The Vanishing Witch

by Karen Maitland

  At last Robert rose and climbed onto the dais, seating himself at the table. He smoothed out a parchment and ran his finger down it. Then he picked up a pointed stick that lay ready beside it and scratched at a spot on the document. He blew the dried ink away and, dipping a quill pen into a pot, he wrote two names on the parchment. Without a word, Robert crossed the room and called for the guards. He didn’t once look at Gunter.

  Gunter felt cold and numb to the very marrow of his bones. How could he walk back into the cell and tell his son that, once again, he had failed to protect him? He felt no bitterness towards Master Robert. You couldn’t ask a wolf to spare a lamb. It was in their nature to kill, just as it was in the nature of the wealthy to show no mercy to the poor. Life had taught him to expect nothing more. His only anger was against himself for being honest, for being a fool, for not learning that you had to grab whatever you could in this life before others snatched it for themselves.

  As the guards marched in and seized him, he turned once more to Robert. ‘Just the boy, spare the boy!’

  Robert ignored him and addressed the guards: ‘When you’ve released this man and his son, send the bailiff to me. There are two men I wish to have arrested.’

  The guards stopped dead as if they’d been struck a sharp blow.

  ‘Release them, Master Robert? But their names are on the list of rebels.’

  ‘It would appear the wrong men have been arrested. The names of this man and his son were never on the list. Can’t you read?’

  The two guards looked at each other and shook their heads. Of course they couldn’t. Why would they need to do that?

  ‘The men who should have been arrested were Martin of Washingborough and his son. Arrest them. Let this man and his boy go free.’

  Chapter 71

  The seven whistlers are the souls of the damned that range the earth as birds. Whenever their cries are heard, death or disaster shall follow as surely as night follows day.

  Lincoln

  Godwin hid outside the city gates at the top of the hill and waited until the moon rose. The road outside the wall was deserted, save for a couple of scavenging dogs. They snarled as they caught his scent. He hurled stones at them until they slunk away into the shadows. He crossed the track and peered over the edge of the cliff down onto the grassy ledge, now washed grey in the starlight. Far below, in the deep darkness of the valley, the cottagers’ fires glowed red as dragons’ eyes.

  It took several attempts before Godwin could summon the courage to lower himself into the darkness. He dropped the last foot or so. The grass was slippery after the rain and he slid to the edge of the ledge before he was able to stop. He lay there, his limbs trembling at the thought of how close he had come to falling. The friar’s robes were cumbersome, but he’d returned to wearing them tonight. They sanctified the execution he was about to carry out. It would be Divine Justice.

  Afraid to stand up in case he slipped again, Godwin crawled to the bushes and, forcing his way behind them, burrowed into the cave. He could see nothing inside, as if an invisible curtain were shutting out the moonlight, but he groped around until his fingers encountered one of the urns. He traced the pattern on it – a great serpent encircling the jar, devouring its own tail – the ouroboros. He smiled to himself. That his hand had been guided to this particular symbol was a good omen, for it was the same design as the ring the witch had used to trick his father into believing his only son was dead. It was fitting that her daughter should die here, among the burial urns. Pavia would have her child ripped from her as his own father had. He wanted her to feel all the pain of a parent’s grief, before he dragged her from this world into the sulphurous fires of Hell. For her, there would be no release from that torment, no ransom paid, just as she had plotted for him.

  Godwin had planned exactly what he would do. He’d contemplated using a dagger, but he knew that, in the dark, he could not be certain of striking a fatal blow. Besides, he couldn’t risk being seen with blood on him in case he ran into the watchmen or someone else who might remember. But, most of all, he was afraid of the girl’s blood: a person’s spirit lives in their blood and hers was an evil one that might leave her body and possess anyone her blood touched.

  He would have to strangle her. But a man cannot easily throttle anyone with just one hand, not even a child. Godwin drew the cord from his friar’s scrip. It had taken time to fashion it into a wide noose, but he had grown accustomed to using teeth and a single hand to do deftly what most men did with two good hands. He was relying on the darkness to conceal his movements from the girl, attack before she realised what he intended.

