by Kevin Sands
“No.”
“Then he didn’t drown.”
Sir Edmund looked at me curiously. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s not just Little Jack that’s missing. It’s Emma Lisle from Robert Dryden’s farm, and Allan Cavill’s boy from Crook’s Hollow, and at least two others. Something’s taking them.”
“Some . . . thing? Do you mean an animal? There are wild dogs about.”
“Not an animal,” I said. “The villagers claim it’s the White Lady.”
The room went quiet. Sir Edmund and Álvaro glanced at each other. Julian studied his plate.
“What have they seen?” Álvaro said.
“A light, at night. And I found a blood mark at two of the sites, and I bet if we went to the others, we’d find the same mark there.”
“This blood mark,” Sir Edmund said. “What does it look like? Some kind of symbol?”
“It’s a word.”
He looked startled. “A word?”
“I’ve made out some of the letters. But I can’t quite figure out what it says.”
I pulled the cloth from beneath my sash and pushed it over to Sir Edmund. The baronet looked at it, as if unsure what to do. Then he unfolded it.
And he gasped.
CHAPTER
28
SIR EDMUND JERKED BACK FROM the table. His chair toppled, and he went with it. Though clearly in pain, he slid himself backward on the rug, eyes wide.
Álvaro sprang to his feet, his own chair tipping, rattling against the stone. He gripped his knife, looking from the blood mark to me. In his eyes was a silent, merciless threat.
I rose. Sally grabbed my arm, fingers squeezing my wrist. We stared, Álvaro and I, at each other across the table. Julian remained seated, looking at his plate as if there was no other thing in the world.
“Stop!” Sir Edmund shouted from the floor. “Everyone stop. Álvaro. Álvaro!”
The Spaniard turned his head toward Sir Edmund but kept his eyes on me.
“Help me up, please,” Sir Edmund said.
Álvaro seemed to weigh something in his mind. Slowly, he placed the knife on the table. Then he went to Sir Edmund and lifted him to his feet.
“It’s all right,” Sir Edmund said, wincing. “I was just startled.” He nodded toward the blood mark. “You don’t have any idea what that is, do you?”
“I told you,” I said, “that I know it’s a word. But I can’t decipher it.”
“Then count yourself blessed, my lord. Because if you had deciphered it, you’d have placed your soul in eternal peril.”
“You can read it?” Sally said.
He nodded and motioned to Álvaro. “We’ve seen it before. It’s not merely a word. It’s a name. It’s the signature of Leviathan, the beast of the water.”
Now I could make it out. What I’d thought was an elongated S was actually a lowercase l. The loop with a tail was an e, not an o. Then v, and i, and the rest. Leviathan. The serpent, rising from the sea to devour God’s creation.
And still Álvaro stared at me like I was his prey. Sir Edmund patted his arm. “There’ll be no need for that, old friend. Lord Ashcombe is fine. Get the poker. From the hearth. It’s all right.”
The Spaniard hesitated, but he did as Sir Edmund asked. He slipped the poker under the cloth, lifting it from the table.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Burning it,” Sir Edmund said.
I started to object—I might need to study that blood mark yet—but the look in Álvaro’s eyes told me not to argue. Careful not to bring it near anyone, he swung the poker into the fire. The wool shriveled on the logs, crisped in the heat, turned to ash.
“Before I was awarded my baronetcy,” Sir Edmund said, “I used to be a witchfinder.”
“That’s why I came to you,” I said, still wary under Álvaro’s gaze. “I’d hoped you’d be able to tell me what the word said. More important, what it meant.”
“Evil,” he said. “It means evil.” He sighed. “There is a great deal of it in these hills. I didn’t know that when I made my home here. I thought I’d left all that behind.”
He stared into the fire, watching the wool burn. Then he spoke. “Julian. Go to your rooms.”
I thought Julian might object, but he didn’t. He stood, not meeting anyone’s eyes, and left.
