We Will All Go Down Together (6 page)

He saw the hair-curtain shift a bit, side to side; a nod, maybe, in its most rudimentary possible form. Or maybe just the breeze kicked up as Orderly Paul went by, tray in hand, scowling at Sy like he held him personally responsible for Carra’s condition. For which, Sy found, he really couldn’t fault him.

“Funniest thing, though,” he told her, leaning a tiny bit closer. “Turns out, Locker Two? Whatever Abbott put in there next must’ve been
really
accidentally flammable, ’cause . . . the whole unit just went up, all of it, from the inside-out. Nothing left but ash.”

A slight pupil-flicker under half-slung lashes, making Sy wonder: what colour
were
those always-hidden eyes of hers, exactly, if he had to choose? Grey like smoke or steam? Silvered like a frosted window? Didn’t matter; he was glad enough to get a reaction of any sort.

Maybe next time, she’ll be awake enough I can tell her how I did it. If she doesn’t know, already.

And here there suddenly came a spark, the barest jolt, synapse-swift—so long since he’d felt that for anybody, it would’ve surprised him no matter who drew it. A stroke along the mental inseam, lizard-area flag automatically part-raised to meet it, no matter how the rest of the brain might scoff.

Bad idea,
he thought, knowing it was true. Knowing she’d agree, if she could: BETTER NOT SY emblazoning itself ’cross palm or cheekbone, coming up on wrist or calf like a blistered rose. NO VERY DANGEROUS VERY DANGEROUS FOR YOU BELIEVE ME. BETTER

(NOT)

And yet:
What the hell, lady. I’ve got at least half a say in this, don’t I?

So since he could, he reached across, took her slack hand in his, and squeezed it. Until he felt the pad of her thumb stroke his love-line, too slow and steady to misinterpret . . . and smiled.

In what was once called Dourvale, just east of Eye and a few miles shy of the border where Scotland and Northumbria meet, they still tell this tale to fright their children away from strangers: How one day in winter, a small girl (no more than nine) sent to gather sticks by the brae-side did so, singing happily, until she looked up to see a darkness pass overhead, moving between her and the sun. It had somewhat of the seeming of a cloud, she later told her mother, but for the fact that it flapped in the wind the way a woman’s skirts—or more than one woman’s, perhaps—will do when set out on a line to dry, crisply, like the wings of some great bird.

As she stared up, squinting against the cold winter light which haloed it, this flapping darkness moved first westward, then lower, presently growing so distant it disappeared altogether. And sometime after that she saw three women come up out of the valley, arm in arm, laughing to each other; up through the gorse with neither hat nor coat to shield them, right into the teeth of a bitter wind that threw sharp fistfuls of snow at their faces.

The girl had never seen such different women in her life, and certainly not together. The first was young and ripe and lewd-looking, full-figured, with smooth red coils of hair held back by a pair of ivory combs chased in silver; she had a petticoat of crimson sateen and a gown of black wrought velvet, a French farthingale wide enough that she might lay her arms upon it and a wrought stomacher embroidered in red-gold thread to hold her waist in (though she seemed to have little need of such). Her cap was likewise of black velvet set with pearls, her full sleeves set out with wire and her hose of orange colour, with gay cork-heeled shoes of red Spanish leather that barely seemed to crush the grass she trod on.

At her elbow stepped another woman—pale as the first was fair, skin and hair like new moonlight. She went stay-less in the country style, an open gown of black fustian over a neat woolen smock the colour of yellow dust and an apron tying the whole together, like any farmer’s wife; her hands were raw and she wore wooden pattens with worn leather straps, thick with mud from clumping down unpaved lanes. The girl thought she looked kind, though her gaze was mournful and (on closer inspection) somewhat queer, being that she had varicoloured eyes of two distinct shades, each: hazel in green and brown on the right, grey and blue on the left.

Yet, the girl did not truly fear until she saw the last woman, for she was terrible indeed to behold: Hard and spare and flat like a plank, with unbound hair hanging wild to her waist, dark as a stormy sky. Her dress might have been
any
colour or constitution, since it had fallen almost entirely to rags, and she went shoeless over the stony ground but did not seem to mind it, the nails of her dirty toes grown long and sharp, like claws. Her neck was circled in a stiff, yellow-starched ruff, ill-fitting enough to rub one raw spot beneath her chin, like the impress of a caged cat’s iron collar. A prim, oddly stained smile, the area outside her lips just a shade redder than that within, as though scoured clean after some indulgence—a cicatrice painted over, a faint rouged scar; tea-coloured eyes enamel-blank, teeth in a screaming mouth, with her desolate face a map of the waning moon, and her left palm marked proudly with a Devil’s kiss of a scar, for all the waking Godly world to gawp at.

As the girl stood rooted to the spot—enspelled, but not yet ensorcelled—the first lady, she in the red and black, deigned at last to notice her, and paused a while in her saunter.