  Fling the noose over the child’s head. Pull the end down with his good hand, until it fastened about her slender throat. Keep pulling until he’d dragged her to the ground. Pin her down with his knees and, using the stump of his right hand as a lever, push against her body, pulling the cord tighter and tighter with his good hand until she was dead.

  He’d practised many times until he could pull the cord tight so quickly she wouldn’t have a chance to throw it off. When she was no longer moving, he would take his time. Make quite sure she was dead. Then fling her body off the cliff to crash down onto the roofs of the houses far below, her bones shattering, like clay jars. They’d carry the broken remains to Pavia and he would be watching from the shadows, waiting to hear her scream.

  Godwin started as he heard the rattle of loose stones that meant someone was scrambling over the edge of the cliff and suddenly there she was, standing on the silvered grassy ledge, silhouetted against the moon. He could see the glint of starlight in her eyes, but nothing of her expression.

  ‘You received . . . my message.’ In his excitement, Godwin was struggling to breathe.

  By way of an answer, Leonia held up the golden boar’s head between her thumb and forefinger. It glittered in the bone-white light that haloed her shorn head.

  Godwin beckoned to her to come closer. ‘I knew your mother long ago . . . We are kin, you and I . . . I wanted to meet you, after all these years. I have a gift for you, little sister. Your mother might not want you to have it. But I know you can keep a secret.’

  He was relying on Leonia’s curiosity and greed. But if she grew suspicious, her only way out was to scramble back up the cliff face, and the moment she tried, he would be behind her with the noose.

  But Leonia did not attempt to run. Instead she slowly paced towards him, parting the bushes until she stood right in front of the cave. It was as if she was inviting him to kill her, daring him to do it. Another step and she was within his reach. But even as Godwin raised his hand to fling the noose about her slender white neck, he caught sight of something moving above him on the lip of the cave.

  At first he thought a bat was hanging there. The bulging eyes were bluish-white in the moonlight, opaque, dead. But the wet black snout wriggled as if it was trying to smell what it could not see. A thick purple tongue protruded between sharp white teeth, tasting the air. The creature was small, its head no broader than Godwin’s hand, but even as he watched, it began to swell, as if it were engorging with blood. Its claws were as sharp as death.

  It hung above Godwin for a moment, suspended, then sprang at him, striking him in the stomach and knocking him to the ground. He screamed and threw himself sideways. Its talons raked his back, tearing the skin. Its four long fangs bit into his flesh. He tried to crawl out, but the twigs of the bushes had turned into vipers, twisting and slithering up in a great swarm towards him. He scuttled backwards into the cave, trying to wedge himself into the rock, but there was no rock. There was nothing but emptiness, a void that went deeper and deeper into the black heart of the world.

  The demon bounded across the floor after him, its claws rasping on the stone. Its sinuous body flattened itself, and as Godwin shrieked and fought to push it away, it crawled on top of him. Its oily black fur brushed over his skin. It pressed its ever-increasing weight down on his chest until he was fighting for breath. It fastened itself o
n his face, the wet snout pressing against his nose, as its four long canine teeth flashed like daggers. Its hot, purple tongue flicked over Godwin’s lips, pushing between them, filling his mouth. Its foul breath seared his lungs. He tried to scream one last time, but the only sound that emerged was the strangled gurgle of his final breath.

  Leonia slipped the little golden boar’s head back into her purse and, turning her head, gazed out over the valley below. One by one the tiny ruby and gold lights of cottage fires and candles were going out and darkness was flowing in like the drowning tide.

