Wine, Witches and Song (The Everyday Witches of Wildham-on-Sea Book 1)

by Molly Milligan

  There was unexpected laughter from behind us.

  The slim, mocking figure of Mark Smeaton joined us. Well, he didn’t exactly stand with us. He pranced around, almost pirouetting around the two fighting men, laughing and giggling. He mocked them, imitating the sword fight, dancing from one foot to another. He came back towards us. “Poor old Boleyn’s getting it, is he not?”

  “Is he the one with the red beard?”

  “Of course he is. Look at him bleed! All of him shall be red before this night is out.”

  “Does he always lose?”

  Smeaton looked at me in surprise. “I don’t know. I never stay to the end.” And he ran away.

  “He’s a trickster and nothing more,” I muttered.

  “He is the campest man I have ever seen,” Gloria said. “And he was Anne’s lover?”

  “Apparently so. How could she stand him? He’s infuriating.”

  “I think the ghost we’ve met is just one aspect of his personality that is lingering, trapped in this world,” Gloria said. “I am going to credit Anne with more taste. Mark Smeaton must have been a more interesting and less annoying person in real life.”

  “Ugh.” I shuddered. “Can you imagine being haunted by him all the time?”

  “Don’t tempt fate,” Gloria said. “Oh! Oh my god...”

  She nudged me and I turned my attention back to the fight.

  The older man – Boleyn, I now knew – was on his knees. Paston raised his sword to deliver the killing blow. He brought the weapon down in a sweeping arc and Gloria squealed and buried her face in my shoulder. I tried to close my eyes but I was transfixed. I was as horrified by my own curiosity as I was by the scene playing itself out in front of us.

  The sword slammed down.

  And Boleyn just disappeared. Pop! Gone.

  I breathed out in a long rush, feeling sick. “Gloria, it’s okay. You can look.”

  Sir Thomas Paston stood alone, and his sword had disappeared. His clothing had repaired itself. He looked up at the night sky and began to mutter to himself, and I realised that he was saying a prayer. The idea of a ghost praying made me start to giggle.

  He must have heard me. He finished his prayer and approached us, and made a low bow. “Good evening, ladies.”

  “Good evening. Are you Sir Thomas Paston?”

  “You know that I am, as I know you are ... Jackie, and Gloria.” He frowned slightly as he spoke. I didn’t think he was used to addressing older women that he didn’t know in such an informal manner. I wondered how he knew our names, then, but that was a mystery for another time. I had very little idea about the world of ghosts.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Where did the coach go? Where’s Anne?”

  “The coach has continued its infernal journey, and will soon pass out of this mortal land once more. As for that poor doomed woman, I will lead you to her.”

  “Ah – great. Well, I ought to say,” I said, “it’s not really Anne that we’re looking for. I mean, it is, but really, we’re trying to get hold of a book that she might have written.”

  “I know the songbook,” he said with a sad smile. “I wrote some of those tunes myself, you know.”

  “Then can you help us get that book back? It’s important,” I said. “It really is a matter of good and evil.”

  He shook his head. “No. This is what you must do. You must avenge my broken family.”

  “What?”

  “Follow me.” He strode off further around the back of the hall. We scurried to keep up.

  “It’s a trap, though,” I said. “You have to be careful. There’s a man round there who has been trying to trick us.”

  “I will save you from any trap,” Paston said, not even slowing his determined pace. “But in return you must bring justice to my family.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He must pay. Vincent, my heir of long years, he must pay for what he has done, and the shame he has brought on my family name, and the cruel plight into which he has thrown his sister.”

  “So he definitely is guilty?”

  “Yes, he is. Bring him to justice and I can rest.”

  We came into a small courtyard where there were three figures all intent on their tasks, although it took me a moment to recognise the third person as human, being as she was holding her own head in her hands, clasped in front of herself most demurely.

  It was a disconcerting sight. You’d expect more screaming.

