The Return of the Witch (19 page)

I kept my own voice as level as I could. “You have no right to keep her here.”

The smaller twin stamped her food and shook her head, glaring at Erasmus. “You don't want her! She's plain. She's not pretty at all.”

Erasmus said firmly, “We are leaving now, and Tegan is coming with us. Forgive me, but you must stand aside and let us pass.”

“But I thought you liked us!” The taller twin whined, pulling at the neck of her dress and sliding her hands down over the fabric of her bodice. “I thought you might come back to see
us,
not
her.”

“What do you want with
her
?” the other sister asked, taking a step closer to Erasmus. “
He's
the same. Always going on about her. What's so special? What's so important?”

“If you let us take her,” I said to them, “you will have your master to yourselves, without Tegan in your way, won't you?”

The girls considered this and for a moment I thought the idea would satisfy them, but their fear of Gideon returned.

“No!” they shouted in unison. “He won't like it. He would be very, very cross! You can't take her!” The stood squarely in front of us and began chanting an incantation.

Whether they were spellcasting or trying to reach Gideon I did not wait to find out. I quickly whipped up a spell of my own, one that conjured images of faces leering and looming about us. It was a harmless trick, a parlor game in truth, but I judged it was the sort of thing that would frighten the sisters. I had read them correctly. They set up a terrible squealing and shrieking, flapping their hands at the phantom faces that swooshed out of nowhere and flew about them. To be certain they would be held, I summoned some friendly bats down from the attic and could hear them diving at the twins, snatching at their hair with their tiny claws.

We seized our chance. Erasmus pressed forward and we both pushed past them, Tegan still moaning softly as we hurried down the passage, through the kitchen, and out into the yard. It seemed to take forever to get back to the cart. I feared at any moment the girls might come after us or raise the alarm. Or that Gideon himself would somehow effect his release and appear. Although the night was warm Tegan had began to shiver and I wished we had thought to bring a blanket for her. Erasmus placed her in the back of the open wagon and I sat with her, my arms around her, pulling the empty flour sacks about her. All the fight had gone out of her now, so that she slumped against me, her head resting on my shoulder. Erasmus was on the point of untying the mare's reins when the twins came screaming across the cobbles, hair flying, like a pair of banshees, with murder in their eyes.

There was no time to work a spell. The fiendish girls set about Erasmus, beating him with their little fists or clawing at him with their long nails. Their hair wrapped itself around him like the tendrils of a nightmare plant The horse began to pull back against its tied reins which I feared would snap. If it decided to bolt I would not be able to control it from the back of the wagon. I caused a maelstrom to disturb the air around them, setting up a whirlwind of dust in an attempt to whip the loathsome hair away from Erasmus. It had little effect.

Suddenly I saw Erasmus take his knife from his belt. I gasped. However desperate our situation I could not believe he intended to kill the sisters. They were hampering us in our escape, they were in the employ of Gideon, and there was no doubt they were dangerous, but I believed them to be in their master's thrall. Were they fully culpable for their deeds? In truth, they were likely acting as much out of fear of Gideon as out of loyalty to him.

Erasmus wrenched the curling bonds from his left arm and shook off the smaller twin who fell to the ground with a cry. He turned and grabbed the taller girl. I saw the blade rise and fall, slicing through the night air. I heard a terrible scream. Erasmus released the girl who stumbled forward, and he quickly grabbed the reins and leapt up onto the cart. It was only then that I saw what he had done. The twin put her hand to the back of her head and screamed again. Her sister stood up, retrieving her twin's precious hair from its resting place on the stoney street.

“My hair!” shrieked the girl. “Look what he has done! Look what he has done!”

The pair were so horrified, grief stricken almost, that in that brief moment we were able to get away. Erasmus urged the old mare into as fast a trot as she could manage, and soon we had left the town and were making our jolting progress along the dark road.

“Where shall we take her, Elizabeth?” he asked. “If you cannot think of anywhere else it will have to be the mill.”