“Be this a one for us, sister Jonet?” she inquired of the pale woman, lightly. But Jonet only shook her pale head, and replied—

“Nay, Alizoun; she is no fit meat for auir purposes. I see His mark already set upon her.”

At this, the eldest woman’s terrible smile grew wider. “So then,” she said to the girl. “Y’are spared this day, little poppet. Yet for how much longer, I wonder?”

“Are ye witches?” the girl asked her, swallowing hard.

“We are. Does that fright ye?”

The girl shook her head, though she felt not half as certain as she looked. “My Mammy says God will protect me from yuir likes.”

The woman leaned close, her strange eyes alight; she had clasped the girl’s hand fast in hers before the girl even thought to snatch it away, and the girl felt a painful spark jump between them where their skins (however briefly) met.

“Yuir God is a doting auld fool,” she said, “who protects nae one. Now run hame and tell yuir Mammy that, while ye still can. And tell her ’tis by Euwphaim Glouwer’s mercy that ye live, not
God’s
.”

So the girl took to her heels, leaving the three witches far behind her, laughing in mockery at her fear. And there were great disturbances in Dourvale township that night; an ill wind blew up and down killing cattle and fowl, and all the crops were blighted with a strange black plague of a kind never seen before, while a fallen candle set aflame the only kirk for miles around. In the morning, a strong young man was found dead in his bed, hag-ridden, and a babe, as yet unbaptized, was snatched from its very cradle as its mother slept on beside it, undisturbed. There was an iron pot stolen from the same bereaved woman’s kitchen, found next day on the side of what local folk called Stane Hill, all greased and lined with fat as though something had been boiled in it; nearby sat a cairn, hastily raised, and under it a collection of soft little bones, well-picked.

But as for the girl who told this story first, her hand welted up as if burnt where the witch Euwphaim Glouwer had touched her, then turned in on itself like a claw—indeed, in time, the whole of her arm grew slack and cold and withered, never to recover until the day she died (which was not too long in coming, after). And this did not change even when all three witches were taken up and tried in King James’s name; put to the question and condemned to the Fire, with true justice administered unstintingly for all their many obscene, dreadful, and blasphemous crimes against the Almighty. . . .

Ah, men of God, be very certain in your judgements. For I tell you, in the Witches’ Book there is but one Commandment only, yet that one deemed unbreakable: Revenge yourselves, or die.

The proper year is 1593, but in the Witch-House of Eye, time stands still. A hot day in a whitewashed room, the eaves and low-hung ceiling stained alike with smoke, where flies pass back and forth—clots in a net of shadow—to graze shoulders held dutifully rigid, pause to sip at the corner of a sleep-slack mouth, before a hand sends them scattering again. A preacher, a proctor, two grim bailiffs with bulky arms folded tight, and a learned divine who’s happened by in lucky time to watch the show—all sit with backs to the wall, while her chief interrogator drones on and that one same clerk’s pen scratches always like a hesitant snake in his words’ wake, pausing only on the tail of each caught breath.

Items: That Alizoun Rusk was reckond by alle and sundry adept at the fashiounynge of poppets, both in waxe and in cloth, for stuffynge. That shee hadde killd both her lawful husbande and chylde unborne by this same wicked method. The last provd true, and lykewize sworn uponne.

Items: That Jonet Devize was well-known to breed imps from her skin and breathe, lyke unto pus or humours or any other sicknesse, and that her neighbours bore witnesse she hadde kept her familiars out of the way of ordinary ken, secretd in a bagge hyd deepe in her nether parts. The last provd true, and lykewize sworn uponne.

Items: That their Ring-Leader Euwphaim Glouwer, a forsworne concubine of Daemons and companioun tae satyrs, claimd alle coven-Members hadde taught their skills eache outher, shared for Eville use in pacte and compacte. For shee claimd also that they would somehow use these said injurious skills tae pay back for eache outher if a single one of them was taken, een to the least and laste drop of bloode.

Items: That both the aforementiound wytches accusd Glauce Lady Druir (of Dourvale) and Callistor Laird Roke (of Rooks-home) of takynge parte in alle similar manner of wyckednesse, as did the said Euwphaim Glouwer, unpenytente een tae the laste. These baselesse charges neer provd true at alle, being how their anely evidence lay in the three accusds ane foresworn and worthlesse testimonyalle.

God’s own men sit stiff-backed like parishoners in awe, thinking (no doubt) on their own shallow faith and little sins. Their hollow faces shine feverish with a constant fear of Hell, features blurring under pressure, as though already a little burnt around the edges.

Yet do I regret nothing,
Euwphaim thinks to herself.
For what matter how my body suffer, seeing my soul be already forfeit?