  It was Anne Boleyn, dressed in a simple long white gown, with a plain white shawl around her neck – her neck, which ended abruptly in a straight line. I stopped looking at it before I saw any details that would thoroughly creep me out. Instead my eyes were drawn to her head, resting in her hands. Her face was mobile, and very much alive, and she was crying.

  The other two people were Ian and Vin. Ian was standing in the centre of a circle that was about ten feet across, and marked out with rope. He had set a tea-light at each of the compass points. Vin stood next to him, with his head hanging down, looking unhappy and dejected. Both of them were facing away from us.

  I was all for creeping up on them without being seen, but Paston had no such thoughts. He strode on.

  “Ho, there!” cried another man and suddenly Sir Thomas Boleyn was back on the scene, and appeared to be perfectly fine. Of course he would be. You can’t kill a ghost, after all. He appeared behind Anne, and went to her side, and put one arm around her. He pointed with his other arm, past Ian and Vin, directly at Paston, Gloria and me.

  This caught Ian’s attention and he turned around and saw us. His face dropped in surprise although I wasn’t sure whether this was because he expected me to have seen the coach and be dragged off somewhere, or whether he was shocked to see Paston with us.

  Ian raised the book in his hand. He shook his head and his frown cleared. “You cannot stop me, now!” he said. “Look. Anne herself is trapped here. And now I even have her father, the silly man.”

  It was true. “Damn him,” I said to Gloria. “Anne’s inside the circle.”

  All four of them were safely behind the rope – Ian and Vin, and the two Boleyn ghosts, Anne and Sir Thomas. Gloria, Sir Thomas Paston and I all stopped outside the circle.

  Ian said, firmly, “Vincent. Do it. Do it now. You know what you have to do. Here.” Ian shoved the book into Vin’s unwilling hands and pushed him forwards so that he stumbled to the edge of the circle, facing us. He held the book in both hands and lifted it above his head, shakily.

  “Do it, Vincent!” Ian yelled.

  Do what?

  Paston got to the edge of the circle and faced Vin. They were only one foot apart. But Paston could not penetrate the magic, and Vin began to chant something.

  “Can you sing?” I said to Gloria.

  “Yes, I love to sing. I’m rather good,” she added.

  She was not. I soon found that out as we began to sing together. The only thing that came to my mind that I knew we’d all know was Greensleeves, so that’s what I began to belt out, at the top of my lungs, in a dramatic performance worthy of a television talent show. Gloria’s voice hurtled around the upper reaches of the soprano universe, and was a unique kind of weapon all of its own, but I threw myself into trying a harmony underneath her wailing, and at least we were both singing the right words.

  We linked arms and walked forwards.

  When we got to stand alongside Paston, he too was singing. And behind Ian, I could see Anne’s mouth was moving, and her father was singing too. We raised up our voices like a choir, and I put as much intent into it as I possibly could.

  The songbook in Vin’s hands twitched and I knew that he had not moved it. There was a life in that book, and it responded to the song. The book was about the music, and that was all.

  “Keep the song going,” I muttered to Gloria, and then stepped back, sliding behind Paston and Gloria to get myself out of sight of Ian. He was hollering at Vin, telling him to “do it”, whatever “it” was, but Vin was
stuck, caught by the song that was surrounding him. The song fed from the book and fed back into the book. He was powerless. Worse, he was incapacitated. Ian ran up behind him and started to shake Vin’s shoulder but it did no good.

  I pulled out a notebook from my bag, and cupped my hands around it. This was the time for paper magic once more. I breathed into the pages of the book and brought them alive, and sang my own little song, a small, whispered Greensleeves, into the notebook.

  The pages fluttered under their own power.

  Then I flung the book into the air, streaming as much of my power into it as I could, urging it to fly and to sing its own song.

  As it leaped up and hung in the air, the songbook in Vin’s hands wrenched itself free and flapped upwards too, meeting my little notebook in the air. I leaped up like I was a teenage netball player and plucked the songbook from its hovering perch and threw myself backwards, away from the circle.