“Come with me,” Sir Edmund said. “I have something to show you.”
Álvaro took his arm, and we made our way through the halls to the baronet’s study. Álvaro led Sir Edmund to a chair, but the baronet steered them past it to the desk, its drawers and cabinets carved with ornate, lifelike leaves.
“You’ll find this interesting, Baron,” Sir Edmund said. He pulled out a small, purple leather bag from the center drawer and held it out to me.
I reached for it, expecting him to hand me the bag. Instead, at the last second, he turned it upside down and dropped what was inside onto my palm.
It was a light, knobbly cylinder, not quite an inch long and dusky brown. It took me a moment to realize what I held.
“It’s a bone,” I said.
“Yes,” Sir Edmund said, relieved. “A finger bone of Saint Benedict, patron against demons. My most prized possession.”
I looked up and saw Álvaro had finally relaxed. And I understood what Sir Edmund had just done.
“This was a test.” I held up the bone. “You gave this to me deliberately. You were testing me.”
“Evil often recoils at the touch of the sacred.” He took the bone from me with delicate fingers and placed it back in the bag. “I apologize, Baron; I meant no insult. But you are clearly unaware of the danger to which you subjected yourself when you copied that signature.”
“I didn’t know that’s what it was.”
“That’s no salvation. Evil takes hold most easily when it remains in the shadows.” He motioned for us to sit. “Like the witch in the woods to the south.”
“You mean Sybil O’Malley,” I said.
“You know of her?”
“I went to her hut.”
Sir Edmund looked horrified. “Why would you go there?”
After their reaction to the blood mark, I certainly wasn’t going to tell them I’d lost my memories. “I’ve been investigating what happened to the missing children. A man in Seaton claimed Sybil was the cause of it.”
“A likely suspicion. Young children are frequent victims of witches. Their blood is of great use in dark magic. And their fat is an ingredient in the flying ointment.” He shifted in his chair. “You mentioned the White Lady earlier. An alliance between them would benefit both. Sybil O’Malley gets the body, the White Lady takes the soul.”
The thought of it made me shudder. “Sybil claims she isn’t responsible. She says she’s not even a witch.”
“And you believe her? My lord . . .”
“Speak plainly, Sir Edmund.”
He did. “You have no idea of the forces you are investigating. Your grandfather may have trained you in the arts of combat, but those are only useful against earthly foes. You are now dealing with the world of spirits. A thousand mortal swords couldn’t protect you.
“Álvaro and I spent our lives fighting them, and barely did we survive. Your aim is noble, but—forgive me—your naiveté will cost you far more than your life. The notion that Sybil is innocent is absurd.”
I wasn’t sure I disagreed. “Do you remember Robert Dryden?”
“Dryden? Oh—yes,” he said. “He came for help when his cows fell ill, I think. I gave him some money.”
“He claims Sybil only uses white magic, to help people.”
Álvaro scoffed.
“With respect, my lord,” Sir Edmund said, “what would he know of it? All magic is black. The very power of it corrupts the soul. Common people often treat with witches, thinking them mere ‘cunning folk.’ It only gives them the opportunity to work their spells with their victim’s permission. They’ll all turn on you, in the end.”
I remembered what Sybil had said, her words bitter. They come for my help when the sickness fills their chests, then come for my head when the rot takes their crops.
“Robert Dryden,” Sir Edmund continued, “may mean well, but all he’s doing is placing his soul at risk. I hunted witches for years—studied under Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General himself—and they are the most deceptive of sorts.”
“I heard about the witch trials,” Sally said. “Weren’t many of the claims false?”
“Most of them were. That’s part of why fighting witches is so difficult. Their craft is tricky to ascertain. Sometimes people are frightened, and they confuse normal events with black magic. Others are malicious, using the courts to inflict pain on those they dislike. There were a thousand trials before the Interregnum. Five hundred of them resulted in conviction. I believe that number is too high by at least double—if not more.”