  It would be three days before an urchin, hiding from his tormenters, found Godwin’s body in the cave. The discovery of a corpse, he knew, would transform his position in the gang from runt to hero. Gleefully he called them to come and look. They scrambled over the edge, threatening to throw him off the cliff if this was another of his hoaxes. But their sneers and jeers died away as they caught sight of the man lying on the floor of the cave. Four neat holes had been punched through the coarse cloth of his robe, from which four streams of blackened blood had run to pool beneath him, staining red the fragments of bone on which he lay. The man’s twisted mouth was wide open, as if his life had been severed in a scream and in his staring eyes was an expression of pure terror. That look so unnerved the boys that not even a double-dare would induce any of the little gang to touch the corpse, in case the stump of his arm should come to life and strike them dead.

  For the adults, however, the death of a nameless vagabond in a stinking cave was hardly worth investigating. The deputy sheriff, to whom the matter was reported, summoned the coroner, as he was legally obliged to do. A dozen sullen citizens were rounded up and coerced into acting as jury, but all were anxious to get the whole matter over as quickly as possible and cursed the corpse for putting them to such trouble.

  The four puncture wounds in the chest of the cadaver stirred a vague memory in the coroner’s mind. He was sure he’d seen something like it on another corpse, but since he was forced to examine bodies all over the county, he couldn’t remember where he’d seen that pattern before.

  The deputy sheriff was absolutely certain where he’d seen similar marks.

  ‘Remember that merchant’s son,’ he murmured, sidling up to the coroner, ‘the one they fished out of the Braytheforde? You reckoned his wounds to have been made by a quant or an anchor. But it looks like you was wrong about that, wasn’t you, Master Coroner?’ he added, with malicious glee. ‘This couldn’t be a ship’s anchor, could it, not on dry land and way up here?’

  The coroner swore under his breath. He did recall the other corpse now, but the deaths of a merchant’s drunken son and a begging friar could hardly be connected, especially after all these months, and he had no intention of being made to look an incompetent fool. Discreetly he opened the purse hanging from his belt. Gold has many great attributes, not least the power to miraculously erase a man’s memory.

  ‘It would appear,’ the coroner said loudly, addressing the jury men, ‘that someone repeatedly stabbed this unfortunate man or he stabbed himself in a frenzy and flung the weapon over the edge of the cliff.’

  The deputy-sheriff gave him a conspiratorial wink and fingered the coins in his palm.

  But there was still the mystery of the noose found lying beside the corpse. Had someone tried to throttle him, or had he come to the cliff-face with every intention of hanging himself and failed to find a suitable tree? Either way, there was little point in anyone wasting any more time or money pursuing the matter. The most pressing problem now was what to do with the body, for if there was any chance it was self-murder, it could not be accorded a burial on consecrated ground. They debated the matter earnestly and concluded that since the deceased was found, hermit-like, in a cave, dressed as a Friar of the Sack, whom everyone knew took religious zeal to the point of madness, the safest course was simply to wall him up in the cave in which he’d died and leave God and the devil to fight it out over his soul.

  Chapter 72

  If a skull be removed from the place where it rests, death and disaster shall follow till it be restored.

  Lincoln

  Welcome to the kingdom of the dead, Godwin, welcome to my kingdom.

  They say the spirit of the last man to be buried in a patch of ground is doomed to guard it until another can be found to take his place, so if I were you, my darlings, I wouldn’t open any caves on that cliff in Lincoln, unless you want to stay there until the great wolf Fenris breaks the chain that fetters it and the stars fall from the sky. Godwin is going to have a long, lonely wait all alone in the dark, but before you start feeling sorry for him, my darlings, remember he would have murdered an innocent little girl. And surely child-murderers deserve the worst of fates, don’t they?

  But we must return to the living. We’re not quite finished with them yet.

  It was late in the afternoon when Robert finally left the castle. The heat was unremitting, and every inch of his body felt wet and sticky. The high collar of his woollen houppelande chafed his neck. Flies crawled everywhere, generated from the slime-green mud that suppurated in the ditches and streams. Even the water in the Witham was unusually low and choked with weed. The flat-bottomed punts could still make the journey between Boston and Lincoln, but keeled craft lay beached along the banks, unable to move until the next rains.