  The action was still enough to break the barrier of magic, which meant everyone inside could now get out.

  And it also meant that we could get in.

  As Ian made a grab for me, Gloria stepped right into his way, and felled him with the most hefty right hook I’d seen outside of a boxing ring.

  He was knocked right to the ground. Vin jumped to one side and yelped. Paston laughed, and Gloria clutched her fist and squealed as if she, too, was surprised at what she had done.

  Sir Thomas Paston stepped over the rope and put his hands on Vin’s shoulders. Vin shuddered and I could only imagine what it felt like to be touched by the ghost. Vin’s lips twisted in disgust but he could not get away.

  We’d all stopped singing by now. My notebook lay on the ground next to Ian, who was struggling to sit up, and holding his jaw.

  Paston said to Vin, “You are my direct descendent. You are of an ancient and noble family, and you bring shame onto me, and my children, and my children’s children. You bring shame onto your parents and your parents’ parents. Most of all, you bring shame to yourself and unimaginable pain to your sister.”

  “I did it for her!” Vin said in a choking voice. “But she was not worthy of it, in the end.”

  “Who told you that? Him, that man, the one mewing there on the floor like an injured kitten? He has silver lies in his mouth, that one.”

  “But what if he’s right?” Vin said.

  “What do you think, boy?” Paston shook him. “Clear your head of his nonsense. What do you think?”

  “Charlotte ... she was wronged by Will Howlett, she was wronged! He took it all from her. She should have had success with him. But he went without her and he took the book. The book was her life. Without it, she could not make any music at all. He didn’t just take the book from her – he took her music from her.”

  That was it. The link I had been missing. That accounted for her fading and coming back to life again.

  Vin said, brokenly, “He had to die.”

  Paston snorted with laughter. “Yes, that is true. I would have run him through with a sword myself, to protect the family. Of course the man had to die. But now? What do you do now, for your sister? Are you continuing to protect the family?”

  Vin hung his head. “No.”

  I was put out by Paston’s assertion that Will had to die, but he was from another age, and I could understand why.

  Paston said, “So, this is what you are going to do, shameful scion of mine. You will go with these two women and they will take you to a place of justice, and you will confess all that you have done, for this is the only way that you may make amends. Your sister will be free once more, and you will never contact her again.”

  “What – no, you can’t say that.”

  “I do not trust your weak mind to stay free of the influence of men like that,” Paston said. “You must do this. Or you will suffer terrible consequences. You will ride the headless coach for all eternity. I can make it happen, do not doubt me, boy.”

  Vin was crying. “I did it for her.”

  “I know. You acted for her at first. But now you act for yourself in the thrall to this man. Give it up. Now do this for her, too. You must complete what you have begun.”

  Paston steered the weak young man towards me. I reached out and grabbed his upper arm, and Gloria went to the other side of him. She squeaked when her hand moved. We were like a pair of wannabe bouncers. “Thank you, sir,” I said to Paston.

  He was already beginning to fade. He lifted one hand in salute to us as his body shimmered and I realised I could see right through him.

  Ian got to his feet.

  Anne and her father were also fading.

  For a moment, I thought that Ian was going to launch himself upon us. He leaned forward, and Paston began to grow more solid again. He put up a hand to Ian, in a warning gesture. “Let them go,” he said in a voice that echoed out of old tombs.

  “Come on,” I said to Gloria. We frog-marched Vin out of there, hurrying him towards the car I’d left in the pub car park, which was empty now. I didn’t look behind. I had to trust to Paston that he would keep Ian there while we made our escape. I flung Vin into the back of the car and he curled up on the rear seats, whimpering.

  “Will you take me home?” he said. “Or take me to my mum and dad’s? Please?”

  “No,” I said. “You know exactly where we are going.”