“No, head for the woods, at the furthest point from the Hall.”

“The woods?”

“We can take the cart most of the way in, if the path has not become overgrown since I last saw it.”

“It might be summer, but we can't just hide among the trees. We need a place, a house, something.”

“Follow my directions. I know a place.”

 

13

Indeed I did. My memory of the cabin in the woods, Gideon's cabin, was something I had buried deep and hoped never to have to revisit. There was nothing remarkable about the little wooden house itself, it was what had happened there—what had happened to me—that made it so significant. For this was where Gideon had schooled me in magic, where he had revealed the depth of his spellcraft, where he had awakened the magic in me.

The journey took nearly an hour, and I began to worry that dawn would begin to break before I had time to work to free Tegan from the spell. It was a relief to reach the woods, as we were less likely to be seen by any soldiers once we were off the roads, but the trees in full leaf obscured the moonlight, so that the horse stumbled and struggled to move forward. In places Erasmus had to get down and lead her, encouraging her gently through the tangle of brambles and low hanging branches.

At last the trees became fewer as we approached the clearing where Gideon used to live and work producing charcoal. Although the place had been abandoned for many years, it was still possible to see the circular patches on the forest floor where the charcoal furnaces had been built, burning away the undergrowth. Once removed the woodland had reclaimed the areas, but slowly, with brambles and ivy and fast growing climbing plants rather than trees. The cabin itself looked unaltered by time, as if nobody had touched it since Gideon left. Perhaps they hadn't. After all, as far as the local people were concerned, the place was associated with magic, with witchcraft. The only surprise was that someone had not thought to burn it to the ground, but then it was quite possible nobody had been brave enough to do so. Easier to stay away from this dark corner of the dense forest and forget about it as best they could.

Erasmus let the tired horse come to a halt. I left Tegan sleeping fitfully among the hessian and jumped down. There was fierce, ancient magic here! The cabin might have been deserted, but the echo of past magic energy was palpable. A coldness fell about me, bringing with it such a feeling of dread that I had to resist the impulse to turn and run. Erasmus saw how affected I was by my surroundings.

“What is this place?”

“It was Gideon's home,” I told him, my voice sounding hoarse and strained.

“What?! Why choose here, for pity's sake?”

“Many reasons,” I said, moving slowly but steadily toward the front door of the cabin. “To begin with, this is the very last place Gideon will expect me to be. That fact might buy us a little time, for he will cast about for a sense of my presence as soon as he is able, and he will use his knowledge of me to work out where I might be hiding Tegan. Trust me, as soon as he is at liberty, he will begin his search, and he will not stop until he finds us. Secondly, we are well away from Batchcombe Hall, from the soldiers, from the townsfolk—they will not disturb us here, for this is not a place anyone of them would venture into unless they were compelled to do so.”

“That I can believe. There is something terrible here, Elizabeth. Something wicked.”

“Which is the third reason I chose to come here. What you are feeling are the remnants of Gideon's magic. It may not have been stirred up for a very long time, but it is here, nonetheless. Waiting to be awoken.”

“And you plan to do that? You want to wake whatever foul power lurks here?”

“If I am to free Tegan, I will need all the magic I can find.”

“But not …
this!
” He took in the clearing with a wave of his arm. “Whatever is here is not good, Elizabeth.”

“Magic is magic; how it is used is what determines its goodness or otherwise. If such strength can be harnessed, can be tamed…”

“If! This was Gideon's magic. Surely that could only work against you and for him?”

“You are attributing the quality of loyalty to an energy source. Magic itself does not have any such characteristics. Surely as a Time Stepper you are aware of that?”

“I am aware of good and evil; of magic and spellcraft being used to heal and help or to do harm.”

“That's my point, these things are ‘used' as you put it. I intend to use them for good. Now, if we want to get anywhere before Gideon catches up with us, I suggest we prepare.”

Erasmus shook his head, but I knew I had his trust. “What would you have me do?” he asked.

