’

‘No person ever died of a surfeit of it,’ he pointed out.

Bess laughed. ‘Nor did they ever truly live on such a diet.’

‘I think you wish to spend all your life as a child, Bess,’ Thomas said, more as a plain fact than a criticism.

Bess opened her eyes and watched Margaret dancing across the stubble. ‘Surely it is the summer of our lives. Why would I want to leave it? Such freedom. Life is all possibility. And then we grow up and find our choices to be so very few. Everything is set down for us. Who we must be. Where we must bide. How we must live our lives.’

Anne shook her head.

‘Most would be thankful to have a place, a home, a position. To be sure of who they are.’

‘Not our Bess.’ John paused to take a slow swig of cider and then continued, ‘Our Bess would sooner go where the wind has a mind to take her.’ He laughed. ‘Adventure lies o’er yonder hill or else across the ocean, not in Batchcombe. B’aint that so, Bess?’

‘Is it so wrong to want to do something different?’ Her eyes glowed with the idea of it. ‘To change something? To go beyond what is set down?’

‘Have a care, Bess,’ said her mother. ‘There are those would call such notions vanity. They would say ’tis ungodly to wish to be other than He has chosen for thee.’

Bess sighed, wishing that just for once her mother would allow her to voice her dream without trampling it into the hard earth of reality.