  He sniffed and wept all the way to the police station.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A custody suite in the middle of the night is a strange and grim place, but it was at least midweek and Wildham-on-Sea is a small town. I supposed that inside of tourist season, and on a weekend, the place would be full of drunks and brawlers. On this particular May Wednesday, there was an unhappy homeless man crying, and a tired desk officer who snapped into life when Vincent Paston hung his head and literally confessed as he stood between us.

  We were not allowed to leave either, in case we were some kind of accessories. We weren’t arrested, exactly, but we were shown into a room and given coffee that was so horrible that it was some kind of punishment. Now the adrenaline was leaving my body, I wanted to curl up and sleep, and Gloria wasn’t looking much better.

  We sagged against one another and didn’t even speak.

  After an hour, our statements were taken and I looked around for any sign of Bernie but things had obviously been happening behind the scenes and the main custody area was strangely quiet. I had no energy left to charm the sergeant into telling us what was happening, though he volunteered some information readily enough: Vin had been formally arrested and charged. But we had no word on Charlotte.

  “It’s all happening this week,” the sergeant did mutter. “Musicians. Huh.”

  I turned around. Gloria was by the door, phoning for a taxi to take us home. Neither of us were up for the walk across town now it was nearly three in the morning.

  “Musicians?” I said to the sergeant. “Have you arrested Ron Thompson?”

  “He’s been charged and released on bail. We’d rather not clutter up the cells if we can help it.”

  “Charged with what?”

  “It will be in the papers. Go on with you.”

  I couldn’t muster any energy to persist with my questioning. I joined Gloria and we shared the taxi back up to the old town, and home, at last.

  I CRAWLED INTO BED and felt strangely awake, and stared up at the dull ceiling, wondering if I was in for a few hours of insomnia. Then I heard a low singing once more. I closed my eyes and sighed, trying to count sheep and do anything possible to resist the irritating ear worm.

  The singing grew louder. The voice was a woman’s, and it was low and sweet, as it crooned out a lullaby. I half-opened my eyes and a faint outline of a woman shimmered there at the bottom of my bed. The singing surrounded me with warmth and love.

  “I didn’t recognise you with your head on,” I murmured into the gloom.

  Anne Boleyn sang me to sleep.

  And it was the best night’s sleep I had had in a lo
ng time.

  The next morning, I left a slew of messages on Bernie’s mobile phone but I wasn’t really surprised that she wasn’t picking up. No doubt Vin’s confession had caused a ton more work for her and her team. I spent the morning lounging around my house, drinking tea and staring out of windows, with the rolling news channel on in the background as I waited for updates to go public.

  I sent a text to Clare, saying that everything had been a success, thanking her for the helpful insight, and telling her that I would tell her everything as soon as she felt up for a visit and a long conversation. Just before lunch, I left the house and called in at the gallery to see Gloria.

  She was sitting down behind the cash register and she got to her feet with a sigh when she heard the shop bell jangle. She perked up when she saw it was me, and sat down again. “Have you brought caffeine?”

  “No – I can get some though.”

  She passed me the key to her house and requested the strongest coffee known to humankind. I went off at her bidding. At least I hadn’t had to be working by nine in the morning, like she had.

  She took the coffee with an appreciative grin, and her eyes sparkled. “We did it, didn’t we?”

  “We’re not finished yet,” I said. “When Charlotte is released, I need to take the book back to her.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Under my bed.” I told Gloria about the dreams. “How is your hand, by the way?”

  She extended her arm and I gasped in horror. Her knuckles were angrily red and black. I took her hand and it felt hot and swollen. “You must get this checked out.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not. Go to the walk-in centre right now. I will watch the shop.”

  We argued but it was inevitable that I would prevail. She drank her coffee and I called a taxi for her, and sent her packing. “Don’t you dare walk back in here until you are bandaged up like a mummy and full of painkillers.”

  “I can have a cup of herbal tea.”

  “You can. If you want to sleep, or relax, or feel at one with hessian. But if they offer you decent strong painkillers, for god’s sake, take them. I pay my taxes so you can rely on the NHS. All right?”