But it does pain me they killed my Sookin, my poor grimoire-keeper—though I can always fashion him again anew, as Jonet taught us both. That they stole away the babe they got on me in my catching, putting me to the Question when I was still sore from his birth. And that my vow to the Black One goes only so far fulfilled, seeing as I did not near enough malefice before they took me as I might have, given time.

She can still hear Alizoun Rusk curse them all, distantly, her words deformed by a mouthful of broken teeth: Sweet Alizoun, with her brazen stare and her wicked tongue, the sort of woman men call “witch” because she rouses the worst in their natures simply by existing, regardless of what her own true nature might be. Alizoun, who was raised always to accept nothing less than the best as her due portion, and throw her defiance like vitriol back in the eyes of any who might dare say her nay. It gives Euwphaim heart to know they have not broken Alizoun in spirit, whatever mischief they may have done her lovely body; that they cannot now, and never will. Not even when the pitch is poured, at last, and the final fire lit.

But Jonet Devize, so pale and pliant, has fallen silent, and stays so. Which is a worse hurt by far than any torment they can visit upon Euwphaim—for all that they hold her here in this thorny iron chair, a coal-fire banked beneath to blister her arse red, and both legs slatted so efficiently she does not really hope to ever walk again, no matter what the future may yet hold in store for her.

Time is an ill master,
she thinks,
iller by far than my own. And it
shall
bend to his will, and mine, in the end.

“Ye kissed Satan’s hindquarters,” these foolish folk yammer on at her, “and swore yuirself over tae the Enemy for the confoundation of Man. Confess it.”

She snorts, unimpressed, and flips her ruined hands at them like weapons, to see how fast they scurry from her tainted blood. “Oh, but there be
many
angels, fool; nae need tae treat wi’ Satan at all, if power be what ye wish for. Mine is but one of seven.”

“Aye, with God higher still than all of them, and us seated at his
right
hand, with ye left tae beg and supplicate in vain at his left. So shall ye not only confess yet recant yuir foulest slander, also—yuir naming of Glauce Lady Druir and Callistor Laird Roke as part of yuir black company, though they be sae far beyond the purview of such as ye as tae exist on another plane entire. For they are landed and monied, their blood from the highest sources only. And ye, Euwphaim Glouwer . . . what title do
ye
hold?”

“Nane at all in
yuir
corrupt world, as ye well know—yet in the De’il’s service, I am as guid as they, at the very least. Or better.”

Ladies and gentlemen, all, like brightness fallen from the air. Personages with long whispering trains, and diadems cut in the reflection of flames.

“Y’have heard the tales,” she reminds them, once again, with what she personally reckons quite marvellous patience. “Lady Glauce is of the Fair Folk, which to yuir small minds rings same as budding straight up from Hell; the Roke, her daughter’s new husband, is a warlock fell and known, wi’ Darkness’s ain power a-run in his veins.”

Her with her leafy crown and her stane, so full and fair o’ luck, and yet she could spare nane for such as us. So she betrayed us to
ye
instead, she and Magister Roke, sae she might bargain a retreat through time, and thus escape the same fire. And Jonet and Alizoun will die for it, wi’out a doubt . . . 

Yet for all that, she shall escape neither my reach, nor my sweet Master’s wroth.

The nearest witchfinder sighs, a dry huff, as though he has no more juice to spit. “More slander.”

“More
truth
. Yet lay that by: Ye shall reap as ye sow, much like mysel’.” And here she gives them a gappy red smile, whispering: “I see it in the air above, hovering, like a bony crown—yuir future, fool.
All
yuir futures.”

Does this give them pause? She cannot see to tell. Perhaps it is only the hearth-fire’s flickering which makes all their shadows seem to rear up high, become one great-winged darkness, and lean comforting over her—a black balm, rushing in to soothe her many hurts and murmur (in the single torn ear yet remaining to her)—

:Euwphaim, bright one, my dreadful star. My own.:

Oh,
she almost sobs aloud, to hear it.
My Black Man, my crow-feathered angel with your strong, scaly thighs, your nails hooked like the beaks of cormorants. And your eyes faceted like blue diamonds.

(
Where have ye been, my long-lost love? This seven long year, and more?
)

His amusement thrums through her, a breath of scent, crowding out everything but the old refrain:
:Seeking gold for thee, my love, and riches of great store.:

Ah, I always knew it.

Her heart lurches, glazed once more with remorse—so much ill-harvest still owed, for all his boon and bounty laid upon her! So many left yet upright, unblasted . . . plagues yet to be sown, nightmares to be spread, childer un-caught, un-eaten. A whole witless generation left to seethe in the illusion of God’s mercy, like kids in milk, cooked ’til they dissolve and drift upwards, towards an empty Heaven.

What lessons I have taught them they will forget, happily,
once I am gone,
she tells him, soul-sore.
My Laird, I have failed you, to my sorrow. Forgive me?