I lifted the rusted iron latch and pushed open the rough wooden door. It swung into the darkness of the cabin with a sigh rather than a creak.

“Please fetch Tegan from the wagon. Bring her in here.” I dared not hesitate longer. I steadied myself with a breath full of the loamy scents of the forest, and then I stepped inside. The gloom was such that it took my eyes a moment to adjust, but eventually there was just enough moonlight to make sense of the interior. The humble dwelling looked as if it had been untouched since last I stood in it. To one side was a stove, cobwebbed and dusty, a bench with bowl for water beneath a grime smeared window across which ivy now twisted. The table at the center of the room still had a candle stub and wooden plates upon it. I turned to my right. The old iron bed was still there, and I experienced a stab of longing that took me by surprise. For so many years I had successfully blanked from my mind the time when I had longed for Gideon's touch. I had come so close to giving myself to him here. I had wanted to. The thought of him now made my flesh crawl, but then … was it magic? Had I, too, been bewitched? I wanted to believe so, but in my heart I knew the truth was different. The truth was that I had felt powerfully drawn to Gideon. And it was him, then, who turned away from me. I believe he was waiting, biding his time, preferring to claim me for himself only when I had properly taken that final step toward being a witch. Except that when that time came I had seen him for what he truly was, and I had chosen to turn from him.

I shook such thoughts from my mind. There was work to be done. Aloysius hopped down from my shoulder and set about exploring. I took the dusty covers off the bed, dragged them outside and shook and beat them. Erasmus carried Tegan inside and I followed them in, directing him to sit her on a chair by the fireplace for now. She was still shivering. I draped one of the bedcovers around her and instructed Erasmus to light both fire and candle. He had brought a lamp with him, and set that on the table, too. The cabin took on an altogether friendlier feel as soon as there was some light and a bit of a fire brightening the hearth. I sent him to the stone wall outside to get water from the spring there. When he returned with a bowl filled to the brim I was grateful to see the supply had not dried up during the hot summer.

I knelt before Tegan and took her hands in mine. It was a relief not to have her recoil from my touch, but I realized this was only because she was drifting into a dreamlike state. She hardly knew what was happening, nor who I was.

“Tegan? My dear, you must try to resist the pull of the darkness. You belong here with us. Listen to my voice. Just keep listening to my voice.” I scooped up her mouse and put him in her lap. Her hands instinctively wrapped around him, gently holding him and stroking him. “That's right,” I told her. “You are here with friends. You will be well again very soon.” I hoped that I sounded more confident than I felt. I silently cursed Gideon for rendering her so pitifully helpless. It occurred to me that this seemed an unnecessarily heavy spell. I could understand him wanting to turn her against me, and to keep her from running away, but that could have been achieved with a far lighter bit of magic. It was as if he wished to stop her thinking. To stop her being at all conscious of what was going on around her. Such extreme measures puzzled me, for Gideon usually enjoyed an audience for his work. I would have expected him to gain a certain pleasure from having her question and challenge him. Perhaps even having her plead and beg.

Erasmus came to stand beside me. “Is there anything more I can do?”

“Once I begin to try to lift the spell it is crucial we are not disturbed. Any disruption at the moment she passes from the crippling influence of this manner of magic could be harmful.” I looked at him. “Unlike the dangers of Time Stepping, her soul is secure. Her mind, however, is not.”

He nodded, his naturally cheerful face for once solemn. “I will stand watch outside. Whatever comes, whatever you hear, do not be deflected from your course. I will let no one pass.”

As he strode for the door I called after him, “You are a good man, Erasmus. Tegan is fortunate to have your help. As am I.”

He paused, as if about to speak, but then thought better of it and went outside.

I set about my work. My task would have been a great deal easier had I been back at Willow Cottage with my
grimoire
, my herbary, and all my witch's accoutrements. I sorely missed my staff, my chalice, my outdoor altar—all these things would have given me strength and helped me to summon deeper and more eclectic magic. But the situation we found ourselves in placed limitations on what was available to me, and I had no choice other than to work with what I had.