“But then . . . you’re talking about hundreds of innocent women put to death.”
“Not just women. A great number of the convicted were men. But, yes, I believe hundreds of innocents were executed.”
Sally’s face darkened. Sir Edmund put up a hand. “I share your anger, my lady. Too many of those who pressed claims of magic had neither the knowledge nor the temperament to be witchfinders. But I promise you, no innocent creature ever went to her death when I was at trial. I investigated forty-seven cases, and only found eleven in league with evil. A proportion far smaller than others.”
“What happened to them?”
“Hanged, of course.”
“How could you know they were guilty?”
“I have a method of discovery that is foolproof.”
“A bone dropped in the hand?” I said.
He flushed. “No, my lord. Much more worthy. If you indulge me a moment, I’ll show you.”
CHAPTER
29
SIR EDMUND STOOD. WITH ÁLVARO’S help, he made his way back to the desk.
“What do you know of tests for witches?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Well, there are several of them. Many of the simpler tests require contact between the accused witch and one of her victims: If a person ensorcelled is touched by the witch, the spell will break. So investigators might bring someone having fits to the trial, then force the witch to lay a hand on them. If the fits stop, then this is proof that the witch cast the spell, and she will be found guilty.”
“What if the ‘victim’ is faking?” Sally said. “Couldn’t they just pretend to have a fit until the accused touches them?”
“Yes,” Sir Edmund said. “Which is why I never used a touch test of any kind. There are other, similar examples, but I rejected them, too, as none of them satisfied me as unfalsifiable. No, there are only two tests I know of that cannot be faked.
“The first is called dunking. The accused is stripped, tied with each hand to the opposite foot, and thrown into water. If they are innocent—well, no one can swim when so bound, so they will sink to the bottom. If they are evil, however, then the water, in its purity, will reject them. In other words, the witch will float. If this happens, the accused is proven to be a witch, and will be hanged.”
Sally looked appalled. “But if they’re innocent—”
“They’ll drown, yes. It’s an effective test, but a cruel one, for it condemns the innocent and guilty alike. Many courts have outlawed it for just this reason. Certainly, I never employed it, and fought against its use wherever I could. It was only the second kind of test that I performed.”
He reached into the drawer that held the bag with Saint Benedict’s finger bone. This time, he brought out an engraved, jeweled silver box. Álvaro helped him hobble back to us, where Sir Edmund rested with obvious relief in his chair.
“When a woman becomes a witch,” he said, “she gains a familiar: a demon who comes to her in the shape of an animal, often a cat. To seal their pact, the familiar feeds on the witch’s blood. Where the demon feeds, its polluting evil creates a mark—a witch’s mark—on the body. This mark will be darker than the surrounding skin, and it has the curious property that it cannot feel pain, and will not bleed except when fed upon by the familiar. It is from this fact that we define what is, in my opinion, the only worthy test of a witch.”
Sir Edmund opened the box. “It is known as pricking. A witch is examined by a physician for possible witch’s marks. Once the physician has ruled out all natural blemishes, the questionable ones are tested with this.”
He pulled out a silver cylinder around three inches long. It was hexagonal in shape, with small circles engraved along each side. At one end was a finely detailed silver crown, with six crosses fused to the metal below it. At its other end was a needle, an inch in length.
Carefully, almost reverently, Sir Edmund handed it to me. “This is a pricking needle,” he said. “And it is utterly infallible. You place the needle’s point against the mark you wish to test, and plunge it in. If the accused is innocent, the pain will be agonizing, and the wound will bleed. But if they are a witch, then the needle will cause no pain, and there will be no blood. Pain, of course, could be faked. But no bleeding? After being stuck with this? Impossible.”
I turned it over in my hands. The needle glinted in the light. A curious sensation came over me: a desire to use it, to test it against some witch, to prove their wickedness—
“You feel it,” Sir Edmund said.