  The latest news from London was that so many rebels’ bodies hung in gibbet cages about the town, or had been quartered and nailed to doors, that the stench was making people ill. Markets had had to be abandoned, for stallholders and customers alike were vomiting and fainting, not just from the sight of the bloated green corpses, but from the smell, which even tainted the bread and meat. Townspeople had started tearing the bodies down and burying them, but the boy-king was having none of that. He’d ordered them dug up and gibbeted again. He was determined this was a lesson no one would forget.

  Robert felt no pang of guilt for adding Martin and his son to the list of rebels. He owed Gunter his life and prided himself on always paying his debts. He believed that neither Gunter nor his son had had any hand in the killings. But two names were needed to fill the gap in the list. Martin and his son would have hanged anyway, if it could have been proved that they’d stolen from the merchants. So justice would be served. Besides, if witnesses could be found to prove their innocence, no harm would come to them, except for a few weeks spent chained up in the castle, which they richly deserved.

  Robert pushed his way through the throng in the castle courtyard towards the great doors that opened out into the city at the top of the hill. He was in two minds whether to go to the warehouse or make straight for home and a large goblet of hippocras. His back was aching and he couldn’t even summon enough energy to worry about the latest folly Edward might have committed at the warehouse.

  Yet he found himself reluctant to return home. Catlin’s tongue was growing more savage by the day and she always found some reason to push him away if he attempted to touch her. He tried to tell himself that the relentless heat was to blame. All the men were complaining it made their wives irritable. But often when he woke in the night, her part of the bed would be empty. Edith may have endured rather than enjoyed love-making, but she had never forsaken his bed, even in anger. She’d been brought up to be a dutiful wife.

  Something caught the edge of Robert’s vision and he turned his head. On the far side of the thronged courtyard, a familiar figure was urging her palfrey forward in the direction of the gate that led to the road and fields beyond the city. For a moment, Robert felt relieved. At least he would have some peace at home for an hour or two. He was just about to walk on, when he saw another figure he knew enter through the city gate. The man was looking ahead of him as if he were searching for someone. Then he saw the man’s gaze fix on Catlin. As if she knew he was behind her, she turned in the saddle. It was only a small gesture, a beckon of the fingers, answered by the briefest of nods from the man, but it was enough. In that instant, the suspicions that ha
d been hovering unformed, like a dark miasma, at the back of Robert’s mind suddenly gathered into a solid, menacing shape.

  Catlin, with a nod to the guards, trotted through the gate out of the city. Minutes later, the man followed. Robert forced himself to wait for them to get well clear of the castle wall before he limped through the gate. He walked down the rise and edged along the bottom of the castle mound, until he had a clear view of the track beyond, prepared at any moment to step behind the trees if either of them should turn. But they did not, which only added to his fury, that both should be so arrogant as to feel themselves safe from discovery.

  He watched them enter the small grove of trees around St Margaret’s pool. Catlin waited on her palfrey for the man to take the bridle and tether the beast. She swung her leg across the horse’s back and he grasped her slender waist to lift her down. Robert saw the fierce embrace, the lingering kiss, watched Catlin pulling him down onto the tinder-dry grass.

  Swiping furiously at the flies that buzzed around his face, Robert limped as fast as his sore back would allow down the track and across the sun-scorched meadow. Catlin was lying on top of the man, her skirts raised, her mouth working hungrily on his. He was running his hands over her bare thighs. But as Robert stumbled towards them it was the man who saw him first. His eyes widened in alarm, and he struggled up, tipping Catlin onto the hard ground. She screeched in annoyance as she was flung aside. The man scrambled to his feet as Robert advanced towards them. He stumbled backwards, the white streak of hair falling across his face.

  Robert ignored him and, seizing his wife’s arm, dragged her to her feet. ‘You filthy whore! You could be put to death for this – both of you. This is a crime against God and nature. Edward is your son, your own son! How could you fornicate with him?