I looked up and found him gazing back at me, eyes alight.
“That needle,” he said. “Its blessing. You feel it, don’t you?”
The silver, warmed by my touch, seemed alive under my skin. Was I imagining it? Or could I really feel its power?
“May I see it?” Sally said.
I handed it to her, not really wanting to let it go. She studied it, gripped it like I had. Then she placed the needle against her palm.
Sir Edmund started. “Do be careful, my lady. The tip is incredibly—”
She pressed the needle in. Her eyes widened, and she gasped as it slipped into her skin.
“—sharp.”
Álvaro snatched the needle away. A dot of blood swelled in Sally’s palm.
The baronet called the steward for a cloth. “I’m dreadfully sorry, my lady. I should have warned you.”
That wouldn’t have made a difference. She’d stuck herself with the point deliberately. I looked at her, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I hope your fears are put to rest, at least,” Sir Edmund said to her. “This needle permits no errors. No frightened farmers, no petty grievances could fake this pure and public test. And I performed the test myself, so none could attempt trickery by sleight of hand. Not even Álvaro, whom I trust beyond measure, was allowed to handle it.”
Sally pressed the cloth into her palm to stop the bleeding.
“Have you tested that needle on Sybil?” I said.
“She will hardly consent to its use without a trial,” Sir Edmund said.
“Why not arrange one?”
“I can’t. The assizes will no longer sit for witch trials. They now require a confession to bring someone to court. Which misses the point entirely!” he huffed. “And as you can see”—he waved at his gout-addled foot—“I am in no condition for a trial. I told you before that the darkness finds its way into you. This is how it has cursed me. And because of my infirmity—and the cowardice of the assizes—Sybil O’Malley summons the White Lady to do her bidding. And evil walks the land again.”
“If you were able,” I said, “how would you stop her?”
He thought about it. “It would have been easiest to have condemned the witch before her summoning. But with the White Lady already freed, that is no longer sufficient. At this point, you’d have to destroy the wraith herself.”
I shivered. “How can you destroy a ghost?”
“By understanding their nature. Ghosts are not a natural part of this world; they belong to the hereafter. For a spirit to remain, somethin
g must bind it to the mortal plane. This is usually accomplished via some artifact of the ghost’s earthly trauma. Something meaningful to the White Lady when she was still alive.”
“What would that be?” Sally asked.
Sir Edmund shrugged. “There’s no way to know. It could be anything: a piece of jewelry, a beloved possession, a favored garment worn at the time of death.”
“How would you find it?” I said.
“You would feel it. If you got close enough, it would radiate evil. Your body would rebel with terror. Only the stoutest of hearts could even approach it.”
“And then what?”
“Burn it. Cast it into fire hot enough to melt steel. But you’d have a much larger problem before that. Touching the artifact will summon the spirit. That’s probably what the witch used to bind her to her power in the first place. So if you found the item, you’d have to find some way to evade the wraith as well. And, of course, you’d be in the lion’s den, so to speak; the artifact would most likely be found near the source of her misery.”
I recalled what Rawlin had said. “That would be the abandoned village. Hook Reddale.”
Sir Edmund paled. “A terrible place. I went there once—at least, I tried. I couldn’t even approach it. I tell you, Baron, I’ve faced a dozen screaming witches, each promising eternal torment, each with the power to provide it. I stood against them all. But the terror I felt when I approached that village . . . it frightened me in a way nothing has before.”
His story made my stomach flutter. I understood now why the Spirits of the Wood had bound me in their geas. How desperately I wished to give up this insane quest, to go home and never return. If I could have, I would have. And when I remembered the missing children, my wish filled me with shame.
“So,” I said. “You know where Hook Reddale is.”
He nodded. “I was able to discover its location by matching the clues in the story to the land. All you need to do is follow—”
Suddenly he stopped. “Why are you asking this?”
Because I have no choice. “Children are missing, Sir Edmund.”